Heinrich Ahrens
Heinrich Ahrens ( * July 14, 1808 in Kniestedt ( today Salzgitter); † August 2, 1874 in Salzgitter ) was a German philosopher of law and main representative named after him quite philosophical direction.
Life and work
Ahrens was the son of the estate manager Karl Heinrich Ahrens and his wife Lucie Christiane Huth. His school days spent Ahrens in his hometown and then began to study, where he joined in 1828 the local fraternity at the Georg- August-Universität Göttingen.
One of his teachers, the philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause was doing his idol. This is Ahrens habilitated in 1830 with his habilitation " De confoederatione germanica ". The political sensitivity of this because of work could Ahrens hope for any employment in the public service; the Bundestag saw in Ahrens a "agitators ".
Since Ahrens and his colleagues, the lawyer Johann Ernst Arminius noise Platt and Carl Wilhelm Theodor Schuster sparked the revolution in Göttingen in January 1831, the warning seemed almost prophetic. Since he was a wanted escaped Ahrens together with noise Platt to Brussels and then to Paris. There he earned his living in 1833 with presentations and lectures on the German philosophy since Kant Just one year later, he accepted an appointment as associate professor of philosophy at the University of Brussels.
In the course of political events of the March Revolution in 1848 Ahrens was able to return to Germany. From the ninth Hanover constituency in hell he was elected as a deputy in the National Assembly in Frankfurt. There he was a member of the Group of West Hall. In addition, he worked in the Committee on the draft of the constitution and the Greater German Constitutional Committee.
Two years later, Ahrens was a professor of philosophical law and political science at the Karl- Franzens- University of Graz. In 1859 he became Professor of Practical Philosophy and Politics at the University of Leipzig. As a representative of the University of Leipzig he was 1863/64, a deputy of the First Chamber of the Parliament of Saxony.
To put 1873 Prof. Ahrens down all his offices and retired into private life. He settled back in Salzgitter down and died there at the age of 66 years on August 2, 1874.
Based on the theories of his teacher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause Ahrens tried to develop an independent natural law, which he tried to face the law of reason of the Enlightenment. A lasting effect of his work was denied Ahrens, although he was already very well known in his lifetime in France, Spain and some countries in South America.
Works (selection)
- Cours de droit naturel. Paris 1839
- Organic Theory of the State on philosophical- anthropological basis (Vienna, 1850, his unfinished masterpiece )
- Fichte's political doctrine in its scientific, culturgeschichtlichen and general national importance: keynote speaker at the Spruce celebration at the University of Leipzig. Veit, Leipzig 1862 ( Digitized edition of the University and State Library Dusseldorf )
- Natural law or the philosophy of law according to the current state of the science in Germany. 6th ed Vienna 1870-71 ( 2 vols )
- Legal Encyclopedia. Vienna. 1855-57 (an organic presentation of Law and Political Science )
- De confoederatione Germanicae. Göttingen 1830 ( habilitation )