Page:A Brief History of Modern Philosophy.djvu/214

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
BENEKE
211

freedom; whenever the conviction or its practical execution is too feeble, it conflicts with the idea of perfection. And the ideas of right, of equity, and of benevolence in the mutual relations of a number of men find their application analogously. We discover the practical ideas by means of an analysis of our judgments concerning human actions, in cases where the relations are clearly present, and where irrelative interests are in abeyance. Herbart even refers to Adam Smith's "disinterested observer" (Allgemeine praktische Philosophie, 1808).

3. Frederick Edward Beneke (1798-1854) quietly fought a hard battle at the University of Berlin for the empirical philosophy against the dominant speculative philosophy. For a while he was even deprived of the privilege of lecturing. Notwithstanding the fact that he exercised a profound influence upon the development of psychology and pedagogy, he nevertheless regarded his effort as useless, and discouragement apparently caused his death.

Beneke is especially influenced by Fries and Schleiermacher. He would base his philosophy on psychology, i. e. elaborate a psychologism. Here he is radically opposed to Herbart, who even endeavored to partly base psychology on metaphysics. Beneke approaches closely to the English school and even calls himself a disciple of Locke. His psychology has a biological character. He describes the development of consciousness as a growth of innate germs or rudiments, which he calls original faculties; these are the faculties of sensation and of motion. The original faculties are conjoined with a tendency; the objective stimuli through which the original faculties are enabled to attain a complete development are sought out spontaneously. The experiences which are