Benedict Stattler

He entered the Jesuit novitiate at Landsberg in 1745 and, after the usual studies, taught philosophy and theology in Solothurn (Switzerland), Innsbruck, and Ingolstadt.

In 1783, when all former Jesuits were excluded from the office of teaching, he took charge of the parish of Kemnath, but soon exchanged this post for that of ecclesiastical adviser and member of the electoral committee on censures in Munich.

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason appeared in its first edition in 1781; in 1788 Stattler launched his Anti-Kant, and parried the attack which his book provoked in the literary world of Germany.

When the doctrines of the French revolutionists began to be echoed in his fatherland, he lost no time in pointing out to his compatriots the false ring which he detected in their boastful promises of liberty.

It was his avowed purpose to adapt the traditional teachings of the Schoolmen to the living needs of his time, "to plow anew the entire field of scholastic philosophy and theology and to fructify it with fresh seeds", as Bishop Sailer of Ratisbon, Stattler's great pupil, expressed it.