Wilhelm Kamlah

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Wilhelm Kamlah (born September 3, 1905 in Hohendorf, today's Neugattersleben , † September 24, 1976 in Erlangen ) was a German philosopher with educational effect.

Life

Wilhelm Kamlah grew up in Harsleben near Halberstadt and also attended the local high school. From 1924 to 1930 he studied musicology , history , philosophy and theology in Marburg , Tübingen , Heidelberg and Göttingen ; Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Heidegger were among his teachers . In 1931 he received his doctorate in Göttingen under the historian Percy Ernst Schramm on medieval commentaries on the Revelation of John . In 1932 he became an assistant at the Historical Institute in Göttingen. In 1934 he was banned from working for political reasons ("Jewish Versippung").

In World War II Kamlah was severely wounded. After the end of the war he was able to work again as a private lecturer in philosophy in Göttingen and - supported by Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker - habilitation. From 1951 he taught as an associate professor at the Technical University of Hanover , where he first met the mathematician and logician Paul Lorenzen . In 1954 he was appointed professor of philosophy at the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen, where he worked until 1970 and founded the Erlangen school of methodical constructivism with Paul Lorenzen, who was also appointed there in 1964 .

His professional development turned from theological investigations in the Middle Ages to philosophy, whereby discussions with Arnold Gehlen and Martin Heidegger resulted in a philosophical anthropology . Other areas of work were logic, language and science criticism and the emergence of modern thinking.

In the musical field he was active in the "Sing Movement" and in 1926 founded the Heinrich Schütz Circle. Several new editions of works by Heinrich Schütz emerged from his work , which Kamlah had submitted to Bärenreiter-Verlag since 1928 ( sacred choral music , passions based on Luke and John). In 1933/34 he headed the student choir of Georgia Augusta in Göttingen , in 1946 he founded the academic a cappella choir and finally in 1958 the Collegium cantorum in Erlangen.

In his work Meditatio mortis (1976), Wilhelm Kamlah took a position for suicide (as he said instead of suicide ), which he carried out in the same year. He was buried in the Neustädter Friedhof in Erlangen. His estate is in the Philosophical Archive of the University of Konstanz .

Joseph Ratzinger is one of Kamlah's readers . In his thesis that Christianity is “the synthesis mediated in Jesus Christ between the faith of Israel and the Greek spirit”, Ratzinger refers to Kamlah's text Christianity and Historicity (1951). This text is the newly revised second edition of the post-doctoral thesis Kamlahs Christianity and Self-Assertion , published in 1940 , in which Kamlah sees Christianity and historicity as opposites.

Kamlah's students include philosophers such as Peter Janich , Kuno Lorenz , Jürgen Mittelstraß and Christian Thiel .

Philosophical Anthropology and Ethics

At the center of Kamlah's “Doctrine of Man” is the need of the person. His first anthropological sentence is: We humans are all in need . All our actions are and will remain entangled in our questions and actions in the final analysis related to this our basic need.

According to Kamlah, questions such as the nature and origin of our free will or the relationship between body and soul arise from connections with other prerequisites, for example from the attempt to approach people under the premise of res extensa . He holds against it that one does not get to humans by adding free will to physical objects. Rather, man is always already reached when he thinks about himself; With all reflection we not only start from people, from ourselves, but must also start every methodical thinking in science . It is only from here that one arrives at the objects of physics , namely by subtraction , by disregarding what is specifically human.

Another important term in Kamlah's anthropology is the occurrence in the sense of an unavailability . By this, Kamlah means events to which a person is exposed “without being able to do anything”, as it can be said in everyday language that something happens to you that is not the result or effect of your own actions, i.e. even hits you unprepared .

If you disregard who something happens to, it is common in German to speak of an event . Experiences are always events or happenings: such as earthquakes or rain showers can, but also not, affect people. Other events such as As birth and death, sleep or fainting are for people on the other hand always happenings as generally everything "that one (so) happened."

Events as happenings in terms of their own need and desire on them related so one for oneself whatsoever, Toggle 'or' unpleasant ', come meet or be on the contrary as a hindrance experienced are as expected or even desired accepted or rejected when they don't suit you, don't come right, are a hindrance, even repugnant or disgusting .

Building on these facts and the statement that we humans depend on each other, Kamlah bases his normative considerations on the demand: Note that the other needy people are like yourself, and act accordingly . As a premise, it explains the “ practical basic norm ” of his moral philosophy and the ethics based on it .

Kamlah has a thorough understanding of ethics . He not only regards the question “How should I act?” As an object of ethics, but also the question of being able to live: “How do I live a fulfilled life?” He answers the question of being able to live with a “eudaemonistic Ethics " . In it he starts from the basic experience of letting go . Only those who experience the letting go of their self-inflicted desire and notice that it is precisely this letting go that enables a relaxed and, in this respect, calm life, will come to the basic insight of eudaemonia . This "calmness of the soul" represents an important condition of life - besides the goods of vitality and other goods that should not be dogmatic. In connection with this, Kamlah criticizes the moral rejection and the habitual condemnation of suicide already expressed in the widespread term "suicide" and pleads for the right to determine the time of one's own death in the event of permanent loss of the most important living conditions.

Works

  • 1935: Apocalypse and theology of history. The medieval interpretation of the Apocalypse before Joachim von Fiore. Göttingen, Phil. Dissertation, 1931. Ebering, Berlin 1935 (historical studies; H. 285) Reprint: Vaduz 1965
  • 1940: Christianity and Assertion. Historical and philosophical research on the origin of Christianity and on Augustine's “Citizenship of God”. Königsberg, Phil. Fak., Habilitation thesis, 1940. Limburg ad Lahn, 1940 a. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main; 2., rework. u. additional edition udT
    • Christianity and Historicity. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1951
  • 1949: Man in profanity. Attempt to criticize the profane through hearing reason. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart
  • 1960: Science, Truth, Existence. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart
  • 1963: Plato's self-criticism in the Sophistes. Beck, Munich
  • 1967: together with Paul Lorenzen : Logische Propädeutik. Preschool of Sensible Speaking. Bibliographical Institute, Mannheim; 2. improve u. extended Edition 1973 ( BI-Htb. 227 ), ISBN 3-411-05227-9
  • 1969: utopia, eschatology, historical steleology. Critical studies on the origins and futuristic thinking of the modern age. Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim ( BI-Htb. 461 - contains four individual works, including the important critical-biographical presentation of " Descartes' Descartes legend " on the " dawn of the new science " )
  • 1972: Philosophical Anthropology. Critical language foundation and ethics. Bibliographical Institute, Mannheim; TB edition 1973 ( BI-Htb. 238 )
  • 1975: From language to reason. Philosophy and Science in Modern Profanity. Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim ( compilation of 14 individual works including his famous "Open Letter" to Martin Heidegger from 1954. )
  • 1976: Meditatio mortis. Klett, Stuttgart 1976 2nd edition 1981; also in: Hans Ebeling : Death in the Modern Age. (New Scientific Library, Volume 91) Athenaeum, Königstein 1979; 2nd edition Syndikat, Frankfurt 1984; 3. through Hain, Frankfurt 1992

Individual evidence

  1. ^ J. Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics. Einsiedeln 1987. p. 205.
  2. ↑ Hans Jörg Sandkühler (Ed.), Philosophy in National Socialism. Hamburg 2009. pp. 71-73.
  3. ↑ s. Philosophical anthropology - language-critical foundations and ethics. BI, Mannheim 1972 "First (descriptive) part: Explication of some experiences from everyone " §2, p. 32 and above all §6 Desires and needs, p. 52ff (also in the text and page-identical TB edition as BI-Htb 238 from 1973)
  4. ↑ Philosophical Anthropology, p. 30 in the “First (descriptive) part: Explication of some experiences of everyone ” §1 “The living being that has logos.” (Pp. 27–31)
  5. ↑ and therefore then also sawn hits . - The DWDS states what happened here : "(it happens), happened, happened, something happened to somebody." Something happens to somebody, somebody experiences something mostly unpleasant without being prepared for it. is affected by sth .: Something strange, painful, great joy, honor, grave suffering, misfortune, inhuman treatment happens to somebody; he is wrong w .; ... coll. joking. what happens to you in life !; justice w. let ( judge sb. justly ); s. otherwise Kamlah Philosophical Anthropology §3, p. 34ff: action and experience
  6. ↑ in "Second (normative and eudaemonistic) part: Ethics, Chapter I, §1 The practical basic norm (understanding and insight) " p. 93ff
  7. ↑ in Chapter II. of the 2nd part, in the title of which he describes “Eudaemonistic Ethics” as “ Philosophy as the Art of Living ”
  8. ↑ in a striking parallel to the Third of the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha , the truth of liberation from suffering through the "lifting" of "attachment" in letting go or giving up "desire" or "desire"!

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Kamlah, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH September 3, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Neugattersleben , Salzlandkreis
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1976
Place of death gain