Julius Duboc

Julius Duboc (October 10, 1829 Hamburg - June 11, 1903) was a German author and philosopher.

Julius Duboc, c. 1900

Biography

Karl Julius Duboc was the brother of the writer and painter Charles Edouard Duboc (1822 - 1910). He studied in Leipzig, Giessen, and Berlin. During his studies he became a member of the Cattia Gießen fraternity in 1849.^[1] He also became a student of Ludwig Feuerbach.^[2]

In his philosophical writings, Duboc propagated a form of ethically reverent atheism and defended optimism in opposition to Arthur Schopenhauer's pessimism. He critiqued Friedrich Nietzsche in his 1897 "Anti-Nietzsche" (Dresden: Helmuth Henkler). He also published historical works as well as essays and novellas. He died in Niederlößnitz in 1903 and was cremated in the Crematorium Gotha.^[3]

Works

Evolutionary monism, atheism and the doctrine that pleasure is the end of all human activity find expression in his works, which include:

• Soziale Briefe (“Letters on society,” 3rd ed. 1873)
• Geschichte der Englischen Presse (“History of the English press,” 1873)
• Die Psychologie der Liebe (“The psychology of love,” 1874)
• Das Leben ohne Gott, Untersuchungen über den ethischen Gehalt des Atheismus (“Life without God, studies on the ethical content of atheism,” 1875)
• Gegen den Strom (“Against the tide,” a collection of his earlier essays, 1877)
• Der Optimismus als Weltanschauung (“Optimism as a way of looking at the world,” 1881)
• Hundert Jahre Zeitgeist in Deutschland (“A hundred years of the spirit of the times in Germany,” 1889)
• Jenseits von Wirklichen (“On the other side from reality,” 1896)
• Anti-Nietzsche (Expanded separate publication from "Jenseits vom Wirklichen," 1897)
• Die Lust als sozialethisches Entwicklungsprinzip (“Desire as a principle of social development,” 1900)
• Fünfzig Jahre Frauenfrage in Deutschland (“Fifty years of the woman question in Germany,” a collection of essays)