Christian Garve

Christian Garve (1742-1798) was one of the best-known philosophers of the late German Enlightenment, alongside Immanuel Kant and Moses Mendelssohn. He came from a family of manual workers and studied at Frankfurt an der Oder and Halle, where he earned his master's degree in philosophy in 1766. His reflections on morality, psychology and economics belong to the tradition of the British and Scottish Enlightenment, and Stoic ethics also left a clear mark on them.

From 1770 to 1772 he was extraordinary professor of mathematics and logic in Leipzig, but poor health led him to retire to Breslau, where he spent most of his life with his mother and worked as a bookseller. His reputation rests largely on his work as a translator: he rendered Cicero's De Officiis into German at the request of Frederick II, and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations as well. His empirical philosophy was never set out as a system but in remarks and essays, which earned him the label of a popular philosopher. His exchange with Kant began with a review of the Critique of Pure Reason and drew Kant's sharp reply, which eventually grew into the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. His writings did much to spread philosophy in Germany.