Karl Löwith

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karl Löwith (born January 9, 1897 in Munich , † May 26, 1973 in Heidelberg , pseudonym: Hugo Fiala ) was a German philosopher . Although he was baptized as a Protestant, he was persecuted as a Jew by the National Socialists and had to emigrate from Germany in 1934. Löwith's main research areas were the philosophy of history and the approaches of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger . His works From Hegel to Nietzsche and World History and Salvation are considered classics of contemporary philosophical literature.

Life

Karl Löwith's parents were Wilhelm Löwith (1861–1932), a painter from Drosau in Bohemia , and Margarete Löwith geb. Hauser, who committed suicide on July 19, 1942 in a transit camp in Munich . Löwith attended the secondary school at Karl-Theodor-Straße 9 in Munich and, after graduating from high school, volunteered for military service in the First World War . Initially deployed on the Western Front, Löwith was transferred to the Austro-Italian front in May 1915, where he was badly wounded and taken prisoner in Italy. In 1917 he was released from captivity through an exchange and returned to his hometown Munich. There he began studying biology with Karl von Goebel and philosophy with the phenomenologists Alexander Pfänder and Moritz Geiger . As a student in Munich, Löwith experienced Max Weber's lectures Science as a Profession (November 1917) and Politics as a Profession (January 1919); he admired Weber deeply and later was one of Weber's early scientific interpreters. In 1919, because of the revolutionary unrest in Munich, he moved to the University of Freiburg , where he studied with Edmund Husserl , his assistant Martin Heidegger and the zoologist Hans Spemann . In 1922 Löwith returned to Munich and received his doctorate from Moritz Geiger in 1923 with the study of the interpretation of Nietzsche's self-interpretation and of Nietzsche's interpretations . He then worked for nine months as a private tutor at the Mecklenburg Gut Kogel , began an extended stay in Italy in 1924 ( Rome , Palermo , Florence ) before following Martin Heidegger to the University of Marburg in 1925 . There he met Leo Strauss , Gerhard Krüger , Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hermann Deckert . In 1928 Löwith completed his habilitation with Heidegger with the study The individual in the role of fellow human beings . He then taught as a private lecturer, from 1931 as a lecturer for social philosophy at the University of Marburg. He read about Nietzsche, Dilthey , Hegel, Marx and Kierkegaard , existential philosophy , philosophical anthropology , sociology and psychoanalysis .

With the beginning of Nazi rule in January 1933, Löwith's existence in Germany was threatened because of his Jewish origins. He was only able to continue teaching in Marburg because, as a participant in the war, he fell under the exception regulation of the front-line combatant section in the law for the restoration of the civil service . After the winter semester of 1933/34 he went to Rome on a Rockefeller scholarship . During his stay in Italy, his teaching position in Marburg was revoked in April 1935, and in October 1935 he was officially removed from office on the basis of the Reich Citizenship Act . Löwith's situation was precarious because his scholarship was only granted for one year; although it was extended for a further year in 1935, he could not find permanent employment in Italy; Appointments to the non-European universities in Bogotá and North Carolina were unsuccessful. In Rome in 1935 and 1936 Löwith finished the monographs Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Eternal Return of the Same and Jacob Burckhardt . In 1935, under the pseudonym Hugo Fiala, he published his criticism of Carl Schmitt in the essay Political Decisionism, which is "still resounding in Schmitt research today ." In 1936 he met with Heidegger, who was in Rome for a lecture, for the last twenty years in Rome, and in 1937 the correspondence with the academic teacher was broken off.

On the mediation of the philosopher Kuki Shūzō , who had studied in Marburg in the 1920s and had meanwhile become a professor at the University of Kyoto , Löwith was appointed professor at the Japanese Imperial University of Tōhoku in Sendai (today's University of Tōhoku ) in 1936 , where he was until 1941 taught. It was during these years that he wrote Von Hegel zu Nietzsche . The book was translated into Italian, Japanese, English and French and became a classic in the history of philosophy. Leo Strauss characterized his topic in an early review: “This book should interest everyone who wants to understand the emergence of European and especially German nihilism . His theme is the transformation of European humanism, represented by Goethe and Hegel, into German nihilism, represented by Ernst Jünger . His thesis is that the philosophical-historical development, which was of 'deadly consequence', offers the key to current events in Germany. ”As a German emigrant no longer tolerated by Germany's ally Japan, Löwith moved to the USA in 1941 and was resettled Recommended by Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr , employed at Hartford , Connecticut Theological Seminary . There he wrote his book Meaning in History , which was published in English in 1949 and first published in German in 1953 under the title World History and Salvation . The work has been translated into numerous languages ​​and established Löwith's international reputation. In a 1948 letter to Leo Strauss, Löwith described his situation at the Hartford seminary as "a fish gasping for water and air on the dry sands of Protestant theology". In 1949 he was appointed to the New School for Social Research in New York, where he worked until 1952.

Through Gadamer's mediation, Löwith was offered a professorship at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in 1952 and taught there until his retirement in 1964. In 1955, he turned down appointments at the Universities of Hamburg and Cologne . In the winter semester of 1965/66 he accepted a teaching position at the University of Zurich . During the years in Heidelberg, among other things, knowledge, belief and skepticism (1956), God, man and world in metaphysics from Descartes to Nietzsche (1967) and Paul Valéry emerged . Principles of his Philosophical Thought (1971). As early as 1953 Löwith had published his book Heidegger - Thinker in a Poor Time , in which he dealt critically with the philosophy of his teacher. He was offended and in 1954 wrote a letter to the teacher Elisabeth Blochmann about Löwith: “Lö [with] is unusually well-read and just as skilful in the selection and use of quotations. He has no idea of ​​Greek philosophy; because he lacks the tools. He has a certain talent for phenomenological description. Within this district he was able to perform legitimate tasks. But he has been living beyond his means for a long time. He has no idea about thinking , maybe he hates it. As I have never met a person who lives so exclusively from resentment and the 'anti'. When he completed his habilitation in M ​​[ar] b [urg] he was the reddest Marxist. He described his time and his time as a 'theology in disguise' […] I would like to remain silent about the worse things that he afforded, even though I helped him with expert opinions in Italy and Japan. ”Since the end of the 1950s there has been a rapprochement between Löwith and Heidegger, also to personal encounters at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences , to which both were accepted in 1958, but the relationship remained tense until Löwith's death.

Karl Löwith was married to Adelheid (called Ada) Kremmer (1900–1989) since 1929. He died in Heidelberg in 1973 at the age of 76.

philosophy

Löwith is counted among Martin Heidegger's group of students, but distanced himself from him at an early age and, especially during the Nazi era, estranged himself. Löwith is considered a skeptical and agnostic philosopher. One of his main themes was the secularization of Christian philosophy and its expectation of salvation through the philosophy of history (Hegel, Marx) and existentialism. He is known as a critic of modern metaphysics and also of an existential pathos. He characterizes modern historical thinking as an ambivalent entanglement of an ancient conception of history (cyclical / periodic, eternal balance between hybris and nemesis , according to Herodotus , Thucydides , Polybius , guided by fatum and fortuna , eternity of the cosmic order) and a Judeo-Christian understanding of history (shaped of eschatology and prophecy , limited by finis and directed to a telos ). His perspective on the history of philosophy is expressed in self-characterizations such as the following:

“The fact that we ask history as a whole for sense and nonsense is itself a matter of history: Jewish and Christian thought brought this immoderate question to life. Seriously asking about the ultimate meaning of history goes beyond all knowledge and takes our breath away; it puts us in a vacuum that only hope and faith can fill.
The Greeks were more humble. They did not presume to fathom the ultimate meaning of world history. They were moved by the visible order and beauty of the natural cosmos. "

- Löwith : World History and Salvation, Complete Writings Volume 2, p. 14

Löwith's approach of a critique of philosophical attitudes through analyzes of the history of philosophy is similar to the method Heidegger calls “destruct”. Klaus Podak writes:

“ Destroying is a foreign word for destroying. There is something of aggressiveness and violence attached to this expression. Löwith's great art of reading and analyzing, however, had the peculiarity that it was an understanding, and often almost loving, destruction. With his work he could and can still give his readers a concept and even an idea of ​​why the attempts at explaining the world of the thinkers he dissected were so fascinating and so powerful, right down to the small ramifications, which he makes visible with masterfully selected quotations, that they were able to direct the thinking of their time in ways that are still temptingly tempting to this day for perfectly understandable reasons. [...] so there is also a spelling that can be called urban, which delights and rewards every reader with a civilized pleasure. "

Memberships and honors

Since 1958 Löwith was a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . In 1965 he became a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome, and in 1967 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1969 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Bologna .

Fonts

Work chronology (first editions of the independent publications)

  • 1923: Interpretation of Nietzsche's self-interpretation and of Nietzsche's interpretations. Phil. Diss. Mach. Munich.
  • 1928: The individual in the role of fellow human beings. A contribution to the anthropological foundation of ethical problems. Drei Masken Verlag, Munich 1928.
  • 1933: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Or theological and philosophical overcoming of nihilism. Klostermann, Frankfurt / M. 1933.
  • 1935: Nietzsche's philosophy of the eternal return of the same. The Round, Berlin 1935.
  • 1936: Jacob Burckhardt. Man in the middle of history. Vita Nova, Lucerne 1936.
  • 1941: From Hegel to Nietzsche. Europa Verlag, Zurich / New York 1941.
  • 1949: Meaning in History. The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 1949.
  • 1953: World history and salvation events. The theological presuppositions of the philosophy of history. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1953.
  • 1953: Heidegger. Thinker in needy time. S. Fischer, Frankfurt / M. 1953; 2nd, extended Edition 1960.
  • 1956: knowledge, belief, skepticism. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1956.
  • 1960: Collected Treatises. On the critique of historical existence. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1960.
  • 1966: On the Critique of Christian Tradition. Lectures and papers. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1966.
  • 1967: God, man and the world in metaphysics from Descartes to Nietzsche. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1967.
  • 1971: Paul Valéry. Basics of his philosophical thinking , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1971.
  • 1986: My life in Germany before and after 1933. A report. With a foreword by Reinhart Koselleck and an afterword by Ada Löwith. JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1986.
  • 1990: Man in the midst of history. Philosophical balance sheet of the 20th century. Stuttgart 1990.
  • 2007: My life in Germany before and after 1933. A report , newly edited by Frank-Rutger Hausmann , with a foreword by Reinhart Koselleck, 2nd edition. ISBN 978-3-476-02181-6 .
  • 2013: The Japanese spirit. From d. Engl. V. A. Brock, foreword v. L. Hunter. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-88221-661-5 . (The volume contains the two elaborations The Japanese Spirit (1943) and Japan's Westernization and Moral Basis (1942–43).)

Work edition

  • All writings , 9 vols. Ed. by Klaus Stichweh, Marc B. de Launay, Bernd Lutz u. Henning Ritter, Stuttgart 1981–1988:
    • Volume 1: Man and the human world. Contributions to anthropology, 1981.
    • Volume 2: World history and salvation events. On the Critique of the Philosophy of History, 1983.
    • Volume 3: Knowledge, Belief and Skepticism. On the Critique of Religion and Theology, 1985.
    • Volume 4: Von Hegel zu Nietzsche, 1988; New edition: Meiner, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 978-3-7873-1359-4 .
    • Volume 5: Hegel and the suspension of philosophy in the 19th century - Max Weber, 1988.
    • Volume 6: Nietzsche, 1987.
    • Volume 7: Jacob Burckhardt, 1984.
    • Volume 8: Heidegger - thinkers in needy times. On the position of philosophy in the 20th century, 1984.
    • Volume 9: God, Man and World - GBVico and Paul Valéry, 1986.

Correspondence

  • Karl Löwith and Leo Strauss: Correspondence. In: Independent Journal of Philosophy 5/6 (1988), pp. 177-192.
  • Karl Löwith and Leo Strauss: Correspondence. In: L. Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften , Vol. 3, JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2001.
  • Correspondence, Karl Löwith and Eric Voegelin. In: Sinn und Form 6/2007, pp. 764–794.
  • Martin Heidegger / Karl Löwith: Correspondence 1919–1973 . Heidegger letter edition, vol. II.2, ed. by Alfred Denker, Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg 2017. ISBN 978-3-495-48628-3 .
  • Günther Anders and Karl Löwith: Correspondence 1947–1955. Edited by Gerhard Oberschlick and Mike Rottmann. In: sans phrase . Journal of ideological criticism. Volume 13, 2018, pp. 113-131. ISBN 978-3-86259-913-4 .

literature

  • Jeffrey Andrew Barash: The Sense of History: On the Political Implications of Karl Löwith's Concept of Secularization. In: History and Theory 37 (1998), pp. 69-82.
  • Jeffrey Andrew Barash: Messianism and Secularization: The Political Ambiguity of Karl Löwith's Reflection on History. In: Galili Shahar and Felix Steilen (eds.): Karl Löwith: Welt, Geschichte, Deutung (= Tel Aviver Yearbook for German History Volume 47). Wallstein, Göttingen 2019, pp. 37–50.
  • Kilian Bartikowski: Karl Löwith's exile in Japan and Italy in comparison. Possibilities and limits of the perception of a contemporary witness, in Claudia Müller, Patrick Ostermann, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg : The Shoah in history and memory. Perspectives of medial communication in Italy and Germany. Series: Histoire. Transcript, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 3-8376-2794-2 , pp. 89-106. Available in Google Books
  • Hermann Braun, Manfred Riedel (Red.): Nature and history. Karl Löwith on his 70th birthday . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1967 ( table of contents ; PDF; 0.6 MB).
  • Mihran Dabag : Löwith's criticism of the philosophy of history and his draft of an anthropology . Studienverlag Brockmeyer, Bochum 1989, ISBN 3-88339-710-5 .
  • Kay Ehling : Biographical Notes on Karl Löwith. In: Mercury. German magazine for European thinking, issue 815, April 2017, pp. 75–81.
  • Jürgen Habermas : Karl Löwith's stoic withdrawal from historical consciousness , in philosophical-political profiles . Extended edition, 1st edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-518-28259-X , pp. 195-216.
  • Birgit Heiderich: On agnosticism in Karl Löwith . In: Heinz Robert Schlette (ed.): The modern agnosticism . Patmos, Düsseldorf 1979, ISBN 3-491-77307-5 , pp. 92-109.
  • Jacek Koltan: The fellow man. On the identity problem of the social self based on the early philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Karl Löwith . Königshausen & Neumann , Würzburg 2012, ISBN 3-8260-4570-X .
  • Burkhard Liebsch: Time-limited world. Variations on the philosophy of Karl Löwith . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-88479-995-9 .
  • Bernd Lutz, Art. "Löwith". In: Metzler Philosophen-Lexikon. Three hundred biographical and industrial history portraits from the pre-Socratics to the new philosophers . Metzler, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-476-00639-5 , pp. 464-470
  • Cathleen Muehleck:  Löwith, Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , pp. 112-114 ( digitized version ).
  • Werner Raupp :  Karl Löwith. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 19, Bautz, Nordhausen 2001, ISBN 3-88309-089-1 , Sp. 941-955.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive  on 2007-06-30)
  • Manfred Riedel : Karl Löwith's philosophical path . In: Heidelberger Jahrbücher . ISSN  0073-1641 , Volume 14, 1970, pp. 120-133, doi: 10.1007 / 978-3-642-46251-1_6 .
  • Wiebrecht Ries : Karl Löwith . Metzler, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-476-10264-5 .
  • Schenkenberger, Jan: The attempt to stand in the air: Karl Löwith's anthropology in the field of tension between Weber, Buber, Schmitt and Valéry. Transcript Vlg., Bielefeld 2018, ISBN 978-3-8376-4237-7 .
  • Wolfgang Schwentker : Karl Löwith and Japan . In: Archives for cultural history . ISSN  0003-9233 , Volume 76, 1994, H. 2, pp. 415-449.
  • Giovanni Tidona: Beyond the boundaries of phenomenology and on the way to dialogue. The individual in the role of fellow human beings. In: Karl Löwith: The individual in the role of fellow human beings. A contribution to the anthropological foundation of ethical problems. Munich 1928; Neudruck Alber, Freiburg 2013, pp. 11–79.
  • Liliane Weissberg : Karl Löwith's trip around the world . In: Monika Boll, Raphael Gross (ed.): “I am amazed that you can breathe in this air”. Jewish intellectuals in Germany after 1945 (= series of publications by the Fritz Bauer Institute . Volume 28). S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2013, pp. 126–170.
  • Wolfgang Wieland : Karl Löwith in Heidelberg. In: Heidelberger Jahrbücher 41 (1997), pp. 267-274.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wiebrecht Ries: Karl Löwith. Stuttgart 1992, p. 1.
  2. ^ Prague and Provincial News. (...) The painter Wilhelm Löwith from Drosau near Klattau in Bohemia (...). In:  Prager Abendblatt. Supplement to the Prager Zeitung / Prager Abendblatt , No. 1/1902, January 2, 1902, p. 2, top center. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / pab.
  3. ↑ Kay Ehling: Biographical Notes on Karl Löwith. In: Mercury. German Journal for European Thinking, Issue 815, April 2017, pp. 75–81, here: p. 77.
  4. ↑ On the former location of the Realgymnasium, today's Oskar-von-Miller-Gymnasium: Georg Dehio: Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmäler. Munich. Munich / Berlin 1996, p. 155.
  5. ^ Karl Löwith: My life in Germany before and after 1933. A report. Stuttgart 1986, p. 1 f. and p. 8.
  6. ^ Karl Löwith: Curriculum vitae (1959). In: Karl Löwith: My life in Germany before and after 1933. A report. Stuttgart 1986, pp. 146–157, here: p. 146.
  7. ^ Karl Löwith: My life in Germany before and after 1933. A report. Stuttgart 1986, pp. 16-18.
  8. ↑ In particular: Max Weber and Karl Marx (1932). In: Karl Löwith: All writings. Volume 5. Stuttgart 1988, pp. 324-407.
  9. ↑ Hans-Georg Gadamer : Marburg Memories: IV. Teaching Years. In: alma mater philippina, winter semester 1974/75, Marburg 1974, p. 22.
  10. ^ Karl Löwith: My life in Germany before and after 1933. A report. Stuttgart 1986, p. 66.
  11. ^ Karl Löwith: My life in Germany before and after 1933. A report , Stuttgart 1986, pp. 9-13.
  12. ↑ Dagmar Drüll: Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1933–1986 , Berlin / Heidelberg 2009, p. 395.
  13. ^ Karl Löwith: My life in Germany before and after 1933. A report , Stuttgart 1986, pp. 105 and 108.
  14. ^ So Reinhard Mehring: Carl Schmitt. Rise and fall. A biography. Munich 2009, p. 475.
  15. ^ Karl Löwith (Hugo Fiala): Political Decisionism. In: International Journal for Theory of Law 9 (1935), pp. 101–123.
  16. ↑ Kay Ehling: Biographical Notes on Karl Löwith. In: Mercury. German Journal for European Thinking, Issue 815, April 2017, p. 78 f.
  17. ^ Karl Löwith: My life in Germany before and after 1933. A report , Stuttgart 1986, p. 108.
  18. ↑ Quoted from: Wiebrecht Ries: Karl Löwith. Stuttgart 1992, p. 6 (review from 1941).
  19. ^ Karl Löwith: Complete writings. Volume 2. Stuttgart 1983, p. 603.
  20. ↑ Dagmar Drüll: Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1933–1986 , Berlin / Heidelberg 2009, p. 395.
  21. ↑ Quoted from Kay Ehling: Biographical Notes on Karl Löwith. In: Mercury. German Journal for European Thinking, Issue 815, April 2017, p. 80.
  22. ↑ Klaus Podak: A man of thought without faith: Philosophy without promise - Karl Löwith for his 100th birthday. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of January 11, 1997.
  23. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Karl Löwith. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed June 24, 2016 .
  24. ^ American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Book of Members ( PDF ). Retrieved April 2, 2016
  25. ↑ Dagmar Drüll: Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1933–1986. Berlin / Heidelberg 2009, p. 395.
personal data
SURNAME Löwith, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fiala, Hugo (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1973
Place of death Heidelberg