Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus

CHALYBÄUS, Heinrich Moritz (1796-1862), a dis tinguished German writer on philosophy, was born on the 3d July 1796. The facts of his life are few and unim portant. For some years after completing his university education he acted as lecturer in the Kreuz-Schule at Dresden, and while there his lectures on the history of philosophy in Germany, delivered before large audiences, drew attention to his rare merits as a thinker and writer. In 1839 he was called to a Professorship in Kiel University, where, with the exception of one brief interval, he remained till his death on 2d September 1862. His first published work, Historische Entwickelung der spekulativen Philosophic von Kant bis Hegel, 1837, was extremely popular, and still retains its place as one of the best and most attractive expositions of modern German thought. It has been twice translated into English, by Tulk in 185-4, and by Edersheim in 1860. His other writings are Phdnome nologische Blatter, 1841 ; Die mod-erne Sophistik, 1843 ; Entivurf eines Systems der Wissenschaftslehre, 1846 ; System der spekulativen Ethik, 2 vols., 1850; Philosophic und Christenthum, 1853; Fundamental - Philosophic, 1861. Of these the most important are the Wissenschaftslehre and the Ethik. Chalybaus s general principle may be named Ideal-Realism. He opposes both the extreme realism of Herbart and what he calLs the one-sided idealism of Hegel, and endeavours to find a mean between them, to discover the ideal or formal principle which unfolds itself in the real or material world presented to it. His Wissenschaftslehre, accordingly, divides itself into three parts, Prindplehre, or theory of the one principle; Vermittelungslehre, or theory of the means by which this principle realizes itself; and Teleologie. The most noticeable point is the position assigned by Chalybaus to the " World Ether," which is defined as the infinite in time and space, and which, he thinks, must be posited as necessarily coexisting with the Infinite Spirit or God. The System der Ethik is perhaps the richest and most thorough-going modern work on moral philosophy. The fundamental principle is carried out with great strength of thought, and with an unusually complete command of ethical material. A brief but satisfactory account of Chalybaus will be found in Erclmann, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophic, ii. 781-786.