Fortlage, Arnold Rudolph Karl

Fortlage, Arnold Rudolph Karl a German philosopher, was born June 12, 1806, at Osnabrick. He first studied theology at Gottingen and Berlin, but, attracted by Hegel's lectures, betook himself entirely to the study of philosophy, which he continued in 1829 at Munich, under Schellilig. In the same year he commenced his philosophical lectures at Heidelberg; in 1845 he was at Berlin, and in the following year accepted a call to Jena, where he died, November 8, 1881. Of his works we mention, Die Lucken des Hegel'schen Systems der Philosophie, etc. (Heidelberg and Leipsic, 1832): — Philosophische Meditationen uber Plato's Symposion (Heidelberg, 1835): — Aurelii Augustini Doctrina de Tempora (ibid. 1836): — Genetische, Geschichte der. Philosophie seit Kant (Leipsic, 1852): — Das System der Psychologie als empirischer Wissenschaft aus der Beobachtung des innern Sinnes (ibid. 1855, 2 vols.): — Acht Psychologische Vortrage (Jena, 1869): — Sechs Psychologische Vortrage (1870): — Vier Psychologische Vortrage (1874): — Beitrage zur. Psychologie als Wissenschaft aus Spekulation und Erfahrlung (Leipsic, 1875), as a supplement to his System. His position concerning the philosophy of religion Fortlage had already defined in the Darsfellung und Krik der Beweise fui das Dosein Gottes (Heidelberg, 1840). The belief in God is not a matter of rational persuasion, but rests entirely on moral motives. Religion is essentially a moral state, and only the translation of this state into the idea is the dogma of God's existence. Philosophic speculation had the peculiar fate that it commenced with the secondary factor of the religious consciousness, and found itself, and this against its own will, only towards the end driven back to the other. This turn, so rich in consequences, commenced with Kant — after him the philosophy of religion, instead of advancing, has only been protracted. But Kant, too, needs to be supplemented: the purely transcendental belief, emanating from a moral and religious need, asks for precise points from which it connects with the material world; it nec essarily wishes to know the places, where upon entering into the world, it can suppose the efficiency of the character of its moral persuasion, in accordance with reason and experience. This is the gap which Fortlage endeavored to fill out in his lectures on the philosophy of religion. Besides these works he wrote, Das musikalische System der Griechen, etc. (Leipsic, 1847): — the article "Griechische Musik," in Ersch and Gruber's

Allg. Eucyklopidie, 81:175-245 (ibid. 1863): — Die Gesange Christlicher Vorzeit (Berlin, 1844, containing translations of Greek and Latin hymns): — Vorlesungen uber die Geschichte der Poesie (Stuttgart, 1839). (B.P.)