Claus Gunzler

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Claus Günzler (born June 2, 1937 in Dortmund ) is a German philosopher and university professor .

Life

After graduating from the Dreikönigsgymnasium in Cologne (1957), Günzler studied philosophy , German literature , history and education at the universities of Cologne , Vienna and Freiburg im Breisgau . In 1964 he did his doctorate with Bernhard Lakebrink at the University of Freiburg and in 1965 became a research assistant at the Heidelberg University of Education . Two years later he was appointed to the Karlsruhe University of Education , where he initially worked as a lecturer and from 1970 until his retirement in 2002 as a professor of philosophy.

Günzler was prorector of the Karlsruhe University of Education from 1970 to 1974 and headed the interdisciplinary Hodegetic Institute there from 1984 to 2002 . In 1987 he was co-founder and until 1996 member of the advisory board of the Scientific Albert Schweitzer Society (seat: Mainz) and from 1991 to 1997 Vice President of the Association Internationale pour l'oeuvre du Dr. A. Schweitzer à Lambarene (seat: Gunsbach / Alsace). From 1988 to 1997 he was first chairman of the German Aid Association for the A. Schweitzer Hospital in Lambarene (seat: Frankfurt a. M.) and in 1995 co-founded the Foundation German A. Schweitzer Center (seat: Frankfurt a. M.). Here Günzler worked from 1995 to 2002 as chairman of the foundation's advisory board and from 2002 to 2006 as chairman of the foundation board. Günzler is also an honorary member of the German Albert Schweitzer Center Foundation.

Research priorities

After his dissertation, The Teleology Problem in Kant and Goethe, as well as early work on Plato and Aristotle, Günzler devoted himself primarily to educational theory and practical philosophy in the context of teacher training, whereby he regularly commented on contemporary questions between ethics and education. In his book Anthropological and Ethical Dimensions of Schools (1976) he subjected the operationalist abbreviation of the concept of learning imported from the USA to an emphatic philosophical criticism and was thus one of the few philosophers who entered the emerging pedagogical debate on the subject of 'value education'. Oriented towards the main idea of ​​the responsible subject, the book Erzieh zur Ethischen Responsibility (1980 together with GM Teutsch) concretises a concept of values education that is committed to everyday school life using exemplary fields of action.

Günzler sets out the theoretical background of his educational contributions in his book Education and Upbringing in Goethe's Thinking (1981), which, at a critical distance from the dominance of socio- theoretical educational theories, elaborates education as a primarily natural-philosophical category in Goethe. For Günzler, Goethe's plea for linking back the legitimate claims of the human will to make to the respect for natural phenomena opens up a concept of education which, in the interplay of natural philosophical insight and pedagogical reflection, is able to protect the development of the school system from a ruinous plunge into inhuman one-sidedness.

From 1980 onwards there was an intensive discussion with Albert Schweitzer , who, like Goethe, ascribes a central role to the idea of ​​awe. On Schweitzer's ethics as a model that brings together the justification of norms and motivation in the thinking ego, Günzler has presented a broad spectrum of individual analyzes in many studies and, in his monograph Albert Schweitzer - Introduction to his Thinking (1996), for the first time also includes Schweitzer's unpublished works Rate drawn. At the same time, he was co-editor of the Schweitzer Edition Works from the estate , which was published from 1995 to 2006 by the CH Beck publishing house in Munich.

Some of Günzler's studies on Goethe and Schweitzer have been translated into French, Italian, and Chinese, and a large number into Japanese. In Japan he is involved in the research project “Nature and Education - Goethe's Theory of Nature and the Topicality of His Education Theory”, which was started in 2009 by Hiromichi Sasada (University of Tohoku). In cooperation with Takara Dobashi (University of Hiroshima), this involves a plausible intercultural reorientation of the modern school system in recourse to the concept of humanity as a multi-layered global heritage. The individual results have been published gradually since 2010 in the journal Proteus - Nature and Education , which is published in Sendai, Japan .

Fonts (selection)

  • The teleological problem in Kant and Goethe . Dissertation Freiburg im Breisgau, 1964. Japanese translation by T. Dobashi in: Forschungsbericht der Universität Tottori, Tottori shi 1996, pp. 1–145.
  • Anthropological and ethical dimensions of school - pressure to achieve learning goals and help in life . Alber. Freiburg i. Br. 1976. ISBN 3-495-47342-4
  • Education for ethical responsibility (together with GM Teutsch). Herder. Freiburg i. Br. 1980. ISBN 3-451-09077-5 .
  • Education and Upbringing in Goethe's Thought - Philosophical Foundations and Current Perspectives on Pedagogy of Self-Restriction . Böhlau. Cologne / Vienna 1981. ISBN 3-412-00780-3 .
  • Ethics and Education (Ed. And lead author). Kohlhammer. Stuttgart 1988. ISBN 3-17-009019-4 .
  • Albert Schweitzer - Introduction to his thinking . CH Beck. Munich 1996. ISBN 3-406-39249-0 .
  • From the 'park' to the 'wilderness' - Albert Schweitzer's model of an elementary everyday ethic . Amber. Bonn 2008. ISBN 978-3-939431-23-7 .

literature

  • Maria Böhm: Conservative value education . German studies publisher. Weinheim 1986, pp. 123-222. ISBN 3-89271-000-7 .
  • Jean Paul Sorg: L'état des recherches et études schweitzériennes . In: Cahiers Albert Schweitzer, No. 85, Strasbourg 1991, pp. 5-14. ISSN  0153-6133
  • Takara Dobashi: The forgotten dimension of school - Claus Günzler's philosophy of education . In: The Journal of the Faculty of Education (Tottori University), Vol. 40, No. 1, Tottori 1998, pp. 1-31. ISSN  0287-8011

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pädagogische Rundschau 21. 1967, issue 12.
  2. ^ Journal for Philosophical Research 21. 1967, Issue 2.
personal data
SURNAME Gunzler, Claus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Dortmund