Wilhelm Traugott Krug

Wilhelm Traugott Krug (22 June 1770 - 12 January 1842) was a German philosopher and writer.

He was born at Radis in Saxony, and died at Leipzig. He studied at Wittenberg under Reinhard and Jehnichen, at Jena under Reinhold, and at Göttingen.

From 1801 to 1804 he was professor of philosophy at Frankfurt (Oder), after which he succeeded Kant in the chair of logic and metaphysics at the university of Königsberg. From 1809 till his death he was professor of philosophy at Leipzig.

He was a prolific writer on a great variety of subjects, in all of which he excelled as a popularizer rather than as an original thinker. In philosophy his method was psychological; he attempted to explain the Ego by examining the nature of its reflection upon the facts of consciousness. Being is known to us only through its presentation in consciousness; consciousness only in its relation to Being. Both Being and Consciousness, however, are immediately known to us, as also the relation existing between them. By this Transcendental Synthesis he proposed to reconcile Realism and Idealism, and to destroy the traditional difficulty between transcendental, or pure, thought and things in themselves.

Krug challenged Hegel to deduce his quill, or pen, from German Idealism's Philosophy of Nature. In so doing, he challenged the thinking that particular, perceptually real things could be logically known from general concepts. As such, this was also a rejection of the Ontological Proof of God's existence and also its equivalent, Hegel's Absolute Idealism, with its Absolute Spirit. Both claimed that something exists, or has being, because it is a thought in someone's mind.

Apart from the intrinsic value of his work, it is admitted that it had the effect of promoting the study of philosophy and stimulating freedom of thought in religion and politics. His work "Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philos. des XIX. Jahrh." (1835-1837) contains interesting criticisms of Hegel and Schelling. See also his autobiography, "Meine Lebensreise".

Principal works

*"Briefe über den neuesten Idealismus" (1801)
*"Versuch über die Principien der philosophischen Erkenntniss" (1801)
*"Fundamentalphilosophie" (1803)
*"System der theoretischen Philosophie" (1806-1810)
*"System der praktischen Philosophie" (1817-1819)
*"Handbuch der Philosophie" (1820; 3rd ed., 1828)
*"Logik oder Denklehre (1827)
*Geschichte der Philos. alter Zeit (1815; 2nd ed., 1825)
*Allgemeines Handworterbuch der philosophischen Wissenschaften" (1827-1834; 2nd ed., 1832-1838)
*"Universal-philosophische Vorlesungen für Gebildete beiderei Geschlechts"
*"Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philos. des XIX. Jahrh." (1835-1837)
*"Meine Lebensreise" (Leipzig, 2nd ed.,1840)

References

*1911