CHRISTOFFER

JACOB

See also:

• CHRISTOFFER JACOB BOSTROM (1797-1866)

BOSTROM (1797-1866)  , Swedish philosopher, was born at Pita, and studied at Upsala, where from 1840 to 1863 he was professor of practical philosophy . His philosophy, as he himself described it, is a thoroughgoing rational idealism founded on the principle that the only true reality is spiritual . God is Infinite Spirit in whom all existence is contained, and is outside the limitations of time and space . Thus Bostrom protests not only against empiricism but also against those doctrines of Christian theology which seemed to him to picture God as something less than Pure Spirit . In ethics the highest aim is the direction of actions by reason in harmony with the Divine; so the state, like the individual, exists solely in God, and in its most perfect form consists in the harmonious obedience of all its members to a constitutional monarch; the perfection of mankind as a whole is to be sought in a rational orderly system of such states in obedience to Universal Reason . This system differs from Platonism in that the " ideas " of God are not archetypal abstractions but concrete personalities . Bostrom's writings were edited by H . Edfeldt (2 vols., Upsala, 1883) . For his school see SWEDEN: Literature; also H . Hoffding, Filosofien i Sverig (German trans. in Philos . Monatsheften, 1879), and History of Mod . Philos .

(Eng. trans., 190o), p . 284; R . Falckenberg, Hist. of Phil . (Eng. trans., 1895) ; A . Nyblaeus, Om den Bostromske filosofien (

Lund, 1883), and Karakteristik of den Bostromska filosofien (Lund, 1892) .