Rehmke, Johannes
Rehmke, Johannes
Born Feb. 1, 1848, in Elmshorn; died Dec. 23, 1930, in Marburg. German idealist philosopher and representative of immanentism.
Rehmke was a professor at Greifswald from 1885 to 1921. Criticizing materialism, naïve realism, and the philosophy of I. Kant (for its acceptance of the thing-in-itself), he held that the knowable and reality are directly given, and immanent to, consciousness (see “O dostovernosti vneshnego mira dlia nas” [Our Certainty About the External World], in the collection Novye idei v filosofii[New Ideas in Philosophy], fase. 6, St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 81). From this standpoint he rejected the opposition between subject and object that he thought characteristic of all earlier philosophy. Philosophy, understood by Rehmke to be the basic branch of knowledge, proceeds from recognition of the logical primacy of the universal over the particular. In Rehmke’s ethics, morality is understood to be self-sacrificing love for other people. Rehmke’s philosophy was subjected to criticism by V. I. Lenin in Materialism and Empiriocriticism.
Rehmke’s followers founded a society named for the philosopher in 1919. The society published the journal Grundwissenschaft from 1919 to 1937.
WORKS
Das Bewusstsein. Heidelberg, 1910.Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Psychologie, 3rd ed. Leipzig, 1926.
Philosophie als Grundwissenschaft, 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1929.
Logik der Philosophie als Wissenslehre, 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1923.
Grundlegung der Ethik als Wissenschaft. Leipzig, 1925.
Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, 5th ed. Frankfurt am Main-Bonn, 1965.
In Russian translation:
Dusha cheloveka. St. Petersburg, 1906.
REFERENCES
Bakradze, K. S. Ocherki po istorii noveishei i sovremennoi burzhuaznoi filosofii. Tbilisi, 1960. Pages 136–42.Troberg, G. Kritik der Grundwissenschaft J. Rehmkes. Munich, 1941.
A. P. OGURTSOV