Gottfried Martin

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Gottfried Martin (born June 19, 1901 in Gera , Thuringia, † October 20, 1972 in Bonn ) was a German philosopher who was best known as an Ockham , Kant and Leibniz researcher .

Life

The father Wilhelm Martin was a pastor. Martin grew up in Heringen on the Werra in Hesse and attended the Friedrichsgymnasium in Kassel from the age of thirteen . After graduating from high school , he was with a volunteer corps in Silesia from May 1919 to spring 1920 . He then worked in factories in Kassel in preparation for his natural science studies, which he began in 1921.

Martin first studied chemistry with Karl Friedrich von Auwers , physics with Clemens Schäfer, mathematics with Kurt Hensel and Ernst Zermelo . Later, under the influence of Paul Natorp , he also took up the study of philosophy . Important teachers were Nicolai Hartmann , Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger . After working in industry in the meantime, he received his doctorate from Heidegger in Freiburg in 1934 with the subject of arithmetic and combinatorics with Kant .

Martin joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1937 . In the spring of 1939 he became operations manager and partner in a chemical factory in Eisenach . Drafted in 1939, he was made indispensable ( uk ) in March 1940 . Martin had completed a thesis on Wilhelm von Ockham and submitted it to Freiburg for his habilitation in 1940, but then, on the advice of Heidegger, in Cologne. The work was unanimously and positively assessed by Heinz Heimsoeth , who supervised the habilitation, Artur Schneider , Herbert Schöffel and Fritz Schalk .

Martin taught at the University of Jena in Thuringia from 1943 to 1946 , after which he fled to the West. From 1948 to 1952 he was an adjunct professor at the University of Cologne and from 1953 to 1954 ao. or from 1954 to 1958 full professor at the University of Mainz .

In 1951 his work Immanuel Kant appeared in the Cologne University Press , in which he interpreted the Critique of Pure Reason ontologically . His thoughts on the philosophy of mathematics , which deal in particular with the history of concepts and theory, he published in 1956 in the work Classical Ontology of Numbers , which spanned the range from ancient Greece to Husserl's concept of manifold . The next step was an investigation of logic and metaphysics by Leibniz (1960). The book General Metaphysics from 1965 is considered to be Martin's main work. Martin denied the end of metaphysics claimed by positivism : "Metaphysics was always equally possible and equally impossible" (p. 6). It depends on the type of questions and the answers. The main task of metaphysics is to "dissolve every newly achieved insight, to find new aporias for every newly achieved insight ." (P. 332) Metaphysics in the sense of Martin is aporetic dialectic . With this approach, Martin stood in the tradition of Nicolai Hartmann , whom he heard in Marburg, and of his Freiburg doctoral supervisor Martin Heidegger. He did not follow Heidegger's talk about a difference between being and being. His question is not whether there is being, but how being is given. For Plato is the general the idea in Aristotle the natural law and in Kant, the act of thinking . Philosophical research means asking "what each of the basic standpoints actually asserts and what it achieves, what it achieves for the understanding of logic and mathematics and what it achieves in the understanding of thinking in general" (p. 328). With Hegel , Martin understood general metaphysics as a problem area and a method to understand the multitude of diverging viewpoints and to understand them as necessary dialectically. Philosophy understood in this way is never complete.

Martin turned down calls to Tübingen (1954), Hamburg (1956), Munich (1957); in 1958 he went to Bonn to succeed Erich Rothacker . He was a full professor there until his retirement in 1969. Even after that he remained active in teaching until his death. He died on the way home from a meeting at the German Research Foundation .

From 1953 to 1965 Martin was the editor of the Kant studies , which he had re-founded with Paul Menzer , and from 1969 to 1972 first chairman of the Kant Society. The first general meeting of the Kant Society after 1934 took place in Bonn in 1960. He was also the editor of the Kant Index (from 1960 on), the Leibniz Index from 1968 and co-editor of the Studia Leibnitiana from 1969. He was also a founding member of the Leibniz Society and from 1966 to 1972 its Vice President.

Works

  • Arithmetic and combinatorics in Kant . 1938 (dissertation 1934). New edition 1972.
  • William of Ockham. Investigations on the ontology of orders. de Gruyter, Berlin 1949. (Habilitation thesis 1939).
  • Immanuel Kant: Ontology and philosophy of science . Kölner Universitätsverlag, Cologne 1951. 4th revised edition and increased by a 3rd part: de Gruyter, Berlin 1969.
  • Modern times and the present in the development of mathematical thinking . Kölner Universitätsverlag, Cologne 1953/54.
  • Classical ontology of number . Kölner Universitätsverlag, Cologne 1956
  • Introduction to general metaphysics . Kölner Universitätsverlag, Cologne 1957. (Reprinted by Reclam, Stuttgart 1984)
  • Leibniz: Logic and Metaphysics . Cologne University Press, Cologne 1960.
  • Collected papers , Volume 1, Cologne 1961.
  • General metaphysics: its problems and its method . de Gruyter, Berlin 1965.
  • Introduction to general metaphysics . Reclam, Stuttgart 1965.
  • Idea and reality of the German university . Bouvier, Bonn 1967.
  • In memory of Professor Erich Rothacker . In: Alma mater , Bonn 1967, pp. 5–12.
  • Subject index to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason . de Gruyter, Berlin 1967.
  • Socrates in personal testimonies and image documents . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1967. (18th edition 1994)
  • Plato in personal testimonies and photo documents . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1969. (19th edition 1995)
  • Plato's theory of ideas . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1973.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christian Tilitzki, Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie, Volume 1, p. 877. Review

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Martin, Gottfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH June 19, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Gera , Thuringia
DATE OF DEATH October 20, 1972
Place of death Bonn