JAKOB

See also:

• SIGISMUND (1368-1437)

SIGISMUND

See also:

• BECK (or BEEK), DAVID (1621—1656)
• BECK, CHRISTIAN DANIEL (1757-1832)
• JAKOB SIGISMUND BECK (1761-1840)

BECK (1761-1840)  , German philosopher, was born at Danzig in 1761 . Educated at Konigsberg, he became'professor of philosophy first at Halle (1791—1799) and then at Rostock . He devoted himself to criticism and explanation of the doctrine of Kant, and in 1793 published the Erlduternder Auszug aus Kants kritischen Schriften, which has been widely used as a compendium of Kantian doctrine . He endeavoured to explain away certain of the contradictions which are found in Kant's system by saying that much of the language is used in a popular sense for the sake of intelligibility, e.g. where Kant attributes to things - in - themselves an existence under the conditions of time, space and causality, and yet holds that they furnish the material of our apprehensions . Beck maintains that the real meaning of Kant's theory is idealism; that of objects outside the domain of consciousness, knowledge is impossible, and hence that nothing positive remains when we have removed the subjective element . Matter is deduced by the " original synthesis." Similarly, the idea of God is a symbolical representation of the voice of conscience guiding from within . The value of Beck's exegesis has been to a great extent overlooked owing to the greater attention given to the work of Fichte . Beside the three volumes of the Erlduternder Auszug, he published the Grundriss der krit . Philosophic (1796), containing an interpretation of the Kantian Kritik in the manner of Salomon Maimon . See Ueberweg, Grundriss der Gesch. der Philos. der Neuzeit; Dilthey in the Archie fiir Geschichte der Philos., vol. ii . (1889), pp . 592-650 .

For Beck's letters to Kant, see R . Reicke, Aus Kants Briefwechsel (Konigsberg, 1885) .