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Johann Eduard Erdmann

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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JOHANN EDUARD ERDMANN (1805-1892), German philosophical writer, was born at Wolmar in Livonia on the 13th of June 1805. He studied theology at Dorpat and afterwards at Berlin, where he fell under the influence of Hegel. From 1829 to 1832 he was a minister of religion in his native town. Afterwards he devoted himself to philosophy, and qualified in that subject at Berlin in 1834. In 1836 he was professor-extraordinary at Halle, became full professor in 1839, and died there on the 12th of June 1892. He published many philosophical text-books and treatises, and a number of sermons; but his chief claim to remembrance rests on his elaborate Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (2 vols., 866), the 3rd edition of which has been translated into Englist. Erdmann's special merit is that he does not rest content with being a mere summarizer of opinions, but tries to exhibit the history of human thought as a continuous and ever-developing effort to solve the great speculative problems with which man has been confronted in all ages. His chief other works were: Leib and Seele (1837), Grundriss der Psychologie (1840), Grundriss der Logik and Metaphysik (1841), and Psychologische Briefe (1851).