Ferdinand Ebner

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Ferdinand Ebner (born January 31, 1882 in Wiener Neustadt ; † October 17, 1931 in Gablitz in Lower Austria) was an Austrian elementary school teacher and philosopher .

Together with Martin Buber , he is counted among the most outstanding representatives of dialogical thinking .

Ebner's philosophy is based on the I-Thou relationship and prepares Gabriel Marcel's Christian existentialism . Based on the unity of me and you in the word, Ebner developed a religiously based philosophy of language .

Life

Ebner attended grammar school and, with a one-year break because of a recreational stay in Gleichenberg and Alland, attended the Lower Austrian state teachers' seminar in Wiener Neustadt. After graduating from high school , he became a teacher in Waldegg in the Piestingtal . Even here he was marked by depression . In 1912 Ebner was transferred to Gablitz in the Vienna Woods , from where he repeatedly fled into the Viennese cultural scene. “He spent whole days in Vienna's churches, museums, concert halls, theaters and coffee houses. In the latter, he discussed with friends and acquaintances and immersed himself for hours in ' Die Fackel ' and ' Brenner '. "( Martin Weiß : BBKL)

In both places Ebner dealt with philosophical topics and first read Otto Weininger's gender and character , later Arthur Schopenhauer , Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche . His first philosophical work Ethics and Life: Fragments of a Metaphysics of Individual Existence he wrote as early as 1913/14, it remained unpublished. His main work The Word and the Spiritual Realities: Pneumatological Fragments was published after partial preprints in the journal Der Brenner 1921 in the Brenner publishing house Ludwig von Fickers , with whom Ebner had become friends in the meantime.

In 1923, after having become the head of the elementary school reluctantly, Ebner attempted two suicide because of renewed depression. After his stay in a sanatorium at Hartenstein Castle , he married his colleague Maria Mizera. Due to the further deterioration in his health, he was retired in November 1923. Ebner died of tuberculosis in 1931 .

Ebner's estate is in the Brenner archive in Innsbruck .

philosophy

The publication of Ebner's main work, the pneumatological fragments , is accompanied by a disparaging opinion from the Viennese philosophy professor Adolph Stöhr . He left no doubt about his rejection of the book when he calls the book a “book of edification for theosophists and other mystics”, at best allows Ebner to be considered a “Kierkegaard admirer” and concludes his assessment with the sobering remark: “Scientific-psychological and scientific - philosophically, the work is utterly impossible ”. As you can see, the reception of Ferdinand Ebner's work begins with devastating criticism and incomprehension. A fact that seemed to be more than known to him, as the following quote proves:

“Because a book that cannot be read by anyone with understanding, who does not become someone else through this reading - as I became a different person because I thought my thoughts in the last years of my life - such a book can not be written otherwise than in humble renunciation of being understood. "

- Ferdinand Ebner : Hohmann, p. 27

On closer inspection of the work, one cannot share this devastating criticism, although one must agree with Bernhard Caspar's opinion that Ebner's philosophy is extremely inchoative . This means that he only initiates the thought and does not lead it to the end, as he himself notes at one point: “The fragments are only inchoative. Who will continue thinking about this thought that has started in them? ”(Casper, p. 249).

criticism

But just like the reception, Ebner's work begins with criticism, accusing Western philosophy of “robbing the word of its true content, tearing it out of its vitality and making it an abstract concept that in fact empties the word Literal sense means ”(Jagiello, p. 403). The true content of the word is lost in the first moment of its reception when the logos of the Gospel of John is misunderstood as reason. After all, logos also means reason, but first and foremost “word” or “speech”, but “philosophy professors who, when they come across the term logos, automatically - because they save thinking - react with an 'aha Neoplatonism', understand not that ”(Ebner: Glosses on the Introit of the Gospel of John, p. 566). The creation of words thus moves into the center of his thinking, in the sense that man thinks because he has the word. And for this reason the word is at the beginning of Ebner's philosophy, albeit with the restriction that the word needs reason and vice versa, or - to put it another way - because "there is reason in the word and the word in reason" (Ebner: Glossen to the introit of the Gospel of John, p. 567).

He was also averse to general science , which sees in man a being that rose above his subhuman nature. Because neither man has risen, nor was it nature that lifted him up, but only a power that stands far above him and above nature, God. Because, according to Ebner, it was God alone, the divine YOU, through whom the word and reason were placed in people. (Jagiello, p. 258)

And also, or especially, journalism was severely criticized by Ebner. In the sense of Plato he warns of the danger of the printed word, because "it goes everywhere, even to those who do not understand it and do not know how to say for whom it was intended and for whom not" (Ebner: Glossen zum Introit to the Gospel of John, p. 586). After all, it is this lie turned into paper that ruins the true meaning of the word and drives the spiritual decline of man.

Pneumatology

In its general meaning, the term pneumatology is derived from the Greek pneuma , meaning spirit. The term was first used in 1620 by J.-H. Alsted, who understood it to be a special part of metaphysics that speaks of God, the created angels and souls of men as the three matterless and rational spirits. That is to say, in a nutshell: "Pneumatica est scientia de spiritu", ie "Pneumatology is the science of the mind".

In the Historical Dictionary of Philosophy there is also a historical outline of the conceptual use, which mentions, among other things, that the term was changed by Hegel to Spiritual Science and later to Spiritual Science , whereby the original meaning was blurred and the term was sometimes even declared dead. Wrong, because with Rosenkranz it comes to the revival of pneumatology, since he tries to preserve it alongside anthropology and phenomenology as a science of the subject or spirit. Ebner is not mentioned in particular, only in connection with the unsuccessful revival of pneumatology his name and main work are mentioned succinctly. There it says: "Similar appropriations of the term pneumatology for a spiritual philosophy in the 20th century remained only episodes".

Ebner goes one step further in his definition. For him, pneumatology is also the "doctrine of the spirit", but unlike in the original sense even more the "doctrine of the spirit of the word" (Jagiello, p. 405). A not insignificant difference.

As in John's Gospel, Ebner's philosophy also begins with the word that he received from God. Only when God has spoken to him does man become man. (Jagiello, p. 252) To be more precise, God laid the meaning for the word in us, which means roughly: “the way in which something enters us. To have a sense for something means to meet it spiritually ”. (Hohmann, p. 50) Only when man was able to interpret his environment spiritually was the path to civilization and culture open to him, or he freed himself to interpret and understand. It did this by putting the human body upright. As Ebner said: "The divine word ... straightened his body so that he is now anatomically capable of it, freed his hand and turned his gaze up to heaven". (Ebner, Fragmente, p. 40)

However, none of this happens in the loneliness of the ego, or in the form of a monologue, because "there is no ego without the world, but also no world without an ego" (Hohmann, p. 77).

The I and the YOU

For Ebner the spiritual is fundamentally based on a relationship to something spiritual outside of us, through which it and in which it exists. In pneumatology this spiritual manifests itself outside of the human being in the YOU, with which the I is related, because “not I and YOU have the word for themselves. Rather, the word itself is - in the concreteness and topicality of its being uttered ... the comprehensive through which I and YOU are in the first place ”(Casper, p. 207). If man finally renounced this relationship and wanted to lead a mere existence in comparison to a real life , he would take flight into the existence of an animal and thus renounce his spiritual activity. For Ebner, this renunciation is the “perversion of the will to live” and commits a grave sin by turning away from God.

The YOU is thus the bond between me and the world, whereby the real core of this relationship is not in my perception of the world, but in the perception of myself, i.e. my I. The other holds a mirror up to us, so to speak - a concept that Ebner took from Weininger's sexual philosophy - which confronts us with our own self. He throws us back on ourselves, so to speak, as Sartre once put it. In fragment 12, Ebner writes:

“The world exists as a world experience that presupposes the self. But the I exists because God created it. As God's creation, the world exists, so to speak, through the detour via the I - via man. However, in the fact that the ego is based on a relationship to the you (...) we have the guarantee that this world we have experienced is real, not just a dream and is a 'projection of the ego'. "

- Ferdinand Ebner : Schriften I, 240

Ultimately, however, according to the Christian faith, the YOU finds its determination only in God, because “the true YOU of the I is God” (Hohmann, p. 23). And so "it is the positive relationship between the self and you, it is our belief in God that gives us the reality of this world". (I, 240).

Quote

"Is it a consolation or a painful exercise in resignation to think that I am a shouter, if not a shouter, in the desert, whose word will not continue to ring in anyone's ears?"

- Ferdinand Ebner in: Das Wort ist der Weg , p. 3

See also

Works

  • Ethics and Life - Fragments of a Metaphysics of Individual Existence , ed. v. Richard Hörmann and Ernst Pavelka, Hamburg a. a .: LIT-Verlag, 2013
  • Diary 1916. Fragment from 1916 , ed. v. Richard Hörmann and Markus Flatscher, Hamburg a. a .: LIT-Verlag, 2007
  • Diary 1917 , ed. v. Richard Hörmann and Matthias Flatscher, Hamburg a. a .: LIT-Verlag, 2011
  • Diary 1918 , ed. v. Richard Hörmann and Markus Flatscher, Hamburg a. a .: LIT-Verlag, 2014
  • Diary 1920 (Mühlauer Tagebuch) , ed. v. Richard Hörmann and Monika Seekircher. Vienna; Cologne; Weimar: Böhlau 2001
  • The Word and Spiritual Realities - Pneumatological Fragments. The story of the fragments , ed. v. Richard Hörmann, Hamburg a. a .: LIT-Verlag, 2009
  • The Word and the Spiritual Realities - Pneumatological Fragments 1921, Ed .: Herder Verlag, Vienna, 1952
  • Word and love. Aphorisms 1931 , ed. v. Richard Hörmann and Krzysztof Skorulski, Hamburg a. a .: LIT-Verlag, 2015 ISBN 978-3-643-50641-2
  • The word is the way , Herder Verlag, Vienna, 1983
  • The original word of language , in: Ficker, L: Der Brenner , 6th episode, 2nd half volume, Brenner-Verlag, Innsbruck, 1921
  • Glosses on the introit of the Gospel of John , in: Ficker, L .: Der Brenner , 6th episode, 2nd half volume, Brenner-Verlag, Innsbruck 1921
  • Writings I - fragments, essays, aphorisms , Kösel-Verlag KG, Munich 1963
  • Writings II - Notes, Diaries, Memoirs , Kösel-Verlag KG, Munich, 1963
  • Writings III - letters , Kösel-Verlag KG, Munich 1963

literature

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Werner L. Hohmann: Ferdinand Ebner. Thinkers and Ebner of the word in the situation of the "spiritual turning point" . The blue owl, Essen 1995, ISBN 3-924368-03-1 , p. 27 .
  2. ↑ Th. Mahlmann: Pneumatology, Pneumatics. In: Joachim Ritter ua (Hrsg.): Historical dictionary of philosophy . Volume 7 (PQ). Schwabe & Co Verlag, Basel 1989, 996–999, here: 997.
  3. ↑ Ferdinand Ebner: Fragments, essays, aphorisms. On a pneumatology of the word . Kösel Verlag, Munich 1963, p. 240 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ebner, Ferdinand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian philosopher (dialogical thinking)
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Wiener Neustadt
DATE OF DEATH October 17, 1931
Place of death Gablitz