Erdmann was born on 13 June 1805 in Wolmar, Livonia, where his father was a pastor. Ferdinand Walter, a Lutheran pastor, theologian, and General Superintendant of Livland, was Erdmann's maternal uncle. Erdmann and Ferdinand Walter both attended Hegel's lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit in 1827 in Berlin. Ferdinand Walter's son, Julius Walter, was a professor of philosophy at the Univ. of Königsberg. Erdmann studied theology at Dorpat and afterwards at Berlin, where he fell under the influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and was known never to miss Hegel's lectures. Then, from 1829 to 1832 he was a minister of religion in his native town of Wolmar. Afterwards he resigned from his position as pastor to devote himself to education and philosophy, but continued to minister throughout his life. He obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Kiel with the treatise, Quidnam sit discrimen philosophiam inter et theologiam, written in 1830, in which he argued that philosophy and religion converge to a common truth, even though they differ in form of approach. In 1834 he began writing his Habilitation thesis to qualify in Berlin. This became volume 1 of his work titled Versuch einer wissenschaftlichen Darstellung der Geschichte der neuern Philosophie . In 1836 he was professor-extraordinary at Halle, became full professor in 1839, and remained there until his death. He died on June 12, 1892 in Halle. He published many philosophical text-books and treatises, and a number of sermons; but his chief claim to remembrance rests on his elaborate Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, the 4th edition of which has been translated into English. Erdmann's special merit is that he does not rest content with being a mere summarizer of opinions, but tries to exhibit the history of human thought as a continuous and ever-developing effort to solve the great speculative problems with which man has been confronted in all ages. His chief other works were: Leib und Seele, Grundriss der Psychologie, Grundriss der Logik und Metaphysik, and Psychologische Briefe. Erdmann had many readers, students and followers, and influenced many intellectuals of his time. Some of these include Niels Thulstrup, his student Albrecht Ritschl, his colleague Martin Kähler, and members the Hegelian school, such as Kuno Fischer, Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Ludwig Michelet. Søren Kierkegaard studied and was inspired in his early studies by Erdmann's works, in particular his Vorlesungen über Glauben und Wissen als Einleitung in die Dogmatic und Religionphilosophie. Although Kierkegaard integrated much of Erdmann's work into his own, the only work in which Erdmann was cited by him was his dissertation On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates.
Commentary on Erdmann
wrote in the Andover Review:
The combination of qualities necessary to produce a work of the scope and grade of Erdmann's is rare....Erdmann wrote his book , not as a reference book... but as a genuine history of philosophy, tracing in a genetic way the development of thought in its treatment of philosophic problems. Its purpose is to develop philosophic intelligence rather than to furnish information....Erdmann unites a minute and exhaustive knowledge of philosophic sources at first hand, equalled over the entire field of philosophy probably by no other one man... To the student who wishes... a somewhat detailed knowledge of the evolution of thought, and of what this and the other writers have contributed to it, Erdmann is indispensable; there is no substitute.
