Educated at first at Eisenberg, he proceeded to the nearby University of Jena, where he studied philosophy under professors Friedrich W. Schelling, G. W. F. Hegel and Johann Gottlieb Fichte and became Privatdozent in 1802. In the same year, with characteristic imprudence, he married Sophie Amalie Concordia Fuchs, without dowry. Two years later, lack of pupils compelled him to move to Rudolstadt and later to Dresden, where he gave lessons in music. In 1805 his ideal of a universal world-society led him to join the Freemasons, whose principles seemed to tend in the direction he desired. In Dresden he published two books on Freemasonry, Höhere Vergeistigung der echt überlieferten Grundsymbole der Freimaurerei: in zwölf Logenvorträgen and Die drei ältesten Kunsterkunden der Freimaurerbrüderschaft, but his opinions attracted opposition from the Masons. He lived for a time in Berlin and became a privatdozent, but was unable to obtain a professorship. He therefore proceeded to Dresden and afterwards to Munich, where he died of apoplexy at the very moment when the influence of Franz von Baader had at last obtained a position for him.
Philosophical work
One of the so-called, Krause endeavoured to reconcile the ideas of a God known by faith or conscience and the world as known to sense. God, intuitively known by conscience, is not a personality, but an all-inclusiveessence, which contains the universe within itself. This system he called panentheism, a combination of monotheism and pantheism. His theory of the world and of humanity is therefore universal and idealistic. In many ways following the general outline of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature, he argued that the world itself and mankind, its highest component, constitute an organism, and the universe is therefore a divine organism. The process of development is the formation of higher unities, and the last stage is the identification of the world with God. The form which this development takes, according to Krause, is Right or the Perfect Law. Right is not the sum of the conditions of external liberty but of absolute liberty, and embraces all the existence of nature, reason and humanity. It is the mode, or rationale, of all progress from the lower to the highest unity or identification. By its operation the reality of nature and reason rises into the reality of humanity. God is the reality which transcends and includes both nature and humanity. Right is, therefore, at once the dynamic and the safeguard of progress. Ideal society results from the widening of the organic operation of this principle from the individual man to small groups of men, and finally to mankind as a whole. The differences disappear as the inherent identity of structure predominates in an ever-increasing degree, and in the final unity Man is merged in God.
Influence and works
The comparatively small area of Krause's influence was due partly to him being overshadowed by Schelling and Hegel, and partly to two intrinsic defects. The spirit of his thought is mystical and by no means easy to follow, and this difficulty is accentuated, even to German readers, by the use of artificial terminology. He makes use of Germanized foreign terms which are unintelligible to the ordinary man. His principal works are : Entwurf des Systems der Philosophie ; System der Sittenlehre ; Das Urbild der Menschheit ; and Vorlesungen über das System der Philosophie. He left behind him at his death a mass of unpublished notes, part of which has been collected and published by his disciples Karl David August Röder, Heinrich Ahrens, Friedrich Wilhelm Theodor Schliephake, Hermann Karl von Leonhardi , Guillaume Tiberghien, and others. Krausism became particularly influential in Spain in the 19th century, where Krause's ideas were introduced by Julián Sanz del Río, an academic based in Madrid. Spanish Krausists combined an emphasis on scientific rationalism and a liberal commitment to individual freedom and opposition to privilege and arbitrary power with Christian spirituality. Spanish intellectuals influenced by Krause included Francisco Giner de los Ríos and Gumersindo de Azcárate. In addition Krause's influence extended to Latin America, where his work made an impact on Hipólito Yrigoyen, José Batlle y Ordóñez and Juan José Arévalo. Richard Gott has argued that Krause influenced José Martí, Fidel Castro , and Che Guevara .
