Volker Gerhardt

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Volker Gerhardt, Berlin 2014

Volker Gerhardt (born July 21, 1944 in Guben / Brandenburg ) is a German philosopher.

Gerhardt was Professor of Philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin from 1992 to 2012 , where he continues to teach as a senior professor . His main research interests are in the areas of ethics , political philosophy , aesthetics , metaphysics and theology . His historical works are aimed at comparing modern thinking with antiquity and have primarily to work on Plato , Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche , but also to studies on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , Karl Marx , Karl Jaspers , Eric Voegelin , Hannah Arendt , Carl Schmitt and many others. His systematic investigations focus on the connection between living nature and productive culture in the epistemic , moral , political and aesthetic achievements of man.

Career

After fleeing from Guben, Volker Gerhardt grew up as a half-orphan in Hagen / Westphalia , graduated from high school in Hohenlimburg in 1965 and studied philosophy, sociology, psychology and law in Frankfurt and Münster ; In 1974 he obtained his doctorate in Münster. phil., followed by his habilitation in 1984. In 1968/69 he was a board member of the Association of German Student Associations (VDS). From 1971 he was also deputy chairman of the "University Association for Distance Learning " and in 1975 helped found the Distance University in Hagen .

In 1975 he started as an assistant to Friedrich Kaulbach at the University of Münster / Westphalia. He mentions Helmut Schelsky and Gerold Prauss as other teachers . In 1985 he became professor of philosophy in Münster, in 1986 he held a visiting professorship at the University of Zurich and from 1988 to 1992 headed the institute for philosophy at the German Sport University in Cologne . In 1992 he was appointed to the founding professorship for practical philosophy in Halle, but in October 1992 he accepted the chair for practical philosophy (focus: legal and social philosophy) at the Humboldt University in Berlin. After the Peaceful Revolution he was the first director of the newly founded Institute for Philosophy, where he taught until his retirement in 2012. After a break of one year, he has been teaching again as a senior professor at Humboldt University since the 2015/16 winter semester.

Gerhardt left the church as a young man, but has been a member of the Protestant church again since 2000.

Honors, memberships

In 1998 he became a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences , was its vice-president from 2001 to 2007 with responsibility for research projects and in 2001 took over the management of the central science commission of the German academies with responsibility for the coordination of all research projects; In 2005 and 2009 he was re-elected. He is the chairman of the Nietzsche Commission of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, in which he started the new edition of the Academy Edition of Kant's works in 2001. Since then, he has been the project manager for the project, which should complete the project by 2024. Between 2001 and 2018 he headed the BBAW's Kant commission. He is a member of advisory committees at the Bavarian and Heidelberg Academy and the Leopoldina . From 1998 and 2012 he was a member of the Senate of the German National Foundation .

From 2001 to 2007 he was a member of the National Ethics Council and from 2008 to 2012 in its successor, the German Ethics Council .

Between 1997 and 2002 he was chairman of the commission for the Bioethics funding initiative of the German Research Foundation . From 2002 he was involved in the publication of the Complete Critical Edition of the Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. He has been the editor of the Philosophical Yearbook since 2002 . From 2004 to 2007 he was a member of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's award committee ; In 2005 he headed the core ethics committee at the Senate Department for Education, Youth and Sport of the State of Berlin and was responsible for the framework guidelines for ethics teaching at Berlin schools.

In October 2006 he was appointed to the University Advisory Board of the Evangelical Church in Germany , at the same time became a member of the Chamber of Theology and was appointed to the University Council of the Philipps University of Marburg for five years .

In 2007 he was appointed honorary professor at the University of Wuhan in Hubei , People's Republic of China . In 2008 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Debrecen (Dr. phil. Hc). In 2017 he received an honorary doctorate from the Theological Faculty of the University of Leipzig (Dr. theol. Hc).

From 2005 to 2009 he was in charge of the human project (carried out together with Detlev Ganten and Julian Nida-Rümelin ) , which asks about the consequences of the human genome project for human self-image. This was followed by the federal government-funded program for young people on functions of consciousness . The results are documented in the Human Project series, which has now grown to fifteen volumes .

Since 2010 Volker Gerhardt has been a member of the SPD's Basic Values ​​Commission ; In 2011 and 2012 he was chairman of the council of the Humboldt University in Berlin, of which he continues to be a senior professor after his retirement in autumn 2012. The farewell lecture held in July 2014 on “The Theory of Humanity” addressed the subject of “Self-Determination” (1999), “Individuality” (2000), “Reason and Life” (2002), “Participation” (2007), “Public” (2012) and “Sinn des Sinns” (2014) systematically assessed the path followed and outlined its conclusion. The preliminary result is in the study "Humanity. About the Spirit of Humanity" (2019).

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overview

Anyone who wants to bring Gerhardt's philosophical approach under one title could speak of a rational existentialism that explicitly does not see itself as modern, but as well as Socrates as well as Seneca , Michel de Montaigne , Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Kant, Hegel or Nietzsche justify her.

He himself put his political philosophy in an anthology under the title of existential liberalism . The associated method is that of exemplary thinking , which leads to exemplary ethics in which everyone has to set an example for humanity in his person.

In his criticism of the obsession with modernity of modern thinking, he warns against the historical-philosophical delusion of contemporary philosophy, which has become nothing more important than entering a new age because history makes history responsible for the unsolved problems of the present. In contrast, Gerhardt insists on the factual weight of the classical questions of knowledge and action, emphasizes the importance of nature and life for the self-understanding of the spirit, considers the question of the divine ground of the world and self to be indispensable and demonstrates in his work that Particularly under the conditions of global individualization, systematic thinking is one of the primary tasks of a philosophy that sees itself as science.

In his most recent work, he describes his approach as a humanitarian naturalism that is neither reductionist nor dualistically ending , which takes the logically compelling connection between individuality and universality as the starting point for an empirically applied existential rationalism .

Early works

Gerhardt's first philosophical works between 1974 and 1981 deal with the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant and ask about the connection between individual motives, social impulses and reasonable claims. The dissertation on reason and interest was followed by a research report (written with Friedrich Kaulbach ) on the reception of Kant and an investigation on law and rule , which already deals with the relationship between power and reality.

With the problem of power, Friedrich Nietzsche moved into focus, to whom Gerhardt devoted numerous essays (collected in Pathos and Distance ) and two monographs. In the study Vom Willen zur Macht (The Will to Power ) presented in 1984 (published in 1995) , the problem of power is identified as the central question of Nietzsche, which is closely related to his theory of values ​​and to the questions first asked by Nietzsche about the meaning of life, the meaning of culture, morality and the truth. In the overall presentation published in 1992 and reprinted several times, Nietzsche's thinking is interpreted from the context of his defense against tradition, to which he nevertheless belongs in all of his philosophical oppositions. This is especially true of his relationship with Kant, Plato and Socrates. In a retrospective of the 100th anniversary of his death in 2000, Gerhardt interprets Nietzsche's thinking as a tragic philosophy of existence that does not escape the seduction of the modernity's self-outbidding process. Consequently, Nietzsche's “exalted Renaissanceism ” comes under the headings of sensation and existence . Gerhardt later deepened the criticism contained therein in his analysis of Nietzsche's philosophy of the body: as important as it is to start from the body, the insight into the organization of reason that goes beyond the individual body is crucial. It is not, as Nietzsche suggests, tied to the “string” of the individual body, but enables a social connection through mutual communication and evaluation from a consciousness that encompasses the individual and is ultimately public. The criticism goes a step further when he reproaches Nietzsche that his criticism of truth , which is based on a misunderstanding anyway, demands the suspension of truth from himself as a consequence of the dogmatically asserted amoralism . In doing so, Nietzsche questions the authenticity of his own thinking.

Political theory

In addition to the historical analyzes, which increasingly also included Plato's work, the investigations into the foundations of politics announced in the Münster inaugural lecture on Metaphysics and Politics (1985) and outlined in the Berlin Inaugural Address on Politics and Life (1993) were advanced. In 1995, the interpretation of Kant's work On Eternal Peace appeared , which proves that Kant not only designed a legal and political theory in the narrower sense, but also a conception of politics that encompasses pragmatic, historical and cultural-theoretical questions. According to Kant, politics must be viewed as an "exercising legal theory" that is based on moral and legal principles, but in its concrete implementation remains essentially dependent on the judgment that begins in the situation. At the same time, politics cannot escape the scientific, economic and technical dynamics of human activity and must demonstrate its skill in the readiness for reforms.

Gerhardt founded his theory of politics on this, which was published in 2007 under the programmatic title Participation. The principle of politics appeared and was explained by the collection of essays entitled Existential Liberalism in 2009 . On the way there, four steps of the historical-systematic examination are completed, the basic principles should be clarified and the humanitarian goal of the political should be confirmed:

Self-confidence and individuality

The first step was self-determination . The principle of individuality (1999). The work, which is divided into ten chapters under the headings: self-knowledge , independence, self-rule , self-organization , self-confidence , self -improvement , self -responsibility , self- concept, self-legislation and self-realization offers a foundation of ethics on the foundation of a self-organizing life. It develops the basic principles of a human way of life based on one's own insight in the context of a nature, as the growing part of which humans - as cultural beings - understand themselves. The starting point and goal of human action is the self-experience of the human being as an individual who has to control himself under the conditions of nature that he has found and changed at the same time. Recognition and knowledge are the indispensable and at the same time never sufficient means of individual self-determination, which in all its phases remains dependent on the presence and cooperation of intelligent individuals. Self-determination presupposes the autonomy of the individual who sees himself as reasonable, but cannot do without guidance and help from others. The necessary trust in one's own strength is linked to the awareness of the limitation of one's own abilities. Therefore, there are not only external but also internal barriers to human self-realization. But this does not change the fact that the individual acts on his own grounds for his own reasons. Even if he does not do this in all situations, he still demands it of himself and cannot refuse it to others without coming into contradiction with himself.

Individuality and world

The second step was in the 2000 published Individuality. The element of the world accomplished. If ethics is based on the autonomy of the person and politics has to be oriented towards the maintenance and development of every citizen, then it must be clarified what the individuality on which both cases are based must be clarified. Above all, it is the condition of every person's self-perception. Especially towards his peers, even if he only wants to express a common need, he has to identify himself as a certain living being that is unique with his life story and in his situation. Space and time meet the social distinction of the uniqueness of every human existence, because in this place at this time there can only be one single living being. The individualizing function of space and time is not limited to human existence. For people (understanding themselves as individuals), every object and every event has the character of uniqueness, which is closely linked to the transience of all phenomena. Therefore he has to understand the world as a whole as the totality of individual occurrences, which itself cannot be understood otherwise than individually. Unlike a world of atoms, however, the individual world consisting of discrete individuals cannot be separated from the self-perception of humans as individuals. The thesis of individuality as an “element of the world” must therefore not be understood as a statement about a physical state of affairs, but is an attempt to link the mutual connection of all occurrences understood by humans with their self-concept. It is the expression of a functional metaphysics of the human world, in which the human being is compelled to preserve his socially and politically endangered individuality for reasons of securing the forms of his knowledge and action.

Man and humanity

The third step, which was not originally planned, was made necessary by the discussion conditions at the turn of the century, because the paradigm shift to the life sciences and the advances in biotechnology heightened doubts about the concept of humanity . In man is born. Little Apology of Humanity (2001) shows that the concept of humanity is indispensable for both the theoretical and the practical relationship to man and the world. Human beings are a species connected in common knowledge and action not only because of their natural equipment, which they genetically connect with, but also because of what they make of it through their technical and cultural achievements for their earth-spanning life security. Homo sapiens , who live in self-created cultures , can only survive through the invention and production of technical foodstuffs, which also include legally defined institutions. The moral and legal self-image of the human being, which is indispensable for politics, is thus identified as a basic cultural condition, without which it would not be possible to justify human rights for all individuals. This line of evidence is supplemented in the collection The Inborn Dignity of Man (2004) and expanded in the tenth book of Participation to the thesis of the indispensability of ideas of humanity, objectivity and truth. It only remains to mention that both the Small Apology and the collection of essays on human dignity brought together a large part of the work that the author published on the then current issues of bioethics. His judgment on the beginning or the end of human life, on stem cell research, abortion, genetic engineering and euthanasia is conceptually related to the way people see themselves.

Individuality and reason

The fourth step seemed necessary because doubts persisted as to whether the concept of individual self-determination was still viable. Even today, individuality and autonomy are suspected of being late conceptions of a modern age that has long since decayed. This was countered by the complete account of the life and work of Immanuel Kant, published in 2002. It is important for her to present the starting point of all thinking, taken from tradition and by Kant himself to Socrates and Plato, as the central focus of the Copernican turn . Even the pre-critical Kant, in his demarcation from Descartes and Leibniz, relies on the self-confident ego of one's own insight. When he declares "self-thinking" to be the only procedure and exclusive goal of philosophy, he not only follows Rousseau and Montaigne, but also remains in the Reformation, humanistic and Stoic tradition of "determining man" through his own reason. As Kant says, the “humanity of science” is based on “people's bliss,” in whose openness insights can be communicated. This includes criticism of what people do for people. It can only ever be uttered by individual people. Kant calls criticism the "second eye of human reason's self-knowledge" that science and culture need at all times. If one wants to record a difference between antiquity and modernity, then it lies in the deepening and sharpening of old European and old oriental approaches to the individualization of humans, but not in a renunciation of supposedly substantialist positions of metaphysics . Rather, Kant shows that metaphysics also fulfills a function for human insight and to that extent does not itself describe substances, but functions. The metaphysical criticism that has become commonplace with Nietzsche is thus, at least as far as Kant is concerned, in vain.

The punch line of Gerhardt's interpretation of Kant, entitled Reason and Life , is that the self-determination of the individual, who refers to his own insight in knowing and acting, both as an achievement of self-organizing life and as an act of self-criticality testing reason must be grasped. Self-determination, even if it is the end in itself of people who understand themselves autonomously, is not only an expression of the self-organization of life, but at the same time a moment of a disciplined humanity that develops into culture in the process of civilization for which it is responsible. In order to make it clear that even the cultivated person remains a living being, Gerhardt calls the person striving for morality an "animal that sets an example". The formula complements his translation of the animal rationale as "animal that has its own reasons" and shows that Kant, following the example of Rousseau and in accordance with the oldest ethical teachings as handed down by Confucius and Socrates, is on the way to an exemplary ethics.

Participation as a principle of politics

The outlined considerations led to the theory of participation presented in 2007 , which the author understands as the “principle of politics”. It is based on the principle of self-determination of individual individuals who join together to form an organization that sustains and develops their lives according to the principle of mutual “ co-determination ”. “Participation” is the Latin expression for co-determination in a social whole that is actively wanted by all those involved. The word is the translation in use since the Middle Ages of the tō metechein kriseōs kai archēs of Aristotle, who defines the citizen ( politēs ) as the one who “participates in the court and in the assemblies” (following Plato) . This oldest description of the political rights of man can be regarded as valid without change, because it was founded on the freedom of citizens even in antiquity. Today it has a special weight through the postulate of equality associated with freedom, through the claim to individual protection of life and through the constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights.

The historical continuity, which is not limited to the republican constitution of Rome and the democratic polis of Athens, but includes the already legally constituted empires of the ancient Orient, is an essential element of a political theory that also tries to catch up with human natural history. The cultural, especially the technical, achievements of people play a fundamental role, because even the institution of law that supports politics is of a technical nature. This does not prevent the law from being open to ethical claims, but it does make it easier to understand why politics is subject to such strong pragmatic expectations.

An essential element of the theory of participation is the thesis of the parallelism of person and institution , which mutually challenge each other and, in the course of the evolution of politics, the main achievements of representation , the constitutionalization of law, the separation of powers , the admission of the opposition and human rights on the one hand and the autonomization of the individual on the other. Finally, the internationalization of law, which is essential for the global order of peace, emerges from the dialectic of political institution and moral person. Self-determination as the “principle of individuality” and participatory co-determination as the “principle of politics” are not only systematically but also historically linked.

In the contractual structures of modern contractualism , Gerhardt sees only a didactic aid to make understandable the expectation of justice already contained in the law, which is already based on mutuality. That is why it can be enough for him to define politics as a “struggle for rights”, which of course cannot be waged without the active participation of those affected. Justice can indeed be represented in model constructions and argued in discourses, but it has to be fought for by the disadvantaged in political disputes. Participation also applies to the expansion and safeguarding of political rights. It thus proves to be the reason, the means and the goal of politics.

The process of participation presupposes the self-confidence of the individuals involved, who in the process of legally regulated codetermination formalize the public which is indispensable for any policy. In the works that have been published since 2007, Gerhardt has contradicted the impression that the principle of the public is limited to modern civil society . Rather, it enables the simultaneous emergence of the arts, sciences and democracy in Athens in the 5th century BC and can be traced back to the time of the emergence of law and writing . If at the same time it can be shown that the individualization of people in the early empires on the Nile and the Euphrates also increased noticeably, there is early historical evidence for the systematic connection between individual self-confidence and the public sphere.

Publicity

The 2012 study on the public . The political form of consciousness speaks of the “squaring of politics” through the principles of participation , representation , constitution and publicity . The fourth principle, the public, has a special position because it includes the person and the institution and thus connects the individual with the political organization from within.

The work shows first of all that the public was by no means only created with the printing of books and newspapers ; Nor did modern debates about civil participation in state power be necessary to give it a political character. Rather, the public belongs to the original form of organization of civilized high cultures , is original with the invention of writing and law and has its first bloom in Greece of the classical period. Here it not only favors the autonomization of politics, but is at the same time the decisive condition for the arts and sciences emerging with politics. In this supporting function, the public was not universally recognized by the political theory of modernity, but was nevertheless recognized by many theorists in the succession of Erasmus von Rotterdam , John Milton and Kant to John Dewey , Karl R. Popper , Hannah Arendt and John Rawls discussed fundamentally. In this line of development one also recognizes where the “public sense” sought by recent sociology lies: in enabling a common political will on the basis of free expression of opinion by the individuals involved.

It goes without saying that the public is constantly changing; The “ structural change of the public ” diagnosed by Jürgen Habermas in 1962 is also part of it, although the associated Marxist expectations have not been fulfilled. It is obvious, however, that the electronic media are currently bringing about a fundamental change in the public sphere. With the systematic considerations of the book, an understanding of this change becomes possible, because you already understand the consciousness of the individual as the original form of publicity. Person and institution are two sides of a civilizational context that has been developing and becoming ever denser for centuries. Awareness is an objective form of communication, understanding and reason must be understood as instances of social intercourse and the spirit as an insightful framework of social bodies.

This redefinition of human consciousness takes place within the framework of a fundamental revision of the relationship between nature, technology and culture, on which the author has presented numerous studies, some of which have been published separately.

Rational theology

In an investigation that was undertaken in many attempts, Volker Gerhardt brought the problem of God back to the center of philosophizing. He tries to show that knowledge and belief are not opposites, but challenge each other. He explains why the divine was already seen as indispensable in the early days of ancient philosophizing, not just for cosmic reasons, but also for logical, epistemic and aesthetic reasons. It also makes sense as the organically as well as socially, psychologically, semantically and intellectually well-founded carrier of the whole that humans need in order to be able to feel and think in an identifiable way and to be able to ascribe lasting value to themselves. In this way it is possible to ascribe an intellectual and affective function to the concept of the divine, even under modern conditions . People cannot do without them if they want to have a relationship with themselves and those of their own that is secured by self and world trust.

In this way, the criticism of an anthropomorphic conception of God is turned in a positive light: God is the authority originally related to the person of man, in which the world gains its practical unity and before which a person can give his personal unity a lasting weight . With God it is like the problem of freedom , the existence of which no one can prove, but which everyone must claim. Just as freedom carries the meaning of speech about human action, so the borderline concept of the divine establishes the meaning of speech about existence and the world. So one can define God as the “ground”, as the “horizon of meaning” of the whole - and thus as the “ meaning of the meaning”.

In the treatise published in 2016 under the title “Faith and Knowledge. A necessary connection ”, conclusions for the relationship of faith to science, morality, humanity and culture were drawn from the understanding of faith as an“ attitude to knowledge ”, which are effective independently of religious faith, but existentially deepened with and in it and can be extended to the whole of existence.

humanity

In spring 2019 the book "Humanity. About the Spirit of Humanity" was published. In it, the attempt is made to describe the self with an anthropological as well as cultural-historical approach with a philosophical intention. The aim of the study is to characterize people in terms of their distinguishing achievements without devaluing other living beings. The starting point is a definition of human culture as a "form of nature" that allows people to be understood in their singular technical, artistic and intellectual achievements as part of nature. With the explicit inclusion of classic self-names, humans are described as "homo quaerens", thus as a "questioning" living being that has "problems". It can use them to develop an understanding of its world that challenges it as an individual and as a species - objectively as it were. As an "animal sociale sive rationale" man has the ability to standardize himself and thus to act according to reasons that can be justified both socially and objectively. Under the title "homo sapiens est homo faber" it is shown that manual and technical abilities of the human being cannot be separated from his intellectual and artistic achievements. In the chapter "homo ludens, homo negans et homo creator", the singular connection between play and negation is worked out, which promotes the rule-consciousness of humans and, as paradoxical as it sounds, stimulates them to their unique technical and artistic creativity. Finally, under the title "homo publicus", it is shown that people, in speaking and acting, form a public in which the spirit can develop like an institution and enable people to become culturally and politically effective. In the end, these specific achievements - with reference to Wilhelm von Humboldt - are highlighted in their connection to humanity, which can be understood as the sensual "spirit of humanity".

Public work

In his contributions to the human project , Gerhardt tried to show that the achievements of individual consciousness can only be understood by analogy with processes in public space. Consciousness is composed “sociomorphically”, it has the structure of communication between different individuals who communicate in common relation to facts. Consequently, the origin of the social public is already to be sought in the consciousness of the individual, who in turn needs the challenge of a public in order to be able to express itself in communication and knowledge.

According to this understanding, Volker Gerhardt also created his own public effectiveness. Already when setting up a distance learning course in the Federal Republic, then when re-establishing philosophy at Humboldt University and finally in the twelve years of coordinating the humanities academy projects, it was important to him to do his own scientific work over the organization of teaching, study and research not to be neglected.

Fonts

literature

  • Simon Springmann and Asmus Trautsch (eds.): What is life? Ceremony for Volker Gerhardt on his 65th birthday. Series Experience and Thinking Vol. 98. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2009. ISBN 978-3-428-83155-5
  • Jan-Christoph Heilinger, Colin G. King, Héctor Wittwer (eds.): Individuality and self-determination - Festschrift Volker Gerhardt. Akademie Verlag GmbH, Berlin 2009. ISBN 978-3-050-04575-7
  • Petra Gehring : Praise of non-private reason , in: German Journal for Philosophy, 61 (2013) 2, 313-330.
  • Kristina Kast : Volker Gerhardt: Nietzsche as a waypoint to a living reason, in: Eike Brock, Jutta Georg (Ed.): "- a reader as I deserve him", Nietzsche readings in German philosophy and sociology, Berlin 2019, 243 -258.
  • Johannes Röser : Dare more God in; Christ in der Gegenwart 41/2014 (October 12, 2014), Freiburg, 463.
  • Georg Sans: The sense of sense. Volker Gerhardt asks the divine , in: Voices of Time, issue 1/2015, 51 - 53.
  • Oliver Hidalgo: Review: Public. The political form of consciousness , in: Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 122nd vol., 1st half, 207 - 209 (Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2015)
  • Norbert Krenzlin : Marxism and Aesthetics - Attempt to take stock. Title giving article in: Volker Gerhardt (Ed.): " Marxism - Attempting to Take Stock ." Anthology. Scriptum-Verlag, Magdeburg 2001, pp. 483-508, ISBN 978-3-933046-52-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ V. Gerhardt, Sensation and Existence. Nietzsche after a hundred years, in: Nietzsche studies 29, 2000, 102–135.
  2. ^ V. Gerhardt, The sense of the sense. Experiment about the divine, Munich 2013, October 2.
  3. ↑ Kant, Reflexion 903, Akademie edition Vol. 15, 1, p. 395.
  4. ^ V. Gerhardt, Immanuel Kant. Reason and Life, Stuttgart 2002, 295 ff.
  5. ^ V. Gerhardt, self-determination. The principle of individuality, Stuttgart 1999, 323 ff.
  6. ^ V. Gerhardt, Menschheit in der Person des Menschen, in: Heiner F. Klemme (Hg), Kant and the future of the European Enlightenment, Berlin / New York 2009, 269-291; ders., Ethics in the globalized world. Christian Wolff lecture in 2008 in Marburg.
  7. ↑ Aristotle, Politics, III. Book, 1275a23 / 24. Regarding Plato's share, see: V. Gerhardt, The first doctrine of the constitution. The contribution of the Nomoi to the theory of politics, in: V. Gerhardt / R. Mehring / H. Ottmann / MP Thompson / B. Zehnpfennig (eds.): Yearbook "Political Thinking" Vol. 18, Berlin 2008, 14 - 31.
  8. ↑ Incarnation through technology. On Ernst Cassirer's theory of the mind, in: Birgit Recki (ed.), Philosophy of Culture - Culture of Philosophizing. Ernst Cassirer in the 20th and 21st centuries, Hamburg 2012, 601 - 622; Culture as a form of nature, in: Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte, Vol. 21, 2013, Issue 12, 91-104.
  9. ^ V. Gerhardt, Gott und Grund, in: H. Deuser / D. Korsch (eds.), Systematic Theologie heute. For the self-understanding of a discipline, publications of the Scientific Society for Theology, Volume 23, Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2004, 85-101; ders., God as the meaning of the world, in: Christ in der Gegenwart, March and April 2009.
  10. ^ V. Gerhardt, Homo publicus, in: Detlev Ganten / Volker Gerhardt / Jan-Christoph Heilinger / Julian Nida-Rümelin (eds.): Was ist der Mensch ?, Series Humanprojekt 3, Berlin / New York 2008, 97-102; ders., communication as a function of consciousness. An experimental consideration, in: D. Ganten / V. Gerhardt / J. Nida-Rümelin (Eds.), Functions of Consciousness, Series Human Project 2, Berlin / New York 2008, 103 - 117.
personal data
SURNAME Gerhardt, Volker
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Guben