Gunnar Hindrichs

Gunnar Hindrichs (* 1971 in Wegberg ) is a German philosopher. He teaches at the University of Basel .

Life

Hindrichs studied Philosophy, Medieval and Modern History and Musicology at the Universities of Marburg, Tübingen and Heidelberg. After graduating, he spent a year in Nebraska as a Fulbright Fellow . Back in Germany, he received his doctorate with a thesis on Kant . Hindrichs worked as Rüdiger Bubner's assistant at Heidelberg University from 1999 , where he completed his habilitation in 2006 with the essay Das Absolute und das Subject . He then taught at the Department of Philosophy at the UPenn . In 2014, he succeeded Emil Angehrn as a professor for the history of philosophy at the University of Basel.

Hindrichs served as President of the Swiss Philosophical Society from 2017-2019 . He is also the deputy president of the International Hegel Association .

Positions

In addition to his studies of the history of philosophy on Spinoza and classical German philosophy, Hindrichs has come out above all with three books.

The absolute and the subject

The Absolute and the Subject suggest a reformulation of metaphysics under the conditions of post-metaphysical thinking. It asks the question “Where are we in?” In order to answer it neither in recourse to nature nor in recourse to society, but in turn to the absolute. In order to be able to develop the concept of the absolute, it reconstructs the history of the ontological proof of God as the subject's self-conquest. In a second part it then unfolds the basic determinations of the subject (order, justification, being a subject, making, home) and concludes from them that the subject cannot be in itself or in another. The subject must therefore “cling to” the absolute (following Augustine 's word “adhaerere Deo”), which is to be thought of as a secret.

The absolute and the subject were perceived as very opposite: both as an “authoritarian ontology of order” and as a “utopia” as well as a “concession to logical positivism” and as a position “between Schelling and Adorno”. Kurt Flasch ends his remarks on "Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Today" with a sketch of the book (although it is not about religion, but about metaphysics), which he sees as a continuation of Wolfgang Cramer's philosophy , and Jens Halfwassen describes it alongside the Works by Dieter Henrich , Werner Beierwaltes and Wolfgang Janke as the fourth position in German-language contemporary metaphysics.

The autonomy of sound

In Die Autonomie des Klangs Hindrichs develops the categories of the musical work of art. In contrast to the language-analytical music philosophy, the book does not provide a definition of the concept of the work, but develops it in a chain of basic terms. According to him, a musical work of art is an autonomous complex of sounds. Its what-being is denoted by the category of musical material, which also includes the “tendency of the material” ( Adorno ); This means that the autonomous sound complex is related to the musical avant-garde. His what-being (the musical form in the philosophical sense) is in turn denoted by the categories of sound, time, space and meaning. According to them, the sounds of the musical work of art are in the forms of intense time, which attains simultaneity in the forms of intense space, and are understandable in four ways: internal musical functionality (literal sense), reference to something other than music (allegorical sense), application to the Hearing (tropological sense) and reference to something that does not yet exist (anagogical sense). It is important that each of the four musical senses arise from the autonomy of the sound. The world reference of sound is therefore not imposed on it from outside, but rather determined by its own implicit axioms.

In the end, the relationship between what-being and what-being of the musical work is shown in its coherence and this in its truth from the category of musical thought.

Even the autonomy of the sound has been recorded differently. Günter Figal says: “There are currently not many books on art that are so originally philosophical and at the same time as knowledgeable about the subject matter at hand .” Laurenz Lütteken, on the other hand, accuses Hindrich's one-sidedness, which his book comes from “a philosophy of music "Into the" philosophy of a music ", and musicologists with a cultural studies orientation are negative about Hindrichs' approach. Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf calls the book a "sensation". The musicologist Tobias Janz states: “The fact that the book provoked a need for discussion and defensive reactions in musicological circles like hardly any other in recent years could be due to the fact that someone here is pointing to the elephants in the room, which today's music discourse is so diverse Learned how to curve elegantly. "

In an essay, Hindrichs tries to defend his idea that the musical work of art represents the ideal type of European music that guides musicology and that music philosophy therefore has to develop categorically.

Philosophy of revolution

To mark the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution , Philosophy of the Revolution was published . The book does not interpret the revolution politically or historically, but philosophically as a mark of autonomous action: "Revolutionary action has its determinateness in setting its rules as well as obeying them." (P. 11) Hindrichs uses four points of view to explain this determination: the right of revolution, the power of revolution, the beauty of revolution and the god of revolution. He denies a right to revolution and instead understands the revolution as the realization of fundamental rights through the abolition of their legal system. With Marx he justifies this with the social being of the proletariat. Since the abolition of the legal system can no longer be understood within the framework of the law, it requires the concept of the abolishing revolutionary power. This is defined - in discussion by Lenin and with recourse to Hannah Arendt , Antonio Gramsci and Kant - as an action against the rules of shared, hegemonic practice that occurs out of enthusiasm in the face of revolutionary historical signs. Such action can no longer be explained out of class interests, even if it concerns the social being of a class. Enthusiasm then brings the beauty of the revolution into play, which consists in the "New Forward-Striding Beauty" ( Mayakowski ) of the avant-garde. The transcendence of revolutionary action beyond the horizon of the practiced practice finally leads to the God of the revolution, who is the God of the covenant, the prophets and eschatology. In an afterword, Hindrichs speaks, following Nolte , Furet and Hobsbawm, of the present remote from the revolution and concludes:

“But doesn't it take just a tiny crazy look to recognize that as the situation of revolutionary action? For him, the time without revolution is nothing but the desert through which the revolutionary exodus runs. Servitude continues to rule in it, but at the same time it is the place where one can enter into the covenant of mutual action: a covenant that abolishes the law, breaks through hegemonic practice in a revolutionary subject, enthusiastically experiences the beautiful appearance, in eschatological presence of mind sees the world grow old for the sake of the new. In the end, the past of the revolution could become the moment of its creation. "

The FAZ can do little with the book. The Junge Welt, on the other hand, calls it “an excellent philosophical study about the necessity of revolution” while Deutschlandfunk says: “Hindrichs does not agitate or moralize, he does not call for anything and he does not condemn either. It is cool and consistent about understanding. Step by step, strictly logical, just as enlightening as it is enlightening. "

In specialist journals, the book was “as a comprehensive acceptance of the challenge of that great of the revolution [...], right down to the 'last things'” and as a “clever composition of revolutionary theoretical considerations that make it vivid that the revolution is a profound transformation of subjectivity and the social order must be thought », added. Honneth's student Martin Hartmann has been very critical of this. He calls the book “Marxist”, “somewhat mysterious”, “complex”, “wrong path”, “fascinating in detail”, “not exactly reader-friendly”, “a theologumenon of the revolution”, “patriarchal-authoritative”, “German ordinarial philosophy from the last century ”,“ new right ”,“ playing with fire ”,“ you can read something like that with Benjamin, Derrida, maybe even with Judith Butler ”and“ kind of a shame ”.

Christoph Menke, on the other hand, thinks: “Hindrichs' book shows: Aragon and Breton, Ensslin and Gramsci, Robespierre and Schklowski, Moses and the prophets are just as important for a philosophy of revolution as Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Lukács and Arendt. » Menke noted an envelope between the first two chapters (Law, Power) and the last two chapters (Beauty, God). “I understand Hindrichs' reflections on beauty and the god of revolution in such a way that they are based on the same argument. His thrust is anti-negative. As long as revolutionary power is understood in a utopian way - as the placeless in the places that unite us - the revolution threatens to sink into a merely negative understanding: as an intrusion of the unconditional, as rebellion or revolt, as an endlessly repeating and drawn-out process of liberation. " Hindrichs, however, "does not see [...] the gap that arises between the first step of his deliberations (the explanation of revolutionary power) and the second step (the explanation of revolutionary transcendence)." Menke concludes: “The first step in the book defines revolutionary power as utopian. [...] According to Hindrichs, something new goes beyond the exercise of this power; it is transcendent to revolutionary power. Revolutionary power cannot produce the new. Does this mean that the new happens without reference to the revolutionary subject ? That would be the end of the idea of ​​revolution. [...] The fact that what is new in the revolution - which Hindrichs defines as its beauty and as its god - goes beyond its power must therefore also mean that it depends on the exercise of this power. Hence, the new beauty and the new God do not exist through the exercise of revolutionary power alone, but they only exist through the exercise of it; that alone defines the new beauty and the new god as revolutionary. The open question of Hindrichs' book, which arises between its two parts, at the place of their unexplained relationship, is therefore how the power of negativity - because if revolutionary power is utopian, it is negative - and the transcendence of the new are thought together can."

Awards

Academy Award of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences

Fonts (selection)

• The absolute and the subject. Investigations into the relationship between metaphysics and post-metaphysics. 2nd edition extended by an afterword. Klostermann, Frankfurt / M. 2011.
• The autonomy of sound. A philosophy of music. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2014.
• Philosophy of revolution. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2017.
• (Ed.) The power of the crowd. About the topicality of a figure of thought Spinoza. Winter, Heidelberg 2006.
• Failure as salvation. Aesthetic experience according to Adorno. In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 74, 2000, pp. 146–175.
• The legacy of Marxism. In: German magazine for philosophy. 54, 2006, pp. 709-729.
• Anselm's inverse theology. In: Thomas Buchheim et al. (Ed.): Evidence of God as a challenge to philosophy. Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2012, pp. 181–221.
• Paradigm and ideal type. In: Andrea Sakoparnig et al. (Ed.): Paradigm shift. Change in Science and the Arts. de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, pp. 21–52.
• To be in oneself and to be in another. In: Studia philosophica 73, 2014, pp. 223–232.
• The aesthetic ternary. In: Philosophical Review. 63, 2016, pp. 303-315.

Web links

• Professor for the History of Philosophy at the University of Basel in the Department of Arts, Media, Philosophy at the University of Basel
• “Ready for the next revolution?” SRF philosophy

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gerhard Gamm: At home in secret . In: German magazine for philosophy . tape 58 , 2010, p. 1021–2015 , here p. 1023 .
2. ^ Riccardo Dottori: Ontologia o utopia . In: Giornale Critico della filosofia italiana . tape 93 , 2012, p. 180-189 .
3. ↑ Olivia Mitscherlich: Thinking the Secret . In: General journal for philosophy . tape 35 , 2010, p. 91-101 .
4. ↑ Peter Dews: Review of Gunnar Hindrichs, Das Absolute und das Subject . In: International Yearbook of German Idealism . tape 7 , 2009, p. 283–288 , here p. 285 .
5. ^ Kurt Flasch: Religion and Philosophy in Germany, today . In: Information Philosophy . No. 2 , 2012, p. 8-17 .
6. ↑ Jens Halfwassen: The indestructibility of metaphysics . In: Philosophical Review . tape 57 , 2010, p. 97-124 .
7. ^ Günter Figal: Music, philosophically understood . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . 5th March 2015.
8. ↑ Laurenz Lütteken: Some just compose only sounds and no music. This is about the whole thing. Gunnar Hindrichs designs a new philosophy of music . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . 5th July 2014.
9. ↑ Beate Kutschke, Andreas Domann: Reflections on a contemporary musical aesthetic in response to Gunnar Hindrichs . In: The music theory . tape 30 , 2015, p. 257-282 .
10. ↑ Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf: "Asking questions correctly, drawing correct conclusions" . In: Neue Musikzeitung . February 10, 2014.
11. ↑ Tobias Janz: Revolution - Transition - Autonomy . In: Music & Aesthetics . tape 76 , 2015, p. 67–79 , here p. 75 .
12. ^ Gunnar Hindrichs: The musical work of art as an ideal type of European music . In: Otfried Höffe, Andreas Kablitz (Hrsg.): European Music - Music of Europe. Series of publications by the European Working Group of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation . Fink, Paderborn 2017.
13. ↑ Philosophy of the Revolution p. 390 f.
14. ↑ Florian Meinel: Where, please, is the next thorn bush burning? Gunnar Hindrichs tries to define revolutionary action . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 28, 2017.
15. ↑ Detlef Kannapin: Progressive Beauty . In: Junge Welt . 20th January 2018.
16. ↑ Uli Hufen: Non-fiction book by Gunnar Hindrichs - Revolution philosophically considered. December 15, 2017 ( deutschlandfunk.de ).
17. ↑ R. Zwarg: After the story. On the attempt to think about the topicality of the revolution , in: Zeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie 14 (2019), 173–178.
18. ↑ C. Schmidt: The revolution that has become questionable , in; Philosophische Rundschau 66 (2019), 51–81.
19. ↑ Studia philosophica 78 (2019), pp. 168–174.
20. ↑ C. Menke: Die Macht des Neues , in: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 66 (2018), 861–869.