18 Facts About Afrikan Spir

Afrikan Aleksandrovich Spir was a Russian neo-Kantian philosopher of German-Greek descent who wrote primarily in German, but French.

Afrikan Spir was born on 10 November 1837 in his father's estates of Spirovska, near the city of Elisavetgrad.

Afrikan Spir described his education as follows: "I spent my childhood in the countryside and later I studied for a while in Odessa, first in a Private boarding-school and after in a Gymnasium, more or less equivalent, if I do not mistake, to a French high-school".

Afrikan Spir later followed the readings of Descartes, David Hume, and Stuart Mill.

Afrikan Spir was there at the same time that Nietzsche was a student, although it does not appear that they met.

In 1884, Afrikan Spir asked the Russian Emperor authorization to leave Russian citizenship and to obtain Swiss citizenship.

In 1878, having suffered from pneumonia, in order to treat the consequences of his illness, a chronic cough, Afrikan Spir moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, where he spent five years.

Afrikan Spir died of influenza on 26 March 1890 in Geneva, at 6 rue Petitot.

Afrikan Spir was survived by his wife Elisabeth and his daughter, Helene.

In Leipzig, Afrikan Spir befriended the publisher and fellow Freemason Joseph Gabriel Findel, who published most of Afrikan Spir's works.

Afrikan Spir provided a biographical sketch of himself that he added to some of his letters of correspondence, after 1882:.

Afrikan Spir sought to establish philosophy as the science of first principles, he held that the task of philosophy was to investigate immediate knowledge, show the delusion of empiricism, and present the true nature of things by strict statements of facts and logically controlled inference.

Socially, Afrikan Spir was not favourable to inherited wealth's accumulation in private hands and demanded just distribution of material goods, but disapproved of collectivism.

Afrikan Spir set the example, redistributing his personal inherited land properties to his former serfs.

Indeed, Afrikan Spir complained of a wall or conspiracy of silence.

Vaihinger read Afrikan Spir's Thought and Reality as soon as it was published and recalls that it made a "great impression".

The most important works on Afrikan Spir's philosophy were published between 1900 and 1914.

Many of Afrikan Spir's books have not been entirely sold and are still available in their first or second edition.