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Eugen Karl Duhring

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EUGEN KARL DUHRING (1833-1901), German philosopher and political economist, was born on the 12th of January 1833 at Berlin. After a legal education he practised at Berlin as a lawyer till 1859. A weakness of the eyes, ending in total blindness, occasioned his taking up the studies with which his name is now connected. In 1864 he became docent of the university of Berlin, but, in consequence of a quarrel with the professoriate, was deprived of his licence to teach in 1874. Among his works are Kapital and Arbeit (1865); Der Wert des Lebens (1865); Natiirliche Dialektik (1865); Kritische Geschichte der Philosophie (1869); Kritische Geschichte der allgemeinen Principien der Mechanik (1872) - one of his most successful works; Kursus der Nationaland Sozialokonomie (1873); Kursus der Philosophie (1875), entitled in a later edition Wirklichkeitsphilosophie; Logik and Wissenschaftstheorie (1878); Der Ersatz der Religion durch Vollkommeneres (1883). He published his autobiography in 1882 under the title Sache,' Leben and Feinde; the mention of "Feinde" (enemies) is characteristic. Diihring's philosophy claims to be emphatically the philosophy of reality. He is passionate in his denunciation of everything which, like mysticism, tries to veil reality. He is almost Lucretian in his anger against religion which would withdraw the secret of the universe from our direct gaze. His "substitute for religion" is a doctrine in many points akin to Comte and Feuerbach, the former of whom he resembles in his sentimentalism. Diihring's opinions changed considerably after his first appearance as a writer. His earlier work, Natiirliche Dialektik, in form and matter not the worst of his writings, is entirely in the spirit of the Critical Philosophy. Later, in his movement towards Positivism, he strongly repudiates Kant's separation of phenomenon from noumenon, and affirms that our intellect is capable of grasping the whole reality. This adequacy of thought to things is due to the fact that the universe contains but one reality, i.e. matter. It is to matter that we must look for the explanation both of conscious and of physical states. But matter is not, in his system, to be understood with the common meaning, but with a deeper sense as the substratum of all conscious and physical existence; and thus the laws of being are identified with the laws of thought. In this materialistic or quasi-materialistic system Daring finds room for teleology; the end of Nature, he holds, is the production of a race of conscious beings. From his belief in teleology he is not deterred by the enigma of pain; he is a determined optimist. Pain exists to throw pleasure into conscious relief. In ethics Diihring follows Comte in making sympathy the foundation of morality. In political philosophy he teaches an ethical communism, and attacks the Darwinian principle of struggle for existence. It economics he is best known by his vindication of the American writer H. C. Carey, who attracts him both by his theory of value, which suggests an ultimate harmony of the interests of capitalist and labourer, and also by his doctrine of "national" political economy, which advocates protection on the ground that the morals and culture of a people are promoted by having its whole system of industry complete within its own borders. His patriotism is fervent, but narrow and exclusive. He idolized Frederick the Great, and denounced Jews, Greeks, and the cosmopolitan Goethe. Diihring's clear, incisive writing is disfigured by arrogance and ill-temper, failings which may be extenuated on the ground of his physical affliction. He died in 1901.

See H. Druskowitz, Eugen Diihring (Heidelberg, 1888); E. Doll, Eugen Diihring (Leipzig, 1892); F. Engels, Eugen D.'s Umwalzung der Wissenschaft (3rd ed., Stuttgart, 1894); H. Vaihinger, Hartmann, Diihring and Lange (1876). (H. ST.)