Paul Carus

Paul Carus

Paul Carus (born July 18, 1852 in Ilsenburg , † February 11, 1919 in La Salle , Illinois ) was a German-American publisher , writer and philosopher .

Life

Paul Carus was born as the son of a Protestant pastor in Ilsenburg am Harz. He attended high school in Poznan and Szczecin. There the mathematician and philosopher Hermann Graßmann was his teacher.

Carus studied philosophy, classical philology and natural sciences in Greifswald , Strasbourg and Tübingen , where he received his doctorate in 1876. Carus became a teacher at the Military Academy in Dresden, where he ran into difficulties due to his liberal attitudes. He then emigrated to England and in 1883 to the United States .

From New York City Carus went to Chicago , where he married Mary (Marie) Hegeler , the daughter of the industrialist Edward C. Hegeler (1835-1910). They lived in the "Hegeler Carus Mansion", a villa in the style of the Second Empire in La Salle (Illinois). The Open Court Publishing Company, through which Carus published the magazines The Open Court (from 1886) and The Monist (from 1890), was housed on the first floor . In addition to a large number of articles, he published over 70 of his own books and pamphlets. His magazines have published works by Charles S. Peirce , William James , Friedrich Max Müller , Ernst Mach , Gottlob Frege , Ernst Schröder and Bertrand Russell . The focus of the publishing house was on writings of the Eastern religion. There was close contact with Mach and Schröder; Ernst Mach's "Physikalische Optik" (1913) is dedicated to Carus.

Paul Carus became a member of the Leopoldina on January 26, 1894 .

Carus considered himself a pantheistic theologian rather than a philosopher. In the legal notice of The Open Court he published his mission statement:

“ The message of The Open Court, in short, is that science is a religious revelation; Science is the development of the mind and its truths (if they are original scientific truths) are sacred. If God ever speaks to his creatures, he speaks through the truths they have learned through experience, and when truths are systematically and precisely formulated, that is, scientific, they become not less but more divine. Hence, the application of scientific accuracy is a religious duty which, if it is observed, destroys some errors that have become dear to us, but which in the end lead without fault to particularly important religious reform. "

Carus contributed significantly to the knowledge of Buddhism in the United States and particularly supported the translation of Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki . About his book "The Gospel of Buddha" he wrote in the foreword:

“ Buddhism, like Christianity, is broken up into innumerable sects, and the sects often cling to their sectarian statements as if these were the main and indispensable components of their religion. The present book does not adhere to any of the sectarian teachings, but takes an ideal position on which, as on common ground, all true Buddhists can stand.

The arrangement of the Gospel of the Buddha as a whole in a harmonious and systematic form is therefore the actual original work of the author of this book, which in its individual parts is a mere collective work. The author has endeavored to treat the material along the lines of the fourth evangelist; that is to say: he undertook to present the details of the life of Buddha in the light of their religious-philosophical significance. He left off the apocryphal adornment, especially that which is so abundant in northern traditions, but did not consider it right to suppress the miracles reported in the ancient writings if the morality contained therein permitted their inclusion seemed to justify. He only curtailed the exaggerations which fall into unbelievable and are told with the intention of impressing, when in fact they are only tiresome. Miracles have ceased to be religious evidence, and yet today belief in the Master's miraculous power testifies to the sacred awe of the first disciples and reflects their religious enthusiasm. "

Paul Carus' estate is in the Morris Library of Southern Illinois University Carbondale .

Works

Selection:

• Metaphysics in Science, Ethics, and Religion: A Philosophical Inquiry. Dresden 1881
• Songs of a Buddhist. Dresden 1882
• Cause, reason and purpose: a philosophical investigation to clarify the terms. Dresden 1883
• Monism and meliorism, a philosophical essay on causality and ethics. New York, 1885
• A life in songs: poems of a homeless person. Milwaukee 1886
• Fundamental problems. The method of philosophy as a systematic arrangement of knowledge. Chicago 1889
• The soul of man: an investigation of the facts of physiological and experimental psychology. Chicago 1891
• Homilies of science. Chicago 1892
• Truth in fiction: twelve tales with a moral. Chicago 1893
• The religion of science. Chicago 1893
• The gospel of Buddha according to old records. Chicago 1894 (12th edition 1920), ISBN 978-1-59547-941-9 ( online ) (German: The Gospel of Buddha told according to the sources, 1905), full text
• The nature of the state. Chicago 1894
• Nirvana, a story of Buddhist philosophy. Chicago 1896 ( description ), ISBN 978-1-4286-0304-2
• The dharma, or The religion of enlightenment; an exposition of Buddhism. Chicago 1896, ISBN 978-1-4286-4301-7
• Karma, a story of Buddhist ethics. Chicago 1896 ( description )
• Buddhism and its Christian critics. Chicago 1897
• Chinese philosophy: an exposition of the main characteristic features of Chinese thought. Chicago 1898, ISBN 978-1-4304-4650-7
• Kant and Spencer; a study of the fallacies of agnosticism. Chicago 1899
• The history of the devil and the idea of ​​evil; from the earliest times to the present day. Chicago 1899 (German: The History of the Devil From the Beginnings of Civilization to Modern Times, 2004, ISBN 978-3-89094-424-1 ), full text
• The ethical problem: three lectures on ethics as a science. 2nd ext. Edition. Chicago 1899
• Whence and whither: an inquiry into the nature of the soul, its origin and its destiny. Chicago 1900
• Kant's Prolegomena to any future metaphysics. Introduction and explanation, Chicago 1902
• The surd of metaphysics; an inquiry into the question Are there things-in-themselves ?. Chicago 1903
• Friedrich Schiller; a sketch of his life and an appreciation of his poetry. Chicago 1905
• Our children; hints from practical experience for parents and teachers. Chicago 1906, ISBN 978-1-4304-5119-8
• Amitabha, A Story of Buddhist Theology. Chicago 1906, full text
• The story of Samson and its place in the religious development of mankind. Chicago 1907
• The rise of man; a sketch of the origin of the human race. Chicago 1907
• Chinese thought: an exposition of the main characteristic features of the Chinese world-conception. Chicago 1907
• The foundations of mathematics; a contribution to the philosophy of geometry. Chicago 1908
• God: an inquiry into the nature of man's highest ideal and a solution of the problem from the standpoint of science. Chicago 1908
• The Pleroma, an essay on the origin of Christianity. Chicago 1909
• The religious doctrine of the Buddhists, German edition after translation from the original text into English. Leipzig 1909 full text
• Philosophy as a science: a synopsis of the writings of Dr. Paul Carus. containing an introduction written by himself, summaries of his books, and a list of articles to date, Chicago 1909
• Truth on trial: an exposure of the nature of truth, preceded by a critique of pragmatism and an appreciation of its leader. Chicago 1911
• The Philosophy of Form. Chicago 1911
• The principle of relativity in the light of the philosophy of science / by Paul Carus; with an appendix containing a letter from James Bradley on the motion of the fixed stars, 1727. Chicago 1913
• The Mechanistic Principle and the Non-Mechanical. Chicago 1913
• Nietzsche and Other Exponents of Individualism. Chicago 1914

Web links

Wikisource: Paul Carus  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Paul Carus in the catalog of the German National Library
• The Hegeler Carus Foundation
• Text of the "Gospel of Buddha"
• Member entry of Paul Carus at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on March 22, 2017.