Hermann Ley (philosophy historian)

Hermann Ley

Hermann Ley (born November 30, 1911 in Leipzig ; † November 24, 1990 in Dresden ) was a German historian of philosophy ( Enlightenment , atheism ) and, as a philosopher of science, at the same time founder of the research facility "Philosophical Problems of Natural Sciences" at the Humboldt University in Berlin .

Life

Hermann Huber Ley - son of a dentist - became a member of the Young Socialists at the age of sixteen and then a member of the SPD . In 1930 the party was excluded because of expressions of solidarity with the Soviet Union. Therefore, he joined the KPD as a member, to which he was officially a member until it was banned in 1933. He passed his Abitur in 1930 at the "Helmholtzschule" high school in Leipzig-Lindenau, at that time one of the best equipped schools for science classes.

From 1930, Ley studied dentistry and natural sciences at the University of Leipzig , where he headed the communist student group and was active in the resistance against National Socialism . He had to interrupt his studies after three years, so that he could not take his state examination until 1942. However, he only practiced his profession as a dentist to a very limited extent, as he had severe eye problems. During the Second World War he was hired as a medical officer (demoted towards the end of the war). During this time he worked on his doctoral thesis on a statistical topic, and in 1943 he was awarded a doctorate at the medical faculty of the University of Leipzig. med. dent. PhD . In 1944 he finally began to study philosophy in order to create a healthy professional basis for himself. Ley was imprisoned several times during the Nazi era and was imprisoned for almost 3 years, most recently sentenced for 45 months, in 1945 he escaped from police custody in Leipzig. He was a member of the National Committee Free Germany (NKFD) in Leipzig.

After the end of the war, Ley worked as the head of the cultural department of the KPD and SED in Leipzig, was press and radio editor of the Leipzig secretariat, and from 1947 deputy editor-in-chief of the Leipziger Zeitung . In continuation of his philosophy studies, which he began in 1944, he had acquired in-depth knowledge through intensive self-study in philosophy and the humanities. In 1948 he completed his habilitation at the University of Leipzig in philosophy on the subject of "Some basic questions of Marxist epistemology". On December 1, 1948, he was appointed as the successor to the bourgeois pedagogue and university rector Theodor Litt, who was disciplined during the Nazi era, as a full professor of theoretical pedagogy at the Pedagogical Faculty of the University of Leipzig.

Since 1949 he was also a lecturer at the TH Dresden , from 1950 to 1954 professor there with a full teaching assignment for dialectical and historical materialism . Since 1954 he worked at the TH Dresden as a professor with a chair for social sciences and from 1955 as director of the institute for historical sciences and at the same time as prorector for social sciences.

Ley taught in Dresden actively until 1956 and then moved to Berlin and succeeded Kurt Hee as chairman of the State Broadcasting Committee until 1962. At the same time, from 1959 he took over the management of the chair he founded for “Philosophical Problems in Modern Natural Sciences” from the Humboldt University of Berlin . From 1962 until the university reform in 1968, he was also director of the Philosophical Institute, and since 1969 head of the Department of Philosophical Questions in Natural Sciences. Here he taught and researched until his retirement in 1977, after which he lived in Dresden and worked on further volumes of his comprehensive book project on the history of the Enlightenment and atheism, of which 5 double volumes have so far been published. He completed the manuscripts for double volume 6 as early as 1990, but they have so far been waiting for a publisher to publish them.

After Ley's retirement in 1977, Karl-Friedrich Wessel took over the area from which in May 1990 the “Interdisciplinary Institute for the Philosophy of Science and Human Ontogenetics” emerged. Six months later Ley died in Dresden.

Ley was instrumental in promoting the development of the new research area “Philosophical Problems of Natural Sciences” in the GDR, especially initially supported by his young colleagues Dieter Müller and Herbert Hörz , who worked for many years as his deputy and was a student of Georg Klaus . Ley was also the initiator of the well-known "Wednesday Colloquia" at his chair, which he and Hörz led until his transfer to the Academy of Sciences in 1972. The interdisciplinary conferences organized by the chair and above all the “Kühlungsborn Meetings” on philosophical problems in the natural, technical and mathematical sciences promoted the fruitful dialogue between philosophy and specialist sciences.

He himself has given many lectures and has attended numerous guest lectures at universities and colleges in Germany and abroad. Here he benefited from his extensive language skills; he was also fluent in French and had a high regard for the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre , who in turn sent him a book with a kind dedication. Ley was a staunch Marxist, albeit not one who allowed himself to be dictated "from above" what it meant. His chair achieved widespread recognition, especially among individual scientists of a wide range.

Ley was a member of the editorial board of the magazine "Die Technik" and the "German magazine for philosophy", since 1955 their co-editor. His main areas of work were the history of the Enlightenment and atheism as well as philosophical problems in the natural sciences, medicine, engineering sciences including heuristics , cybernetics , and operational research . In particular, he also criticized Western technology pessimism. Ley was a member of the Presidium of Urania and the management of the Kulturbund in Berlin.

Renowned professors have emerged from his academic environment: Herbert Hörz , Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski , Helmut Felke, Gerhard Poppei, Hubert Laitko , Siegfried Wollgast , Werner Kriesel , Gerhard Banse , Wolfgang Eichhorn, Rolf Löther, Anneliese Griese, Frank Richter, Martin Guntau , Werner Plesse, Heinrich Parthey , Helge Wendt, Karl-Friedrich Wessel .

plant

Ley became known for his work on the history of the Enlightenment and atheism , and also on intercultural, especially Arab, philosophy. Avicenna already deals with his first monograph . In 1964 Tayyib Tīzīnī wrote a master’s thesis on the concept of matter with him, then in 1968 a dissertation on the “concept of Arab heritage”. Some of his research theses are now considered refuted, for example in the area of ​​medieval philosophy several of his theses on Meister Eckhart .

His chair soon gained national and international recognition in the field of philosophy of science . With the research carried out mainly by the next generation of academics, he fulfilled the task of developing teachers who could contribute to the qualitative improvement of philosophical teaching in special science education. Students of all disciplines completed a philosophy training in the GDR in the sense of a studium generale, which was often still dogmatic and little subject-related, which was justifiably sharply criticized. This should be remedied with competent researchers and teachers.

It was no coincidence that more than 300 physicists, chemists, biologists, engineers, pedagogues and other individual scientists found their way to the Humboldt University in Berlin to obtain their doctorate at Hermann Ley's chair for “Philosophical Problems in Modern Natural Sciences” . Because the word got around in Rostock as well as in Ilmenau, Magdeburg, Leipzig or Dresden: there was an open atmosphere in the “Ley House”. Here many bourgeois naturalists and philosophers were not ostensibly the focus of ideological criticism, but were perceived and taken seriously as sources of non-Marxist thought. Of course, you had to read their works for that. Here, too, Ley willingly helped so that every interested doctoral student could get the books he needed, including blocked titles in the library or the most up-to-date conference proceedings and books that Ley brought back from his travels. In addition, the institute had a quota of currency funds to purchase magazines and books from western countries. A lively exchange of books also took place. Many foreign colleagues also appeared at the chair, including Paul Feyerabend and others

Ley has established an influential tradition of self-critical philosophizing at his chair. He clearly rejected the pseudoscientific theories of the Soviet agronomist Trofim D. Lysenko, to which Ley himself had paid homage in 1948. His willingness to admit errors and to designate ideological nonsense as such, earned him the sympathy of numerous naturalists. These included the astrophysicist Hans-Jürgen Treder as well as the behavioral biologist Günter Tembrock , the Austrian-American-German doctor and biochemist Samuel Mitja Rapoport and the theoretical physicist Werner Ebeling .

The research work led by Ley and Hörz (until 1972) focused on the heuristic function of philosophy. Above all, the problematic view of determinism in physics and the development problems in biology were discussed extensively with competent specialist scientists. It also produced internationally acclaimed monographs . After 1972, with the active participation of Ley, coordinated via the "Philosophical Sciences" problem council as the central coordinating body for research in this field, to which Ley was also a member, the constructive cooperation between the research area "Philosophical Problems in Natural Sciences" at the Humboldt University (head: Ley) and the department “Philosophical Questions in Science Development” at the Academy of Sciences (head: Hörz).

Honors

• 1959 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
• 1960 National Prize III. Science and technology class
• 1971 Order Banner of Labor
• 1974 Karl Marx Order
• 1976 honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Dresden

Fonts (selection)

• Avicenna - science and technology clearly presented. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1953.
• with Arthur Weichold (Red.): 125 years of the Dresden University of Technology - Festschrift (1828–1953). German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1953.
• Study on the history of materialism in the Middle Ages. German Science Publishers, Berlin 1957.
• Friedrich Engels' philosophical achievement and its significance for dealing with bourgeois natural philosophy (presentation and closing words). Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1957.
• Demon technology? German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1961.
• with Herbert Hörz and Rolf Löther (eds.): Quo vadis, Universum? On the problem of development in science and philosophy. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1965.
• with Rolf Löther (ed.): Mikrokosmos, Makrokosmos - Philosophical-theoretical problems of natural science, technology and medicine. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1966 (Volume 1), 1967 (Volume 2).
• History of the Enlightenment and Atheism, Volume 1. Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1966.
• with Günter Hauck and Peter Marnitz (Red.): Operations research - technology, practice, philosophy. Scientific series of the Humboldt University, Institute for Philosophy, Berlin 1968.
• Technology and Weltanschauung - Some Philosophical Consequences of the Scientific-Technical Revolution. Science and worldview series, edited by Hermann Ley. Urania-Verlag, Leipzig; Jena; Berlin 1969, 2nd edition. 1971. Hubert Freistühler publishing house, Schwerte / Ruhr 1971.
• History of the Enlightenment and Atheism. Volume 2.1, Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1970.
• History of the Enlightenment and Atheism. Volume 2.2, Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1971.
• with Thomas Müller: Critical Reason and Revolution - On the controversy between Hans Albert and Jürgen Habermas . Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1971.
• with Matthäus Klein (ed.): Friedrich Engels and modern problems of the philosophy of Marxism - a joint work of German and Soviet philosophers. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1971.
• as publisher: On the understanding of Hegel in our time - contributions to Marxist-Leninist Hegel research. German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1972.
• as Ed .: Cybernetics and Weltanschauung , by Peter Gudermuth and Werner Kriesel . Science and worldview series. Verlag Hubert Freistühler, Schwerte / Ruhr 1972. Urania-Verlag, Leipzig, Jena, Berlin 1973. Czech translation, Verlag Horizont, Praha 1976.
• with Karl-Friedrich Wessel (ed.): Weltanschauung-philosophical education and upbringing in mathematics and science lessons. People and Knowledge, Berlin 1972, 2nd edition. 1974.
• On the difficulties of the individual scientist - the biologist Jacques Monod's criticism of historical materialism and the compulsion to philosophy in the natural sciences. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1973 (also: Verlag Marxistische Blätter, Frankfurt am Main 1973)
• (Ed.): On the understanding of Kant in our time - contribution to Marxist-Leninist research on Kant. German Science Publishers, Berlin 1975.
• with Richter and Spickermann: Dialectics, Law, Cosmos - on the topicality of Friedrich Engels' "Dialectics of Nature". German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1976.
• History of the Enlightenment and Atheism. Volume 3.1, Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1978.
• Atheism, materialism, politics. German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1978.
• History of the Enlightenment and Atheism. Volume 3.2, Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1980.
• From consciousness to being - comparison of the philosophy of history of Hegel and Marx. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1982.
• On the heuristic function of the “dialectic of nature” in biology. In: Manfred Buhr, Herbert Hörz (Hrsg.): Natural dialectics - natural science. The legacy of Engels' "Dialectic of Nature". Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1986, pp. 190–207. (also: Verlag Marxistische Blätter, Frankfurt am Main 1986)
• History of the Enlightenment and Atheism. Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1982 (volume 4.1), 1984 (volume 4.2), 1986 (volume 5.1), 1989 (volume 5.2).

literature

• Hubert Laitko : Reflections on Karl-Friedrich Wessel, Hermann Ley and the ruse of history. In: F. Kleinhempel, A. Möbius, H.-U. Oschinka, M. Waßermann (Ed.): The biopsychosocial unit human - encounters. Festschrift for Karl-Friedrich Wessel. Kleine-Verlag, Bielefeld 1996, pp. 348–353.
• Siegfried Wollgast : Hermann Ley as a historian of philosophy. In: Klaus Mylius, Lars Göhler (Hrsg.): Indian culture in context. (= Contributions to Indology. 4). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-447-05207-4 , pp. 427-454.
• Hubert Laitko : In memoriam Hermann Ley. In: Hans-Christoph Rauh, Peter Ruben (ed.): Attempts at thinking - GDR philosophy in the 60s. (Research on GDR society). Ch. Links Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-86153-359-6 , pp. 367-378 (and other articles in this volume).
• Herbert Hörz : Turns in life. About the becoming and work of a philosopher before, in and after the GDR. trafo Wissenschaftsverlag, 2005, ISBN 3-89626-313-7 .
• Helga E. Hörz : Between the university and the UN. Experience of an ethicist. (Series of Autobiographies. Volume 37). trafo-Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-89626-924-9 .
• Martin Koch: Encouragement to think for yourself. The philosopher Hermann Ley was born 100 years ago. In: New Germany. History, Berlin November 26, 2011.
• Karl-Friedrich Wessel (ed.): Hermann Ley - thinker of an open world. Kleine Verlag, Grünwald 2012.
• Frank Fuchs-Kittowski , Werner Kriesel (Ed.): Computer science and society. Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski . Frankfurt a. M., Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Vienna: Peter Lang Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, PL Academic Research 2016, ISBN 978-3-631-66719-4 (print), E- ISBN 978-3-653 -06277-9 (e-book).
• Catalog of professors at the University of Leipzig: Epochs> 1946–1989, Faculties> Pedagogical Faculty of the University of Leipzig (1947–1956), Dates: Prof. Dr. med. dent. et Dr. phil. habil. Hermann Huber Ley. www.uni-leipzig.de (accessed on May 5, 2014).
• Short biography for:  Ley, Hermann . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Norbert Nail (2016): Views from a conquered country - reflections of an American "Chief Interrogator for Military Government Information Control" from Marburg and Leipzig 1945. [Samson B. Knoll]. The special archival material: https://www.uni-marburg.de/de/uniarchiv/inhalte-pdf/interrogator_1.pdf - also on Hermann Ley and the National Committee Free Germany.
2. ↑ Printed in an abridged version: The conception of matter in the Islamic-Arabic philosophy of the Middle Ages. Berlin 1972.
3. ↑ Extensively worked up a. a. with Karl Albert : Meister Eckhart's thesis of being . Investigations into the metaphysics of the "Opus tripartitum". Universitätsverlag, Saarbrücken 1976.