Leonard Nelson, a German critical philosopher and the founder of the Neo-Friesian school, was born in Berlin. After studying mathematics and philosophy he qualified for teaching as a Privatdozent in the natural science division of the philosophical faculty at Göttingen in 1909. In 1919 he was appointed extraordinary professor.

The Critical School

Nelson's philosophical work was concerned mainly with two problems: the establishment of a scientific foundation for philosophy by means of a critical method and the systematic development of philosophical ethics and philosophy of right and their consequences for education and politics.

Nelson's search for a strictly scientific foundation and development of philosophy soon led him to critical philosophy. Nelson took the Critique of Pure Reason to be a treatise on method and regarded the critical examination of the capacities of reason as its decisive achievement. Through this critique alone could philosophical concepts be...