Johannes Nikolaus Tetens

Who was Johannes Nikolaus Tetens?

Johannes Nikolaus Tetens was a German philosopher, statistician and scientist.

He has been called 'the German Hume', on the basis of a comparison of his major work Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung with David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. He is considered to have been an influence on Immanuel Kant.

Born 1736 in Tetenbüll. From 1760, he taught philosophy and physics in the Buetzow Academy. During this decade, he wrote many treatises on various subjects, ranging from the color of the sky to the existence of God through the origins of languages. After this polygraphic formation period, Tetens goes back to more fundamental enquiries: after having read David Hume's work, he popularized it throughout the German-speaking world. Tetens is therefore supposed to have introduced Immanuel Kant to phenomenological thought and to the empiricism / transcendence dualism.

In 1776, Tetens became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kiel, which might have appeared to be his final professional position. Nonetheless, in the years following 1789, Tetens begun another career as a high ranking Danish civil servant: member of the Finanzcollegium in Copenhagen, then counselor of state, and co-director of the state bank and director of the widow pension funds. By this time, he was interested in pure maths as well as in applications. His interest in polynomial algebra was influenced by his belonging to the German combinatorial school of Carl Friederich Hindenburg, Christian Kramp and others. His main applied work was concentrated on actuarial mathematics.