The New International Encyclopædia/Kirchmann, Julius von

KIRCHMANN, kḗr K 'mȧn, (1802-84). A German jurist and philosopher, born near Merseburg. He was educated at Leipzig and Halle. In 1846 he was made State's attorney in the Criminal Court of Berlin, and two years afterwards was chosen to the Prussian National Assembly. From 1871 to 1876 he was a member of the German Reichstag. He first attracted attention as a philosopher by his brochure Die Wertlosigkeit der Jurisprudenz als Wissenschaft (1848). His other philosophical writings include: Ueber Unsterblichkeit (1865); Aesthetik auf realistischer Grundlage (1868); translations of parts of Aristotle, Bacon, Grotius, Hume, Leibnitz, and Spinoza, and a remarkable edition of Kant in the Philosophische Bibliothek, edited by him (1868 et seq.), and of Hobbes, De Cive (1873). His philosophy was an attempt to mediate between realism and idealism. Consult Lasson and Meineke, Julius von Kirchmann als Philosoph (Halle, 1885).