Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus

Who was Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus?

Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus was a German philosopher best known for his exegetical work on philosophy, such as his characterisation of Hegel's dialectic as positing a triad of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.

He was born at Pfaffroda in Saxony. For some years he taught at the knight academy in Dresden, and won a high reputation by his lectures on the history of philosophy in Germany. In 1839 he became professor in Kiel University, where, with the exception of one brief interval, when he was expelled with several colleagues because of his German sympathies, he remained till his death.

His first published work, Historische Entwicklung der spekulativen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel, which still ranks among the best expositions of modern German thought, has been twice translated into English, by Alfred Tulk, and by Alfred Edersheim. His chief works are Entwurf eines Systems der Wissenschaftslehre and System der spekulativen Ethik.

He opposed both the extreme realism of Herbart and what he regarded as the one-sided idealism of Hegel, and endeavoured to find a mean between them, to discover the ideal or formal principle which unfolds itself in the real or material world presented to it. His Wissenschaftslehre, accordingly, divides itself into