Lazarus Geiger (21 May 1829 – 29 August 1870) was a German-Jewish philosopher and
philologist
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...
.
Life
He was born at
Frankfurt-on-Main
Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the foreland of the Taunus on its namesake Main, it forms a continuou ...
, was destined to commerce, but soon gave himself up to scholarship and studied at
Marburg
Marburg (; ) is a college town, university town in the States of Germany, German federal state () of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf Districts of Germany, district (). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has ...
,
Bonn
Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...
and
Heidelberg
Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...
. From 1861 till his sudden death in 1870 he was professor in the Jewish high school at Frankfurt. His chief aim was to prove that the evolution of human reason is closely bound up with that of language. He further maintained that the origin of the
Indo-Germanic language is to be sought not in Asia but in central (Germany). He was a convinced opponent of
rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the Epistemology, epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "the position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge", often in contrast to ot ...
in religion.
Bibliography
Lazarus Geiger's chief work was ''Ursprung und Entwickelung der menschlichen Sprache und Vernunft'' (vol. i., Stuttgart, 1868), the principal results of which appeared in a more popular form as ''Der Ursprung der Sprache'' (Stuttgart, 1869 and 1878). The second volume of the former was published in an incomplete form (1872, 2nd ed. 1899) after his death by his brother Alfred Geiger.
Alfred Geiger also published a number of Lazarus Geiger's scattered papers as ''Zur Entwickelung der Menschheit'' (1871, and ed. 1878; Eng. trans. D. Asher, ''Hist. of the Development of the Human Race'', London, 1880).
Notes
References
*
Attribution
* – See towards the end of his uncle's article. Endnots:
**Keller, J. (1883). ''L. Geiger und der Kritik der Vernunft''. Wertheim.
**Keller, J. (1883). ''Der Ursprung der Vernunft''. Heidelberg.
**Peschier, E. (1871) ''L. Geiger, sein Leben und Denken''.
**Rosenthal, L.A. (1883). ''Lazarus Geiger: seine Lehre vom Ursprung d. Sprache und Vernunft und sein Leben''.Stuttgart.
Further reading
* – full translated text.
*
External links
*''Jewish Encyclopedia''
"Geiger, Lazarus (Eliezer Solomon)"by Isidore Singer & A. Geiger (1906).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Geiger, Lazarus
19th-century German philosophers
German philologists
1829 births
1870 deaths
University of Marburg alumni
University of Bonn alumni
Heidelberg University alumni