A German translation of Marcus Tullius Cicero's De Officis by Christian Garve (1742-1798). Garve was born in Breslau. After studying at Frankfurt an der Oder, Halle and Leipzig, he became extraordinary professor of philosophy at Leipzig in 1770, but in 1772 he resigned on account of ill health and moved to Breslau. In 1779 Frederick II called him to Charlottenburg, where he remained until his death.

Garve's interests were mainly in practical morality and empirical psychology. He sought useful knowledge and was averse to abstract speculation. He drew inspiration from Duc François de La Rochefoucauld and Claude-Adrien Helvétius, and especially from the British moralists. His translations of Adam Ferguson, Edmund Burke, Alexander Gerard, Adam Smith and other British authors were important in popularizing the British moral philosophy and aesthetics in Germany. He also translated and commented on the moral and political works of Aristotle and Cicero. In his own writings Garve studied the individual characteristics and inclinations of different men, and their interrelation in society. He explained their differences by a difference in the degree of clarity and vividness of the ideas they possessed. Interest - the participation of the individual in the feelings, ideas and actions of another - was a central notion in his psychology. It was derived from the "benevolence" and "sympathy" then current in British thought. In Garve's works psychology, sociology and ethics were interwoven. His goal was that of a social psychologist, moralist and educator.