Gernot Boehme

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Gernot Böhme (undated)

Gernot Böhme ( January 3, 1937 in Dessau – January 20, 2022 ) was a German philosopher .

Böhme was a professor of philosophy at the Technical University of Darmstadt and made a name for himself with his work on aesthetics , philosophy of nature , the body and technology , and his view of practical philosophy as a skill for coping with life. With numerous publications on Plato , Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as well as with interviews and articles for newspapers and magazines, he became known beyond the professional circles. Böhme advocated the preservation of humanity and nature under the conditions of technical civilization and, in particular, respect for human physicality.

Live and act

Gernot Böhme - the literary and cultural scientist Hartmut Böhme is his younger brother - studied mathematics , physics and philosophy at the University of Göttingen and the University of Hamburg . In 1966 Böhme received his doctorate in Hamburg with a thesis on time modes . He owed the transition from science to philosophy to his mentor Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker , with whom he worked closely in Hamburg and later in Starnberg. With this he shared the interest in Plato and Kant as well as the skepticism towards the secondary literature and the basic view that one can only understand a philosopher when one grasps his claim to truth. From 1965 to 1969 he was a research assistant at the University of Hamburg with Weizsäcker and later at the University of Heidelberg with Georg Picht , a cousin of Weizsäcker. Between 1970 and 1977 he worked as a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Research into Living Conditions in the Scientific and Technical World in Starnberg . In 1973 Böhme habilitated with a thesis on the theory of time in Plato, Aristotle , Leibniz and Kant at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Munich .

In 1977 Böhme became a professor of philosophy at the TU Darmstadt . He has held numerous international guest professorships. His areas of research included classical philosophy, particularly Plato and Kant , science studies , theory of time , natural philosophy , aesthetics , ethics , technical civilization, philosophical anthropology , and Goethe . Böhme's research on Plato's philosophy aimed primarily at bringing together recent philological research on Plato with the history of science. From this grew a systematic presentation of Plato's theoretical philosophy. At the same time, she explains how the Aristotelian categories arose from discussions in the Platonic Academy. Böhme 's introduction to philosophy was published in several editions by Suhrkamp Verlag . His work Ethics in Context has also been translated into English. From 1997 to 2001, Böhme was spokesman for the graduate college on technology and society . He was also a part of the Witten/Herdecke University research project on economic culture through art . He retired in 2002. From 2005 he was director of the private Institute for the Practice of Philosophy e. V. (IPPh) in Darmstadt .

Gernot Böhme died in January 2022 at the age of 85. His wife Farideh Akashe-Böhme died in 2008.

Classic philosophy and ethics

For Gernot Böhme, the practice of philosophy meant that questions about life had to be formulated and that an art of living had to be worked out that was also connected to working on oneself. In modern times, the discipline of philosophy refuses to follow this tradition. However, philosophy is not just a science of the kind pursued at the university. It is world wisdom and a way of life at the same time. Philosophy as a way of life is about developing yourself as a human being, following on from Socrates and antiquity. Philosophy as world wisdom is based on Kant, who defined it as the philosophy that deals with what interests everyone. Today, it is particularly about the socially significant issues. Socrates as a type represents an anthropological state characterized by awareness. This includes sensitivity to the non-self ( daimonion ) of one's existence. Concern for one's own self does not mean that the other would be denied itself. To deal with the irrational components of the self, forms must be developed that make them appear manageable, necessary, and useful. In Kant research, Gernot Böhme made a name for himself with the book The Other of Reason , which he published together with his brother Hartmut Böhme . In doing so, he presented a psychoanalytically influenced critical view of modernity. According to Böhme, the Kantian epistemology turns out to be a theory of alienated knowledge, the ideal of the autonomous rational man as a dearly bought strategy of self-control. On the other hand, Böhme advocated the "otherness of reason", in particular nature, the human body, imagination, desire and feelings. Subsequently, Böhme presented a new interpretation of the criticism of judgment - the beautiful as atmosphere - and a reconstruction of the metaphysical foundations of natural science. Böhme criticized the Kantian concept of becoming human through education.

Aesthetics as aesthetics

Gernot Böhme endeavored to expand the philosophical aesthetics thematically. He conceived aesthetics as aisthetics, i.e. as a general theory of perception. Here he referred to the work of the philosopher Hermann Schmitz , who had already presented a detailed theory of perception in the 1970s, but whose work remained largely unnoticed. In the 1990s, Böhme took over the concept of atmosphere and numerous phenomenological observations from him and transferred his New Phenomenology into a New Aesthetic. Design, nature and art should now be the focus of attention. Aesthetics not only has the task of conveying modern art. An exclusively intellectual interpretation of art objects is rejected. It also has to deal with the new relationship to nature, which is increasingly shaped by humans. Moods and affects play a special role in aesthetics. For Böhme, atmospheres are the first and decisive reality for aesthetics. These are spatial carriers of moods. They form the common reality of the perceiver and the perceived. Böhme understood perception as a modality of bodily presence. He then emphasized the emotional component. Just as Schmitz had already defined perception as "feeling one's own body", perception is also a feeling of presence or a feeling of a certain atmosphere for Böhme. The atmosphere belongs neither to the object nor to the subject, but is a co-presence on this side of the subject-object split. Only later does the atmosphere differentiate into an I and object pole of the relation and solidify in the dual subject-object structure.

“In the perception of the atmosphere I feel what kind of environment I am in. So this perception has two sides: on the one hand the environment, which radiates a mood quality, on the other hand I, by participating in this mood in my state of mind and realizing that I am here now. […] Conversely, atmospheres are the way in which things and environments present themselves.”

– Gernot Boehme

The atmosphere has spilled into the room in a vague way. Atmosphere can only be pursued by experiencing it. You have to expose yourself to it and be affected by it affectively. For example, a certain cheerful or depressing atmosphere can prevail in a room. This is not a subjective sentiment. This atmosphere is experienced as a quasi-objective external experience. It describes a common state of the ego and its environment. Atmospheric phenomena are experienced as free-floating qualities, like physical-emotional forces, or as semi-personified forces of nature. Böhme distinguishes different characters from atmospheres. He counts wealth, power or elegance among the social characters. Heat, cold and brightness belong to the synaesthesias. Communicative characters are, for example, tense, calm or peaceful. Suggestions of movement can be oppressive, uplifting and moving. There are also moods in the narrower sense, such as the scenes in the English Garden. In perception, the ego not only feels the presence of something, but it feels it physically and also feels itself. Things arise from atmospheric sensing through processes of defense, differentiation and narrowing. They are perceived as dynamic because they create atmospheres and thus our sensitivities. The things are characterized by their spatially fixed locality, by physicality, identity and by the concentration as the potency of the atmospherically felt character concentrated in a finite space. Only the perception of things constitutes the dual subject-object relationship. They are experienced as something factual and objective outside of the subject.

Anthropology and Body Philosophy

Under the title anthropology in pragmatic terms , Böhme explained what man can do with himself on the basis of knowledge about himself. The human sciences of the 20th century now form the knowledge background. In a civilization that has become technologically advanced, humanity can only be preserved through resistance. This view also determines Böhme's personal philosophy. In his book Being a body as a task , he shows that for people in technical civilization, the body is no longer simply a given, because they have always understood and treated themselves as a body. The body is defined as "the nature that we ourselves are". The body is one's own nature insofar as it is given in self-experience; the body is one's own nature insofar as it is given in the experience of others. However, self-awareness must first be sought out again in special exercises in order to be able to build up an awareness of oneself that is based on “affected self-givenness”. Since the dismay is felt most inevitably in negative experiences, pain in particular moves to the center of Böhme's anthropology. He speaks of a "birth of the subject out of pain". According to Böhme, only on the basis of physical familiarity with oneself are decisions possible that are demanded of people today as “responsible patients”. He and his wife wrote the book Living with Illness about how to deal with illnesses in accordance with these insights .

Technology, science and time philosophy

In the 1970s, Gernot Böhme, together with Wolfgang van den Daele and Wolfgang Krohn at the Max Planck Institute in Starnberg, put forward the thesis of the finalization of science and thus stimulated a broad public debate. The ambiguity of the title - finis means goal or end - provoked strong criticism, especially from members of the Bund Freiheit der Wissenschaft , as if the authors wanted to restrict the autonomy of science. However, following Thomas S. Kuhn's theory of paradigms in science, the theory of the finalization of science states a three-phase model of scientific development in order to place the application of science itself on a scientific basis. After a phase of trial and error , a scientific discipline enters the paradigmatic phase that eventually leads to a mature theory. On this basis, a differentiation follows in the third phase , which is guided by application interests. The finalization thesis was supported by numerous case studies. Böhme then continued this work with a view to ecology as a normative orientation of natural science and later developed it into a critical theory of technological development. He was guided by the "interest in reasonable conditions" with reference to Max Horkheimer . In terms of scientific theory, Böhme has published writings on the formation of quantitative concepts and measurement methods. He distinguishes between an epistemological step, namely the conceptual organization of the field of phenomena ( quantification ), and an epistemological step, the mathematical representation ( scale theory ). Together with the knowledge sociologist Nico Stehr , Böhme also coined the term knowledge society in 1985. Gernot Böhme had already identified himself as a contemporary philosopher through his dissertation and post-doctoral thesis, both historically and systematically. He opposed the understanding of time as a real parameter, on the one hand, to the experience of time as duration and, on the other hand, to the ordering function of time as a rhythmic structure of existence, for example through the times of day and seasons. Against the dual conception of time as a series of positions ordered by past, present and future, and as a series of positions ordered by earlier and later, which prevails in analytic philosophy, Böhme introduced a new fundamental dichotomy, namely time as a medium of representation and time as a form of living existence. The form of living existence is time, which we experience as existing: that which we are extends itself in time - similar to a melody.

Darmstadt refusal formula

Böhme wanted to counter the participation of science in the armaments industry in the course of the arms race and the so-called NATO double-track decision- making process with an individual moralization of science and the handling of science. To this end, he propagated the maxim of starting with yourself first if you want to change something in society. In 1984 he therefore played a key role in the development of the Darmstadt refusal formula, which was intended to make the moral commitment of scientists binding for entire groups and to influence the public:

"I hereby declare that I do not want to be involved in the development of military armaments as part of my work as a scientist or technician. Rather, I will endeavor to clarify the contribution of my field to armaments development and counteract the military use of scientific and technical knowledge."

– Darmstadt refusal formula

This declaration was drafted by the Darmstadt Initiative for Disarmament and signed by around 130 scientists and technicians. Moral pressure was to be built up on the people working in armaments research and intellectual potential was to be withdrawn from the armaments escalation feared by Böhme. Böhme was the first to sign the Darmstadt refusal formula.

Honors and Festschrifts

  • On the occasion of Gernot Böhme's 60th birthday, the commemorative publication Naturknowledge and Being in Nature was published .
  • When he retired in 2002, a Festschrift on aesthetics was published for him.
  • In 2003 Böhme received the Denkbar Prize for oblique thinking .
  • On the occasion of his 70th birthday, the commemorative publication Praxis der Philosophie was published .

Fonts (selection)

  • science alternatives. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 978-3-518-07934-8 (series: Suhrkamp paperback science; 334).
  • With Hartmut Böhme : The Other of Reason. On the development of rationality structures using Kant as an example. Frankfurt am Main 1983 (2nd edition 1985, 3rd edition 1989, 5th edition 2007).
  • Anthropology in Pragmatic Terms . Suhrkamp , Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-11301-1 .
  • The Socrates guy . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 978-3-518-57925-1 .
  • As editor: Classics of natural philosophy. Beck, Munich 1989.
  • Atmosphere: Essays on the New Aesthetics . Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-518-11927-3 .
  • Theory of the Image . Fink, Munich 1999.
  • aesthetics . Fink, Munich 2001.
  • The nature before us. Natural philosophy in pragmatic terms . Kusterdingen 2002, ISBN 3-906336-33-6 .
  • body as a task. Body philosophy in pragmatic terms . Kusterdingen 2003, ISBN 3-906336-38-7 .
  • Plato's Theoretical Philosophy . WBG , Darmstadt 2004.
  • With Hartmut Böhme: Fire, Water, Earth, Air. A Cultural History of the Elements . Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 978-3-406-51067-0 .
  • Goethe's Faust as a Philosophical Text . The Gray Edition, Kusterdingen 2005.
  • with Farideh Akashe-Böhme : Living with illness. The Art of Dealing with Pain and Suffering . Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52790-6 .
  • With Gregor Schiemann and Dieter Mersch (eds.): Plato in the post-metaphysical age. WBG, Darmstadt 2006.
  • architecture and atmosphere . Munich 2006, ISBN 3-7705-4343-2 .
  • With Gisbert Hoffmann: Benn and We. Existential interpretations of poems by Gottfried Benn. Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-936532-81-4 .
  • Invasive mechanization. Philosophy of technology and criticism of technology . Kusterdingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-906336-50-3 .
  • With WR Lafleur and S. Shimazono (eds.): Questionable medicine. Immoral research in Germany, Japan and the USA in the 20th century. Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-593-38582-2 .
  • ethics of bodily existence. About our moral treatment of our own nature . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-29480-2 .
  • (Hg.) Criticism of the meritocracy . Bielefeld/Basel 2010, ISBN 978-3-89528-797-8 .
  • History in perspective. The Weimar Republic from a contemporary's perspective . Schöningh , Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-77323-4 .
  • (Hg.) Alternative economic forms . Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-89528-931-6 .
  • I myself. On the Formation of the Subject . Wilhelm Fink Verlag , Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-7705-5386-0 .
  • forms of consciousness . Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn 2013, ISBN 978-3-7705-5530-7 .
  • Aesthetic Capitalism . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-518-12705-6 .
  • Body. The Nature That We Are . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-518-29870-1 .
  • with Rebecca Böhme: About the Discomfort in Prosperity . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2021, ISBN 978-3-518-12767-4 .

translations

  • Ethics in Context: The Art of Dealing with Serious Questions . Politics 2001.
  • Invasive Technification: Critical Essays in the Philosophy of Technology . Continuum 2012.
  • Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces . Bloomsbury 2017.
  • Critique of Aesthetic Capitalism . Mimesis 2017.
  • Aisthétique : pour une esthétique de l'expérience sensible , foreword by Emmanuel Alloa & Céline Flécheux and afterword by Mildred Galland-Szymkowiak, Les Presses du réel, "Perceptions" series 2020.

See also

web links

itemizations

  1. ↑ Svenja Flasspöhler : Obituary: On the death of the philosopher Gernot Böhme , Philosophy Magazine , January 22, 2022.
  2. ↑ About the Time Modes . An investigation into the understanding of time as present, past and future with special consideration of the relationship to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, Hamburg 1966.
  3. ↑ Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker - Err productively : Interview with Gernot Böhme, summer semester 2007 of the ZNF colloquium natural science and peace research
  4. ↑ Time and Numbers. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1974.
  5. ↑ Gernot Böhme: Plato's theoretical philosophy. WBG, Darmstadt 2004.
  6. ↑ Introduction to Philosophy. World Wisdom Life Form Science. 4th edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001.
  7. ↑ Ethics in context. About dealing with serious questions. 2nd Edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998; english Ethics in Context. Polity Press, Cambridge 2001.
  8. ↑ Cf. the interview with Böhme, in: Information Philosophie. 5 (1999), p. 22 ff.
  9. ↑ Cf. Gernot Böhme: The Socrates type. Frankfurt am Main 1992, p. 163 f.
  10. ↑ Gernot and Hartmut Böhme: The Other of Reason. On the development of rationality structures using Kant as an example. 5th edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 13.
  11. ↑ Gernot Böhme: Kant's critique of judgment in a new perspective , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1999.
  12. ↑ Gernot Böhme: Philosophizing with Kant. On the reconstruction of Kant's epistemology and theory of science. 2nd Edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2002; Korean translation 1992.
  13. ↑ Gernot Böhme: Disciplining, civilizing, moralizing - self-cultivation after Kant. In: NCCU Philosophical Journal. Volume 13, 2005, pp. 17–62.
  14. ↑ Schmitz, Hermann, 1928-: System of philosophy. Vol. 3. The Space Part 5. The Perception . Study edition edition. Bouvier, Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-416-03080-X .
  15. ↑ Gernot Böhme: Atmosphere. Frankfurt am Main 1995, p. 96.
  16. ↑ Gernot Böhme: Aisthetik. Munich 2001, esp. p. 103 and p. 166 ff.
  17. ↑ Gernot Böhme: Anthropology in pragmatic terms , Darmstadt Lectures, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main, 4th edition. 1994; Polish translation 1998
  18. ↑ Gernot Böhme: being in the body as a task. Body philosophy from a pragmatic point of view. Gray edition, Kusterdingen 2003
  19. ↑ Gernot Böhme: Ethics of bodily existence . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, there in particular the chapter “Remembering nature in the subject”
  20. ↑ Farideh Akashe-Böhme, Gernot Böhme: Living with illness. The Art of Dealing with Pain and Suffering . CH Beck, Munich 2005.
  21. ↑ Gernot Böhme, W. vd Daele, W. Krohn: The finalization of science. In: Journal of Sociology. 2 (1973), p. 128 ff.
  22. ↑ Gernot Böhme, W. vd Daele, R. Hohlfeld, W. Krohn, W. Schäfer: Starnberger Studies I. The social orientation of scientific progress. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1978; English translation 1983.
  23. ↑ Gernot Böhme, Engelbert Schramm (eds.): Social science. Ways to expand ecology. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985.
  24. ↑ Gernot Böhme, Alexandra Manzei (eds.): Critical theory of technology and nature. Fink, Munich 2003; see also Gernot Böhme: Invasive Mechanization. Technology philosophy and technology criticism. Gray edition, Kusterdingen 2008.
  25. ↑ Gernot Böhme: Quantification - metrication. Attempt to differentiate between epistemological and epistemological elements in the process of forming quantitative concepts. In: Oliver Schlaudt (ed.): The quantification of nature. Classic texts of measurement theory from 1696 to 1999. Mentis, Paderborn 2009, pp. 253–268.
  26. ↑ Gernot Böhme, N. Stehr (eds.): The Knowledge Society. Reidel, Boston 1986; Gernot Böhme: The structures and prospects of knowledge society. In: Social Sciences Information. 1997, 36 (3), pp. 447-468 (German in: Divinatio Studia Culturologica Series. vol 5, Autumn-Winter 1997, pp. 53-74; and abridged version in: Journal for critical theory. 14/2002, p .56-65).
  27. ↑ A-Time after John ME McTaggart .
  28. ↑ B-time according to McTaggart.
  29. ↑ Gernot Böhme: Time as a medium of representations and time as a form of living existence . Rostock Phenomenological Manuscripts, RPM5, Rostock 2009.
  30. ↑ Science and Peace Information Service. 2/84, p. 19 f.; A. Burckhardt (ed.): College and armaments . A contribution by scientists from the TH Darmstadt to the ("after") armaments debate. Verlag Darmstädter Blatter, Darmstadt 1984, pp. 228-231.
  31. ^ Edited by M. Hauskeller, Chr. Rehmann-Sutter and G. Schiemann, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998, with a complete list of publications up to that point.
  32. ↑ Ziad Mahayni (ed.): New Aesthetics. The atmosphere and the art. Fink, Munich 2002.
  33. ↑ Ute Gahlings (ed.): Practice of philosophy. Gernot Böhme on his 70th birthday. Albunea, Munich 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Boehme, Gernot
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
BIRTH DATE January 3, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH dessau
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 2022