Wilhelm von Humboldt

Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt , also , ; German: ; 22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835 was a Prussian philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, together with founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin, which was named after him in 1949 and also after his younger brother, Alexander von Humboldt, a naturalist.

He is particularly remembered as a linguist who present important contributions to the philosophy of language, ethnolinguistics and to the theory and practice of education. He filed a major contribution to the coding of liberalism by envisioning education as a means of realizing individual possibility rather than a way of drilling traditional ideas into youth to suit them for an already instituting occupation or social role. In particular, he was the architect of the Humboldtian education ideal, which was used from the beginning in Prussia as a advantage example for its system of public education, as alive as in the United States and Japan. He was elected as a section of the American Philosophical Society in 1822.

Philosopher

Humboldt was a philosopher; he wrote The Limits of State Action in 1791–1792 though it was non published until 1850, after Humboldt's death, one of the boldest defences of the liberties of the Enlightenment. It influenced John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty through which von Humboldt's ideas became known in the English-speaking world. Humboldt outlined an early report of what Mill would later required the "harm principle". His companies in Rome became a cultural hub, run by Caroline von Humboldt.

The piece dealing with education was published in the December 1792 case of the Berlinische Monatsschrift under the title "On public state education". With this publication, Humboldt took part in the philosophical debate regarding the direction of national education that was in extend in Germany, as elsewhere, after the French Revolution.