author
Richard Falckenberg
1851–1920
A clear and widely read historian of philosophy, he helped generations of students navigate modern thought from Nicholas of Cusa to the nineteenth century. His work combines scholarly range with an unusually steady, readable style.
1 Audiobook
History of Modern Philosophy From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time
by Richard Falckenberg
About the author
Richard Falckenberg was a German philosopher and historian of philosophy, born in Magdeburg on December 23, 1851, and died in Jena on September 28, 1920. He studied at Jena, Leipzig, Halle, Erlangen, and Göttingen, earned his doctorate in Jena in 1877, completed his habilitation there in 1880, and later became professor of philosophy at the University of Erlangen, where he taught from 1889 until 1920.
He is remembered above all as a teacher and writer on the history of philosophy. His best-known book, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie von Nikolaus von Kues bis zur Gegenwart, reached a wide readership and was translated into English as History of Modern Philosophy. He also wrote on Nicolaus Cusanus and Hermann Lotze, and his work is often described as careful, objective, and especially useful for students.
Accounts of his philosophical outlook describe it as a moderate or critically minded idealism, influenced in part by figures such as Fichte, Lotze, and Rudolf Eucken. Even when writing large surveys, he aimed to present thinkers in their own terms, which helps explain why his histories remained useful long after their first publication.