Early Life
Beneke was born in Berlin. He studied at the universities of Halle and Berlin, and served as a volunteer in the War of 1815. After studying theology under Friedrich Schleiermacher and De Wette, he turned to pure philosophy, studying English writers and the German modifiers of Kantianism, such as Jacobi, Fries and Schopenhauer. In 1820, he published Erkenntnisslehre, Erfahrungsseelenlehre als Grundlage alles Wissens, and his inaugural dissertation De Veris Philosophiae Initiis. His marked opposition to the philosophy of Hegel, then dominant in Berlin, was shown more clearly in the short tract, Neue Grundlegung zur Metaphysik (1822), intended to be the programme for his lectures as Privatdozent, and in the able treatise, Grundlegung zur Physik der Sitten (1822), written, in direct antagonism to Kant's Metaphysic of Ethics, to deduce ethical principles from a basis of empirical feeling. In 1822 his lectures were prohibited in Berlin, because of the influence of Hegel with the Prussian authorities, who also prevented him from obtaining a chair from the Saxon government. He retired to Göttingen, lectured there for several years, and was then allowed to return to Berlin. In 1832 he received an appointment as professor extraordinarius at the university, which he continued to hold till his death. On March 1, 1854 he disappeared, and more than two years later his remains were found in the canal near Charlottenburg. There was some suspicion that he had committed suicide in a fit of mental depression.
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