EDUARD

ZELLER (1814-1908)  , German philosopher, was born at Kleinbottwar in Wurttemberg on the 22nd of January 1814, and educated at the university of Tubingen and under the influence of Hegel . In 184o he was Privatdozent of theology at Tubingen, in 1847 professor of theology at Bern, in 1849 professor of theology at Marburg, migrating soon after-wards to the faculty of philosophy as the result of disputes with the Clerical party . He became professor of philosophy at Heidelberg in 1862, removed to Berlin in 1872, and retired in 1895 . His great work is his Philosophie der Griechen (1844–52) . This book he continued to amplify and improve in the light of further research; the last edition appeared in 1902 . It has been translated into most of the European languages and became the recognized text-book of Greek philosophy . He wrote also on theology, and published three volumes of philosophical essays . He was also one of the founders of the Theologische Jahrbiicher, a periodical which acquired great importance as the exponent of the historical method of David Strauss and Christian Baur . Like most of his contemporaries he began with Hegelianism, but subsequently he developed a system on his own lines . He saw the necessity of going back to Kant in the sense of demanding a critical reconsideration of the epistemological problems which Kant had made but a partially successful attempt to solve . None the less his merits as an original thinker are far outshone by his splendid services to the history of philosophy . It is true that his view of Greekthought is somewhat warped by Hegelian formalism .

He is not alive enough to the very intimate relation which thought holds to

national life and to the idiosyncrasy of the thinker . He lays too much stress upon the " concept," and explains too much by the Hegelian antithesis of subjective and objective . Nevertheless his history of Greek philosophy remains a noble monument of solid learning informed with natural sagacity . He received the highest recognition, not only from philosophers and learned societies all over the world, but also from the emperor and the German people . In 1894 the Emperor William II. made him a " Wirklicher Geheimrat " with the title of " Excellenz," and his bust, with that of Helmholtz, was set up at the Brandenburg Gate near the statues erected to the Emperor and Empress Frederick . He died on the 19th of March 1908 . The Philosophie der Griechen has been translated into English by S . F . Alleyne (2 vols., 1881) in sections: S . F . Alleyne, Hest, of Gk . Phil. to the time of Socrates (1881); O .

J . Reichel, Socrates and the Socratic

Schools (1868; 2nd ed . 1877); S . F . Alleyne and A . Goodwin, Plato and the Older Academy (1876) ; Costelloe and Muirhead, Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics (1897) ; O . J . Reichel, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics (187o and 188o); S . F . Alleyne, His'. of Eclecticism in Gk . Phil . (1883) .

The Philosophie appeared in an abbreviated

form as Grundriss d . Gesch. d . Griech . Philos . (1883; 5th ed . 1898); Eng. trans. by Alleyne and Evelyn Abbott (1866), under the title, Outlines of the Hist. of Gk . Philos . Among his other works are :—Platonische Studien (1839); Die Apostelgeschichte krit. untersucht (1854; Eng. trans . J . Dare, 1875–76); Entwickelung d . Monotheismus bei d . Griech .

(1862); Gesch. d. christlich . Kirche (1898); Gesch. d.

deutsch . Philos. seit Leibniz (1873, ed . 1875); Staat and Kirche (1873); Strauss in seinenLeben and Schriften (1874; Eng. trans . 1874); Ober Bedeutung and Aufgabe d . Erkenntniss-Theorie (1862); Ober teleolog. and mechan . Naturerklarung (1876); Vortrage and Abhandlungen (1865–84); Religion and Philosophie bei den Romern (1866, ed . 1871); Philosoph . Aufsatze (1887) .