Hans Heinz Holz

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Hans Heinz Holz (born February 26, 1927 in Frankfurt am Main ; † December 11, 2011 in Sant'Abbondio ) was a German Marxist philosopher .

Life

Because of resistance to the Nazi system , Hans Heinz Holz was imprisoned by the Gestapo for several months at the age of seventeen . While studying philosophy , he began writing for newspapers and magazines. His attempt to do his doctorate with Otto Friedrich Bollnow at the University of Mainz with the dissertation The Self-Interpretation of Being failed in 1954 because Bollnow left and Gottfried Martin became his successor. Martin also campaigned against wood several times in the following years; the two became bitter political opponents.

His second attempt to do a doctorate - with the option of habilitation - at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig under the philosopher Ernst Bloch was successful. The title of his dissertation was Herr und Knecht at Leibniz and Hegel . Bloch rated the work summa cum laude , but was not allowed to issue a doctoral certificate in 1956 because he had fallen out of favor with the GDR leadership and was given early retirement. It wasn't until 1969 that Holz finally received his doctorate.

After 1956, Holz was an editor at the newspaper Deutsche Woche , from 1960 a freelance journalist in Switzerland and as editor-in-chief of the evening studio at Hessischer Rundfunk . In 1971 he received a professorship for philosophy at the University of Marburg , where he taught from 1971 to 1978. In 1978 he moved to the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and stayed there until his retirement. In 1994 he became a member of the German Communist Party , on whose program he worked.

Holz died at his retirement home, Sant'Abbondio, in southern Switzerland. His ashes were scattered over Lake Maggiore .

plant

Holz published numerous books and essays on the history and systematics of dialectics , on the theory of art and contemporary artists, as well as on problems in social sciences and politics. He was President and later Honorary President of the International Society for Dialectical Philosophy as well as an elected member of the Leibniz Society and the World Academy of Letters . In 1997 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Urbino . He was awarded the plaque of honor of the Association of German Engineers , the Order of Merit of the International Biographical Center (GB) and the Legion of Honor of the American Biographical Institute (USA). In 1991 he founded the Fondazione Centro di Studi Filosofici with his wife Silvia Markun . Together with Domenico Losurdo, Holz published the philosophical journal Topos - International Contributions to Dialectical Theory . The magazine for dialectical philosophy , which has been published since 2012, is dedicated to wood. Holz was one of the editors of the Marxist papers .

meaning

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Holz was one of the few communist intellectuals who, against orthodox paralysis, kept the plurality of Marxist thought in mind. Years before the Eurocommunism boom, he pointed out the importance of the theories of Italian Marxism - Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti , which challenged the generality of the Soviet / Russian path to communism. He emphasized the importance of philosophers such as Georg Lukács and Ernst Bloch, who were ostracized in Soviet communism at the time . And he did - after the break between the Soviet Union and the China of Mao and demarcation against all " isms " and "Dissidenzen" - the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the work of Mao Tse-Tung's " polycentric " as one of the many national road to socialism to know understood and legitimized.

Looking back, Holz's political journalism of the time can be understood as an attempt to halt the impending disintegration processes of world communism by means of a historical-philosophical synthesis that brings the disparate together again to form a unity, namely the "diversity in the unity":

“The path taken in the Soviet Union of the educational dictatorship of a consciously advanced minority, which might correspond to the historical conditions there, is not feasible in the countries of Western Europe. The aim here is to mobilize a democratic majority on the path of enlightenment and joint class struggle actions for socialism. This is the lesson that Gramsci and Togliatti and, in their wake, the Italian Marxist theorists oppose to the Soviet party's claim to hegemony. The doctrine of polycentrism takes up the thought model of European metaphysics, the diversity in unity. "

Criticism of the Emergency Laws

In an essay on the question "What is left today?" from 1963 wood dealt with the effect of the law on society in the FRG. He writes: "Wherever legislation, jurisprudence and execution are permeated by class considerations, we are obviously dealing with a class state. It is no coincidence that the fight against class justice is one of the first expressions of the oppressed classes against their oppressors." It would not be difficult "to provide evidence that the legal system of the Federal Republic is clearly used as an instrument of the ruling class, and thus proves to be a mirror of class society." This provides the basis for Holz's public criticism of the emergency legislation in the following years from a legal and constitutional perspective.

Holz starts from the insight that the ruling classes in business and politics tried together to replace the formal democratic legal norms, which they had once tolerated themselves, with the reality of the authoritarian state of corporations and high state officials. In a contribution from 1966, Holz addresses the political-economic context in which the law was effective in the FRG and the jurisdiction took place: "Private-sector decisions and private-law obligations, insofar as they are made and entered into by companies of the highest order of magnitude, prejudice the measures of the state both internally and externally (...) According to classic bourgeois political doctrine (...) it was the state's task to maintain and protect the legal system that guaranteed the free play of forces in the economy, and (...) ) To prevent one-sided shifts in the equilibrium (e.g. through the formation of monopoly), in view of the new priorities in the economy (...) the state (got) into such a dependency on the decisions of the economically strongest powers that it practically only serves them can (...) The parliamentary legislative machinery is only partially decisive for the destinies s community. "

criticism

Hans Heinz Holz encountered contradictions when attempting to reintroduce ontology into the Marxist philosophical discourse, especially when he resorted to Leibniz , in which he wanted to make fruitful the dissolution of the classical concept of substance into a model of relations and structure. Here some critics see the danger of deviating from the consistently materialistic point of view. This becomes clear in his work World Design and Reflection (2005). Here wood develops the category of reflection as a metaphor of a structure of being instead of a sensual-material process. With wood, reflection should model the interrelationship of the material diversity as a universal reflection system and justify the peculiarity of human being-in-the-world as an element of the general relationship to nature.

Fonts

  • Jean-Paul Sartre . Presentation and criticism of his philosophy . Westkulturverlag, Meisenheim / Glan 1951, 140 pages.
  • Language and world. Problems of the philosophy of language . Frankfurt / M .: Schulte-Bulmke 1953, 144 pp.
  • Leibniz . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1958, 164 pp. (= Urbach books 34)
  • French existentialism. Theory and actuality . Dobbeck, Speyer and Munich 1958, 140 pp.
  • Power and impotence of language. Investigations into the understanding of language and style of Heinrich von Kleist . Athenaeum, Frankfurt / M. 1962, 180 pp.
  • HH Holz, Leo Kofler , Wolfgang Abendroth : Conversations with Georg Lukács . Edited by Theo Pinkus . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1967, 136 pp.
  • Utopia and anarchism. On Herbert Marcuse's critical theory . Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein 1968, 136 pp.
  • Contradiction in China. Political-philosophical explanations on Mao Tse-tung . Hanser, series Hanser , Munich 1970, 124 pp.
  • From work of art to goods . Studies on the function of the aesthetic object in late capitalism . Luchterhand, Luchterhand Collection , Neuwied / Berlin 1972, 218 pp.
  • Currents and tendencies in neo-Marxism . Munich: Hanser 1972, 120 pp.
  • Tendensen in het europese marxisme. Het polycentrism en de dialektiek van theory en practice . Nijmegen: SUN 1975, 93 pp.
  • Logos spermatikos. Ernst Bloch's philosophy of the unfinished world . Darmstadt / Neuwied: Luchterhand 1975, 250 pp.
  • Klaus Peters, Wolfgang Schmidt, HH Holz: Cognitive certainty and deduction. To build the philosophical systems. Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz . Luchterhand, Neuwied 1975, 178 pp.
  • The adventurous rebellion. Bourgeois Protest Movements in Philosophy . Stirner , Nietzsche , Sartre, Marcuse, Neue Linke . Darmstadt / Neuwied: Luchterhand 1976, 290 pp.
  • Holz, Hans Heinz / Sandkühler, Hans Jörg (Ed.): Subject: Gramsci - Philosophy and revolutionary politics in Italy. With a bibliography of the editions of the work, the German-language Gramsci literature and selected bibliographies of French and English literature . Cologne: Verlag Pahl-Rugenstein 1980, 320 pages
  • Dialectic and reflection . Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein 1983, 189 pages.
  • Strutture della Visualità. Corpo, Superficie, Movimento, Luce . Milano / Varese: Feltrinelli 1984, 208 pages.
  • Alex Sadkowsky . Zurich: ABC-Verlag 1986, 184 pages.
  • Holz, Hans Heinz / Bartels, J. / Lensink, J. / Pätzold, D .: Dialectiek als open systeem . Groningen: Konstapel 1985, 191 pp.
  • Dialectics as an open system . Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein 1986, 202 pages (together with J. Bartels, D. Pätzold and J. Lensink).
  • Holz, Hans Heinz / Sandkühler, Hans Jörg (Ed.): Encyclopedia and Emancipation - Knowing the Whole . Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein 1988, 373 pp.
  • Defeat and future of socialism . Essen: Neue Impulse Verlag 1991, 120 pp.
  • Holz, Hans Heinz / Sandkühler, Hans Jörg (ed.): Historical knowledge - on the theory type "Marx" . Hamburg: Meiner 1991, 171 pp.
  • Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz . Frankfurt am Main: Campus (= introductions 1052) 1992, 165 pp.
  • China in a cultural comparison . Cologne: Dinter, 1994; ISBN 3924794278 .
  • Communists today. The party and its worldview . Essen: Neue-Impulse-Verlag 1995, 160 pp.
  • The aesthetic object. The presence of the real (= Philosophical Theory of the Fine Arts I) . Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag 1996, 326 pages.
  • Structures of representation. About constants of the aesthetic configurations (= Philosophical Theory of Fine Arts II) . Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag 1997, 278 pages.
  • The disintegration of meanings. On the function of the aesthetic object in late capitalism (= Philosophical Theory of the Fine Arts III) . Bielefeld: Aiesthesis Verlag 1997, 318 pages.
  • Riflessioni sulla Filosofia di Hegel , Napoli: La città de sole 1997, 210 pages.
  • Unity and contradiction. Problem history of dialectics in the modern age , Volume I: The signature of the modern age , Stuttgart / Weimar: JB Metzler 1997, 548 pages.
  • Unity and contradiction. Problem history of dialectics in modern times , Volume II: Plurality and Unity , Stuttgart / Weimar: JB Metzler 1997, 442 pages.
  • Unity and contradiction. Problem history of dialectics in modern times , Volume III: The elaboration of dialectics , Stuttgart / Weimar: JB Metzler 1997, 532 pages.
  • "The Great Robber's Den". Religion and class struggles in the Christian Middle Ages , Bielefeld: Aisthesis 1999, 118 pages.
  • Socialism instead of barbarism. A contribution to the future debate . Essen: Neue-Impulse-Verlag 1999, 144 pp.
  • Hans Falk. One life - one work , Zurich: Weltwoche ABC-Verlag 1999, 238 pages.
  • Forms of being. About strict constructivism , Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag 2001, 288 pages.
  • Wood, Hans Heinz / Albrecht, Hans Joachim / Erben, Walter / Riedl, Peter Anselm: Hans Joachim Albrecht. Sculpture and drawing 1986–2000 . Krefeld: Krefelder Kulturstiftung 2001, 168 pp.
  • Irrationalism. Modern. Postmodern . In: Hermann Kopp and Werner Seppmann (eds.): Failed modernity? On the ideological criticism of postmodernism . Neue-Impulse Verlag, Essen, 2002, pp. 67–92. Online failed modernity? On the ideological criticism of postmodernism as a PDF file
  • The struggle for democracy and peace (collected essays from 50 years, vol. 1) . Essen: Neue Impulse Verlag 2003, 268 pages.
  • German ideology after 1945 (collected essays from 50 years, vol. 2) . Essen: Neue-Impulse-Verlag 2003, 252 pages.
  • World outline and reflection. Attempt to lay the foundation for dialectics . Stuttgart / Weimar: JB Metzler 2005, 624 pages.
  • 1789-1917. Two revolutions (Topos special issue 2) , Napoli 2008, 110 pages.
  • Abolition and Realization of Philosophy , Vol. 1: The Algebra of the Revolution: from Hegel to Marx . Berlin: Aurora Verlag 2010, 287 pages.
  • Ernst Bloch: System and Fragment (together with Silvia Markun), Halle: Projekt-Verlag Cornelius 2010, 206 pages.
  • Dialectics: Problem history from antiquity to the present (5th vol.), Darmstadt: WGB 2010.
  • Abolition and Realization of Philosophy , Vol. 2: Theory as Material Force. The classics of the III. International . Berlin: Aurora Verlag 2011, 272 pages. WGB
  • Abolition and Realization of Philosophy , Vol. 3: Integrals of Practice. Aurora and the owl of Minerva . Berlin: Aurora Verlag 2011, 351 pages.
  • Power and impotence of language. Investigations into the understanding of language and style of Heinrich von Kleist . Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag 2011, 174 pages.
  • Leibniz. The life's work of a polymath . Edited by Jörg Zimmer. Darmstadt: Scientific Book Society 2013, 314 pages.
  • Leibniz in the reception of classical German philosophy . Edited by Jörg Zimmer. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2015, 206 pages.

Correspondence

literature

  • Wolfgang Hübener : A wrong way of the Leibniz interpretation , in: Philosophisches Jahrbuch 78 (1971) 185–193.
  • Karl Christoph Gerber, Rudolf Hunziker, Elisabeth Zillig (eds.): Documentation of the habilitation process Hans Heinz Holz in Bern . Bern 1971 (hectographed).
  • Friedrich-Martin Balzer, Helge Speith: German misery. The controversy surrounding the Marxist philosopher Hans Heinz Holz (1970–1974) . Marburg 2006 (private print).
  • S. Garroni: La proposta di Holz: da Leibniz a Marx . In: Marxismo oggi 1 (2002), pp. 23-26.
  • Thomas Grimm: Journeyman on the Left. Socialists, anarchists, communists, ruffians, and other non-conformists . Parthas Verlag, Berlin 2003, pp. 168–193 (“Hans Heinz Holz - On the extreme left wing”).
  • Hans Heinz Holz: metaphysics , dialectics , reflection . My philosophical path in the context of philosophy after 1945 . Guest lecture at the Ferrater Mora Chair for Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Girona, Girona 2001 (private print).
  • Thomas Metscher , Heewon Lee: Marxist Philosophy and Ontological Aesthetics . On Hans Heinz Holz '' Philosophical Theory of the Fine Arts ' . In: Zeitschrift für Marxist Renewal No. 45, March 2001, pp. 121-133.
  • Reinhard Mocek: The claim to preservation. Notes on Hans Heinz Holz . In: Utopie Kreativ No. 103/104 (1999), pp. 154-164.
  • Jörg Zimmer: Hans Heinz Holz . In: Bernd Lutz (Ed.): Metzler-Philosophen-Lexikon . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2003, pp. 318–321.
  • Friedrich-Martin Balzer (Ed.): Hans Heinz wood for beginners and advanced. First complete bibliography with 2550 titles and 500 journalistic articles in full text on the fields of art and culture, theater and literature, philosophy and history, politics and current affairs, 1959 pages, CD-Rom, Bonn 2007, 4th expanded edition 2011.
  • Christoph Hubig , Jörg Zimmer (ed.): Difference and contradiction. Perspectives on the work of Hans Heinz Holz . (with contributions by Christoph Hubig, Jörg Zimmer, Wolfgang Neuser, Francesco Xavier Bou Max, Angelica Nuzzo, Alfred J. Noll, Dieter Kraft, Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski , Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer , Hans Jörg Glattfelder , Rolf Wedewer , Peter Schweiger, Lukas B. Suter, Friedrich-Martin Balzer and Hans Joachim Albrecht), Cologne 2007.
  • Erich Hahn , Silvia Holz-Markun (ed.): The pleasure of contradiction. Theory of Dialectics - Dialectics of Theory . Symposium on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Hans Heinz Holz (with contributions by Hermann Klenner , Domenico Losurdo , José Barata-Moura, Hans Friedrich Fulda, Isabel Monal, Christoph Hubig, Herbert Hörz , Günter Ropohl , Jörg Zimmer, Dieter Kraft, Dieter Wittich , Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski, Arnold Schölzel , Wolfgang Eichhorn , Erich Hahn , Hans Heinz Holz, Dogan Göcmen , Wolf-Dieter Gudopp-von Behm , Friedrich Kumpf, Alfred J. Noll , Hans-Christoph Rauh , Peter Römer , Richard Sorg). Berlin 2008.
  • Richard Sorg: Hans Heinz Holz und die Dialektik, in: Das Argument 297 (3/2012), pp. 436–445.
  • Martin Küpper , Vincent Malmede , Johannes Oehme , Arnold Schölzel : The sensuality of reason. Last Conversations , Das Neue Berlin , 2017, ISBN 978-3-360-01325-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary in ORF
  2. ↑ Some sources, such as Der Spiegel (1971), assumed that Gottfried Martin, as a GDR refugee, was naturally biased against left-wing intellectuals like Holz. Both philosophers, Martin and Bollnow, were NSDAP members with academic careers.
  3. ↑ Bloch was co-editor of the German magazine for philosophy . His colleague Wolfgang Harich was tried for “counter-revolutionary” actions.
  4. ↑ Died: Hans Heinz Holz . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 2011, p. 158 ( online - December 17, 2012 ).
  5. ↑ FAZ, December 17, 2011, p. 38.
  6. ↑ See www.dialektik-salzburg.at
  7. ↑ Hans-Heinz wood: currents and tendencies in neo-Marxism. Munich 1972
  8. ↑ Holz, Kofler, Abendroth: Conversations with Georg Lukacs (ed. Theo Pinkus), Reinbek near Hamburg 1967.
  9. ↑ Wood: Logos spermatikos. Ernst Bloch's philosophy of the unfinished world, Darmstadt and Neuwied 1975.
  10. ↑ Wood: Contradiction in China. Political-philosophical explanations on Mao Tse-Tung, Munich 1970, p. 108.
  11. ↑ Holz 1972, p. 10.
  12. ↑ Wood 1970
  13. ↑ Holz 1972, p. 28 f.
  14. ↑ Hans Heinz Holz, The veiled class society, in: H. Krüger (Ed.), What is left today? Munich 1963, pp. 69–84, here p. 75.
  15. ↑ Hans Heinz Holz, Intelligence and Co-determination, in: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 1966, pp. 278–288, here p. 281.
  16. ^ Thomas Collmer : Notes on Hans Heinz Holz, World Design and Reflection . In: Z. Zeitschrift Marxistische Renewal No. 73 (March 2008).
personal data
SURNAME Wood, Hans Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Marxist philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 2011
Place of death Sant'Abbondio TI