Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz (April 23, 1805 – July 14, 1879) was a German philosopher and pedagogue.
Born in Magdeburg, he read philosophy at Berlin, Halle and the University of Königsberg, devoting himself mainly to the doctrines of Hegel and Schleiermacher. After holding the chair of philosophy at Halle for two years, he became, in 1833, professor at Königsberg. In his last years he was blind.
He died in Königsberg.
Throughout his long professorial career, and in all his numerous publications he remained, in spite of occasional deviations on particular points, loyal to the Hegelian tradition as a whole. In the great division of the Hegelian school, he, in company with Michelet and others, formed the "centre," midway between Erdmann and Gabler on the one hand, and the "extreme left" represented by Strauss, Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer.
Between 1838 and 1840, Rosenkranz published an edition of the works of Kant in conjunction with F. W. Schubert, to which he appended a history of the Kantian doctrine.