BENEKE, FRIEDRICH EDUARD Ger man psychologist, was born at Berlin on Feb. 17, 1798, and edu cated at the universities of Halle and Berlin. After studying theology under Schleiermacher and de Wette, he turned to philo sophy, especially to English writers and the German modifiers of Kantianism, such as Jacobi, Fries and Schopenhauer. In 182o he published his Erkenntnisslehre, his Er f ahrungsseelenlehre als Grundlage alles Wissens, and his De Veris Philosophiae Initiis. His marked opposition to Hegelianism then dominant in Berlin, was shown more clearly in the short tract, Neue Grundlegung zur Metaphysik (1822), and in the able treatise, Grundlegung zur Physik der Sitten (1822), written against Kant's Metaphysic of Ethics deducing ethical principles from a basis of empirical feeling. In 1822 his lectures were prohibited at Berlin, possibly through Hegel's influence with the authorities, who also prevented him from obtaining a chair from the Saxon Government. After lecturing at Gottingen he was allowed to return to Berlin, and in 1832 became professor extraordinarius in the university, a post which he continued to hold till his death. In his Neue Psychologie (1845) and his Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaf t (1833), Beneke signalized as the two great stages in the progress of psychology the negation of innate ideas by Locke, and of fac ulties, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, by Herbart. His own contribution to the subject consists in his insistence that em pirical psychology is the basis of all philosophy, that psychology depends on introspection and must be free from metaphysics and mathematics, and that mental phenomena must be treated by the genetic method. Starting from the rejections of innate ideas and the theory of faculties, Beneke supposes that originally the soul is an immense variety of powers or forces which differ only in tenacity, vivacity, receptivity and grouping and which gradually acquire definiteness through the action of stimuli from the outer world. If the impression be sufficiently strong, consciousness arises, and definite sensations and perceptions begin to be formed. There are no special faculties of judgment or reasoning. Judg ment is the springing into consciousness of a concept alongside of an intuition, or of a higher concept alongside of a lower. Rea soning is merely a more complex judgment. The understanding is simply the mass of concepts lying in the background of un consciousness, ready to be called up and to flow with force to wards anything closely connected with them. Even memory is not a special faculty; it is simply the fundamental property of tenacity possessed by the original faculties. The very distinction between the great classes—Knowledge, Feeling and Will—may be referred to elementary differences in the original relations of fac ulty and impression (see ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS).
The special value of Beneke's works consists in their many acute psychological analyses which can be utilized in the train ing of unformed minds, but their original hypotheses are often hastily assumed and rest on a clumsy mechanical metaphor. As in all empirical theories of mental development, the higher cate gories which are apparently shown to result from the simple ele ments, are really presupposed at every step. Particularly unsat isfactory is the account of consciousness, which is said to arise from the union of impression and faculty. The necessity of con sciousness for any mental action whatsoever is apparently granted, but the conditions involved in it are never discussed or mentioned. The same defect appears in the account of ethical judgment; no amount of empirical fact can ever yield the notion of absolute duty.
A complete list of Beneke's writings appears in the appendix to Dressler's edition of the Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissen schaft (1861). The chief are:—Psychologische Skizzen (1825) ; Prag matische Psychologie oder Seelenlehre in der Anwendung auf das Leben (1832) ; Metaphysik and Religion,philosophie (184o) ; Die neue Psy chologie (1845) ; see also J. G. Dressler, Beneke oder Seelenlehre als Naturwissenschaft; O. E. Hummel, Die Unterrichtslehre Benekes (1885) ; C. H. Th. Kuhn, Die Sittenlehre F. E. Benekes (1892) ; Brandt, Beneke, the Man and His Philosophy (New York, 1895) ; Joh. Friedrich, F. E. Beneke (Wiesbaden, 1898, with biography and list of works) ; Otto Gramzow, F. E. Benekes Leben and Philos. (Berne, 1899, with full bibliography) ; H. Hoffding, Hist. of Mod. Phil., vol. ii. (Eng. trans., 1900) ; H. Renner, Benekes Erkenntnistheorie (Halle, 1902) ; A. Wandschneider, Die Metaphysik Benekes (1903) ; G. S. Brett, Hist. of Psychology, vol. iii. (1921) ; F. Ueberweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, pt. iv. (1923) .