Krause, Karl Christian Friedrich

Krause, Karl Christian Friedrich a German philosopher, born in Eisenberg May 6, 1781, was educated at the University of Jena, where he attended the lectures of Reinhold, Fichte, and Schelling, and then lectured as "privat docent" from 1802 to 1804. In order to devote himself to the wide range of studies which he deemed necessary to give completeness to his philosophical system, more especially to studies in art, he quitted Jena, and resided successively in Rudolfstadt, Dresden and Berlin. He made several journeys through Germany, France, and Italy, and lectured at Gottingen from 1824 to 1831, when he retired to Munich. "The aim of his speculations was to represent the collective life of man as an organic and harmonious unity; and he conceived the scheme of a public and formal union of mankind, which, embracing the Church, State, and all other partial unions, should occupy itself only with the interests of abstract humanity, and should labor for a uniform and universal development and culture. The germ of such a union he thought he found in freemasonry, to which he rendered great service by his works." He died in Munich Sept. 27, 1832. Among his works are Vorlesungen uiber las Systemn der Philosophie (Gottingen, 1828, 8vo):-A briss der Religions philosophie (1828):and Vorlesunqen uber die Grundwahrheiten der Wissenschtft (Gottingen, 1829). See Krug, Philosophischces Lexikon, ii, 642; Kathol. Real-Encyklopadie, 6:398, 399; Appleton's New Amer. Cyclopcedia, 10:217. (J. H. W.)