Ernest Gellner

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Ernest Gellner (1977)

Ernest André Gellner (born December 9, 1925 in Paris ; died November 5, 1995 in Prague ) was a Czechoslovak-British anthropologist , sociologist and philosopher .

Life

Ernest Gellner was born in Paris to Rudolf and Anna Gellner (née Fantl) of a German-speaking Bohemian family of Jewish origin. His father Rudolf Gellner, interested in sociology and Max Weber , did research in Paris on the French political theorist Joseph de Maistre and had worked as a journalist for German-language newspapers before he became a businessman. Ernest Gellner's uncle was the theater director Julius Gellner . Shortly after Ernest Gellner's birth, his family moved to Prague, where he initially grew up. There he attended a newly founded grammar school, which combined the English model of the grammar school with European curricula; Otto Pick was his classmate. In 1939 he fled from the German Wehrmacht to England and fought in a unit of the Czechoslovak army in exile during World War II . In 1962 he became Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science , then in 1984 Professor of Social Anthropology at Cambridge University . In 1974 he was admitted to the British Academy , in 1988 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1993 to the American Philosophical Society . In 1993 he went to Prague to the Central European University .

Act

Ernest Gellner was an important theoretician of modern society and its differences from traditional societies. Michael Lessnoff called him a “prophet of the modern age”. He influenced various subjects, with contributions to philosophy , sociology , history and social anthropology. Referring to Gellner, the British newspaper The Independent wrote in its November 8th 1995 issue: "A man's crusade for critical rationalism , in defense of the universalism of the Enlightenment , against the ebb of idealism and relativism". His no less well-known friend and fellow campaigner of Critical Rationalism, the sociologist and philosopher Hans Albert , dedicated his book Critique of Pure Hermeneutics (1994) to him with the words “... that he was probably the first critic of Anglo-Saxon idealism to emerge from the Thinking of Ludwig Wittgenstein emerged. "

In Germany, Gellner is best known for his theories on nationalism . For Gellner, "nationalism" was a political principle that assumed the correspondence between politics and national unity. According to Gellner, nationalism only emerged in the modern world.

Furthermore, his work, of which only a few works have been translated into German, is an important systematization of the history of ideas. According to Gellner himself, the work of Karl Popper , his colleague at the London School of Economics and Political Science , influenced him the most. Max Weber may have had the second biggest influence on his thinking . Perry Anderson wrote that of all sociological thinkers in the post-Weber era, Gellner was the one who “remained closest to Weber's central intellectual problems”. The sociologist David Glass said of Gellner that he was not sure whether the next revolution would come from the left or from the right - in any case, he was certain that Gellner would be the first of those shot.

He also dealt with the culture and history of Islam , the methodology of the social sciences and political culture.

Fonts

  • Words and Things, A Critical Account of Linguistic Philosophy and a Study in Ideology (1959)
  • Thought and Change (1964)
  • Saints of the Atlas (1969)
  • Contemporary Thought and Politics (1974)
  • The Devil in Modern Philosophy (1974)
  • Legitimation of Belief (1974)
  • Spectacles and Predicaments (1979)
  • Soviet and Western Anthropology (1980) (editor)
  • Muslim Society (1981); German Life in Islam: Religion as a Social Order (1985) and Islam as a Social Order (1992)
  • Nations and Nationalism (1983); German nationalism and modernity (1995)
  • Relativism and the Social Sciences (1985)
  • The Psychoanalytic Movement (1985)
  • The Concept of Kinship and Other Essays (1986)
  • Culture, Identity and Politics (1987)
  • State and Society in Soviet Thought (1988)
  • Plow, Sword and Book (1988); German plow, sword and book: Basics of human history (1993)
  • Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (1992)
  • Nationalism in Eastern Europe (1992)
  • Reason and Culture (1992); German Descartes & Co: of reason and its enemies (1995)
  • Conditions of Liberty (1994); German Conditions of Freedom: Civil Society and Its Rivals (1995)
  • Anthropology and Politics: Revolutions in the Sacred Grove (1995)
  • Liberalism in Modern Times: Essays in Honor of José G. Merquior (1996)
  • Nationalism (1997); German Nationalism: Culture and Power (1999)
  • Language and Solitude: Wittgenstein, Malinowski and the Habsburg Dilemma (1998)

literature

Web links

Commons : Ernest Gellner  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John A. Hall: Ernest Gellner. An Intellectual Biography . Verso, London 2012, p. 12.
  2. ↑ Eric Page: Ernest Gellner, a Philosopher On Nationalism, Dies at 69 . Obituary in The New York Times, Nov. 10, 1995, online at: nytimes.com/1995/
  3. ^ Jiří Musil: Ernest Gellner - A Great European. In memoriam Professor Ernest Gellner . An obituary, online at: ssoar.info/ , p. 97 (2)
  4. ^ Member History: Ernest André Gellner. American Philosophical Society, accessed August 1, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Gellner, Ernest
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gellner, Ernst André
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech-British anthropologist, sociologist and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 1995
Place of death Prague