Daniel von Wachter

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Daniel von Wachter (* 1970 in Munich ) is a German religious philosopher and director of the International Academy for Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein . His main research interests are metaphysics , analytical philosophy of religion , ontology , causality , natural laws and free will .

Live and act

The son of the physician Albrecht von Wachter and the pathologist Ingrid von Boehmer, daughter of the lawyer and entrepreneur Henning von Boehmer , studied after graduating from high school at the Technical University of Munich , first engineering and put 1991 in this subject his undergraduate degree from. He then moved to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , where he enrolled in Protestant theology and also completed his intermediate examination there a year later. After another change, this time to the University of Innsbruck , von Wachter took the subjects philosophy and musicology and passed his examination for a master's degree in philosophy in 1995. In 1997 he obtained his doctorate in philosophy in the field of ontology at the University of Hamburg with the dissertation “Things and Properties”. Finally von Wachter moved to Oxford University , where he studied philosophical theology with the religious philosopher Richard Swinburne . He passed his master's degree in 1999 and his doctorate in 2003 with a thesis on “Modality, Causality and God”. In addition, from July to December 2002, he worked as a research assistant and researcher at the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science at the University of Leipzig .

After receiving his second doctorate, von Wachter returned to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, where he was employed in research and teaching. From 2003 to 2005 he received a three-year scholarship as part of the Bavarian Habilitation Award to prepare for his habilitation. He passed this in 2008 with the habilitation thesis “The causal structure of the world”, for which he received the “Karl Alber Prize” a year later.

From August 2008 to December 2012 von Wachter took on a full professorship at the International Academy of Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile . Since December 2012, he has been Professor and Director of the International Academy of Philosophy based in Bendern in the Principality of Liechtenstein.

Daniel von Wachter is married and has two children. In his free time he is active as a countertenor and violinist as well as a mountaineer.

Teaching and positions

As a philosopher, von Wachter deals with fundamental concepts such as God, truth and reason. He accuses representatives of postmodernism in particular, such as Michel Foucault , Jean-François Lyotard , Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida , of fundamentally rejecting the establishment of truth and making it the standard and goal of their thinking and philosophy. This leads to questionable indifference and a distorted concept of truth. On the other hand, he takes the view that reasonable people should search for God today and strive for truth. Because in truth there is a lot of power. Von Wachter positions himself fundamentally Christian and rejects socialism and postmodernism as well as the philosophy of the Enlightenment and its real historical consequences such as the French Revolution as a “rebellion against God's order”.

In his consideration “A Philosophical Investigation of the New Coronavirus” in April 2020, he came to the conclusion that SARS-CoV-2 caused no or only mild flu-like symptoms in average healthy people. The severe symptoms that occur in some infected people are only caused to a small extent or not at all by the pathogen. "Even a layman" can recognize that. The fact that the vast majority of infected people have no or mild symptoms shows that the few infected people who have severe symptoms have other causes. Even a small number of observed cases in which the pathogen is present but no or only mild symptoms occur, would prove that the pathogen causes no or only mild symptoms and that the severe symptoms are caused “by something else”. Whether pre-existing illnesses, air pollution, other pathogens, drug intake, vaccinations, hospital infections or in fl uenza play a role is irrelevant for the assessment of the dangerousness of the pathogen. It is "irrational" to believe that the pathogen causes no symptoms, or only mild symptoms, in other, average healthy people, but that you may need intensive medical treatment yourself because of this. Criticized by Wachter, only theories are called “conspiracy theories” that contradict a representation spread by the government or the authorities. Having the virus in you is not yet a disease. Therefore, increased testing is unnecessary. In a fictional dispute, the partner argues with the position supported by Wachter: "Do they want to give us the highest possible number of positive tests in order to give the impression that they are all sick now and that the hospitals will soon burst if we do not have a ban on meetings and social Do distancing? "

Fonts (selection)

Lectures

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Alber Prize 2009 ( Memento from August 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Staff at the International Academy for Philosophy Liechtenstein ( Memento from May 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Daniel von Wachter: The Christian Truth and Postmodernism. VBG Nachrichten, building blocks, Zurich December 2016, pages 4–5
  4. ^ Daniel von Wachter: Creation and Prohibitions of Assembly , script from April 21, 2020
  5. ↑ Daniel von Wachter: A Philosophical Investigation of the New Coronavirus , April 9, 2020, 54 pages, PDF, 191 kB
personal data
SURNAME Wachter, Daniel von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German religious philosopher and director of the International Academy for Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein
DATE OF BIRTH 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich