Ernst von Aster (philosopher)

Ernst von Aster (born February 18, 1880 in Berlin , † October 22, 1948 in Stockholm ) was a German philosopher and historian of philosophy.

Live and act

The officer's son attended the Askanische Gymnasium in Berlin. He then studied at the Friedrich Wilhelms University there and in Munich, where he joined Theodor Lipps as his academic teacher. In 1920 he was appointed to a chair at the University of Giessen . This appointment had met with strong resistance in advance because Aster was a member of the SPD and publicly emerged as a pacifist . During the final phase of the First World War he had pleaded for a mutual agreement . Aster was also on the board of the German League for Human Rights . In 1933 he was released for political reasons and went into exile in Sweden. In 1936 he moved to Turkey, where he received teaching assignments in Istanbul and Ankara . He was married to the poet Hildur Dixelius (1879–1969).

Aster's writings, lectures and lectures met with great approval at the time. He combined aspects of the history of philosophy with the history of ideas and achieved great depth, clarity and vividness of the presentation. Independent philosophical works are the “Principles of Epistemology” (1913) - in which he tried to re-establish nominalism - and his “Natural Philosophy” (1932). He also wrote accounts of Karl Marx and psychoanalysis .

Aster is known today for the "history of philosophy". This now classic work was first published in 1932 ( Alfred Kröner Verlag ) and was published in its eighteenth edition in 1998 - supplemented by Ekkehard Martens .

Works

• On task and method in the proofs of the analogies of experience in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason , Berlin 1903 (Dissertation Munich 1902).
• Investigations into the logical content of the causal law , Leipzig 1905.
• Immanuel Kant , Leipzig 1909.
• Principles of epistemology. Attempt to re-establish nominalism , Leipzig 1913.

• Introduction to Psychology. 2nd edition:, Leipzig / Berlin 1919.
• History of ancient philosophy , Berlin 1920.
• History of the modern epistemology (from Descartes to Hegel) , Berlin 1921.
• Ibsen and Strindberg. Portrayal of people and worldview , Munich 1921.
• Space and time in the history of philosophy and physics , Munich 1922.
• Ibsen and Strindberg , Berlin / Leipzig 1923.
• Plato , Stuttgart 1925.
• The French Revolution developing its political ideas. From liberalism to democracy to the beginnings of socialism , Leipzig 1926.
• History of English Philosophy , Bielefeld 1926.
• Marx and the present , Tübingen 1929.
• History of Philosophy , Stuttgart 1932 [18. Edition: Stuttgart 1998 ( ISBN 978-3520108180 )].
• Natural philosophy , Berlin 1932.
• Psychoanalysis , Berlin 1930 [2. Edition: Bern 1949].
• Nationalism and Ethics , Leipzig 1933.
• Contemporary philosophy, Leiden 1935.

literature

• Hans Michael Baumgartner : Ernst von Aster (1880–1948) / philosopher , in: Gießen scholars in the first half of the 20th century , Ed. Hans Georg Gundel u. a., Part 1, Marburg 1982, pp. 6-11.
• Josef Hanslmeier:  Aster, Ernst von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 421 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Horst Widmann : Exile and educational aid. German-speaking academic emigration to Turkey after 1933 . With a bio-bibliography of the emigrated university professors attached. Herbert Lang-Verlag, 1973.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst von Aster in the catalog of the German National Library