Eduard Gottlob Zeller was a German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 philosopher and theologian

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

 of the Tübingen School of theology.

Life

Eduard Zeller was born at Kleinbottwar in Württemberg

Württemberg

Württemberg , formerly known as Wirtemberg or Wurtemberg, is an area and a former state in southwestern Germany, including parts of the regions Swabia and Franconia....

, and educated at the University of Tübingen and under the influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...

. In 1840 he was Privatdozent of theology

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

 at Tübingen, in 1847 professor of theology at Berne

University of Berne

The University of Bern is a university in the Swiss capital of Bern and was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the Canton of Bern. It is a comprehensive university offering a broad choice of courses and programmes in eight faculties and some 160 institutes. The university is an...

, in 1849 professor of theology at Marburg

Marburg

Marburg is a city in the state of Hesse, Germany, on the River Lahn. It is the main town of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district and its population, as of March 2010, was 79,911.- Founding and early history :...

, migrating soon afterwards to the faculty of philosophy as the result of disputes with the Clerical party. He became professor of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg in 1862, moved to Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 in 1872, and retired around 1895. His great work is his Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung (The Philosophy of Greeks in their Historical Development) (1844-52). This book he continued to amplify and improve in the light of further research; the last edition appeared in 1902. It was translated into most of the European languages and became the recognized text-book on Greek philosophy.

Zeller was also very active on theology, and published three volumes of philosophical essays. He was also one of the founders of the Theologische Jahrbücher, a periodical which acquired great importance as the exponent of the historical method of David Strauss and Christian Baur

Ferdinand Christian Baur

Ferdinand Christian Baur was a German theologian and leader of the Tübingen school of theology...

. Like most of his contemporaries he began with Hegelianism, but subsequently he developed a system on his own lines. He saw the necessity of going back to Kant in the sense of demanding a critical reconsideration of the epistemological problems which Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

 had made but a partially successful attempt to solve.

Thought

Nonetheless his merits as an original thinker are far outshone by his splendid services to the history of philosophy. Zeller's conception of the history of Greek thought was influenced by the dialectic

Dialectic

Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...

al philosophy of Hegel. Some critics maintain that Zeller was not alive enough to the so-called intimate relation which thought holds to national life and to the idiosyncrasy of the thinker. It is held in some circles that he lays too much stress upon the "concept," and explains too much by the Hegelian antithesis of subjective and objective despite the fact that his history of Greek philosophy is a noble monument of solid learning informed with natural sagacity. He received the highest recognition, not only from philosophers and learned societies all over the world, but also from the emperor and the German people. In 1894 the Emperor Wilhelm II made him a "Wirklicher Geheimrat" with the title of "Excellenz," and his bust, with that of Helmholtz

Hermann von Helmholtz

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science...

, was set up at the Brandenburg Gate

Brandenburg Gate

The Brandenburg Gate is a former city gate and one of the most well-known landmarks of Berlin and Germany. It is located west of the city centre at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße, immediately west of the Pariser Platz. It is the only remaining gate of a series through which...

 near the statues erected to the Emperor and Empress Frederick.

The Philosophie der Griechen has been translated into English by S. F. Alleyne (2 vols, 1881) in sections: S. F. Alleyne, History of Greek Philosophy to the time of Socrates (1881); O. J. Reichel, Socrates and the Socratic Schools (1868; 2nd ed. 1877); S. F. Alleyne and A. Goodwin, Plato and the Older Academy (1876); Benjamin Francis Conn Costelloe and J. H. Muirhead, Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics (1897); O. J. Reichel, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics (1870 and 1880); S. F. Alleyne, History of Eclecticism in Greek Philosophy (1883).

Zeller was also, in Philosophie der Griechen, one of the first to use the term "übermensch", later reified by Nietzsche, in adjectival form: "...so kann die Glückseligkeit, welche in ihr besteht, auch als eine übermenschliche, die Glückseligkeit der ethischen Tugend dagegen als das eigenthümlich menschliche Gut bezeichnet werden."

Works

The Philosophie appeared in an abbreviated form as Grundriss der Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie (1883; 5th ed. 1898); English transl. by Alleyne and Evelyn Abbott (1866), under the title, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy.

• Among his other works are:

• Platonische Studien (1839)
• Die Apostelgeschichte kritisch untersucht (1854; English transl. J Dare, 1875-76)
• Entwickelung des Monotheismus bei den Griechen (1862)
• Geschichte der christlichen Kirche (1898)
• Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibniz (1873, ed. 1875)
• Staat und Kirche (1873)
• Strauss in seinen Leben und Schriften (1874; English transl. 1874)
• Über Bedeutung und Aufgabe der Erkenntnisstheorie (1862)
• Über teleologische und mechanische Naturerklärung (1876)
• Vorträge und Abhandlungen (1865-84)
• Religion und Philosophie bei den Römern (1866, ed. 1871)
• Philosophische Aufsätze (1887).