Hans Reiner

Hans Reiner (born November 19, 1896 in Waldkirch , † September 4, 1991 in Freiburg ) was a German philosopher .

biography

Hans Reiner studied philosophy with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and theology with Rudolf Otto in Freiburg , Munich and Marburg . In 1926 he received his doctorate in Freiburg with Husserl, and in 1931 his habilitation in Halle. After the war, Reiner returned to Freiburg and in 1947 was given a teaching position in philosophy. In 1951 he became a visiting professor and in 1957 a regular associate professor of ethics.

Reiner was a phenomenologist shaped by his teachers . At the same time, however, he combined this with his personal topic of value ethics as a doctrine of the moral realities of the lifeworld . Building on Scheler and Hartmann , but without their ontological basic assumptions, he developed his own anthropologically oriented concept that received international attention. Key data of his philosophy are the three basic faculties of a sense of value, reason and freedom as well as the distinction between objectively meaningful and subjectively meaningful values, from which Reiner then developed preferential principles in accordance with the maxims of Kant , which are to be evaluated according to the basic understanding of the categorical imperative .

Reiner founded the new phenomenological system of ethics he had designed - in discussion with Kant - in his work "Duty and Inclination" (1951). The book was also a criticism of his teacher Heidegger. Vinzenz Rüfner wrote: Reiner had "hit Heidegger's sore point when he reproached him for presenting moral phenomena in an interpretation that changes the set of phenomena and thus revealing Husserl's legacy and the clean methodical principles. [...] With full right he accuses Heidegger's methods that they lead to bottomlessness. "

In numerous publications, Reiner dealt with Thomistic ethics, turned to legal philosophical and political issues and in 1964 presented a new justification of natural law. In a radio lecture "The meaning of our existence", which was later printed several times, he expanded his system into a philosophical view of life. Reiner's works have been translated into Spanish, Japanese and Korean.

For Reinhard Lauth he was "undoubtedly the most important German ethicist since Scheler and Hartmann."

University reform in the Third Reich

In his work The existence of science and its objectivity. The Fundamental Question of the University and its Renewal (1934), a written speech to students, Hans Reiner drafts a plan for the renewal of the university using existentialist categories. It is seen as the goal of science to recognize the truth and to determine the position of the person. From the knowledge of the location, the application possibilities of the people become apparent. These possible uses are linked to values. It is important to strive for good values ​​and to replace wrong values. In particular, it is the task of the leaders of the leadership state to recognize these values. The operational readiness should correspond to the possible application. The drive of "purely discerning devotion to beings" is seen as "the weapon of the human spirit for conquering the world" (quoted from Max Niemeyer, Halle, 1934, p. 36 f.).

Publications

• Freedom, volition and activity . Phenomenological investigations towards the problem of free will, Halle 1927
• Phenomenological and human existence , Halle 1931
• The ground of the moral bond and the moral good . An attempt to renew the Kantian moral law on the basis of today's opponents, Halle 1932
• The Phenomenon of Faith, presented with regard to the problem of its metaphysical content , Halle 1934
• The existence of science and its objectivity. The basic question of the university and its renewal , Halle, M. Niemeyer, 1934
• The principle of good and bad , Freiburg 1949
• Duty and inclination . The foundations of morality, discussed and redefined with particular reference to Kant and Schiller, Meisenheim 1951
• The honor . Critical examination of an occidental way of life and morality, Darmstadt 1956
• The meaning of our existence , Tübingen 1960 (3rd edition Freiburg 1987)
• The philosophical ethics . Your questions and lessons in the past and present, Heidelberg 1964
• Foundations, principles and individual norms of natural law , Freiburg 1964
• Good and bad . Origin and nature of the basic moral distinctions, Freiburg 1965
• The foundations of morality (extended edition of duty and inclination), Meisenheim 1974

literature

• Jörg-Johannes Lechner: Hans Reiner . In: Fred Ludwig Sepaintner (Ed.): Baden-Württembergische Biographien Volume VI, Verlag Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-17-031384-2 , pp. 401-403.
• Jörg-Johannes Lechner: Ethics and Pedagogy. The philosophical-anthropological ethics of Hans Reiner and their meaning for a life-related education . Publishing house Dr. Kovač, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-8300-2055-4 .
• Jörg-Johannes Lechner: The importance of phenomenology for the philosophical ethics of Hans Reiners . In: N. Huppertz (Ed.): To the things themselves . Pais-Verlag eV, Oberried 1997, ISBN 978-3-931992-03-3 , pp. 73-102.
• Norbert Huppertz : The letter of St. Edith Stein. From phenomenology to hermeneutics. Pais-Verlag, Oberried near Freiburg im Breisgau 2010, ISBN 978-3-931992-26-2 (history and scientific analysis of a letter from Edith Stein to Hans Reiner).
• Henrik Eberle: The Martin Luther University in the time of National Socialism. Mdv, Halle 2002, ISBN 3-89812-150-X , p. 385.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Reiner in the catalog of the German National Library
• Hans Reiner in the Catalogus Professorum Halensis

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Philosophisches Jahrbuch 62 (1953) 207.
2. ↑ Philosophisches Jahrbuch 73 (1966) 418.