Harald Høffding (11 March 1843 – 2 July 1931) was a Danish

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

and

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 ...

Life

Born and educated in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, he became a schoolmaster, and ultimately in 1883 a professor at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...

. He was strongly influenced by

Søren Kierkegaard Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , , ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on ...

in his early development, but later became a positivist, retaining and combining with it the spirit and method of practical

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

and the critical school. The physicist

Niels Bohr Niels Henrik David Bohr (; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. B ...

studied philosophy from and became a friend of Høffding. The philosopher and author Ágúst H. Bjarnason was a student of Høffding. Høffding's great-nephew was the statistician

Wassily Hoeffding Wassily Hoeffding (June 12, 1914 – February 28, 1991) was a Finnish statistician and probabilist. Hoeffding was one of the founders of nonparametric statistics, in which Hoeffding contributed the idea and basic results on U-statistics. In pro ...

. Høffding died in Copenhagen.

Work

His best-known work is perhaps his ''Den nyere Filosofis Historie'' (1894), translated into English from the German edition (1895) by B.E. Meyer as ''History of Modern Philosophy'' (2 vols., 1900), a work intended by him to supplement and correct that of Hans Brøchner, to whom it is dedicated. His ''Psychology, the Problems of Philosophy'' (1905) and ''Philosophy of Religion'' (1906) also have appeared in English. Among Høffding's other writings, most of which have been translated into German, are: ''Den engelske Filosofi i vor Tid'' (1874); ''Etik'' (1876); ''Psychologi i Omrids paa Grundlag af Erfaring'' (ed. 1892); ''Psykologiske Undersøgelser'' (1889); ''

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...

'' (1889); ''Kontinuiteten i Kants filosofiske Udviklingsgang'' (1893); ''Det psykologiske Grundlag for logiske Domme'' (1899); ''Rousseau und seine Philosophie'' (1901); ''Mindre Arbejder'' (1899).

Selected publications

*Harald Høffding, 1891 *Harald Hoffding, 1906 *Harald Høffding, 1919 *Harald Høffding, 1920

References

Sources

External links

* * * *
Presentation of Harald Høffding, ''in portuguese''
1843 births 1931 deaths Danish philosophers Danish schoolteachers University of Copenhagen alumni University of Copenhagen faculty People from Copenhagen Philosophy teachers Rectors of the University of Copenhagen Spinoza scholars Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy {{Denmark-philosopher-stub