Jakob Friedrich Fries (; 23 August 1773 – 10 August 1843) was a German post-Kantian

Terry Pinkard Terry P. Pinkard (born 1947) is an American philosopher. He is a University Professor at Georgetown University. His research and teaching focus on the German tradition in philosophy from Kant to the present. Education and career Pinkard earn ...

, ''German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism'', Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 199–212.

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

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

Biography

Fries studied

theology 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 th ...

at the academy of the

Moravian Brethren , image = AgnusDeiWindow.jpg , imagewidth = 250px , caption = Church emblem featuring the Agnus Dei.Stained glass at the Rights Chapel of Trinity Moravian Church, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States , main_classification = Proto-Prot ...

Niesky Niesky ( Sorbian and pl, Niska, cz, Nízké) is a small town in Upper Lusatia in eastern Saxony, Germany. It has a population of about 9,200 (2020) and is part of the district of Görlitz. Historically considered part of Upper Lusatia, it wa ...

and

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...

at the Universities of

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

Jena Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a po ...

. After travelling, in 1806 he became

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...

of philosophy and elementary

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

at the

University of Heidelberg } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...

. Though the progress of his

psychological 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 bet ...

thought compelled him to abandon the positive theology of the Moravians, he retained an appreciation of its spiritual or symbolic significance. His philosophical position with regard to his contemporaries had already been made clear in his critical work ''Reinhold, Fichte und Schelling'' (1803), and in the more systematic treatises ''System der Philosophie als evidente Wissenschaft'' (1804) and ''Wissen, Glaube und Ahnung'' (1805). Fries' most important treatise, the ''Neue oder anthropologische Kritik der Vernunft'' (2nd ed., 1828–1831), was an attempt to give a new foundation of psychological analysis to the

critical philosophy The critical philosophy (german: kritische Philosophie) movement, attributed to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), sees the primary task of philosophy as criticism rather than justification of knowledge. Criticism, for Kant, meant judging as to the po ...

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 1811 he published his ''System der Logik'' (ed. 1819 and 1837), and in 1814 ''Julius und Evagoras'', a philosophical romance. He was also anti-semitic, writing public polemics against

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

, and in 1816 wrote ''Ueber