(F. R. C.; A. P. H.)
BECK, CHRISTIAN DANIEL (1757-1832), German philologist, historian, theologian and antiquarian, one of the most learned men of his time, was born at Leipzig on the 22nd of January 1757. He studied at Leipzig University, where he was appointed (1785) professor of Greek and Latin literature. This post he resigned in 1819 in order to take up the professorship of history, but resumed it in 1825. He also had the management of the university library, was director of the institute for the deaf and dumb, and filled many educational and municipal offices. In 1784 he founded a philological society, which grew into a philological seminary, superintended by him until his death. In 1808 he was made a Hofrath by the king of Saxony, and in 1820 a knight of the civil order of merit. His philological lectures, in which grammar and criticism were subordinated to history, were largely attended by hearers from all parts of Germany. He died at Leipzig on the 13th of December 1832. He edited a number of classical authors: Pedo Albinovanus (1783), Pindar and the Scholia (1792-1795), Aristophanes (with others, 1794, &c.), Euripides (1778-1788), Apollonius Rhodius (1797), Demosthenes De Pace (1799), Plato (1813-1819), Cicero (1795-1807), Titus Calpurnius Siculus (1803). He translated Ferguson’s Fall of the Roman Republic and Goldsmith’s History of Greece, and added two volumes to Bauer’s Thucydides. He also wrote on theological and historical subjects, and edited philological and bibliographical journals. He possessed a large and valuable library of 24,000 volumes.
See Nobbe, Vita C.D. Beckii (1837); and G. Hermann, Opuscula, v. 312.
BECK (or Beek), DAVID (1621-1656), Dutch portrait-painter, was born at Arnheim in Guelderland. He was trained by Van Dyck, from whom he acquired the fine manner of pencilling and sweet style of colouring peculiar to that great master. He possessed likewise that freedom of hand and readiness, or rather rapidity of execution, for which Van Dyck was so remarkable, insomuch that when King Charles I. observed the expeditious manner of Beck’s painting, he exclaimed, “Faith! Beck, I believe you could paint riding post.” He was appointed portrait-painter and chamberlain to Queen Christina of Sweden, and he executed portraits of most of the sovereigns of Europe to adorn her gallery. His death at the Hague was suspected of being due to poisoning.
BECK, JAKOB SIGISMUND (1761-1840), German philosopher, was born at Danzig in 1761. Educated at Königsberg, he became professor of philosophy first at Halle (1791-1799) and then at Rostock. He devoted himself to criticism and explanation of the doctrine of Kant, and in 1793 published the Erläuternder Auszug aus Kants kritischen Schriften, which has been widely used as a compendium of Kantian doctrine. He endeavoured to explain away certain of the contradictions which are found in Kant’s system by saying that much of the language is used in a popular sense for the sake of intelligibility, e.g. where Kant attributes to things-in-themselves an existence under the conditions of time, space and causality, and yet holds that they furnish the material of our apprehensions. Beck maintains that the real meaning of Kant’s theory is idealism; that of objects outside the domain of consciousness, knowledge is impossible, and hence that nothing positive remains when we have removed the subjective element. Matter is deduced by the “original synthesis.” Similarly, the idea of God is a symbolical representation of the voice of conscience guiding from within. The value of Beck’s exegesis has been to a great extent overlooked owing to the greater attention given to the work of Fichte. Beside the three volumes of the Erläuternder Auszug, he published the Grundriss der krit. Philosophie (1796), containing an interpretation of the Kantian Kritik in the manner of Salomon Maimon.
See Ueberweg, Grundriss der Gesch. der Philos. der Neuzeit; Dilthey in the Archiv für Geschichte der Philos., vol. ii. (1889), pp. 592-650. For Beck’s letters to Kant, see R. Reicke, Aus Kants Briefwechsel (Königsberg, 1885).