Daub, KARL

Daub, KARL, a speculative theologian, was born 20th March 1765, at Cassel, studied philosophy and theology at Marburg, and became in 1795 professor of Theology at Heidelberg, where he died 22d November 1836. An earnest and singularly open-minded seeker after truth, although defective in the true historical sense, and not a robust and independent thinker, Daub laboured incessantly to find a sound basis for a reconciliation between religion and philosophy, and his successive writings reflect the whole development of prevailing philosophy from Kant to Hegel. Thus his Lehrbuch der Katechetik (1801) rests completely on Kant's fundamental principles; again, dominated by the influence of Schelling's 'philosophy of identity' are his Theologumena (1806) and Einleitung to Christian dogmatics (1810); while Schelling's transition to theosophy and to 'positive philosophy' is mirrored in Daub's Judas Ischarioth (1816), despite its eccentricities his best work. Hegel was called to Heidelberg in 1816, and henceforth it was his influence which was dominant over the receptive mind of Daub. In his Dogmatische Theologie (1833) and Prolegomena (1835), he attempts in the darkest language of the Hegelian dialectic a philosophical restoration of the dogmas of the church. Daub's Thol.-philos. Vorlesungen were collected by Marheineke and Dittenberger in seven volumes (1838-43). See Rosenkranz's eulogistic but uncritical Erinnerungen (1837), and D. F. Strauss, Charakteristiken und Kritiken (2d ed. 1844).