Julius von Kirchmann

Julius Hermann von Kirchmann was a German jurist and philosopher.

Career

Born in Schafstädt near Merseburg, Kirchmann was educated at Leipzig and Halle universities. He was made state's attorney in the criminal court of Berlin in 1846, and two years afterwards was chosen to the Prussian National Assembly. From 1871 to 1876, he was a member of the Reichstag, the German Empire's parliament, for the German Progress Party. His philosophy was an attempt to mediate between realism and idealism. On the fugacity of law, he said "only three words of the legislature can destroy whole libraries".

Writings

Kirchmann first attracted attention as a philosopher by his brochure Die Wertlosigkeit der Jurisprudenz als Wissenschaft. His other philosophical writings include: Ueber Unsterblichkeit, Aesthetik auf realistischer Grundlage ; translations of parts of Aristotle, Roger Bacon, Hugo Grotius, David Hume, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Baruch Spinoza, and a remarkable edition of Immanuel Kant in the Philosophische Bibliothek, edited by him, and of Thomas Hobbes' De Cive.