KRAUSE, KARL CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH (17811832)

This article appears in Volume V15, Page 924 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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KRAUSE, KARL CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH (17811832) , German philosopher, was born at

Eisenberg

EISENBERG (Isenberg)

on the 4th of May 1781, and died at

Munich

MUNICH (Ger. Munchen)

on the 27th of September 1832. Educated at first at

Eisenberg

EISENBERG (Isenberg)

, he proceeded to Jena, where he studied philosophy under

Hegel

HEGEL, GEORG WILHELM
FRIEDRICH
- FRIEDRICH, JOHANN (1836— )
(1770-1831)

and Fichte and became privatdozent in 1802. In the same year, with characteristic imprudence, he married a wife without dowry. Two years after,lack of pupils compelled him to move to Rudolstadt and later to Dresden, where he gave lessons in music. In 18o5 his ideal of a universal world-society led him to join the Freemasons, whose principles seemed to tend in the direction he desired. He published two books on

Freemasonry

FREEMASONRY

, Die drei altesten Kunsturkunden der Freimaurerbriuderschafl and Hohere Vergeistigung der echt uberlieferten Grundsymbole der Freimaurerei, but his opinions drew upon him the opposition of the Masons. He lived for a time in Berlin and became a iirivatdozent, but was unable to obtain a professorship. He therefore proceeded to Gottingen and afterwards to

Munich

MUNICH (Ger. Munchen)

, where he died of apoplexy at the very moment when the influence of Franz von Baader had at last obtained a position for him.
One of the so-called " Philosophers of Identity," Krause endeavoured to reconcile the ideas of a God known by Faith or Conscience and the world as known to sense. God, intuitively known by Conscience, is not a personality (which implies limitations), but an all-inclusive essence (Wesen), which contains the Universe within itself. This

system

SYSTEM

he called Panentheism, a combination of Theism and Pantheism. His tfleory of the world and of humanity is universal and idealistic. The world itself and man-kind, its highest component, constitute an organism (Gliedbau), and the universe is therefore a divine organism (Wesengliedbau). The process of development is the formation of higher unities, and the last stage is the identification of the world with God. The form which this development takes, according to Krause, is Right or the Perfect Law. Right is not the sum of the conditions of external liberty but of absolute liberty, and embraces all the existence of nature, reason and humanity. It is the mode, or rationale, of all progress from the lower to the highest unity or identification. By its operation the reality of nature and reason rises into the reality of humanity. God is the reality which transcends and includes both nature and humanity. Right is, therefore, at once the dynamic and the safeguard of progress. Ideal society results from the widening of the organic operation of this principle from the individual man to small groups of men, and finally to mankind as a whole. The differences disappear as the inherent identity of structure predominates in an ever-increasing degree, and in the final unity Man is merged in God.
The comparatively small area of Krause's influence was due partly to the overshadowing brilliance of

Hegel

HEGEL, GEORG WILHELM
FRIEDRICH
- FRIEDRICH, JOHANN (1836— )
(1770-1831)

, and partly to two intrinsic defects. The spirit of his thought is mystical and by no means easy to follow, and this difficulty is accentuated, even to German readers, by the use of artificial terminology. He makes use of germanized foreign terms which are unintelligible to the

ordinary

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

man. His

principal

PRINCIPAL

works are (beside those quoted above): Entwurf des Systems der Philosophie (1804);

System

SYSTEM

der Sittenlehre (181o) ; Das Urhild der Menschheit (1811) ; and Vorlesungen ilber das System der Philosophie (1828). He left behind him at his death a

mass

of unpublished notes, part of which has been collected and published by his disciples, H.

Ahrens

AHRENS, FRANZ HEINRICH LUDOLF (1809–1881)

(18081874), Leonhardi, Tiberghien and others.
See H. S. Lindemann, Uebersichtliche Darstellung des Lebens .. . Krauses (1839); P. Hohlfeld, Die Krausesche Philosophie (1879); A. Procksch, Krause, ein Lebensbild nach seinen Briefen (188o); R. Eucken, Zur Erinnerun an Krause (1881) ; B. Martin, Krauses Leben and Bedeutung (1881), and Histories of Philosophy by Zeller, Windelband and Hoffding.

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