Agnes Taubert

Agnes Marie Constanze von Hartmann (née Taubert; 7 January 1844 – 8 May 1877), who wrote under the names A. T. and A. Taubert, was a German philosopher associated with Post-Schopenhauerian pessimism. Born in Stralsund and later based in Berlin, she married the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann in 1872 and became an advocate for his Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869). She published two books that both defended and criticised Hartmann's ideas, Philosophie gegen naturwissenschaftliche Ueberhebung (1872) and Der Pessimismus und seine Gegner (1873; translated as Pessimism and Its Opponents); Frederick C. Beiser writes that the use of a pen name meant her work was received as if it had been written by a man. Beiser credits her books as playing a significant role in the German pessimism controversy, and has described Taubert as "one of the first women to have a prominent role in a public intellectual debate in Germany". Carol Bensick has compared Taubert with Olga Plümacher and Amalie J. Hathaway.