Henning Ottmann

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Horst Henning Ottmann (born March 9, 1944 in Vienna ) is a German philosopher . From 1995 to 2009 he was Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at the Geschwister Scholl Institute for Political Science at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich .

Life

Henning Ottmann passed the Abitur at the Kempten Humanistic High School in 1963 . He finished his military service in the Bundeswehr in 1965 as an officer in the reserve. Ottmann then studied philosophy and political science at the universities in Munich and Yale , with a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation . After completing his master's degree with the work The Failure of an Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy. An analysis of the phenomenology of the mind in 1970 he became assistant to Nikolaus Lobkowicz in 1972 . In 1974 he received his doctorate from Lobkowicz with the work Individual and Society under Hegel . The habilitation took place in 1983 on philosophy and politics with Nietzsche . Because of this and later publications, he is, among other things, a recognized expert on Hegel and Nietzsche.

Ottmann became professor of philosophy in Augsburg in 1986 and of political philosophy and theory in Basel in 1987 . In 1990 he was offered a chair in political science at the University of Freiburg , which Wilhelm Hennis had previously held. In 1995 he was appointed to the Geschwister-Scholl-Institut at the University of Munich. Until 2009 he held the chair for political science with special emphasis on philosophy and political theory, succeeding his teacher Nikolaus Lobkowicz. He also teaches at the Munich School of Politics .

Henning Ottmann was the first President of the German Society for Research into Political Thought (DGEPD) and President of the International Hegel Society . He is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , a member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts ( Academia artium et scientiarum ).

Teaching and Research

The chair is committed to the tradition of political science known as normative , which was founded by Hannah Arendt , Leo Strauss , Eric Voegelin , Dolf Sternberger and established in Munich by Voegelin, the founder of the Geschwister-Scholl-Institut. Nikolaus Lobkowicz and, in his successor, Henning Ottmann continued this tradition. Ottmann himself does not use the term “normative”, which he describes as “unfortunate and downright misleading”. Instead, he speaks of “neoclassical political philosophy”.

Ottmann's main work is the 4-volume series (divided into 9 sub-volumes) on the history of political thought, which has been available in full since September 2012. Ottmann's concept of political thinking is broad. He justified this following Aristotle in the foreword of the first volume with the words:

“Anyone can think about politics. A history of political thought must be open to what historians and poets, theologians and jurists, and whoever, contributed to the understanding of the politics of its time. "

Philosophical positions

Ottmann's perspective on his field of research can be found in concentrated form in the volume Plato, Aristotle and the neoclassical political philosophy of the present. In addition to passing on and commenting on Western tradition, Ottmann has also developed approaches to his own ethical position.

In the anthology "Negative Ethik", edited by him, various types of ethics of omission and preventive restraint are discussed. Ottmann uses an older essay of his own. He sets up five imperatives of "letting go":

  • “To leave what has already been done better than one could do it oneself”;
  • “To let what others do better than us”;
  • "To let what can become of itself what it should be";
  • "To let go of what leads to the predominance of worse over good consequences";
  • “To leave what you can't change anyway”.

In the debate about an ethically appropriate use of the latest medical possibilities, Ottmann spoke up in the volume Life, Death, Human Dignity: Positions on Contemporary Bioethics . In his contribution When is a person a person? he recommends a high degree of argumentative care in answering this question, which it would be better not to raise (see p. 19). But since it inevitably arises, it must be answered. Ottmann's argumentation aims to see the point in time for the beginning of human existence in the fusion of egg and sperm cells, because from then on “man potentially [is] what he will naturally be. From then on there is a continuous development from one and the same starting point. ”(P. 27) One can probably assume a religious conviction behind this position. Because Ottmann recognizes that such “in secularized societies is no longer generally capable of consensus” (p. 22), he consciously formulates his thoughts carefully.

Publications

Periodicals

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ Ellen Latzin: Bavarian Academy of Sciences elects new members . In: Information Service Science . March 5, 2010
  2. ^ Henning Ottmann: History of political thought. Vol. 4/1: The 20th Century. Totalitarianism and its overcoming. Stuttgart / Weimar 2010, p. 408
personal data
SURNAME Ottmann, Henning
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ottmann, Horst Henning
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist and philosopher, professor of philosophy and political science in Munich
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna