Dühring, Eugen Karl (1833–1921)

Versatile and prolific, Eugen Dühring constructed a metaphysical system uniting naturalism with a priori principles, such as a ‘law of definite number’ which asserts that everything countable must be finite; hence, the natural world must be limited, and past time must have a beginning. Value judgments are based on natural drives and feelings: in particular, the concept of injustice arises from the resentment produced by injury. Since criminal law is ‘a public administration of revenge’, the deterrent function of punishment is irrelevant to its rightness. In politics, Dühring combined his socialism with a fervent racism, chauvinism and anti-Semitism.