Karl wilhelm von humboldt biography

Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand, or Baron von Humboldt (June 22, 1767 – April 8, 1835), was a government official, diplomat, philosopher, linguist, and educational reformer, famous for introducing knowledge of the Basque language to European intelligentsia. His younger brother, Alexander von Humboldt was an equally famous naturalist and scientist. Wilhelm von Humboldt was influential in developing the science of comparative philology, and his work has continued to inform the field of linguistics. His view that language expresses the culture of the speaker and is a determinant in our perception of the world was developed much later into the field of ethnolinguistics. He was the founder of Humboldt Universität in Berlin, and made significant contributions to the educational system in Prussia and, through its influence, to the world.

Life

Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt was born on June 22, 1767 in Potsdam, Prussia (toda

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Wilhelm von Humboldt

Prussian philosopher, government official, diplomat, and educator (1767–1835)

Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt^[a] (22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835) was a German philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1949, the university was named after him and his younger brother, Alexander von Humboldt, a naturalist.

He was a linguist who made contributions to the philosophy of language, ethnolinguistics, and to the theory and practice of education. He made a major contribution to the development of liberalism by envisioning education as a means of realizing individual possibility rather than a way of drilling traditional ideas into youth to suit them for an already established occupation or social role.^[6] In particular, he was the architect of the Humboldtian education ideal, which was used from the beginning in Prussia as a model for its system of public edu

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Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767-1835)

This essay first appeared in the New Individualist Review, vol. 1, no. 1, April 1961 published bygd the University of Chicago chapter of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. The entire periodical was reprinted by Liberty Fund in 1981. The biographical essay on Humboldt was written by Ralph Raico who was then a graduate student at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and the Editor-in-Chief of the Review. It was the first in a series of essays on "Great Individualists of the Past" and further essays "on past thinkers who have contributed to individualist philosophy... such as Burke, Acton, Bastiat and Herbert Spencer" were promised.

Ralph Raico, "Great Individualists of the Past: Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835)"

When Oswald Spengler in one of his minor books scornfully characterized German classical liberalism as, "a bit of the spirit of England on German soil," he was merely displaying the willful blindness