Eugen Dühring

Karl Eugen Dühring (12 January 1833 – 21 September 1921) was a German philosopher, economist, and socialist. Despite becoming blind in early adulthood, he was a prolific and popular lecturer at the University of Berlin. His "philosophy of the actual" was a comprehensive, materialist system that challenged German idealism, classical economics, and organized religion, and he also made significant contributions to economics, law, and the natural sciences. In the 1870s, Dühring's ideas gained significant influence within the burgeoning German Social Democratic movement, prompting Friedrich Engels to write his major polemic *Anti-Dühring*, which became a foundational work of Marxism. Dühring's academic career ended in 1877 with a controversial dismissal from the university following his accusations of plagiarism against Hermann von Helmholtz. The affair caused a public outcry and a student protest movement, with Dühring cast as a martyr for free thought. After his dismissal, Dühring's thought became increasingly personal and radical. His writings took a sharply antisemitic turn, culminating in his 1881 book *The Jewish Question*, a key text in the history of modern, racial antisemitism. His later work advocated an extreme form of individualism which he termed "personalism", and he spent the last decades of his life in relative obscurity, promoting his views through his self-published journal, *Personalist und Emancipator*.