Helmut Kuhn (philosopher)

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Helmut Kuhn (born March 22, 1899 in Lüben , Lower Silesia , † October 2, 1991 in Munich ) was a German philosopher .

Live and act

Kuhn was a volunteer in the First World War. He then studied at the Universities of Breslau , Innsbruck and Berlin . In 1923 he was charged with a dissertation on the concept of symbolism in the German aesthetics to Schiller in Wroclaw doctorate . In 1930 he completed his habilitation in Berlin with the two-volume work on the cultural function of art and taught there as a private lecturer . It was during this time that he dealt with the concept of the political (Munich 1927) by Carl Schmitt . In 1936 his teaching license was revoked by the National Socialist regime because of his Jewish origins. He left Germany with his wife Käthe and his children Reinhard and Annette . The family's first exile were the Abbaye de Pontigny in France, London (Oppidans Road 15) and Haslemere in Great Britain. The son Reinhard attended the Stoatley Rough School , which was directed by Hilde Lion , for a very short time, and then switched to Margaret Hutchinson's kindergarten with his sister Annette. Reinhard's school attendance was financed by Anita Warburg , the family's stay in Great Britain was accompanied by Gertrud Bing from the Warburg Institute in London and also by Heinrich Gerhard Kuhn , Helmut's brother, who had emigrated to Great Britain in 1933. Helmut Kuhn's emigration to the USA was prepared by Gertrud Bing and the Warburg Institute in London and financially supported by the SPSL (Society for the protection of Science and Learning) and the Emergency Committee .

In 1938 Helmut Kuhn emigrated with his family to the United States , where he taught as a visiting professor and later as a full professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . In 1947 he took a chair at Emory University near Atlanta in Georgia . During the years of exile, together with Katherine Gilbert, he wrote a History of Esthetics (New York 1939), which became a widely used textbook in American colleges, Freedom Forgotten and Remembered (Chapel Hill, 1942) and Encounter with Nothingness (Chicago 1949) about the existentialism .e

In lectures to German prisoners of war and in various publications, Kuhn campaigned for a “better” Germany. The Kuhn couple also belonged to the American committee to aid survivors in the German Resistance . Eric Warburg was a member of this committee, and he was involved in countless committees in New York for the integration of refugees.

During the years of his exile in the United States , the originally Jewish philosopher Helmut Kuhn converted to the Roman Catholic Church with his wife Käthe .

In 1949 Helmut Kuhn returned to Germany and took a chair at the University of Erlangen . Käthe Kuhn took on the widows of the German resistance with self-sacrificing willingness to help and was a member of the 20 July relief organization , which was supported by American donors and Eric Warburg among others . In addition, Käthe Kuhn and Reinhold Schneider and Helmut Gollwitzer published the successful publication "You haunted me by night" (Dying we live, New York 1956).

In 1953 Helmut Kuhn was appointed professor for American cultural history and philosophy at the America Institute of the University of Munich. Against some resistance, Kuhn was appointed full professor of philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . He retired in 1967 . Until 1958 he was also director of the Institute for American Studies. In addition, from 1961 he was rector of the Munich University of Political Sciences for a decade .

In 1953 Kuhn founded the Philosophische Rundschau together with Hans-Georg Gadamer, which both of them published until 1974. From 1957 to 1962 Kuhn was President of the General Society for Philosophy in Germany . In 1969, together with Bernhard Waldenfels and Reinhold Gladiator , he prepared the establishment of the German Society for Phenomenological Research and, with the participation of Hans-Georg Gadamer, led its first international conference.

Helmut Kuhn is the father of the women's historian Annette Kuhn , who, in her autobiography, sets herself apart from her father, whom she perceived as authoritarian and who kept silent about her Jewish origins for decades. The son Reinhard (1930-1980) became a professor at Brown University in Rhode Island and did not return to Germany.

Helmut Kuhn was very concerned about the church crisis that he saw triggered by the Second Vatican Council .

Zeitgeist-critical books that dealt with the 1968 movement and the changes in the Catholic Church are his works Rebellion Against Freedom , Youth on the Move. On the revolutionary movement in our time , The Church in the Age of the Cultural Revolution and Ideology - Hydra of the world of states .

Dieter Henrich gave the laudation at the celebration of the University of Munich on Kuhn's 85th birthday .

Publications (selection)

  • 'Classic' as a historical term . In: Werner Jaeger (editor): The problem of the classical . Leipzig, 1931, pp. 109–128.
  • Review of Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political . In: Kant studies , 1933, pp. 190–196.
  • Humanism in the present. To Werner Jaeger's Paideia . In; Kant studies , Volume 39, 1934, pp. 328–338.
  • Socrates. Attempt on the origin of metaphysics . Verlag die Runde, Berlin 1934. New edition by Kösel Verlag, Munich 1959
  • Encounter with nothing. An attempt on existential philosophy . JCB Mohr Verlag, Tübingen 1950.
  • Encounter with being. Meditations on the metaphysics of conscience . JCB Mohr Verlag, Tübingen 1954
  • Nature and work of the work of art . Kösel Verlag, Munich 1960
  • Romano Guardini. The man and the work . Kösel Verlag Munich 1961
  • The being and the good . Kösel Verlag, Munich 1962
  • The German university on the eve of the seizure of power , in: The German University in the Third Reich. A series of lectures by the University of Munich . Munich 1966, pp. 13-43.
  • The State. A philosophical representation . Kösel Verlag Munich 1967
  • The way from consciousness to being . Klett-Cotta Verlag Stuttgart 1981
  • Romano Guardini. Philosopher of concern . St. Ottilien 1987.

literature

credentials

  1. ↑ a b Hugo Herrera: Being and State . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, p. 12
  2. ↑ Dietrich Henrich: The loyalty of wisdom . In: Philosophical Yearbook . tape 92 , 1985, pp. 156–161 ( philosophisches-jahrbuch.de [PDF]).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kuhn, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Lüben , Lower Silesia
DATE OF DEATH October 2, 1991
Place of death Munich