Beneke Friedrich Eduard (1798–1854), German philosopher who was influenced by Herbart and English empiricism and criticized rationalistic metaphysics. He taught at Berlin and published some eighteen books in philosophy. His major work was Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft (1833). He wrote a critical study of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and another on his moral theory; other works included Psychologie Skizzen (1825), Metaphysik und Religionphilosophie (1840), and Die neue Psychologie (1845). The ‘new psychology’ developed by Beneke held that the hypostatization of ‘faculties’ led to a mythical psychology. He proposed a method that would yield a natural science of the soul or, in effect, an associationist psychology. Influenced by the British empiricists, he conceived the elements of mental life as dynamic, active processes or impulses (Trieben). These ‘elementary faculties,’ originally activated by stimuli, generate the substantial unity of the nature of the psychic by their persistence as traces, as well as by their reciprocal adjustment in relation to the continuous production of new forces. In what Beneke called ‘pragmatic psychology,’ the psyche is a bundle of impulses, forces, and functions. Psychological theory should rest on inductive analyses of the facts of inner perception. This, in turn, is the foundation of the philosophical disciplines of logic, ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion. In this regard, Beneke held a psychologism. He agreed with Herbart that psychology must be based on inner experience and must eschew metaphysical speculation, but rejected Hebart’s mathematical reductionism. Beneke sought to create a ‘pragmatic philosophy’ based on his psychology. In his last years he contributed to pedagogic theory. See also ASSOCIATIONIS. G.J.S.