Background
Heffding, Harald was born on March 11, 1843 in Copenhagen.
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Harald Heffding
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Education
Copenhagen.
Career
1883-1915, Professor of Philosophy, Copenhagen.
Views
HofTding initially studied theology but decided lot to take religious orders and. after a religious orisis, eventually became a liberal humanist. As a result of a stay in Paris from 1865 to 1869 his Philosophical outlook was decisively influenced hy French and English positivism. His Ethics (1887) is broadly utilitarian. In Philosophy of Religion (1906) he claimed that the basis of all religion is a wish to believe in the existence of values. His most influential work has been his history of modem philosophy from the end of the Renaissance to 1880 (1894-1895), in which the ‘Romantic speculation' of post-Kantian idealism is represented as giving way to positivism. He gave substantially more space to Comte, J. S. Mill, Darwin and Spcnccr than to Hegel. His history emphasized the contribution of scientists to the development of philosophy. Here, and in his epistemological work of 1910, HofTding showed apartieularsympathyforHumeand Kant. He has been criticized, for instance by Hartnack, for tending to psychologize epistemology and in this respect his huge influence on Danish philosophy in the period up to the Second World War has been regretted. It has been claimed that he was a significant influence on Niels Bohr. Less controversially, he played a major role in turning Danish philosophy away from Hegelianism and moving it in the empirical and positivistic direction taken by pupils such as Jorgensen. He had a considerable international reputation and many of his books were translated into German, French. Russian and Italian, as well as English. Sources: Burr: Schmidt, Raymund (1923) Die Philosophie der Gegenwarl in Selbstdarstellungen, vol. 4. Leipzig; Huisman; Edwards.
