Karl Ludwig Michelet

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Karl Ludwig Michelet (4 December 1801 – 15 December 1893) was a German philosopher from Berlin. He studied at Humboldt University, earned a doctorate in 1824, and became a professor there in 1829, a position he held for the rest of his life. A devoted follower of Hegel, he spent his career defending and expanding the Hegelian tradition.

His first major book, System der philosophischen Moral (1828), explores ethical responsibility. In 1836 he published a French study of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Examen critique du livre d'Aristote intitulé Metaphysique, which was praised by the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. He also wrote on Aristotle, including Nikomachische Ethik and Die Ethik des Aristoteles in ihrem Verhältniss zum System der Moral.

Michelet’s own views appeared in Vorlesungen über die Persönlichkeit Gottes und die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (1841) and Die Epiphanie der ewigen Persönlichkeit des Gottes (1844–52), a form of Neo-Christian Spiritualism. From 1832 to 1842 he edited Hegel’s complete works and wrote several volumes to explain Hegel’s system, such as Geschichte der letzten Systeme der Philosophie in Deutschland von Kant bis Hegel and Schelling und Hegel. In Anthropologie und Psychologie (1840) he began to diverge from some Hegelian ideas.

His other writings covered travel, the history of humanity, natural law, and logic. In 1845 he founded the Berlin Philosophical Society, which promoted Hegelian ideas, and he became the first editor of Der Gedanke, the society’s official journal (1860).