German philosophy
Encyclopedia
German philosophy, here taken to mean either (1) philosophy
in the German language
or (2) philosophy
by Germans, has been extremely diverse, and central to both the analytic
and continental
traditions in philosophy for centuries, from Leibniz through Kant
, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx
, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein to contemporary philosophers. Although a Danish
philosopher
, Søren Kierkegaard
is frequently included in surveys of German (or Germanic) philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was both a philosopher and a mathematician
who wrote primarily in Latin
and French
. Leibniz, along with René Descartes
and Baruch Spinoza
, was one of the three great 17th century advocates of rationalism
. The work of Leibniz also anticipated modern logic
and analytic philosophy
, but his philosophy also looks back to the scholastic
tradition, in which conclusions are produced by applying reason to first principles or a priori definitions rather than to empirical evidence.
Leibniz is noted for his optimism - his Théodicée
tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds
. It must be the best possible and most balanced world, because it was created by an all powerful and all knowing God, who would not choose to create an imperfect world if a better world could be known to him or possible to exist. In effect, apparent flaws that can be identified in this world must exist in every possible world, because otherwise God would have chosen to create the world that excluded those flaws.
Leibniz is also known for his theory of monads
, as exposited in Monadologie
. Monads are to the metaphysical realm what atom
s are to the physical/phenomenal. They can also be compared to the corpuscles of the Mechanical Philosophy of René Descartes and others. Monads are the ultimate elements of the universe
. The monads are "substantial forms of being" with the following properties: they are eternal, indecomposable, individual, subject to their own laws, un-interacting, and each reflecting the entire universe in a pre-established harmony
(a historically important example of panpsychism
). Monads are centers of force
; substance is force, while space
, matter
, and motion
are merely phenomenal.
(1679–1754) was the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant
. His main achievement was a complete oeuvre on almost every scholarly subject of his time, displayed and unfolded according to his demonstrative-deductive, mathematical method, which perhaps represents the peak of Enlightenment rationality
in Germany
.
Wolff was also the creator of German
as the language of scholarly instruction and research, although he also wrote in Latin
, so that an international audience could, and did, read him. A founding father of, among other fields, economics
and public administration
as academic disciplines, he concentrated especially in these fields, giving advice on practical matters to people in government
, and stressing the professional nature of university education.
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In 1781, Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804) published his Critique of Pure Reason
, in which he attempted to determine what we can and cannot know through the use of reason independent of all experience. Briefly, he came to the conclusion that we could come to know an external world through experience, but that what we could know about it was limited by the limited terms in which the mind can think: if we can only comprehend things in terms of cause and effect, then we can only know causes and effects. It follows from this that we can know the form of all possible experience independent of all experience, but nothing else, but we can never know the world from the “standpoint of nowhere” and therefore we can never know the world in its entirety, neither via reason nor experience.
Since the publication of his Critique, Immanuel Kant has been considered one of the greatest influences in all of western philosophy. In the late 18th and early 19th century, one direct line of influence from Kant is German Idealism
.
The German Idealists believed there were problems with Kant’s system and sought to place it on firmer grounds. They were also greatly concerned with the problem of freewill as understood through Kantianism: practical reason presupposes a freewill, and yet according to theoretical reason, everything is predetermined in a complete system of causality. Therefore either everything in possible experience isn’t predetermined, which contradicts the universality of pure reason, or the freewill is outside the system of causality and can have no effect on it, rendering the will useless.
The three most prominent German Idealists were Fichte (1762–1814), Schelling
(1775–1854) and Hegel (1770–1831). On some interpretations, Hegel did away with Kantianism altogether to achieve absolute knowledge, while others read him as working within the confines of Kantianism. Either way, he came to replace Kant as the dominant influence in German Philosophy for the rest of the 19th century, and his method of dialectics has become a commonplace means of reasoning in continental philosophy
.
Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788 – 1860) was known for his pessimism
and philosophical clarity. Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation
, claimed that the world is fundamentally what we recognize in ourselves as our will
. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. Consequently, he eloquently described a lifestyle of negating desires, similar to the ascetic
teachings of Vedanta
and the Desert Fathers
of early Christianity
.
Among those influenced by Hegel was a group of young radicals called the Young Hegelians
, who were unpopular because of their radical views on religion and society. They included Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872), Bruno Bauer
(1809–1882) and Max Stirner
(1806–1856) among their ranks.
Karl Marx
(1818–1883) often attended their meetings. He developed an interest in Hegelianism, French socialism and British economic theory. He transformed the three into an essential work of economics called Das Kapital
, which consisted of a critical economic examination of capitalism. Marxism
has had a massive effect on the world as a whole.
and of the interpretations of Kant provied by post-Kantian philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Jakob Friedrich Fries
and Johann Friedrich Herbart
. Major figures in the neo-Kantian movement, which began around the 1860s, include Friedrich Albert Lange
and Hermann Cohen
.
(1844–1900) was initially a proponent of Arthur Schopenhauer
. However, he soon came to disavow Schopenhauer's pessimistic outlook on life and sought to provide a positive philosophy. He believed this task to be urgent, as he believed a form of nihilism caused by modernity was spreading across Europe, which he summed up in the phrase "God is dead". His problem, then, was how to live a positive life considering the fact that if you believe in God, you give into nihilism, and if you don't believe in God, you also give in to nihilism. He believed he found his solution in the concepts of the Übermensch
and Eternal Return
. His work continues to have a major influence on both philosophers and artists.
(1848–1925) overthrew Aristotelian logic (the dominant logic since its inception in Ancient Greece). This was the beginning of analytic philosophy
. In the early part of the 20th century, a group of German and Austrian philosophers and scientists formed the Vienna Circle
to promote scientific thought over Hegelian system-building, which they saw as a bad influence on intellectual thought. The group considered themselves logical positivists because they believed all knowledge is either derived through experience or arrived at through analytic statements, and they adopted the predicate logic of Frege, as well as the early work of Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889–1951) as foundations to their work. Wittgenstein did not agree with their interpretation of his philosophy.
In the 20th and 21st centuries Germany has been an important country for the development of contemporary analytic philosophy in continental Europe, along with France, Austria, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries.
Karl Popper
was an Austro-British philosopher of science
.
", whose roots lay in the German idealist
tradition.
Phenomenology began at the start of the 20th century with the descriptive psychology of Franz Brentano
(1838–1917), and then the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl
(1859–1938). It was then transformed by Martin Heidegger
(1889–1976), whose famous book Being and Time
applied phenomenology to ontology
, and who, along with Ludwig Wittgenstein
, is considered one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Phenomenology has had a large influence on Continental Philosophy, particularly existentialism
and poststructuralism. Heidegger himself is often identified as an existentialist, though he would have rejected this.
Hermeneutics is the philosophical theory and practice of interpretation and understanding.
Originally hermeneutics referred to the interpretation of texts, especially religious texts. In the 19th century, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), Wilhelm Dilthey
(1833–1911) and others expanded the discipline of hermeneutics beyond mere exegesis
and turned it into a general humanistic discipline. Schleiermacher wondered whether there could be a hermeneutics that was not a collection of pieces of ad hoc advice for the solution of specific problems with text interpretation but rather a "general hermeneutics," which dealt with the "art of understanding" as such, which pertained to the structure and function of understanding wherever it occurs. Later in the 19th century, Dilthey began to see possibilities for continuing Schleiermacher's general hermeneutics project as a "general methodology of the humanities and social sciences".
In the 20th century, hermeneutics took an 'ontological turn'. Martin Heidegger's Being and Time fundamentally transformed the discipline. No longer was it conceived of as being about understanding linguistic communication, or providing a methodological basis for the human sciences - as far as Heidegger was concerned, hermeneutics is ontology, dealing with the most fundamental conditions of man's being in the world. The Heideggerian conception of hermeneutics was further developed by Heidegger's pupil Hans-Georg Gadamer
(1900–2002), in his book Truth and Method
.
In 1923, Carl Grünberg
founded the Institute for Social Research
, drawing from Marxism
, Freud
's psychoanalysis and Weberian
philosophy, which came to be known as the "Frankfurt School
". Expelled by the Nazis, the school reformed again in Frankfurt after World War II
. Although they drew from Marxism, they were outspoken opponents of Stalinism
. Books from the group, like Adorno’s
and Horkheimer’s
Dialectic of Enlightenment
and Adorno’s Negative Dialectics
, critiqued what they saw as the failure of the Enlightenment project and the problems of modernity. Postmodernists
consider the Frankfurt school to be one their precursors.
Since the 1960s the Frankfurt School
has been guided by Jürgen Habermas
' (born 1929) work on communicative reason
, linguistic intersubjectivity
and what Habermas calls "the philosophical discourse of modernity".
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
in the German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
or (2) philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
by Germans, has been extremely diverse, and central to both the analytic
Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
and continental
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
traditions in philosophy for centuries, from Leibniz through Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein to contemporary philosophers. Although a Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
philosopher
Danish philosophy
Danish philosophy has a long tradition as part of Western philosophy.Perhaps the most influential Danish philosopher was Søren Kierkegaard, the creator of Christian existentialism, which inspired the philosophical movement of Existentialism. Kierkegaard had a few Danish followers, including Harald...
, Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...
is frequently included in surveys of German (or Germanic) philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers.
Leibniz
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
who wrote primarily in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. Leibniz, along with René Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
and Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
, was one of the three great 17th century advocates of rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
. The work of Leibniz also anticipated modern logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
and analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
, but his philosophy also looks back to the scholastic
Scholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...
tradition, in which conclusions are produced by applying reason to first principles or a priori definitions rather than to empirical evidence.
Leibniz is noted for his optimism - his Théodicée
Théodicée
Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal , more simply known as Théodicée, is a book of philosophy by the famed polymath Gottfried Leibniz...
tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds
Best of all possible worlds
The phrase "the best of all possible worlds" was coined by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal...
. It must be the best possible and most balanced world, because it was created by an all powerful and all knowing God, who would not choose to create an imperfect world if a better world could be known to him or possible to exist. In effect, apparent flaws that can be identified in this world must exist in every possible world, because otherwise God would have chosen to create the world that excluded those flaws.
Leibniz is also known for his theory of monads
Monad (Greek philosophy)
Monad , according to the Pythagoreans, was a term for Divinity or the first being, or the totality of all beings, Monad being the source or the One meaning without division....
, as exposited in Monadologie
Monadology
The Monadology is one of Gottfried Leibniz’s best known works representing his later philosophy. It is a short text which sketches in some 90 paragraphs a metaphysics of simple substances, or monads.- Text :...
. Monads are to the metaphysical realm what atom
Atom
The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons...
s are to the physical/phenomenal. They can also be compared to the corpuscles of the Mechanical Philosophy of René Descartes and others. Monads are the ultimate elements of the universe
Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
. The monads are "substantial forms of being" with the following properties: they are eternal, indecomposable, individual, subject to their own laws, un-interacting, and each reflecting the entire universe in a pre-established harmony
Pre-established harmony
Gottfried Leibniz's theory of pre-established harmony is a philosophical theory about causation under which every "substance" only affects itself, but all the substances in the world nevertheless seem to causally interact with each other because they have been programmed by God in advance to...
(a historically important example of panpsychism
Panpsychism
In philosophy, panpsychism is the view that all matter has a mental aspect, or, alternatively, all objects have a unified center of experience or point of view...
). Monads are centers of force
Force
In physics, a force is any influence that causes an object to undergo a change in speed, a change in direction, or a change in shape. In other words, a force is that which can cause an object with mass to change its velocity , i.e., to accelerate, or which can cause a flexible object to deform...
; substance is force, while space
Space
Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
, matter
Matter
Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...
, and motion
Motion (physics)
In physics, motion is a change in position of an object with respect to time. Change in action is the result of an unbalanced force. Motion is typically described in terms of velocity, acceleration, displacement and time . An object's velocity cannot change unless it is acted upon by a force, as...
are merely phenomenal.
Wolff
Christian WolffChristian Wolff (philosopher)
Christian Wolff was a German philosopher.He was the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant...
(1679–1754) was the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
. His main achievement was a complete oeuvre on almost every scholarly subject of his time, displayed and unfolded according to his demonstrative-deductive, mathematical method, which perhaps represents the peak of Enlightenment rationality
Rationality
In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action...
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Wolff was also the creator of German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
as the language of scholarly instruction and research, although he also wrote in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, so that an international audience could, and did, read him. A founding father of, among other fields, economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
and public administration
Public administration
Public Administration houses the implementation of government policy and an academic discipline that studies this implementation and that prepares civil servants for this work. As a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" its "fundamental goal.....
as academic disciplines, he concentrated especially in these fields, giving advice on practical matters to people in government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
, and stressing the professional nature of university education.
Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
(1724–1804) published his Critique of Pure Reason
Critique of Pure Reason
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is considered one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. Also referred to as Kant's "first critique," it was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgement...
, in which he attempted to determine what we can and cannot know through the use of reason independent of all experience. Briefly, he came to the conclusion that we could come to know an external world through experience, but that what we could know about it was limited by the limited terms in which the mind can think: if we can only comprehend things in terms of cause and effect, then we can only know causes and effects. It follows from this that we can know the form of all possible experience independent of all experience, but nothing else, but we can never know the world from the “standpoint of nowhere” and therefore we can never know the world in its entirety, neither via reason nor experience.
Since the publication of his Critique, Immanuel Kant has been considered one of the greatest influences in all of western philosophy. In the late 18th and early 19th century, one direct line of influence from Kant is German Idealism
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
.
German Idealism
The three most prominent German Idealists were Fichte (1762–1814), Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...
(1775–1854) and Hegel (1770–1831). On some interpretations, Hegel did away with Kantianism altogether to achieve absolute knowledge, while others read him as working within the confines of Kantianism. Either way, he came to replace Kant as the dominant influence in German Philosophy for the rest of the 19th century, and his method of dialectics has become a commonplace means of reasoning in continental philosophy
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
.
Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
(1788 – 1860) was known for his pessimism
Pessimism
Pessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...
and philosophical clarity. Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation
The World as Will and Representation
The World as Will and Representation is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first edition was published in December 1818, and the second expanded edition in 1844. In 1948, an abridged version was edited by Thomas Mann....
, claimed that the world is fundamentally what we recognize in ourselves as our will
Will (philosophy)
Will, in philosophical discussions, consonant with a common English usage, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are called "willing" or "voluntary" and sometimes pejoratively "willful"...
. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. Consequently, he eloquently described a lifestyle of negating desires, similar to the ascetic
Asceticism
Asceticism describes a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from various sorts of worldly pleasures often with the aim of pursuing religious and spiritual goals...
teachings of Vedanta
Vedanta
Vedānta was originally a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name is a morphophonological form of Veda-anta = "Veda-end" = "the appendix to the Vedic hymns." It is also speculated that "Vedānta" means "the purpose or goal...
and the Desert Fathers
Desert Fathers
The Desert Fathers were hermits, ascetics, monks, and nuns who lived mainly in the Scetes desert of Egypt beginning around the third century AD. The most well known was Anthony the Great, who moved to the desert in 270–271 and became known as both the father and founder of desert monasticism...
of early Christianity
Early Christianity
Early Christianity is generally considered as Christianity before 325. The New Testament's Book of Acts and Epistle to the Galatians records that the first Christian community was centered in Jerusalem and its leaders included James, Peter and John....
.
Karl Marx and the Young Hegelians
Young Hegelians
The Young Hegelians, or Left Hegelians, were a group of Prussian intellectuals who in the decade or so after the death of Hegel in 1831, wrote and responded to his ambiguous legacy...
, who were unpopular because of their radical views on religion and society. They included Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872), Bruno Bauer
Bruno Bauer
Bruno Bauer was a German philosopher and historian. As a student of GWF Hegel, Bauer was a radical Rationalist in philosophy, politics and Biblical criticism...
(1809–1882) and Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
(1806–1856) among their ranks.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
(1818–1883) often attended their meetings. He developed an interest in Hegelianism, French socialism and British economic theory. He transformed the three into an essential work of economics called Das Kapital
Das Kapital
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
, which consisted of a critical economic examination of capitalism. Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
has had a massive effect on the world as a whole.
Neo-Kantianism
Neo-Kantianism refers broadly to the revival of the type of philosophy explained by Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
and of the interpretations of Kant provied by post-Kantian philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Jakob Friedrich Fries
Jakob Friedrich Fries
Jakob Friedrich Fries was a German philosopher from Barby .-Life and career:...
and Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart was a German philosopher, psychologist, and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline....
. Major figures in the neo-Kantian movement, which began around the 1860s, include Friedrich Albert Lange
Friedrich Albert Lange
Friedrich Albert Lange , was a German philosopher and sociologist.-Biography:Lange was born in Wald, near Solingen, the son of the theologian, Johann Peter Lange. He was educated at Duisburg, Zürich and Bonn, where he distinguished himself in gymnastics as much as academically...
and Hermann Cohen
Hermann Cohen
Hermann Cohen was a German-Jewish philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, and he is often held to be "probably the most important Jewish philosopher of the nineteenth century".-Life:...
.
Nietzsche
Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
(1844–1900) was initially a proponent of Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
. However, he soon came to disavow Schopenhauer's pessimistic outlook on life and sought to provide a positive philosophy. He believed this task to be urgent, as he believed a form of nihilism caused by modernity was spreading across Europe, which he summed up in the phrase "God is dead". His problem, then, was how to live a positive life considering the fact that if you believe in God, you give into nihilism, and if you don't believe in God, you also give in to nihilism. He believed he found his solution in the concepts of the Übermensch
Übermensch
The Übermensch is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....
and Eternal Return
Eternal return
Eternal return is a concept which posits that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time or space. The concept initially inherent in Indian philosophy was later found in ancient Egypt, and was subsequently...
. His work continues to have a major influence on both philosophers and artists.
Frege, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle
In the late 19th century, the predicate logic of Gottlob FregeGottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
(1848–1925) overthrew Aristotelian logic (the dominant logic since its inception in Ancient Greece). This was the beginning of analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
. In the early part of the 20th century, a group of German and Austrian philosophers and scientists formed the Vienna Circle
Vienna Circle
The Vienna Circle was an association of philosophers gathered around the University of Vienna in 1922, chaired by Moritz Schlick, also known as the Ernst Mach Society in honour of Ernst Mach...
to promote scientific thought over Hegelian system-building, which they saw as a bad influence on intellectual thought. The group considered themselves logical positivists because they believed all knowledge is either derived through experience or arrived at through analytic statements, and they adopted the predicate logic of Frege, as well as the early work of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
(1889–1951) as foundations to their work. Wittgenstein did not agree with their interpretation of his philosophy.
Contemporary analytic philosophy
In the 20th and 21st centuries Germany has been an important country for the development of contemporary analytic philosophy in continental Europe, along with France, Austria, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries.
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
was an Austro-British philosopher of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
.
Continental Philosophy
Analytic philosophy was well received in the English-speaking philosophy community, who viewed it in opposition to "continental philosophyContinental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
", whose roots lay in the German idealist
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
tradition.
Phenomenology
Phenomenology began at the start of the 20th century with the descriptive psychology of Franz Brentano
Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Brentano was an influential German philosopher and psychologist whose influence was felt by other such luminaries as Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, Kazimierz Twardowski and Alexius Meinong, who followed and adapted his views.-Life:Brentano was born at Marienberg am...
(1838–1917), and then the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
(1859–1938). It was then transformed by Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
(1889–1976), whose famous book Being and Time
Being and Time
Being and Time is a book by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, particularly...
applied phenomenology to ontology
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
, and who, along with Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
, is considered one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Phenomenology has had a large influence on Continental Philosophy, particularly existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
and poststructuralism. Heidegger himself is often identified as an existentialist, though he would have rejected this.
Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics is the philosophical theory and practice of interpretation and understanding.
Originally hermeneutics referred to the interpretation of texts, especially religious texts. In the 19th century, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), Wilhelm Dilthey
Wilhelm Dilthey
Wilhelm Dilthey was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist and hermeneutic philosopher, who held Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of...
(1833–1911) and others expanded the discipline of hermeneutics beyond mere exegesis
Exegesis
Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially a religious text. Traditionally the term was used primarily for exegesis of the Bible; however, in contemporary usage it has broadened to mean a critical explanation of any text, and the term "Biblical exegesis" is used...
and turned it into a general humanistic discipline. Schleiermacher wondered whether there could be a hermeneutics that was not a collection of pieces of ad hoc advice for the solution of specific problems with text interpretation but rather a "general hermeneutics," which dealt with the "art of understanding" as such, which pertained to the structure and function of understanding wherever it occurs. Later in the 19th century, Dilthey began to see possibilities for continuing Schleiermacher's general hermeneutics project as a "general methodology of the humanities and social sciences".
In the 20th century, hermeneutics took an 'ontological turn'. Martin Heidegger's Being and Time fundamentally transformed the discipline. No longer was it conceived of as being about understanding linguistic communication, or providing a methodological basis for the human sciences - as far as Heidegger was concerned, hermeneutics is ontology, dealing with the most fundamental conditions of man's being in the world. The Heideggerian conception of hermeneutics was further developed by Heidegger's pupil Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method .-Life:...
(1900–2002), in his book Truth and Method
Truth and Method
Truth and Method is the major philosophical work by Hans-Georg Gadamer, first published in 1960.The book draws heavily on the work of Wilhelm Dilthey, and Romantic hermeneutics...
.
The Frankfurt School
In 1923, Carl Grünberg
Carl Grünberg
Carl Grünberg was the first director of the Institute for Social Research. He established and edited a journal of labour and socialist history today known as Grünbergs Archiv . He retired in 1929 and left the Institute to Max Horkheimer....
founded the Institute for Social Research
Institute for Social Research
The Institute for Social Research is a research organization for sociology and continental philosophy, best known as the institutional home of the Frankfurt School and critical theory....
, drawing from Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
's psychoanalysis and Weberian
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
philosophy, which came to be known as the "Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
". Expelled by the Nazis, the school reformed again in Frankfurt after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Although they drew from Marxism, they were outspoken opponents of Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
. Books from the group, like Adorno’s
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
and Horkheimer’s
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer was a German-Jewish philosopher-sociologist, famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research. His most important works include The Eclipse of Reason and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment...
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Dialectic of Enlightenment , is one of the core texts of Critical Theory explaining the socio-psychological status quo that had been responsible for what the Frankfurt School considered the failure of the Enlightenment...
and Adorno’s Negative Dialectics
Negative Dialectics
Negative Dialectics is a 1966 book by Theodor W. Adorno and is considered to be his magnum opus. In the book, Adorno challenges the metaphysics of Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, while simultaneously building his ideas towards emancipation from the capitalist order...
, critiqued what they saw as the failure of the Enlightenment project and the problems of modernity. Postmodernists
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
consider the Frankfurt school to be one their precursors.
Since the 1960s the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
has been guided by Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
' (born 1929) work on communicative reason
Communicative rationality
Communicative rationality, or communicative reason, is a theory or set of theories which describes human rationality as a necessary outcome of successful communication. In particular, it is tied to the philosophy of Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas, and their program of universal pragmatics, along...
, linguistic intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity is a term used in philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology to describe a condition somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity, one in which a phenomenon is personally experienced but by more than one subject....
and what Habermas calls "the philosophical discourse of modernity".
See also
- List of German-language philosophers
- Continental philosophyContinental philosophyContinental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
- Critical theoryCritical theoryCritical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
- Culture of GermanyCulture of GermanyGerman culture began long before the rise of Germany as a nation-state and spanned the entire German-speaking world. From its roots, culture in Germany has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular...
- German idealismGerman idealismGerman idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
- German romanticismGerman RomanticismFor the general context, see Romanticism.In the philosophy, art, and culture of German-speaking countries, German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding in its...
- German literatureGerman literatureGerman literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German part of Switzerland, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there...
- History of philosophyHistory of philosophyThe history of philosophy is the study of philosophical ideas and concepts through time. Issues specifically related to history of philosophy might include : How can changes in philosophy be accounted for historically? What drives the development of thought in its historical context? To what...
- List of Austrian intellectual traditions
- Logical empiricism
- Modern philosophyModern philosophyModern philosophy is a type of philosophy that originated in Western Europe in the 17th century, and is now common worldwide. It is not a specific doctrine or school , although there are certain assumptions common to much of it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier philosophy.The 17th and...
- Phenomenology
- PostmodernismPostmodernismPostmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
- Prussian virtuesPrussian virtuesThe term Prussian virtues refers to an unfixed canon of several Lutheran virtues dating from the Enlightenment. Prussian virtues and the Prussian value system have influenced aspects of wider German culture.- Historical Development :...
- Vienna CircleVienna CircleThe Vienna Circle was an association of philosophers gathered around the University of Vienna in 1922, chaired by Moritz Schlick, also known as the Ernst Mach Society in honour of Ernst Mach...