Benno Erdmann

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Benno Erdmann (1906). Photo by Aura Hertwig

Benno Erdmann (born May 30, 1851 in Guhrau , Lower Silesia , † January 7, 1921 in Berlin ) was a German philosopher . As a professor at five Prussian universities, he dealt with logic and psychology .

Life

As the son of a Christian preacher , Erdmann studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin and the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . Heymann Steinthal , Hermann von Helmholtz , Hermann Bonitz and Eduard Zeller were formative teachers. Zeller and Bonitz imparted methodological knowledge to him for his historical research. Helmholtz and Bornitz influenced his later psychological publications. 1873 doctorate he in Berlin to Dr. phil. with the dissertation: On the position of the thing in itself in Kant's aesthetics and analytics . He thus founded the historical-genetic research on Kant. The previously mostly practiced method of quoting Kant primarily as a guarantor for one's own ideas has been expanded.

A steep university career began with his habilitation. Helmholtz proposed the publication Die Axioms der Geometrie (1877) as the basis for the habilitation . Since 1876 he was a private lecturer and in 1878 went to the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel as an associate professor . In 1879 he received a chair. In 1884 he followed the call of the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelms University in Breslau . In 1890 he moved to the Friedrichs-Universität Halle and in 1898 to the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn . For the academic year 1907/08 he was elected rector . In his inaugural address on October 18, 1907, he dealt with the functions of the imagination in scientific thinking . When he returned to Berlin in 1909, he was also elected rector there. On January 27, 1914, he spoke about modern monism . As a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences , he directed the edition of Immanuel Kant and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz after Wilhelm Dilthey's death .

The main significance of Erdmann lies in his work on the history of philosophy, especially modern philosophy, ibs. Kant. Here he was the first to come up with the plan to settle the controversies about the correct interpretation of Kantian philosophy, especially the Critique of Pure Reason, through a historically accurate reconstruction of the development of Kantian thought. The controversial Kantian interpretations of his time could not be appeased by this. Individuals, including Erich Adickes , contradicted his historical account and showed him to be mistaken because he assumed certain interpretations to be correct. Erdmann devoted himself to systematic questions of epistemology and logic. Like John Stewart Mill , he answers the general validity of logical laws with the thesis that the necessity of logical laws does not result in their absolutely general validity. With this he contradicted Edmund Husserl . He published numerous studies on epistemological and perceptual psychological questions. His main work in this area is "Basics of Reproductive Psychology" from 1920.

His children included Lothar Erdmann , Rilke's correspondent Ilse Erdmann (1879–1924) and Käthe Erdmann (1882–1952), who married Friedrich Brie .

Fonts

  • Martin Knutzen and his time . 1876
  • The Axioms of Geometry, a philosophical investigation of the Riemann-Helmholtz theory of space . Voss, Leipzig 1877
  • Kant's Criticism in the first and second editions of the Critique of Pure Reason . 1878
  • Logic. Vol. 1. Logical elementary theory . Halle: Niemeyer 1892 (review by Bernard Bosanquet in Mind (1892): NS No. 2)
  • Treatises on philosophy and its history . 1893
  • Psychological research on reading on an experimental basis . 1898
  • The Child's Psychology, and School 1901
  • Historical research on Kant's prolegomena . 1904
  • About the content and validity of the law of causation 1905
  • Outlines to the psychology of thinking . 1908
  • About modern monism, 1914

literature

  • Emil Arnoldt: Kant's Prolegommena not edited twice. Refutation of Benno Erdmann's hyposthesis. Berlin 1879.
  • Else Wentscher: Benno Erdmann as a historian of philosophy. In: Kant studies. Volume 26, Issue 1–2, 2009.
  • Ludwig Stein: Archive for the History of Philosophy. Volume 5: In association with Hermann Diels, Wilhelm Dilthey, Benno Erdmann and Eduard Zeller. Forgotten Books, 2018.

Web links

Wikisource: Benno Erdmann  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Eberhard Schulz: Benno Erdmann [1]
  2. ↑ a b Rector's speeches (HKM) .
  3. ↑ Gäbe, Lüder, "Erdmann, Benno" in: Deutsche Biographie 4 (1959), p. 570 f. [Online version]
  4. ↑ Cf. Eberhard Schulz: Benno Erdmann [2]
personal data
SURNAME Erdmann, Benno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher; University professor in Berlin, Kiel, Breslau, Halle and Bonn
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Guhrau , Lower Silesia
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 1921
Place of death Berlin