Alexander Konstantin von Oettingen (, Wissust Manor, Wissust () – Yuryev ()) was a Baltic German

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched th ...

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

and

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

Biography

Oettingen was born at Wissust (now in

Jõgeva Parish Jõgeva Parish ( et, Jõgeva vald) is a rural municipality of Estonia, in Jõgeva County. It has a population of 13,513 (2018) and an area of 458 km² (177 mi²). Populated places ;Towns: Jõgeva (administrative center) ;Small borou ...

) in the Kreis Dorpat of the Governorate of Livonia, the member of a Baltic German

noble A noble is a member of the nobility. Noble may also refer to: Places Antarctica * Noble Glacier, King George Island * Noble Nunatak, Marie Byrd Land * Noble Peak, Wiencke Island * Noble Rocks, Graham Land Australia * Noble Island, Great B ...

family that produced many scholars, including his brothers

Georg von Oettingen Georg Philipp von Oettingen ( – ) was a Baltic German physician and ophthalmologist. He was a brother of theologian Alexander von Oettingen (1827–1905), and physicist Arthur von Oettingen (1836–1920). In 1848 he received his medical docto ...

, professor of medicine at the University of Dorpat (), and Arthur von Oettingen, professor of physique in Dorpat and

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

. Alexander von Oettingen studied at

Erlangen Erlangen (; East Franconian German, East Franconian: ''Erlang'', Bavarian language, Bavarian: ''Erlanga'') is a Middle Franconian city in Bavaria, Germany. It is the seat of the administrative district Erlangen-Höchstadt (former administrative d ...

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

, and

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. From 1854 to 1891, Oettingen was

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

of dogmatics at the University of Dorpat and, theologically, a typical representative of this ultra-orthodox and conservative Lutheran department. While his theological works are forgotten, his side-interest in statistics (and the then-very fashionable view that statistical

predictability Predictability is the degree to which a correct prediction or forecast of a system's state can be made, either qualitatively or quantitatively. Predictability and causality Causal determinism has a strong relationship with predictability. Perf ...

of social behavior left no space for

ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...

or God), and discussions with the then-very deterministically-minded great economist Adolph Wagner let him write a very important work, the ''Moralstatistik'' ("Moral Statistics"), in 1868. Oettingen makes the point that there is regularity in human action because of human societal living together but that there is

freedom Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving on ...

of action of the

individual An individual is that which exists as a distinct entity. Individuality (or self-hood) is the state or quality of being an individual; particularly (in the case of humans) of being a person unique from other people and possessing one's own Maslow ...

"because the regularity of moral statistical numbers is never absolute". (R. v. Engelhardt) With the book, and in its subtitle, Oettingen also coined the word, and established the concept, of '' Sozialethik'' ("Social Ethics"), meant as a counter to

Auguste Comte Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte (; 19 January 1798 – 5 September 1857) was a French philosopher and writer who formulated the doctrine of positivism. He is often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense ...

's "

social physics Social physics or sociophysics is a field of science which uses mathematical tools inspired by physics to understand the behavior of human crowds. In a modern commercial use, it can also refer to the analysis of social phenomena with big data. Soci ...

" concept and as the establishment of a non-personal, non-individualistic

; this is what

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

ethics as taught in German universities is still called.

Works

* ''Die Moralstatistik. Inductiver Nachweis der Gesetzmäßigkeit sittlicher Lebensbewegung im Organismus der Menschheit''. 1868. * ''Die Moralstatistik und die christliche Sittenlehre. Versuch einer Socialethik auf empirischer Grundlage'', vol. 1. Erlangen: Deichert. 1868.

References

External links

Estonian Manors Portal
at www.mois.ee. See in particular the

Visusti Visusti is a village in Jõgeva Parish, Jõgeva County in eastern Estonia. Prior to the 2017 administrative reform of local governments in Estonia, the village belonged to Palamuse Parish. (retrieved 28 July 2021) Physician and ophthalmologist ...

(in German: Wissust) manor page. Alexander von Oetiingen was born there. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Oettingen, Alexander von 1827 births 1905 deaths People from Jõgeva Parish People from Kreis Dorpat Alexander Baltic-German people German Lutheran theologians 19th-century German Protestant theologians 19th-century German male writers German male non-fiction writers 19th-century Lutherans Academic staff of the University of Tartu