Otto Liebmann (25 February 1840 – 14 January 1912) was a German neo-Kantian philosopher.

Biography

He was born at Löwenberg, Silesia, into a Jewish family, and educated at Leipzig and Halle. He was made professor at Strassburg (1872) and went to Jena in 1882. He died at Jena. The mathematician Heinrich Liebmann was his son.

Philosophical work

A forerunner of neo-Kantianism, in his best-known book, Kant und die Epigonen, he deals with the philosophy after Kant, discussing Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Fries, Herbart and Schopenhauer. Having credited Kant's philosophy (though criticizing it on the vital point of accepting a thing-in-itself), he focuses on what he sees as the shortcomings in the approaches of Kants successors. He frequently ends a section with the statement that one should return to Kant. Liebmann's work also influenced his Jena colleague Gottlob Frege.

Works