Dietrich von Hildebrand

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Dietrich von Hildebrand (born October 12, 1889 in Florence , † January 26, 1977 in New Rochelle , New York ) was a Catholic philosopher and author .

Photo by Max Fenichel (1930s)
Memorial plaque in Vienna

Life

Hildebrand grew up in Florence in a German family of artists. His father was the well-known sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand . He studied philosophy in Munich and Göttingen and did his doctorate with Edmund Husserl . In 1914 the (nominally Protestant) 25-year-old converted to the Catholic faith. From 1918 to 1933 he was professor of philosophy at the University of Munich ; one of his students there was Baldwin Schwarz . Under the influence of Adolf Reinach and Max Scheler he developed a catholic, phenomenological philosophy of values .

Out of his conviction of the unconditional value of the person towards any collective , Hildebrand rejected nationalism and communism equally strictly. As early as the 1920s he took a radical stand against Hitler and National Socialism as well as against anti-Semitism, which was widespread even in church circles, and therefore emigrated to Florence in March 1933 and then to Vienna in September of the same year as a result of the National Socialist seizure of power . There he founded and edited, with the support of the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß, the anti-National Socialist weekly newspaper Der christliche Ständestaat . In this newspaper Hildebrand appeared not only against National Socialism, but also against racial doctrine and anti-Semitism. Because of this activity he was put on a death list in Germany.

Because of the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in 1938, Hildebrand fled initially via Switzerland to France , where he taught at the Catholic University of Toulouse until the German occupation of France in 1940 . After that, he initially hid until he managed to flee to Portugal with his wife, son and daughter-in-law with French help (including from Edmond Michelet ) . From there he made his way to New York via Brazil , where he began teaching philosophy for many years at the private Jesuit college Fordham University in Rose Hill, in the Bronx . In 1960 he retired and devoted the rest of his life to research. He wrote his books in both English and German. a. several works on the internal church crisis after the Second Vatican Council .

Dietrich von Hildebrand was married to Margarete Denck for the first time. With her he had a son, Franz. After Margaret's death in 1957, he married Alice Jourdain , 34 years younger than him , in 1959 , who had studied with him. The ethnologist Martín von Hildebrand is one of his grandsons.

Pope Pius XII , with whom he was on friendly terms, called him "Church Doctor of the 20th Century".

Works

  • The Idea of ​​the Moral Action . In: Yearbook for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , Volume 3, 1916, pp. 126-251. Complete imprint of the phil. Dissertation, Göttingen 1913. PDF
  • Morality and knowledge of ethical values. An investigation into ethical structural problems . In: Yearbook for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , Volume 5, 1922, pp. 462-602. Habilitation thesis. PDF
  • Purity and virginity . Oratoriums Verlag, Cologne 1927.
  • Marriage . Publishing house Ars Sacra, Munich 1929.
  • Metaphysics of community . Haas & Grabherr, Augsburg 1930.
  • Temporal in the light of the eternal. Collected treatises and lectures . Josef Habbel, Regensburg 1932.
  • Liturgy and personality Anton Pustet, Salzburg 1933.
  • Basic moral attitudes . Matthias Grünewald Verlag, Mainz 1933.
  • Engelbert Dollfuss. A Catholic statesman . Anton Pustet, Salzburg 1934.
  • The War against Hitler (Including a Special Analysis of the Character of France) . Plon 1940.
  • The transformation in Christ . Benziger & Co., Einsiedeln, Cologne 1940. 1st and 2nd edition under the pseudonym Peter Ott.
  • The moral foundations of the international community. Josef Habbel, Regensburg 1946
  • The sense of philosophical questioning and knowing . Peter Hanstein, Bonn 1950.
  • Christian Ethics . David McKay, New York 1953.
    • Christian ethics , Patmos, Düsseldorf 1959. German translation.
  • Humanity at a crossroads. Collected treatises and essays . Karla Mertens (editor), Josef Habbel, Regensburg 1955.
  • What is Philosophy? Bruce Publishing, Milwaukee 1960, 2nd edition Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago 1973.
    • What is philosophy Collected Works, Volume I. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1974.
  • Trojan Horse in the City of God . Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago 1967
    • The Trojan horse in the city of God . Josef Habbel, Regensburg 1968. German translation.
  • The devastated vineyard . Josef Habbel, Regensburg 1973.
  • Idol cult and God cult . Collected Works , Volume VII. Josef Habbel, Regensburg 1974.
  • Aesthetics . 1st chapter. Collected Works , Volume V. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1977.
  • Aesthetics . Part 2. Collected Works , Volume VI. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1984.
  • Moralia . Collected Works , Volume IX. Josef Habel, Regensburg 1980.
  • Memoirs and essays against National Socialism 1933–1938 . Edited by Ernst Wenisch . Mainz 1994.

literature

Philosophy and theology
  • Stanislaw T. Zarzycki: Spirituality of the Heart. The philosophical-theological foundations with Dietrich von Hildebrand. Translated from Polish by Herbert Ulrich. Pneuma, Munich 2010. ISBN 978-3942013031
  • Valentina Gaudiano: The love philosophy Dietrich v. Hildebrands. Approaches to an ontology of love . Karl Alber Freiburg / Munich (Theses 55), Diss. Univ. Munich 2013.
  • Ciril Rütsche: Person and Religion. A presentation of Dietrich von Hildebrand's philosophy of religion (Tübingen Studies on Theology and Philosophy 26) Diss. Univ. Tübingen 2016; Fool Francke Attempto 2017.
  • Markus Enders : Love as the “most affective value response”. Dietrich v. Hildebrand's (1889–1977) value-philosophical understanding of love and its virtue-ethical implications . In: Winfried Rohr (ed.): Love - a virtue? The dilemma of modern ethics and the repressed status of love. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2018, pp. 265–292. doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-658-17874-1_12
Person and biography

Web links

Commons : Dietrich von Hildebrand  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Drekonja-Kornat: Gabriel García Márquez in Vienna and other cultural stories from Latin America . LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-50141-7 ( google.at [accessed on November 15, 2017]).
  2. ^ Joseph Bottum, David G. Dalin: The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII . Lexington Books, 2004, ISBN 978-0-7391-5888-3 ( google.at [accessed November 15, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Hildebrand, Dietrich von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Catholic philosopher, theologian and author
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Florence
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1977
Place of death New Rochelle