Herbart, Johann Friedrich (1776–1841)

German philosopher and educationist. He wrote extensively on philosophy, psychology, and education. In his work on psychology Herbart rejects the doctrine of mental faculties and endeavours to prove that all psychic phenomena whatsoever proceed from the action and interaction of elementary ideas or presentations (Vorstellungen). Unlike contemporary reformers, Herbart had a theory of education. He imbibed the ideas of his friend the Swiss educationist, Johann Pestalozzi, and did much to make education and educational methods a science. As to his philosophy, which was based on that of Kant, the cardinal point of his ontology is that it is a ‘pluralistic realism’. As a metaphysician Herbart proceeds from what he calls ‘the higher scepticism’ of the Hume-Kantian sphere of thought, the source of which he sees in Locke's perplexity over the idea of substance.

Herbart was born in Oldenburg, Germany. In 1794 he went to the University of Jena, becoming a pupil of the German philosopher Johann Fichte, but soon began to disagree with him. In 1802 he went to the University of Göttingen, where in 1804 he published Allgemeine Pädagogik/General Pedagogy, his main work on education. In 1809 he accepted the chair of philosophy at Königsberg University, and published in 1812 Lehrbuch zur Einleitung in die Philosophie/An Introduction to Philosophy, his best known book. His chief psychological work, Psychologie als Wissenschaft neu begrundet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik und Mathematik/Psychology as a Science of Experience, Metaphysics, and Mathematics, appeared in 1824–25, and the system of metaphysics on which the fundamental principle of his psychology rested was published in 1828–29 as Allgemeine Metaphysik nebst Neuanfängen der philosophischen Naturlehre/General Metaphysics including New Beginnings in Philosophy.