Knight School

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The expression Ritter School (sometimes also: "School of Münster") is used in literature on the history of philosophy or the history of ideas to denote a group of thinkers who were direct pupils of the philosopher Joachim Ritter , who worked in Münster , or at least some of his methodological , systematic or philosophical history Options were more or less influenced.

Thinkers assigned to the "knight school"

The knight school are in the secondary literature u. a. assigned the following thinkers:

Positions of the "knight school"

Ritter had held an advanced seminar in Münster since 1947, which was called the Collegium Philosophicum , initially “in a barrack in front of the Münster castle with about 10 to 12 participants”. Many of his direct philosophical students, but also others, had taken part regularly. Even though the term "knight school" was used early and frequently in the specialist literature, there is still a broad consensus, both among direct students of Ritter such as Robert Spaemann and in research literature , that "the knight school" is rather heterogeneous in terms of concrete positioning be. To speak of a “school” in the true sense is therefore largely problematized. Odo Marquard initially spoke in a frequently quoted dictum of “school convergence as a long-term, late effect” but corrected this in 1989: “The Ritter students are now - more or less - on different paths”.

The Knight School does not represent a common, coherent philosophical teaching; But it can be understood as an attempt to tie in with a hermeneutic tradition that is guided by the Hegel maxim that in philosophy it is important to see what reality is and the reason contained in reality to represent and to bring up. The "Knight School" has often been described as "neoconservative", conservative values ​​or "conservative modernity". In the philosophy of the GDR , the criticism of Marxism was sometimes perceived by Ritter, Rohrmoser and others as a "crusade [...] against Marxism". Ritter and many of his students distinguished themselves from representatives of the Frankfurt School, whose ideas they z. B. referred to as "socialism romanticism". Conversely, Jürgen Habermas , for example, spoke of a “theory of the post-Enlightenment”. Ernst Tugendhat , who had studied in Münster at the time of Ritter, spoke of an "ethical counter-enlightenment". Odo Marquard, on the other hand, described the “Knight School” as part of the Enlightenment project, which, however, is less related to Descartes , Turgot , Fichte , Marx , Lukács , Sartre or Habermas than to Montaigne , Locke , Montesquieu , Tocqueville , Weber or Lübbe. Marquard himself "was one of the few in the college (like Karlfried Gründer ) on whom ' Critical Theory ' and in particular Theodor W. Adorno's work had an influence". Volker Gerhardt sees the "Knight School" and the Frankfurt School as "a lot closer than many people believe ”.

In the meantime, Jens Hacke has proposed and justified the term “liberal-conservative” in a monograph. Initially, he differentiates his presentation from representations on the one hand by dedicated critics from the circle of the so-called " Frankfurt School ", on the other hand from the "affirmative-conservative [n] point of view: There the necessary analytical level is often undercut". As a liberal-conservative alternative to the Frankfurt School, the political philosophy of the Ritter School sought an affirmation of the state and its institutions, which emphasized the factual legitimacy of the Federal Republic. For Jens Hacke, the Ritter School is therefore part of the success story of the Federal Republic: "The Ritter students helped establish a cultural and intellectual legitimacy in the Federal Republic. Their unreserved defense of this state is a contribution to internal acceptance and thus to a gradual spiritual foundation This can safely be described as a historical achievement. " The historian and publicist of the new right, Karlheinz Weißmann , emphasizes in a review of Hacke's work in the Junge Freiheit that z. B. Willms, Maurer or Rohrmoser were more critical of liberalism. In fact, z. B. Willms made a change here: first “still a very loyal student of the knight school, which is actually so civic-minded”, he “later becomes a rather steep right-wing bird himself, who migrated more and more to the nation via Hobbes and Fichte ”. Ritter himself will u. a. due to relevant publications during the Nazi era, a participation in "National Socialism-compliant philosophy companies" and an "elegant opportunism" aiming at "Germanizing the origins of modern European times" is attributed. Hans Jörg Sandkühler notes : “In the interests of his professional career, Ritter changed his position in philosophy in 1933. It leads away from Marx - where to? He moves in Nazi institutions to the extent that their mistrust accompanies him and that 'tests' are required of him. "

Ritter had prominently defended a political and cultural-philosophical conservatism in critical approval of “modernity” - a program to which z. B. Rohrmoser decided to tie in. Ritter's political philosophy is based primarily on Aristotle and Hegel , but also deals with Arnold Gehlen , Ernst Jünger and Carl Schmitt . Many of his students follow this. The "knight school" is z. B. described as "Hegel-conformist". Among the Ritter students, partly weakening and partly reinforcing modifications are favored. So have z. B. Maurer and Rohrmoser Ritter's "school-educating" interpretation of Hegel's political thought, which z. B. contains the well-known theorem of a “double structure of modernity”, “modified theological-political”. Perhaps the best known is the so-called compensation model of the knight school, which z. B. is criticized by Herbert Schnädelbach . Accordingly, culture compensates z. B. the modern rationalization and objectification of the lifeworld through aestheticization. Odo Marquard called the "Knight School" the "wing of hermeneutic thought [...] that rehabilitated practical philosophy ". Even Friedrich Kambartel looks through Knights a renewal of practical philosophy, claiming that practical reason at Ritter "only through the Envision its historical unfolding leaves the level of an abstract ought and capable of concrete criticism as legitimation" In practical philosophy are knights and many his students known for a neo- Aristotelianism , z. B. in Ritter also includes a defense of the classical concept of natural law . This position was used both as a systematic thesis z. B. attacked by Habermas as well as z. B. criticized by Karl-Otto Apel as an incorrect interpretation of Aristotle. With regard to the philosophy of culture and religion , Hermann Lübbe diagnosed a "convergence of philosophical interests" between the knight school and z. B. Hans Blumenberg or Eric Voegelin : the rejection of an “ideology-critical understanding of religion that treats it as an epiphenomenon of materially based human order of life instead of as a formative force ”.

In particular, the project of the “ Historical Dictionary of Philosophy ”, the world's largest philosophical dictionary, has kept many representatives of the “Knight School” busy for decades. The editor-in-chief Ritter refers in the foreword to the first volume a. a. to Gadamer and Erich Rothacker . The original methodology of this work was commented on divergent, for example as a "continuation of the - theoretical, systematic philosophy and thus especially all transcendental thinking rejecting - intellectual and conceptual-historical working method, whose protagonist was Rothacker". Reinhold Aschenberg believes that Rothacker (the founder of the Archive for Conceptual History ), Gadamer and Ritter formed a “dominant triumvirate” that “has continued uninterruptedly since the second half of the 1940s the suppression of all systematic and critical thinking, which was supported by National Socialism and in its place was able to put that somehow 'historical' orientation ”,“ as it should be so characteristic of the philosophy of the Federal Republic. ”In the international specialist discourse, the“ historical dictionary ”is today generally recognized as the authoritative standard work of research on the history of philosophy and concepts.

Web links

  • Information philosophy: 20th century: The knight school .
  • Florian Roth: The Knight School. Philosophy for the young Federal Republic, manuscript for a folk high school lecture. Munich 2005.

literature

  • Commemorative publication Joachim Ritter. At the commemoration in honor of the em. full professor of philosophy Dr. phil. Joachim Ritter, February 6, 1976, auditorium of the Westphalian Wilhelms University, Münster, castle. Aschendorff, Münster 1978, ISBN 3-402-04428-5 ( publications of the Society for the Promotion of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster 65).
  • Ulrich Dierse: Joachim Ritter and his students. In: Anton Hügli , Paul Lübcke (Hrsg.): Philosophy in the 20th century. Volume 1: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Existential Philosophy and Critical Theory. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1992, ISBN 3-499-55455-0 , pp. 237-278 ( Rowohlt's Enzyklopädie 455).
  • Ulrich Dierse (Ed.): Joachim Ritter in memory. Steiner Verlag et al., Stuttgart et al. 2004, ISBN 3-515-08626-9 ( Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz, treatises of the humanities and social sciences class 2004, No. 4).
  • Jens Hacke : Philosophy of Bourgeoisie. The liberal-conservative justification of the Federal Republic . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-525-36842-9 ( Bürgerertum NF 3), (also: Berlin, Humboldt-Univ., Diss., 2004).
  • Martin Ingenfeld, Between Progress and Decline. On the discussion of religion and modernity in the exit by Joachim Ritter , Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-946198-12-3 .
  • Georg Lohmann: Neoconservative responses to modern experiences of loss of meaning. About Odo Marquard, Hermann Lübbe and Robert Spaemann. In: Richard Faber (Ed.): Conservatism in past and present. Königshausen & Neumann Verlag, Würzburg 1991, ISBN 3-88479-592-9 , pp. 183-201.
  • Henning Ottmann : Joachim Ritter. In: Julian Nida-Rümelin (ed.): Philosophy of the Present in Individual Representations. From Adorno to v. Wright (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 423). Kröner, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-520-42301-4 , pp. 504-509 (including personal articles on Lübbe, Marquard and Spaemann).
  • Mark Schweda: Joachim Ritter and the Knight School (introduction) . Junius, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3885067085 .
  • Mark Schweda and Ulrich von Bülow (eds.): Entzweite Moderne. On the topicality of Joachim Ritter and his students . Wallstein, Göttingen 2017.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürgen Seifert: Joachim Ritter "Collegium Philosophicum". A forum for open thinking, in: Richard Faber, Christine Holste (eds.): Circles, groups, frets: for the sociology of modern intellectual association, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, pp. 189–199, here p. 190. Later the name also the title of a Ritter Festschrift: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde et al. (Ed.): COLLEGIUM PHILOSOPHICUM. Studies. Joachim Ritter on the occasion of his 60th birthday , Basel - Stuttgart 1965. It also contains further information on the group of students (the year 1947 there p. 5). Likewise with Dirk van Laak: Conversations in the security of silence . Carl Schmitt in the political intellectual history of the early Federal Republic, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2002, pp. 192–199 ("Münster: the 'Collegium Philosophicum'").
  2. ↑ See Hermann Lübbe: The religion and the legitimacy of the modern age. Philosophy of modernization with Eric Voegelin , with Hans Blumenberg and in the Ritter-Schule, in: Ders .: Modernization Winners: Religion, Sense of History, Direct Democracy and Moral, Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2004, pp. 58–79, here p. 59: “[ ...] that the Münster Collegium philosophicum by no means united its members in a consensually shared philosophy. There were neither methodically nor thematically shared obligations. ”- with reference to the Collegium participant Ernst Tugendhat , who stayed away from the usual“ practical political options ”. Jens Hacke: Philosophy of Bourgeoisie , p. 11f.37 et passim. Hermann Lübbe against the concept of school: Laudation in the commemorative publication Joachim Ritter , Aschendorff, Münster 1978, pp. 14–20, here p. 20; however, "there are many Ritter students in many subjects in many places, and it is always unmistakable that they are". Cf. also Martin Laube: The communication of origin and future . Perspectives of Philosophy Joachim Ritter, in: Theology and Modern Christianity, Contributions to Historical Theology 139, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2006, pp. 164–184.
  3. ^ O. Marquard: Farewell to the principle. Philosophical Studies, Stuttgart 1981, p. 8.
  4. ↑ Odo Marquard: Future and Origin. Comment on Joachim Ritter's philosophy of division, in: Skepticism and Agreement. Philosophical Studies , Stuttgart 1994, pp. 15-29, here pp. 17f.
  5. ^ Henning Ottmann : Plato, Aristotle and the neoclassical political philosophy of the present. In: information philosophy . Cf. further: Hermann Lübbe: The religion and the legitimacy of the modern age . Sven Kluge speaks of "modernity traditionalism": Affirmative protest - ambivalences and affinities of the communitarian critique of capitalism. In: Rolf Eickelpasch, Claudia Rademacher, Philipp Ramos Lobato (eds.): Metamorphoses of capitalism - and its criticism. VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2008, pp. 59–79, here p. 74.
  6. ↑ So with Dieter Bergner, Wolfgang Jahn: The crusade of the Protestant academies against Marxism. Berlin 1960; taken up by Lübbe: The religion and the legitimacy of the modern age , 65f. Ritter and Rohrmoser had u. a. Lectured on Hegelian political philosophy and legal philosophy, especially on property law.
  7. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: Key words on the 'intellectual situation of the time'. Volume 1, Nation and Republic. Frankfurt / M. 1979, 19. Taken up at Lübbe: The religion and the legitimacy of the modern age. 59. To the knight school as an antipole to the Frankfurt school : Hoe: Philosophy of the middle class. P. 15.91 et passim. See e.g. B. also the connection of neo-Aristotelianism and neoconservatism in the "knight school", as it exists according to J. Habermas: The philosophical discourse of modernity. Frankfurt / M. 1985, 41 et passim.
  8. ↑ In the title of the 10th lecture: "The ethical counter-enlightenment: Hegel and the knight school [...]", in: Ders .: Lectures on ethics , Frankfurt / M. 1993, pp. 192-225, here especially pp. 197ff; also cited by Hermann Lübbe: The religion and the legitimacy of the modern age , p. 59.
  9. ↑ Odo Marquard: The education of the human race - a balance. In: The dream of reason - from the misery of the Enlightenment, Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1985.
  10. ^ Seifert: Joachim Ritter "Collegium Philosophicum", p. 192.
  11. ↑ Volker Gerhardt: The subject is the substance. Laudation for Dieter Henrich on the award of the Hegel Prize of the City of Stuttgart on November 26, 2003. In: Dieter Henrich (Hrsg.): Hegel Prize 2003. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-608-94087-1 , p 23-48, here 29f.
  12. ↑ Jens Hacke: Philosophy of Bourgeoisie. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 2006, p. 16 with reference a. a. on Habermas: The new complexity , small political writings V, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1985, p. 30ff for the former, on Hartmuth Becker among others: The 68er and their opponents , Graz 2003 for the latter. For the monograph Hackes z. B. the discussion in: Information Philosophy .
  13. ↑ Jens Hacke: Philosophy of Bourgeoisie. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 2006, p. 296
  14. ↑ Karlheinz Weißmann: Reality is always right , mental surgery: Günter Rohrmoser, the knight school and the power of the real. In: Young Freedom . 27/07 of June 29, 2007.
  15. ^ Stephan Schlak: Wilhelm Hennis. Scenes from a history of ideas in the Federal Republic. CH Beck, Munich 2008, p. 91.
  16. ↑ So by Reinhold Aschenberg: Ent-Subjectivierung des Menschen. Camp and Shoah in philosophical reflection. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2003, p. 113.
  17. ↑ Hans Jörg Sandkühler: Joachim Ritter: About the difficulties of being a philosopher 1933-1945. In the S. (Ed.): Philosophy in National Socialism. Meiner, Hamburg 2009, pp. 219–252, here p. 233. Similar: Hans Jörg Sandkühler: “A long odyssey”. Joachim Ritter, Ernst Cassirer and philosophy in the 'Third Reich'. ( Memento from September 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 275 kB) In: Dialektik. 2006/1. See also Th. Weber: Joachim Ritter and the "metaphysical turn". In: Wolfgang Fritz Haug (Ed.): Deutsche Philosophen 1933. Berlin 1989, pp. 219–243.
  18. ↑ See e.g. B. Günther Rohrmoser: Conservative thinking in the context of modernity. Society for Cultural Studies, Bietigheim 2006
  19. ↑ Cf. Dirk van Laak : Conversations in the Sicherheit des Schweigens , pp. 192ff, u. a. with an impression from the correspondence.
  20. ^ Enno Rudolph: Ernst Cassirer in Europe. In: Ernst Cassirer in context, JCB Mohr, Tübingen 2003, pp. 1–16, here p. 4. That Aristotle and Hegel “(t) he two points of reference for Joachim Ritter's thought in the post-war period” describes z. B. also Jürgen Seifert : Joachim Ritter "Collegium Philosophicum", p. 190.
  21. ↑ J. Ritter: Hegel and the French Revolution. Cologne 1957, also in: J. Ritter: Metaphysik und Politik , Frankfurt / M. 1989, pp. 183-225.
  22. ^ Henning Ottmann: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). In: Hans Maier, Horst Denzer (ed.): Classics of Political Thought Volume II : From John Locke to Max Weber. 3. Edition. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-56843-5 , pp. 131–144 and bibliography pp. 238ff, here p. 239. Much more comprehensive: Ders .: Individual and Community in Hegel , Volume 1, Hegel im Spiegel der Interpretationen, de Gruyter, Berlin 1977, pp. 299–377. (Chapter 6: The high point of German Hegelapologetics. Joachim Ritter and his school ).
  23. ↑ Herbert Schnädelbach: Critique of the compensation theory. In: Why Humanities? Kursbuch 91 (1988), pp. 35-45.
  24. ↑ See z. B. Ludger Heidbrink: Culture as compensation for modernization damage? To deal with a contentious category of interpretation. In: Karen Gloy (ed.): In the field of tension between two cultures. a confrontation between humanities and natural sciences, art and technology. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002, pp. 31–63, here especially p. 42ff.
  25. ^ Odo Marquard: Farewell to the principle. Philosophical Studies, Stuttgart 1981, p. 7.
  26. ^ Friedrich Kambartel: Ritter, Joachim. In: Jürgen Mittelstraß (Ed.): Encyclopedia Philosophy and Philosophy of Science , Vol. 3, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1995.
  27. ↑ J. Ritter: Natural Law and Aristotle. In: Metaphysics and Politics. Studies on Aristotle and Hegel, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1969, pp. 133-179.
  28. ↑ E.g. in Habermas: The philosophical discourse of modernity. P. 41 et passim.
  29. ^ Karl-Otto Apel: Discourse and responsibility. The problem of the transition to post-conventional morality, Frankfurt / M. 1990, p. 412ff. Reinhold Aschenberg: De-subjectivation of the human. P. 128 speaks of "one-sided interested interpretation".
  30. ↑ Hermann Lübbe: The religion and the legitimacy of the modern age. 73f.
  31. ↑ Reinhold Aschenberg: Ent-Subjectivierung des Menschen. P. 114.
  32. ↑ Reinhold Aschenberg: Ent-Subjectivierung des Menschen. P. 111.
  33. ↑ See the selection of reviews in Walter Tinner, "Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie", in: Officina. Announcements from Schwabe & Co. AG, Basel 1994, p. 6f.