Thomas M. Seebohm

Thomas M. Seebohm

Thomas M. Seebohm. Signature 1994

Thomas Mulvany Seebohm (born July 7, 1934 in Gleiwitz , Upper Silesia , † August 25, 2014 in Bonn ) was a German philosopher. He taught at the University of Mainz and at the Pennsylvania State University . He was the son of Minister Hans-Christoph Seebohm .

life and work

After graduating from the Hermann-Lietz-Schule / Spiekeroog (1952) and completing an apprenticeship as a carpenter at the District Chamber of Crafts in Bonn, Seebohm studied philosophy , sociology and Slavic studies at the universities of Hamburg , Bonn and Mainz . In 1960 he received his doctorate with his dissertation “The Conditions of Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy ”.

In the following 3 years Seebohm worked, made possible by a grant from the German Research Foundation , on a project of Eastern European research on the development of Russian intellectual history. With his work “Ratio und Charisma. Approaches to the development of a philosophical and scientific understanding of the world in Moscow Russia ”Seebohm completed his habilitation in 1969 after working as a research assistant at the University of Mainz from 1965. In 1969 he received the Venia Legendi for philosophy.

From 1970 to 1972 Seebohm taught as a visiting professor at Pennsylvania State University in the USA. 1973 brief return to Germany at the University of Mainz and visiting professor at the University of Trier . From 1973 to 1984 Seebohm taught as a full professor at Pennsylvania State University in the USA and at the New School for Social Research in New York . He was also a visiting professor at the University of Guelph in Canada, the University of Heidelberg and the University of Riga . He turned down a permanent move to the New School for Social Research and a call to the University of California at La Jolla.

In 1984 he followed the call of the University of Mainz and returned to Germany as a professor of philosophy. He worked as a full professor in the philosophy department and as dean and was first chairman of the Kant Society from 1994 until his retirement in 1999 and co-editor of the Kant studies from 1996 to 2010 .

His research and teaching focused on phenomenology , the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl , epistémology , hermeneutics , German idealism , the history of philosophy in Eastern Europe, analytical philosophy , logic and legal philosophy .

Publications (selection)

• The conditions of the possibility of transcendental philosophy. Bouvier, Bonn 1961.
• On the critique of hermeneutical reason. Bouvier, Bonn 1972.
• Ratio and Charisma: Approaches to the development of a philosophical and scientific understanding of the world in Moscow Russia. Bouvier, Bonn 1977.
• Philosophy of logic: manual philosophy. Alber, Freiburg 1984.
• Elementary formalized logic. Alber, Freiburg 1991.
• Hermeneutics, Method and Methodology. (= Contributions to Phenomenology Vol. 50). Kluwer, Dordrecht 2004.
• History as a Science and the System of the Sciences. Phenomenological Investigations. (= Contributions to Phenomenology Vol. 77). Springer International Publishing, New York, London, Switzerland 2015.

literature

• JJ Kockelman: Professional and biographical Information and critical Bibliography. In: OK Wiegand et al. (Ed.): Phenomenology on Kant, German Idealism, Hermeneutics and Logic: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Thomas Seebohm. (= Contributions to Phenomenology Vol. 39). Kluwer, Dordrecht 2000
• Ballard Prize: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology 50. (2004)
• Ernst Wolfgang Orth: Thomas Mulvany Seebohm. In: Kant studies. 106, 2015, pp. 1–2.