Peter Bieri

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peter Bieri (born June 23, 1944 in Bern ) is a Swiss philosopher and writer . His five novels so far have been published under the pseudonym Pascal Mercier , with the night train to Lisbon being particularly successful .

Life

Bieri grew up in a middle-class family in a suburb of Bern. His father was a composer . He passed his Matura at the Berner Gymnasium Kirchenfeld , where he also learned Latin , Greek and Hebrew . After graduating from high school , Bieri began studying classical philology in Bern, which he broke off because he moved to London because of a love affair . In Heidelberg he studied philosophy , English and Indology . He was a student of Dieter Henrich , Gerhard Knauss and Ernst Tugendhat . In 1971 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the philosophy of the time of the English philosopher John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart , in 1981 he completed his habilitation in his own position.

After teaching in Heidelberg and Marburg , he held the chair for philosophy at the Free University of Berlin from 1993 to 2007 . Bieri was a co-founder of the German Research Foundation's research focus on cognition and the brain . From 1995 Bieri appeared as a novelist under the pseudonym "Pascal Mercier". He released his pseudonym on the occasion of the appearance of his second novel three years later. The novel Night Train to Lisbon , published in 2004, became a bestseller. In 2007, Bieri retired prematurely from the academic profession, annoyed by the university's operations. He criticized the company, which is dominated by third-party funding, and the science management as the "dictatorship of business". In 2010 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lucerne .

Working as a philosopher

The focus of his research is analytical philosophy, philosophical psychology, epistemology and moral philosophy . In the essay "What Makes Consciousness a Riddle?", Bieri argues against the idea that neuroscience has explained the phenomenon of " consciousness ". Even if we learn more and more about the neural correlates of consciousness, we still do not know why these processes are accompanied by consciousness. Bieri's argument here is similar to that of Thomas Nagel , Joseph Levine, and David Chalmers . See: Bieri Trilemma .

Working as a writer

As a writer, Bieri uses the pseudonym “Pascal Mercier”, composed of the surnames of the French philosopher Blaise Pascal and the writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier . Martin Halter criticized Bieri's pretentious manner of presenting “the good Berner in the top jabot of the French philosopher”. Peter Bieri has published five novels so far under his pseudonym: Perlmanns Schweigen (1995), The Piano Tuner (1998), Night Train to Lisbon (2004; filmed in 2013 ), Lea (2007) and The Weight of Words (2020). In “Heart, Pain and Much Fate”, critics see “his recipe for success”, which Bieri, striving for “literary wellness”, uses only slightly varied from book to book.

Awards

Private

Bieri is married to the painter Heike Bieri-Quentin, with whom he lives in Berlin.

Works

As a philosopher

Independent publications

  • Time and time experience. Exposure of a problem area. Dissertation, 1971, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1972.
  • Philosophical psychology. Conceptual considerations. In: Neue Hefte für Philosophie 11 (1977), pp. 26–81.
  • Nominalism and Inner Experience. In: Journal for philosophical research 36 (1982), pp. 3-24.
  • Being and appearance of objects. Are things colored? In: Journal for philosophical research 36 (1982), pp. 531-552.
  • Evolution, knowledge and cognition. Doubts about evolutionary epistemology. In: Wilhelm Lütterfelds (Ed.): Transcendental or evolutionary epistemology? Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1987, pp. 117–147.
  • Intentional Systems: Reflections on Daniel Dennett's Theory of Mind. In: Jochen Brandtstädter (Ed.): Structure and experience in psychological research , de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1987, pp. 208-252.
  • Pain: A Case Study of the Mind-Body Problem. In: Ernst Pöppel (ed.): Brain and Consciousness , VCH Verlagsgesellschaft, Weinheim 1989, pp. 125-134.
  • Trying Out Epiphenomenalism. In: Knowledge Vol. 36, No. 3, May 1992.
  • What Makes Consciousness a Mystery? In: Spectrum of Science October 1992. Reprinted in: Brain and Consciousness , Spectrum Academic Publishing House, Heidelberg / Berlin / Oxford 1994, pp. 172–180; and: Thomas Metzinger (Hrsg.): Consciousness: Contributions from Contemporary Philosophy , Paderborn 1996.
  • The craft of freedom. About discovering your own will . Hanser, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-596-15647-5 .
  • Does the direction of the brain undermine freedom of will? In: Christof Gestrich and Thomas Wabel (eds.): Free will or unfree will? , Wichern Verlag, Berlin 2005 (= Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift, supplement 2005), pp. 20–36.
  • What is left of analytical philosophy? In: German Journal for Philosophy, 2007, Issue III, pp. 333–344.
  • How do we want to live? Residence, St. Pölten 2011, ISBN 978-3-7017-1563-3 .
  • Write and understand a story (Jacob Burckhardt-Talks auf Castelen). Audiobook, Complete Media, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-8312-6483-4 .
  • A way of life : About the diversity of human dignity. Hanser, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-446-24349-1 .

Editorships

As a novelist

Published under the pseudonym Pascal Mercier :

literature

Web links

Wikiquote: Peter Bieri  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d one to one. The talk with Peter Bieri ( Memento from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Lessing (ed.) And Volker Steenblock (ed.): “What actually makes people human ...” Verlag Karl Alber 2016. ISBN 978-3-495-86101-1 . P. 203.
  3. ↑ Manfred Papst: Peter Bieri alias Pascal Mercier has had enough of the university , NZZ on Sunday , May 27, 2007 (with FAZ quote from May 23, 2007)
  4. ^ Honorary doctorates - University of Lucerne. Retrieved May 15, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Peter Bieri: What makes consciousness a mystery? (rtf; 56 kB), published in “Brain and Consciousness” (Ed. W. Singer ), Spectrum of Science , Heidelberg 1994, pp. 172–180.
  6. ↑ Martin Halter, The soul hangs full of violins. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. May 30, 2007
  7. ↑ Martin Halter, The soul hangs full of violins. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. May 30, 2007
  8. Jump up ↑ Eberhard Falcke, Wacky mood-making. In: THE TIME. June 10, 2007; Falcke explains: “He [Bieri] tells about people who want nothing other than the good, the true and the beautiful, but the world and fate won't leave them. And don't we all feel that way, basically, at the very bottom? In any case, this author is well understood by millions. "
  9. ↑ Martin Halter, The soul hangs full of violins. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. May 30, 2007; similar to Joseph Hanimann, with this violin she finds death. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. July 16, 2007: “Description of feelings bordering on kitsch” and Volker Weidermann , Professor Kitsch. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. May 10, 2007.
  10. ↑ This is a popular science book on free will. Marcus von Schmiede is of the opinion that Bieri succeeds well in getting a lay public interested in the discussions about determinism and in introducing them to them; see. von Schmiede's review of the book in Die Zeit (Hamburg), December 13, 2001.
personal data
SURNAME Bieri, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mercier, Pascal (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Bern