Transcriptions and English translations of Danish philosophical works, primarily from the nineteenth century. All source texts are in the public domain; scans are drawn from the Royal Danish Library, the National Library of Norway, and the Internet Archive. LaTeX sources and PDF files are on GitHub. For scholarly commentary on each text, see the notes page.
A note on the word “Danish”. Denmark and Norway were joined under a single crown from 1380 and administered as one state from the sixteenth century until 1814, governed from Copenhagen — which held the only university of the joint realms until the Royal Frederick University was founded in Christiania in 1811. Danish was the written language of educated Norwegians no less than of Danes. Ludvig Holberg, born in Bergen, and Niels Treschow, born in Drammen, are accordingly claimed today by Norway as well as by Denmark; but neither faced a choice between two national literatures, and for their own lifetimes the question does not arise. Treschow is the exact hinge: he held the chair of philosophy at Copenhagen until 1813, moved to the new university in Christiania, and saw the union dissolved by the Treaty of Kiel in January 1814. “Danish” here therefore means the philosophy of that shared realm and its shared written language, rather than of the post-1814 nation-state.
Niels Treschow (1751–1833)
Norwegian-born philosopher; professor of philosophy at Copenhagen 1803–1813, then the first professor of philosophy at the new Frederik University in Christiania (Oslo) from 1813. A Spinoza- and Leibniz-influenced monist and self-described Neoplatonist whose late "Identitets-system" treats the mental and the bodily — and, more broadly, the ideal and the real, subject and object — as two sides of one reality. His insistence that "in the real world only individuals exist" (universals being mere "Hjælpemidler til Oversyn," aids to survey, not knowledge of things in themselves) makes him an early source of the emphasis on concrete individuality that runs through nineteenth-century Danish philosophy. The relevance to the Bohr line is direct: Harald Høffding — Bohr's philosophical mentor, and himself in this catalog — discussed Treschow at length in »Danske Filosofer« (1909) and reprinted his essay on individuality in »Udvalgte Stykker af dansk filosofisk Litteratur« (1910). Treschow is thus the earliest figure on the Danish subject–object / individuality tradition that reaches Bohr's "epistemological lesson." The philosophical books are all listed below. Further items not catalogued here are the pre-1794 juvenilia and occasional pieces (»Om Veltalenheds Nytte« 1776, »Om offentlig Underviisning i Videnskaber« 1785, the 1790 dissertation »De anthropomorphismo«), the 1807 »Anatomisk-physiologiske Forelæsninger for Anthropologer«, the 1816 prize essay on rights and moral law, the 1817 »Politisk Catechismus«, and the 1830 verse »Skabelsen, Mennesket og Messias«. All are digitised and public-domain at nb.no.
Forsøg om Guds Tilværelse af theoretiske Grunde: i Anledning af den kantiske Philosophie
1794. Kjøbenhavn
The earlier of Treschow's two early critiques of Kant (1794, 1798), written directly »i Anledning af den kantiske Philosophie«: a defence of theoretical grounds for God's existence against Kant's verdict that the speculative proofs fail and that God can be reached only through practical reason. His earliest published engagement with critical philosophy and the starting point of the trajectory that leads to the monist »Identitets-system« of the 1831–33 »Testament«.
Forelæsninger over den Kantiske Philosophie
1798. Kjøbenhavn: Gyldendals Forlag
The later of the two early critiques of Kant, four years after the »Forsøg om Guds Tilværelse« and on a much larger scale (361 printed pp.): a course of lectures expounding and assessing the critical philosophy as a whole rather than contesting a single doctrine. A German version, »Vorlesungen über die Kantische Philosophie. Erster Theil« (421 pp.), appeared the same year and is separately digitised; worth establishing whether it is a translation of this volume or an independent recasting, and whether a second German part ever followed. Together with the 1794 »Forsøg« this is the record of what Treschow took from Kant and what he refused, and so the baseline against which the monism of the 1805 »Philosophiske Forsøg« should be read. Note provisional: written from the title pages and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Kort Udkast til Kundskab om Mennesket, eller Anthropologie til Brug for de lærde Skoler
1803. Kjøbenhavn: Fr. Brummers Forlag, hos Sebastian Popp
A school textbook of anthropology, written for the »lærde Skoler« in the year Treschow took the Copenhagen chair. It is the direct predecessor of the 1812 »Om den menneskelige Natur«, which is described in this catalog as the first psychology written in Danish; the interest of the 1803 book is therefore what the doctrine of the twofold — bodily and mental — access to the human being looked like nine years earlier, and in a form pitched at schoolboys. Named in the Brekke bibliography below as one of the pedagogical works this catalog had not yet reached. A German version, »Kurzer Entwurf zu einer Lehre von der Kenntniss des Menschen, oder Anthropologie« (323 pp.), appeared the same year. Note provisional: written from the title pages and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Indledning til den hele Philosophie og de vigtigste Lærebygninger af samme
1805. Kjøbenhavn: Fr. Brummers Forlag, hos Z. Breum
A survey introduction to philosophy as a whole and to its principal systems (»Lærebygninger«), issued by the same publisher in the same year as the »Philosophiske Forsøg« and evidently its companion: the historical and doctrinal frame within which the identity-system sketch was meant to be placed. It anticipates the 1811 »Om Philosophiens Natur og Dele«, which redoes the same task at greater length. Note provisional: written from the title page and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Philosophiske Forsøg
1805. Kjøbenhavn
The first sketch of the identity-system later expanded in the 1831–33 »Testament«. Useful as the compact early statement of his monism.
Gives der noget Begreb eller nogen Idee om enslige Ting? Besvaret med Hensyn til Menneskeværd og Menneskevel
1810. Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter, bd. 5
Short, self-contained treatise arguing that only individuals are real and that universals are mere aids to survey, not exact knowledge of things in themselves. The core statement of Treschow's primacy of the individual — the theme most resonant with Bohr's language of the "individuality" (indivisibility) of the quantum phenomenon. Reprinted in excerpt by Høffding, »Udvalgte Stykker af dansk filosofisk Litteratur« (1910), and complete in A.H. Winsnes' ed. of »Philosophiske Forsøg og andre Skrifter« (1966). It was also issued twice on its own under its subtitle as »Menneskeværd og Menneskevel« (Tanum 1963; Reitzel 1991, ed. Jørgen Juul Nielsen) — see `modern-editions` below, and note that the retitling is why it hides in library catalogues. NB: the essay is signed 1807 and printed in the volume published 1810; it is set in antiqua, not Fraktur, and uses »ö« rather than »ø« throughout. The key formulation is on printed p. 240: general concepts are »kun Hielpemidler til Oversyn, ei til nöiagtig Kundskab om Tingene i sig selv«; the thesis is restated on p. 247: »Der gives altsaa et fast Begreb om enslige Ting.«
Moral for Folk og Stat
1810. Kjøbenhavn: Fr. Brummers Forlag, hos J. F. Schultz
Treschow's moral philosophy, published the same year as the »enslige Ting« essay and running to 481 printed pp. The pairing of »Folk« and »Stat« in the title is the point of interest here: it is the first place to look for how far the primacy of the individual extends from metaphysics into ethics and politics, which is the question Brekke raises (see secondary literature below) and which »Lovgivnings-Principier« then takes up at length. The standard bibliographies give the work as 1810–11 in two parts; the nb.no scan is a single volume, so whether it carries both parts or only the first needs checking against the item. Note provisional: written from the title page and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Complete work (481 pp. digitised; bibliographies give 2 parts, 1810–11)Scan (nb.no)to do Elementer til Historiens Philosophie
1811. Kjøbenhavn, 2 vols.
Treschow's developmental philosophy applied to living nature and to the history of the species (and of individual nations), which pass through childhood, youth, maturity and age. The continuity/development strand of the tradition — a counterpoint to the quantum discontinuity that Bohr's epistemology had to accommodate. NB the full title is »Elementer til Historiens Philosophie i Forelæsninger holdne Vinteren 1806-1807«. The nb.no scan is a single digitised volume of 411 pp.; whether it carries both printed parts or only the first still needs checking against the item.
Om Philosophiens Natur og Dele: en dogmatisk og historisk Indledning til denne Videnskab
1811. Kjøbenhavn
A metaphilosophical introduction — what philosophy is, how it divides into parts, and how it got that way — expanding the 1805 »Indledning til den hele Philosophie«. It is the natural companion to the 1813 »Almindelig Logik«: the 1811 book says what the parts of the science are, the 1813 textbook works out one of them, and between them they should settle where Treschow thought the doctrine of individuals belongs in the architecture. Published the same year as the »Elementer til Historiens Philosophie«. Note provisional: written from the title page and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Om den menneskelige Natur i Almindelighed, især dens aandelige Sider
1812. Kjøbenhavn
The first psychology written in Danish, and the fullest statement of Treschow's double-aspect view. Man is not a composite of soul and body; the mental and the bodily are the same thing considered as an object of the inner and the outer sense. The programme is stated in § 2 — the human being »kan betragtes fra en dobbelt Side, nemlig en legemlig og aandelig«, with no »fælles Sands« in the middle from which both could be seen united — and made precise in the 2det Hovedstykke § 12 (p. 79), »Sandselighedens første Lov«: every bodily motion is bound to a mental sensation answering to it in quality and magnitude, and conversely, yet »Forholdet mellem begge er altsaa ikke caussalt«. A strict parallelism, and the 1812 anticipation of the identity system of »Om Gud«. Two further passages tie the book to the 1810 prize essay: p. 168, where individuality is itself »Tingenes uforanderlige Grundform« and »Enhver enslig Ting kan i denne Mening betragtes som Aftryk af en Idee, ei Arterne og Slægterne alene«; and p. 151, where the Linnaean system, horticulture and forestry classify plants by different marks yet »i alle tre Videnskaber kan Forstanden vise Grundighed«, the pure sciences aiming at Tingenes Væsen and the applied at Vigtighed for a purpose. Body: printed pp. 1–486, in an Indledning and four Hovedstykker (Forestillingsevnen, Føleevnen, Villien). Transcription of the complete work is under way and image-verified page by page.
Almindelig Logik
1813. Kjøbenhavn: Fr. Brummers Forlag
His textbook of logic / theory of knowledge, the counterpart to the 1812 psychology; develops the epistemology of the individual (concepts of particulars vs. general concepts). §§ 26–34 supply the machinery the 1810 essay presupposes but never states. The key passage is § 30 (printed p. 97): »Slægter saavelsom Arter ere deels egentlige, deels uegentlige eller analogiske. Hines Kiendemærker ere væsentlige og bestandige, disses blot tilfældige og ubestandige« — a criterion of naturalness for classifications. Treschow does not discard the improper kinds: they are »nødvendige« where no proper kind is to be had, whence the »kunstige Systemer«. §§ 32–34 give a theory of division (partitio vs. divisio, the ground of a division, and the rules that the parts must exhaust the whole, be mutually exclusive, and admit no leap from higher to lower species); and § 35 turns § 30 into a rule of method — take the ground of a division from things' essential and abiding criteria, and where none are to be had, choose those that come *nearest* to them, which makes naturalness graded rather than binary. NB § 31 denies that the highest being is a whole of which individuals are parts — pantheism and the emanation- system are said to rest on that confusion. Fraktur; uses »ø«, unlike the antiqua 1810 essay. 330 printed pp. in all; only §§ 26–35 are transcribed here — they close the First Main Part (p. 108).
Remainder of the work (§§ 1–25, 36–97+)to do
Lovgivnings-Principier
1820–1823. Christiania (Chr. Grøndahl), 3 vols.
The political philosophy, written in the Christiania years and the largest thing Treschow published apart from the »Testament«: vol. I »Om Staten i Forhold til Religion, Sæder og Cultur« (1820, 479 pp.), vol. II »Om Staten i Forhold til offentlig Velstand, Næringsveie, Handel, Fattigvæsenet, samt Penge- og Skatte-Væsenet m.m.« (1821, 437 pp.), vol. III »Om Staten med Hensyn til Justits- og Forsvarsvæsenet, Statsforfatning og Staters Forhold til hverandre« (1823, 513 pp.). Together with »Moral for Folk og Stat« this is where the primacy-of-the-individual thesis meets the state, and so where it can be tested against the relational, sociability-based reading of Treschow that Brekke defends (see secondary literature below). Note provisional: written from the title pages and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Vol. I: Religion, Sæder og Cultur (1820, 479 pp.)Scan (nb.no)to do Vol. II: offentlig Velstand, Næringsveie, Handel, Fattigvæsenet, Penge- og Skatte-Væsenet (1821, 437 pp.)Scan (nb.no)to do Vol. III: Justits- og Forsvarsvæsenet, Statsforfatning, Staters Forhold til hverandre (1823, 513 pp.)Scan (nb.no)to do Den philosophiske Sædelæres første Grunde, til Brug ved Forelæsninger
1824. Christiania: Trykt hos Chr. Grøndahl
The lecture textbook of moral philosophy from the Christiania chair, standing to »Moral for Folk og Stat« (1810) roughly as the 1813 »Almindelig Logik« stands to the larger theoretical works: the doctrine reduced to first principles for teaching. Its compactness is the reason to read it — a textbook has to say plainly what the big books can leave implicit. Note provisional: written from the title page and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Christendommens Aand, eller Den evangeliske Lære: Frimodig og upartisk beskreven
1828. Christiania: Trykt hos Chr. Grøndahl
Treschow's book on Christianity, three years before the first volume of the »Testament« and evidently its theological antechamber: »Om Gud, Idee- og Sandseverdenen« works out the doctrine of God that this book approaches from the evangelical side. The subtitle's »frimodig og upartisk« (candid and impartial) was not received as such — the Christiania pastor W. A. Wexels published against it, and Treschow replied the same year with the 35-page »Anhang til Bogen om Christendommens Aand«, linked below. The exchange is the one place in the corpus where the identity-system had to be defended as orthodoxy. Note provisional: written from the title pages and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
»Anhang til Bogen om Christendommens Aand«, reply to Pastor Wexels (1828, 35 pp.)Scan (nb.no)to do Om Gud, Idee- og Sandseverdenen samt de førstes Aabenbarelse i den sidste. Et philosophisk Testament
1831–1833. Christiania (Grøndahl), 3 vols.
Treschow's summa, written in retirement and prefaced with an autobiography; the detailed statement of his monist "Identitets-system." God is not the sum of things but "a real individual" that makes all things one; consciousness "pictures the Absolute One," standing to the manifold as the mind stands to its own thoughts and decisions. The most explicit source for the subject–object identity theme. NB: the third word is »Sandse-« (world of sense), not »Sandheds-«. Two spans of vol. I are transcribed here because they settle a problem raised by »Almindelig Logik« § 31, which denies that the highest being is »noget Heelt, som Verden, hvoraf alle Individuer ere Dele«. The answer (p. 220) is that the unity of the ideal world is constituted by »Vexelvirkning« among Ideas that do not alter one another — a relational, not a mereological unity — and that (p. 221) »Disse ere de Individuer, hvoraf Sandseverdenen bestaaer«: individuals compose the world of sense, not God. p. 207 gives the sharpest statement of the primacy of the individual anywhere in the corpus: all class-, genus- and species-concepts are »mere eller mindre vaklende og ubestemmelige, men Individuerne i sig selv saa fuldkommen bestemte«, while an individual may pass over into another species, genus, order or class. p. 206 marks the break with Plato: the Ideas are individual, not the objects of general concepts.
Modern editions
Menneskeværd og Menneskevel
1963. Oslo: Johan Grundt Tanum, 57 pp.
Free-standing reprint of the 1810 »Gives der noget Begreb eller nogen Idee om enslige Ting? Besvaret med Hensyn til Menneskeværd og Menneskevel« — the essay is here retitled by its subtitle, which is why it does not surface under the original title in library catalogues. Predates the Winsnes selection by three years and is the first modern printing of the essay in full. The National Library record gives the languages as Danish and Norwegian Bokmål, so the volume evidently carries something more than the Danish original; worth establishing what, since a 1963 Norwegian rendering would be a prior translation of the text transcribed and translated here under »enslige-ting«. Digitised at nb.no under the »bokhylla« licence: Norwegian IP addresses only.
»Philosophiske Forsøg« og andre skrifter
Ed. A. H. Winsnes. 1966. Oslo: Johan Grundt Tanum, 225 pp. Series: »Norsk filosofi i det 19. århundre« 1 / Thorleif Dahls kulturbibliotek
The standard modern selection from Treschow, and the volume cited in the »enslige-ting« note above as the source in which the 1810 essay is reprinted complete. It opens the series »Norsk filosofi i det 19. århundre« within Thorleif Dahls kulturbibliotek — i.e. it presents Treschow as the first figure of a *Norwegian* nineteenth-century philosophy, which is the framing the note at the head of this file flags as diverging from Høffding's Danish one. The editor is the same A. H. Winsnes as the 1927 monograph »Niels Treschow. En opdrager til menneskelighet« and the 1956 Trondheim address listed under secondary literature below, so his introduction can be read against that 1956 text. Contents need verifying against the volume: it takes its title from the 1805 »Philosophiske Forsøg« (listed above as »philosophiske-forsog«, still to-do here), so it is the most likely modern access point for that work as well. Digitised at nb.no under the »bokhylla« licence: Norwegian IP addresses only.
Menneskeværd og menneskevel
Ed. Jørgen Juul Nielsen (introduction and notes). 1991. København: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 83 pp. ISBN 87-7421-728-3
Danish edition of the same 1810 essay, again under its subtitle, with an introduction and notes by Jørgen Juul Nielsen. The only one of the three modern editions to carry a full modern commentary on the essay, and the only one published in Denmark — so it is the natural check on the reading of »enslige Ting« given here: whether Juul Nielsen also takes the primacy-of-the-individual thesis to be the essay's point, and whether his notes settle anything about the text's antiqua/»ö« orthography or the 1807 signature vs. 1810 printing. Not digitised; obtain a copy or consult by ILL.
Complete edition (83 pp.) — not held; consult against the »enslige-ting« translationreference
Secondary literature
Niels Treschow
A. H. Winsnes. 1956. Det Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskabs Forhandlinger, bd. 29 (Trondheim: Aktietrykkeriet, i kommisjon hos F. Bruns Bokhandel, 1956), 31 pp. (offprint, pp. 1*–31*)
Biographical portrait delivered by the literary historian Andreas Hofgaard Winsnes as the address on the Society's Høytidsdag (Anniversary Day), 26 February 1956. A concise Norwegian overview of Treschow's life and thought — his »philosophia perennis«, his debt to Leibniz and Spinoza, and the primacy-of-the-individual theme of »Gives der noget Begreb eller nogen Idee om enslige Ting?« It closes with a valuable bibliography (»Henvisninger«) of the older scholarship on Treschow, including Høffding's »Danske Filosofer« (1909) and »Udvalgte Stykker« (1910). Winsnes is the same scholar who edited »Philosophiske Forsøg og andre Skrifter« (1966), cited under the »enslige-ting« work above; he had earlier written the monograph »Niels Treschow. En opdrager til menneskelighet« (Oslo, 1927). In Norwegian; secondary literature, so no translation is planned.
Complete article (pp. 1*–31*)PDFcomplete Niels Treschow (1751–1833), A Danish Neoplatonist
Svend Erik Stybe. 1976. Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 13 (1), pp. 29–47
The one substantial treatment of Treschow in English, and therefore the natural point of departure for any anglophone discussion of him. Stybe reads him as a Neoplatonist — the label Treschow applies to himself — which bears directly on the »Om Gud« material: the eternal Ideas, the outflowing (»Udflydelse«) of both Ideas and sensible things from the absolutely One, and the identity-system's principle that »essentially the highest and the lowest things are entirely alike«. NB that Treschow's Neoplatonism is heterodox on exactly the point that matters here: his Ideas are themselves individual, not the objects of general concepts, and he breaks with Plato explicitly on that ground (»Om Gud« I, p. 206). Worth checking whether Stybe registers that departure, and whether he anticipates the primacy-of-the-individual reading. In English; secondary literature, so no translation needed.
Complete article (pp. 29–47)DOIBrillreference Niels Treschow, 1751–1833: en tenker mellom to tidsaldrer
H. O. Christophersen. 1977. Oslo: Grøndahl, 549 pp. ISBN 82-504-0270-7
The standard monograph on Treschow, and the largest single piece of scholarship on him — »a thinker between two ages«, i.e. straddling the Enlightenment and Romanticism, and equally the Danish and Norwegian phases of his career. It is the first thing to consult before claiming novelty for any reading of Treschow: anyone arguing for the primacy-of-the-individual thesis, or for the line running toward Høffding and Bohr, needs to know whether Christophersen has already said it. Digitised at the National Library of Norway but under the »bokhylla« licence, so readable only from Norwegian IP addresses; obtain a print copy by ILL. In Norwegian; secondary literature, so no transcription or translation is planned.
Den tidlige norske filosofien: en lesning av Treschow, Schweigaard og Monrad
Erik Lundestad. 2002. Universitetet i Tromsø
Reads Treschow alongside A. M. Schweigaard and M. J. Monrad as the first phase of an independent Norwegian philosophy. Useful as a check on how the Norwegian tradition frames Treschow — which is a different framing from Høffding's Danish one, and the divergence is itself worth knowing about (see the note on Denmark–Norway at the head of this file). Digitised at the National Library of Norway under the »bokhylla« licence: Norwegian IP addresses only. In Norwegian; secondary literature, so no transcription or translation is planned.
»Filosofien på Københavns Universitet fra 1803 til 1813: Niels Treschow«, in »Dansk oplysningsfilosofi 1700–1800«
Carl Henrik Koch. 2003. Den danske filosofis historie, ed. Sten Ebbesen and Carl Henrik Koch, bd. 3 (København: Gyldendal, 2003), 385 pp. ISBN 87-02-01584-6; e-book 2016, ISBN 978-87-11-49738-8. The Treschow chapter stands in Part 1, »Filosofien som skole og universitetsfag«.
The standard Danish account, and the counterpart to Christophersen's Norwegian monograph above: Koch treats Treschow as a Danish university philosopher — the man who held the Copenhagen chair between Riisbrigh and Sibbern — rather than as the first figure of a Norwegian nineteenth-century philosophy, which is the framing Winsnes and Lundestad adopt and which the note at the head of this file flags. The publisher's description of the volume names Treschow first among the philosophers treated, ahead of Holberg, Eilschov, Rothe, Boye, Hornemann, Baggesen and the Ørsted brothers, so the treatment should be substantial. NB where it sits: the chapter covers 1803–13 but is filed in the *Enlightenment* volume (1700–1800), because Koch carries the history of the chair past 1800 to complete it — not where one would look first. The bibliotek.dk record for bd. 5, »Den danske idealisme 1800–1880« (2004, 595 pp.), lists only its four main parts (Naturfilosoffer og schellingianere; Kritikken af idealismens menneskesyn; Den danske hegelianisme og dens kritikere; På overgangen til positivismens tidsalder), so whether Treschow reappears there is not settled from the catalogue record alone and should be checked against the volume. What else needs checking: whether the chair-history framing means Koch covers the teaching and institutional context only, or the doctrine as well — in particular the 1810 »enslige Ting« essay and the 1812 psychology, both written inside the decade the chapter covers. Page extent not yet established. Note that bd. 3 also carries the chapter on Holberg, who opens this catalog, so the volume serves both authors. Not freely digitised; in print and as a 2016 e-book. In Danish; secondary literature, so no translation is planned.
Chapter »Filosofien på Københavns Universitet fra 1803 til 1813: Niels Treschow« — not held; page range to establishbibliotek.dkreference «(S)aa meget bedre skikkede til … de mindste Ting»: Niels Treschow om dannelse og kjønn
Tone Brekke. 2012. Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning 36 (2), pp. 99–120
Treschow on Dannelse (Bildung) and gender. Brekke's case is that although Treschow held that women should be excluded from the university — importing and continuing a Continental ideal of Dannelse that did so — he nonetheless works out a more nuanced model of gender than the period's dominant one: against academia as a homosocial, over-rationalised and professionalised sphere, he grounds both individual and social Dannelse in sociability, the family, and feminine models of sympathy and care. Two reasons to keep it in view here. First, sociability is a *relational* rather than an atomistic way of taking the individual, so it is a test of how far the primacy-of-the-individual thesis in »enslige Ting« and »Om Gud« extends beyond metaphysics into the moral and political writings (»Moral for Folk og Stat«, »Lovgivnings-Principier«). Second, the bibliography is unusually rich on the pedagogical Treschow — Helge Dahl's 1965 magister thesis »Niels Treschow – en pedagogisk tenker«, Anathon Aall's 1911 piece on his doctrine of development, Erik Lundestad's 1998 article on the »Forsøg om Guds Tilværelse«, and the 1803 »Kort Udkast til Kundskab om Mennesket« (the anthropology textbook that precedes the 1812 psychology) — none of which is catalogued here yet. Paywalled at Scandinavian University Press; Brekke is at ILOS, University of Oslo, so a repository copy may exist. In Norwegian with an English abstract; secondary literature, so no translation is planned.
«Thi Klogskab burde være Videnskabs Slavinde, og hielpe den til at bestige Visdoms Throne» – Niels Treschow og forholdet mellom filosofisk visdom og politisk klokskap
Lars Petter Storm Torjussen. 2026. Norsk filosofisk tidsskrift 61 (1–2), pp. 4–14
The most recent scholarship on Treschow, and the piece that bears most directly on the political works newly catalogued above (»Moral for Folk og Stat«, »Lovgivnings-Principier«). Torjussen — at the Institutt for pedagogikk, Universitetet i Bergen — argues that for Treschow the task of philosophy is not to supply »kunnskab« but wisdom, by way of spiritual exercises aimed at peace of mind, and reads him through Pierre Hadot's »view from above«: the exercise of seeing how small one's life is under a cosmic perspective. Politics then rests on a philosophical doctrine of virtue, prudence being raised to wisdom's throne and made science's handmaid. Two reasons to keep it in view. First, it is a rival to the reading this catalog pursues — a Treschow whose centre is a therapeutic and ethical conception of philosophy rather than a metaphysics of individuals — and the two need to be squared, or the difference stated. Second, the Hadot frame is a claim about *method* running across several books, so it is a check on whether the primacy-of-the-individual thesis is the organising idea of the corpus or one strand among several. In Norwegian with an English abstract; secondary literature, so no translation is planned. Open access (diamond, CC BY) at the DOI; the nb.no copy of the issue is access-restricted, so use the DOI.
Complete article (pp. 4–14)DOIreference F.C. Sibbern (1785–1872)
Frederik Christian Sibbern, professor of philosophy at Copenhagen 1813–1870. Close friend of Poul Martin Møller; Kierkegaard attended his lectures and called him a lovable and distinctive thinker. A transitional figure who resisted the Hegelian campaign of the 1830s and anticipated several of Kierkegaard's central arguments. What he set against Hegel was personality as the highest value: where the individual is subordinated to the universal and subjective truth to objective, so that the well-ordered state becomes the end of Dannelse, Sibbern held that a truth is not appropriated until it has been personally lived and undergone, and is possessed only »som personliggjort i os« — turned by the will into an actual life. Kim Minke's chapter in Dansk litteraturs historie, catalogued under secondary literature below, makes this personality-philosophy the built-in premise of Møller, of Kierkegaard's ethicist, and of the Danish Bildungsroman, and the ground of the critique of Hegel that »baner vej for Kierkegaards«. For the life — the parentage, the walking tour to Hegel and Goethe, Sophie Ørsted, the fifty-seven years in the chair — see the essay »The Doctor's Son Called Gabrielis«.
Menneskets aandelige Natur og Væsen. Et Udkast til en Psychologie
1819–1828. Copenhagen
Sibbern's principal psychological work, published in two parts: Part 1 (1819) and Part 2 (1828), the latter subtitled »Psychologisk Pathologie«. Part 2 was reissued 1885 by his son Gabriel Sibbern as »Læren om de menneskelige Følelser og Lidenskaber«. A KB scan of the 1828 Anden Deel (printed pp. 3–480) is held locally, as is the 1885 reissue from the Internet Archive; neither is transcribed. Note that the KB page offset on the 1828 scan is NOT uniform — it drifts from +21 to +19 across the volume, so a leaf is duplicated or a plate inserted somewhere in the middle, and the page map needs a full verification pass before any transcription. Part 1 (1819) has not been located in any digitised form.
Første Deel (1819) — no scan locatedto do
Om Elskov eller Kjerlighed imellem Mand og Qvinde
1819. Copenhagen
Transcribed from the »Tredie uforandrede Udgave« (Kjøbenhavn 1858; text unchanged from the 1819 first edition). Three »Bøger« plus a table of contents; front-matter prefaces in Fraktur, body in roman. Transcription and English translation both complete and image-verified (front matter through Tredie Bog).
Logikens Elementer (1822); 2nd ed. as Logik som Tænkelære (1827)
1822, 1827. Copenhagen
Sibbern's first logic, printed as manuscript for his students. The 1827 second edition does not reprint the 1822 title: it appears as »Logik som Tænkelære«, "Ny Udarbeidelse, endnu som foreløbigt Aftryk for Tilhørere" (Kjøbenhavn: trykt hos Jens Hostrup Schultz, 1827), XXII + 378 pp. Sibbern's Fortale to it settles the relation — it opens by comparing »nærværende Udgave med den første« — and reports that although the ground-view and procedure are unchanged, the execution differs enough that the two are not simply printings of one text. NB the 1827 title collides with, but is distinct from, the 1835 »Logik som Tænkelære fra en intelligent Iagttagelses Standpunct og i analytisk-genetisk Fremstilling« catalogued separately below, which remains undigitised. The 1827 edition is transcribed complete from the KB scan — XXII + 378 pp., §§ 1–176, with the Fortale, the full Oversigt and the Rettelser leaf; the 1822 first edition has not been located.
Logik som Tænkelære (1827), the second editionTranscriptioncomplete Logikens Elementer (1822), the first edition — no scan locatedto do
Om Erkjendelse og Granskning. Til Indledning i det academiske Studium
1822. Copenhagen
Transcribed from the first edition (Kjøbenhavn 1822, Paa Fr. Brummers Forlag; Trykt hos C. Græbe). Danish transcription complete and image-verified (Fortale, Oversigt, body §§ 1–22, Slutning, and the Rettelser errata leaf). English translation complete (lightly modernized register; front matter + §§ 1–22 + Conclusion; key terms glossed with the bracketed Danish on first use per section). The Danish Rettelser (errata) leaf corrects only the Danish original's orthography and is noted in a one-line translator's note.
Udaf Gabrielis' Breve til og fra Hjemmet
1826. Copenhagen
Sibbern's Gabrielis epistolary fiction. NB this record needs splitting, and the bibliography below already has it right where this note does not: these are two novels, not one expanded one — »Efterladte Breve af Gabrielis« (1826), and a continuation of 1850, »Udaf Gabrielis's Breve til og fra Hjemmet«, set ten years later and called by Minke »langt senere — og svagere«. Which of the two the transcription below is has not been established and must be checked against the title page before the record is split; the Femte Udgave's dedication is dated 1850, which points to the second. The 1826 book was written mainly in 1811–14 and held back until eight years after Sophie Ørsted's death, out of regard for the family. Do not call it a »wertheriade« without noting that this is the reading Minke argues against: the Werther comparison is Christian Molbech's, from the only substantial contemporary review, and Minke's reply is that the book fails as a wertheriade »først og fremmest fordi den slet ikke er det« — it is the seed of the Danish Bildungsroman, or the first of them, and that is where its classic status comes from. About 100 letters from a young theology student to a friend, written from the country near his old school Herlufsholm, with interpolated life-histories serving as mirror figures. J. P. Mynster's private response to the book was printed by Sibbern as its fortale. Transcribed from the »Femte Udgave« (Kjøbenhavn 1893, Det Reitzelske Forlag), which carries a Forord by Harald Høffding and Sibbern's own dedication to Mynster (dated 1850). Roman/antiqua; ~302 pp. of dated letters. Title page and dedication complete and image-verified; body of letters in progress.
Logik som Tænkelære fra en intelligent Iagttagelses Standpunct og i analytisk-genetisk Fremstilling
1835. Copenhagen
Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie
1838. C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen
Originally in Maanedsskrift for Litteratur XIX (1838).
Om Philosophiens Begreb, Natur og Væsen. En Fremstilling af Philosophiens Propædeutik
1843. Copenhagen
Companion piece to Om Erkjendelse og Granskning (1821/22); the Fortale explicitly relates the two. Danish transcription (Fraktur, from the KB scan) COMPLETE: front matter (Fortale) + §§ 1–21 + the verbatim Rettelser leaf (printed pp. 1–86), image-verified page by page with the NB/non-NB errata folded into the body. English translation complete (front matter + §§ 1–21, on the same policy as the erkjendelse companion volume: lightly modernized register; key terms glossed with the bracketed Danish on first use per section; Latin/German kept as in the print). The Danish Rettelser (errata) leaf corrects only the Danish original's orthography and is noted in a one-line translator's note.
Psychologie, indledet ved almindelig Biologie
1843. Copenhagen
Condensed reworking of the psychology; 4th ed. 1862. A complete Google library scan of the 1856 edition (Paa eget Forlag, trykt hos J. H. Schultz; 554 pp.) is freely available at the Internet Archive and is held locally; not yet transcribed.
Speculativ Kosmologie med Grundlag til en speculativ Theologie
1846. Copenhagen
Presents Sibbern's vitalistic conception of nature. A complete Google library scan of the 1846 first edition (161 pp.) is freely available at the Internet Archive and is held locally; not yet transcribed.
Om Forholdet imellem Sjæl og Legeme, saavel i Almindelighed som i phrenologisk, pathognomonisk, physiognomonisk og ethisk Henseende i Særdeleshed
1849. Copenhagen
One of the most detailed treatments of the psychophysical problem.
Tænkelære eller Logik. I Udtog til Brug ved Forelæsninger
1849. Copenhagen
3rd ed. 1866.
Moralphilosophie som Retsindigheds- og Tilbørlighedslære
1878. Copenhagen
Posthumous; edited by his son Gabriel Sibbern. Left as a draft. A complete Google library scan (Reitzel 1878, 146 pp.) is freely available at the Internet Archive and is held locally; not yet transcribed.
Meddelelser af Indholdet af et Skrift fra Aaret 2135
1858–72. Copenhagen
Sibbern's utopia, and the one place he set out his politics: a future-society fiction of over 1000 pages, unfinished, built on a mix of highly undogmatic Christianity and communism in the line of Saint-Simon's Christian-tinged utopian socialism. Minke, who is the source for this entry, calls it »det besynderlige, ret ulæselige«. It belongs among the works because Sibbern's politics rested on a deep-rooted hostility to private property, which is also why he was nearly tone-deaf to the national question and to the demands for a new constitution — not conservatism, on Minke's reading, but a politics belonging to a utopian future rather than to the present. Dating needs care: the bibliography below records »I–II« as 1858–62 and the continuation to 1872, while Minke gives the whole as 1858–72; part-structure, extent and publication sequence are all still to be established. No copy held and no digitised copy located.
Complete work — no copy held; part-structure and extent to establishto do
Secondary literature
Sibbern: en Monografi
Jens Himmelstrup. 1934. København: J. H. Schultz
The standard Danish monograph on Sibbern, and the older of the two book-length treatments; by the historian of philosophy Jens Himmelstrup (1890–1967), better known for »Søren Kierkegaards Opfattelse af Sokrates« and for the third edition of the Samlede Værker. The bibliotek.dk record notes a section »Den Clausen-Grundtvigske Strid« at p. 222, so the book carries Sibbern's part in the church controversies as well as the philosophy. Not held; page extent, and how the psychology and the logic are weighted against the biography, still to be established against the volume. In Danish; secondary literature, so no translation is planned.
Complete book — not held; page extent to establishbibliotek.dkreference Frederik Christian Sibbern: Træk af en dansk Filosofs Liv og Tænkning
Poul Kallmoes. 1946. København: Ejnar Munksgaard, 248 pp.
The second book-length Danish study, twelve years after Himmelstrup, by Poul Henning Kallmoes (1911–2002) — cand.mag. in French and German, later stadsbibliotekar in Rønne and university librarian in Odense, so a literary rather than a professional-philosophical hand, and the subtitle (»Træk af … Liv og Tænkning«) promises traits rather than a systematic exposition. Reviewed by Hans Bølling in Nationaltidende, 5 September 1946. Not held and no digitised copy located; secondhand copies circulate in the Danish antiquarian trade, and it is available by ILL from Danish libraries. What needs checking: how much weight it puts on the logic and the psychology as against the Gabrielis material and the biography, whether it carries a bibliography of the older Sibbern scholarship, and what it adds to Himmelstrup. In Danish; secondary literature, so no translation is planned.
»Poesien som livsfilosofi — F.C. Sibbern« and »Sibberns brevroman — kimen til den danske dannelsesroman«
Kim Minke. 2006–2009. Dansk litteraturs historie, 5 vols., eds. Klaus P. Mortensen and May Schack; online at lex.dk from 17 December 2012
Two consecutive chapter-sections in the standard Danish literary history, and the best short modern account of Sibbern. Read them together: the running title promises poetry as life-philosophy but the first section is entirely philosophy — the professor of fifty-seven years, the newspaper habit (»Når man råber i skoven, svarer professor Sibbern«), the hostility to private property and the 2135 utopia, Sophie Ørsted and the Naturphilosophie that came out of that crisis, and the personality-philosophy with its two anchor passages, the 1819 »Drivten« passage from Menneskets aandelige Natur and the 1838 »personliggjort i os« passage. The poetry is in the second section, where »Livspoesien« turns out to be Minke's term for the fullness of existence that is the subject of the 1850 continuation. Its thesis is that Efterladte Breve af Gabrielis (1826) is not a wertheriade but the seed of the Danish Bildungsroman — which contradicts this catalog's own gabrielis note, now flagged there. It also sets Sibbern's Christianity against Kierkegaard's: for Sibbern it is the background of the philosophy and not its object, which is why he could claim in an 1847 university festskrift that a man may belong to God's kingdom »uden at være Christen«. The predecessor section is on Grundtvig, the successor on Biedermeier; the volume number and printed page range are not given online and remain to be established against the printed set. Freely available. In Danish; secondary literature, so no translation is planned.
»Poesien som livsfilosofi — F.C. Sibbern« — read online; printed volume and pages to establishlex.dkreference »Sibberns brevroman — kimen til den danske dannelsesroman« — read online; printed volume and pages to establishlex.dkreference Complete bibliography (40 items)
A near-complete list of F.C. Sibbern's publications and manuscripts. ✦ marks works available in this collection.
Published works
1811De principiis philosophicis disciplina juris · Doctoral dissertation, Copenhagen — »Om retslærens filosofiske principper«.
1819Menneskets aandelige Natur og Væsen. Et Udkast til en Psychologie, 1. Deel · Copenhagen✦ in the collection 1819Om Elskov eller Kjerlighed imellem Mand og Qvinde · Copenhagen — 3rd ed. 1858.✦ in the collection 1819»Om Poesiens Indflydelse paa Dannelsen og paa Sindets Oplivelse. Fragmenter af en Poetik« · Iris (1819)
1822Logikens Elementer · Copenhagen (printed as manuscript; new ed. 1827)✦ in the collection 1822Om Erkjendelse og Granskning. Til Indledning i det academiske Studium · Copenhagen✦ in the collection 1822Ueber das Verhältniss des christlichen Glaubens zum philosophischen Erkennen · Theologische Zeitschrift (hrsg. Schleiermacher et al.), III
1823De præexistentia, genesi et immortalitate animæ · Universitetsprogram, Nov. 1823
1824»Over Professor Howitz' Afhandling: Om Afsindighed og Tilregnelse« · Juridisk Tidsskrift IX
1826Efterladte Breve af Gabrielis · Copenhagen — Epistolary novel; a Danish »wertheriade«. 6th ed. 1927.✦ in the collection 1828Menneskets aandelige Natur og Væsen, 2. Deel: Psychologisk Pathologie · Copenhagen✦ in the collection 1829»Om den menneskelige Sjæls Subsistents i Liv og Død« · Philosophiskt Archiv og Repertorium (1829)
1829»Bidrag til Bestemmelsen af Philosophiens Forhold til Theologien« · Philosophiskt Archiv og Repertorium (1829)
1829–30Philosophiskt Archiv og Repertorium, I–IV · Copenhagen (edited by Sibbern)
1829–30»Om den intellectuelle Anskuelse« · Philosophiskt Archiv og Repertorium (1829–30)
1830»Bidrag til Opklaring af de menneskelige Drivters Natur og Væsen« · Philosophiskt Archiv og Repertorium (1830)
1830»Bidrag til Besvarelsen af det Spørgsmaal: Hvad er Dogmatik« · Philosophiskt Archiv og Repertorium (1830)
1834Mindeskrift over H. B. Melchior · Copenhagen
1834–69Om Poesie og Konst i Almindelighed, med Hensyn til alle Arter deraf, dog især Digtekonsten, I–III · Copenhagen — The principal aesthetic work of Danish Romanticism.
1835Logik som Tænkelære fra en intelligent Iagttagelses Standpunct og i analytisk-genetisk Fremstilling · Copenhagen✦ in the collection 1835–36Patriotiske Intelligentsblade, 1.–2. hft. · Copenhagen
1836Hvad det har at betyde, at komme til Universitetet · Copenhagen
1836Mindeskrift over A. W. Brorson · Copenhagen
1838Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie, betragtet i Forhold til vor Tids · C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen — Originally in Maanedsskrift for Litteratur XIX (1838).✦ in the collection 1843Om Philosophiens Begreb, Natur og Væsen. En Fremstilling af Philosophiens Propædeutik · Copenhagen✦ in the collection 1843Psychologie, indledet ved almindelig Biologie · Copenhagen (4th ed. 1862)✦ in the collection 1843Dikaiosyne eller Bidrag til Politik og politisk Jurisprudents for Danske, 1. hft. · Copenhagen
1846Speculativ Kosmologie med Grundlag til en speculativ Theologie · Copenhagen✦ in the collection 1846»Om den christelige Yttringsfrihed i kirkelig Henseende« · Universitetsprogram, Sept. 1846
1848»Bidrag til at oplyse nogle ontologiske Udtryk i Aristoteles' Metaphysik« · Universitetsprogram, Okt. 1848
1849Om Forholdet imellem Sjæl og Legeme, saavel i Almindelighed som i phrenologisk, pathognomonisk, physiognomonisk og ethisk Henseende i Særdeleshed · Copenhagen✦ in the collection 1849Tænkelære eller Logik. I Udtog til Brug ved Forelæsninger · Copenhagen (3rd ed. 1866)✦ in the collection 1849»Nogle Betragtninger over Stat og Kirke« · Universitetsprogram, Okt. 1849
1850Ud af Gabrielis's Breve til og fra Hjemmet · Copenhagen — Continuation of the 1826 Gabrielis novel.✦ in the collection 1858–62Meddelelser af Indholdet af et Skrift fra Aaret 2135, I–II · Copenhagen — Sibbern's political utopia; unfinished (continued to 1872).
1859Mindeskrift over C. J. Heise · In Platons Philebos, trans. C. J. Heise, Copenhagen
1865–70Samfundsbetragtninger, 1.–2. hft. · Copenhagen
1866Breve til og fra F. C. Sibbern, I–II · Ed. C. L. N. Mynster, Copenhagen — Correspondence collection.
1878Moralphilosophie som Retsindigheds- og Tilbørlighedslære · Copenhagen — Posthumous; edited by Gabriel Sibbern.✦ in the collection 1885Læren om de menneskelige Følelser og Lidenskaber · Copenhagen — Reissue of the 1828 »Psychologisk Pathologie«, ed. Gabriel Sibbern for the centenary of Sibbern's birth.✦ in the collection J.L. Heiberg (1791–1860)
Johan Ludvig Heiberg — poet, vaudeville dramatist, critic, editor, from 1849 director of the Royal Theatre, and the man who made Hegel a Danish subject. He is in this catalog for one reason: almost every philosophical quarrel the other authors here are having is a quarrel he started. In Berlin in 1824 he met Hegel, attended his lectures, and underwent what he later described as a philosophical conversion; the same year he brought out »Om den menneskelige Frihed« from Kiel, the first work in Danish literature to argue a case on Hegelian ground. From then until the early 1840s he ran what was in effect a campaign — through his journals »Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post« (1827–37), »Perseus« (1837–38) and »Intelligensblade« (1842–44), through the logic textbook written for his cadets at the Royal Military College, and through the public lecture series announced by »Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid« (1833) — to persuade Golden Age Denmark that Hegel's system was the cure for an age he diagnosed as being in crisis. The campaign is the hinge of this catalog's middle. Martensen, who reviewed the »Indlednings-Foredrag« in 1836, took the speculative program into theology and became the target of both Kierkegaard and Nielsen. Sibbern's »Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie« (1838) — transcribed and translated in full under Sibbern above — is formally a review of the first volume of »Perseus«, and remains the most thorough Danish critique of Hegel ever written. Poul Martin Møller's late turn against "the modern atheism" is a turn against this same speculative fashion. And Heiberg's slogan »Tidens Fordring«, the demand of the age, together with the promise that philosophy can »gaae videre«, is what Kierkegaard spends the pseudonymous authorship mocking, in »Forord« most directly, but also throughout the »Efterskrift«. Heiberg is thus the positive term that Sibbern, Møller and Kierkegaard are all negating, and the source from which the faith-and-knowledge controversy running through Nielsen and Brøchner ultimately flows. He is unusually well served in English: Jon Stewart has translated the whole philosophical corpus in the first six volumes of »Texts from Golden Age Denmark«, so translation here is low priority and the useful work is Danish transcription. Not catalogued below are the 1825 essay on contingency and its 1827 sequel on Nemesis (Stewart's volume 4), the aesthetic and theatre writings (»Om Vaudevillen« 1826, »Om Theatret«), the astronomical-poetic yearbook »Urania« (1844–46), and the verse — above all »En Sjæl efter Døden« in »Nye Digte« (1841), a Hegelian satire in dramatic form and the most read thing he wrote.
Om den menneskelige Frihed. I Anledning af de nyeste Stridigheder over denne Gjenstand
1824. Kiel: i Universitets-Boghandlingen; 104 pp.
Heiberg's first philosophical publication and, by common consent, the first Hegelian work in Danish. Written in Kiel, where he lectured on Danish language and literature 1822–25, and published in the year of his meeting with Hegel in Berlin. It is an intervention in the »Howitz-fejde«, the dispute over freedom of the will touched off by the physician F.G. Howitz's determinism and answered by A.S. Ørsted, J.P. Mynster and P. Hjort: Heiberg's move is to argue that the opposition between freedom and necessity dissolves at the standpoint of the absolute — the pattern of every argument he would make for the next twenty years. The 1824 Kiel first printing is available complete and in full view: KB's own online record for it (digitisation project funded by Cand.pharm. Povl M. Assens Fond) carries no KB file but points, in its MARC 856, at the Google Books scan linked below — Fraktur throughout, 104 pp., title page reading »Af Dr. J. L. Heiberg«. Also reprinted in »Prosaiske Skrifter« vol. 1 (Schubothe) and as the opening item of Bd. 1 of the 1861–62 Reitzel set. Note provisional: written from the title page, the KB record and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Grundtræk til Philosophiens Philosophie eller den speculative Logik. Som Ledetraad ved Forelæsninger paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole
1832. Kjøbenhavn: Andreas Seidelin; 126, [2] pp.
Heiberg's most extensive work on logic, written as a textbook for his students at the Royal Military College (den kongelige militaire Høiskole). NB the title: it is »Grundtræk«, not »Grundlinier« — the latter belongs to a quite different, German, 1824 piece on aesthetics (»Grundlinien zum Systeme der Aesthetik«, re-edited by Klaus Müller-Wille in 2022), and the two are easy to confuse. KB's record also identifies this printing as a revised setting of an earlier »Ledetraad ved Forelæsningerne over Philosophiens Philosophie eller den speculative Logik ved den kongelige militaire Høiskole« (1831–32), of which KB holds a copy at Fil. 54495 4°; a transcription should say which of the two it follows and ideally collate them. The book follows Hegel's »Wissenschaft der Logik« closely, and is the first of the series of Danish works on Hegel's logic that runs through the late 1830s and 1840s — Nielsen's and Brøchner's logical writings, catalogued below, are downstream of it. The themes it puts into Danish circulation are exactly the ones the later controversy turns on: the presuppositionless beginning, mediation, the law of excluded middle, and the relation of philosophy to religion. Digitised by KB in 2014 from their copy 14,-112-4°, rights recorded as »Unrestricted online access«; the PDF is linked below and is large — 88.7 MB, so render pages to a temp dir rather than pulling the whole file about. Note provisional: written from the KB record, Stewart's introduction and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid. Et Indbydelses-Skrift til en Række af philosophiske Forelæsninger
1833. Kjøbenhavn: C.A. Reitzel; 55 pp.
The manifesto of Danish Hegelianism, and the most consequential thing Heiberg wrote as a philosopher: an invitation to a lecture series, which turns into a diagnosis of the age as one of relativism and dissolution — art, religion and scholarship all having lost their ground — and a prescription that thinkers take refuge in speculative philosophy, which alone can restore truth and beauty to their places. Its claims about the standing of religion drew fire from Copenhagen's theologians, Mynster among them, and Heiberg answered; Stewart's volume collects the whole exchange. 55 printed pages, which makes it the obvious first transcription for this author. Digitised twice over and available in full both ways: a Google Books scan, and KB's own 2022 digitisation of their copy 14,-22 8°, rights recorded as »Unrestricted online access«, whose colour PDF (13.1 MB) is linked below. Note provisional: written from the title page, the KB record, Stewart's introduction and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Indlednings-Foredrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole
1835. Kjøbenhavn: Schubothe; 42 pp., Fraktur
Delivered as a lecture in 1834 and printed the following year; the clearest single statement of Heiberg's Hegelian idealism. Arguing from a theory of categories, he places philosophical knowing above both religious knowing and the natural sciences — the claim that made the piece a scandal — and, despite the title, ranges well beyond logic into philosophy of language and a taxonomy of poetic forms. It is here that the appeal to »Tidens Fordring«, the demand of the age, is made in the form Kierkegaard would satirise in »Forord« and »Stadier paa Livets Vei«. Martensen's review of it (1836) is his own entry into the debate, and Sibbern and Nielsen followed; the resulting exchange, on the relation of philosophy to religion, is the direct ancestor of the Nielsen–Brøchner controversy catalogued below. The 1835 separate printing has NOT been digitised: KB's copy, shelfmark 14,-105-8° (»Kan ikke hjemlånes«), is flagged »Digitalisering eller læsesal«, i.e. it is eligible for digitisation on demand — the cheapest way to get this text is to order that, and it belongs on the KB visit list. KB catalogues the printing twice, once under the copy and once as a Schubothe imprint; both records are linked. Meanwhile the reprint in »Prosaiske Skrifter« vol. 2 (Schubothe) is available in full view and is linked below. Note provisional: written from the KB record, Stewart's introduction and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, Nr. 1–2
1837–1838. Kjøbenhavn: C.A. Reitzel
Heiberg's philosophical journal, founded in June 1837 after the editors of »Maanedsskrift for Litteratur« declined an article of his and he withdrew it in protest. Two issues only, but the landmark of the Danish Hegel reception: the prefatory address calls on Perseus to champion speculative idealism against the Medusa of realism and empiricism, and the second issue carries »Det logiske System«, the fragment of Heiberg's own system that got as far as §23 and stopped. The journal is the occasion of two of the most important texts in this catalog — Sibbern's »Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser« (1838), which began as an eight-part review of Nr. 1 and is transcribed complete under Sibbern, and Kierkegaard's »Forord« (1844), which satirises it. THIS IS THE ONE ITEM HERE WITH NO DIGITISATION ANYWHERE that has been found: a KB catalogue search restricted to electronic holdings returns nothing for it, and it is absent from Google Books. What KB does hold is physical copies: the record below carries shelfmark Fil. 13075 8° with »2 eks.« and holdings recorded as Nr. 1–2, 1837–1838; further copies sit at Den Sorte Diamant (reading-room loan, to be ordered) and at KU Teologi's Søren Kierkegaard Bibliotek, E 569 Per, use on the premises by arrangement. Getting this text therefore means either a reading-room visit or a digitisation order; it is the strongest candidate on the KB visit list. Note provisional: written from the KB records, Stewart's introduction and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Prosaiske Skrifter (first collected edition)
1841–1843. Kjøbenhavn: J.H. Schubothe
The collected prose Heiberg himself saw through the press, and the working text for the »Indlednings-Foredrag« until the 1835 printing is digitised. Two volumes are digitised full-view at Google Books from the Princeton copies: vol. 1 carries »Om den menneskelige Frihed«, »Om Vaudevillen« and the polemic with Oehlenschläger; vol. 2 carries the polemic with Hauch, »Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid«, the »Indlednings-Foredrag til det logiske Cursus« and »Bidrag til en æsthetisk Moral«. Google dates both digitised volumes 1841; the set's full extent and volume structure have not been collated against a bibliography. Do not confuse this with the posthumous eleven-volume Reitzel set of 1861–62, catalogued separately below — the volume numbers cited in the scholarly literature are usually that set's, not this one's, and any transcription must say which it follows.
Vol. 1 — Om den menneskelige Frihed; Om Vaudevillen; Polemik med OehlenschlägerScan (Google Books)to do Vol. 2 — Polemik med Hauch; Om Philosophiens Betydning; Indlednings-Foredrag; Bidrag til en æsthetisk MoralScan (Google Books)to do Remaining volumes — not yet surveyedto do
Johan Ludvig Heibergs prosaiske Skrifter (posthumous collected edition, 11 vols.)
1861–1862. Kjøbenhavn: C.A. Reitzel, 11 bd., ed. L.V. Petersen and Andræ; part of »J.L. Heibergs samlede Skrifter«
The standard collected prose, and the edition the secondary literature cites. What matters here is Bd. 1 (1861), whose contents are, in order: »Om den menneskelige Frihed«, »Speculativ Logik«, »Om Philosophiens Betydning«, and »Indlednings-Foredrag til det logiske Cursus« — that is, the entire philosophical core of this entry gathered in a single volume, which makes Bd. 1 the natural transcription target if a diplomatic text of the first printings is not the goal. Bd. 11 (1862) carries »Studier og Udkast« and the »Autobiographiske Fragmenter«, the latter being Heiberg's own account of meeting Hegel in Berlin. KB digitised the set in 2019 from their copy 52,-86 8°, rights »Unrestricted online access«, but the digitisation is split across several catalogue records and the one inspected exposes only vols. 6, 7 and 9; the record for Bd. 1 has not yet been run down, so the volume-1 PDF is still to be located. The umbrella record is linked below.
Bd. 11 (1862) — Studier og Udkast; Autobiographiske Fragmenterto do
Remaining volumesto do
Secondary literature
Texts from Golden Age Denmark, vols. 1–6
Jon Stewart (ed. and trans.). 2005–2011. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel / Museum Tusculanum Press; series ISSN 1903-3336, now continued by Brill
Not secondary literature in the strict sense but the English edition of Heiberg's philosophical corpus, with introductions and commentary, and the reason translation is low priority for this author. Vol. 1, »Heiberg's On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age and Other Texts« (2005), also carries the »Autobiographical Fragments« with Heiberg's account of meeting Hegel in Berlin, and the theologians' replies. Vol. 2, »Heiberg's Speculative Logic and Other Texts« (2006), is the »Grundtræk« of 1832. Vol. 3, »Heiberg's Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course and Other Texts« (2007), includes Martensen's review and the answers by Sibbern, Nielsen and Kierkegaard. Vol. 4, »Heiberg's Contingency Regarded from the Point of View of Logic and Other Texts« (2008), has the 1825 contingency essay, the 1827 »Nemesis« sequel, and articles from »Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post« 1825–43. Vol. 5, »Mynster's 'Rationalism, Supernaturalism' and the Debate about Mediation« (2009). Vol. 6, »Heiberg's Perseus and Other Texts« (2011) — the only complete Perseus in any language that is readily obtainable, given that the Danish original is not digitised. Vol. 7 is Sibbern's »Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser«, cited under Sibbern above. Details from the series editor's own catalogue page; not held.
Johan Ludvig Heiberg — forfatterskabsportræt
Arkiv for Dansk Litteratur. n.d.. Det Kgl. Biblioteks tekstportal / tekstnet.dk
The standard Danish scholarly overview of the authorship, covering the philosophical writings alongside the poetry and drama, with the publication history of both »Prosaiske Skrifter« sets. Free, in Danish, and the first place to check any bibliographical claim made in this entry.
Poul Martin Møller (1794–1838)
Poet, philosopher, and Professor of Philosophy at Copenhagen 1831–1838. The most important philosophical figure in the generation immediately preceding Kierkegaard; the Concept of Anxiety is dedicated to his memory. A digital scholarly edition of Møller's collected writings — with textual-critical apparatus and commentary — is in preparation at Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab (DSL) and available in prototype at http://pmm.dsl.dk; the transcriptions below are independent of it.
Tanker over Muligheden af Beviser for Menneskets Udødelighed
1837. Maanedsskrift for Litteratur 17 (1837), pp. 1–72 and 422–453
Two-part essay. Article I (§§ I–VII) transcribed from Skrifter i Udvalg (1930); Article II (§§ VIII–XI, MfL 1837 pp. 422–453), omitted from that selection, transcribed from the Fraktur first printing in matching modernized orthography. Danish transcription complete; English translation by Jon Stewart (2022).
En Dansk Students Eventyr
1824 / 1843. Efterladte Skrifter, bd. 3, ed. F.C. Olsen, C.A. Reitzel
Written c. 1824; published posthumously 1843. Selections.
Strøtanker
1843. Efterladte Skrifter, bd. 3, ed. F.C. Olsen, C.A. Reitzel
Selected aphorisms and short essays, arranged in twelve thematic groups (incl. Problemet »Udødelighed«, Eksistentialisme, Dybdepsykologi). Translation-only project: text from the Lindhardt og Ringhof e-book (2018), which preserves the original orthography; no public Danish transcription is produced.
Complete selection (12 thematic groups)Translationcomplete Hvad er Philosophie?
1843. Efterladte Skrifter, bd. 3, ed. F.C. Olsen, C.A. Reitzel
Remainder of lecture courseto do
Ontologien eller Kategoriernes System
1837–1838. Efterladte Skrifter, bd. 3, ed. F.C. Olsen, C.A. Reitzel
Fragment (Brudstykke) on ontology / the system of the categories, named after the science Møller lectured on in the winter half-year of 1837 and worked on during his final illness (1838). Transcribed from the Fraktur setting of Efterladte Skrifter vol. 3 (3rd ed.), printed pp. 189–212. Includes the Indledning and the opening of "Første Capitel: Læren om de enkelte Begreber" (Being–Nothing–Something), engaging Kant, Schelling, and Hegel. Breaks off mid-section.
Forberedelser til en Afhandling om Affectation
1837. Efterladte Skrifter, bd. 3, ed. F.C. Olsen, C.A. Reitzel
Fragment (Brudstykke IV): materials toward a projected treatise on affectation — one of Møller's signature ethical-psychological concepts (inauthenticity, self-deception). Opens with a connected treatment (begun 1837) defining affectation as a compound of falsity and self-deception and distinguishing three degrees (momentary, fixed, changing); then the editor's thematic grouping of the author's scattered aphoristic notes, rich in cultural diagnosis. Contains the striking "two sides" passage — "Da enhver Sag kan sees fra to Sider, var det tilfældigt, fra hvilken Side den øieblikkeligen blev seet" — and the China frog-bundle image. Pairs directly with § 29 of the Moralphilosophi lectures. Transcribed from the Fraktur setting of Efterladte Skrifter vol. 3 (3rd ed.), printed pp. 163–188.
Om Begrebet Ironie
1835–1837. Efterladte Skrifter, bd. 3, ed. F.C. Olsen, C.A. Reitzel
Fragment (Brudstykke II) occasioned by Provost Tryde's review of Sibbern's Æsthetik (Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, bd. 13, 1835). As a member of the journal's editorial board Møller began appended remarks on the concept of irony but, per the editor's note, "bragte kun Indledningen til Ende": only the treatment of MORAL irony was completed, and the piece breaks off as it turns to poetic irony ("Vi gaae nu over til den poetiske Ironie"). Traces irony from Greek moral consciousness (Aristotle) through Kant and Fichte to F. Schlegel's Lucinde and Hegel's "subjectivity that knows itself as the highest" — a direct line to Kierkegaard's Concept of Irony. Transcribed from the Fraktur setting of Efterladte Skrifter vol. 3 (3rd ed.), printed pp. 152–158.
Forelæsnings-Paragrapher over Moralphilosophien
1837. Efterladte Skrifter, bd. 5, C.A. Reitzel, 1855–56, pp. 141–162
Møller's ethics in 47 numbered lecture-paragraphs (§§), reconstructed by the editor "from lecture-notes of 1837, collated with the Author's manuscript" (F.C. Olsen). The systematic practical-philosophy counterpart to the Ontologien. Three main parts: the Doctrine of Imputation (§§ 6–12; freedom against both indifferentism and determinism, the anatomy of the voluntary/intentional/deliberate act); the Doctrine of Happiness (§§ 13–22; interest, feeling, the Cyrenaic/ Cynic/Epicurean sequence, self-preservation, benevolence, right, the perfect existence); and the Doctrine of the Good (§§ 23–47), covering Virtue (the mean between extremes, affectation), Duty (the categorical imperative), and Conscience — closing (§ 47) with the individual fulfilling its vocation as a member of the rationally organised State. Transcribed from the Fraktur setting of Efterladte Skrifter vol. 5.
Qvindelighed
1822–1823. Efterladte Skrifter, bd. 5, C.A. Reitzel, 1855–56, pp. 5–13
Written 1822–1823; published posthumously. Transcribed from the Fraktur setting of Efterladte Skrifter vol. 5 (1855–56).
Secondary literature
Ironiens uendelige frihed: ironi i »En dansk Students Eventyr«
Claus Elholm Andersen. 2003. K&K – Kultur og Klasse 31, nr. 96 (2003): Metonymi, pp. 114–136
Article on irony in »En dansk Students Eventyr«. Open access via tidsskrift.dk; the journal reserves rights under Danish copyright. English translation planned, pending permission from the author and/or publisher.
Complete article (pp. 114–136)Journalto do Udlængsel og hjemve: personlighedsopfattelse hos Poul Møller og hans forgængere
Martin Paludan-Müller. 1987. Museum Tusculanum Press (UJDS-studier 5), 101 pp.
Monograph on the conception of personality (»personlighedsopfattelse«) in Poul Møller and his predecessors, tracing the theme from personal rationalism through romanticism/psychology to personal realism. ISBN 87-7289-037-1.
Poul Martin Møller as a Philosopher
Carl Henrik Koch. 2025. In Nassim Bravo, Finn Gredal Jensen & Jon Stewart (eds.), »Poul Martin Møller: Poet, Philosopher and Philologist« (Danish Golden Age Studies 16), Leiden: Brill, ch. 3, pp. 107–130
A general account of Møller's philosophy — as far as I know the only treatment of Poul Martin Møller written in English. Included here as a reference; the article is already in English, so no translation is planned.
Complete chapter (pp. 107–130)BrillDOIcomplete Hans Lassen Martensen (1808–1884)
Theologian: Privatdocent and from 1840 professor of theology at Copenhagen, court preacher from 1845, and Mynster's successor as Bishop of Zealand from 1854. Usually classified as a theologian rather than a philosopher, but a necessary part of this catalog's story, because he is the man both Kierkegaard and Nielsen wrote against. His lectures on speculative dogmatics from the late 1830s made Hegelian theology the reigning fashion in Copenhagen — the mediation of faith and knowledge, and the ambition to »gaae videre«, to go further than Descartes' doubt and Hegel's system — and it is these commonplaces that Kierkegaard's unfinished »Johannes Climacus eller De omnibus dubitandum est« and the polemic against speculation in the »Efterskrift« (1846) satirise: the Climacus pseudonym is aimed at a Martensenian target. When the »Christelige Dogmatik« finally appeared in 1849, Nielsen's »undersøgende Anmeldelse« of it (the »johannesclimacos« entry below) opened the faith/knowledge controversy that runs through this catalog from Nielsen to Brøchner to Høffding; Martensen answered once, in the »Dogmatiske Oplysninger« (1850), and thereafter left the defence to others (whence Nielsen's »scharling-apologie« pamphlet). And it was Martensen who triggered the last act of Kierkegaard's authorship: his February 1854 memorial sermon placed Mynster as »et tjenende Led« in »den hellige Kjæde af Sandhedsvidner« — compressed by Kierkegaard into the »Sandhedsvidne« charge of his Fædrelandet attack (December 1854) and the »Øieblikket« campaign of 1855. Only the four controversy documents are catalogued below; the larger corpus — »Mester Eckart« (1840), »Grundrids til Moralphilosophiens System« (1841), »Den christelige Daab« (1843), »Den christelige Ethik« (1871–78), the memoirs »Af mit Levnet« (1882–83) — is left for later.
Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie i vor Tids dogmatiske Theologie (De autonomia conscientiae sui humanae)
1837; Danish transl. 1841. Kjøbenhavn; Latin original 1837, Danish transl. L. V. Petersen 1841
The licentiate dissertation, and the programmatic document of Danish speculative theology: against the autonomy of human self-consciousness in modern dogmatics — the principle Martensen finds running from Descartes through rationalism to Kant and Schleiermacher — and for a theonomous dogmatics in which self-consciousness knows itself only in dependence on God. The young Kierkegaard read it closely, and its picture of modern philosophy as beginning in doubt is part of what »Johannes Climacus eller De omnibus dubitandum est« mocks. The 1841 Danish translation exists as a Wikisource transcription, so the transcription task here would be collation against the page images rather than keying from scratch. Note provisional: written from the title pages and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Den christelige Dogmatik
1849. Kjøbenhavn: C.A. Reitzel
The system itself, and the centre of the mid-century controversy: the long-promised dogmatics in which faith and knowledge are mediated and theology made speculative science. Nielsen's »Mag. S. Kierkegaards "Johannes Climacus" og Dr. H. Martensens "Christelige Dogmatik"« (October 1849, transcribed complete under Nielsen below) reads Climacus against it to argue that it fails »i dens Princip som i dens Problem«; everything in the Nielsen–Brøchner debate radiates from this book. Widely translated: German 1850, English as »Christian Dogmatics« (trans. William Urwick, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1866), so an English version already exists and translation here has low priority. NB the KB digitisation is the *fourth* printing (4. Oplag, Reitzel, 491 pp.; the record's dates point to 1883), not the 1849 first — the Google Books scan carries the first printing, so any transcription should collate the two and state which printing it follows. Note provisional: written from the title pages and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Dogmatiske Oplysninger. Et Leilighedsskrift
1850. Kjøbenhavn: C.A. Reitzel
Martensen's one direct reply to the critics of the »Dogmatik« — above all to Nielsen's »undersøgende Anmeldelse« — after which he withdrew from the controversy and left the defence to C.E. Scharling and others. The KB digitisation is the 2. Oplag (also 1850; 104 pp., Reitzel). The other half of the exchange is under Nielsen: he answered with »Dr. H. Martensens dogmatiske Oplysninger belyste« (75 pp., Reitzel 1850; digitised at KB and linked below since it is listed in Nielsen's bibliography but not yet curated there) and with the »scharling-apologie« pamphlet. Note provisional: written from the title pages and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Prædiken holdt i Christiansborg Slotskirke paa 5te Søndag efter Hellig Tre Konger, Søndagen før Biskop Dr. Mynsters Jordefærd
1854. Kjøbenhavn: C. A. Reitzels Bo og Arvinger (Bianco Luno), 1854; reprinted in »Leilighedstaler« (1884)
The memorial sermon of 5 February 1854, on Hebr. 13, 7–8. 16 printed pp. What Martensen actually says (pp. 5–6): »Efterligner de sande Veilederes, de rette Sandhedsvidners Tro!«, and of Mynster that »I denne hellige Kjæde af Sandhedsvidner var ogsaa vor hedengangne Lærer et tjenende Led« — the sermon nowhere flatly calls Mynster »et Sandhedsvidne«; that compression is Kierkegaard's, in the title of his delayed reply »Var Biskop Mynster et 'Sandhedsvidne', et af 'de rette Sandhedsvidner' — er dette Sandhed?« (Fædrelandet, 18 December 1854; Martensen answered in Berlingske Tidende on the 28th), which began the church struggle and »Øieblikket«. A few pages, but the single most consequential document Martensen published for the Kierkegaard story — and short enough that transcription plus translation is an afternoon's work. KB holds two separate digitisations of the same 1854 printing; the first is linked below, the second is under record alma99122386251405763 (e-mat 130020344319). Kierkegaard's article is in SKS at the KB tekstportal, linked below.
Secondary literature
Hans Lassen Martensen: Theologian, Philosopher and Social Critic
Jon Stewart (ed.). 2012. Danish Golden Age Studies 6, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press
The standard English-language collection on Martensen, from the same series and editor as the Møller volume cited above — the natural first stop for the anglophone reader, and the check on any claim made here about what Martensen's speculative theology actually held. In English; secondary literature, so no translation is planned. Not held; details from the publisher's catalogue.
Complete volume — not heldreference
Rasmus Nielsen (1809–1884)
Professor of philosophy at Copenhagen 1841–1884. Developed the central position of the mid-century debate: that faith and knowledge spring from absolutely heterogeneous principles. Target of both Brøchner's philosophical critique and Brandes's cultural polemic.
Den speculative Methodes Anvendelse paa den hellige Historie
1842. H.C. Klein, Copenhagen
Danish version, made by B. C. Bøggild, of Nielsen's 1840 Latin dissertation »De speculativa historiae sacrae tractandae methodo«. Body printed pp. 1–162, Fraktur. The earliest statement of the speculative programme he would spend the 1850s and 1860s dismantling from within — and, read against the later books, the clearest measure of how far he moved. Two Deele: the first on the relation of philosophy to history in general (§§ 1–10), the second on sacred history itself (§§ 11–23), running from Catholicism through Luther and the symbolic books to criticism, subjective and objective rationalism, and finally Strauß's panlogism, with a Slutning at p. 161. The §§ run continuously across both Parts. Bøggild's translator's preface sets the book against H. L. Martensen's »Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie« and refers the reader to the review in »Fædrelandet« Nr. 329 (1840); it is dated Kjøbenhavn, 24 January 1842. NB the KB scan transcribed here is missing a whole leaf of that preface — the surviving page begins mid-sentence — so the preface stands as the fragment it is, and the colour KB digitisation has still to be checked for the missing leaf. The printed Indhold and the printed § heads disagree in six places (§§ 3, 7, 10, 13, 15, 21 — e.g. the Indhold's »Den speculative Methode« against the head's »Den videnskabelige Methode« at p. 36); both readings are recorded in the transcription and neither is normalised away. All twelve of the book's own Trykfeil are applied and flagged at their sites.
Den propædeutiske Logik
1845. P.G. Philipsen, Copenhagen
283 pp. of Fraktur prose. Nielsen's pre-Kierkegaardian logic textbook, superseded by the »Philosophisk Propædeutik« of 1857. Useful as the baseline against which to measure what the encounter with Kierkegaard changed. Structure: Indledning (I. Den formelle og speculative Logik; II. Den propædeutiske Logiks Formaal); Første Deel, Læren om det subjective Begreb (§§ 1–11, in three Capitler on the subjective concept's formation, its expression in the judgment, and its validity in inference and proof); anden Deel, Læren om det objective Begreb (§§ 12–21, ending in Idee og Gud). The §§ run continuously 1–21 across both Parts. No footnotes and no figures; the »Anm.« remarks do the work footnotes would do. Polytonic Greek and Latin, French and English phrases set in antiqua against the Fraktur; heavy quotation of Kant, Fichte, Hegel and Heiberg. Danish transcription COMPLETE — image-verified verbatim, the whole book, printed pp. 1–283; 205-page LaTeX PDF, compiles clean. Diplomatic throughout: the printer's unmatched quotation marks, wrong sorts, blind stops and letterspacing lapses are transcribed as printed and logged at their sites, while the nine corrections of the book's own »Rettelser« page are applied and flagged; both readings are recorded wherever the body heads and the Indhold disagree — including the lowercase »anden Deel:« of p. 97 against the Indhold's »Anden Deel.«
Evangelietroen og den moderne Bevidsthed: Forelæsninger over Jesu Liv
1849. C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen
Published 19 May 1849, five months before the »Johannes Climacus« review. X + 530 pp.; the title page marks it "Første Deel", but no further part appeared. Lectures on the life of Jesus in which Nielsen first works out publicly how evangelical faith is to stand toward modern historical-critical consciousness. Danish transcription complete and image-verified; translation not begun. The editorial record and the philosophical reading are in the note.
Mag. S. Kierkegaards "Johannes Climacus" og Dr. H. Martensens "Christelige Dogmatik"
1849. C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen
Published 15 October 1849, a few months after Martensen's »Christelige Dogmatik«. Nielsen's public response to Kierkegaard's »Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift« (1846): he reads Climacus against Martensen to argue that the latter's dogmatics fails "i dens Princip som i dens Problem". The pamphlet that opened the Danish faith/knowledge controversy — and that broke Kierkegaard's confidence in Nielsen. Printed pp. 3–132, Fraktur, continuous review-essay in two halves, hinged at p. 42: the first reads the »Efterskrift« („Har ikke »Johannes Climacus« dialektisk skjærpet det christelige Problem?"), the second Martensen's dogmatics („Har ikke »den christelige Dogmatik« udialektisk omgaaet det christelige Problem?"). Articulated by these display questions and by lettered sub-heads rather than numbered sections. Danish transcription COMPLETE: the whole book, printed pp. 3–132, image-verified page by page against the Google Books scan (77-page LaTeX PDF; requires libertinus + libertinust1math + textalpha for the polytonic Greek). English translation COMPLETE: full pp. 3–132, 86-page LaTeX PDF, sandbox-verified 0 errors.
Complete work (pp. 3–132) — translationTranslationcomplete Evangelietroen og Theologien: Tolv Forelæsninger, holdte ved Universitetet i Kjøbenhavn i Vinteren 1849–50
1850. C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen
VIII + 174 pp. Twelve lectures delivered in the winter immediately after the »Johannes Climacus« review, and the most compact statement of the position for which Nielsen became the central figure of the mid-century debate: that faith and knowledge rest on absolutely heterogeneous principles, so that theology may not be made a science on the model of the other sciences, and yet nothing in scientific knowing need be surrendered. Transcription complete (Forord, all twelve lectures, and the Indhold, from the page images); English translation complete.
Complete work (Forord pp. III–VIII, Tolv Forelæsninger pp. 1–174, Indhold) — transcriptionTranscriptionKB ScanPDFcomplete Et Par Ord i Anledning af Prof. Scharlings Apologie for Dr. Martensens Dogmatik
1850. C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen
24 pp. Nielsen's reply to C.E. Scharling's defence of Martensen, one of the two 1850 pamphlets (with »Dr. H. Martensens dogmatiske Oplysninger«) continuing the controversy opened by the »Johannes Climacus« review.
Om personlig Sandhed og sand Personlighed
1854. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Subtitle: 'Tolv Forelæsninger for dannede Tilhørere af begge Kjøn, holdte ved Universitetet i Vinteren 1854' (Lic. theol. R. Nielsen, Professor i Philosophien). [1] + 144 pp. of Fraktur prose, twelve popular lectures for a mixed lay audience (unlike the more technical Forelæsninger for students). No Indhold in the scan and no italic chapter-argument summaries, unlike the closely related Evangelietroen og Theologien (1850). Page map verified (uniform PDF = printed + 9). Danish transcription COMPLETE: image-verified verbatim, all twelve lectures plus the unfoliated Forord (144 printed pp.), 0 gaps/dupes, sandbox compile 0 errors. English translation not yet begun.
Om Theologiens Naturbegreb, med særligt Hensyn til Malebranche
1855. Det Schultziske Officin (Universitetsprogram)
Reformation-festival Indbydelsesskrift, 1855. Danish transcription complete (printed pp. 3–47: the Malebranche essay plus the appended doctoral vitae and festival invitation). English translation covers the treatise (pp. 3–37); the appendix (doctoral vitae + festival invitation, pp. 38–47) is left untranslated by choice.
Philosophie og Mathematik
1857. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Subtitle: 'en propædeutisk Afhandling' (R. Nielsen). ~84 pp. of Fraktur body text, math- and figure-heavy. Complete in full: image-verified Danish transcription (69 pp.) and English translation of the whole book (70 pp.), 19 TikZ figures carried over verbatim.
Philosophisk Propædeutik i Grundtræk
1857. Gyldendal (F. Hegel), Thieles Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen
R. Nielsen. ~204 pp. of Fraktur prose (some inline math in §§31–32): Indledning; I. Erkjendelseslære; II. Videnskabslære; III. Ideelære; Slutning. Danish transcription COMPLETE (image-verified verbatim, printed pp.3–204; 163-page LaTeX PDF, compiles 0/0/0). English translation COMPLETE (from the verified transcription; foreign quotations kept verbatim with bracketed English).
Om S. Kierkegaards »mentale Tilstand«
1858. Nordisk Universitets-Tidsskrift 1858 (1): 1–29; separate offprint
29 pp. Nielsen's defence of Kierkegaard against the charge that the authorship is to be explained by its author's mental derangement — i.e. an argument that Kierkegaard must be read as a thinker making claims, not as a case to be diagnosed. Short, and directly about the terms on which Kierkegaardian subjectivity can be taken seriously within a scientific culture.
Complete article — translationto do
Mathematik og Dialektik
1859. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Not digitised at KB, but Google Books holds two full-view scans (subtitle on the second: »En philosophisk Afhandling«), both dated 1859 and verified by title page.
Forelæsninger over »Philosophisk Propædeutik« fra Universitetsaaret 1860–61
1862. Den Gyldendalske Boghandling (F. Hegel); Thieles Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen
482 pp. of Fraktur prose in three parts: I. Philosophiens Begreb; II. Philosophien og de særskilte Videnskaber (Mathematiken, Chemien, Physiologien); III. Philosophien og de akademiske Studier. The fullest record of Nielsen's propædeutik lectures between the 1857 Grundtræk and Grundideernes Logik, and the home of the Darwin passage at pp. 326–328. Danish transcription COMPLETE and image-verified (Forord, body pp. 1–482, Indhold), diplomatic throughout — the compositor's errors transcribed as printed and logged at each site. English translation COMPLETE (Forord, pp. 1–482, Indhold), with a translator's note on the nineteenth-century technical vocabulary.
Grundideernes Logik, vols. I–II
1864–1866. Gyldendal (F. Hegel); Trykt hos J. H. Schultz, Copenhagen
Published in two volumes: Vol. I (1864) and Vol. II (1866). Vol. I (456 pp. of body text) develops only the first Grundidee, Videns Idee; Vol. II (1866) continues the work and is planned for transcription and translation. Danish transcription of Vol. I from the Google Books scan (Fraktur) is COMPLETE and image-verified: the full front matter (Forord + Indledning, pp. VII–XXXIV) plus the entire body pp. 1–456 (ending 'Functionerne af den almindelige Objectivitet ere alle Functioner af subjectiv Viden.'). Compiles cleanly (requires libertinus + libertinust1math + textalpha for the \varkappa symbols and polytonic Greek). Vol. II not yet begun.
Svar til Hr. Dr. phil. Pastor Zeuthen i Anledning af hans Sendebrev om Tro og Viden
1866. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
16 pp., published the same year as »Grundideernes Logik« II. A reply to F.L.B. Zeuthen's open letter, and one of the sharpest short statements of the heterogeneity thesis under direct pressure. NOTE the dating: the bibliography below lists a »Svar til Hr. Dr. Phil. Pastor Zeuthen« under 1886, but the Royal Library dates this printing 1866 (Gyldendal), which also fits Zeuthen's dates (1805–1874) and the Tro-og-Viden controversy. The 1886 entry should be checked and probably corrected.
Om den Gode Vilje som Magt i Videnskaben
1867. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
141 pp. The KB record gives the title as »Om "Den gode Villie" som Magt i Videnskaben« — quotation marks in the title, and »Villie«, not »Vilje«; check the title page when transcription begins.
Logik og Psychologie
1867. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Lecture course for the university year 1867–68; VI + 482 pp. Transcription complete, from the Google Books scan of the Bodleian copy — the course synopsis and Indhold (pp. 3–6) and the whole body (pp. 1–482), including the closing section »Philosophien og de akademiske Studier« (pp. 477–482), which the book's own Indhold omits. The volume runs to 482 pp., not the 477 the Indhold's coverage suggests. Nielsen here sets the logic out as the common ground of all the sciences and then works down through plant, animal and human life to the relation of soul and body, closing with Herbart's mathematical psychology worked through in detail. It is printed under the signature title »Grundideernes Logik«, and opens with a Deel/Afsnit/Kapitel heading apparatus that the book never continues — both signs that the Cursus was conceived as an instalment of the 1864 volume. Note on the KB scans: the Royal Library's digitisations of this course are not the full volume but the »Omtrykte Blade« (reprinted leaves) — [28] pp. for 1867–68 and a further set for the 1871–72 Cursus. Useful for collation, not as a substitute for the volume.
Complete work (synopsis and Indhold pp. 3–6, body pp. 1–482) — transcriptionTranscriptioncomplete III. Philosophien og de akademiske Studier (pp. 477–482)Transcriptioncomplete Om Hindringer og Betingelser for det aandelige Liv i Nutiden
1868. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Religionsphilosophie
1869. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Complete work — translationto do
Ide og Virkelighed
1869. For Ide og Virkelighed 1(1): 1–39
Complete essay (pp. 1–39)Journalto do Grundideernes Logik i kort Begreb
1870. J. H. Schubothe, Copenhagen
Nielsen's own one-volume compend of the »Grundideernes Logik« system (vols. I–II, 1864–66, above). The interest is threefold. First, coverage: the Google Books term index (»Atomerne«, »Brint«, »absolut Viden«, »Andethedsformer«, »formelle Logik«) shows the compend spans both volumes' material, including the natural-science Grundideer of the still-untranscribed vol. II — so it is the compact route to the whole mature system, and is planned for transcription in preference to vol. II. Second, the compend argument this catalog already applies to Treschow's »Sædelære« and »Almindelig Logik«: a short course must say plainly what the big books leave implicit. Third, timing: 1870 is two years after Brøchner's »Problemet om Tro og Viden«. The Forord (fol. III, five lines) settles how far that goes: no critic is named, but Nielsen presents the book as »en kort og klar Fremstilling af sin theistiske Logik«, organised around the »Knudepunkter, om hvilke den videnskabelige Strid mellem Pantheisme og Theisme væsenlig maa dreie sig« — the axis of the Brøchner exchange, though not a direct reply. Scanned complete at Google Books (British Library copy, digitised 2013), full view with downloadable PDF. Title as on the title page and in the »List of Publications« appendix (»i kort Begreb«; the GB record capitalises »Kort«). Extent XIV + 89 pp.: Forord (fol. III), Indledning (V–XIII), Indhold (XIV), body pp. 1–89 beginning »A. Viden«. Page map verified against the PDF text layer (printed = PDF − 20, uniform) and by eye at the endpoints. Danish transcription COMPLETE: the whole book — Forord, Indledning, body pp. 1–89, Indhold — image-verified page by page (0 gaps/dupes, quote balance 0, sandbox compile 0 errors). Diplomatic throughout: the printer's signature defect is the turned sort (n as u in »iugenlunde«, »Slutniug«, and the p. 77 display head »Saudhed«; m as w in »wellem«), all transcribed as printed and logged; where the Indhold disagrees with the body heads both readings are recorded (»Den logiske Theisme« vs. the p. 85 head »Logisk Theisme.«). Imprint from the title leaf: Forlagt af J. H. Schubothes Boghandel; Louis Kleins Bogtrykkeri. English translation COMPLETE (»The Logic of the Fundamental Ideas in Brief Compass«): front matter, body pp. 1–89, and Contents, all footnotes carried, printer's errors rendered corrected with the diplomatic readings noted in comments.
Et Synspunkt for Darwinismen
1873. For Ide og Virkelighed 8(1): 449–459
Natur og Aand: Bidrag til en med Physiken stemmende Naturphilosophie
1873. J. H. Schubothe, Copenhagen
Nielsen's philosophy of nature, and the longest book of his in this collection. The programme is in the subtitle: a Naturphilosophie that agrees with physics rather than legislating to it. Three Deele — the mechanical, the elementary and the organic nature — of three Kapitler each, running from space and time through the mechanics of the heavens and the elements of the earth to life, death and the claim that all natural reality is »Aandsvirkelighed, Virkelighed for Aanden«. Unusually for this collection the book contains real mathematics: 83 of its pages carry it, and a footnote to p. 160 derives Kepler's laws from Newton's principles in polar coordinates. Extent xiv + 549 pp. Transcription and English translation both COMPLETE, diplomatic throughout and made from two physical copies. See the note for the argument and the editorial record.
Om Betingelserne for en kraftig Villie
1874. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
A contemporary English translation appeared as »The conditions of a powerful will: six lectures« (1882) and is digitised at the Royal Library — a rare case of Nielsen in English in his own lifetime. The Danish digitisation at KB is the later edition (»sex Forelæsninger«, 86 pp.; the record's date is 1884, matching the J. H. Schubothe reissue in the bibliography below), not the 1874 original — a transcription from it should say so.
English translation: The conditions of a powerful will (1882)KB ScanPDFreference Gamle og nye Profeter: Seks Forelæsninger
1878. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
No digitisation located as of August 2026: searched KB (online-resources facet), Google Books full view (both »Profeter« and »Propheter« spellings), archive.org, and the HathiTrust catalogue. A transcription would have to start from a physical copy or a new KB digitisation-on-demand request.
Philosophiske Grundproblemer
1879. Universitetets Festskrift, Copenhagen
Almindelig Videnskabslære i Grundtræk
1880. Gyldendalske Boghandel, Copenhagen
Om det oprindelige Forhold mellem Religion og Videnskab
1881. Schultz, Copenhagen
University festival address, 8 April 1881.
Secondary literature
Rasmus Nielsen: Nordens Filosof. En almenfattelig Fremstilling
P. A. Rosenberg. 1903. København: K. Schønberg, 1903. 247 pp., portrait
The only book-length treatment of Nielsen — Rosenberg's popular (»almenfattelig«) exposition of the whole philosophy, published nineteen years after Nielsen's death and quoted on the opening page of the 1909 »Mindeskrift« below, whose Part II is in effect Rosenberg's own précis of this book. The fullest secondary source on the doctrine of the uensartede Principer and so the natural companion to the Nielsen–Brøchner debate materials catalogued above. Unlike the rest of the secondary literature in this catalog, an English translation IS planned: Rosenberg died in 1935, so the text has been public domain in the EU since 2006 (and in the US as a pre-1930 publication). Scanned complete at HathiTrust (Harvard copy, full view). A modern epub reissue exists — SAGA Egmont, 9 April 2021, ISBN 978-87-265-1826-9, 252 pp. — and can serve as a working text, but it should be collated against the 1903 printing before anything is published from it. Paid e-book (76 kr.); no free/open copy of this edition established.
Mindeskrift over Rasmus Nielsen, udgivet paa Hundredaarsdagen efter hans Fødsel
V. Klein & P. A. Rosenberg. 1909. København: Det Schønbergske Forlag (Ernst Bierberg & Michael H. Jensen), 1909; contents run to p. 111. Frontispiece portrait after H. W. Bissen.
Memorial volume for the centenary of Nielsen's birth (4 July 1809), dedicated »Til unge danske Mænd, som higer og søger« and prefaced with a Hostrup verse. Three parts. I, »Nielsen som Privatmand«: Klein's firsthand reminiscences of a man who taught him — working habits, the writing of »Grundideernes Logik«, his last days, and his circle (Sibbern, Martensen, Jacobsen, Steenstrup, Julius Thomsen, Høyen, Brøchner, Brandes, Gabriel Sibbern, Rudolf Schmidt) — biographical testimony of the same kind the Brandes »Levned« excerpt supplies for Brøchner. II, »Nielsen som Videnskabsmand«: Rosenberg's short popular exposition of the philosophy — Erkendelsesproblemet, Virkelighedsproblemet, and »de uensartede Principers Problem«, i.e. precisely the doctrine of heterogeneous principles at issue in the Nielsen–Brøchner debate catalogued above, plus Nielsen's relation to contemporary philosophy (German materialism, French positivism, Spencer). III, »Nielsen som Folkelærer«: Klein's personal assessment of the thought and its bearing on culture, freedom and the national questions. Rosenberg is the author of the fuller monograph »Rasmus Nielsen, Nordens Filosof« (1903), quoted on the volume's opening page — the natural companion if this proves useful. Scanned complete at Slægtsforskernes Bibliotek. In Danish; secondary literature, so no transcription or translation is planned.
Complete volumePDFcomplete Entwicklungsgang und Grundprobleme der Philosophie Rasmus Nielsens
Eduard Asmussen. 1911. Flensburg: A. Westphalen, 1911. 109 pp. (doctoral dissertation)
The only academic monograph on Nielsen, and the only treatment of him in German — a doctoral dissertation printed at Flensburg; the granting university still needs establishing from the title page. Asmussen died in the First World War, and the dissertation went essentially uncited until the late twentieth century, when it resurfaced in the literature on Kierkegaard's influence. The Google Books term index shows sustained engagement with exactly the strands this catalog cares about: Kierkegaard and Climacus, Glauben und Wissen, ideelle Kausalität, Subjektiv und Objektiv, and — unusually for the older literature — the mathematical apparatus of »Grundideernes Logik« (Integralrechnung, Kontinuum, Stoffwirksamkeit/Selbstwirksamkeit). NOT publicly digitised: Google scanned the University of California copy in 2009 but shows snippets only, and HathiTrust has no record. Asmussen's death in the war puts the text long out of copyright everywhere, so the paper copy held here could be scanned and published — which would be the first public digitisation. In German; secondary literature, so no translation is planned.
Complete bibliography (98 items)
A near-complete list of Rasmus Nielsen's publications and manuscripts. ✦ marks works available in this collection.
Published works
1840De speculativa historiae sacrae tractandae methodo · Fabritius de Tengnagel (ASKB 697) — Danish trans. 1842 as »Om den spekulative Methodes Anvendelse paa den hellige Historie« (B. C. Bøggild).
1841Pauli Brev til Romerne · Private publication
1841–44Den speculative Logik i dens Grundtræk, Hefte 1–4 · Private publication
1843Forelæsningsparagrafer til Kirkehistoriens Philosophie · Private publication
1845Den propædeutiske Logik · P. G. Philipsen
1849Evangelietroen og den moderne Bevidsthed: Forelæsninger over Jesu Liv · C. A. Reitzel
1849Mag. S. Kierkegaards »Johannes Climacus« og Dr. H. Martensens »Christelige Dogmatik«: En undersøgende Anmeldelse · C. A. Reitzel✦ in the collection 1850Evangelietroen og Theologien: Tolv Forelæsninger holdte ved Universitetet i Kjøbenhavn i Vinteren 1849–50 · C. A. Reitzel
1850Dr. H. Martensens dogmatiske Oplysninger · C. A. Reitzel
1850Et Par Ord i Anledning af Prof. Scharlings Apologie for Dr. Martensens Dogmatik · C. A. Reitzel
1853Om Skjæbne og Forsyn · Otto Schwartz
1853Et Levnetsløb i Underverdenen · Otto Schwartz — Published under a pseudonym.
1854Om personlig Sandhed og sand Personlighed: Tolv Forelæsninger for dannede Tilhørere af begge Kjøn, holdte ved Universitetet i Vinteren 1854 · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1855Om Theologiens Naturbegreb med særligt Hensyn til Malebranche: De la recherche de la vérité · Det Schultziske Officin✦ in the collection 1857Philosophisk Propædeutik i Grundtræk · Gyldendal
1857Philosophie og Mathematik: En propædeutisk Afhandling · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1858»Om S. Kierkegaards ‘mentale Tilstand’« · Nordisk Universitets-Tidsskrift 1858 (1): 1–29, A. Ingerslev
1858»Tale ved Reformationsfesten« · Universitetets festskrifter
1859Mathematik og Dialektik: En philosophisk Afhandling · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1860Paa Kierkegaardske »Stadier«: et Livsbillede · Gyldendal
1860Hr. Professor Steens »Afregning«: Hermed en specificeret Opgjørelse til Revision · Gyldendal
1860»Om Begrebet Nøiagtighed med særligt Hensyn paa Hr. Prof. Steens ‘Bidrag’« · Postscript to Philosophie og Mathematik
1862Forelæsninger over »Philosophisk Propædeutik« fra Universitetsaaret 1860–61 · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1863Forelæsninger over »Philosophisk Propædeutik« fra Universitetsaaret 1861–62 · Gyldendal
1863»De stærkeres Ret. Tale ved Reformationsfesten« · Universitetets festskrifter
1864Grundideernes Logik I · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1866Grundideernes Logik II · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1866Propædeutik og Psychologie: Cursus fra Universitetsaaret 1866–67 · Gyldendal
1867Logik og Propædeutik: Cursus for Universitetsaaret 1867–1868 · Gyldendal
1867Om Holbergs Kirkehistorie og Theologie: Et Bidrag fra Fortiden til at belyse Nutiden · Gyldendal
1867»Indledning«, in Holbergs Kirke-historie I · F. L. Liebenberg
1867Om den Gode Vilje som Magt i Videnskaben · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1867Logik og Psychologie: Cursus for Universitetsaaret 1867–68 · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1868Herr Professor Brøchners Philosophiske Kritik · Gyldendal
1868Logik og Psychologie: Cursus for Universitetsaaret 1868–69 · Gyldendal
1868Om Hindringer og Betingelser for det aandelige Liv i Nutiden: Sexten Forelæsninger holdte ved Universitetet i Christiania September–Oktober 1867 · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1869Logik og Psychologie: Cursus for Universitetsaaret 1869–70 · Gyldendal
1869Religionsphilosophie · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1869»Ide og Virkelighed« · For Ide og Virkelighed 1 (1): 1–39, Chr. Steen & Søns Forlag✦ in the collection 1869»To Slags Undervisning I« · For Ide og Virkelighed 1 (1): 297–323
1869»To Slags Undervisning II« · For Ide og Virkelighed 1 (1): 409–441
1869»Om Selvforstaaelse i det Onde, med Henblik paa Shakspeares Richard den Tredie« · For Ide og Virkelighed 1 (1): 521–554
1869»Personlige Grunde« · For Ide og Virkelighed 1 (1): 585–622
1869»Om Sindsformørkelse, Bidrag til Selvmorderes Psykologi« · For Ide og Virkelighed 1 (1): 659–706
1870»Brændende Spørgsmaal« · For Ide og Virkelighed 2 (1): 1–33
1870»Synspunkter for Begrebet: Folkekirke« · For Ide og Virkelighed 2 (1): 105–135
1870»En literær Overraskelse« · For Ide og Virkelighed 2 (1): 193–221
1870»En Fortolkning af den hellige Historie« · For Ide og Virkelighed 2 (1): 289–324
1870»Filosofi og sund Menneskeforstand« · For Ide og Virkelighed 2 (1): 385–406
1870»En Arbeiderforening« · For Ide og Virkelighed 3 (2): 1–38
1870»Aandsvirkelighed« · For Ide og Virkelighed 3 (2): 289–320
1870»Tale ved Festen til Thorvaldsens Minde, den 19de November 1870« · For Ide og Virkelighed 3 (2): 443–456
1870»Om Betydningen af et nordisk Samfund, efter et Foredrag holdt i ‘Nordisk Samfund’ d. 8de Decbr 1870« · For Ide og Virkelighed 3 (2): 465–481
1870Grundideernes Logik i kort Begreb · J. H. Schubothe✦ in the collection 1871»Udsigter til en ny Præsteskole« · For Ide og Virkelighed 4 (1): 1–23, Otto B. Wroblewskys Forlag
1871»Samfundets Naturlove« · For Ide og Virkelighed 4 (1): 289–315
1871»Videre om Aandsvirkelighed, foranlediget ved Pastor V. Birkedals og Pastor C. Møllers Indlæg« · For Ide og Virkelighed 5 (2): 1–38
1871»Efter Døden« · For Ide og Virkelighed 5 (2): 193–223
1871Logik og Psychologie: Cursus for Universitetsaaret 1871–72 · J. H. Schubothe
1872»Om Universitetets Stilling til den almindelige Folkedannelse« · For Ide og Virkelighed 6 (1): 1–31, Otto B. Wroblewskys Forlag
1872»Karakter og Villie« · For Ide og Virkelighed 6 (1): 489–517
1872»Biskop Absalon« · For Ide og Virkelighed 7 (2): 215–247
1873»Hvorledes man danner sig en Verdensanskuelse« · For Ide og Virkelighed 8 (1): 1–18, Otto B. Wroblewskys Forlag
1873»Et Synspunkt for Darwinismen« · For Ide og Virkelighed 8 (1): 449–459✦ in the collection 1873Natur og Aand: Bidrag til en med Physiken stemmende Naturphilosophie · J. H. Schubothe✦ in the collection 1874Om Betingelserne for en kraftig Vilje: sex Forelæsninger · J. H. Schubothe✦ in the collection 1875Folkelige Foredrag: Seks Forelæsninger · Gyldendal
1875Om Liv og Haab: Sex Forelæsninger · Gyldendal
1876Om Phantasiens Magt: Sex Forelæsninger · Gyldendal
1877Om Aandsdannelse med særligt Hensyn paa vort Opdragelsesvæsen: Sex Forelæsninger · Gyldendal
1877Om Samfundets Vilkaar: Sex forskellige Foredrag · F. Hegel & Søn
1878Gamle og nye Profeter: Seks Forelæsninger · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1879Adam Oehlenschläger: et Mindeskrift · Gyldendal
1879»Philosophiske Grundproblemer«, in Festskrift i Anledning af Universitetets Firehundredaarsfest, Juni 1879 · Universitetets Festskrift✦ in the collection 1880Om Arbeidets Betydning for det aandelige Liv: Almeenfattelige Foredrag · Gyldendal
1880Almindelig Videnskabslære i Grundtræk · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1881Om det oprindelige Forhold mellem Religion og Videnskab · J. H. Schultz✦ in the collection 1884Om Betingelserne for en kraftig Villie: Seks Forelæsninger · J. H. Schubothe — Later edition of the 1874 lectures.
1886Svar til Hr. Dr. Phil. Pastor Zeuthen · Gyldendal
Unpublished manuscripts
1839»Forskellige mindre Manuskripter« · NKS 1839 folio
1843»Forelæsninger over Kirkehistoriens Philosophie, 1842–43« · NKS 4677 kvart
1849»Referat af Sibberns og Rasmus Nielsens filosofiske Forelæsninger 1848–49« · NKS 943 oktav
1853»Forelæsninger over den philosophiske Propædeutik, 1852–1853« (a–b) · Additamenta 835 kvart — Transcribed by F. P. J. Dahl. 62 + 62 s.
1861»Professor Rasmus Nielsens Papirer. 3 æsker« · NKS 1761 folio
1862»Forelæsninger over den philosophiske Propædeutik 1861–1862« · Additamenta 808 kvart — Transcribed by S. Heegaard, s. 199–300.
1863»Kirkehistoriens Philosophie. Forelæsninger fra Foraarssem.« (32 Bl.) · Additamenta (Peder Madsen; contents note by F. Torm)
1863»Fr. Hammerich: Den nyeste Tids Kirkehistorie. Foraarssem.« (21 Bl.) · Additamenta 858 kvart (Peder Madsen; F. Torm)
1863»Kirkehistoriens Philosophie. Foraarssem.« (44 Bl.) · Additamenta 859 kvart (Peder Madsen; F. Torm)
1863»Forelæsninger over philosophisk Propædeutik, 1862–1863« (incl. 9 s. of Grundideernes Logik, autumn 1863) · Additamenta 860 kvart (Peder Madsen; F. Torm)
1864»Forelæsninger over Dantes guddommelige Komedie, Jan. 1864« · Additamenta 861 kvart (Peder Madsen)
1868»Forelæsninger over Psychologi 1868–1869« · Additamenta 809–810 kvart
1870»6 Forelæsninger over ‘den sjælelige Modsætning mellem Mand og Kvinde’, 1869–1870« · Additamenta 862 kvart (Peder Madsen; F. Torm)
1870»Propædeutik ved Hans Brøchner og Psykologi og Logik ved Rasmus Nielsen: Forelæsninger 1869–70« · NKS 4788 kvart (Transcribed by U. F. K. Carøe)
1871»J. L. Heibergs Optegnelser efter Forelæsninger« & »Logik ved Rasmus Nielsen, I–II. 2 æsker« · NKS 3170 folio
n.d.»Referater af Rasmus Nielsens Forelæsninger. 9 bd. i æske« · NKS 1058 oktav
n.d.»Fremstilling af Professor Nielsens Betydning« · NKS 1839 folio
n.d.Religionsfilosofi · Collin 90 folio
n.d.Filosofisk Propædeutik i Grundtræk · Collin 395 folio
Hans Brøchner (1820–1875)
Professor of philosophy at Copenhagen 1857–1875. Post-Hegelian, moved toward a naturalistic humanism under the influence of Feuerbach and Strauss. With Rasmus Nielsen he is one of the two men who carried Kierkegaard into the Danish university in the decade after 1855: the authorship reached the next generation largely as these two professors taught and disputed it — Nielsen annexing it to his dualism of faith and knowledge, Brøchner reading it as a psychological and ethical achievement whose theology he rejected. He was also its first serious expositor. »Om Søren Kierkegaards Virksomhed som religieus Forfatter« appeared in Fædrelandet three weeks after the death, and the »Erindringer« of 1871–72 remain a primary source for the man. The exchange with Nielsen in 1868 (»Problemet om Tro og Viden« and the »Svar«) is accordingly a quarrel between two custodians of the same inheritance, not an attack from outside it. What he transmitted he transmitted mainly by teaching: Brandes and Høffding both sat in his lecture room, and Høffding credited Brøchner's lectures as the direct cause of his own conversion away from Nielsen's position.
Nogle Bemærkninger om Daaben, foranledigede ved Professor Martensens Skrift: »Den christelige Daab«
1843. P. G. Philipsen, Copenhagen
Brøchner's first publication, written at twenty-three against Martensen's »Den christelige Daab« of the same year — catalogued in the Martensen section as part of the larger corpus left for later. The pamphlet denies infant baptism its sacramental force and cost him the theological career: it is the reason he took the philosophical magister degree instead. Digitised by KB in 2013 from their copy 3,-156 8°, rights recorded as »Unrestricted online access«. Note provisional: written from the KB record and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Om det jødiske Folks Tilstand i den persiske Periode
1845. Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen
The magister dissertation — »skrevet for den philosophiske Magistergrad«, the degree Brøchner took after the baptism pamphlet closed the theological path to him. Historical-critical rather than philosophical, but it is the earliest sustained piece of his writing and the start of the Straussian line the later work follows. Digitised by KB in 2014 from their copy 2,-39 8°, rights recorded as »Unrestricted online access«. Note provisional: written from the KB record and the standard bibliographies, not from a reading of the text.
Om Søren Kierkegaards Virksomhed som religieus Forfatter
1855. Fædrelandet, 1 December 1855
Published anonymously under the mark "-r". Brøchner's first comprehensive account of Kierkegaard's authorship, written just after Kierkegaard's death. The article is reprinted, with introduction and commentary, in Carl Henrik Koch (ed.), "Hans Brøchners bidrag til Kierkegaard-receptionen i Danmark" (Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Scientia Danica, Series H, Humanistica 8, vol. 13; 2016, ISBN 978-87-7304-396-7). Koch's volume is open access: the whole volume and the individual afhandling are both downloadable as PDF from the publisher. No diplomatic transcription is offered here yet: the text that was prepared derived from Koch's 2016 edition rather than from the 1855 Fædrelandet printing, and has been withdrawn pending re-transcription from the original.
Benedict Spinoza. En Monographie
1857. P.G. Philipsen, Copenhagen
188 pp., Antiqua. The first of the series of monographs on representative systems that Brøchner announces in the Fortale, and the only one he finished; it ends by claiming that Spinoza's deeper motives are first fully understood in Hegel. Transcribed from the Google Books digitisation of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek copy, not from a Royal Danish Library scan. Danish transcription complete; English translation still to come.
Problemet om Tro og Viden
1868. Philipsen, Copenhagen
Et Svar til Professor R. Nielsen
1868. P. G. Philipsens Forlag, Copenhagen
Brøchner's rejoinder to Rasmus Nielsen's »Hr. Professor Brøchner's philosophiske Kritik gjennemseet« (1868), and the last round of the exchange begun by »Problemet om Tro og Viden«. Only 31 pages. KB has not digitised it — the two copies recorded are the Aarhus one (Brabrand, læsesalsbrug) and a 2. oplag bound into a Nielsen samlingsbind at KU Teologi (V g 2 Nie) — so the transcription is made from the British Library copy, scanned by Google in 2013.
Georg Brandes, Levned vol. I (1905), pp. 129–132
1905. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Primary source for Brøchner's personality and influence.
Om det Religiøse i dets Enhed med det Humane
1869. Philipsen, Copenhagen
The positive sequel to Problemet om Tro og Viden, promised in that book's preface. 211 pp., complete in both languages, with the author's Trykfeil leaf recorded and not applied.
Bidrag til Opfattelsen af Philosophiens historiske Udvikling
1869. P. G. Philipsen, Copenhagen
294 pp. Companion to the two-volume »Philosophiens Historie i Grundrids« (1873–74), setting out the principle on which Brøchner reads the history of philosophy. Unlike his other works here it is set in antiqua, not Fraktur, and it carries several hundred words of polytonic Greek — which neither OCR witness reads at all, so every Greek word was read off the page image. Danish transcription complete, including the six-page Register and the »Trykfeil og Rettelser« leaf; the nine errata the author lists there are recorded and not applied, as elsewhere in this repo. English translation still to come.
Det Kristelige og det Humane som Modsætninger i vor Tids Bevidsthed
1871. Nyt dansk Maanedsskrift, 2. Bind (April–September 1871)
Three installments in one volume — pp. 289–299, 433–456 and 492–510, i.e. the July, August and September numbers — published under the pseudonym »Constans«, which the volume's list of contributors carries as a name in its own right. The journal counterpart to »Om det Religiøse i dets Enhed med det Humane« of 1869: Christianity, as the highest and closing form of positive religion, is set against the free human consciousness and the two are held to be irreconcilable, with Kierkegaard taken as the classic Danish statement of the first side. Dansk Biografisk Leksikon calls the piece a critique of Martensen's »Den christelige Ethik«, whose first part had just appeared; in the text Martensen is named once only, in a single dismissive paragraph on p. 451, so that description overstates the case. Note written from the digitised journal, not from a full reading.
Det ubevidste og det bevidste menneskelige Sjæleliv
1871. Nyt dansk Maanedsskrift, 3. Bind (Oktober 1871–Marts 1872), pp. 42–57
Signed with his own name — the contents page reads »Af Professor H. Brøchner« — unlike the »Constans« articles of the preceding volume. Sixteen pages arguing that conscious mental life is bounded on both sides by the unconscious: it rises out of the unconscious organic ground, is at every moment carried and conditioned by it, and returns into it at death; the closing pages extend the analogy to the relation between individual minds. It stands in the volume's opening number, October 1871, but the title page of the bind is dated 1872, which is why the standard bibliographies cite it as 1872. Note written from the digitised journal, not from a full reading.
Philosophiens Historie i Grundrids
1873–1874. P. G. Philipsen, Copenhagen
Brøchner's history of philosophy, and the last work he completed: the textbook that applies the reading of philosophical development set out in the »Bidrag« of 1869. Two volumes — I. »Den græske Philosophies Historie i Grundrids« (1873), also titled »Den græske Philosophies Historie«, and II. »Den nyere Philosophies Historie i Grundrids« (1874), also titled »Philosophiens Historie i den nyere Tid«. KB's copy (14,-29-8°, Den Sorte Diamant) is NOT digitised — flagged »Digitalisering eller læsesal«, so it is a digitisation-on-demand candidate and belongs on the KB visit list; meanwhile a full-view Google digitisation of the Harvard copy, both volumes bound in one and 596 page scans, is on HathiTrust with rights recorded as »Public Domain«. Both volumes are now transcribed complete from that scan — a presentation copy inscribed by Brøchner to the young K. Kroman and annotated throughout in his hand, who worked the printed errata into the type in ink at every one of the seventeen sites the second volume's list gives. English translations still to come.
Giordano Bruno
1875. Det nittende Aarhundrede, vol. 2 (April–September 1875), pp. 1–22
The opening article of the April 1875 number of Georg and Edvard Brandes's monthly, and the last thing Brøchner published; he died that December. It opens with the torchlight procession of Naples students who on 9 January 1865 burnt the encyclical of 8 December 1864 at Bruno's new statue, then follows the life and expounds the central doctrines, closing with Bruno's sonnet »Poi che spiegat'ho l'ali« in Italian with M. Carrière's German version in a footnote. Set in antiqua, not Fraktur. Note written from the scan, not from a full reading.
Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard
1877. Det nittende Aarhundrede, vol. 5, March 1877, pp. 337–374; book form ed. Steen Johansen, 1953
Published posthumously in Georg and Edvard Brandes's monthly »Det nittende Aarhundrede«, vol. 5, March 1877, pp. 337–374, and dated by Brøchner himself in a line above the signature: »Nedskrevet i Tiden fra 27. Dec. 1871 til 10. Januar 1872«. The volume is digitised in full on the Internet Archive from the University of Illinois copy, so the digitisation-on-demand errand at KB (copy 60,-109 8°, »Kan ikke hjemlånes«) is no longer needed; the scan also settles that the article carries no editorial headnote from Brandes. The 1953 Steen Johansen edition is still in copyright and is not the basis of anything here. T. H. Croxall's »Glimpses and Impressions of Kierkegaard« (1959, catalogued under Secondary Literature below) reportedly translates part of this text into English; unconfirmed, and not yet collated against the Danish.
Efterladte Manuskripter a–i (Forelæsninger, 1858–1875)
1858–1875. Håndskriftsamlingen, Det Kgl. Bibliotek: Additamenta 414 kvart
Brøchner's manuscript Nachlass: nine unpublished lecture courses from the Copenhagen chair, bound as a single archival unit. Provenance Københavns Universitetsbibliotek, incorporated into KB 1938; indexed in Krarup II, 6. NOT digitised — the unit is a reading-room loan (»skal bestilles«) at Den Sorte Diamant, so digitisation here means first obtaining images (order a reproduction, or photograph on site), and only then transcription — of handwriting, not print, so the usual OCR-based batch pipeline will not apply as-is. The item titles in the sections below follow the KB record, including its misprints in item (i) (»Philsophies« for »Philosophies«, »pg« for »og«). The contents span his whole professorship, from the 1858–59 lectures on modern philosophy and Christianity to the spring 1875 course on the points of difference between philosophy and theology, given in the year of his death. The three philosophisk Propædeutik courses (items b, g, h) are the introductory genre through which Brøchner reached students — the lectures the bio above credits with turning Høffding — and a student transcript of the 1869–70 Propædeutik cycle survives separately as NKS 4788 kvart (U. F. K. Carøe), listed under Rasmus Nielsen's manuscripts in this catalog: a possible control text, in a fair hand, for whichever course is taken up first.
(a) Orienterende Oversigt over Hovedepocherne i Philosophiens Historie (Efteraarshalvaaret 1859)KB Recordto do (b) Forelæsninger over Philosophisk Propædeutik, 1860–1861 (612 S.)KB Recordto do (c1) Om Forholdet mellem det Humane og det Religiøse (Efteraarshalvaaret 1870)KB Recordto do (c2) Schematisk Udkast til Forelæsninger over ethiske og religiøse Emner (Efteraarshalvaaret 1871)KB Recordto do (d) Forelæsninger over de væsentlige Differentspunkter mellem Philosophien og Theologien (Foraarshalvaaret 1875)KB Recordto do (e) Forelæsninger over Psychologien, 1861–1862 (797 S.)KB Recordto do (f) Forelæsninger over Logik (292 S.)KB Recordto do (g–h) Forelæsninger over philosophisk Propædeutik, 1864–1865 (340 S.) og 1866–1867 (26 Læg à 8 S. + 4 S.)KB Recordto do (i) Forelæsninger over den nyere Philsophies Forhold til Christendommen, Efteraarshalvaaret 1858 pg Foraarshalvaaret 1859 (77 Læg à 8 S. + 4 S.)KB Recordto do Secondary literature
Hans Brøchners forelæsninger om Kierkegaard
Carl Henrik Koch. 2008. Fund og Forskning i Det Kongelige Biblioteks Samlinger, vol. 47, p. 223
On the 1858–59 lectures on Kierkegaard Brøchner gave at Copenhagen the year after his appointment as extraordinary lecturer in philosophy — the first university lectures on Kierkegaard, faithful and respectful but already critical, anticipating the criticism he repeated a decade later in the faith-and-knowledge exchange with Nielsen catalogued above (»Problemet om Tro og Viden« and the »Svar«). The lecture manuscripts themselves are catalogued under Efterladte Manuskripter, item (i), covering this same 1858–59 half-year. Open access. In Danish; secondary literature, so no transcription or translation is planned.
Brøchner og Kierkegaard
Carl Henrik Koch (ed.). 2016. Scientia Danica, Series H, Humanistica 8, vol. 13. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
A critical edition of two previously unknown Brøchner texts examining Kierkegaard's collected authorship, with Koch's introduction and commentary. Overlaps with this catalog's own primary-source work: the 1855 Fædrelandet memorial article transcribed above under »kierkegaards-virksomhed« is reprinted here (see that entry's note), so this volume is where to check the transcription against Koch's text and read his account of how the two 1858–59 lecture-course texts relate to it. Not established as digitised; not held.
Hans Brøchners breve til Julie Thomsen fra årene 1846–47 og 1849
Vibeke Koch & Carl Henrik Koch (eds.). 2013. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 163 pp. ISBN 978-87-6353-975-3
First publication, with introduction and commentary, of Brøchner's letters — written from Berlin, Rome and Paris during his student travels — to Julie Thomsen, his and Kierkegaard's shared cousin, reckoned by contemporaries the most gifted woman of the Kierkegaard family. Confirms the same noble, well-endowed personality that the era's memoir literature and the Brandes »Levned« excerpt catalogued above describe. Not digitised; obtain a copy or consult by ILL.
Hans Brøchner og Georg Brandes
Carl Henrik Koch. 2000. Chapter in »Strejftog i den danske filosofis historie«. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1st ed., 2000, pp. ?; reissued Lindhardt & Ringhof, 2016
A chapter specifically on Brøchner's relation to his student Georg Brandes — the natural companion, within Koch's own output, to the »koch-brochner-kierkegaard-2016« item above and to the Brandes »Levned« excerpt catalogued under Brøchner's works. Page range not yet established. Not digitised.
Chapter — not heldreference
Glimpses and Impressions of Kierkegaard
T. H. Croxall (trans. and ed.). 1959. London: James Nisbet & Co. (published posthumously)
Reportedly includes an English translation of part of Brøchner's »Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard« (catalogued above as »erindringer-kierkegaard«, translation status to-do) — if so, the earliest English rendering of any part of that text known to this catalog. The extent of the excerpt and the accuracy of the rendering have not been checked against the Danish; treat as unconfirmed until collated. Not established as digitised.
Volume — not held; collate excerpt against »erindringer-kierkegaard« before relying on itreference
Harald Høffding (1843–1931)
Nielsen's student and eventual successor as the dominant figure in Danish philosophy. His intellectual development is the key to the whole debate: in 1866 he explicitly defended Nielsen's position, then within a year — under Brøchner's influence — changed his mind completely, spending the next three decades working out what that conversion implied.
Studentnoter fra Rasmus Nielsens kursus om Grundideernes Logik
c. 1864–1866. Manuscript
Høffding's handwritten notes from Nielsen's lectures on Grundideernes Logik.
Complete manuscriptcoming soon
Philosophie og Theologie: en historisk-kritisk Afhandling
1866. Copenhagen
Filosofien og Darwinismen
1874. For Ide og Virkelighed
Psykologi i Omrids paa Grundlag af Erfaring
1882. Philipsen, Copenhagen (2nd ed. 1885)
English translation: Outlines of Psychology (1891).
Realisme i Videnskab og Tro
1882 / 1884. In Mindre Arbejder (1899)
Delivered as lecture 2 September 1882; published revised 1884.
Forholdet mellem Tro og Viden i dets historiske Udvikling
1885. In Mindre Arbejder (1899)
Frederik Christian Sibbern
1885. In Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 61–112
The longest essay in the collection by a wide margin — roughly a fifth of the whole book. Høffding on Sibbern, and so a direct bridge between two author sections of this edition: it is his own extended estimate of the philosopher whose Erkjendelse, Om Elskov and Philosophiens Begreb are already transcribed and translated here.
Sindsbevægelsernes Fysiologi
1886. In Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 51–60
On the physiology of the emotions, from the period of Psykologi i Omrids (1882) and contemporary with Carl Lange's work on the same subject, which Høffding cites elsewhere.
Alexander Hamilton og den nordamerikanske Unionsforfatning
1889. In Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 113–141
The one essay in the collection on political rather than philosophical or psychological matter — Hamilton and the framing of the United States constitution.
Nietzsche-debatten med Brandes (Høffdings tre indlæg)
1889–1890. Tilskueren, Copenhagen
Transcription-only project. Høffding's three contributions to the 1889–90 Brandes–Høffding debate on Nietzsche; Brandes's three essays are catalogued under Brandes. Translated in full by William Banks, The Great Debate: Nietzsche, Culture, and the Scandinavian Welfare Society (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2024). Danish running text at henrikpontoppidan.dk; scans in Tilskueren at Project Runeberg.
Gensvar til Dr. Georg Brandes (Tilskueren, Feb.–Mar. 1890, pp. 125–153)Danish textRunebergto do Social Pessimisme
1890. In Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 142–157
Tvivlens Historie i den nyere Tid
1891. In Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 15–39
On the history of doubt in modern thought — the theme Holberg's "one must first learn to doubt" opens this catalog with, treated historically by the philosopher who made that remark the starting point of Danske Filosoffer.
Søren Kierkegaard som Filosof
1892. P.G. Philipsens Forlag, Copenhagen (rev. ed. 1919)
Complete English translation, rendered from the revised 1919 edition (Lindhardt og Ringhof e-book). The Danish text is the publisher's copyrighted edition and is not reproduced here; links point to the public-domain 1892 original and to the publisher's e-book.
Hedenske Sandhedssøgere
1892. In Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 158–179
Kontinuiteten i Kants filosofiske Udviklingsgang
1893. Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter, 6. Række, Historisk og Filosofisk Afdeling, 4(2)
Filosofi som Kunst
1893. In Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 180–194
Philosophy as an art. Stands directly behind the argument of Filosofiske Problemer III, where metaphysics is treated as an art rather than a science — Fisher's 1905 translation heads that section "Metaphysic as an art."
Den nyere Filosofis Historie
1894–1895. Det Nordiske Forlag, Copenhagen; 2nd ed. 1903
Høffding's two-volume history of modern philosophy, from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century, in ten Books — the work he cites more often than any other of his own, and dedicated to the memory of his teacher and friend Hans Brøchner. It is the source of the volume-and-page references ("Den nyere Filosofis Historie I, p. 290") scattered through the translations here; the 1898 Kort Oversigt is a separate, one-volume abridgement and does not resolve them.
An English translation exists and is not superseded: B. E. Meyer, A History of Modern Philosophy (Macmillan, 1900), 2 vols. It is, however, made from the German edition of 1895–96 rather than from the Danish, and so stands at two removes from Høffding's text, and renders the FIRST Danish edition. The e-book used here is the SECOND Danish edition (© 1903), whose revisions are concentrated in the notes — some thirty citations dated 1900–1903 that cannot appear in Meyer. No full retranslation is contemplated; the sections below are the parts worth doing in English on their own account.
Tillæg to the Ninth Book: Boole, Jevons, Sidgwickto do
Tenth Book: Robert Mayer and the principle of the conservation of energyTranslationcomplete Kampen mellem gamle og nye Tanker. Et Tilbageblik
1895. In Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 225–250
The retrospective that closes the collection.
Det religiøse Problem
1897. In Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 216–224
The shortest essay in the collection, and an early statement of the question Religionsfilosofi (1901) takes up at length.
Om Vitalisme
1898. In Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 40–50
A lecture to the Biological Society, 27 January 1898. Høffding takes the rhythmic alternation of mechanism and vitalism through the history of biology — the Atomists and Aristotle, Stahl, Barthez and Bichat, the reform of 1840 under Dumas, Liebig and Robert Mayer — and argues that the neo-vitalism of Bunge, Haeckel and Verworn differs so far from the classical doctrine that the name should be dropped: where the old vitalism took "vital force" for a finished explanation, the new one means by it an x, an unresolved remainder. The closing pages generalise the point into the opposition between the rational and the empirical, the "kinks and knots in the thread" that recur wherever quality and individuality resist rational continuity — the argument Høffding refers back to in Filosofiske Problemer, note 6. Cited by him again in Den menneskelige Tanke.
Om Religionsfilosofiens Opgave og Fremgangsmaade
1900. Oversigt over det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Forhandlinger 1900, Nr. 5
Communicated at the meeting of 2 November 1900 (pp. 411–421). Eleven pages, written the year before Religionsfilosofi (1901), setting out what Høffding takes the philosophy of religion to be for and how it should proceed: its subject is the relation between value and reality, and its central proposition the religious axiom, the assumption of the persistence of value (Værdiens Bestaaen). Transcribed from the Academy's own digitisation of the 1900 printing; four printer's errors are transcribed as printed and logged in the edition.
Complete work (pp. 411–421) — translationTranslationcomplete Religionsfilosofi
1901. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Translation complete (§§1–110 and all 111 notes). A clean modern e-book (epub) edition exists, so this was a translation-only project — no transcription needed. The e-book sets the third edition (preface signed Carlsberg, February 1924), and our translation follows it: Høffding there shortened the epistemological section, merged the two groupings of religious-psychological types, and revised the notes, so the 1901 subsection on the main groups of personal differences is absent. B. E. Meyer's English translation, The Philosophy of Religion (1906), renders the first edition by way of the German, and so differs from this text both in substance and in what it contains.
Filosofiske Problemer
1902. Det Nordiske Forlag, Copenhagen
Høffding's own statement of what philosophy's problems are and how they hang together: the psychological, the epistemological, the cosmological and the ethical-religious, shown to be one problem — the relation of continuity to discontinuity — in four applications. An authorized English translation appeared as The Problems of Philosophy (Macmillan, 1905), translated by Galen M. Fisher with a preface by William James; it compresses the Danish considerably, and the translation here is independent. A clean modern e-book edition exists (SAGA Egmont / Lindhardt & Ringhof), so this is a translation-only project — no transcription.
Vort Hjem
1903. Introduction to Emma Gad, Vort Hjem
Om Begrebet Analogi og dets filosofiske Betydning
1905. In Mindre Arbejder II
Published simultaneously in English in Mind (1905), as "On Analogy and its Philosophical Importance" — a paper read to the Jowett Society in Oxford, 26 November 1904. Høffding's own English, and so the terminology anchor for the 1923 »Begrebet Analogi«, which expands this essay.
Danske Filosoffer
1909. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Portraits of the Danish philosophers — Holberg, Steffens, Ørsted, Grundtvig, Sibbern, Poul Martin Møller, Rasmus Nielsen, Brøchner, Kierkegaard, and others. A clean modern e-book edition exists (SAGA Egmont / Lindhardt & Ringhof), so this is a translation-only project — no transcription needed.
Udvalgte Stykker af dansk filosofisk Litteratur
1910. Gyldendal, Copenhagen (Mindesmærker af Danmarks Nationallitteratur, III)
Høffding's anthology of Danish philosophy, with his own introductions — the companion volume to »Danske Filosoffer« (1909) and the vehicle by which nineteenth-century Danish philosophy was transmitted to the next generation. Section IV, »Den psykologiske Skole (Treschow, Sibbern, Howitz)«, is of particular interest for the line running toward Bohr. Work here is selective: the aim is the *transmission document* — Høffding's editorial framing and the shape of his selection — rather than a re-transcription of excerpts whose originals are already in this catalog. Two findings worth recording. (1) Høffding heads the excerpt from the 1810 essay with a title of his own, »Det Individuelles Uudtømmelighed«, and prints only pp. 225–230 and 235–241 of the original, **cutting pp. 231–234 and 242–254 silently** — so what reached his readers was the epistemology of the limits of general concepts, not the identity-system, and not the thesis (p. 247) that the concept of singular things has objective validity. (2) The second excerpt, »Udviklingslære«, carries no source in the anthology; it is verified here as coming from »Elementer til Historiens Philosophie« (1811).
§ 2 on Sibbern, § 3 on Howitz, and the general Indledningto do
Den menneskelige Tanke, dens Former og dens Opgaver
1910. Copenhagen
Transcription complete (392 pp.). Full English translation complete (Foreword through §162).
Religion og Videnskab
1910. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Religionshistoriske Smaaskrifter, no. 1. 59 pp. A follow-up to Religionsfilosofi (1901). Transcription and translation complete (printed pp. 1–59).
Personlighedsprincippet i Filosofien
1911. Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2013 (Danish trans.)
Six lectures, Helsingfors spring 1911. First published in Swedish; Danish trans. Mogens Blegvad.
Editorial apparatus (Blegvad introduction; Koch commentary & afterword)Source PDFto do Totalitet som Kategori: en erkendelsesteoretisk Undersøgelse
1917. Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter, 7. Række, hist. og filos. Afd. III, 2. Copenhagen: Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri
Translation only; no Danish transcription is published. Cited by Høffding in Erkendelsesteori og Livsopfattelse (1925), which glosses the title 'Totality as a Category'.
Oplevelse og Tydning
1919. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Essay collection, predominantly philosophy of religion — how strong experiences have been interpreted as religious across periods (totemism, witch trials, spiritualism, prophetism, medieval mysticism, the ecstasy of St. Teresa), followed by sociological and religious-philosophical explanations. A clean modern e-book edition exists (SAGA Egmont / Lindhardt & Ringhof, ISBN 9788726363029).
Relation som Kategori: en erkendelsesteoretisk Undersøgelse
1921. Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen
Published in Filosofiske Meddelelser I, 3. Høffding's late epistemological treatise on relation as a category, the companion to Totalitet som Kategori (1917) and, like it, an extended working-out of a point in Den menneskelige Tanke (1910). §3d.δ (pp. 72–76) takes up the new relativity theory directly — Neumann, Mach, Einstein, Langevin, Whitehead's "the percipient event" — and argues that Einstein's result, if it stands, is a further instance of the Copernican lesson that the observer's own standpoint must enter the account, and no threat to the unity of truth. Transcribed from the Royal Danish Academy's own digitisation of the 1921 printing. English translation COMPLETE (2026-08-23), made from that transcription: full pp. 3–109 including the printed Indhold, 98-page LaTeX PDF, sandbox-verified 0 errors and 0 missing characters. The earlier partial translation of §3d.δ, which predated the scan and diverged from the printing in eleven places, was redone from the transcription rather than extended.
Complete work (pp. 3–109) — translationTranslationcomplete Relation som Kategori (1921), Høffding's annotated copy
1921. Manuscript marginalia
Pascal et Kierkegaard
1923. Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 30(2): 221–246
Written in French, for the Pascal tercentenary number. Four parts: temperament and character; intellectual predispositions; the Christian problem; the courses open.
Begrebet Analogi
1923. Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Filosofiske Meddelelser I, 4, Copenhagen
The third of the late category studies, after »Totalitet som Kategori« (1917) and »Relation som Kategori« (1920), and the largest of them. Analogy is defined as likeness of relation — a likeness holding not of properties or parts but of the relations among them — and traced from the involuntary analogies of primitive thought and of childhood, through formal logic, to the analogies between the functions and the domains of cognition, closing on poetic and religious symbolism. It expands the 1905 essay that Høffding published in English himself, in Mind, so his own English is available as the terminology anchor.
Erkendelsesteori og Livsopfattelse
1925. Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Copenhagen
Erindringer
1928. Gyldendalske Boghandel, Copenhagen
Autobiography, published in his 85th year. Chapter II — the student years — is where the philosophical material is concentrated: Kierkegaard is named 40 times in it, Rasmus Nielsen 19, Brøchner 17, against 5 / 4 / 1 in the next-densest chapter. A targeted selection from that chapter is transcribed and translated here: 43 of its 115 paragraphs, on Høffding's education, his teachers, and the ideas he took from them. The rest of the chapter (the 1864 war, the courtship, the Poul Kierkegaard story, the Jutland walking tour) is not transcribed. Source is the 2021 Lindhardt og Ringhof e-book of the 1928 text, which carries no pagination, so the excerpt file cites no printed pages; see its comment header.
II. 1861–1874: remainder of the chapter (pp. 38–93)Runebergto do IV. 1883–1894 (pp. 121–174)Runebergto do VI. 1904–1914 (pp. 224–265)Runebergto do Correspondance entre Harald Høffding et Émile Meyerson
1939. E. Munksgaard, Copenhagen
Published correspondence, in French; xiii + 202 pp. Edited by Frithiof Brandt, Hans Høffding, and J. Adigard des Gautries.
Brevveksling med Niels Bohr
Manuscript correspondence
Complete correspondencecoming soon
Kristian Kroman (1846–1925)
Professor of philosophy at Copenhagen 1884–1922, in the chair he took over from Sophus Heegaard, and one of the three professors who between them ran the filosofikum for a generation — Høffding and Claudius Wilkens were the other two. He came to philosophy sideways: a schoolteacher's training at Jonstrup in 1865, then artium read on his own in 1869, and a turn to philosophy that Dansk Biografisk Leksikon credits to Kierkegaard's writings and to personal acquaintance with Hans Brøchner. His specialism was what we would call philosophy of science. »Vor Naturerkjendelse« (1883), which took the Academy's gold medal and was translated into German the same year, divides the sciences into formal and real, and grounds the certainty of the formal ones in a claim about what we can picture: »Al Tankenødvendighed beror til syvende og sidst paa Anskuelsesnødvendighed«. That premise is what put him at odds with the mathematics of his century — DBL names it as the reason for his polemical stance toward both the non-Euclidean geometries and Einstein's relativity theory. He is in this collection for the second of those quarrels. His 1915 attack on special relativity in Fysisk Tidsskrift set off the only sustained critical discussion the theory received in Denmark, and Høffding answered him by name in »Relation som Kategori« (1921), which we carry in both Danish and English. He also taught Bohr filosofikum. Kroman is otherwise best remembered outside philosophy altogether, as a school reformer and as the author of the gymnastics handbook that put a modified Swedish system into Danish schools.
Den exakte Videnskabs Indlæg i Problemet om Sjælens Existens: en kritisk Undersøgelse
1877. J. H. Schubothes Boghandel, Copenhagen
The doctoral dissertation. It argues that the question of a soul substance cannot be settled scientifically, positively or negatively — though Kroman held privately, and lifelong, that the hypothesis was the more probable one. Digitised by KB in 2015 from their copy 14,-157 8°, rights recorded as »Unrestricted online access«. Note provisional: written from the KB record and Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, not from a reading of the text.
Kortfattet Tænke- og Sjælelære
1882 (2nd, much enlarged ed. 1888; 5th 1914). Andr. Fred. Høst & Søn, Copenhagen
The filosofikum textbook. The enlarged second edition of 1888 — translated into German in 1890 — was the basis of Kroman's university teaching, which makes it, in one edition or another, the book through which Niels Bohr sat the philosophy examination. A companion volume, »Grundtræk af Sjælelæren med et Omrids af Tænkelæren« (1889), was the version used in the teacher-training colleges. KB digitised the 1882 first edition in 2018 from copy 14,-113 8°; the later and more important editions are not digitised. Note provisional: written from the KB records and Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, not from a reading of the text.
1888 second edition and later — not digitisedto do
Vor Naturerkjendelse: Bidrag til en Mathematikens og Fysikens Theori
1883 (prize awarded 1882). Andr. Fred. Høst & Søns Forlag, Copenhagen; awarded the Royal Danish Academy's gold medal
Kroman's philosophical main work, and the one that made his name abroad. It separates formal sciences, which are a priori and concern objects we ourselves create by definition, from real sciences, which are empirical and never get beyond approximation and probability; the certainty of the formal ones rests on necessity of intuition, and it is on that ground that the book rejects the non-Euclidean geometries as contentless. The same premise drives the attack on relativity thirty-two years later. The Danish printing is NOT digitised anywhere and is a DOD candidate; the German translation by R. v. Fischer-Benzon, »Unsere Naturerkenntnis« (1883, 458 pp.), is free on the Internet Archive and is linked below as the working substitute. Note provisional: written from the KB record and Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, not from a reading of the text.
German translation, »Unsere Naturerkenntnis« (1883, 458 pp.)Internet Archiveto do »Relativitetsprincipet« (Hansen's lecture)
1912. Fysisk Tidsskrift 10 (1911–12), pp. 251–281; lecture to a joint meeting of Fysisk Forening and Mathematisk Forening, 11 April 1912
The first real introduction of special relativity to a Danish audience, and the lecture that provoked Kroman three years later. Hans Marius Hansen (1886–1956) was Bohr's collaborator. Catalogued here because it belongs to Kroman's controversy. This is the one item of the five not free online — Google's run of the journal skips vols 10–12 — but the offprint has a real call number, 8° Fys. 11882 at Danmarks Natur- og Lægevidenskabelige Bibliotek, and can simply be ordered. NOT YET PUBLIC DOMAIN: Hansen died 13 June 1956, so the Danish term runs to the end of 2026 and the text is free on 1 January 2027. Transcribe now if convenient; do not publish before that date.
»Relativitetsprincipet«
1915. Fysisk Tidsskrift 14 (1915–16), pp. 1–30
Kroman's attack on special relativity, and the opening of the only sustained critical discussion the theory received in Denmark. If two observers each correctly measure the other's rod as the shorter, then there are two truths, and »Sandheden er ikke dobbelt«; the theory contradicts the principle of non-contradiction and must therefore be rejected. Høffding answers the argument by name in »Relation som Kategori« (1921), §3d.δ. The article is in full view on Google Books in a bound volume of Fysisk Tidsskrift; the KB record is for the offprint only, filed in the Særtrykssamlingen. See the note for the full shape of the debate and the sourcing.
»Tidsproblemet«
1916. Fysisk Tidsskrift 15 (1916–17), pp. 1–13
Helge Holst on the problem of time, answering Kroman's attack. Holst (1871–1944) was a physicist and popular-science writer, better known as H. A. Kramers's co-author on »Bohrs Atomteori« (1922), so this article sits on the Bohr line as well as in Kroman's controversy; catalogued here for the latter reason. In the same bound Google Books volume as both Kroman articles, at printed pp. 1–13 = PDF 603–615. Public domain since the end of 2014. Danish transcription COMPLETE (2026-09-04), all 13 pages, image-verified, with the Fizeau diagram on p. 8 redrawn in TikZ as a reconstruction. English translation COMPLETE (2026-09-05).
»Omkring Videnskabens Grænse«
1916. Fysisk Tidsskrift 15 (1916–17), pp. 13–17
A mediating contribution, sitting between Holst's »Tidsproblemet« and Hansen's reply, and belonging to the debate rather than merely adjacent to it: Walsøe describes his own piece as »denne Antydning fra Trediemand af en Mulighed for […] at udløse Spændingen og bilægge Striden mellem de to Parter«. Found in the scan on 2026-09-04 and in no bibliography consulted; it shares p. 13 with the end of Holst's article, which is why the running heads make it look like pp. 14–17. The author is Carl Emil Walsøe (1870–1951), cand. polyt. 1896 and district engineer at Post- og Telegrafvæsenet — identified from Kraks Blå Bog 1949 and, for the death year, from his son's 1957 entry. He also wrote »Den ny Naturvidenskab og vor gamle Kristentro« (1938), which is what makes the identification more than a matter of initials. Public domain since 1 January 2022. Danish transcription COMPLETE (2026-09-04), all 5 pages, image-verified; English translation COMPLETE (2026-09-05).
»Relativitetsprincipet« (Hansen's reply)
1916. Fysisk Tidsskrift 15 (1916–17), pp. 18–29
Hansen's answer to Kroman, and the third of the three treatises Kroman replies to in 1917 — »Med Forfatteren af den tredie Afhandling, Hr. Dr. H. M. Hansen, er jeg derimod erkendelsesteoretisk set meget uenig«. Identified from the scan on 2026-09-04; the range previously guessed here, pp. 14–22, was wrong. It opens at printed p. 18 with the title block »Relativitetsprincipet. / Af / H. M. Hansen.« and runs to p. 29. Same rights position as the 1912 lecture: free on 1 January 2027, not before.
»Relativitetsprincipet«
1917. Fysisk Tidsskrift 15 (1916–17), pp. 165–168
Holst's second contribution, later in the same volume than his »Tidsproblemet« and shorter. Found in the scan on 2026-09-04 and in no bibliography consulted. It runs pp. 165–168, not the 166–168 the running heads suggest: like Walsøe's article and Kroman's 1917 reply, it begins partway down the page on which the previous article ends. Public domain since the end of 2014. Danish transcription COMPLETE (2026-09-04), all 4 pages, image-verified; English translation COMPLETE (2026-09-05).
»Et Par yderligere Bemærkninger om »Relativitetsprincipet««
1917. Fysisk Tidsskrift 15 (1916–17), pp. 192–205
Kroman's reply to H. M. Hansen and H. Holst, and the close of the debate; Koch's judgement is that it adds nothing new. In the same bound Google Books volume as the 1915 article. The KB record is for the offprint, which has no title page — »U. titelbl.« — and no call number beyond »Særtrykssamlingen 8°«, which is why it has twice defeated attempts to have it fetched.
Matematikken og Erkendelseslæren: til Belysning af den »ikke-euklidiske« Geometris Oprindelse
1920. Copenhagen, 45 pp.; English version in Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Meddelelser, same year
The late statement of the other half of Kroman's quarrel with modern mathematics — the rejection of non-Euclidean geometry first made in »Vor Naturerkjendelse« (1883), returned to five years after the relativity articles and grounded in the same claim about necessity of intuition. Worth having beside the relativity pieces, since it is the same argument applied to the geometry rather than to the physics. Not digitised; KB copy 8° Math. 17615. An English version appeared in the Academy's Meddelelser in 1920 and has not been located. Note provisional: written from the KB record and Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, not from a reading of the text.
Kristian Kroman
1976. Danish Yearbook of Philosophy XIII (1976), pp. 147–166
The standard scholarly treatment, cited in the Dansk Biografisk Leksikon bibliography. Koch also wrote the popular account of the Einstein reception that first put us onto this material, »Videnskabet: Einstein og dansk humaniora« in Uniavisen, which is free online and is linked below. Not yet consulted in the 1976 form.
Niels Bohr (1885–1962)
Niels Henrik David Bohr — physicist, and the figure toward whom this whole collection points. His 1913 quantum model of the atom and the principle of complementarity (Como, 1927) reshaped physics; the 1922 Nobel Prize recognized the former. But Bohr was also a philosopher of knowledge in the Danish tradition gathered here: raised in the circle around Harald Høffding — his father's friend and his own philosophical mentor — and a lifelong reader of Poul Martin Møller's »En dansk Students Eventyr«, whose licentiate, dizzy with the self that thinks about itself, Bohr loved to quote. From quantum theory he drew what he called an "epistemological lesson": that the conditions of observation enter irreducibly into what is observed, so that subject and object cannot be cleanly separated — the theme this catalog traces back through Høffding, Sibbern, Treschow and beyond. The collection's capstone is an edition of his philosophical writings in eight volumes — the four Danish »Filosofiske Skrifter« and the four English »Philosophical Writings« — listed separately below, since for the supplementary volume the Danish and English are independent selections rather than translations of one another. Its distinguishing feature is dual marginal pagination: each essay carries the page numbers of its original printing in a journal, congress volume or Festschrift alongside those of the collected volume scholars usually cite, so a passage can be located either way. Every piece links to its first printing, by DOI where one exists.
Filosofiske Skrifter I: Atomteori og naturbeskrivelse
1929 / 2013. Forlaget Philosophia, København 2013
Bohrs første samling, udgivet i Københavns Universitets festskrift 1929 og genudgivet af Schultz 1958. Her efter Philosophia 2013. Fire afhandlinger 1925–1929 med indledende oversigt og tillæg fra 1931.
The Philosophical Writings I: Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature
1934 / 1987. Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge Conn. 1987 (= Cambridge University Press 1934)
Bohr's first collection: the four papers of 1925–1929 in which complementarity is first stated in print, with the introductory survey and its 1931 addendum. Ox Bow 1987, reproducing Cambridge 1934 page for page.
Filosofiske Skrifter II: Atomfysik og menneskelig erkendelse
1957 / 2013. Forlaget Philosophia, København 2013
Femogtyve års lejlighedsskrifter, fra »Lys og Liv« (1932) til de to skrevet til samlingen selv. Indeholder »Diskussion med Einstein«. Her efter Philosophia 2013.
The Philosophical Writings II: Essays 1932–1957 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge
1958 / 1987. Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge Conn. 1987 (= John Wiley & Sons 1958)
Twenty-five years of occasional papers, including the Discussion with Einstein. Ox Bow 1987, reproducing Wiley 1958 page for page.
Filosofiske Skrifter III: Atomfysik og menneskelig erkendelse II
1963 / 2013. Forlaget Philosophia, København 2013
De sidste fem år, samlet af Bohr og udgivet af sønnen Aage kort efter faderens død — herunder det ufuldendte »Lys og liv påny«. Her efter Philosophia 2013.
The Philosophical Writings III: Essays 1958–1962 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge
1963 / 1987. Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge Conn. 1987 (= Interscience Publishers 1963)
The essays of Bohr's last five years, assembled by his son Aage. Ox Bow 1987, reproducing Interscience 1963 page for page.
Filosofiske Skrifter IV: Supplementsbind
2013. Forlaget Philosophia, København 2013
Supplementsbind, red. Steen Brock: sytten artikler Bohr ikke selv samlede, flere ikke før udgivet på dansk, med Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen som appendix. Bemærk at dette bind IKKE svarer til Ox Bows bind IV.
The Philosophical Writings IV: Causality and Complementarity
1998. Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge Conn. 1998, ed. Jan Faye & Henry J. Folse
Supplementary papers, ed. Faye & Folse 1998. An independent selection: it shares only nine papers with Philosophia's Danish Bind IV and is not a translation of it.
Secondary literature
Det udelelige: Niels Bohrs aktualitet i fysik, mystik og politik
Tor Nørretranders. 1985; 3rd ed. 2022. Gyldendal, Copenhagen; 3. udgave 2022, 480 pp., ill.
The best popular treatment of Bohr in Danish, and listed here because it does not stop at the physics: the philosophical side of Bohr's thinking is a full third of the book rather than a closing gesture. Nørretranders, a science journalist, follows three tracks named in the subtitle — Fysik, Mystik, Politik — the second on the epistemological and conceptual difficulties of building a holistic world-picture on quantum mechanics, classical physics' divisible world against the new indivisible one, and the third on Bohr and the atomic-weapons question. Note that the library classification calls it »biografier« and it is not one: it is a book about Bohr's continuing relevance. Carries a very large note apparatus and an extensive bibliography with suggestions for further reading, which is the main reason it earns a place here rather than on a popular-science shelf. WHICH EDITION MATTERS: first published by Gyldendal in 1985, 2. udgave 1988 (further printings 1990 and 1994), and a 3. udgave in 2022 described by the libraries as »revideret og kraftigt udvidet« against all the earlier ones — 480 pp., restructured into five parts, with a fourth part »De udelelige« and an »Efterord 2022: Næste generation« that the 1985 book cannot contain. Page references must therefore name the edition. Sequel: »I syv sind: kvantecomputeren får os til at opdage os selv«, filed by the libraries as Del 2 of the same series. Widely reviewed on first publication — including by David Favrholdt in Kristeligt Dagblad, 23 October 1985, which is worth reading against the two Favrholdt studies below — and again in 2022. Not held; no copy located locally, and the pagination of the 1985 edition is not established. In copyright and in print, so reference only: no transcription or translation is planned or possible.
Complete book — not held; 1985 pagination to establishbibliotek.dkreference Niels Bohr's Philosophical Background
David Favrholdt. 1992. Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser 63, Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Copenhagen
Favrholdt's earlier, book-length study reconstructing the philosophical sources of Bohr's thought — the long argument later distilled in the 2009 »Filosoffen Niels Bohr«. Written in English and freely available from the Royal Danish Academy, so this is a reference rather than a translation project.
Filosoffen Niels Bohr
David Favrholdt. 2009. Informations Forlag, Copenhagen
Favrholdt's synthesis of his lifelong study of Bohr as thinker, arguing that Bohr was a genuine philosopher whose insight into quantum mechanics yielded a modern understanding of the limits of thought imposed by our language and concepts. David Favrholdt (1931–2012), Dr.phil. and professor at the University of Southern Denmark, heard Bohr lecture as a student and became the leading Danish interpreter of complementarity. A clean modern e-book (epub) edition exists, so this is a translation-only project — no transcription needed.
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