Christian Garve

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Christian Garve, engraving by Eberhard Siegfried Henne (1791) after Anton Graff
Christian Garve

Christian Garve (born January 7, 1742 in Breslau ; † December 1, 1798 there ) was one of the most famous German philosophers in the late Enlightenment, alongside Immanuel Kant and Moses Mendelssohn .

biography

Christian Garve was born into a family of craftsmen and died at the age of 56 in his parents' house. He studied at the Brandenburg University in Frankfurt and the Friedrichs University in Halle . In 1766 he became a master of philosophy. 1770–72 he became an associate professor of mathematics and logic in Leipzig and taught there. From 1772 he was in Breslau and became a bookseller there, among other things. But he stayed with his mother in Breslau for most of his life. In this city the Enlightenment member of the Freemason Lodge Friedrich became a golden scepter . Garve was a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .

Garve was best known for his lively translation work (including Ciceros De officiis , Adam Smith : The Prosperity of Nations ). He wrote psychological , moral-philosophical and economic writings and reviews for the New Library of Fine Sciences and the Free Arts . He was strongly influenced by the English and Scottish Enlightenment and the Stoic ethics . He never formulated his philosophy, which was empirical in its main features, as a system, but published it as notes and essays. Among other things, this earned him the charge of being just a shallow popular philosopher ( women's philosophy ). He still has this reputation today. With Christian Felix Weisse , the educator, child friend and co-founder of the German Singspiel, he had a long-standing friendship and extensive correspondence.

His engagement with Immanuel Kant deserves special mention. It began with a review of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in the “Göttingen Scholar Ads”, which was abridged by the Göttingen philosopher Johann Feder . Kant felt misunderstood. The original, longer version of the review, which Garve then published in the “Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek”, brought him Kant's contradiction. For his part, Kant was now writing an “Anti-Garve”. In the course of time this project developed into the foundation for the metaphysics of morals . The academic debate between Immanuel Kant and Christian Garve dragged on until Garve's death in 1798.

anecdote

On his last visit to Breslau in 1785, Frederick II (Prussia) talked to Professor Garve about philosophical matters, calling the great bunch canaille. Garve did not want to accept that expression. “When your Majesty,” he said, “moved into town yesterday and all the people ran to see his King, that was no canaille!” - “Dear Professor,” replied the royal pessimist, “He set an old monkey on the horse and let him ride through the streets, the people will also run together. "

literature

swell

  • Christian Garve: Collection of some papers . Leipzig 1779 ( digitized version and full text in the German text archive )
  • Edmund Burke : About the origin of our concepts of the sublime and the beautiful . Riga 1773. / New edition : Werner Strube (Hrsg.): Philosophical investigations into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and the beautiful . (= Philosophical Library . Volume 324). Meiner, Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-7873-0944-6 .
  • Adam Ferguson : Principles of Moral Philosophy . Leipzig 1772.

Work edition

  • Kurt Wölfel (Hrsg.): Collected works . 15 vols., Berlin, 1985 ff.

Secondary literature

  • Claus Altmayer: Enlightenment as popular philosophy. Civil individual and public at Christian Garve . Röhrig Universitätsverlag, St. Ingbert 1992, ISBN 978-3-86110-000-3 .
  • Doris Bachmann-Medick : Attraction instead of self-interest. Christian Garve's non-utilitarian conception of the interested party . Internet, 2008, OCLC 612346967 .
  • Gotthardt Frühsorge: About “handling” and books. On Christian Garve's reflections on bourgeois existence. In: Euphorion. 81, pp. 66-80 (1987).
  • Rudolf Vierhaus : Christian Garve's theory of handling. In: Peter Albrecht , Hans Erich Bödeker, Ernst Hinrichs (eds.): Forms of sociability in Northwest Germany 1750-1820 . Niemeyer, Tübingen 2003, pp. 541-548.
  • Gerhard Vowinckel: Christian Garve and the end of the doctrine of happiness. In: Journal of Sociology. 18, 1989, pp. 136-147.
  • Norbert Waszek : The Scottish Enlightenment in Germany, and its translator Christian Garve (1742–98). In: Tom Hubbard, RDS Jack (Ed.): Scotland in Europe . (= Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature. 7). Rodopi, Amsterdam / New York 2006, ISBN 90-420-2100-4 , pp. 55-71.
  • Norbert Waszek: Translation practice and popular philosophy using Christian Garves as an example. In: The Eighteenth Century. 31.1 2007, ISBN 978-3-89244-971-3 , pp. 42-64.
  • Kurt Wölfel:  Christian Garve. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 77 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Helmut Zedelmaier: Christian Garve and loneliness. In: Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis. Nº 1757: Germanica Wratislaviensia. CXIV (1996), pp. 133-149.
  • Norbert Waszek: "The popular philosophy". - In: Outline of the history of philosophy. The philosophy of the 18th century [Ueberweg revision]. Vol. 5: Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Switzerland. Northern and Eastern Europe . Edited by Helmut Holzhey and Vilem Mudroch. Basel, Schwabe, 2014, pp. 403-414 (text), p. 443-445 (bibliography). ISBN 978-3-7965-2631-2 .

Web links

Commons : Christian Garve  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Christian Garve  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The preliminary work is u. a. documented by letters from Hamann, cf. in addition z. B. Jens Timmermann's introduction to his edition of Kant's Foundation for the Metaphysics of Morals. (= Philosophy Collection. Volume 3). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004, ISBN 3-525-30602-4 , SX
  2. ↑ Reinhold Schneider (Introduction): Anecdotes from Friedrich der Große Insel-Verlag Leipzig, without a year (thirties)
personal data
SURNAME Garve, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1742
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1798
Place of death Wroclaw