Franz Peter Knoodt

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Franz Peter Knoodt, marble medallion in the old cemetery in Bonn

Franz Peter Knoodt (born November 6, 1811 in Boppard ; † January 27, 1889 in Bonn ) was a German philosopher and theologian.

Life

Knoodt's parents were the mayor of Boppard Heinrich Knoodt jun. and Josepha (née Goutzen). He was a cousin of the brothers August and Peter Reichensperger (their mother was Margarethe Knoodt, the sister of Heinrich Knoodt junior). After attending the Progymnasium in Boppard and the grammar school in Koblenz, he began studying Catholic theology at the University of Bonn in 1829 (in 1828 he became a member of the old Bonn fraternity ). There he met the philosophy of Georg Hermes . In 1831 he moved to the University of Tübingen, in 1833 he attended the seminary in Trier. In 1835 he was ordained a priest and employed as a chaplain at the Trier Liebfrauenkirche . In 1837 he was given the post of religion teacher at the Koblenz grammar school.

In Trier he had already dealt with the works of the then popular, but also controversial Czech-Austrian philosopher and theologian Anton Günther , in particular with his main work, Pre-School for Speculative Theology of Positive Christianity . In 1841 Knoodt traveled to Vienna, where Günther, a student of the logician and theologian Bernard Bolzano , was staying as a private scholar. Knoodt stayed with him for three years and became his closest pupil. In 1844 he moved to Breslau. There he met Johann Baptist Baltzer and Peter Joseph Elvenich , who had also turned away from Hermesian philosophy and turned to Günther. In 1845 Knoodt received his doctorate with the dissertation De Cartesii sententia: cogito ergo sum . The cogito-ergo-sum plays an important role in the philosophy of Günther and Knoodt, because their starting point is self-confidence.

In his article in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie about Günther, Knoodt drafts an outline of Günther's philosophy, which is largely his own. After that, both can be described as new Cartesians. They fought neo-scholasticism ( Neuthomism ), the Jesuit-influenced ultramontanism , but also pantheism (even the Cartesian approaches to it), and taught a dualism in which the self-confident spirit of nature (including the animated fauna, to which man also belongs in part) ), juxtaposed (mind and nature as different forms of being and not as expressions of the same being as in Spinoza ).

In 1845 the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Bonn (at the instigation of the Prussian Ministry of Culture) appointed Knoodt as associate professor. In 1847 he became a full professor in Bonn after he had rejected the offer of the University of Tübingen to fill a vacant chair for Catholic theology. In Bonn, Knoodt gave lectures on logic, psychology, the theory of the senses, metaphysics, ethics and the history of philosophy (e.g. on Augustine and Schopenhauer ). In 1859/60 he was the rector of the university.

In 1853 Franz Jakob Clemens , a Jesuit pupil and private lecturer in philosophy in Bonn, published a criticism of Günther's philosophy ( The speculative theology of Anton Günther and the Catholic doctrine of the Church ). In it he accuses Günther of wanting to transplant a science alienated from faith onto Catholic soil. Knoodt defended Günther in the three-volume work Günther und Clemens, Open Letters , in which he emphasized that science and faith are not mutually exclusive and that it is possible to build a bridge between free science and the revealed truth of positive Christianity. The Archbishop of Cologne, Johannes von Geissel , implemented a ban on Günther's writings. The Roman Index Commission agreed that the Breslau cathedral capitular Baltzer and the Benedictine abbot Gangauf defended Günther's writings in Rome. In 1854 Gangauf was replaced by Knoodt. Baltzer and Knoodt were able to hold off the indexing, but not stop it. In 1857 all of Günther's writings were placed on the index and thus banned. The same happened in 1859 to Knoodt's work by Günther and Clemens . The index commission announced its judgment with the addition: Auctor iam pridem laudabiliter se subjecit.

In the revolution of 1848/49 Knoodt supported democratic reforms. On March 23rd, five days after the bloody conflict in Berlin, he preached in Bonn in a service in honor of those who fell in March . Knoodt was a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly ( Neuwied constituency) from May 1848 to February 1849 (before the Imperial Constitution was passed ). He belonged to the center faction Casino Party .

In December 1869 began in Rome by Pius IX. convened Vatican Council (Vaticanum I). The dogmatization of papal infallibility was decided on it in the summer of 1870 . All German bishops who spoke out against dogmatization ultimately submitted to the decision. But many Catholic professors, including Knoodt, protested against it. The ultramontanism of the church hierarchy led Catholic communities to confess to the pre-Vatican, the old conditions and to found an old Catholic diocese, which the Prussian, Baden and Hessian governments soon recognized. Joseph Hubert Reinkens was the first bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Old Catholics in the German Empire , in whose service Knoodt placed himself. He was appointed vicar general in 1878 (after the resignation of Franz Heinrich Reusch ) and remained so until his death.

Knoodt was buried in the old cemetery in Bonn .

Works

  • De Cartesii sententia: cogito ergo sum , dissertation, Breslau 1845.
  • Speech during the funeral service for those who fell in Berlin , Bonn 1848.
  • Habilitation thesis De legitimis rei publicae potestatibus , Bonn 1849.
  • Günther and Clemens. Open letters , from Wilhelm Braumüller, Vienna 1853.
  • Speech given at the grave of his friend Professor Dr. Baltzer , Bonn 1871.
  • Five sermons on the sacrifice of the cross and the mass , by Eduard Weber, Bonn 1875.
  • Speeches by Prof. Dr. Knoodt and Bishop Dr. Reinkens, held at the Old Catholic Association in Düsseldorf on March 24, 1876.
  • The Thomas encyclical Leo XIII. of August 4, 1879. Lecture given by Eduard Weber, Bonn 1880.
  • Anton Günther: a biography , in two volumes, by Wilhelm Braumüller, Vienna 1881.
  • Anti-Savarese , texts from Günther's estate, which Knoodt edited posthumously and commented on in an appendix (the larger part of the book), Vienna 1883.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Family table in August Reichensperger by Ludwig Pastor
  2. ↑ His grave is in the old cemetery in Bonn , the grave bust is from Bernhard Afinger
  3. ↑ On Descartes' theorem: I think therefore I am
  4. ↑ after Thomas Aquinas
  5. ↑ That's why Günther and Knoodt were accused of teaching two different souls
  6. ↑ The author has long been commendably submitted to [the judgment]
  7. ↑ The Namen-Jesu-Kirche (Bonn) was the center of the Bonn old Catholic community from 1877 to 1934
  8. ↑ On the lawful violence of the state
  9. ↑ Knoodt's main work
  10. ^ The house prelate of Pius IX, Giambattista (Giovanni Battista) Savarese, mentions Knooth, Günther and Baltzer several times in his book Introduzione alla storia critica della filosofia dei Santi Padri (Naples 1856)
personal data
SURNAME Knoodt, Franz Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Knoodt, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH November 6, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH Boppard
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1889
Place of death Bonn