Rudolf Christoph Eucken: Biography from Answers.com Mobile

Rudolf Christoph Eucken

(born Jan. 5, 1846, Aurich, East Friesland — died Sept. 14, 1926, Jena, Ger.) German philosopher. He taught primarily at the University of Jena (1874 – 1920). Distrusting abstract intellectualism and systematics, Eucken centred his philosophy upon actual human experience. He maintained that man is the meeting place of nature and spirit and that it is a human duty and privilege to overcome nature by incessant striving after the spiritual life. A strong critic of naturalism, he held that humans are differentiated from the rest of the natural world by their possession of a soul, an entity that cannot be explained in terms of natural processes. He also was known as an interpreter of Aristotle. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1908.

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