Jakob Sigismund Beck, the German Kantian philosopher, was born in Marienburg. He studied mathematics and philosophy in Königsberg with P. Krause and Immanuel Kant, completing his studies in 1783. In 1791 he became a teacher at the gymnasium in Halle and, in 1796, extraordinary professor of philosophy at Halle University. He was called to Rostock as professor of metaphysics in 1799 and remained there until his death.

Purporting to defend the "true" Kantian position against "dogmatic" misinterpretations, Beck called attention to problems concerning the role of the thing-in-itself in Kant's theory of perception. Beck rejected any positive role for the thing-in-itself and argued that the object affecting our senses must be phenomenal. Kant's theory of affection is to be understood not in the transcendent sense, as the working of an unknowable thing-in-itself on an unobservable "I"-in-itself, but only in the empirical sense: A phenomenal...