Ferdinand Ulrich

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Ferdinand Ulrich (born February 23, 1931 in Odrau , today Odry , Czech Republic ; † February 11, 2020 in Regensburg ) was a German philosopher .

Life

Ulrich studied philosophy, psychology, education and fundamental theology at the Philosophical-Theological University of Freising and at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich . In 1955 he was awarded a PhD in Munich . PhD. In 1959 he completed his habilitation in philosophy at the University of Salzburg . From 1960 he taught as a private lecturer, from 1961 as an associate professor at the University of Education in Regensburg , which was later integrated into the University of Regensburg . In 1967 he was appointed full professor of philosophy. Ulrich also taught at the University of Salzburg (from 1963) and at the Jesuit School of Philosophy in Pullach (later Munich). In 1996 he retired. He died in February 2020, a few days before his 89th birthday.

Act

The focus of his thinking and questioning is always the concrete person in his or her constitution and life as well as his human being- in-the-world . At the same time, however, Ulrich's view of people always comes from the depths of a way of thinking that shapes all of his writings. In everything he thinks about, he is always and originally a metaphysician who perceives and develops the phenomena of human existence in the light and “risk of the question of being”.

This thinking about being is particularly inspired by the spirit of Thomas Aquinas , who interprets being as the abundance of acts of all that is real. From there, Ulrich develops a metaphysics of being as love (or of being as a gift) in constant conversation - especially with German idealism ( above all Hegel ) and with Heidegger , but also with Marx , Kierkegaard , Freud and others . He explicitly sees himself as a Christian philosopher. Based on these prerequisites, he succeeds in reconciling traditional metaphysics and modern transcendental philosophy on the one hand, but also in reconciling these positions with the dialogue philosophy on the other. Ulrich's thinking revolves in multiple variations around the ontological difference between non-subsisting being and subsisting being. However, he sees the full form and thus the actual horizon of interpretation of this difference in the personal difference between you and me (as a form of freedom: I-you-we). This is why ontology and anthropology are strictly related to each other without merging into one another. With his radical understanding of being as love, Ulrich stands in the tradition of those who want to overcome metaphysics, especially in the form of a static substance ontology. At the same time, however, he also sees himself in a tradition of thinkers who (with Heidegger, for example ) want to hear the philosophical blueprints of the great tradition from this very depth from a deeper experience of being and want to “repeat” ( Kierkegaard ) its basic metaphysical concerns .

However, if this philosophy of being as love has the intact form of human personhood in mind, then it is only possible as liberated thinking in the place in which the human being is liberated for this personhood: in the place of the arrival of the liberator, in the space of the redeemed Freedom or the "perfect finitude" that Ulrich sees as the personal epitome of the Church.

Publications

Ulrich's thinking is accessible in the form of a five-volume publication by Johannes-Verlag Einsiedeln, which has not yet been completed. However, after 1980 there are hardly any new texts by Ulrich. For the publication edition mostly older manuscripts were revised by him. The first volume and at the same time the central work is Ulrich's habilitation thesis “Homo abyssus. The risk of the question of being ”(first published in 1961). In the printed edition, the last volume V to date deserves special attention. Ulrich presents a “contribution to the biblical ontology” under the title “Gift and Forgiveness”, in which he describes the “parable of the prodigal son” (Lk 15: 11–32) in the sense of an ontodrama between God and Human interprets. Other publications include around 60 articles and in some cases extensive treatises, most of which are published in foreign journals and edited volumes. The titles of smaller books are for example: “The human being as a beginning. On the philosophical anthropology of childhood ”(1970) or“ Atheism and Incarnation ”(1966).

reception

The speculative difficulty, the idiosyncratic diction and the Christian foundation from which Ulrich philosophizes have made a broad reception difficult. However, there has been and still is a very notable response. Hans Urs von Balthasar, for example, received Ulrich intensively and made the following verdict on Ulrich's philosophy: “ It has ... ahead of all the designs I know of, that it stands face to face with the innermost mysteries of Christian revelation, it opens without the strict- to leave philosophical space and thus overcome the hopeless dualism between philosophy and theology happier than perhaps ever before ”. In a more recent anthology on the philosophy of religion, Ulrich is named "one of the most important religious philosophers of the century ". Bishop Stefan Oster von Passau is a self-declared student of Ulrich.

Ulrich's works are gradually being translated into English. On the occasion of the publication of the English translation of "Homo abyssus", the first international symposium on his work took place in Washington in April 2019.

Primary literature

Writings IV :

  • I: Homo abyssus. The risk of the question of being. Johannes Verlag, Einsiedeln 2nd ed. 1998 (Horizonte 8) ISBN 3-89411-284-0 . (At the same time Salzburg dissertation 1958 udT: Attempt at a speculative development of the human being in the participation in being. )
  • II: Life in the unity of life and death. Einsiedeln 1999. ISBN 3-89411-358-8
  • III: narrated sense. Ontology of becoming oneself in the imagery of fairy tales. Einsiedeln 2nd edition 2002. ISBN 3-89411-362-6
  • IV: Logo tokos. The man and the word. Einsiedeln 2003. ISBN 3-89411-383-9
  • V: Gift and forgiveness. A contribution to biblical ontology. Einsiedeln 2006. ISBN 3-89411-392-8 ( review by Richard Niedermeier)
  • Presence of Freedom. Einsiedeln 1974. ISBN 3-265-10154-1 (Collection Horizonte; NF 8), 1974
  • The human being as a beginning: to the philosophical anthropology of childhood. Einsiedeln 1970. (Criteria 16)

Secondary literature

  • Being as an Image of Divine Love: A Symposium on Homo Abyssus, ICR Communio 46/1 (2019) [some of the contributions are freely available online]. ISSN  0094-2065 . ( Online )
  • Marine de la Tour: Gift in the beginning: Basics of the metaphysical thinking of Ferdinand Ulrich. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016. ISBN 978-3-17-031123-7
  • Stefan Oster : Giving for free - About being a teacher and spiritual fatherhood. Ferdinand Ulrich on his 80th birthday. In: IKaZ Communio 40 (2011), pp. 51–61
  • Stefan Oster: Thinking Love at the Heart of Things. The Metaphysics of Being as Love in the Work of Ferdinand Ulrich. In: IKaZ Communio 37/4 (2010), pp. 660–700
  • Stefan Oster: Being with people. Phenomenology and ontology of the gift in Ferdinand Ulrich , Freiburg / Munich 2004. ISBN 3-495-48126-5
  • Reinhard Feiter : Liberated to freedom. Apology of Christianity in Ferdinand Ulrich , Würzburg 1994. ISBN 3-429-01603-7
  • Martin Bieler: Freedom as a gift. A creation theological draft , Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1991. ISBN 3-451-22294-9
  • Emmanuel Tourpe : “La positivité de l'être comme amour chez Ferdinand Ulrich à l'arrière-plan de Theologik III. Sur un mot de Hans Urs von Balthasar ”, in: Gregorianum 1 (1988), pp. 86–117

swell

  • Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar (1996), p. 1496
  • Who is who? 46 (2007), p. 1346

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ferdinand Ulrich died , hfph.de, accessed on February 26, 2020.
  2. ↑ Here you can read the sermon that Bishop Stefan Oster SDB gave at the funeral of Ferdinand Ulrich on February 21, 2020 in Mühldorf am Inn: https://stefan-oster.de/von-der-liebe-die-umsonst-ist -zu-ehren-von-ferdinand-ulrich / , accessed on February 28, 2020.
  3. ↑ Quotation printed on the back of the 2nd edition of Homo abyssus, 1998.
  4. ↑ S. Grätzel / A. Kreiner. Philosophy of Religion , Stuttgart / Weimar 1999, p. 112.
  5. ↑ Stefan Oster, Mit-Mensch-sein: Phenomenology and ontology of the gift with Ferdinand Ulrich . Freiburg 2004.
  6. ↑ The articles were published in the special edition of the North American magazine Communio (Spring 2019) .
personal data
SURNAME Ulrich, Ferdinand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Odrau , Moravia
DATE OF DEATH February 11, 2020
Place of death regensburg