Ferdinand Fellmann

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Ferdinand Fellmann

Ferdinand Fellmann (born December 14, 1939 in Hirschberg im Riesengebirge , Silesia , † October 28, 2019 in Münster ) was a German philosopher .

Life

Ferdinand Fellmann grew up in Hameln on the Weser . From 1959 he studied English and Romance languages at the Universities of Münster and Pavia . From 1962 to 1965 he studied Romance studies and philosophy at the University of Gießen . There his two most important teachers were the Romanist Hans Robert Jauß and the philosopher Hans Blumenberg . In 1967 he received his doctorate from Blumenberg at the University of Bochum and his habilitation in 1973 at the University of Münster. He presented his collaboration with Hans Blumenberg in the information philosophy . Fellmann cultivates the intellectual legacy of his academic teacher in short prose pieces called "Blumenbergiana", which he regularly posts on his homepage. In 1980 Fellmann was appointed professor of philosophy. In 1985 he was visiting professor in Naples . Translations by Giordano Bruno , Giambattista Vico and Benedetto Croce have appeared . Later he turned away from historicism and turned to systematic issues.

He stayed at an “old European” distance from the philosophy of language analysis at German universities. This is evidenced by the numerous articles that appeared on the FAZ's humanities page in the 1980s . In 1994 Fellmann was appointed a founding professor for philosophy and philosophy of science at the Technical University of Chemnitz , where he tried to synthesize idealistic and materialistic forms of thought. His conception of philosophy as an orientation practice, which he described in the volume Orientation Philosophy. What she can do what she wants (1998) has been fought as heretical by some academic colleagues .

After his retirement in 2005, Fellmann held visiting professorships in Vienna and Trento (Italy). Most recently he lived in Münster . His main research interests include phenomenology , ethics and philosophical anthropology . In 2019 his autobiography was published under the title The Erosoph . With this neologism Fellmann describes the ideal type of a postmodern philosopher who combines intellect and sensuality, logos and eros.

Scientific work

The entry into the academic discussion took place in 1975 with the book The Vico Axiom: Man makes history . Contrary to the idealistic conception of history, which was shaped by Hegel's philosophy of spirit, Fellmann interprets Giambattista Vico's New Science from a cultural anthropological perspective . According to this, man is the sole author of history, but he cannot control its course with will and consciousness.

In the 1980s Fellmann's research area shifted to phenomenological theory of consciousness. In Phenomenology as Aesthetic Theory (1989) he interprets Edmund Husserl's doctrine of the vision of essence using the example of the photographic snapshot as a case of aesthetic perception of the general in particular. A further development of phenomenology to general media theory is offered by the second edition of the book Phenomenology for Introduction . With his theory of image awareness he turns against the dogma of the linguistic development of the world. In several programmatic essays, he worked out the logic of the image as an independent symbolic form between trace and language. He sums up the primacy of image awareness in symbolic pragmatism. Hermeneutics according to Dilthey (1991) into the formula of the “ imagic turn ” (compare: iconic turn ), which says that images have a magical dimension that cannot be completely dissolved into intentional consciousness.

The insight into the limits of the theory of consciousness based on language analysis led Fellmann to a change in life philosophy after 1990. His historical representation of the philosophy of life with a systematic intention in the philosophy of life . Elements of a theory of self-experience (1993), clearly shows that he does not count ideological degeneracies at the core of the philosophy of life. Rather, he sees this in the fact that the human being, as an acting being, must always reckon with uncontrollable emotions and opinions that thwart his reasonable intentions, but at the same time offer him support in life. The philosophy of life approach leads Fellmann to an ethic with strongly utilitarian and hedonistic features. In The Ethics Teacher's Fear of the Class. Is morality teachable? (2000) as well as in Philosophy of the Art of Living for Introduction (2009) he makes it clear that a practicable ethics can only be developed on the basis of a realistic image of man .

Fellmann's philosophical anthropology is provisionally final in Das Paar. Found an Erotic Justification of Man (2013). In analogy to the Pauline doctrine of justification, he understands justification to be an emotional bond with a loved one that cannot be resolved into rational reasons (epistemic justification). Fellmann reconstructs erotic love in the sense of genetic phenomenology as the origin of human self-consciousness, a position that he has recently been trying to substantiate with evolutionary biology. In essays, he argues that the eccentric positionality of people results from the special position of their sexuality . He introduced the term “emotional selection” as an extension of sexual selection in the theory of evolution and thus paved new paths for evolutionary anthropology. Fellmann is co-editor of Charles Darwin's Descent and Sexual Selection . Stuttgart 2012.

Works

Ferdinand Fellmann autograph 1983
  • The Erosoph: A Philosophical Autobiography . Würzburg 2019, Königshausen and Neumann. ISBN 978-3-8260-6734-1
  • Feelings of life. What it's like to be human . Meiner, Hamburg 2018. ISBN 978-3-7873-3433-9
  • Reason in the medium of phenomenality . In: Torsten Nieland (ed.): Appearance and reason - access to reality in the Enlightenment . Frank & Timme, Berlin 2018. ISBN 978-3-7329-0520-1
  • The couple. An erotic justification for humans. Alber Freiburg 2013. ISBN 978-3-495-48577-4
  • Introduction to philosophy of the art of living . Hamburg 2009
  • The love code. Key to the polarity of the sexes . Berlin 2007
  • Introductory phenomenology . Hamburg 2006, 2nd edition 2009
  • The ethics teacher's fear of the class. Is morality teachable? Stuttgart 2000
  • Orientation philosophy. What she can do, what she wants . 2nd revised edition. Reinbek b. Hamburg 2000
  • Philosophy of life. Elements of a theory of self-awareness . Reinbek b. Hamburg 1993
  • Symbolic pragmatism. Hermeneutics according to Dilthey . Reinbek b. Hamburg 1991
  • Phenomenology as Aesthetic Theory . Alber ( Fermenta philosophica series ), Freiburg / Munich 1989, ISBN 3-495-47672-5 .
  • Lived philosophy in Germany. Forms of thought of lifeworld phenomenology and critical theory . Alber ( Fermenta philosophica series ), Freiburg / Munich 1983, ISBN 3-495-47524-9 .
  • Phenomenology and Expressionism . Alber ( Fermenta philosophica series ), Freiburg / Munich 1982, ISBN 3-495-47505-2 .
  • The Vico axiom: man makes history . Alber, Freiburg / Munich 1976, ISBN 3-495-47334-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Obituaries of Ferdinand Fellmann | www.trauer.ms. Accessed November 6, 2019 (German).
  2. ^ Information Philosophy , 2008, Issue 3, pp. 49–54
  3. https://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~ferdi/blumenbergiana.html
  4. ^ Ferdinand Fellmann: Giambattista Vico en una nueva clave . In: Cuadernos sobre Vico , 32, 2018, doi: 10.12795 / Vico.2018.i32.17
  5. An update of this approach through the essay: Reason in the medium of phenomenality . In: Torsten Nieland (ed.): Appearance and reason - access to reality in the Enlightenment . Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-7329-9479-3 , pp. 233–244.
  6. For example, the couple as the source of the self. On the sociobiological foundations of philosophical anthropology . In: German Journal for Philosophy, 57/2009/5, pp. 745–756; and F. Fellmann, R. Walsh From Sexuality to Eroticism: The Making of the Human Mind . In: Advances in Anthropology , 6 (1), 2016, pp. 11-24, doi: 10.4236 / aa.2016.61002
  7. ^ Biological Theory . 2013. doi: 10.1007 / s13752-013-0093-3