BECK, JAKOB SIGISMUND German phil osopher, born at Danzig and educated at Konigsberg, became professor of philosophy at Halle and at Rostock. He devoted himself to interpreting the doctrine of Kant, and in 1793 pub lished the Erlauternder Auszug aus Kants kritischen Schrif ten, a compendium of Kantian doctrine, in which certain of the Kant ian contradictions are explained on the supposition that much of the language is used in a popular sense for the sake of intel ligibility. Beck maintains that Kant's theory is really an idealism, asserting that knowledge of objects outside the domain of con sciousness is impossible, and that nothing positive remains when we have removed the subjective element. Matter is deduced by the "original synthesis." Similarly, the idea of God is a symbolical representation of the guiding voice of conscience. The value of Beck's exegesis has been to a great extent overlooked owing to the attention given to the work of Fichte. Beside the Erlauternder Auszug, he published the Grundriss der krit. Philosophie (1796), containing an interpretation of the Kantian Kritik in the manner of Salomon Maimon.
See Ueberweg, Grundriss der Gesch. der Philos. der Neuzeit (1914); Dilthey, in the Archiv fiir Geschichte der Philos., vol. ii. pp. 0880. For Beck's letters to Kant, see R. Reicke, Aus Kants Brie f wechsel (Konigsberg, i885).