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.
A note on the absence of women. Until 1875 women could not matriculate at the University of Copenhagen, and so could neither hold a chair nor take a degree in philosophy. They entered the conversation nonetheless, in the forms open to them: the novel, the letter, the pamphlet, and, once the university admitted them, the prize essay. Thomasine Gyllembourg's »To Tidsaldre« (1845) is the book through which Kierkegaard works out his diagnosis of the present age in »En literair Anmeldelse« (1846). Mathilde Fibiger's »Clara Raphael« (1851), published with Heiberg's preface, set off a public quarrel over the spiritual equality of the sexes in which Grundtvig and Goldschmidt took sides and women wrote in her defense. Magdalene Thoresen argued the faith-and-knowledge controversy against the young Georg Brandes in their correspondence of 1867. Kirstine Frederiksen studied under Høffding and in 1891 won the university's gold medal for a treatise on education drawn from the new psychology and ethics. Hans Brøchner's letters to his cousin Julie Thomsen, listed under Brøchner, preserve one side of his correspondence with the woman his contemporaries reckoned the most gifted of the Kierkegaard family. Each of these women is entered below in her chronological place.
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, written »i Anledning af den kantiske Philosophie«: a defense of theoretical grounds for God's existence against Kant's verdict that the speculative proofs fail. It is his first published engagement with the critical philosophy and the starting point of the path to the monist »Identitets-system« of the 1831–33 »Testament«.
Forelæsninger over den Kantiske Philosophie
1798. Kjøbenhavn: Gyldendals Forlag
The later of Treschow's two early critiques of Kant, on a much larger scale (361 printed pp.): a course of lectures expounding and assessing the critical philosophy as a whole. A German version, »Vorlesungen über die Kantische Philosophie. Erster Theil« (421 pp.), appeared the same year. With the 1794 »Forsøg« it records what Treschow took from Kant and what he refused, and so is the baseline against which the monism of the 1805 »Philosophiske Forsøg« should be read.
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 for the »lærde Skoler«, written in the year Treschow took the Copenhagen chair. It is the direct predecessor of the 1812 »Om den menneskelige Natur«, and shows the doctrine of a twofold — bodily and mental — access to the human being nine years earlier, pitched at schoolboys. A German version, »Kurzer Entwurf zu einer Lehre von der Kenntniss des Menschen, oder Anthropologie« (323 pp.), appeared the same year.
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. It anticipates the 1811 »Om Philosophiens Natur og Dele«, which does the same work at greater length.
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 general concepts are »kun Hielpemidler til Oversyn, ei til nöiagtig Kundskab om Tingene i sig selv« (p. 240). The core statement of Treschow's primacy of the individual, and the theme most resonant with Bohr's language of the "individuality" of the quantum phenomenon. Signed 1807 and printed in 1810, it was reprinted by Høffding (1910, in excerpt) and Winsnes (1966), and twice on its own under its subtitle, »Menneskeværd og Menneskevel« (1963, 1991).
Moral for Folk og Stat
1810. Kjøbenhavn: Fr. Brummers Forlag, hos J. F. Schultz
Treschow's moral philosophy (481 printed pp.), published the same year as the »enslige Ting« essay. The pairing of »Folk« and »Stat« in the title makes it the first place to look for how far the primacy of the individual extends from metaphysics into ethics and politics, the question »Lovgivnings-Principier« then takes up at length. The standard bibliographies give it as two parts, 1810–11.
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 nations, which pass through childhood, youth, maturity and age. It is the continuity strand of the tradition — a counterpoint to the quantum discontinuity that Bohr's epistemology had to accommodate. The full title is »Elementer til Historiens Philosophie i Forelæsninger holdne Vinteren 1806-1807«.
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 companion to the 1813 »Almindelig Logik«: the 1811 book says what the parts of the science are, and the 1813 textbook works out one of them.
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: the mental and the bodily are the same thing considered as an object of the inner and of the outer sense. »Sandselighedens første Lov« (p. 79) binds every bodily motion to a mental sensation answering to it in quality and magnitude, yet »Forholdet mellem begge er altsaa ikke caussalt« — a strict parallelism that anticipates the identity system of »Om Gud«. On p. 168 individuality is itself »Tingenes uforanderlige Grundform«, which ties the book to the 1810 »enslige Ting« essay.
Almindelig Logik
1813. Kjøbenhavn: Fr. Brummers Forlag
Treschow's textbook of logic and theory of knowledge, the counterpart to the 1812 psychology; §§ 26–35 supply the machinery that the 1810 »enslige Ting« essay presupposes but never states. § 30 (p. 97) gives a criterion of naturalness for classifications — the marks of proper kinds are »væsentlige og bestandige«, those of improper kinds »blot tilfældige og ubestandige« — and § 35 makes naturalness graded rather than binary. § 31 denies that the highest being is a whole of which individuals are parts.
Remainder of the work (§§ 1–25, 36–97+)to do
Lovgivnings-Principier
1820–1823. Christiania (Chr. Grøndahl), 3 vols.
The political philosophy of the Christiania years, in three volumes (1820, 1821, 1823), and the largest thing Treschow published apart from the »Testament«. With »Moral for Folk og Stat« it is where the primacy of the individual meets the state, and so where it can be tested against Brekke's relational, sociability-based reading of Treschow.
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. A textbook has to say plainly what the big books can leave implicit.
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 its theological antechamber. 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 one place where the identity system had to be defended as orthodoxy.
»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«, in which God is not the sum of things but a real individual that makes all things one. The transcribed spans of vol. I answer »Almindelig Logik« § 31: the unity of the ideal world is a relational unity of »Vexelvirkning« among Ideas (p. 220), and individuals compose the world of sense, not God (p. 221). Page 207 gives the sharpest statement of the primacy of the individual anywhere in the corpus, and p. 206 breaks 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 »enslige Ting« essay, retitled by its subtitle — which is why it does not surface under the original title in library catalogs. It is the first modern printing of the essay in full, three years before the Winsnes selection. Digitized at nb.no, readable from 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, in which the 1810 »enslige Ting« essay is reprinted complete. It opens the series »Norsk filosofi i det 19. århundre«, presenting Treschow as the first figure of a Norwegian nineteenth-century philosophy rather than a Danish one. Digitized at nb.no, readable from 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 1810 »enslige Ting« essay, again under its subtitle, with an introduction and notes by Jørgen Juul Nielsen. It is the only one of the three modern editions with a full modern commentary, and the only one published in Denmark. Not digitized.
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 address by the literary historian A. H. Winsnes on the Society's anniversary day, 26 February 1956: a concise Norwegian overview of Treschow's »philosophia perennis«, his debt to Leibniz and Spinoza, and the primacy of the individual in the »enslige Ting« essay. It closes with a useful bibliography of the older scholarship, including Høffding's »Danske Filosofer« (1909) and »Udvalgte Stykker« (1910).
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. Stybe reads him as a Neoplatonist — Treschow's own label — which bears directly on »Om Gud«: the eternal Ideas, their outflowing (»Udflydelse«) from the absolutely One, and the principle that the highest and the lowest things are essentially alike. Treschow's Neoplatonism is heterodox on the decisive point, since his Ideas are themselves individual (»Om Gud« I, p. 206).
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«, straddling Enlightenment and Romanticism and the Danish and Norwegian phases of his career. Digitized at nb.no, readable from Norwegian IP addresses only.
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 — a different framing from Høffding's Danish one. Digitized at nb.no, readable from Norwegian IP addresses only.
»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: Koch treats Treschow as a Danish university philosopher, the holder of the Copenhagen chair between Riisbrigh and Sibbern, rather than as the first figure of a Norwegian philosophy. The chapter covers 1803–13 but is filed in the Enlightenment volume (bd. 3, 1700–1800), because Koch carries the history of the chair past 1800; the same volume has the chapter on Holberg.
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 argues that although Treschow would exclude women from the university, he grounds both individual and social Dannelse in sociability, the family, and feminine models of sympathy and care, against academia as a homosocial and over-rationalized sphere. Sociability takes the individual relationally rather than atomistically, so the article tests how far the primacy of the individual extends into the moral and political writings.
«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. Torjussen argues that for Treschow the task of philosophy is to supply not knowledge but wisdom, through spiritual exercises aimed at peace of mind, and reads him through Pierre Hadot's »view from above«; politics then rests on a doctrine of virtue in which prudence is made science's handmaid. Open access at the DOI.
Complete article (pp. 4–14)DOIreference 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
Bøggild's Danish version of Nielsen's 1840 Latin dissertation »De speculativa historiae sacrae tractandae methodo« (162 pp.): the earliest statement of the speculative program he would spend the 1850s and 1860s dismantling from within, and so the measure of how far he moved. Its two parts treat the relation of philosophy to history in general (§§ 1–10) and sacred history itself (§§ 11–23), running from Catholicism through Luther to rationalism and Strauß's panlogism. Bøggild's preface (1842), which sets the book against Martensen's »Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie«, survives in the scan only as a fragment.
Den speculative Logik i dens Grundtræk
1841–1844. Privately printed, Copenhagen
Nielsen's outline of speculative logic from his Hegelian period, issued in four parts (Hefter) between 1841 and 1844. The KB digitization binds Hefter 1–3 in one volume (192 pp.); Hefte 4 is not in it.
Forelæsningsparagrafer til Kirkehistoriens Philosophie
1843. Privately printed, Copenhagen
Printed paragraphs for Nielsen's lectures on the philosophy of church history, a course he gave in 1842–43 and again in 1863 (student notes of both survive in manuscript; see the list below). No printed copy has yet been located.
Den propædeutiske Logik
1845. P.G. Philipsen, Copenhagen
Nielsen's pre-Kierkegaardian logic textbook (283 pp.), superseded by the »Philosophisk Propædeutik« of 1857, and so the baseline against which to measure what the encounter with Kierkegaard changed. Two parts, on the subjective concept (§§ 1–11: concept, judgment, inference) and the objective concept (§§ 12–21, ending in »Idee og Gud«), with heavy quotation of Kant, Fichte, Hegel and Heiberg.
Evangelietroen og den moderne Bevidsthed: Forelæsninger over Jesu Liv
1849. C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen
Lectures on the life of Jesus in which Nielsen first works out publicly how evangelical faith is to stand toward modern historical-critical consciousness. Published 19 May 1849, five months before the »Johannes Climacus« review; the title page marks it »Første Deel«, but no further part appeared.
Mag. S. Kierkegaards "Johannes Climacus" og Dr. H. Martensens "Christelige Dogmatik"
1849. C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen
Nielsen's public response to Kierkegaard's »Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift«, published 15 October 1849: he reads Climacus against Martensen's »Christelige Dogmatik« to argue that the dogmatics fails »i dens Princip som i dens Problem«. The review-essay turns at p. 42 from its first question, „Har ikke »Johannes Climacus« dialektisk skjærpet det christelige Problem?", to its second, „Har ikke »den christelige Dogmatik« udialektisk omgaaet det christelige Problem?". It opened the Danish faith-and-knowledge controversy, and broke Kierkegaard's confidence in Nielsen.
Evangelietroen og Theologien: Tolv Forelæsninger, holdte ved Universitetet i Kjøbenhavn i Vinteren 1849–50
1850. C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen
Twelve lectures delivered in the winter after the »Johannes Climacus« review, and the most compact statement of the position that made Nielsen the central figure of the mid-century debate. Faith and knowledge rest on absolutely heterogeneous principles, so theology may not be made a science on the model of the other sciences — and yet nothing in scientific knowing need be surrendered.
Et Par Ord i Anledning af Prof. Scharlings Apologie for Dr. Martensens Dogmatik
1850. C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen
Nielsen's reply (24 pp.) to C. E. Scharling's defense of Martensen, one of two 1850 pamphlets (with »Dr. H. Martensens dogmatiske Oplysninger belyste«) continuing the controversy opened by the »Johannes Climacus« review.
Dr. H. Martensens dogmatiske Oplysninger belyste
1850. C. A. Reitzel, Copenhagen
Nielsen's answer (75 pp.) to Martensen's »Dogmatiske Oplysninger« (1850), the second of his two 1850 pamphlets (with »Et Par Ord« above) in the controversy opened by the »Johannes Climacus« review.
Om Skjæbne og Forsyn
1853. Otto Schwartz, Copenhagen
On fate and providence: Fate as the impersonal power that crushes personality, Providence as the personal God revealed in Christ, in three parts (On Fate; On Providence; On Fate and Providence). Text of the 1853 first edition; reissued unchanged in 1867 as »Om Tilværelsens ideale Magter: Skjæbne og Forsyn«.
Om personlig Sandhed og sand Personlighed
1854. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Twelve popular lectures »for dannede Tilhørere af begge Kjøn«, given at the university in the winter of 1854 for a mixed lay audience, unlike the more technical lectures for students. A close relation of »Evangelietroen og Theologien« (1850).
Om Theologiens Naturbegreb, med særligt Hensyn til Malebranche
1855. Det Schultziske Officin (Universitetsprogram)
Reformation-festival Indbydelsesskrift, 1855: an essay on theology's concept of nature with special reference to Malebranche (pp. 3–37), followed by the doctoral vitae and festival invitation (pp. 38–47), which are left untranslated.
Philosophie og Mathematik
1857. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
A propaedeutic treatise on philosophy and mathematics (~84 pp.), heavy with mathematics and figures; the translation carries over all 19 figures.
Lecture courses, 1857–72
1857–1872. Gyldendal; from 1871 J. H. Schubothe, Copenhagen; and manuscripts in Det Kgl. Bibliotek
Nielsen's university courses in philosophical propaedeutic, logic and psychology, from the »Philosophisk Propædeutik i Grundtræk« of 1857 through the printed lectures of 1860–62 to the annual »Cursus« of 1866–72, revised from year to year with changed pages reprinted as »omtrykte Blade«. The 1860–61 lectures run from the concept of philosophy through mathematics, chemistry and physiology to the academic studies; »Logik og Psychologie« (1867–68) works from logic down through plant, animal and human life to the relation of soul and body. Two manuscripts of his psychology lectures survive in the Royal Library. Much of »Propædeutik og Psychologie« (1866–67) appears to be reprinted from earlier books: its opening pages are new, but at least pp. 81–150 are those of the »Philosophisk Propædeutik i Grundtræk« (1857), and its later pages, page for page by p. 264, are those of the »Forelæsninger« of 1860–61.
Forelæsninger over »Philosophisk Propædeutik« fra Universitetsaaret 1861–62 (1863), 164 pp.KB recordto do Propædeutik og Psychologie: Cursus fra Universitetsaaret 1866–67KB recordto do Logik og Propædeutik: Cursus for Universitetsaaret 1867–68 (reprinted leaves)KB recordto do Logik og Psychologie: Cursus for Universitetsaaret 1869–70KB recordto do Undated »Forelæsninger over Psychologi« (Additamenta 809 kvart)KB Recordto do 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.
Mathematik og Dialektik
1859. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
»En philosophisk Afhandling« (VII + 148 pp.), the sequel to »Philosophie og Mathematik« (1857): the concepts of function, the infinite, limit, differential and integral, and Zeno's problems of division and motion, taken up dialectically; the Forord answers the mathematicians' criticism of the earlier book.
Paa Kierkegaardske »Stadier«: et Livsbillede
1860. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
An anthology: passages from Kierkegaard's writings (»Om Begrebet Ironi«, »Stadier paa Livets Vei«, »Frygt og Bæven« among them), selected and arranged by Nielsen as a »Livsbillede« through the stages. The text is Kierkegaard's own, chosen and ordered by Nielsen; the passages are in SKS.
Hr. Professor Steens »Afregning«, gjennemseet: Hermed en specificeret Opgjørelse til Revision
1860. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Nielsen's reply to the mathematician Adolph Steen's »Afregning med Hr. Professor R. Nielsen« (1860), in the dispute over »Philosophie og Mathematik« and »Mathematik og Dialektik«.
Om Begrebet Nøiagtighed med særligt Hensyn paa Hr. Prof. Steens »Bidrag«
1860. Gyldendal (F. Hegel), Copenhagen, 55 pp.
Nielsen's postscript to Philosophie og Mathematik, answering the mathematician Adolph Steen's »Bidrag til en Kritik« (1859): after three caricatures of precision (the pettifogging, the pedantic, the caviling) it takes up Steen's corrections on the concept of function, the imaginary, the arbitrary constant and the method of limits, and argues that the demand for precision is always relative to what is essential to a purpose. Ends with errata to three of Nielsen's books.
Den Stærkeres Ret: Tale ved Reformationsfesten 1863 for Universitetet
1863. Copenhagen University; Gyldendal (F. Hegel), 15 pp.
Nielsen's address at the University's Reformation festival of 1863, on the saying that the stronger will have right. It sets the power that claims to be right against the right that is in its essence power, and follows the two from the first missionaries through the medieval papacy and the Crusades to Luther at Worms; it closes with the customary prayer for Frederik VII and the University.
Grundideernes Logik, vols. I–II
1864–1866. Gyldendal (F. Hegel); Trykt hos J. H. Schultz, Copenhagen
Published in two volumes: Vol. I (1864, 456 pp.) develops only the first Grundidee, Videns Idee; Vol. II (1866, 465 pp.) carries the logical functions of judgment and syllogism.
Svar til Hr. Dr. phil. Pastor Zeuthen i Anledning af hans Sendebrev om Tro og Viden
1866. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
A reply (16 pp.) to F. L. B. Zeuthen's open letter, published the same year as »Grundideernes Logik« II, and one of the sharpest short statements of the heterogeneity thesis under direct pressure. The Royal Library dates it 1866 (Gyldendal); the 1886 in the bibliography below is probably an error.
Om theoretisk og praktisk Erkjendelse, nogle Bemærkninger
1866. Nordisk Universitets-Tidsskrift 10, Tillægshefte (1866): 63–77, A. Ingerslev
Nielsen's 1866 statement (15 pp.) of the split between theoretical and practical knowledge, carrying the heterogeneity thesis over into ethics — the move Brandes attacks in »Dualismen i vor nyeste Philosophie«. Koch notes that Nielsen never wrote a moral philosophy but took the question up here.
Om „Den gode Villie“ som Magt i Videnskaben
1867. Gyldendal, Copenhagen (trykt hos J. H. Schultz)
Three parts (141 pp.) on the fate of natural science, history and philosophy under the "monarchy" of a theological principle, directed throughout against Martensen.
Hr. Professor Brøchners philosophiske Kritik gjennemseet
1868. Gyldendal, Copenhagen (trykt hos J. H. Schultz)
Nielsen's reply (52 pp.) to Brøchner's »Problemet om Tro og Viden« (1868), the middle round of the exchange that Brøchner closed with »Et Svar til Professor R. Nielsen« the same year.
Om Hindringer og Betingelser for det aandelige Liv i Nutiden
1868. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Sixteen public lectures (326 pp.) given at the University of Christiania in September–October 1867, with an Efterskrift.
Religionsphilosophie
1869. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Ide og Virkelighed
1869. For Ide og Virkelighed 1(1): 1–39
The programmatic essay opening the journal Nielsen edited with Bjørnson and Rudolf Schmidt: idea and reality cannot do without one another; Kierkegaard's attack on the established order, the crowd and the single individual, and the free constitution's need of ideas that can guide a people.
To Slags Undervisning
1869. For Ide og Virkelighed 1(1): 297–323, 409–441
Two installments contrasting the learned school, which imparts knowledge and trains memory and understanding, with the popular school of the Grundtvigian folk high schools, which works on the whole person and its view of life.
Om Selvforstaaelse i det Onde, med Henblik paa Shakspeares Richard den Tredie
1869. For Ide og Virkelighed 1(1): 521–554
An essay on whether evil can understand itself, read through Shakespeare's Richard III: a self-understanding in evil is the most dreadful self-contradiction, and Richard's appeal to grounds is shown to be self-deception.
Personlige Grunde
1869. For Ide og Virkelighed 1(1): 585–622
An essay on personal grounds of conviction, which cannot be communicated like objective proofs: faith and knowledge, the fanaticism of faith and of knowledge, Lessing's Nathan der Weise, and the eternity of the self.
En Fortolkning af den hellige Historie
1870. For Ide og Virkelighed 2(1): 289–324
Occasioned by H. N. Clausen's commentary on the synoptic Gospels (1850): a true historical understanding of the sacred history presupposes acknowledging the possibility of miracle, and the mediating apologetics that keeps one truth for science and another for edification must give way.
Filosofi og sund Menneskeforstand
1870. For Ide og Virkelighed 2(1): 385–404
Starting from J. L. Heiberg's complaint, some thirty years earlier, that philosophy was a stranger in Denmark, Nielsen weighs philosophy against Sound Human Understanding and the natural sciences, and ends on the task a late-come Danish philosophy might take up.
Aandsvirkelighed
1870–1871. For Ide og Virkelighed 3(2): 289–320; 5(2): 1–38
The 1870 essay argues that the Gospel events are Spiritual Reality, real for the spirit: neither outward fact apart from the spirit nor spirit apart from the facts. The sequel, »Videre om Aandsvirkelighed« (1871), answers Pastors V. Birkedal and C. Møller in six numbered theses.
Grundideernes Logik i kort Begreb
1870. J. H. Schubothe, Copenhagen
Nielsen's own one-volume compend of the »Grundideernes Logik« system (1864–66), spanning the material of both volumes, including the natural-science Grundideer of vol. II. Published two years after Brøchner's »Problemet om Tro og Viden«, it names no critic, but its Forord presents it as »en kort og klar Fremstilling af sin theistiske Logik« organized around the »Knudepunkter, om hvilke den videnskabelige Strid mellem Pantheisme og Theisme væsenlig maa dreie sig« — the axis of the Brøchner exchange. The English title is »The Logic of the Fundamental Ideas in Brief Compass«.
Samfundets Naturlove
1871. For Ide og Virkelighed 4(1): 289–315
History has its laws as nature has, but they are laws of spirit and freedom, conditioned in many ways; Nielsen traces the natural laws of society through examples from ancient and modern history and finds the constants in human nature and the thought of Christ.
Efter Døden
1871. For Ide og Virkelighed 5(2): 193–223
On death and what comes after it: the expectation of an eternal life, and of judgment, is grounded in the law of selfhood, the deep possibilities of blessedness and perdition in the self.
Karakter og Villie
1872. For Ide og Virkelighed 6(1): 489–517
Against the zoological view of man, character is what the will makes of a person; Nielsen sets Pietism, which imposes the ideal as law, against Grundtvig's beginning in the Gospel, by way of Kierkegaard on preferential love and love of the neighbour.
Hvorledes man danner sig en Verdensanskuelse
1873. For Ide og Virkelighed 8(1): 1–18
Everyone has a world-view; Nielsen asks how one is formed, criticises the state's care for one and Eduard von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious, and ends with the world-views as personal powers of life contending for the one that is true.
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 his longest book in this collection (xiv + 549 pp.): a Naturphilosophie that agrees with physics rather than legislating to it. Three parts — mechanical, elementary and organic nature — run from space and time through celestial mechanics and the elements to life, death and the claim that all natural reality is »Aandsvirkelighed, Virkelighed for Aanden«. The book contains real mathematics: 83 pages carry it, and a footnote to p. 160 derives Kepler's laws from Newton's principles in polar coordinates.
Om Betingelserne for en kraftig Villie
1874. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Six lectures on the will, traced through three stages: the drive-will of the natural man, the reason-will of the ancient moralists, and the spirit-will that faith »discovers« in the self, before turning to the miracle, self-deception, the religious and the humane, and the last things. Transcribed from the first printing of 1874 (83 pp.); a resetting, »Andet Oplag« (86 pp.), followed in 1884, and an English translation, »The conditions of a powerful will« (1882), is a rare case of Nielsen in English in his own lifetime.
English translation: The conditions of a powerful will (1882)KB ScanPDFreference Folkelige Foredrag efter Indbydelse af Foredragsforeninger i Kolding, Fredericia og Aagaard
1875. Gyldendal (F. Hegel), Copenhagen
Nine popular lectures and a festival speech for the anniversary of Isted: on an old breach of the Grundlov, Christ as teacher of the peoples and what he teaches of the historical future, the present age, church authority, »Gudsdomme« in history, the ordering of the Danish Folkekirke by law, university and folk high school, and »Et lille Folk«.
Om Liv og Haab: Sex Forelæsninger
1875. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Six popular lectures (103 pp.) on hope: life between memory and expectation, the crisis of disappointment and the rebirth of hope, hope as of personal origin, faith in Providence, immortality, and the relation of faith to knowledge. Nielsen argues that a hope worth the name is built on faith in inner experience.
Om Phantasiens Magt: Sex Forelæsninger
1876. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Six public lectures on the power of imagination: imagination and reality, imagination and the immortality of the soul, religious imagination against the science of the day, the imagination of the Old and the New Testament, and the infinite realm of imagination in poetry, art and ethics. Nielsen argues that revelation comes in the form of imagination, and that faith, not science, must tell it from myth and superstition. Transcribed from the only printing (1876, 91 pp.).
Om Aandsdannelse med særligt Hensyn paa vort Opdragelsesvæsen: Sex Forelæsninger
1877. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Six lectures on spiritual formation and education. Nielsen sets a Christian against a naturalistic system of upbringing, gives two lectures to Kierkegaard's public career and its »Selvmodsigelse«, and closes with »Religion og Humanitet«, where the religious and the humane are two forms of existence of one spiritual realm. Høffding (Danske Filosoffer, 1909) read the book as Nielsen's break with Kierkegaard.
Om Samfundets Vilkaar: Sex folkelige Foredrag
1877. Gyldendal (F. Hegel & Søn), Copenhagen
Six popular political lectures given in Kolding, Middelfart, Viborg and Fredericia during the constitutional conflict: on the Grundlov and the political movements of the day, popular self-government, parliamentarism, free constitution and freedom, aristocratism and democratism, and politics and conscience (Machiavellianism).
Gamle og nye Profeter: Seks Forelæsninger
1878. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Six lectures (112 pp.; the title page spells »Propheter«). The first four treat the Old Testament prophets, from Moses, Samuel and Elijah to messianic prophecy and its fulfilment; the last two treat the »new prophets« (Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, Comte, Mill), whose common ground Nielsen finds in the denial of the supernatural.
Philosophiske Grundproblemer
1879. Universitetets Festskrift, Copenhagen
Om Arbeidets Betydning for det aandelige Liv: Almeenfattelige Foredrag
1880. Gyldendal, 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
F. Rønning. 1898. In Rønning, Fire fynske Bøndersønner: Literaturhistoriske Levnedsskildringer (Nyerup, Rask, N. M. Petersen, Rasmus Nielsen). København: Udvalget for Folkeoplysnings Fremme, i Kommission hos G. E. C. Gad, 1898. Chapter 4, pp. 159–196, with portrait.
A popular life published fourteen years after Nielsen's death, from his Funen childhood through his university career and public lectures. Its central pages trace his relation to Martensen and Kierkegaard: his early agreement that faith is a paradox, and his revision of it to »Troen er et Mysterium«, above reason but not against it, with faith and science as separate realms.
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. It is the fullest secondary source on the doctrine of the »uensartede Principer«, and so the companion to the Nielsen–Brøchner debate. Scanned complete at HathiTrust.
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, in three parts: Klein's firsthand reminiscences of Nielsen as a private man and of his circle; Rosenberg's short popular exposition of the philosophy, centered on »de uensartede Principers Problem«; and Klein's assessment of its bearing on culture, freedom and the national questions. Scanned complete at Slægtsforskernes Bibliotek.
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; Asmussen died in the First World War, and the book went essentially uncited until it resurfaced in the literature on Kierkegaard's influence. Its index shows sustained engagement with Kierkegaard and Climacus, Glauben und Wissen, ideelle Kausalität, and — unusually for the older literature — the mathematical apparatus of »Grundideernes Logik«. Not publicly digitized.
Complete bibliography (104 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).✦ in the collection 1841Pauli Brev til Romerne · Private publication
1841–44Den speculative Logik i dens Grundtræk, Hefte 1–4 · Private publication✦ in the collection 1843Forelæsningsparagrafer til Kirkehistoriens Philosophie · Private publication✦ in the collection 1845Den propædeutiske Logik · P. G. Philipsen✦ in the collection 1849Evangelietroen og den moderne Bevidsthed: Forelæsninger over Jesu Liv · C. A. Reitzel✦ in the collection 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✦ in the collection 1850Dr. H. Martensens dogmatiske Oplysninger · C. A. Reitzel✦ in the collection 1850Et Par Ord i Anledning af Prof. Scharlings Apologie for Dr. Martensens Dogmatik · C. A. Reitzel✦ in the collection 1853Om Skjæbne og Forsyn · Otto Schwartz✦ in the collection 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 1857S. Kierkegaards Bladartikler, med Bilag samlede efter Forfatterens Død, udgivne som Supplement til hans øvrige Skrifter — Edited by Nielsen. Not in the appendix; from Dansk biografisk Leksikon (1939).
1857Philosophisk Propædeutik i Grundtræk · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 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✦ in the collection 1858»Tale ved Reformationsfesten« · Universitetets festskrifter
1859En Bladartikel af S. Kierkegaard, udgiven som Anhang til »S. Kierkegaards Bladartikler« — Edited by Nielsen. Not in the appendix; from Dansk biografisk Leksikon (1939).
1859Mathematik og Dialektik: En philosophisk Afhandling · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1860Paa Kierkegaardske »Stadier«: et Livsbillede · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1860Hr. Professor Steens »Afregning«: Hermed en specificeret Opgjørelse til Revision · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1860»Om Begrebet Nøiagtighed med særligt Hensyn paa Hr. Prof. Steens ‘Bidrag’« · Postscript to Philosophie og Mathematik✦ in the collection 1862Forelæsninger over »Philosophisk Propædeutik« fra Universitetsaaret 1860–61 · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1863Forelæsninger over »Philosophisk Propædeutik« fra Universitetsaaret 1861–62 · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1863»De stærkeres Ret. Tale ved Reformationsfesten« · Universitetets festskrifter✦ in the collection 1864Grundideernes Logik I · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1866Grundideernes Logik II · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1866Propædeutik og Psychologie: Cursus fra Universitetsaaret 1866–67 · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1866Skjæbne og Forsyn for store og smaa Nationer: Et Foredrag, holdt i den danske Folkeforening — Not in the appendix; from the Royal Library catalogue.
1866»Om theoretisk og praktisk Erkjendelse, nogle Bemærkninger« · Nordisk Universitets-Tidsskrift 10, Tillægshefte: 63–77✦ in the collection 1867Logik og Propædeutik: Cursus for Universitetsaaret 1867–1868 · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 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 Tilværelsens ideale Magter: Skjæbne og Forsyn — 2. Oplag the same year. Not in the appendix; from Dansk biografisk Leksikon (1939).✦ in the collection 1867Om „Den gode Villie“ 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✦ in the collection 1868Propædeutik og Logik: Cursus for Universitetsaaret 1868–69 · Gyldendal — The appendix gives »Logik og Psychologie«; the title page reads »Propædeutik og Logik«. The volume reissues the sheets of the 1860–61 lectures and of Grundideernes Logik II and I, joined by a new Oversigt and new pages 81–89 and 263–264.✦ in the collection 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✦ in the collection 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✦ in the collection 1869»To Slags Undervisning II« · For Ide og Virkelighed 1 (1): 409–441✦ in the collection 1869»Om Selvforstaaelse i det Onde, med Henblik paa Shakspeares Richard den Tredie« · For Ide og Virkelighed 1 (1): 521–554✦ in the collection 1869»Personlige Grunde« · For Ide og Virkelighed 1 (1): 585–622✦ in the collection 1869»Om Sindsformørkelse, Bidrag til Selvmorderes Psykologi« · For Ide og Virkelighed 1 (1): 659–706✦ in the collection 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✦ in the collection 1870»Filosofi og sund Menneskeforstand« · For Ide og Virkelighed 2 (1): 385–406✦ in the collection 1870»En Arbeiderforening« · For Ide og Virkelighed 3 (2): 1–38
1870»Aandsvirkelighed« · For Ide og Virkelighed 3 (2): 289–320✦ in the collection 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✦ in the collection 1871»Videre om Aandsvirkelighed, foranlediget ved Pastor V. Birkedals og Pastor C. Møllers Indlæg« · For Ide og Virkelighed 5 (2): 1–38✦ in the collection 1871»Efter Døden« · For Ide og Virkelighed 5 (2): 193–223✦ in the collection 1871Logik og Psychologie: Cursus for Universitetsaaret 1871–72 · J. H. Schubothe✦ in the collection 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✦ in the collection 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✦ in the collection 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 Villie: Sex Forelæsninger · Gyldendal (F. Hegel)✦ in the collection 1875Folkelige Foredrag efter Indbydelse af Foredragsforeninger i Kolding, Fredericia og Aagaard · Gyldendal (F. Hegel) — Nine lectures and a Festtale; the appendix's subtitle »Seks Forelæsninger« is not on the title page.✦ in the collection 1875Om Liv og Haab: Sex Forelæsninger · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1876Om Phantasiens Magt: Sex Forelæsninger · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1877Om Aandsdannelse med særligt Hensyn paa vort Opdragelsesvæsen: Sex Forelæsninger · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 1877Om Samfundets Vilkaar: Sex folkelige Foredrag · Gyldendal (F. Hegel & Søn)✦ in the collection 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✦ in the collection 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.✦ in the collection 1886Svar til Hr. Dr. Phil. Pastor Zeuthen · Gyldendal✦ in the collection 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 810 kvart — Autograph (»Egenhændige«), 345 s.
n.d.»Forelæsninger over Psychologi« · Additamenta 809 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. 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.
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, it is the earliest sustained piece of his writing and the start of the Straussian line the later work follows.
Om Søren Kierkegaards Virksomhed som religieus Forfatter
1855. Fædrelandet, 1 December 1855
Brøchner's first comprehensive account of Kierkegaard's authorship, published anonymously under the mark "-r" just after Kierkegaard's death. Transcribed from the 1855 printing (Fædrelandet nr. 281, pp. 1179–1180); Carl Henrik Koch reprints the article with introduction and commentary in »Hans Brøchners bidrag til Kierkegaard-receptionen i Danmark« (2016), which is open access.
[Anmeldelse af A. D. Andresen, »Dr. Søren Kierkegaards falske Paastande« 1–2]
1856. Ugeskrift for den evangeliske Kirke i Danmark 7 (1856), pp. 249–251; signed »-r.«
Brøchner's review, under his usual mark »-r.«, of the first two of A. D. Andresen's pamphlets charging that Kierkegaard's attack on the Church had harmed Christianity in Denmark. He asks whether, among the complacent and the merely worldly-anxious alike, there are not some whom Kierkegaard has woken »til alvorligere Prøvelse, til Bekymring ogsaa for Sjælens Anliggender«. Attribution and reference from C. H. Koch, Fund og Forskning 47 (2008).
Complete review (pp. 249–251)to do
[Anmeldelse af J. C. M. Ørums Pjece om Sandhedsvidnestriden]
1856. Fædrelandet, Nr. 298, 20 December 1856
A review of J. C. M. Ørum's short pamphlet on the »Sandhedsvidne« controversy, mocking two theologians, H. F. Helveg and H. P. Kofoed-Hansen, who accepted part of Kierkegaard's critique of the established order without drawing its consequences: »det Halve er mindre end Intet«. Listed in Dansk Biografisk Leksikon; details from C. H. Koch, Fund og Forskning 47 (2008).
Benedict Spinoza. En Monographie
1857. P.G. Philipsen, Copenhagen
The first of the series of monographs on representative systems that Brøchner announces in the Fortale, and the only one he finished (188 pp.); it ends by claiming that Spinoza's deeper motives are first fully understood in Hegel.
Problemet om Tro og Viden
1868. Philipsen, Copenhagen
Et Svar til Professor R. Nielsen
1868. P. G. Philipsens Forlag, Copenhagen
Brøchner's rejoinder (31 pp.) to Nielsen's »Hr. Professor Brøchners philosophiske Kritik gjennemseet« (1868), and the last round of the exchange begun by »Problemet om Tro og Viden«. Not digitized by KB; transcribed from the British Library copy scanned by Google.
Georg Brandes, Levned vol. I (1905), pp. 129–132
1905. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Primary source for Brøchner's personality and influence. The passage is the second of the selected passages from Levned I listed under Brandes.
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.).
Bidrag til Opfattelsen af Philosophiens historiske Udvikling
1869. P. G. Philipsen, Copenhagen
Companion to the two-volume »Philosophiens Historie i Grundrids« (1873–74), setting out the principle on which Brøchner reads the history of philosophy (294 pp.). Unlike his other works here it is set in antiqua, and it carries several hundred words of polytonic Greek.
Det Kristelige og det Humane som Modsætninger i vor Tids Bevidsthed
1871. Nyt dansk Maanedsskrift, 2. Bind (April–September 1871)
Three installments (July–September) published under the pseudonym »Constans«, and the journal counterpart to »Om det Religiøse i dets Enhed med det Humane« (1869). Christianity, as the highest and closing form of positive religion, is set against the free human consciousness and the two are held irreconcilable, with Kierkegaard as the classic Danish statement of the first side. Dansk Biografisk Leksikon calls the piece a critique of Martensen's »Den christelige Ethik«, but Martensen is named only once, in a single dismissive paragraph on p. 451.
Det ubevidste og det bevidste menneskelige Sjæleliv
1871. Nyt dansk Maanedsskrift, 3. Bind (Oktober 1871–Marts 1872), pp. 42–57
Sixteen pages, signed with Brøchner's own name, arguing that conscious mental life is bounded on both sides by the unconscious: it rises out of the unconscious organic ground, is carried and conditioned by it, and returns into it at death. It appeared in October 1871, but the volume's title page is dated 1872, which is why the standard bibliographies cite it as 1872.
Philosophiens Historie i Grundrids
1873–1874. P. G. Philipsen, Copenhagen
Brøchner's history of philosophy and the last work he completed, applying the reading of philosophical development set out in the »Bidrag« of 1869: I. »Den græske Philosophies Historie i Grundrids« (1873) and II. »Den nyere Philosophies Historie i Grundrids« (1874). Transcribed from the Harvard copy on HathiTrust — a presentation copy inscribed by Brøchner to the young K. Kroman, who worked the printed errata into it in ink.
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 Naples students who on 9 January 1865 burned 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«.
Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard
1877. Det nittende Aarhundrede, vol. 5, March 1877, pp. 337–374; book form ed. Steen Johansen, 1953
Brøchner's memoir of Kierkegaard, dated by him »Nedskrevet i Tiden fra 27. Dec. 1871 til 10. Januar 1872« and published after his death in Georg and Edvard Brandes's monthly »Det nittende Aarhundrede«. Transcribed diplomatically from the Internet Archive scan of the University of Illinois copy.
Forelæsninger om Søren Kierkegaard
1858–59. Lectures, University of Copenhagen; ed. C. H. Koch, 2016
Brøchner's university lectures of autumn 1858 and spring 1859 on modern philosophy's relation to Christianity, culminating in a full account of Kierkegaard's authorship. The translation is made from Carl Henrik Koch's edition (pp. 72–188), not from the manuscript, KB Add. 414.
Danish text from the manuscript (KB Add. 414)to do
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 at the Royal Library (indexed in Krarup II, 6) and not digitized. They 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. Item titles follow the KB record, including its misprints in item (i).
(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, the first university lectures on Kierkegaard — faithful and respectful but already critical, anticipating the criticism Brøchner repeated a decade later against Nielsen in »Problemet om Tro og Viden« and the »Svar«. The manuscripts are listed under »Efterladte Manuskripter«, item (i). Open access.
Hans Brøchners bidrag til Kierkegaard-receptionen i Danmark
Carl Henrik Koch (ed.). 2016. Scientia Danica, Series H, Humanistica 8, vol. 13. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. ISBN 978-87-7304-396-7
Koch's edition, with introduction and commentary, of Brøchner's two early accounts of Kierkegaard's authorship as a whole: the 1855 Fædrelandet article (pp. 45–64), which this collection transcribes from the newspaper itself under »kierkegaard-virksomhed«, and the lectures of 1858–59 on modern philosophy's relation to Christianity (pp. 72–188), transcribed by Koch from the manuscript in the Royal Library, Add. 414, as a normalized reading edition. The publisher offers the whole volume as a free PDF.
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 from Berlin, Rome and Paris to Julie Thomsen, his and Kierkegaard's cousin, whom contemporaries reckoned the most gifted woman of the Kierkegaard family. Not digitized.
Hans Brøchner og Georg Brandes
Carl Henrik Koch. 2000. Chapter in »Strejftog i den danske filosofis historie«. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1st ed., 2000; reissued Lindhardt og Ringhof, 2016 (e-book, ISBN 978-87-11-49745-6), pp. 128–150
A reassessment of Brøchner's influence on his student Georg Brandes, against Rubow (1927, 1932) and Fenger (1955), who confined it to Brandes's philosophical period ending with the Taine dissertation of 1870. Koch argues that several of Brandes's leading ideas are radicalizations of themes he could have taken from Brøchner.
Chapter (pp. 128–150, as paginated in the 2016 e-book)reference
Glimpses and Impressions of Kierkegaard
T. H. Croxall (trans. and ed.). 1959. London: James Nisbet & Co. (published posthumously)
Includes, at pp. 7–39, an English translation of Brøchner's »Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard«, the earliest in English; Kirmmse's »Encounters with Kierkegaard« (1996) cites it as the other English version of the text.
Volume — not held; collate translation against »erindringer-kierkegaard« before relying on itreference
Den unge Brøchner
S. V. Rasmussen. 1966. Copenhagen: Gyldendal
A posthumous monograph, left in manuscript at Rasmussen's death and edited with a foreword by Justus Hartnack, on Brøchner's life, personality and philosophy: from family and schooling through his student years, the 1845 disputation, the travels of 1846–47 and 1852–53, the Kierkegaard articles, the Spinoza book and his appointment as professor, to chapters on the Danish Hegelians before him, on Hegel, and on his later philosophy (spirit and nature, metaphysics and psychology). Not digitized.
Monograph (23 chapters, notes and index) — not scannedreference
Et Blad af Hans Brøchner-Forskningens Historie. Dr. phil. S. V. Rasmussen: Den unge Brøchner
Skat Arildsen. 1968. Kierkegaardiana VII (1968), pp. 160–166
A review of Rasmussen's »Den unge Brøchner«, set in a survey of the writing on Brøchner since his death: the obituaries, Brandes's 1887 portrait, Høffding's »Danske Filosofer« and his edition of the Molbech correspondence, and Kroman's and Rasmussen's articles in Dansk Biografisk Lexikon. Arildsen divides the young Brøchner's life into four stages (1828–1845), names five formative figures — Rosendahl, Kierkegaard, Molbech, Costanza Testa and Hegel — and regrets that the book stops before the controversy over faith and knowledge.
Filosofiens Historie
Harald Høffding. 1874. Nyt dansk Maanedsskrift, 6. Bind (1874), pp. 279–296
Høffding's review of both parts of Brøchner's »Philosophiens Historie i Grundrids« (1873–74), which he greets as the first original history of philosophy published in Denmark and the handbook that should displace the translated Schwegler. He sets out Brøchner's general view of the history of philosophy and its division into periods.
Hans Brøchner
Georg Brandes. 1887. Norden. Illustreret skandinavisk Revue, 1. Hefte (1887); reprinted in »Essays: danske Personligheder« (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1889), pp. 230–255, dated 1886, and in »Samlede Skrifter« II (1899), pp. 426–439
Brandes's portrait of his teacher as man, lecturer and stylist, drawn from long personal friendship; its one criticism is of the style of the philosophical books. It was the first public account of Brøchner's youthful love for Costanza Testa.
Brøchner, Hans
Kristian Kroman. 1889. Dansk biografisk Lexikon, ed. C. F. Bricka, vol. III (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1889), pp. 202–206
The article on Brøchner in the first edition of the Danish national biography, by Kroman, who had studied under him: a sober account of his life, his university career and his philosophical work.
Hans Brøchner
Harald Høffding. 1909. Chapter 17 of »Danske Filosoffer« (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1909), pp. 196–206
The closing chapter of Høffding's »Danske Filosoffer«, on the teacher and friend whose philosophical successor he was taken to be. The whole book is transcribed and translated in this collection, under Høffding.
Trolddom. Boghistorisk arabesk
H. P. Rohde. 1961. Bogvennen 1961, pp. 29–53
The history of one book: Kierkegaard's copy of Eichendorff's »Dichter und ihre Gesellen«, lent to Brøchner in 1837 and bought by him at the 1856 auction of Kierkegaard's library, and given, Rohde argues, to Anna Thomsen, the younger daughter of his cousin Julie. Brøchner is at its center, with his circle in the Thomsen household and his brief marriage to Dorthea Ipsen.
Hans Brøchner
Mogens Blegvad & S. V. Rasmussen. 1979–84. Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, 3rd ed., ed. Svend Cedergreen Bech (16 vols., 1979–84); online at lex.dk
The article in the current edition of the Danish national biography: life, works, family, portraits, and the fullest bibliography of literature on Brøchner, with the location of his papers in the Royal Library. Free online.
Complete articlelex.dkreference Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries
Bruce H. Kirmmse (ed.). 1996. Translated by Bruce H. Kirmmse and Virginia R. Laursen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996; ch. 11, »Hans Brøchner on Kierkegaard«, pp. 225–252, notes pp. 330–338
The standard English anthology of contemporary testimony on Kierkegaard. Chapter 11 translates Brøchner's »Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard« from his manuscript in the Royal Library, followed by letters of 1855–56 between Brøchner and Molbech about Kierkegaard, with full annotation; chapter 4 has his 1871 letter to Barfod.
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
Published when Høffding signed himself cand. theol., in the middle of the faith-and-knowledge controversy. He answers Larsen's "Samvittighed og Videnskab", then traces the dispute from scholasticism through Strauss, Martensen's Dogmatik and Johannes Climacus to Rasmus Nielsen, and defends the absolute heterogeneity of faith and knowledge.
Den antike Opfattelse af Menneskets Villie
1870. Doctoral dissertation (dr. phil.), University of Copenhagen, 1870.
Høffding's dissertation on the ancient conception of the human will, written in part during his winter in Paris (1868–69). It continues the subject of his gold-medal prize essay of 1868 on the Danish free-will controversy of the 1820s (Howitz, Sibbern, A. S. Ørsted), which Nielsen and Brøchner judged.
Complete dissertationto do
Positivisme og Materialisme
1871. Nyt dansk Maanedsskrift, 2. Bind (April–September 1871)
A critique of positivism and materialism occasioned by Henry Maudsley's lecture on mind and body, translated in Ugeskrift for Læger (1870). The first part sets out Comte's positive philosophy and its law of three stages; the second turns to the physiologists' materialism and to Maudsley's account of mental illness. Høffding concludes that both grasp only one side of life, and so fail in practice as they fail in theory.
Philosophien i Tydskland efter Hegel
1872. Kjøbenhavn: Gyldendalske Boghandel (F. Hegel), 1872. 325 pp.
Høffding's first book, a critical survey of German philosophy from Hegel's death to 1872: the "critical consciousness" (the immortality controversy, Strauss, Bruno Bauer, Ruge, Feuerbach, Stirner), modern materialism (Vogt, Moleschott, Büchner, Czolbe), speculative theism (the later Schelling, I. H. Fichte, Weisse) and what he calls the idealism of reality (Trendelenburg, Fechner, Hartmann, Lotze). Text of the 1872 printing; English translation.
Filosofien og Darwinismen
1874. Nær og Fjern 3, Nr. 93–94 (12 and 19 April 1874)
Den engelske Philosophi i vor Tid
1874. Kjøbenhavn: P. G. Philipsens Forlag, 1874.
The counterpart to the 1872 book on Germany: a survey of the English philosophy of Høffding's own day, the positivist and evolutionist line he had first met in Paris and which, on his own account, only slowly came to have a decisive importance for him. After a general characterization of English thought and its relation to German philosophy and French positivism, it treats the pure empiricism of John Stuart Mill and Alexander Bain, the critical school of Whewell, Hamilton and Mansel, and Herbert Spencer's philosophy of evolution, and closes with Høffding's own assessment. A German translation appeared as "Einleitung in die englische Philosophie unserer Zeit" (Leipzig, 1889).
Herbert Spencers Filosofi
1875. Det nittende Aarhundrede (April–September 1875), May 1875, pp. 106–130.
A lecture given in the Students' Association in February 1875. Høffding sets out Spencer's synthetic philosophy (the Unknowable, the persistence of force, the law of evolution, mind and knowledge measured against Kant) and criticizes his individualist theory of society and the state.
Anmeldelse af Cl. Wilkens, »Erkendelsens Problem«
1875. Det nittende Aarhundrede (October 1875–March 1876), October 1875, pp. 81–85.
Review of Claudius Wilkens's Erkendelsens Problem (1875), listed in the volume's contents as »Anmeldt af Dr. phil. Høffding«.
Montaignes Betydning i Etikens Historie
1876. Det nittende Aarhundrede (April–September 1876), June 1876, pp. 210–230.
On Montaigne's place in the history of ethics, from the year of Om Grundlaget for den humane Ethik: his skepticism, Nature as the norm of life, his ethics of enjoyment and of repentance, friendship and toleration, with long quotations from the Essais. The volume's contents list the title as „Montaignes Betydning i Ethikens Historie“.
Om Grundlaget for den humane Ethik
1876. Kjøbenhavn: Andr. Fred. Høst & Søns Forlag, 1876 (Sally B. Salomons Tryk). [IV], 146 pp.
Høffding's first attempt at an ethics on purely human foundations, which Brandes greeted as the »forklarede« Brøchner: psychological remarks on feeling and will, a critique of the individual starting points (egoism, utility, sympathy, Kant's law of reason), an analysis of authority, the ethical law and progress, and freedom of the will. In the Erindringer Høffding singles out its analysis of the concept of authority.
Benedikt Spinoza
1876. Nær og Fjern 6, Nr. 233 (17 December 1876), lead article.
The lead article of Nær og Fjern for 17 December 1876, written as a statue to Spinoza was to be raised at The Hague for the bicentenary of his death: his life, the excommunication, the Tractatus and toleration, his reception from Lessing and Goethe to Steffens, and his meaning for modern science.
Spinozas Liv og Lære. Et Bidrag til Tænkningens Historie i det 17de Aarhundrede
1877. København: Rudolph Klein, 1877 (trykt hos Nielsen & Lydiche). VIII, 166 pp.
Written at the publisher's invitation for a series of »kulturhistoriske Personligheder«: Spinoza's life, his correspondents, and an account of the doctrine in five parts (fundamental concepts; mind and matter; theory of knowledge; psychology and ethics; political philosophy and philosophy of religion), with a list of philosophical terms. The Forord sets the book beside Brøchner's »Benedict Spinoza. En Monographie« (1857), listed under Brøchner, and says that its standpoint »afviger fra Brøchners«: his late teacher stood nearer to Spinoza as a speculative philosopher and criticized the inconsistencies of Spinoza's speculation, not its principle, where Høffding goes further. It also uses material Brøchner did not have, the Short Treatise (»Om Gud, Mennesket og dets Lykke«) and the letters in van Vloten's Supplementum (1862).
Om Erindring
1878. Nær og Fjern 7, February 1878.
A popular statement of leading ideas of the Psykologi (1882), written against the English association psychology: memory shows an inner connection among all mental elements, and pathological states of dissolution show what concentration means for mental life.
Anmeldelse af H. L. Martensen, »Den christelige Ethik«
1878. Nær og Fjern 7, July 1878, in several numbers.
Høffding's reckoning with theological ethics and with »modern Christianity«, for which he took Martensen as the representative, set against the eschatological ethics of the New Testament. On his own account it won quiet sympathy from Madvig and others who resented the bishop's attempt to bring science, art and public life under theology.
Complete review (several numbers)to do
Anmeldelse af S. Heegaard, »Om Intolerance«
1878. Nær og Fjern 7, August 1878.
Heegaard had argued, under Kierkegaard's influence, that a faith or view of life can exist only as personal conviction, beyond scientific decision. Høffding replied that argument between views of life needs common ground, which must finally be science, and that personality cannot be formed in isolation from society.
Anmeldelse af F. C. Sibbern, »Moralphilosophi«
1878. Nær og Fjern 7, September 1878.
A characterization of Sibbern occasioned by the posthumous edition of his moral philosophy, which Høffding calls a preliminary study for his Sibbern essay of 1885.
Filosofien i Sverig
1879. Nordisk tidskrift för vetenskap, konst och industri 2 (1879), pp. 30–73.
A review article on Swedish philosophy, headed by Axel Nyblæus's Den filosofiska forskningen i Sverige among six works under review.
Om Pessimismen
1879. Vor Ungdom. Tidsskrift for Opdragelse og Undervisning, 1879, 2. Hefte, pp. 69–90.
On pessimism as a symptom of the modern disharmony between knowledge and feeling (Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Carlyle), with a critique of Schopenhauer's and Hartmann's doctrines of the will and of pain as positive; Høffding ends with the hope of a harmony won through development.
Psykologi i Omrids paa Grundlag af Erfaring
1882. Philipsen, Copenhagen (2nd ed. 1885)
Høffding's psychology on the basis of experience, in seven chapters: the object and method of psychology; soul and body; the conscious and the unconscious; the classification of psychological phenomena; sense-perception and thought; the psychology of feeling; the psychology of the will. English translation: Outlines of Psychology (1891). The text here is the 1882 first edition (412 pp.).
Anmeldelse af Viktor Rydberg, »Ny Testamentes Lærdomme om Forudtilværelsen og de sidste Ting«
1882. Ude og Hjemme. Nordisk illustreret Ugeblad, 5. Aargang (1881–82), Nr. 224 (15 January 1882), pp. 196–197. (Danish translation by J. P. V. Petersen, Kjøbenhavn: Andr. Schous Forlag, 1881.)
Høffding welcomes Rydberg's purely historical reading of the New Testament but faults the abstract Swedish idealism that keeps him from recognizing development as a law of the world and from the empirical sciences.
Anmeldelse af H. L. Martensen, »Jacob Böhme«
1882. Ude og Hjemme. Nordisk illustreret Ugeblad, 5. Aargang (1881–82), Nr. 238 (April 1882), pp. 365–366.
Høffding argues that the self-thinking mystic would never have accepted the bounds Martensen set between »Christian« and »pagan« thought.
Realisme i Videnskab og Tro
1882 / 1884. Tilskueren 1 (1884), pp. 20–32; reprinted 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. Tilskueren 2 (1885), pp. 747–773, 840–855; reprinted in Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 61–112
The longest essay in the collection by a wide margin, roughly a fifth of the book: Høffding's own extended estimate of Sibbern, whose »Om Erkjendelse og Granskning«, »Om Elskov« and »Om Philosophiens Begreb« are transcribed and translated here.
Sindsbevægelsernes Fysiologi
1886. Tilskueren 3 (1886), pp. 114–123; reprinted in Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 51–60
A review of Carl Lange's Om Sindsbevægelser. En psykofysiologisk Studie (1885), the Danish half of the James–Lange theory of the emotions, written in the period of Psykologi i Omrids (1882).
Om Religionsfrihed og nogle dermed forbundne psykologiske og etiske Spørgsmaal
1886. Tilskueren 3 (1886), June–July, pp. 448–459.
A lecture given in the Students' Association in March 1886. Høffding traces positive religion from family and national religion to the universal church and the neutral state, and asks what religious freedom demands psychologically and ethically of believers and freethinkers alike, in the light of the principle of personality.
Etik. En Fremstilling af de etiske Principer og deres Anvendelse paa de vigtigste Livsforhold
1887. Kjøbenhavn, 1887.
Høffding's ethics on a psychological basis, which separates the motive of valuation from the motive of action. It traces the types of ethical standpoint from the momentary through the individual, the clan and the nation to the universally human, which he had set out to the Academy in February 1886.
Nye Undersøgelser om den primitive Familje
1888. Tilskueren 5 (1888), October–November, pp. 787–795.
A review article on Die primitive Familie in ihrer Entstehung und Entwickelung (1888) by Høffding's student C. N. Starcke. Høffding argues that a philosophical ethics needs historical material on how moral life and institutions actually developed, and credits Starcke with thoroughness and acuity while missing something he thought significant.
Psykologiske Undersøgelser
1889. Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter, 6. Række, historisk og philosophisk Afdeling, III, 1 (Kjøbenhavn: Bianco Luno, 1889), 103 pp.
Develops, more fully than the Psykologi, the doctrine of the kinds of recognition, the association of ideas, the stages of the will and the relation of mind and body. Text of the 1889 printing; English translation.
Charles Darwin
1889. Studentersamfundets Smaaskrifter 91–92. Kjøbenhavn, 1889.
Alexander Hamilton og den nordamerikanske Unionsforfatning
1889. Tilskueren 6 (1889), pp. 699–725; reprinted 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
Høffding's three contributions to the 1889–90 debate with Brandes on Nietzsche; Brandes's three essays are under Brandes. Translated in full by William Banks, The Great Debate: Nietzsche, Culture, and the Scandinavian Welfare Society (University of Wisconsin Press, 2024). The Danish text is at henrikpontoppidan.dk, and scans of Tilskueren are at Project Runeberg.
Social Pessimisme
1890. Tilskueren 7 (1890), pp. 464–477; reprinted 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.
Etiske Undersøgelser
1891. Kjøbenhavn: P. G. Philipsens Forlag (Thieles Bogtrykkeri), 1891.
Three treatises: »Om Muligheden af en filosofisk Etik«, »Om Velfærdsprincipet« and »Forholdsloven i Etiken«. Høffding offers the first two as an introduction or supplement to his Etik (1887) and lays most weight on the third, which works out an idea only hinted at there; it had appeared in the first number of the International Journal of Ethics (1890), and the second was printed at the same time in The Monist.
Søren Kierkegaard som Filosof
1892. Kjøbenhavn: P. G. Philipsens Forlag, 1892 (rev. ed. 1919)
Høffding's study of Kierkegaard as a philosopher: the romantic-speculative philosophy of religion, Kierkegaard's older Danish contemporaries, his personality, his epistemology and ethics (the leap, the stages, the standard), and his final collision with Christianity. Transcription and translation are of the 1892 first edition, with its pagination; the revised edition of 1919 adds a long passage on Kierkegaard's youth and drops most of Høffding's references to the Papirer.
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. 1903–1904
Høffding's two-volume history of modern philosophy, from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century, dedicated to the memory of his teacher Hans Brøchner; it is the source of the volume-and-page references ("Den nyere Filosofis Historie I, p. 290") scattered through the translations here. B. E. Meyer's English translation (1900) is made from the German edition of 1895–96, and so renders the first Danish edition at two removes. Here: a diplomatic transcription of the whole second Danish edition (1903–04), title pages, Indhold, all ten Books, both volumes' notes and the Register, with a new English translation of all of it. Among other things it traces the conservation of motion, force and energy from Descartes and Leibniz through Spencer to Robert Mayer.
Kampen mellem gamle og nye Tanker. Et Tilbageblik
1895. In Mindre Arbejder (1899), pp. 225–243
The retrospective that closes the collection.
Jean Jacques Rousseau og hans Filosofi
1896. København: Det Nordiske Forlag (Bogforlaget Ernst Bojesen), 1896.
Grew out of the studies of Rousseau that Høffding took up again after finishing Den nyere Filosofis Historie, with both a psychological and a historical interest: Rousseau's awakening and his problem, the Confessions, his life, character and works, and his philosophy — its leading concepts and the religious, political-social and pedagogical problems.
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, taking the alternation of mechanism and vitalism through the history of biology and arguing 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 generalize 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. Høffding refers back to it in Filosofiske Problemer (note 6) and in Den menneskelige Tanke.
Kort Oversigt over den nyere Filosofis Historie
1898. 1st ed. 1898; 4th, revised ed., Kjøbenhavn og Kristiania: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1910 (95 pp.); thirteen editions to 1946.
A short survey of modern philosophy from the Renaissance through the systems, the philosophy of experience, the Enlightenment, Kant and Romanticism to the nineteenth century — not to be confused with the two-volume Den nyere Filosofis Historie (1894–95).
Mindre Arbejder [I]
1899. København: Det Nordiske Forlag (Bogforlaget Ernst Bojesen), 1899. VIII, 243 pp. (Further collections followed in 1905 and 1913.)
Høffding's own collection of twelve lectures and review essays from 1882 to 1898, which he presents in the preface as the record of one basic outlook on scientific, social and religious questions: from »Om Realisme i Videnskab og Tro« and the long portrait of F. C. Sibbern to essays on Tönnies (»Social Pessimisme«), the Stoics, Hamilton and vitalism.
Om Religionsfilosofiens Opgave og Fremgangsmaade
1900. Oversigt over det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Forhandlinger 1900, Nr. 5
Communicated at the Academy's meeting of 2 November 1900, the year before Religionsfilosofi (1901): what the philosophy of religion is 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).
Ved Aarhundredskiftet
1901. Tale paa Københavns Universitet d. 19. Dec. 1900. København: Gyldendal, 1901. 30 pp. (Dansk Bogfortegnelse 1901–08, p. 125, lists it as »Ved Aarhundredeskiftet«)
A speech characterizing the century just ended: its sharpened intellectual and national antagonisms, its science as the age of confirmation by experience and of historical research (the founding ideas belonging to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), and its practical life as shaped by the great workers' organizations. Høffding returns to it in Erindringer (1928) and builds on it in Ledende Tanker i det nittende Aarhundrede (1920).
Religionsfilosofi
1901. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
The third edition (1924), in which Høffding shortened the epistemological section, merged the two groupings of religious-psychological types, and revised the notes. 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 in both substance and contents.
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. The authorized English translation, The Problems of Philosophy (1905, trans. Galen M. Fisher, preface by William James), compresses the Danish considerably; the translation here is independent. The 1902 print was the University's Reformation-festival publication.
Vort Hjem
1903. Introduction to Emma Gad, Vort Hjem
Høffding's introduction to Emma Gad's »Vort Hjem«: an essay in four parts on the home, as an ideal of intimacy, fullness and rest; in its history, from the wandering horde to the family home; in the ways it fails under unfavorable conditions; and in its future, which depends on an open relation to the wider community and on room for each member's own development.
Om nogle religionsfilosofiske Arbejder fra den nyeste Tid
1903. Indbydelsesskrift til Kjøbenhavns Universitets Aarsfest i Anledning af Hans Majestæt Kongens Fødselsdag den 8. April 1903. Kjøbenhavn: Universitetsbogtrykkeriet (J. H. Schultz), 1903.
Høffding's university programme of 1903, a survey of recent philosophy of religion measured against his own Religionsfilosofi (1901): the systematic attempts of Siebeck, Sabatier and Eucken, then the psychology of religion of Reischle, Murisier, Starbuck, Coe, Leuba, Arréat and Santayana, ending with William James's Varieties of Religious Experience. The text is the 1903 print with its thirteen endnotes; Høffding reprinted it, revised and without the notes, in Mindre Arbejder. Anden Række (1905), where it is also translated.
Moderne Filosofer
1904. København: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1904.
Takes up the history where Den nyere Filosofis Historie stopped, at 1880, in three groups: an objective-systematic line (Wundt, Ardigò, Bradley, Fouillée and Boutroux); an epistemological-biological line, with the philosophizing natural scientists Maxwell, Mach, Hertz and Ostwald, and Avenarius; and the philosophy of valuation (Guyau, Nietzsche).
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.
Mindre Arbejder. Anden Række
1905. København: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1905.
The second collection: seventeen lectures, essays, speeches and reviews from 1891 to 1905, among them »Filosofien og Livet«, »Begrebet Analogi i dets filosofiske Betydning« (see the separate entry), the preface and afterword to his Religionsfilosofi, Parmenides, Holberg as a philosopher, two pieces on Henrik Steffens, »Søren Kierkegaard. En Karakteristik« (1903), Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation, Harnack on the essence of Christianity, speeches for Georg Brandes and Henrik Ibsen, and Goethe. It reprints, revised, the 1903 programme »Om nogle religionsfilosofiske Arbejder fra den nyeste Tid« (see the separate entry).
Danske Filosoffer
1909. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Portraits of the Danish philosophers — Holberg, Steffens, Ørsted, Grundtvig, Sibbern, Poul Martin Møller, Rasmus Nielsen, Brøchner, Kierkegaard, and others.
Udvalgte Stykker af dansk filosofisk Litteratur
1910. Gyldendal, Copenhagen (Mindesmærker af Danmarks Nationallitteratur, III)
Høffding's anthology of Danish philosophy from Holberg to his own generation, in eight sections (Holberg and the eighteenth century, Steffens and Grundtvig, the brothers Ørsted, Treschow, Sibbern and Howitz, Heiberg and Poul Møller, Kierkegaard, Rasmus Nielsen and Brøchner, and the last generation from Heegaard to Feilberg), each author introduced by Høffding, with his explanatory notes at the end. It is the companion reader to »Danske Filosoffer« (1909), and the text is that of the 1910 edition. His excerpt from Treschow's 1810 essay, retitled »Det Individuelles Uudtømmelighed«, silently cuts pp. 231–234 and 242–254 of the original.
Den menneskelige Tanke, dens Former og dens Opgaver
1910. Copenhagen
Høffding's systematic account of human thought, its forms and its tasks (392 pp.), of which »Totalitet som Kategori« (1917) and »Relation som Kategori« are extended workings-out.
Religion og Videnskab
1910. Gyldendal, Copenhagen
Religionshistoriske Smaaskrifter, no. 1 (59 pp.), a follow-up to Religionsfilosofi (1901).
Personlighedsprincippet i Filosofien
1911. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1911 (Swedish, auth. trans. Irene Leopold); Danish trans. Mogens Blegvad, Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2013
Six lectures, Helsingfors spring 1911. First published in Swedish; Danish trans. Mogens Blegvad. Transcribed and translated here from the Swedish print of 1911, the text of record (Høffding's Danish manuscript is not known to survive).
Editorial apparatus (Blegvad introduction; Koch commentary & afterword)Source PDFto do Mindre Arbejder. Tredie Række
1913. København: Gyldendal, 1913. 234 pp. (Dansk Bogfortegnelse 1909–14, p. 147)
The third collection of Høffding's shorter writings, eighteen pieces from 1901 to 1912: on culture, the will and ethics (Aandelig Kultur, Begrebet Villie, Human Etik, Sociologi og Etik), on Plato, Democritus, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, on Rousseau, Goethe, Schiller, Napoleon, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and on Darwin; with »En filosofisk Bekendelse« (from his American lectures of 1904) and a speech at the memorial celebration for Krøyer (1909).
Henri Bergson's Filosofi. Karakteristik og Kritik
1914. Kjøbenhavn og Kristiania: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag (Græbes Bogtrykkeri), 70 pp.
Høffding's characterization and critique of Bergson, in six chapters: the task of philosophy, intuition, psychology and physiology, the philosophy of evolution, the psychology of will and of laughter, and the attempt at metaphysics. He praises Bergson as a descriptive psychologist and critic of association psychology, but distinguishes four kinds of intuition and argues that Bergson's metaphysical intuition rests on an analogy experience cannot confirm, and so is art rather than science. French translation by Jacques de Coussange, »La philosophie de Bergson. Exposé et critique« (Paris: Alcan, 1916), with a letter from Bergson to the author.
Den store Humor. En psykologisk Studie
1916. København og Kristiania: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1916. 178 pp.
A psychological study of humor as a »Totalfølelse«, a feeling that takes in the whole of life and not a single experience, in nine chapters: humor as total feeling; laughter and humor; irony and humor; the main forms of humor; the tragic and humor; understanding and humor; action and humor; the historical conditions of humor; humor and philosophy; with an index.
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
An epistemological inquiry into totality as a category, in six chapters: the place of the doctrine of categories in philosophy; the concept of totality and the fundamental categories; the concept of totality and the formal categories; the concept of totality and the real categories; totality and value; totality as a limiting concept. It ends with a table of the categories (»Kategoritavle«, cf. »Den menneskelige Tanke«, 1910). Høffding cites it in »Erkendelsesteori og Livsopfattelse« (1925), which glosses the title 'Totality as a Category'.
Spinoza's Ethica. Analyse og Karakteristik
1918. D. Kgl. Danske Vidensk. Selsk. Skrifter, 7. Række, historisk og filosofisk Afd. III, 3. København: Andr. Fred. Høst & Søn; Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri, 1918. 97 pp.
An analysis and characterization of Spinoza's Ethics, published in the Royal Danish Academy's series four decades after Høffding's »Spinozas Liv og Lære« (1877).
Oplevelse og Tydning. Religionsfilosofiske Studier
1918. Nyt Nordisk Forlag, Copenhagen
The title study asks how strong experiences have been interpreted as religious: in totemism, Bacchic frenzy, witch trials and spiritualism; in the prophets, early Christianity, Neoplatonism, Augustine and medieval mysticism; in St. Teresa; and in a modern mystic whose ecstasies Flournoy recorded. Its conclusion treats the relation of experience to interpretation as a problem for both epistemology and psychology. Six essays follow: on sociology and the philosophy of religion (Durkheim), on consolation, on the history of prayer, on the correspondence of two pastors (Otto Møller and Skat Rørdam), on Madvig as a philosopher, and on Aristotle on friendship.
Bemærkninger om den platoniske Dialog Parmenides
1920. Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Filosofiske Meddelelser I, 2. København: Andr. Fred. Høst & Søn; Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri
A reading of Plato's »Parmenides«: the objections to the doctrine of Ideas in the first part are taken to hold, and to bear on every attempt at metaphysics; then the second part, Plato's concept of the sudden (τὸ ἐξαίφνης) set against Kierkegaard's leap, and the later dialogues. »Relation som Kategori« (1921) cites it, and »Begrebet Analogi« corrects what it says about unity and identity in Plato.
Ledende Tanker i det nittende Aarhundrede
1920. København: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag; Swedish ed. »Ledande tankar under det nittonde århundradet«, Stockholm: Norstedt, 1921, 146 pp.
Written at Gyldendal's invitation for its collection of works on the culture of the nineteenth century, issued in Danish and Swedish. Its thesis is that the nineteenth century was the age of confirmation by experience, of specialization and of technical application, in which the great theoretical and practical ideas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were put to the test of experiment and life. Høffding counts it among his historical works of the Carlsberg years, and cites it in the third edition of »Religionsfilosofi« (1924).
Relation som Kategori: en erkendelsesteoretisk Undersøgelse
1921. Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen
Høffding's late 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 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. Published in Filosofiske Meddelelser I, 3. Høffding's own annotated copy, with notes on Bohr, Russell, James and Kierkegaard, is listed below.
Relation som Kategori (1921), Høffding's annotated copy
1921. Manuscript marginalia
Høffding's own copy of »Relation som Kategori«, with his handwritten notes on Bohr's lecture of August 1929 (whether quantum theory leaves only description, not causal explanation), on Russell's and James's theories of belief in »The Analysis of Mind«, on Einstein, and on Kierkegaard. The note on this page previews them, with provisional readings and translations.
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
Published in the Academy's »Filosofiske Meddelelser« (II, 1). Høffding moves from the theory of knowledge to the conception of life, in seven chapters: epistemology; organism; personality; view of life (»Livsanskuelse«); worldview (»Verdensanskuelse«); religion; and the poetry of life (»Livspoesi«).
Religiøse Tanketyper
1927. København: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1927.
Lectures and essays from 1922–27 on types of thought about religion in thinkers and poets, introduced by two statements of his own standpoint: the lecture given in the University's Festsal after his eightieth birthday (»Filosofiske Synspunkter«, 1923) and »Om min Forfattervirksomhed«. Then Plato, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, »Pascal og Kierkegaard« (1923; cf. »Pascal et Kierkegaard«), »Sibbern og Kierkegaard«, and pieces on modern literature ending with Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Erindringer
1928. Gyldendalske Boghandel, Copenhagen
Høffding's memoirs, from his childhood in the 1840s to 1924, written in the winter of 1915–16, in 1922 and in 1924 and published in 1928: his family and schooling, his teachers Rasmus Nielsen, Sibbern and Brøchner, his youthful crisis over Kierkegaard and faith and knowledge, his career, friendships (Brandes, William James, Pontoppidan) and travels, the war years and the old age at Carlsberg. Text of the 1928 first printing; English translation.
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
Secondary literature
Harald Høffding: Bidrag til Biografi og Karakteristik
Erik Rindom. 1913. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 94 pp., with portrait
A biographical sketch and characterization of Høffding, published in his lifetime. Page images at HathiTrust (US access only).
Samtaler med Harald Høffding, 1909–1918
Erik Rindom. 1918. Copenhagen: Nyt nordisk Forlag, 119 pp., with portrait
Rindom's record of his conversations with Høffding over the years 1909–1918. Page images at HathiTrust.
Harald Høffding som Religionsfilosof og to andre Karakteristiker
Valdemar Hansen. 1923. Copenhagen, 1923
A characterization of Høffding as philosopher of religion, printed with two shorter portraits, of Vitalis Norström and William James. The author (1881–1967) was a librarian at the Royal Library and wrote several philosophical books.
Complete book — not heldreference
Mindeord over afdøde Medlemmer: Harald Høffding (11. Marts 1843–2. Juli 1931)
Vilhelm Grønbech & Niels Bohr. 1931. Oversigt over Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Virksomhed 1931–1932, pp. 57–136
The two memorial addresses given at the meeting of the Royal Danish Academy on 11 December 1931. Grønbech's long address (pp. 57–130) surveys Høffding's authorship as a whole, including his debt to Kierkegaard; Bohr's (pp. 131–136) is a personal tribute from Høffding's former student and friend.
I. Vilhelm Grønbech (pp. 57–130)reference
II. Niels Bohr (pp. 131–136)reference
Bevidsthedsproblemet i Harald Høffdings filosofi
David Favrholdt. 1969. Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser udgivet af Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, vol. 44, no. 4. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 37 pp.
A study of the problem of consciousness in Høffding's philosophy, by the Odense philosopher (1931–2012) who later edited Bohr's philosophical writings and wrote on Høffding's place in Bohr's philosophical background. Still in copyright.
Religion og kultur hos Harald Høffding
Poul Juul Foss. 1996. Kirkehistoriske Samlinger 1996, pp. 149–169
Reads Høffding's psychology of religion, with its question whether religion can make human beings active and harmonious, from a theological standpoint, and argues that Høffding saw a conflict with Christianity, which he thought would survive only as an ethical, cosmic-poetic attitude cut off from its historical roots. Open access.
Filosoffernes psykologitradition
Stig Dankert Hjort. 2000. Psyke & Logos, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 56–115
A history of the philosophical psychology taught for the filosofikum at the Danish universities, divided at 1882, the year of Høffding's »Psykologi i Omrids«. The second part follows Høffding's descriptive, empirical psychology and its successors up to Jørgen Jørgensen's textbook of 1941–45. Open access.
Harald Høffdings demokratiske radikalisme
Henrik Wivel. 2006–2009. Dansk litteraturs historie, period 1870–1920, ed. Klaus P. Mortensen & May Schack (Gyldendal, 2006–2009)
A chapter on Høffding's place in the literary and cultural life of the Modern Breakthrough, from »Psykologi i Omrids« (1882) and »Etik« (1887) to »Søren Kierkegaard som Filosof« (1892) and »Religionsfilosofi« (1901). Free online at lex.dk.
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