He was born at Leichlingen, in Rhenish Prussia, where his father was Lutheran pastor. Educated at Göttingen and Berlin, he qualified at Bonn as Privatdozent in philosophy (1852). In 1862 he was called to Königsberg as extraordinary professor, and in 1867 he was promoted to the ordinary grade. He married in 1863.
His compendious History of Philosophy is remarkable for its fullness of information, conciseness, accuracy and impartiality. At first he followed Beneke's empiricism, and strongly opposed the subjectivistic tendency of the Kantian system, maintaining in particular the objectivity of space and time, which involved him in a somewhat violent controversy. His own mode of thought he preferred later to describe as an ideal realism, which refused to reduce reality to thought, but asserted a parallelism between the forms of existence and the forms of knowledge. Beneke and Friedrich Schleiermacher exercised most influence upon the development of his thought.
This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.Works
See FA Lange, Friedrich Ueberweg (Berlin, 1871); M Brasch, Die Welt und Lebensanschauung Friedrich Ueberwegs (Leipzig, 1889).