Christian Hermann Weisse

Christian Hermann Weisse (1801 to 1866) was a German Protestant religious philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig, where he was also born and educated. He began as an adherent of the Hegelian school, later moved closer to the ideas of Schelling, and with I. H. Fichte developed a new speculative theism that opposed Hegelian idealism. His addresses on the future of the Protestant Church of 1849 and his Philosophical Dogmatics of 1855 to 1862 sought to reduce Christian dogma to natural postulates of reason or conscience. In 1838 he became the first theologian to propose the two-source hypothesis of the gospels, which most biblical scholars still hold. He contributed to the journal of philosophy and speculative theology that Fichte edited, and as a teacher of Hermann Lotze he influenced the later anti-psychologistic approach of Lotze to the history of philosophy. He is included here as an influence on nineteenth century German thought about mind, value and religion.