Kroner, Richard

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KRONER, RICHARD

KRONER, RICHARD (1884–1974), German philosopher. He was professor at Dresden, Kiel, and Frankfurt universities. After Hitler's rise to power, he emigrated to the U.S., and became professor at the (Protestant) Union Theological Seminary in New York, and later at the theological school of Temple University. Kroner was editor of the philosophical quarterly Logos from 1910 to 1938. He revived interest in Hegel's philosophy, which was unknown and even scorned at the time. His book Von Kant bis Hegel (2 vols., 1921–24) was a brilliant analysis of German idealism, which in Kroner's opinion had reached its peak in Hegel. Kroner was the initiator and chairman of the First International Hegel Congress at The Hague in 1931. Kroner's Die Selbstverwirklichung des Geistes (1928; Culture and Faith, 1951) attempted to explain the structure of human culture in one comprehensive system. He also wrote The Primacy of Faith (1943), How Do We Know God? (1943), Selbstbesinnung (1958), and Speculation and Revelation in the History of Philosophy, 3 vols. (1956–61).

bibliography:

S. Marck, Die Dialektik in der Philosophie der Gegenwart (1929), 56ff.; H. Levy, Die Hegel-Renaissance in der deutschen Philosophie (1927), 80–84; S.H. Bergman, Anashim u-Derakhim (1967); idem, in: Haaretz (June 5, 1953).

[Samuel Hugo Bergman]