Julius Bahnsen

Julius Bahnsen

Julius Friedrich August Bahnsen (born March  30, 1830 in Tondern , North Schleswig ; †  December 7, 1881 in Lauenburg i. Pomm. ) Was a German philosopher . Bahnsen is considered to be the founder of characterology and a real-dialectical method of philosophical reflection , which he drafted in his two-volume “Contributions to Characterology” (1867) and in his subsequent works, including his main work “The contradiction in knowledge and essence of the world “(1880/82), further developed.

Biographical data

Born in Tondern, Schleswig, in 1830, as the son of Christian August Bahnsen, director of the seminar there, Julius Bahnsen began studying philosophy and - under Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch  - philology in Kiel in 1847 . In the Schleswig-Holstein War of 1848-1851 he fought against the Danes from 1849 and fled to Tübingen in Wuerttemberg in 1850 as a result of the disarmament of the Schleswig-Holstein army . There he studied - at the suggestion of Jakob Friedrich Reiff ("System of Wills Determinations ", 1842) - Schopenhauer's philosophy and received his doctorate in 1853 under Friedrich Theodor Vischer ("Aesthetics or Science of the Beautiful", 1846/57) on a topic from aesthetics . Numerous jobs as a house teacher and high school teacher followed . In 1862 Bahnsen took up a position as a teacher at the Progymnasium in Lauenburg , in the back of Pomerania , where he lived until his death on December 7, 1881.

Philosophical work

As a student of Schopenhauer, Bahnsen dared to combine Hegelian dialectics (which Bahnsen only accepts in the area of ​​the abstract) with Schopenhauer's monism . In this connection the unreasonable all-one will of Schopenhauer is accepted as the fundamental being of the world and the only real thing, but not in such a way that it is the same in the many individuals, but in such a way that it is just as many as they are, their unchangeable essence in whose unchangeable volitional nature, in their character. Schopenhauer's will is thus split not only within itself but also outside itself into a multiplicity of individual wills.

This characterological side of his teaching, which was the starting point for the work of such philosophers as Ludwig Klages , are Bahnsen's “Contributions to Characterology” (1867) and the treatises “On the Relationship between Will and Motive” (1870) and “Mosaics and Silhouettes” (1877 ) dedicated. Since the essence of unreasonable contradiction, that of unreasonable will, in particular, consists in the simultaneous existence of mutually adjoining directions of will, it follows that not only reality is an uninterrupted struggle of real opposites (real dialectics), but also the inside of every individual insoluble dichotomy between opposing directions of will (conflict of wills ) expire. Bahnsen negates a redemption of the innumerable “wills of will” and postulates the permanence of the existence of the contradiction as the fundamental being of the world, whereby the law of this world becomes a tragic world order.

Bahnsen found the real dialectic side of his teaching in the treatise "On the Philosophy of History" (1871) and in his main work "The Contradiction in Knowledge and Nature of the World" (1880/82), the tragic fruit of this in his commemorative publication for the Tübingen anniversary " The tragic as the law of the world and humor as the aesthetic form of the metaphysical ”(1877).

literature

• Julius Bahnsen, Winfried H. Müller-Seyfarth (eds.): The tragic as world law and humor as the aesthetic form of the metaphysical. VanBremen Verlag Buchhandlung, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-927050-01-1
• Julius Bahnsen, Anselm Ruest (ed.): How I became what I became, along with other items from the philosopher's estate. Leipzig 1931
• August Vetter:  Bahnsen, Julius. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 540 ( digitized version ).
• Richard Reschika: Schopenhauer's wild sons. Julius Bahnsen - the tragic real dialectician, in: Philosophical adventurers. Eleven profiles from the Renaissance to the present, JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), UTB, Tübingen 2001, pp. 103–159. ISBN 3-8252-2269-1

Web links

• Literature by and about Julius Bahnsen in the catalog of the German National Library