Long 19th c. · 1767–1835
Who influenced Wilhelm von Humboldt?
Influences and legacy
Made language the defining act of spirit and the university a place to seek truth.
Wilhelm von Humboldt was influenced by Johann Gottfried Herder, and went on to influence Wilhelm Dilthey. That is 2 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Thomas Lawrence, Public domain See the whole map
Who was Wilhelm von Humboldt?
Wilhelm von Humboldt was a Prussian philosopher, linguist and diplomat and founded the university in Berlin that since 1949 bears his and his brother Alexander's name. He contributed to the philosophy of language and to ethnolinguistics.
He saw education as a way to develop each person's own possibilities, not to drill the young for a ready-made role, a view that did much for liberalism. This Humboldtian ideal shaped public education in Prussia and later in the United States and Japan.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Wilhelm von Humboldt?
1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.
- Johann Gottfried Herder 1744–1803
Who did Wilhelm von Humboldt influence?
1 thinker on this map draws directly on Wilhelm von Humboldt.
- Wilhelm Dilthey 1833–1911
The line of teachers behind Wilhelm von Humboldt
The longest documented line of influence ending at Wilhelm von Humboldt runs 21 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
- Thales of Miletus
- Anaximenes of Miletus
- Anaxagoras
- Socrates
- Antisthenes
- Diogenes of Sinope
- Crates of Thebes
- Zeno of Citium
- Seneca
- Tertullian
- Augustine of Hippo
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Peter Lombard
- Thomas Aquinas
- René Descartes
- Thomas Hobbes
- Baruch Spinoza
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Christian Wolff
- Immanuel Kant
- Johann Gottfried Herder
- Wilhelm von Humboldt
Two steps away from Wilhelm von Humboldt
Indirect influences
The second generation
Contemporaries of Wilhelm von Humboldt
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Wilhelm von Humboldt, with no direct line between them.
- Friedrich Schleiermacher 1768–1834
- Georg W. F. Hegel 1770–1831
- Johann Gottlieb Fichte 1762–1814
- Friedrich Schlegel 1772–1829
- Mary Wollstonecraft 1759–1797
- F. W. J. Schelling 1775–1854
- Johann Friedrich Herbart 1776–1841
- Bernard Bolzano 1781–1848
Wilhelm von Humboldt by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 1
- Direct followers
- 1
- Thinkers upstream
- 85
- Thinkers downstream
- 13
- Wikipedia languages
- 71 — #26 of 47 among 19th-century philosophers
- Card rarity
- Epic
Questions about Wilhelm von Humboldt
- Who influenced Wilhelm von Humboldt?
- Johann Gottfried Herder.
- Who did Wilhelm von Humboldt influence?
- Wilhelm Dilthey.
- When did Wilhelm von Humboldt live?
- 1767–1835. The map files Wilhelm von Humboldt under the long 19th century.
- How rare is the Wilhelm von Humboldt card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Wilhelm von Humboldt in 71 languages, which makes it an Epic card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More 19th-century philosophers
- Karl Marx 1818–1883
- Charles Darwin 1809–1882
- Leo Tolstoy 1828–1910
- Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821–1881
- Friedrich Nietzsche 1844–1900
- Georg W. F. Hegel 1770–1831
- Friedrich Engels 1820–1895
- Søren Kierkegaard 1813–1855