Simon Lyudwigowitsch Frank

Simon L. Frank

Simon L. Frank ( Russian Семён Людвигович Франк , Semyon Ljudwigowitsch Frank , born 16 ^jul. / 28. January  1877 ^greg. In Moscow ; † 10. December 1950 in London ) was a Russian philosopher . Frank always used his Russian first name “Semjon” as “Simon” in his publications written in Western languages.

To the work

Frank's philosophy is a systematic personalistic doctrine of being with a practical purpose. His work The Object of Knowledge is fundamental . Based on the concept of being gained in this work , Frank created a philosophical psychology , a social philosophy and social ethics , a religious philosophy and an anthropology , which culminates in the doctrine of the ontological unity and difference between man and God, the "God-humanity".

His analyzes of contemporary history, especially the intellectual background of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, show him to be an attentive political observer. His interest in the philosophical content of literature is expressed in essays on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Alexander Sergejewitsch Pushkin , Fyodor Ivanovich Tjuttschew and Rainer Maria Rilke . As a philosopher, he also took a position on theological questions. According to the history of philosophy WW Senkowski, Frank is the “greatest Russian philosopher of all”.

Life

Simon L. Frank came from a Jewish family. The father, a military doctor, died when the boy was five years old. His maternal grandfather, co-founder of the Moscow Jewish community, gave him his first religious impressions; then his stepfather introduced him to the thoughts of the radical “ friends of the people ”.

In 1894, Frank enrolled in the Law School of Moscow University . As a result of participating in a Marxist discussion group, he was banned from all Russian universities for two years in 1899. His knowledge of German enabled him to study political economy and philosophy at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin (among others with Georg Simmel ); he dealt intensively with neo-Kantianism and classical German philosophy. The encounter with Nietzsche's work sealed the final departure from Marxism.

A critical work on Marx's theory of values ​​(Moscow 1900) had drawn the attention of the Russian “legal Marxist” Peter B. Struve to him. Initially, Frank worked with Struve as the editor of magazines for the radical liberal opposition and as a translator of German philosophical works. He was the youngest collaborator on the analysis of the intellectual situation of the Russian intellectual elite published in 1909 by a group of Russian intellectuals under the title "Wegzeichen" (Russian " Wechi "); With a critical intention he gave his contribution the heading "Ethics of Nihilism" and called for the philosophical justification of a "creative religious humanism". In 1909 Frank published the Russian translation of Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations I with an introduction. It was during this time that he dealt with the epistemology of pragmatism , with the religious philosophy of William James , Friedrich Schleiermacher and Spinoza .

Frank had been a lecturer at the University of St. Petersburg since 1911, and in 1912 he became an Orthodox Christian. His work “The Object of Knowledge. Foundations and Limits of Conceptual Knowledge ”appeared in 1915; Dmitrij Tschižewskij called it “probably the most important book of Russian philosophical literature in the 20th century”. In it Frank systematically pursues the question of the transcendental conditions of conceptual knowledge. As such, it is a statement on Kant's criticism, on neo-Kantian epistemology ( Hermann Cohen , Alois Riehl ), on Paul Natorp's conception of time , on Wilhelm Schuppe's philosophy of immanence and on Georg Cantor's mathematical logic . The work contains an extensive appendix on the history of the ontological proof of God , which pursues the understanding of the ontological argument from Parmenides to German idealism. Even before the October Revolution, Frank was able to 1917 Die Seele des Menschen. Publish an attempt at an introduction to philosophical psychology .

For a short time he was dean of the philosophical faculty of the newly founded Saratov University . In 1921 he became a professor at Moscow University; with Nikolai Alexandrowitsch Berdjajew he founded an "Academy for Spiritual Education". In 1922 Frank, like Berdjajew, Fedor Stepun , Sergei Nikolajewitsch Bulgakow and other non-Marxist scholars, had to leave Russia. He moved to Berlin with his family; the distress of exile began, and only from 1931 to 1933 did he get a job as a lecturer at Berlin University. During this time several smaller writings were created, including a. in the “ Kant Studies ” and in the “Logos”. In 1930 in Paris he published The Spiritual Foundations of Society in Russian . Introduction to social philosophy . His religious philosophy “The unfathomable. He had almost completed an ontological introduction to the philosophy of religion in 1936 in German, but the National Socialists did not allow publication in Germany; it was published in Paris in 1939, slightly revised in Russian.

At the beginning of 1938 he emigrated to France with his family. Here he wrote The Light in Darkness. An attempt at Christian ethics and social philosophy (partly revised, published in English in 1949) and the theological writing Mit uns ist Gott. Three considerations (published in English in 1946). In November 1945 Frank moved to London. It was here that his last great work, Reality and Man, was created. A Metaphysics of Human Being (published posthumously in Paris 1956, Russian). Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990, Frank's works have also been reprinted in Russia.

philosophy

Philosophers who influenced Frank

Already in The Object of Knowledge , Frank noted that, in addition to Plotinus , he owes decisive impulses for his doctrine of being to Nikolaus von Kues . In The Unfathomable , he described Nicholas as his "in a certain sense the only teacher of philosophy". But Augustine is also named by Frank as the source of his understanding of being. As Frank himself notes, Platonism (in a broader sense) forms the framework of his thinking. The examination of Descartes ' struggle for absolute certainty of knowledge has also left its mark .

Phenomenology was critically received on the basis of Neoplatonic ontology ( Edmund Husserl , Martin Heidegger ); the phenomenological method played a strong role in Frank's religious philosophy and in his late writings. The reception of personalism and the philosophy of dialogue ( Max Scheler , Martin Buber , Ferdinand Ebner , Franz Rosenzweig ) was of lasting importance . The critical examination of contemporary philosophy of life was fruitful, primarily with Henri Bergson , but also with Wilhelm Dilthey . For the philosophical doctrine of God and the theological and spiritual writing God is with us are also Christian mystics of importance: Meister Eckhart , Teresa of Avila , John of the Cross , Francis de Sales . In the last years of his life, Frank also expressly recognized the role model of Vladimir Solovyov for his conception of God-humanity.

Farewell to the philosophy of consciousness - "ideal realism"

Fundamental to Frank's philosophy is the real validity of the concept of being shown in The Object of Knowledge (1915). Starting from the intentionality of the act of cognition, Frank shows that every determining thinking and conceptual knowledge presupposes the “presence” or “presence” of being as a transcendental condition of its possibility. Being as the “background” of everything that is “given” in terms of content and objects is not itself determined or delimited and cannot be determined in terms of content. Regardless of the words used here such as "background", "horizon" or the like, being must not be thought of as objectified and contrasted with what is. In order to express the unity of being with the object of thought and experience, the formula that they are not separate and not mixed applies.

Frank continues in this work focus on the philosophy of consciousness from which he was close to in his first works, and takes the turn to a realistic ontology which he referred (a term Fichte Picking up) as "ideal-realism". Being cannot be interpreted as consciousness, because consciousness as an intentionality is part of a relationship that presupposes something else beyond it, without reference to which it is not possible. This “other” cannot be mediated again through consciousness, but has to be present “with us in itself”. That means again: The “timeless unity” of consciousness with the object, which enables cognition, is given “to us as such not in the form of consciousness but in the form of being”. Consciousness can focus on being "only because we are in it and they are in us" independently of the stream of current experiences that make up the life of our consciousness, the timeless unity. That means: "The first thing that is and what is consequently immediately evident is not consciousness, but the timeless being itself". This being, because it is not objectively given, is not a "transcendent" being that we would first have to reach thinking. "It is the absolute being, outside of which there is nothing and that is not transcendent, but the absolutely immanent basis of all transcendence ", so that the difference between the (in the narrow sense) "immanent" content of consciousness and the "objective" (transcendent) Being as derived duality can only arise on its basis.

This immanence is analogous to the immanence of an experience currently present in us. But this analogy is limited, because the immanence of experience is only conceivable as a counter-concept to its transcendence, while the immanence of absolute being is the condition of this distinction.

The necessity of accepting absolute being as immanent in thinking is confirmed by Descartes' effort to gain absolute certainty. Strictly speaking, the Cartesian formula says “cogito, ergo sum”: I think, therefore thinking is. But that means: Consciousness experiences itself as certain. This self-certainty of consciousness also means “its indissolubility, that is, its necessity and certainty as being”. If being could only be known through the consciousness, there would be no way to get to its certainty. According to Frank, the meaning of the Cartesian formula consists in the fact that in the form of consciousness a being is shown that is not given to me as the content of consciousness that would be conveyed to me through knowledge. Rather, it is given immediately: I “know” it because it is myself. Every act of thought - and thus the distinction between subject and object, between consciousness and objective being - is only possible on the basis of being and belongs to it. In this absolute or original being, knowability and being are the same. With this ontological approach, Frank sees the limitations of a mere philosophy of consciousness overcome.

The knowledge of being, because being is not the object of thought, cannot be conceptual knowledge. It is an executive knowledge that Frank calls "living knowledge" or "understanding experience" based on Plotinus . As such, the knowledge of being cannot be obtained by inference, but is immediately evident. An example of the direct “living knowledge” of the overarching non-representational being is the hermeneutic context of artistic experience. As soon as we “immediately grasp the necessity for the appearance of some general type in a series of acts, or when we perceive the necessity with which one musical phrase emerges from another”, we have immediately in a thinking experience the “living reality and effectiveness of the General “and not an abstract, timeless and therefore passive content.

Just as we have a living knowledge of the infinity of being as the “background” of every certain “something”, so we also have a non-objective knowledge of the untimely, “not given” eternity as the “background” of every temporally given moment. “In the knowledge that I am myself - that is not in front of me like a thought content before the subject of thought, but is in me as self-knowing being - timelessness and the flow of time are not given to me in detail, but only their unity as a living, time-encompassing unity, as a non-perishing being that is at the same time complete in every moment of its temporal appearance ”. Because it is not an addition, but an inner unity removed from time, Frank's ontology is not foreign to history, but enables us to think about the unity of history.

In his “philosophical psychology”, under the title Die Seele des Menschen , published in Russia in 1917, Frank shows (with reference to Husserl's “Essensschau”) that the individual “soul” can only be the outcome of the life by virtue of its connection with the supra-individual being specific spiritual knowledge and willing.

Exit from "being yourself"

Even in his early work "The Object of Knowledge", Frank took the fundamental insight into his thinking that the philosophical knowledge of being can only be gained on the basis of the intentional "self-being" of man, but not through the analysis of the objectively given world-being .

The reception of personalism after the First World War led to a deepening of this basic insight: The “only gateway” to ontology, Frank states in “The Unfathomable”, we find in “immediate self-existence”. The "living" known non-objective absolute being is one with the self-fulfillment of the subject without this dissolving in him. Frank took up Dilthey's criticism of lifeless metaphysical conceptual constructions, but held onto Kant's question about the transcendental conditions of conceptual knowledge and found it in the presence of the absolute in the subject. For Frank, too, "life" is the inescapable exit, but understood as being and spirit . In being ourselves, we experience it as an expressive, self-evident event that goes beyond itself. The self-being is therefore not the contentless subject of knowledge in the Descartes sense, which is exhausted in being the starting point for thinking. Rather, it is the “bin-form” of being that is not mediated by thinking, because “I am” is not an objective judgment in which the gaze of knowledge would be directed to an “it” opposing it and would recognize a content in it. It is a self-revelation of being.

Frank's “ontological introduction to the philosophy of religion” is concerned with the dynamics of being, which shows itself in the intentionality of self-being as well as showing the relational unity of self and absolute being. In striving beyond itself, as the phenomenological analysis shows, self-being finds the striving goal essentially associated with it in the you, i.e. H. in the other person. The self "only realizes itself in going beyond itself, in transcending to you". It is "in its very essence a being dependent on the you, connected with the you and a being that takes place as I-you-being". “The I-you relationship as I-you-being shows itself as the basic form of being; it appears to us as the revelation of the inner structure of reality as such ”.

The phenomenology of the I-Thou relationship is central to Frank's “The Unfathomable”. The perception of the other person not only as a not-I (as he or it), but the encounter with him in his special quality as a person (as you) has the previous ontological we-unity of I and you as a condition (Frank follows an insight that can also be found in Max Scheler ). But Frank sees: Transcending to the other's you cannot simply give the self the desired fulfillment. Even in the most intimate togetherness, there remains an "unbridgeable loneliness" and such an inadequacy. No “subjectivity” as such “can free me from my own subjectivity”. The self seeks a reality that leaves everything subjective behind and has absolute validity. Admittedly, this “reality” can encounter precisely in transcending into the “depth” of the other, which is perfected in love. The reality that appears here, however, does not allow localization either in the “inside” of the other or in myself. It is “ transsubjective ”, “common to all and applicable to all”.

Frank takes the decisive step in his ontology of religion by uncovering the infinity and "depth" of the reality that reveals itself in selfhood - which is essentially a dynamic we-being - and thus the assertion that the "soul" is "closed" in itself, rejects. In being and through it "reveals itself to 'other' that does not belong to itself". In its dynamic - the transcending of oneself to the other both in the cognition and in the specific way of the I-Thou relationship - the "soul" crosses its "limits", so to speak, in its deep layer, touches "something other than itself" or "this other penetrates into them". Frank calls this reality as the other and at the same time related in nature “life” or actuality : “Being and validity in and of itself, a perfect, resting, solid being that is effective as such, in contrast to the unfinished, restless, striving and only potential being in immediate self-being. This is also what we experience as 'spirit' or 'spiritual reality' ”.

The unity of the self with this other reality - can be experienced particularly intensely in love - is a "coincidence", a "coincidentia oppositorum", which does not mean mixing, in which rather the ontological difference of the opposita is preserved and this is completed in its self-being . This unity of unity and separation also characterizes the relationship to the absolute: the self “has itself as the absolute” - but it is not the absolute per se. It opposes it and “only has itself in this isolation and detachment”. Although Frank does not mention the essays W. “Solovyov” on the meaning of love , 1892-1894, in his ontophenomenology of love, it is reasonable to assume that they influenced him.

The all-unity of being

Being as “life” and “spirit” is present in its absolute wholeness in each of its utterances in a specific and limited way and permeates it. No being is therefore isolated in its being, but referred to the other. Being as a living relationship is a “spirit realm”, as Frank says several times with one term Fichtes . The unity as we-being has ontological priority. It is to be thought in terms of the Cusan coincidence . This "coincidence" is not recorded if the parts are added to a sum; Rather, the only way of thinking that opens up the transrational relationship is a "floating" above the parts, which sees their logically incomprehensible unity in one act. To say “it is” of absolute being would be pointless. It is not an “it”, rather the reason from which each “is” as well as each “I am” emerges - the unity as the principle that first establishes unity and multiplicity (not the numerical unity, which is opposed to multiplicity) . This primordial reason corresponds, as Frank explains, to what Meister Eckhart called the "deity".

Philosophical doctrine of God

According to Frank, the proofs of God that try to prove God by means of the causal principle as the cause of the universe miss the reality of God. In these proofs, even if they ascribe to him an otherworldly existence, God is thought of as an objective reality opposed to man in the logical form of objective being. According to Frank, God can only be "touched" directly through the experience of reality in one's own being. Frank's consideration in this regard has the structure of the “ontological argument”. It assumes that the experience of one's own being is at the same time the experience of its essential "groundlessness" ( subjectivity ). Just by asking about the meaning of his being, he realizes that it has an essential defect. This lack of being, the experience of which characterizes human existence as such, is only remedied if the reality that complements it “has everything in it that defines the essence of our self as a person. Because everything impersonal is alien to us and cannot be a refuge or home for us ”.

“' God ' we call that deepest and highest instance of reality, which on the one hand has absolute stability in itself as its original source ([...] being by virtue of itself) and is therefore the only absolutely secure support of our being, and on the other hand possesses the quality of sovereignty , of absolute worth and which for us is the object of worship and loving self-giving ”. An instance of being that has the characteristics required here - personality combined with absolute self-justification and absolute self-worth - cannot be found in the world. It cannot be found either as long as we look for it in relation to ourselves (in the form of a certain content). Because "God reveals himself to me directly only in the undivided unity 'God and I'". For Frank, therefore, “the only but fully adequate ' proof of God ' is the being of the human person himself, if one understands it in its full depth and meaning, namely as a being that transcends itself”. For Frank, outstanding occasions for transcending oneself are the experience of beauty, especially moral beauty, but above all the encounter with the personal depth of another person, not least in the experienced suffering: Such an experience “opens up access to the inner depths of our own spiritual being, leads us into the depths of our own self ”.

The person who finds the ground of his being neither in the external world nor in his soul knows at the same time that through his personal being he surpasses all external, objective being in “depth, originality and meaning”. This world superiority of personal being, which exists at the same time as the lack of a ground of being, cannot be accidental. "The perception of the reality of God is given immanently in the perception of my being as a person, in so far as I recognize my being and being as fundamentally different from all objective reality, it is at the same time insufficient, imperfect and in its purely immanent nature of fullness, I recognize a lack of firmness and inner justification. [...] In the ideal inner view of reality, the imperfection, finiteness and imperfection with which I possess that deepest and highest, absolutely valuable principle of being that I have in myself as a person, evidently testifies to the reality of one that surpasses myself absolute person or an absolute primordial ground of the person principle ”.

Frank's thinking is similar to the “anthropological proof of God” that Descartes presented in his “Third Meditation”. The limited cannot be experienced as such, as Frank sums up Descartes' thought, without considering the fullness of the unlimited as non-objective. The experience of being homeless in the world is only possible because man already has a home “in another sphere of being”, because he is “in this world, as it were, the representative of another, completely real principle of being”. Frank does not start from the assumption that we have a concept of God whose origin has to be explained, but rather from the experience of the existential lack in human existence, which is not possible without the infinite abundance. Unlike Descartes, Frank avoids using the causal principle to justify this connection; for him this insight is not a conclusion; rather, it has the character of direct evidence.

Kant's objection to the “ontological proof of God” - it does not follow from an imaginary term that what is thought also actually exists - ignores the ontological argument, according to Frank, because he refers to concepts of objects of external perception (“one hundred thalers”) while the ontological argument is about ideal being in which “knowing and having are the same”.

Frank emphatically rejected the identification of being with God as pantheistic . The general and impersonal being cannot satisfy the human longing for “support” and “home”. It is true that the religious feeling for nature can experience being as a divine “all-pervading elemental force”. But the origin of evil also lies in this general being. Frank's understanding of God, which is strongly influenced by Augustine , emerges from the perception of God as the “primordial ground” that can be experienced “inside” man. In this “understanding experience” of God's presence in him, he does not take possession of God as an object. In order to characterize the touching perception of the reality of God in man, the sentence of Nikolaus von Kues preceded his religious ontology as the motto: “The untouchable is touched in the manner of not being touched” (attingitur inattingibile inattingibiliter). A concept of God that addresses the relationship between God and the objective world - God as creator and world ruler, God as Almighty - is "already derived and, from the point of view of pure experience, more or less problematic".

According to Frank, the ontological argument, which allows one to understand that the being of man points directly to the absolute absolute, is similar to the relationship that the biblical account of creation also knows. But unlike the Bible, which starts from the divine Creator and understands the human being as his image, ontophenomenological thinking is based on human self-experience: It shows that the human being is an image that refers to an archetype.

Anthropology and "God-Humanity"

All of Frank's major works deal with aspects of a philosophical anthropology ; they thus correspond to his intention, expressed early on, to establish a “religious humanism ”. This endeavor came to an end with the work “Reality and Man”, completed in September 1949, which was subtitled “A Metaphysics of Human Being”. But already in “The Unfathomable”, written before the Second World War, the author's thoughts converge in the term “God and I” reality, which Frank already describes here as “God-humanity”. Frank sees “the real meaning of Christian faith” in the real presence of God in man, indicated by the term “God-humanity”.

"Godmanhood" means no mixing of God and man, but rather their indissoluble coincidence . God, who is essentially affection and encouragement, reveals himself in the being of man as encouragement or being you. The reality of God as the promise to people “you are” “is in a certain sense already decided in the depths of my own 'am' or my 'am' is rooted, as it were, in the 'am' of God himself”. The unity of the lasting difference can only be experienced with understanding in a “taught ignorance” (docta ignorantia) - in a “hovering” over the logically insoluble contradiction. God-humanity has its basis in the eternal, divine will to create, which is at the same time a timeless will to salvation. God as the eternal “stream of love” communicates its essence to the creature by creating it - in a special way. God is also “God-Man”, since he has wanted man as his partner, as you, “for eternity”. Consequently, man cannot be understood without his essential relationship to God, but neither can God be understood without his essential relationship to man. Just as the presence of God in man establishes his freedom and dignity, so too his creative potency and immortality.

The theodicy question in view of the tremendous suffering that people have to endure finds its only possible answer in the fact that God himself participates in the suffering of his creatures and thereby leads them to their own fullness of being. Suffering - unlike evil - has a positive quality of being, which as such belongs to God and is perfected in God. The goal laid out in human existence is therefore the deification of man (θεωσις, oboženie), in which the difference between creator and creature is of course preserved.

Social Philosophy - Freedom and Human Rights

The pivotal point of Frank's social philosophy is freedom , understood as "service to the truth". The " truth " that freedom is supposed to serve is the divine human being of man as "we being". It is essentially a free being, because every I is I only through its free unity with the you - ultimately through the you of God who awakens it to be. For this reason alone it would be absurd to want to understand freedom as a right. Rather, it is the characteristic through which man is the image of God - “the only point of human existence at which the direct connection of the human with the divine is possible; it is the bearer of spiritual life, the link between empirical and transcendent being ”. The binding of freedom to we-being is therefore not a heteronomous restriction. Freedom is assigned to the goal towards which man's life is oriented: his deification through his moral life in society.

On this basis Frank expresses emphatic criticism of a positivist view of civil liberties and human rights . The only absolutely binding requirement that Frank knows is to put every objective on the “scales of truth” and to measure it by this measure. The highest normative principle of social life is therefore only the duty to recognize and realize the “truth” that is given with the divine human nature. It is therefore absurd to speak of the rights of freedom as “innate” and in this sense “original rights”. So-called political rights and freedoms cannot be derived from a fundamental right to freedom that exists in itself. They have "no self-sufficient, but only functional value". Like all rights, they are “always relative and derived; they are only secondary expressions and means of realizing the principle of service and the principles of solidarity and freedom associated with it ”. "All human rights ultimately flow from the only 'innate' human right: the right to demand that he be given the opportunity to fulfill his duty" - to seek the truth and to be able to act accordingly. Every individual, if he does not want to destroy himself, has to obey the guidelines of his divine human being in the realization of himself. That means: To give up one's own freedom or to destroy that of another would be tantamount to the destruction of humans.

State and social authorities can only demand “for themselves and for their interests from their members participation in that service to the truth, in which the duty consists not only of every individual but also of society as a whole”. This applies both to legislation and to “good morals ”: Their binding force is based solely on the “truth” they express. To judge this "truth" or, in other words, about its moral character, is the duty of conscience of every individual.

What is concretely to be regarded as the “true” standard of moral behavior is shown by historical experience, in that it is made phenomenologically transparent in terms of the meaning it contains. Overall human historical experience teaches with sufficient clarity that certain behaviors contradict human nature - to be recognized by their consequences, by illness, rift, destruction and death. The ought set by this experience - to avoid the actions leading to those evils - is not a hypothetical one which is left to inclination to obey. Rather, the corresponding commandments are set with the meaning of human existence itself; they are, in Frank's expression, “ontologically necessary”. The binding nature of the moral norms raised from experience (Kant's “determining reason”) does not result from experience as such, but lies in the real divine humanity of human-social being. The fact that the present is rooted in the past, and to that extent its unity, is an essential date for Frank's philosophy of history. “Society as a spiritual unit is never exhausted in the present moment; it is only when everything that has passed is alive in it at every moment ”.

In principle, freedom of belief has a special position among political freedoms. It is more closely connected than any other to the “principle of freedom, understood as the source of spiritual life”. “Every attack on the freedom of belief is an attack on the spiritual life itself” and thus on the human being of God. “ Faith ” - being convinced of the truth - must be able to express itself in active participation in social life.

This outlines the idea of democracy . It is based on the "obligation of all to actively participate in the common service of the truth". "Serving the truth is not anyone's privilege or the exclusive duty of any particular group of people who patronize and forcibly govern social life: it is the business of all people without exception." This duty corresponds to the right to realize the known truth. From this position one can see the correlation between equality and freedom. The " equality " of all people consists in the common calling to service; “But service is based on the freedom of man as a moral activity”. Just as the all-unity of being can only be understood as free, so too can the unity of society.

objection

Some orthodox theologians ( Georgi Florowski , Sergei Bulgakow , Wassili Senkowski ) have accused Frank of falling back on a pantheism or monism of being ; the theological concept of creation thereby loses its meaning. This allegation includes the rejection of the Cusan idea of ​​the "collapse of opposites" .

literature

Primary literature

• Semen L. Frank: The Inscrutable. Ontological introduction to the philosophy of religion. Edited and introduced by Alexander Haardt. Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg / Munich 1995, ISBN 3-495-47795-0
• Simon L. Frank. Works in eight volumes. Edited by Peter Schulz, Peter Ehlen SJ , Nikolaus Lobkowicz , Leonid Luks . Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg / Munich.
  • Volume 1: The Subject of Knowledge. Basics and limits of conceptual knowledge. With an introduction by the editors and a foreword by Nelly Motrošilova. 2000. ISBN 3-495-47935-X
  • Volume 2: The human soul. An attempt at an introduction to philosophical psychology. With an introduction by Peter Schulz and Stefanie Haas. 2008. ISBN 3-495-47936-8
  • Volume 3: The spiritual foundations of society. Introduction to social philosophy. With an introduction by Peter Ehlen. 2002. ISBN 3-495-47937-6
  • Volume 4: Reality and Man. A metaphysics of being human. With an introduction by Peter Ehlen. 2004. ISBN 3-495-47940-6
  • Volume 5: Light in Darkness. Attempt at Christian ethics and social philosophy. With an introduction by Vladimir Kantor. 2008. ISBN 3-495-47939-2
  • Volume 6: God is with us. Three considerations. With an afterword by Peter Ehlen. 2010. ISBN 3-495-47938-4
  • Volume 7: Beyond Right and Left. Comments on the Russian Revolution and the Moral Crisis in Europe. With an introduction by Leonid Luks. 2012, ISBN 978-3-495-47941-4
  • Volume 8: Living Knowledge. Essays on philosophy. With an introduction by Dennis Stammer. 2013, ISBN 978-3-495-47942-1
• Simon L. Frank: The meaning of life. With an essay on religion and science. Translated and edited by Dietrich Kegler. Academia-Verlag, Sankt Augustin 2009. ISBN 978-3-89665-488-5
• SL Frank (Ed.): A Solovyov Anthology. Westport, Conn .: Greenwood Press 1950/1974.
• S. Frank: The ethics of nihilism. On the characteristic of the moral worldview of the Russian intelligentsia. In: Karl Schlögel (ed.): Vechi - Wegzeichen: To the crisis of the Russian intelligence. Frankfurt am Main 1990, 275-320. ISBN 3-8218-4067-6
• Semen Frank: The Ethic of Nihilism. In: Boris Shargin, Albert Todd (eds.): Landmarks: A Collection of Essays on the Russian Intelligentsia, 1909. Karz Howard, New York 1977, 155-184.
• SL Frank: "I" and "We". To analyze the community. In: The Russian Thought. International journal of Russian philosophy, literary studies and culture. 1 (1929/30), 49-62
• S. Frank: The legend of the Grand Inquisitor. In: highlands. Monthly for all areas of knowledge, literature and art. ed. by Karl Muth 31.1 (1933/34), pp. 56-63.

Secondary literature

• Philip Boobbyer: SL Frank. The life and work of a Russian philosopher (1877-1950). Athens 1995, ISBN 0-8214-1110-1
• Peter Ehlen, Gerd Haeffner, Friedo Ricken: Philosophy of the 20th Century. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 3rd edition 2010, pp. 125-131
• Peter Ehlen SJ: Russian Philosophy of Religion in the 20th Century: Simon L. Frank. The God-human of man. Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-495-48336-7
• Peter Ehlen SJ: The We-Philosophy Simon L. Franks. In: Philosophisches Jahrbuch 104. (1997) 390–405.
• Peter Ehlen SJ: Simon L. Frank's philosophy of religion: "The Unfundamental". In: Theologie und Philosophie 71. (1996), 88–98.
• Peter Ehlen SJ: The rights and freedom of man in the social philosophy of Simon L. Frank. In: Emerich Coreth (Ed.): Talking about God in secular society, FS Konrad Feiereis for the 65th Erfurt Theological Studies 61, Benno, Leipzig 1996, ISBN 3746211344 , 197–206.
• Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, Richard F. Gustafson (Ed.): Russian Religious Thought. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison / London 1996, ISBN 978-0299151348 , therein v. a. Cape. 9-11, 195-248.
• Attila Szombath: The Antinomic Philosophy of the Absolute. Thinking along with SL Frank. Herbert Utz, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-8316-0387-1
• В. Куприянов: "Трансформация философии длительности А. Бергсона в идеал-реализме С.Л. Франка V: The Philosophy of Transformation of Bergson's. In: History of Philosophy , Vol. 21 (2016), pp. 128–135 ( online ).

Web links

• SLFrank in the online Russian encyclopedia Krugosvet (in Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Vasily V. Zen'kovskij: Istorija russkoj filosofii. (Paris 1950), Leningrad ² 1991, II, 2, pp. 158, 178.
2. ↑ See signposts. On the crisis of the Russian intelligentsia. Introduced and translated from Russian by Karl Schlögel. Frankfurt am Main. 1990, p. 320.
3. ↑ Dmitri Čyževs'kyj: Hegel among the Slavs. Darmstadt 21961, p. 358.
4. ↑ SL Frank: Sočinenija (Nepostižimoe). Moscow 1990, p. 184. In the German translation Das Unergründliche , p. 24, the sentence "In a certain sense he is the only teacher of philosophy for me" has been left out.
5. ^ SL Frank: The object of knowledge, p. 218 f.
6. ↑ SL Frank: The object of knowledge. P. 221.
7. ↑ SL Frank: The object of knowledge. P. 450.
8. ^ SL Frank: The unfathomable. P. 334.
9. ^ SL Frank: The unfathomable. P. 196f.
10. ^ SL Frank: The unfathomable. P. 249.
11. ↑ Max Scheler: Essence and Forms of Sympathy. 1923 (Max Scheler: Gesammelte Werke, Volume 7) - The chapter "About the reason for assuming the existence of the foreign self" can already be found in the 1st version of this work. Hall 1913.
12. ^ SL Frank: The unfathomable. P. 267.
13. ^ SL Frank: The unfathomable. P. 269.
14. ^ SL Frank: The unfathomable. P. 272.
15. ↑ SL Frank: The Inscrutable. P. 273.
16. ^ SL Frank: The unfathomable. P. 204.
17. ↑ Cf. Vladimir Solov'ev: The Sense of Love. Hamburg (Meiner) 1985.
18. ^ SL Frank: The unfathomable. P. 249f.
19. ^ SL Frank: The unfathomable. P. 200.
20. ↑ SL Frank: Reality and man. P. 236.
21. ↑ ^{a b c} S. L. Frank: Reality and man. P. 246.
22. ↑ SL Frank: Reality and man. P. 251.
23. ↑ SL Frank: Reality and man. P. 242.
24. ↑ ^{a b} S. L. Frank: Reality and man. P. 253.
25. ↑ René Descartes: Meditationes de prima philosophia (3rd meditation). Lat.- German, ed. v. Lüder given. Meiner, Hamburg 1992 ISBN 3-7873-1080-0 .
26. ↑ SL Frank: Reality and man. P. 250 f.
27. ↑ Cf. Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason. B 620-630.
28. ↑ Frank mentions the word of Augustine several times: "noverim me, noverim te" ("if I had known myself, I would have known you"), Soliloquia II, 1.
29. ↑ Nicolaus Cusanus: Idiota de sapientia (The layman on wisdom). I, 7.
30. ^ SL Frank: The unfathomable. Pp. 414 and 410.
31. ↑ SL Frank: Reality and man. P. 125.
32. ↑ SL Frank: Sočinenija (Nepostižimoe). Moscow 1990, p. 506. In the German translation Das Unergründliche. P. 410, the second part of the sentence has been left out.
33. ↑ For Franks Ontophänomenologie of suffering and the mystery of evil, see: P. Ehlen: Russian religious philosophy in the 20th century: Simon L. Frank. The God-human of man. Freiburg 2009, pp. 277-288, 289-300.
34. ^ SL Frank: The spiritual foundations of society. Introduction to social philosophy. P. 229.
35. ^ SL Frank: The spiritual foundations of society. Introduction to social philosophy. P. 233.
36. ^ SL Frank: The spiritual foundations of society. Introduction to social philosophy. P. 221.
37. ^ SL Frank: The spiritual foundations of society. Introduction to social philosophy. P. 222.
38. ↑ SL Frank: Religioznyja osvnovy obščestvennosti. In: Put '. September 1925, No. 1, p. 19.
39. ^ SL Frank: The spiritual foundations of society. Introduction to social philosophy. P. 232.
40. ^ SL Frank: The spiritual foundations of society. Introduction to social philosophy. P. 244.