Franz von Kutschera

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Franz von Kutschera (born March 3, 1932 in Hanover ) is a German philosopher , initially with a focus on logic , philosophy of language , epistemology and philosophy of science , but who also wrote treatises on the areas of philosophy of mind , ethics , aesthetics and the philosophy of religion . He is one of the early representatives of analytical philosophy in the German-speaking world, although he did not follow naturalistic and reductionist tendencies.

Life

Franz von Kutschera studied mathematics , philosophy and physics at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, among others with the scientific theorist Wolfgang Stegmüller and the physicist Fritz Bopp . In 1960 he received his doctorate in Munich with the work on the problem of the beginning of philosophy in Edmund Husserl's late work . The habilitation also took place in Munich with the text The Antinomies of Logic - Semantic Investigations . Then Kutschera worked as a private lecturer at the Institute for Logic and Philosophy of Science in Munich. In 1966 he represented Kurt Schütte's chair in Kiel . From 1968 until his retirement in 1998 he held the chair for philosophy at the University of Regensburg .

Like many other younger analytical theorists, Kutschera belongs to a generation that no longer follows the authoritative dogmas of analytical schools. For example, he presented benevolent works on religious-philosophical problems early on . In ontology , Kutschera criticizes materialistic or naturalistic positions that try to reduce everything psychic and spiritual to material or natural phenomena. In philosophical anthropology he has therefore developed a bipolar or non-reductionist position, which - similar to Karl Popper in his conception of the three worlds - assumes an ontological independence of the intellectual abstracts (numbers, functions, propositions, etc.) so that Let neither the spiritual (mental) reduce to the consciousness (psychic) ​​nor the consciousness (psychic) ​​to the physical (physical). The psychological unity of the person is preserved despite a certain dualism or trialism.

According to Kutschera, psychological and spiritual phenomena such as thinking, feeling and perceiving are not reducible to the physical in the broad sense. H. not on objective material phenomena. The psychological and mental phenomena of consciousness and spirit are essentially only subjectively accessible phenomena and cannot be understood through abstraction from the physical or from matter. Accordingly, phenomena of consciousness and the spiritual cannot be completely objectified, especially since a theory of the psychic and mental is always something spiritual. According to Kutschera, this ontological and epistemological independence of the psychic and spiritual enables the freedom of human will and thus both the non-deterministic openness of the world and the normativity of theoretical and practical reason.

In ethics, he takes a value-objectivist view that there are not only subjective, but also objective facts of value that can be recognized and substantiated. Kutschera also takes a similar position in aesthetics, so that some aesthetic judgments about the beautiful and ugly are not merely subjective in nature, but can be proven to be accurate and justifiable. He argues against skepticist (or non-cognitivist), subjectivist and (cultural) relativist positions in ethics as well as in aesthetics.

On January 12, 1999, Kutschera received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Philosophy at Leipzig University . In November 2010, the Munich School of Philosophy awarded him an honorary doctorate. Well-known students are Wolfgang Lenzen , Georg Meggle and Uwe Meixner .

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Franz von Kutschera published books and essays on logic, epistemology and philosophy of science, but also philosophy of language, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion and history of philosophy. He published overview volumes on the philosophy of language (1971) and on the philosophy of science (1972) as well as several monographs on logic: 1971 together with Alfred Breitkopf the introduction to modern logic , 1973 the introduction to the logic of norms, values ​​and decisions and 1976 the standard work on intensional Logic in German, the introduction to the dimensional semantics . The set of excluded third parties (1985) and the monograph on Gottlob Frege (1989) also belong to the complex of his logical writings .

In addition to his logical writings, Kutschera also wrote books on numerous other classical fields of philosophy: 1981 the basic questions of epistemology , 1982 the foundations of ethics , 1988 aesthetics , 1990 the religious philosophy Reason and Faith . The two complementary and interdisciplinary works The False Objectivity (1993) and The Parts of Philosophy and the Whole of Reality (1998) are also of importance.

When discussing classic authors, Kutschera developed new interpretive approaches and thus gave important impulses to relevant research. His essay, Basic Concepts of Metaphysics by Leibniz, which appeared in 1979, was the starting point for research on Leibniz's logic in comparison with the conceptualizations of today's modal logic. His detailed study of Plato's Parmenides (1995) influenced Plato research - among others by Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer .

Fonts

  • On the problem of the beginning of philosophy in Edmund Husserl's late work . Dissertation, Munich 1960
  • The Antinomies of Logic - Semantic Investigations . Alber, Freiburg / Munich 1964
  • Elementary logic . Springer, Vienna / New York 1967
  • Philosophy of language . Fink, Munich 1971 (2nd edition 1975)
  • Introduction to modern logic (with Alfred Breitkopf). Alber, Freiburg / Munich 1971, 8th, completely revised. 2007 edition, ISBN 978-3-495-48271-1
  • Philosophy of Science - Fundamentals of the general methodology of empirical sciences . 2 vols., Fink, Munich 1972
  • Introduction to the logic of norms, values ​​and decisions . Alber, Freiburg / Munich 1973, ISBN 3-495-47269-X
  • Introduction to the dimensional semantics. de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1976, ISBN 3-11-006684-X . ( De Gruyter Study Book: Basics of Communication. )
  • Basic questions of epistemology . de Gruyter, Berlin 1981
  • Basics of ethics . de Gruyter, Berlin 1982 (2nd edition 1998)
  • The phrase of the excluded third party. Research on the basics of logic . de Gruyter, Berlin 1985
  • Aesthetics . de Gruyter, Berlin 1988 (2nd edition 1998)
  • Gottlob Frege - An introduction to his work . Berlin, New York (de Gruyter), Berlin 1989
  • Reason and belief . de Gruyter, Berlin 1990
  • The wrong objectivity . de Gruyter, Berlin 1993
  • Plato's "Parmenides" . de Gruyter, Berlin 1995
  • The parts of philosophy and the whole of reality . de Gruyter, Berlin 1998
  • The big questions . de Gruyter, Berlin 2000
  • Plato's philosophy . 3 vol., Mentis, Paderborn 2002, ISBN 978-3-89785-277-8
  • Beyond materialism . mentis, Paderborn 2003, ISBN 978-3-89785-295-2
  • The ways of idealism . mentis, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 978-3-89785-536-6
  • What remains of Christianity . mentis, Paderborn 2008, ISBN 978-3-89785-609-7
  • Philosophy of mind . mentis, Paderborn 2009, ISBN 978-3-89785-670-7
  • Value and Reality . mentis, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-89785-718-6

literature

  • Joachim Jacobi: The polar dualism after Franz von Kutschera. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8260-6515-6 .
  • Wolfgang Lenzen (Ed.): The wide spectrum of analytical philosophy. Festschrift for Franz von Kutschera . de Gruyter, Berlin 1997

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ von Kutschera: Philosophy of Spirit, Paderborn: mentis, 2009, foreword p. 12
  2. ↑ Permin Stekeler-Weithofer: On an interpretation of Plato's dialogue Parmenides . In: Wolfgang Lenzen: The wide spectrum of analytical philosophy - Festschrift for Franz von Kutschera . de Gruyter, Berlin 1997, pp. 346-363.
personal data
SURNAME Kutschera, Franz von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover