Friedrich Karl Forberg was a German philosopher and classical scholar.

Biography

He studied under Karl Leonhard Reinhold

Karl Leonhard Reinhold

Karl Leonhard Reinhold was an Austrian philosopher. He was the father of Ernst Reinhold, also a philosopher.-Life:...

 at Jena

Jena

Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...

. In 1791 he travelled to Klagenfurt

Klagenfurt

-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...

, writing to Reinhold that there was much sympathy for the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, and to the followers of Immanuel 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....

 that the young ladies of Klagenfurt substituted Kant's writings (modestly bound in black) for their prayer books.

He was a headmaster at Saalfeld/Saale, and from 1801 to 1826 Director of the Sächsische Landesbibliothek. His philosophical publications are less known now than his 1824 edition of an erotic poem sequence in renaissance Latin, Hermaphroditus by Antonio Beccadelli

Antonio Beccadelli

Antonio Beccadelli , called Il Panormita , was an Italian poet, canon lawyer, scholar, diplomat, and chronicler. He generally wrote in Latin...

. This was accompanied by Forberg's own learned commentary, which took the form of a catalogue and anthology of descriptions of sexual acts and postures in classical and later literature.

Forberg's journal article regarding religion and its effect on morality initiated the Atheism Dispute

Atheism Dispute

The Atheism Dispute was an event in German cultural history that lasted between 1798–1800 which had an effect on the German philosophy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.- History :...

 which resulted in Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...

's dismissal from his professorship.

Works

• 1796 (anonymous) Fragmente aus meinen Papieren
• 1797 "Briefe über die neueste Philosophie", in Philosophisches Journal
• 1798 "Entwickelung des Begriffs der Religion", in Philosophisches Journal
• 1802 Von den Pflichten des Gelehrten
• 1824 Antonii Panormitae Hermaphroditus
  • The commentary to the poem is better known as a separate publication under the titles De figuris Veneris
    De figuris Veneris
    De figuris Veneris was an anthology of ancient Greek and ancient Roman writings on erotic topics, discussed objectively and classified and grouped by subject matter...
    
    , variously translated as Manual of classical erotology, Manuel d’érotologie classique or Manual de erótica clásica (Edición de Luis Parra y José M. Ruiz, Ediciones Clásicas, Madrid 2007)
• 1840 Lebenslauf eines Verschollenen

External links

• Full bio-bibliography on the German Wikipedia