Hans Lipps
Encyclopedia
Hans Lipps was a German
phenomenological and existentialist
philosopher.
in 1909, Lipps began studying art history
, architecture
, aesthetics
and philosophy
at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. In 1910-1911 while doing his military service in Dresden he continued his philosophical studies at Dresden's University of Technology
. In the spring of 1911 he moved to Göttingen to study with Edmund Husserl
. Together with Theodor Conrad and his wife, Hedwig Conrad-Martius
, as well as Roman Ingarden
and Fritz Kaufmann, Lipps belonged to the famous “Philosophical Society of Göttingen” that gathered around Husserl and Adolf Reinach
. This society also included Edith Stein
, who described the young Lipps as follows: “He was very tall, slender but strong; his handsome, expressive face was fresh like a child’s and his big round eyes were earnest – questioning like a child’s eyes. He usually uttered his opinion in a short but definitive statement.”
Lipps also studied biology
. In the winter of 1912 he completed a doctorate with a dissertation entitled “About structural changes of plants in a modified medium”, after which he began to study medicine
. Between 1914 and 1918 he served in World War I
as an assistant army physician. After the war he continued his interrupted studies in Göttingen and Freiburg i. Br.
and completed his formal medical degree. In 1919 he received his license to practice medicine, and in 1920 he published a Ph.D. dissertation in medicine addressing “... the effect of certain colchicine derivatives”.
In 1921 he completed his habilitation (qualification for professorship) under the mathematician Richard Courant
, whom he had met through Edith Stein, with a dissertation entitled “Investigations into the philosophy of mathematics”. Lipps had close personal links with the philosophers Josef König, Helmuth Plessner
, and Georg Misch
. During the academic year 1923/24 he and Misch conducted a seminar on the theory of signification (hermeneutics). In 1928 Lipps substituted for the professor of philosophy at the University of Marburg. Having declined a professorship at the University of Santiago de Chile, he accepted in 1936 the position of Ordinarius (chair professor) of philosophy at the University of Frankfurt am Main.
Throughout his academic career, Lipps continued occasionally to practice medicine, substituting alternatively for army physicians and country doctors. During the term breaks 1921/1922 and again 1930/1931, when he was already teaching as a professor, he served for extensive periods as a doctor in the navy, traveling to all continents except for Australia. At the beginning of World War II
in September 1939 he was drafted to the military and served as an army doctor in France
and Russia
. He lost his life in a battle at Shabero/Ochwat on 10 September 1941 and was buried in the nearby cemetery of Dudino.
Husserl, too, demands a reversion. Yet his return is not directed towards the concrete human being but instead to a “transcendental ego” through which the concrete human being is to be constituted in the first place. Martin Heidegger
substituted Husserl’s intentional analysis of “transcendental consciousness” with the existential analytic of Dasein, as it has been expounded in Sein und Zeit in terms of a fundamental ontology.
Like Heidegger, Lipps inquires about the Sein of the concrete human being. While Heidegger interprets this Sein as a phenomenon in the sense of something “which-shows-itself,” Lipps begins from the question: “Inwiefern wird in der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden gerade die Verfassung meiner Existenz Erfahrung?” (To what extent does the manifold signification of Seiendes lead to the experience of the constitution of my existence?) With this question, Lipps moves closer to Husserl’s method of transcendental inquiry (“transzendentale Leitfäden”). Unlike Husserl, however, Lipps is neither concerned with the constitution of Seiendes, nor – as Heidegger is – with the question about the “Sein des Seienden”. From Lipps’s point of view, Sein cannot be disentangled from the concretization of its essence (“was”). His focus is on the manifold meanings of being (“sein”): the “is” in statements such as “is blue”, “is a lion”, “is iron”, “is rain”, “is a speech”, “is greed”, etc. denotes different things and differs in its respective meaning. From this Lipps concludes: “Es gibt keine universelle Ontologie.” (There is no universal ontology.)
So what exactly is the subject matter of Hans Lipps’s philosophy? Does his thought move on a trajectory from the essence of things (“das Was der Dinge”) via “language” (“Sprache”) to the “human being” (“Mensch”), as his three major treatises might suggest? Lipps states: “Die Weise, in der der Philosophierende existiert, sich vor sich selbst bringt in der Bewegtheit seiner Einstellung - aber kein Gegenstand - bestimmt die Philosophie.” (Philosophy is determined not by the object but by the mode in which the philosophizing subject exists and how it relates to itself in the movement of its perception) Philosophy is neither defined by a specific subject matter, nor a clearly delineated field of investigation; it cannot be compartmentalized into disciplines or taken into possession. “Philosophy” describes a direction and a point of view one cannot assume deliberately as it consists in an attitude that develops in direct opposition to my natural inclination. Philosophy does not intend to lay new grounds; rather it occurs “als verantwortliche Übernahme schon geschehener Grundlegung” (as a responsible adoption of an already existing groundwork). In philosophy I become conscious of myself.
Philosophy traces back to, and brings to awareness, what has been present before without being conscious of itself (“an ihm selber in seiner Vorgängigkeit unbewußt” ). Thus I seek to become aware of myself in my origins, and consequently attain an original relationship to reality, not by disposing of prior decisions - which would be impossible - but by accepting myself in these prior decisions. Such a philosophy is not geared toward enlightenment but toward a responsible appropriation of myself in my origins, toward a responsible performance of my existence, toward existing properly. In this regard philosophy specifically is existential philosophy
.
The term of reference of philosophy is reality (“Wirklichkeit”), to which I have always already reached out and within which I have gained pre-predicative understanding of myself as well as of reality. It is in this relationship that reality becomes real and that the human being realizes itself. The reality of myself as well as of other people is directed toward the reality of things, which refers back to the former. It is only in such proportionality that anything exists at all. It is ultimately for this reason that everything that is real and to the extent that it is real refers back to my own and other people’s (practical and theoretical) ability by which human existence is realized. Such relationship is therefore an “indicator of existential possibilities”: a piece of iron, the color blue, vision, cognition, embarrassment, etc.
Philosophy unveils human existence as the center of reality - in analogy to the interpretation of a text. For Lipps, philosophy is therefore a hermeneutics of reality directed at human existence for the purpose of enabling the latter to its own realization. As Lipps understands it, “hermeneutics” necessarily implies a fundamentally retroactive dimension.
Philosophy qua hermeneutics of reality is tied up with language, through which alone reality – both in terms of objects or things as well as of human beings - is being revealed. It is therefore the foremost task of philosophical inquiry to take up and follow the hints toward meaning and signification embodied in word and speech. And it must clarify those hints and explicate the pre-predicative mode of understanding they represent as grounded in the logos. This leads to the problem of the openness of the meaning of words.In open contrast to Husserl's theory of the "Ideal unities of significance" Lipps emphasized the "open indifference" of many utterances whose meaning changes according to the change of speech situation. This resembles Wittgenstein's conception of "language games" (a similarity seen for the first time by Gottfried Bräuer). A further similarity exists exists between Wittgenstein's "concepts with blurred edges" (Philosophical Investigations
§ 71) and the "envisageing conceptions " which in both cases are illustrated by the word "Spiel". There is, however, no trace of any influence on either side.
Hans Georg Gadamer writes in the preface to the edition of Lipps’s works:
“In our days, Lipps’s work should once again find its time. Mining in the quarry of language undertaken in England in the wake of Wittgenstein, Austin, and Searle has not only a predecessor, but an excellent counterpart in Hans Lipps. In questioning language, Lipps gains almost inexhaustible anwers. Among phenomenologists, Lipps’s standing in unrivaled in his aural sensitivity for language and this perception of gesture.”
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...
phenomenological and existentialist
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...
philosopher.
Biographical Sketch
Following his highschool graduation in DresdenDresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
in 1909, Lipps began studying art history
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
, architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
, aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
and 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...
at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. In 1910-1911 while doing his military service in Dresden he continued his philosophical studies at Dresden's University of Technology
Dresden University of Technology
The Technische Universität Dresden is the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, the largest university in Saxony and one of the 10 largest universities in Germany with 36,066 students...
. In the spring of 1911 he moved to Göttingen to study with 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...
. Together with Theodor Conrad and his wife, Hedwig Conrad-Martius
Hedwig Conrad-Martius
Hedwig Conrad-Martius was a German phenomenologist who became a Christian mystic.- Life and works :...
, as well as Roman Ingarden
Roman Ingarden
Roman Witold Ingarden was a Polish philosopher who worked in phenomenology, ontology and aesthetics.Before World War II, Ingarden published his works mainly in the German language...
and Fritz Kaufmann, Lipps belonged to the famous “Philosophical Society of Göttingen” that gathered around Husserl and Adolf Reinach
Adolf Reinach
Adolf Bernhard Philipp Reinach , German philosopher, phenomenologist and law theorist.-Life and Works:...
. This society also included Edith Stein
Edith Stein
Saint Teresia Benedicta of the Cross, sometimes also known as Saint Edith Stein , was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and nun, regarded as a martyr and saint of the Roman Catholic Church...
, who described the young Lipps as follows: “He was very tall, slender but strong; his handsome, expressive face was fresh like a child’s and his big round eyes were earnest – questioning like a child’s eyes. He usually uttered his opinion in a short but definitive statement.”
Lipps also studied biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
. In the winter of 1912 he completed a doctorate with a dissertation entitled “About structural changes of plants in a modified medium”, after which he began to study medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
. Between 1914 and 1918 he served in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
as an assistant army physician. After the war he continued his interrupted studies in Göttingen and Freiburg i. Br.
University of Freiburg
The University of Freiburg , sometimes referred to in English as the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.The university was founded in 1457 by the Habsburg dynasty as the...
and completed his formal medical degree. In 1919 he received his license to practice medicine, and in 1920 he published a Ph.D. dissertation in medicine addressing “... the effect of certain colchicine derivatives”.
In 1921 he completed his habilitation (qualification for professorship) under the mathematician Richard Courant
Richard Courant
Richard Courant was a German American mathematician.- Life :Courant was born in Lublinitz in the German Empire's Prussian Province of Silesia. During his youth, his parents had to move quite often, to Glatz, Breslau, and in 1905 to Berlin. He stayed in Breslau and entered the university there...
, whom he had met through Edith Stein, with a dissertation entitled “Investigations into the philosophy of mathematics”. Lipps had close personal links with the philosophers Josef König, Helmuth Plessner
Helmuth Plessner
Helmuth Plessner was a German philosopher and sociologist, and a primary advocate of "philosophical anthropology" .He was Chairman from 1953-1959 of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie....
, and Georg Misch
Georg Misch
Georg Misch was a German philosopher.-Life and work:He worked as a professor in Marburg and Göttingen before retiring under pressure from the National Socialist government in 1935. He went into exile to the UK, living there from 1939 until 1946...
. During the academic year 1923/24 he and Misch conducted a seminar on the theory of signification (hermeneutics). In 1928 Lipps substituted for the professor of philosophy at the University of Marburg. Having declined a professorship at the University of Santiago de Chile, he accepted in 1936 the position of Ordinarius (chair professor) of philosophy at the University of Frankfurt am Main.
Throughout his academic career, Lipps continued occasionally to practice medicine, substituting alternatively for army physicians and country doctors. During the term breaks 1921/1922 and again 1930/1931, when he was already teaching as a professor, he served for extensive periods as a doctor in the navy, traveling to all continents except for Australia. At the beginning of 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...
in September 1939 he was drafted to the military and served as an army doctor in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. He lost his life in a battle at Shabero/Ochwat on 10 September 1941 and was buried in the nearby cemetery of Dudino.
Philosophy as responsible self-acceptance
According to Lipps, human existence is grounded in the interpretation of reality. Asking about what something is refers to and fundamentally involves the human being, in relation to whom everything primarily is.Husserl, too, demands a reversion. Yet his return is not directed towards the concrete human being but instead to a “transcendental ego” through which the concrete human being is to be constituted in the first place. Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
substituted Husserl’s intentional analysis of “transcendental consciousness” with the existential analytic of Dasein, as it has been expounded in Sein und Zeit in terms of a fundamental ontology.
Like Heidegger, Lipps inquires about the Sein of the concrete human being. While Heidegger interprets this Sein as a phenomenon in the sense of something “which-shows-itself,” Lipps begins from the question: “Inwiefern wird in der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden gerade die Verfassung meiner Existenz Erfahrung?” (To what extent does the manifold signification of Seiendes lead to the experience of the constitution of my existence?) With this question, Lipps moves closer to Husserl’s method of transcendental inquiry (“transzendentale Leitfäden”). Unlike Husserl, however, Lipps is neither concerned with the constitution of Seiendes, nor – as Heidegger is – with the question about the “Sein des Seienden”. From Lipps’s point of view, Sein cannot be disentangled from the concretization of its essence (“was”). His focus is on the manifold meanings of being (“sein”): the “is” in statements such as “is blue”, “is a lion”, “is iron”, “is rain”, “is a speech”, “is greed”, etc. denotes different things and differs in its respective meaning. From this Lipps concludes: “Es gibt keine universelle Ontologie.” (There is no universal ontology.)
So what exactly is the subject matter of Hans Lipps’s philosophy? Does his thought move on a trajectory from the essence of things (“das Was der Dinge”) via “language” (“Sprache”) to the “human being” (“Mensch”), as his three major treatises might suggest? Lipps states: “Die Weise, in der der Philosophierende existiert, sich vor sich selbst bringt in der Bewegtheit seiner Einstellung - aber kein Gegenstand - bestimmt die Philosophie.” (Philosophy is determined not by the object but by the mode in which the philosophizing subject exists and how it relates to itself in the movement of its perception) Philosophy is neither defined by a specific subject matter, nor a clearly delineated field of investigation; it cannot be compartmentalized into disciplines or taken into possession. “Philosophy” describes a direction and a point of view one cannot assume deliberately as it consists in an attitude that develops in direct opposition to my natural inclination. Philosophy does not intend to lay new grounds; rather it occurs “als verantwortliche Übernahme schon geschehener Grundlegung” (as a responsible adoption of an already existing groundwork). In philosophy I become conscious of myself.
Philosophy traces back to, and brings to awareness, what has been present before without being conscious of itself (“an ihm selber in seiner Vorgängigkeit unbewußt” ). Thus I seek to become aware of myself in my origins, and consequently attain an original relationship to reality, not by disposing of prior decisions - which would be impossible - but by accepting myself in these prior decisions. Such a philosophy is not geared toward enlightenment but toward a responsible appropriation of myself in my origins, toward a responsible performance of my existence, toward existing properly. In this regard philosophy specifically is existential philosophy
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...
.
The term of reference of philosophy is reality (“Wirklichkeit”), to which I have always already reached out and within which I have gained pre-predicative understanding of myself as well as of reality. It is in this relationship that reality becomes real and that the human being realizes itself. The reality of myself as well as of other people is directed toward the reality of things, which refers back to the former. It is only in such proportionality that anything exists at all. It is ultimately for this reason that everything that is real and to the extent that it is real refers back to my own and other people’s (practical and theoretical) ability by which human existence is realized. Such relationship is therefore an “indicator of existential possibilities”: a piece of iron, the color blue, vision, cognition, embarrassment, etc.
Philosophy unveils human existence as the center of reality - in analogy to the interpretation of a text. For Lipps, philosophy is therefore a hermeneutics of reality directed at human existence for the purpose of enabling the latter to its own realization. As Lipps understands it, “hermeneutics” necessarily implies a fundamentally retroactive dimension.
Philosophy qua hermeneutics of reality is tied up with language, through which alone reality – both in terms of objects or things as well as of human beings - is being revealed. It is therefore the foremost task of philosophical inquiry to take up and follow the hints toward meaning and signification embodied in word and speech. And it must clarify those hints and explicate the pre-predicative mode of understanding they represent as grounded in the logos. This leads to the problem of the openness of the meaning of words.In open contrast to Husserl's theory of the "Ideal unities of significance" Lipps emphasized the "open indifference" of many utterances whose meaning changes according to the change of speech situation. This resembles Wittgenstein's conception of "language games" (a similarity seen for the first time by Gottfried Bräuer). A further similarity exists exists between Wittgenstein's "concepts with blurred edges" (Philosophical Investigations
Philosophical Investigations
Philosophical Investigations is, along with the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one of the most influential works by the 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein...
§ 71) and the "envisageing conceptions " which in both cases are illustrated by the word "Spiel". There is, however, no trace of any influence on either side.
Works
Hans Lipps: Werke in five volumes. Frankfurt a. Main: Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, 1976-1977.- Volume I: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis. Part 1: “Das Ding und seine Eigenschaften “ (1927); Part 2: “Aussage und Urteil “ (1928). ISBN 978-3-465-01137-8
- Volume II: Untersuchungen zu einer hermeneutischen Logik (1938). ISBN 978-3-465-01147-7
- Volume III: Die menschliche Natur (1941). ISBN 978-3-465-01221-4
- Volume IV: Die Verbindlichkeit der Sprache. “Aufsätze und Vorträge” (1929 bis 1941), “Frühe Schriften” (1921 bis 1927), “Bemerkungen.” ISBN 978-3-465-01222-1
- Volume V: Die Wirklichkeit des Menschen. “Aufsätze und Vorträge” (1932 bis 1939), “Frühe Schriften” (1921 und 1924), “Fragmentarisches.” ISBN 978-3-465-01223-8
Hans Georg Gadamer writes in the preface to the edition of Lipps’s works:
“In our days, Lipps’s work should once again find its time. Mining in the quarry of language undertaken in England in the wake of Wittgenstein, Austin, and Searle has not only a predecessor, but an excellent counterpart in Hans Lipps. In questioning language, Lipps gains almost inexhaustible anwers. Among phenomenologists, Lipps’s standing in unrivaled in his aural sensitivity for language and this perception of gesture.”
Secondary sources
- Otto Friedrich BollnowOtto Friedrich BollnowOtto Friedrich Bollnow was a German philosopher and teacher.He was born the son of a rector in Stettin in what was then northwest Germany and went to school in the town of Anklam...
, Studien zur Hermeneutik. Volume II: “Zur hermeneutischen Logik von Georg Misch und Hans Lipps.” Freiburg / München: Alber, 1983. ISBN 3-495-47513-3 - Otto Friedrich BollnowOtto Friedrich BollnowOtto Friedrich Bollnow was a German philosopher and teacher.He was born the son of a rector in Stettin in what was then northwest Germany and went to school in the town of Anklam...
, Hans Lipps: “Ein Beitrag zur philosophischen Lage der Gegenwart,” in Blätter für Deutsche Philosophie.16 (1941/3), p. 293-323 [1] - Gottfried Bräuer: Wege in die Sprache. Ludwig WittgensteinLudwig WittgensteinLudwig 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...
und Hans Lipps, in: Bildung und Erziehung 1963, S.131-140. - Alfred W. E. Hübner, Existenz und Sprache. Überlegungen zur hermeneutischen Sprachauffassung von Martin Heidegger und Hans Lipps. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 2001. ISBN 3-428-10286-X
- Frithjof Rodi “Beiträge zum 100. Geburtstag von Hans Lipps am 22. November 1989: 4 Beiträge zur Biographie, 4 Beiträge zur Philosophie von Hans Lipps, Texte und Dokumente,” in DiltheyDiltheyDilthey is a surname:*Karl Dilthey, German classical scholar and archaeologist.*Wilhelm Dilthey, Karl's older brother and German historian, psychologist, sociologist, student of hermeneutics, and philosopher....
-Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Geschichte der Geisteswissenschaften 6 (1989), ed. together with O. F. Bollnow, U. Dierse, K. Gründer, R. Makkreel, O. Pöggeler and H.-M- Sass. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1989. - Guy van Kerckhoven / Hans Lipps: Fragilität der Existenz. Phänomenologische Studien zur Natur des Menschen. Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg / München 2011. ISBN 978-3-495-48494-4
- Gerhard Rogler, Die hermeneutische Logik von Hans Lipps und die Begründbarkeit wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis. Würzburg: Ergon, 1998. ISBN 3-932004-74-4
- Wolfgang von der Weppen, Die existentielle Situation und die Rede. Untersuchungen zu Logik und Sprache in der existentiellen Hermeneutik von Hans Lipps. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1984. ISBN 3-88479-160-5
- Meinolf Wewel, Die Konstitution des transzendenten Etwas im Vollzug des Sehens. Eine Untersuchung im Anschluß an die Philosophie von Hans Lipps und in Auseinandersetzung mit Edmund Husserls Lehre vom “intentionalen Bewußtseinskorrelat.” Düsseldorf 1968. ISBN 3-495-47528-1 - Google