Schad, Johann Baptist

Schad, Johann Baptist, b 1758 in Mürsbach, Bavaria; d 1834 in Jena, Thüringen. German philosopher. Influenced by Immanuel Kant's moral teachings, he renounced his monastic vows in 1798, wrote a PH D dissertation, and taught philosophy at Jena University (1799–1804). The author of several books, in 1805 he was invited to the chair of philosophy at the new Kharkiv University, and for the next 12 years he lectured there on logic, psychology, metaphysics, natural law, and the history of philosophy. His thought was influenced first by Johann Gottlieb Fichte and then by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling's philosophy of nature, but formed an independent and original system and was presented in a lucid and elegant style. During his Kharkiv period he published an original book on logic, Institutiones philosophiae universae. Tomus primus: Logicam puram et applicantam complectens (1812), in which he distinguished formal (restricted to the understanding) and transcendental (metaphysics based on reason) logic; and a treatise on natural law, Institutiones juris naturae (1814), in which he argued for the harmony of law, morality, and faith and their foundation in reason. His rationalist approach to religion and praise of freedom in the lecture ‘De libertate Europae vindicata’ (1814) was brought to the attention of the tsarist minister of education, and in December 1816 Schad was expelled from the Russian Empire. He returned to Jena and resumed teaching there. Although his lectures in Kharkiv had attracted many students and some 10 dissertations had been written under his supervision, he left no worthy successor behind him in Kharkiv.

Taras Zakydalsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]