Kurt Flasch

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Kurt Flasch, 2012

Kurt Flasch (born March 12, 1930 in Mainz ) is a German philosopher and historian of philosophy specializing in the philosophy of late antiquity and the Middle Ages . Among other things, he dealt extensively with the works of Augustinus von Hippo , Dietrich von Freiberg , Meister Eckhart and Nikolaus von Kues . His representations are shaped by the theoretical considerations that he published in his two-volume work Philosophy Has History . As a researcher and editor of texts at the Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi , he did basic work.

His scientific method ties in with historical ideas of the 19th century, when increasingly notions of the historicity and changeability of all expressions of life indicated a change in thinking. The philological-historical basis of his work is formed by thorough studies that question or destroy valid thought patterns. He understands the history of philosophy as the “history of thought”, which is ignited by unforeseeable historical events and shows noticeable interactions in philosophical discourse. Such temporal responses to events or their originality are philosophical and historical topics of his research.

Kurt Flasch has worked many times as an author and translator in the field of humanities . The literary historian Gustav Seibt pays tribute to his work by writing in 2020: “The number of his newspaper articles and essays is in the thousands. He debated with popes, scholars and poets in many languages, seldom interfered in politics, but then with cutting acuteness, most audibly whenever a war cry was loud. ”He developed“ a new style in the history of philosophy ”. For him, philosophical thinking is - in contrast to the prevailing conceptual philosophy that is interested in duration - a "never-ending movement"

Life

Flasch was born in 1930 as the third of four children in a Catholic family of railway workers in Mainz. Gustav Seibt and Karl Heinz Bohrer said that he came from a milieu that made his family resistant to National Socialism . He attended primary school in Mainz-Kastel from 1936 to 1940 . He didn't feel at home here. School “was terrifying and frightening,” he recalls. The Nazi teacher's tone was harsh, paramilitary and loud. "The forced manhood, the brisk diction, the commanded sport, all of that repelled me [...]." He was already able to read, learned to write, arithmetic and natural science stayed away from him emotionally. He was "a reasonably good student" and learned to behave inconspicuously. Reading Catholic magazines, through reports on General Franco, gave him the impression, which he later corrected, that communists are rude men who massacre priests and nuns. His real child life took place in the country. There were gangs he belonged to and enemies. Fights and bloody fights were part of it. He experienced something new: The buddies gave each other access to courtyards, barns and workshops and he got to know unknown social worlds.

From 1940 until his Abitur in the summer of 1949 he attended the Grand Ducal Realgymnasium in Mainz. The grammar school, which at that time was called Hermann Görings, had little to offer him. His teachers were a source of human studies for him. Some had been "World War II participants" who had been called back from the pension to represent new World War II participants. Flasch positively mentions, among other things, a priest and history teacher who had been converted to the Nazi, who told exciting and vivid stories, and who renounced the pedantic reproduction of dates. In the substitute classes of the German and religion teacher Dumont, Freemason and later director, he was impressed by his “nuanced” interpretation and “expressive” reading, which created an atmosphere that made contexts felt in texts. Disturbances were rare with Dumont: he appeared defenseless and open.

During this time, Flasch benefited from contact with the theologically and philosophically trained chaplain , Ludwig Berg , who developed an interest in the philosophy of the Middle Ages, especially Thomas Aquinas, and read Nietzsche's Zarathustra at the age of 14 . A priest whom Berg introduced him to, who served as a librarian and had a doctorate in history, instructed him to transcribe fragments from medieval manuscripts. “This is how I learned Latin palaeography .” It is an important tool in historical research to assess the reliability of sources and to understand how they were created. Methodically determined facts will be Flasch's tools for a lifetime. In 1944 his mother and youngest brother died during a bomb attack on Mainz. Flasch was spilled and survived. For the rest of the time he was supported by relatives and clerics who were friends with him . For 15 months he worked as an unskilled worker in a nursery, from which he was rewarded with food and a place to sleep. At that time, his father lived in eastern Germany on a postponed basis because he was considered hostile to the regime. Young Flasch decided never to want to be a soldier.

The world war stories kept Flasch's political consciousness constantly awake in the context of his family socialization. About 50 years later he published a study entitled “The Spiritual Mobilization. The German intellectuals and the First World War. ”. He examined speeches and texts by 'thinkers of war' such as Rudolf Eucken , Ernst Troeltsch and Max Scheler . The preliminary result of his study was: All texts share the thought that war is just and of absolute, ideal value for the national well-being. According to Flasch, this can be understood against the background of Christian metaphysical, historically acquired ideas: accordingly, the facts of war, hardship and death were excluded; they were not considered to be timeless. Flasch questioned the view that had been valid until then that there had been a fateful, necessary development towards fascism. He does not condemn the philosophical background of the philosophical war thinkers, but interpreted it as a contingent result of history. He notes: World War II thinkers thought what seemed possible for each of them to think in the context of historical conditions. This historical perspective is also the basis of his philosophical evaluation of medieval texts. Answers to questions in the context of the respective time are individual decisions that everyone makes from their own perspective.

From autumn 1950 to January 1952 he studied philosophy at the Albert Magnus Academy in Walberberg near Bonn. From the summer semester of 1952 until 1957, he continued his philosophy studies at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. History , Greek and German studies were added as additional subjects. He passed his state examination with Theodor Adorno . Under Johannes Hirschberger and Max Horkheimer he received his doctorate in Frankfurt in 1956 with a thesis on Thomas von Aquin ( Ordo dicitur multipliciter: A study on the philosophy of the “ordo” in Thomas von Aquin. ). In 1969 he completed his habilitation with a publication on Nikolaus von Kues ( The Metaphysics of One in Nikolaus von Kues. ) From 1970 to 1995 Flasch was professor of philosophy at the Philosophical Institute of the Ruhr University in Bochum . He turned down offers of appointment from Vienna and Freiburg im Breisgau . He was u. a. active as visiting professor at the Paris Sorbonne.

Flasch lives in Mainz.

Flasch's different picture of the Middle Ages

Flasch authored and written representations of medieval philosophy in the context of the era as well as in detail: For Augustine , Anselm of Canterbury , Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa , especially Dietrich of Freiberg , whose works he as part of him together with Loris Sturlese justified Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi . According to Flasch's project and working hypothesis, the history of medieval thought conveys how individuals in a society shaped by Christian metaphysical ideas developed concepts that should give them and others orientation. At first glance, “purely theoretical questions were discussed in a practical-political context”. The beginnings of complex theories were often simple questions: such as B. 'Should everyone live like a monk?' or 'Is all trade and military service a sin?' The answers flowed into texts that are complicated due to the times: they almost always follow ancient writing and thought patterns and “seem too abstract for today's reader”. However, they come from life, not from ideas that are timeless and which - as Flasch observes - only hypostatized later philosophers . The reference to the pragmatic context forms the framework in which Flasch presents and interprets medieval texts. The usual procedure of capturing the historical life of the Middle Ages with catchphrases such as “ nominalism ” or “ realism ”, “ Aristotelianism ” or “ Platonism ” is unsuitable from his point of view. It prevents a more precise preoccupation with medieval thinking and supports ideas of the Middle Ages that are suitable for staging this time as an idyll of "old-new security".

honors and awards

He is a member of four important academies: the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei , the Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere , the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and the German Academy for Language and Poetry . The latter awarded him the Sigmund Freud Prize for scientific prose in 2000 . In 2001 Flasch received the Kuno Fischer Prize from the University of Heidelberg for his biography of Cusanus, in 2002 an honorary doctorate from the University of Lucerne and in 2009 the Hannah Arendt Prize and an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel . In 2010 he was awarded the Lessing Prize for Criticism and the Essay Prize Tractatus , and in 2012 the Joseph Breitbach Prize .

Publications (selection)

literature

  • Vittorio Hösle : How should one pursue the history of philosophy? Critical remarks on Kurt Flasch's methodology of the history of philosophy. In: Philosophical Yearbook . Vol. 111 (2004), pp. 140-147.
  • Gustav Seibt : The physical talent for history. For the 80th birthday of Kurt Flasch, Germany's most urban philosophical writer. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . No. 59 from Friday, March 12, 2010, p. 13.
  • Hartmut Westermann: Epoch concepts and historicization. A conversation with Kurt Flasch. In: International Philosophy Journal. ISSN  0942-3028 , 2004, issue 2, pp. 193-209.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Peter Koslowski (Ed.): The Discovery of Historicity in German Idealism and Historism. Introduction. Berlin / Heidelberg 2005, pp. 1–5.
  2. ↑ See Kurt Flasch: Philosophy Has History, Volume 1. Frankfurt a. M. 2003, S, 16. - Karl Heinz Bohrer: Laudation Kurt Flasch .
  3. ↑ Gustav Seibt: Be responsible for yourself. For Kurt Flasch's 90th birthday. Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 11, 2020, last accessed on June 9, 2020.
  4. ↑ Cf. Gustav Seibt: The physical talent for history . In: Kurt Flasch: Towards Truth: With contributions from friends and companions . Munich 2014.
  5. ↑ Cf. Gustav Seibt: The physical talent for history . In: Kurt Flasch: In the direction of truth . Munich 2014. p. 16. and Karl Heinz Bohrer: Agonal thinking. In: ibid. P. 39 f.
  6. ↑ Kurt Flasch: Over the bridge. Childhood in Mainz 1930–1949. Frankfurt am Main 2005 (1st edition: 2002), p. 47.
  7. ↑ a b c Kurt Flasch: Over the bridge. Childhood in Mainz 1930–1949. Frankfurt am Main 2005 (1st edition: 2002), p. 22.
  8. ↑ See Kurt Flasch: Across the Bridge. Childhood in Mainz 1930 - 1949. Frankfurt am Main 2005 (1st edition 2002), pp. 47–54.
  9. ↑ Kurt Flasch: Over the bridge. Childhood in Mainz 1930 - 1949. Frankfurt am Main 2005 (1st edition 2002) p. 51 f.
  10. ↑ Kurt Flasch: Over the bridge. Childhood in Mainz 1930 - 1949. Frankfurt am Main 2005 (1st edition 2002) p. 54 f.
  11. ↑ Kurt Flasch: Philosophy has a history. Frankfurt a. M. 2003, Volume 1. S. 14 f.
  12. ↑ See Kurt Flasch: Across the Bridge. Mainz Childhood 1930 - 1949. Frankfurt am Main 2005 (1st edition 2002), pp. 99–102.
  13. ↑ Cf. Flasch: Let the past be gone. In: Ders .: In the direction of truth. Munich 2014, p. 44 f.
  14. ↑ See the following reviews, among others: Patrick Bahners : Maybe the professor will like it. Very strange taste: Kurt Flasch serves samples from 1914. [1] - Bohrer, Laudatio p. 41 f. - Rüdiger C. Graf: Review of: Flasch, Kurt: Die Geistige Mobilmachung. The German intellectuals and the First World War. Berlin 2000. ISBN 3-8286-0117-0 , In: H-Soz-Kult, 22.10.2000, [2] . - Fritz Klein (journalist) : The madness of holy war. August 18, 2000 [3] - Mathias Mayer: The First World War and literary ethics. Historical and systematic perspectives. Munich 2010, p. 16. - Bruno Preisendörfer : Each one a piece of the armature of the state - Kurt Flasch explores the complicity of the intellectuals in the First World War. March 21, 2000 [4] - Mark Terkessidis : The spiritual mobilization. [5]
  15. ↑ Cf. Flasch: Philosophy has history , vol. I, p. 72 f. and Karl Heinz Bohrer: Agonal Thinking. In: Kurt Flasch: In the direction of truth . Munich 2014, p. 33 f.
  16. ↑ Patrick Bahners: Behind the Thoughts. In: faz.net. March 12, 2020, accessed March 12, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Published by Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg. [6]
  18. ↑ Kurt Flasch: The philosophical thinking in the Middle Ages. From Augustine to Machiavelli. Stuttgart 1986, pp. 12-14.
  19. ↑ Honorary doctorates from the Faculty of Culture and Social Sciences at the University of Lucerne. Retrieved May 15, 2019 .
  20. ↑ derstandard.at
  21. ↑ https://www.unibas.ch/de/Universitaet/Portraet/Dies-Academicus/Ehrenpromotionen-Dies-Academicus-Philosophisch-Historische-Fakultaet.html , website of the University of Basel, accessed on April 8, 2012.
  22. ↑ derstandard.at
  23. ↑ Price for a bridge builder. In: FAZ . May 10, 2012, p. 29.
personal data
SURNAME Quick, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz