Schuppe, Wilhelm

Schuppe, Wilhelm 

Born May 5, 1836, in Brieg (now Brzeg), Silesia; died Mar. 29, 1913, in Breslau. German idealist philosopher, representative of immanent philosophy. Professor at the University of Greifswald from 1873 to 1910.

Schuppe considered the ultimate irreducible element (the basis of philosophy) to be the experimentally established “I,” the content of the consciousness of which is, according to Schuppe, “reality” (cognizable reality). To avoid solipsism, Schuppe supplemented his theory by postulating a theory of consciousness in general, which lends to reality an objective character. Thus, a subjectivist idealist theory became in Schuppe’s philosophy an objectivist idealist theory. V. I. Lenin sharply criticized Schuppe as “a reactionary in philosophy” in Materialism and Empiriocriticism.

WORKS

Erkenntnistheoretische Logik. Bonn, 1878.
Grundzüge der Ethik und Rechtsphilosophie. Breslau, 1881.
Grundriss der Erkenntnistheorie und Logik. Berlin, 1894.
In Russian translation:
“Solipsizm.” Novye idei v filosofii, 1913, collection 6.

REFERENCES

Bakradze, K. Ocherki po istorii noveishei i sovremennoi burzhuaznoi filosofii, Tbilisi, 1960. Pages 124–77.
Bogomolov, A. S. Nemetskaia burzhuaznaia filosofiia posle 1865 goda, Moscow, 1969. Pages 61–76.
Herrmann, H. R. Schuppe’s Lehre vom Denken. Greifswald, 1895.
Kljukowsky, L. Das Bewusstsein und das Sein bei Wilhelm Schuppe. Heidelberg, 1912.