Joseph Geyser, the German critical realist philosopher, was born in Erkelenz, in the Rhineland. He received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Bonn in 1898. He became an extraordinary professor at the University of Münster in 1904 and a full professor there in 1911. In 1917 Geyser was called to Freiburg, and in 1924 he succeeded Clemens Baeumker, the distinguished historian of ancient and medieval philosophy, at the University of Munich.

From his youth, Geyser opposed what he regarded as two basic tendencies in recent philosophy, an intellectualism strongly tinged with historical relativism and an overly abstract, idealistic Kantianism. He devoted himself to recalling philosophy to the asking of questions that are largely independent of any temporary situation and to the answering of these questions in an objective, critically realist manner. This attitude, but not Geyser's attachment to Thomistic tradition, was shared by the realist Oswald...