Leo Kofler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Leo Kofler (born April 26, 1907 in Chocimierz near Stanisławów , East Galicia , Austria-Hungary , today: Ukraine ; † July 29, 1995 in Cologne ) - also known under the pseudonyms Stanislaw Warynski or Jules Dévérité - was an Austrian-German undogmatic Marxist theorist and sociologist of Jewish origin.

life and work

Life

Kofler attended the commercial academy in Vienna . From 1930 to 1934 he was employed in the Vienna Social Democratic Education Center. He also attended Max Adler's lectures , which had a lasting impact on his thinking. After Austria was annexed by the German Reich in March 1938, Kofler fled to Switzerland and survived in emigrant and labor camps . There he was active in the "Free Austria" movement and the "Free Germany" movement.

After the Second World War , Kofler went to Halle an der Saale in 1947 , in what was then the Soviet occupation zone of Germany and later the GDR . With work The science of society. Outline of a methodology of dialectical sociology , which he had published in Switzerland in 1944, he was able to do his doctorate in 1947 at the University of Halle . He obtained his habilitation with the work on the history of civil society. Attempt at an understanding interpretation of the modern age from the perspective of historical materialism , which had already appeared in 1948, in 1966 abridged in the Federal Republic of Germany and only came out completely in 1992 in two volumes. In Halle an der Saale he was on friendly terms with the minister of education Ernst Thape and the university curator Friedrich Wilhelm Elchlepp . At the University of Halle, Kofler taught as a professor of Middle and Modern History .

Grave of Leo Kofler in the Mülheim cemetery

After political disputes, he left the SED at the beginning of 1950 and went to Cologne in the Federal Republic of Germany at the end of the year . From 1951 he was active in trade union and youth education work and taught at various adult education centers . From 1953 he was a lecturer at the Dortmund Social Academy , 1969 for philosophy at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and from 1968 to 1972 lecturer for sociology at the Art Academy in Cologne ( Kölner Werkschulen ).

In 1972 the student movement won for Kofler the substitute for the chair of sociology (as the successor to Urs Jaeggi ) at the Ruhr University in Bochum, which he held until 1979. In 1975 he was awarded an honorary professorship in Cologne because of his services to teaching . This status enabled him to teach there until his stroke in the summer of 1991. On July 29, 1995 Leo Kofler died after a long illness. His grave is on the Mülheimer Friedhof in Cologne (hallway G5u no. 103).

plant

Kofler presented his own interpretation of Marxism in the fields of sociology , history , aesthetics and anthropology . He also examined the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and published critical works on the “ leveled middle class society ” and literary theory .

In his first work, The Science of Society. Outline of a methodology of dialectical sociology from 1944, he deals with the importance of dialectics for social theory. In it, Kofler developed Marxist social theory further. For Kofler, Marxism, a realistic social theory and dialectical thinking are inextricably linked. He shows the progress and the barriers to knowledge in social theory and shows the emergence of dialectical thinking from its beginnings with Heraclitus to the development of materialistic dialectics or historical materialism with Marx . In this treatise he develops the categories of dialectical thinking that are essential for him and emphasizes its importance for the criticism of materialism without dialectics and of idealism .

His second work, published in 1948, On the history of civil society. An attempt at an understanding interpretation of the modern age from the perspective of historical materialism is the first concrete application of its dialectical method to history. He does not present a complete historical account of civil society, but primarily deals with the "position of the religious to the political-social" in the development of civil society. His claim is to tell history “in an ' understanding ' way, but removing all metaphysical burdens that traditionally attach to this apt expression.” In this understanding historiography, Kofler begins with Christian prescholasticism in the philosophy of the Middle Ages and ends his presentation with the victory of the reactionary elements in bourgeois thought and the barriers of bourgeois humanism in the 19th century.

History and Dialectics (1955) is an "attempt to underpin the science of history epistemologically " based on Marxism . This attempt essentially leads to an "understanding" presentation of the development of philosophical thought up to the historical materialism of Marx. Starting from Fichte's subjective idealism , the Kantian “ thing in itself ”, from which among other things the objective idealism of Hegel emerged , and from the materialism of Feuerbach , Kofler shows how classical German philosophy flowed into Marx's ideas.

State, society and elite between humanism and nihilism (1960) is Kofler's attempt to combine his class theory with his theory of consciousness into a peculiar Marxist theory of the state . For Kofler, the state consists of three elements: the bourgeois elite , the bureaucracy and the intelligentsia. According to Kofler, these three groups tend towards a nihilistic attitude towards the world in late capitalism . The humanism of the Renaissance era and the heroic optimism of the revolutionary bourgeoisie have accordingly been replaced by late bourgeois decadence . Nevertheless, there is hope that, especially within the intelligentsia and the trade union bureaucracy, again and again individual humanistically minded individuals will rebel against decadence and nihilism. In this context, Kofler elaborates his theory of the “progressive elite” in detail. According to this, an amorphous , loose group of progressive people can promote or even take over the historical mission of the labor movement .

The proletarian citizen (1964) is a defense of Marxist ideology criticism , whereby he gives a lot of room to questions of alienation and reification . In this work, Kofler seeks to update the Marxist method, which he understands as applied dialectics in theoretical questions. He describes this method in a paragraph as follows:

“For Marx, the scientific understanding of the whole as well as the detail is of completely equal importance; both stand in the relationship of the mutual condition to one another. It would be completely misleading to think that looking through the whole, the totality, is a question of scope. Rather, it is a matter of the concrete relation of the essential moments and only subsequently of the other moments of interest to the process and to each other in the process, precisely to the understanding of their diversity in their unity, and this for the purpose, appearance and essence of the whole to separate the individual 'facts' from one another and thus reveal history in its true content. "

Even the ascetic Eros (1967) critique of ideology dedicated under which Kofler its original anthropological theory, his humanistic critique of class society explained and dialectical theory of consciousness.

The conversations with Georg Lukács (1967) were held by Kofler together with Hans Heinz Holz and Wolfgang Abendroth . The topics discussed included topics such as Marxist aesthetics, questions of anthropology and ontology , the nature of the proletarian revolution or class consciousness . As a pupil of Lukács , Kofler could not avoid comparing his own views with those of his great role model. Above all, Kofler and Lukács clashed on the question of ontology, since Lukács had sketched a Marxist ontology, while Kofler primarily fought for a Marxist anthropology. In contrast, the two critics of the Frankfurt School and admirers of Brecht largely agreed on aesthetic issues .

Stalinism and Bureaucracy (1970) is an early work of Marxist criticism of Stalinism , which differs from that of Trotsky by a greater focus on the ideological self-deception of the bureaucracy and the "bureaucratic consciousness". The book consists of two texts: The Nature and Role of the Stalinist Bureaucracy and Marxism and Language . The aim of the first text is to "demonstrate the contradictions in the appearance of the Stalinist bureaucracy by uncovering its reasons as a necessary unity and thus to unveil the ultimate, essential meaning of the contradicting elements themselves". In this work, too, it is a special concern of Kofler to uncover the essence of social phenomena in order to make it understandable, while he criticizes the usual scientific method for proceeding only compilatively and superficially. For Kofler, the central contradiction of the Stalinist bureaucracy is the contradiction between its Marxist self-image and its bureaucratic, anti-democratic and terrorist practice. While the liberal criticism of Stalinism mostly derives its practice from Marxist theory, Kofler explains the non-Marxist practice and theory of Stalinism from the concrete social conditions following the October Revolution :

"But precisely in Russia, where, given the lack of democratic tradition and the lack of a developed industry, bureaucratic arrogance was combined with the addiction to accumulate without regard to human needs, the typical Stalinist bureaucracy could arise." no direct connection between planned economy per se and bureaucratization when he writes that "even in Russia the degeneration of bureaucratism into a hopeless terrorist dictatorship [was] avoidable and, secondly, it was entirely possible to gradually reduce it instead of increasing it." a historical possibility prevailed because of the weakness of the democratic forces:
“Without the direct participation of the democratic forces of the people in the government and without direct democratic control by the people, any planned economy must degenerate bureaucratically; with the presence of these forces and such control, the planned economy cannot degenerate bureaucratically. "

The article Marxism and Language in the volume Marxism and Language (1970) is a polemical response to Stalin's study On Marxism in Linguistics . In this text, Kofler tries to show that Stalin's views on language are extremely formalistic and contradict the Marxist view. Stalin's views are formalistic because he only looks at the purely technical side, its grammar, etc., but completely ignores the content- related side, its dependency on ideology and its roots in concrete social relationships. That is why Stalin's view is un-Marxist. Rather, Stalin falls far behind Marxism and linguistics and ends up with mechanical materialism on the one hand and flat idealism on the other.

In Aggression und Gewissen (1973), Kofler refutes the biologistic and vulgar materialistic views that scientists like Konrad Lorenz , Arnold Gehlen and Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt spread at the time. As the title of the book suggests, Kofler was interested in the relationship between aggression and conscience. Where the biological theorists assumed an insurmountable instinct for aggression, Kofler referred to the socio-historical causes of aggression in humans. People do not necessarily tend to aggression, but are at most made aggressive by their social conditions. For Kofler there is no instinct that controls the consciousness of the person, but the consciousness basically tames the instinctuality. This characteristic also distinguishes the human species from animals, which are always controlled by instincts and whose mental processes do not reach the quality of human consciousness. In his remarks, Kofler also addresses issues such as the conditions under which crime, drug addiction, violence and declining morality in society arise. Among other things, he criticizes the thesis of "prosperity crime", according to which inhibitions in the affluent society decrease and people lose all scruples. Kofler polemicises against this conservative social criticism and argues for a free society beyond capitalism in order to end aggression and the general decline of society. So Kofler writes:

“The inevitable disappointments that attack individuals who have been cheated of their freedom urge relief through aggression. The feeling of guilt takes on a twofold form: on the basis of the extreme subjective internalization of socially relevant problems, on the one hand, the guilt of personal failure arises, on the other hand, the guilt of violating the applicable norm of behavior in the event of aggressive attempts to exonerate. Only the rulers benefit from it without restriction, because they are not recognized as the culprits through internalized identification with the existing. "Only when kings are internalized are kings safe from the guillotine," remarks P. Brückner aptly . But not forever, as history shows. Because the human urge for self-realization freedom is indestructible. "

Does technology dominate us? (1983) is a polemic against the Frankfurt School around Adorno and Horkheimer and their pupils Habermas , as well as against bourgeois sociologists like Helmut Schelsky . Kofler defends the Marxist criticism of capitalist society as a class society in which the class of the upper bourgeoisie ruled.

Aftermath

In 1996 the Leo Kofler Society was founded in Bochum. It should serve the scientific processing and maintenance of the life and work of Leo Kofler. The chairman is Christoph Jünke , who did his doctorate on the work and life of Kofler with Sozialistisches Strandgut (2007) and regularly gives lectures on the deceased and almost forgotten Marxist. The company publishes information material at irregular intervals, for example about Kofler's reception in Japan or articles that are out of print. Christoph Jünke occasionally publishes books about Kofler, such as the encounters with Leo Kofler (2011) or Leo Kofler's philosophy of practice (2015).

Leo Kofler is received to a small extent among students and left-wing academics. Articles related to Kofler appear occasionally in newspapers and magazines.

Works

  • The science of society. Outline of a methodology of dialectical sociology. Francke, Bern 1944 (EA as Stanislaw Warynski; EA with foreword by Konrad Farner ); Makol again, Frankfurt 1971², most recently ibid. 1991 (also VDVK publishing, printing and sales collective, Frankfurt 1971 [robbery printing]).
  • On the history of civil society . Hall 1948; Luchterhand, Neuwied 1966²
  • Marxist or Stalinist Marxism? A reflection on the falsification of Marxist teaching by the Stalinist bureaucracy. Publishing house for journalism, Cologne 1951
  • The Lukacs case. Georg Lukacs and Stalinism. 1952 (as Jules Dévérité).
  • History and dialectics. 1955, 1970², 1973³; Again: New Impetus, Essen 2002.
  • State, society and elite between humanism and nihilism. Schotola, Ulm 1960.
  • The end of philosophy? 1961
  • On the theory of modern literature. Luchterhand, Neuwied 1962.
  • The proletarian citizen. 1964
  • The ascetic Eros. 1967.
  • Perspectives of revolutionary humanism . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1968.
  • Marxist state theory. 1970.
  • Stalinism and Bureaucracy. Luchterhand, Neuwied 1970.
  • Abstract art and absurd literature. 1970.
  • Technological Rationality in Late Capitalism. Makol Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971.
  • Aggression and conscience. Foundation of an anthropological epistemology. Hanser, Munich 1973.
  • Sociology of the ideological. 1975.
  • Intellectual decay and progressive elite. 1981.
  • Humanistic Anthropology and Dialectical Materialism. A work book. Leo Kofler on his 70th birthday. 1982, ISBN 3-87958-710-8 .
  • Everyday life between eros and alienation. Germinal Verlag, Bochum 1982.
  • Does technology dominate us? Technological Rationality in Late Capitalism. 1983.
  • To the criticism of the "alternatives". VSA, Hamburg 1983.
  • Eros, aesthetics, politics. Theses on the image of man in Marx. 1985.
  • The spiritualization of rule. 1986/87, 2 volumes.
  • Avant-gardism as alienation. Aesthetics and ideology criticism. 1987.
  • Conservatism. Between decadence and reaction. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1987.
  • “Criticism is the head of passion.” From the life of a Marxist cross-border commuter. A conversation on the occasion of his 80th birthday with Wolf Schönleitner and Werner Seppmann , 1987.
  • Christoph Jünke (Ed.): On the criticism of civil freedom. Selected political-philosophical texts by a Marxist loner. 2000.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christoph Jünke: Socialist Strandgut. Leo Kofler - Life and Work (1907–1995) , Hamburg 2007, p. 236.
  2. ^ Leo Kofler Society eV
  3. ↑ Christoph Jünke: Socialist Strandgut. Leo Kofler - Life and Work (1907–1995). VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-89965-197-3 ( leo-kofler.de ).
personal data
SURNAME Kofler, Leo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Warynski, Stanislaw; Dévérité, Jules
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Chocimierz (Eastern Galicia , Austria-Hungary , today: Ukraine )
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 1995
Place of death Cologne