Wolfgang Deppert

Wolfgang Deppert (born August 6, 1938 in Liegnitz ) is a German philosopher and Unitarian .

biography

After an apprenticeship as a locksmith, Deppert attended the State Engineering School in Kiel and became a mechanical engineer in 1962 . In the same year, at his request, the Kiel Ministry of Education granted him the right to study physics at Kiel University , from which he graduated in 1968 with a diploma. He then became an assistant in the philosophy department of the university at Kurt Huebner's chair and received his doctorate in 1975 in theoretical elementary particle physics . After his habilitation in philosophy on the concept of time, he organized the international Hermann Weyl Congress in Kiel in 1985 .

From 1991 to 2004, in addition to his teaching duties at Kiel University, he held a teaching position at the Lübeck University of Music. On the initiative of professors from the University of Leipzig , Deppert taught philosophy and philosophy of science there from the winter semester 1991 to the summer semester 1993. During this time Rudolf Bahro obliged him to give lectures and seminars at his newly founded Institute for Social Ecology at the Humboldt University in Berlin . In 1995 he was appointed adjunct professor at the University of Kiel. In the 1995 summer semester he was a visiting lecturer at the Sociological Institute of the Karl-Franzens-University Graz .

In addition to teaching at the Philosophical Seminar of the University of Kiel, he was appointed a member of the teaching staff of the Graduate School “Integrative Environmental Assessment” of the Ecology Center of the University of Kiel in the summer semester of 1996 and in the winter semester of 1997/98 he was appointed liaison professor of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation there. Deppert set up various interdisciplinary working groups at the University of Kiel, including the working group for interdisciplinary research and teaching, the interdisciplinary research group "The SE problematic" and the Socrates Studies Organization Association, through which the Socrates year 2002 on the occasion of the 2400th anniversary organized by Socrates' death year. Deppert has been retired since 2003. In 2005 he became the founding rector of the Socrates-Universitäts-Verein e. V. elected.

Deppert has been active with the Unitarians for many years . He founded and built up the Unitarian youth group Kieler Sturmvogel in Kiel . He was head of the Spiritual Council of the German Unitarians, founded and built up the regional group of the German Unitarian Relief Organization (HDU) in Kiel and is the community leader of the Unitarians in Kiel.

Deppert has been a member of the FDP since 1977 , first in Kiel, and since 1998 in Hamburg, where he was a member of the state executive. In 2002 he ran for the FDP for the German Bundestag .

Wolfgang Deppert founded the Klingberger Symphoniker symphony orchestra in 1982 and has been its musical director ever since.

In 1988 Wolfgang Deppert married the Kiel editor Ulrike Dotzer . The sons Max Amadeus and Konrad Duwald Deppert emerged from this marriage, both of whom chose the profession of mathematically versed computer scientist.

Wolfgang Deppert was one of the three confidants of the popular initiative “WIR against the spelling reform” in Schleswig-Holstein . This was successful with its referendum and then on September 28, 1998 with its referendum against the spelling reform.

Services

As a philosopher, Deppert worked in the following areas: epistemology - scientific theory of the natural sciences , medicine , economics and law - research into the development of conceptual thinking and individuality awareness among the pre-Socratics up to Socrates - Socrates research - reinterpretation of the understanding of Platonic works - ethics - Philosophy of Religion - Philosophy of Political Liberalism .

Epistemology

Deppert's contributions to epistemology are:

• the theory of the characteristics of concepts : the bilateral, the structuring and the system-forming characteristic,
• the theory of hierarchical and holistic conceptual systems,
• the concept of "mythogenic ideas" as the justification endpoints in which existential and conceptual thinking coincide,
• the “selection principle” and
• the theory of connected experiences,
• Development of the theory of consciousness and forms of consciousness ,
• Presentation and application of the theory of cultural evolution to the justification of the survivability of cultural beings,
• Introduction of the new science of consciousness genetics .

On the feature theory of concepts

Since the attempt to define a concept from a concept leads to an infinite regress, Deppert introduced three characteristics of concepts to identify and distinguish them from other linguistic elements:

The two-sided feature of the terms explains terms to those linguistic elements that, depending on the aspect, represent either something individual or something general.

The structuring feature of the terms has the effect that when terms are applied to areas of existence, these are divided or structured into non-elementary classes.

The system-forming feature of the terms distinguishes terms in that they can be linked to one another to form hierarchical or holistic systems of terms

On the theory of hierarchical and holistic conceptual systems

In contrast to hierarchical conceptual systems, in which circles are strictly forbidden, holistic conceptual systems are determined by the form of mutual meaning dependencies among one another. The meaning of the term "true" cannot be grasped without referring to the term "false" in some way.

In the context of a hierarchical system of terms, knowledge can be understood as the knowledge of a successful attempt to assign something individual to something general ( general and individual ). In this case, the foundation of a hierarchical concept pyramid consists of the undefined basic concepts which, due to their mutual dependence on meaning, form holistic conceptual systems or even turn out to be mythogenic ideas.

The concept of "mythogenic ideas"

Deppert solves the problem that all justifications need justification endpoints through his concept of mythogenic ideas, which can be determined as justification endpoints in which existential and conceptual thinking coincide. In addition, in a mythogenic idea, the individual and the general coincide in one unit of ideas. Mythogenic ideas are therefore not concepts, because they do not represent something individual or general, as is the case with all concepts. They are always both at the same time, just as people in mythical time were unable to distinguish the individual from the general due to their mythical, cyclical awareness of time.

The selection principle

The selection principle states that there must be functionally equivalent terms in a system of terms, but their actual applicability is ruled out by empirical evidence. Deppert speaks here, based on the notations of nuclear physics, of the so-called systematic concept isotopes. These are of great importance in the understanding of Kant: In order to justify the comparative generality of the terms mass and temperature, Kant had to provide a way of thinking for massless and temperatureless bodies. The determination of empirical universality is always only possible through an a priori principle, and that is precisely the principle of selection.

Theory of connected experiences

The experiential awareness of connections is what Deppert describes as connected experiences . By Hermann von Helmholtz shown unconscious inferences go designated by Deppert related experiences over time far ahead, but have to give them a striking resemblance by just require a mysterious effective connection pin end into the human organisms. According to Deppert, the interrelated experiences introduced also have the basic property of positively changing the emotional state. That is why there is an effort to reproduce related experiences. If a contextual experience can be reliably reproduced, then Deppert calls the awareness of the experienced context a knowledge and the ability to reproduce contextual experiences he calls rationality . Since there are different methods for reproducing connected experiences, Deppert differentiates between different types of rationality:

• The scientific rationality,
• artistic and musical rationalities,
• handicraft rationalities,
• human rationality
• different types of athletic rationality etc.

Scientific rationality is particularly characterized by the fact that it allows us to make related experiences - even very complicated ones - reproducible by stringing together the simplest related experiences (the simplest steps of understanding). But it is a fatal mistake to think that all kinds of contextual experiences can be reproduced with the help of scientific rationality. Every rationality has specific methods of gaining knowledge, some of which can only be recognized, understood and thus also practiced through one's own experience or through demonstration.

Philosophy of science

In his post-doctoral thesis on the theory of the concept of time (1984), Deppert developed a whole series of new epistemological concepts:

1. Clarification and tightening of the concept of extensive metric terms
2. Solution of McTaggart's time antinomy
3. Splitting of the concept of time into the epistemological and ontological concept of time and solution of the time flow regress
4. Definition and application of hierarchical and holistic conceptual systems
5. Theory and terminology of PEP classes, PEP systems and system times
6. Theory of system laws and super laws
7. Introduction and presentation of the concept of desynchronization diseases

Ethics and philosophy of religion

In his earliest philosophical work, Deppert began to develop a new concept of ethics , which he describes as individualistic ethics and which is characterized by the fact that it consists only of demands that an individual who accepts certain presuppositions for himself, for reasons of creates its own meaning in itself. In the meantime, this has turned into sophisticated economic and corporate ethics .

Fonts (selection)

• On the theory of the concept of time . Kiel 1983.
• Hermann Weyl, life and work. Exhibition in Elmshorn Town Hall from November 9th to December 8th 1985. Lecture on the occasion of the exhibition opening on November 9th 1985 . Elmshorn 1985.
• Exact sciences and their philosophical foundations. Lectures of the International Hermann Weyl Congress, Kiel 1985 (=  exact sciences and their philosophical foundations ). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1988, ISBN 3-8204-9328-X .
• Time. The foundation of the concept of time, its necessary split and the holistic character of its parts . Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-515-05219-4 .
• The Influence of the Unitarians on European-American Intellectual History. Lectures at the First German Scientific Conference on Unitarianism Research from 13.-14. June 1985 in Hamburg . Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1990, ISBN 3-631-41859-0 .
• Religion and Tolerance - the German Unitarians in the public debate; a statement (= Unitarian booklets , booklet 5). Munich 1992.
• Theories of Science in Medicine held a symposium . De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1992, ISBN 3-11-012849-7 .
• Individualistic business ethics. In: W. Deppert, D. Mielke, W. Theobald (Eds.): Mensch und Wirtschaft. Interdisciplinary contributions to economic and corporate ethics . Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-934565-69-7 , pp. 131–196.
• Intrinsic Jobs, or How Applied Philosophy can address the problem of unemployment. In: W. Deppert, D. Mielke and W. Theobald: Mensch und Wirtschaft. Interdisciplinary contributions to economic and corporate ethics. (= Economy with a human face. Volume 1). Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-934565-69-7 , pp. 299–323.
• On the scientific theory of interdisciplinarity. In: W. Deppert, K. Köther, B. Kralemann, C. Lattmann, N. Martens, J. Schaefer (eds.): Self-organized system times. An interdisciplinary discourse on the modeling of living systems based on internal rhythms. (= Fundamental problems of our time. Volume I). Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-935693-73-7 , pp. 273-298.
• On the relationship between religion, metaphysics and science, explains an Kant's path of knowledge and its discovery through a systematically determined concept of religion. In: Wolfgang Deppert, Michael Rahnfeld (Hrsg.): Clarity in Religionsdingen, current contributions to the philosophy of religion. (= Fundamental Problems of Our Time, Volume III). Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2003, ISBN 3-936522-44-8 .
• Individualistic Business Ethics (IWE). Application of individualistic ethics to the field of economics. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden 2014, ISBN 978-3-658-03585-3 .
• Theory of Science , 4 volumes, Volume 1: The systematics of science , ISBN 978-3-658-14023-6 , Volume 2: The becoming of science , ISBN 978-3-658-14042-7 , Volume 3: Critique of normative theories of science , ISBN 978-3-658-15119-5 , Volume 4: The responsibility of science , ISBN 978-3-658-15123-2 , Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2019.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Deppert in the catalog of the German National Library

Footnotes

1. ↑ Hearing of the confidants of the people's initiative "WIR against the spelling reform" on the draft law of the people's initiative before the submission committee of the Schleswig-Holstein Landtag on April 29, 1997 ( memo of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ W. Deppert: Atheistic Religion. In: Glaube und Tat, 27. pp. 89-99 (1976) or W. Deppert: Individualistische Wirtschaftsethik. In: W. Deppert, D. Mielke, W. Theobald (Eds.): Mensch und Wirtschaft. Interdisciplinary contributions to economic and corporate ethics. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-934565-69-7 , pp. 131–196.
3. ↑ Wolfgang Deppert: Relativity and Security. In: Michael Rahnfeld (Ed.): Is there any reliable knowledge? (= Basic problems of our time. Vol. V). Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 3-86583-128-1 , ISSN  1619-3490 , pp. 90-188.
4. ↑ Presentation of the principle of understanding and the theory of connected experiences in: Deppert: Glaube und Tat 27, pp. 89-99 (1976).
5. ^ W. Deppert: Individualist business ethics in: W. Deppert, D. Mielke, W. Theobald: Mensch und Wirtschaft, 1st volume in the series Economy with a human face. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-934565-69-7 , pp. 131–196.
6. ↑ Individualistic Business Ethics (IWE). Application of individualistic ethics to the field of economics. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden 2014, ISBN 978-3-658-03585-3 .