Julius Hermann von Kirchmann (5 November 1802 – 20 October 1884) was a German jurist and philosopher.

Biography

Kirchmann was educated at

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 ...

and Halle. In 1846 he was made state's attorney in the criminal court of Berlin, and two years afterwards was chosen to the

Prussian National Assembly The Prussian National Assembly (German: ''Preußische Nationalversammlung''), came into being after the revolution of 1848 and was tasked with drawing up a constitution for Prussia. It first met in the building of the '' Sing-Akademie zu Berlin ...

. From 1871 to 1876 he was a member of the German Reichstag. His philosophy was an attempt to mediate between realism and idealism.On fugacity of law he said: "only three words of the legislature can destroy whole libraries":
, in Mondoperaio, n. 1/2016, p. 80-81

Writings

Kirchmann first attracted attention as a philosopher by his brochure ''Die Wertlosigkeit der Jurisprudenz als Wissenschaft'' (The worthlessness of jurisprudence as a body of knowledge; 1848). His other philosophical writings include: ''Ueber Unsterblichkeit'' (On immortality; 1865), ''Aesthetik auf realistischer Grundlage'' (A realistic foundation for aesthetics; 1868); translations of parts of

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...

, Roger Bacon, Hugo Grotius,

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment phil ...

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of math ...

, and Baruch Spinoza, and a remarkable edition of

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...

in the ''Philosophische Bibliothek'', edited by him (1868 et seq.), and of

Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influ ...

' ''De Cive'' (1873).

Notes

References

* This work in turn cites: ** Lasson and Meineke, ''Julius von Kirchmann als Philosoph'' (Halle, 1885)

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kirchmann, Julius von 1802 births 1884 deaths People from Saalekreis People from the Electorate of Saxony German Protestants German Progress Party politicians Members of the Prussian House of Representatives Members of the 1st Reichstag of the German Empire Members of the 2nd Reichstag of the German Empire Jurists from Saxony-Anhalt 19th-century German philosophers German male writers Leipzig University alumni University of Halle alumni Member of the Prussian National Assembly