Kuno Fischer, the German philosopher and historian of philosophy, was born at Sandewalde in Silesia. He studied philology at Leipzig and theology and philosophy at Halle. In 1850 Fischer was appointed Privatdozent in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, but his pantheistic views caused his dismissal three years later. In 1856 he qualified as Privatdozent at the University of Berlin, and in the same year he was invited to Jena as professor of philosophy. In 1872 he returned to Heidelberg, where he taught with great success until 1903.

Fischer's major work is his Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (1852–1877). This widely reprinted history of modern philosophy owed its success in large part to Fischer's splendid gift for exposition. Endowed with a remarkable capacity for sympathetic understanding, Fischer was able to reproduce the great philosophical systems in a literary form of exemplary brilliance and clarity, as well as to unravel their...