Upsala, according to whom time, change and evolution are illusions of the senses, whilst true reality consists of a world of ideas which differ from Platonism by the fact that the ideas are construed as personal beings.—Denmark reveals the influence of Schelling and Hegel to a marked degree, especially among the writers in aesthetics and the theologians. The more independent thinkers however have devoted themselves almost exclusively to the problems of psychology, ethics and epistemology and assumed an attitude of decided opposition to abstract speculation. Frederick Christian Sibbern (1785-1872), who labored at Copenhagen in the capacity of professor of philosophy for more than fifty years,—in opposition to Hegel and Boström—placed great stress on a real evolution in time. Experience reveals that evolution has a number of starting-points, and the contact of the various evolutional series with each other gives rise to strife, "a stupendous debate of everything with everything," which in turn accounts for progress. This idea of sporadic evolution has likewise an important bearing on the theory of knowledge: each cognizing being has the viewpoint of one of these beginnings and hence cannot survey the entire process. Sibbern devoted himself more particularly to psychology, for which he was specially adapted by his gift of observation and his enthusiastic interest in human life.
We shall consider Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) only as a philosopher, leaving out of account his aesthetic and religious activities, which have taken such deep hold on the life of the North. The author of this text-book has given a general description of this thinker in his book Soren Kierkegaard, als Philosoph (in Frommann's Klassiker).
