Wolfgang Leidhold

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Wolfgang Leidhold (born December 12, 1950 in Dortmund ) is a German political scientist, philosopher and artist.

Wolfgang Leidhold (2007)

biography

Scientific career

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Zeus Olympic Committee

Leidhold studied social sciences , philosophy and East Asian studies at the Ruhr University in Bochum . His teachers included Norbert Elias , Günter Gawlick , Jürgen Gebhardt, Leo Kofler , Eric Voegelin and Peter Weber-Schäfer . After completing his master's degree with a thesis on René Descartes (unpublished) and studies at Stanford University , CA, he received his doctorate in 1982 with a thesis on 'Ethics and Politics in Francis Hutcheson '.

From 1978 to 1992 he was an assistant at the University of Erlangen . During the 1980s, his research focused on international relations, especially in cooperation with the Science and Politics Foundation (SWP). Numerous research stays in the USA followed, including at Georgetown University and the University of Hawaii, as well as in New Zealand, Australia and the South Pacific.

The habilitation for the subject political science took place in 1989 with a thesis on the topic "Security Policy Problems of the Pacific Island Region" (1991). After teaching at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt , he was appointed to the University of Cologne in 1992 .

In 2001, Leidhold was awarded the Karl Carstens Prize .

Artistic activity

From 1972 to 1975 Leidhold received his artistic training from the painter Hans-Jürgen Schlieker . After group exhibitions in Bochum and moving to the University of Erlangen , he continued his artistic activity in the studio of Eberhard “Pinsl” Königsreuther, among others. In his painting he developed a transhistorical metaphysical realism, which combines the artistic techniques, composition and coloring of the Renaissance with contemporary abstract formulations, taking up in particular classical themes. This includes mythology and religion in East and West as well as the universal symbolism of the knot. His work was inspired by the work of Duccio and Lorenzo Monaco as well as by Michelangelo and Raffael ; In the modern age, alongside Carlo Carrà , Giorgio de Chirico , Max Ernst and Willi Baumeister , Jean Dubuffet and Cy Twombly also played a role, with whose mythological and metaphysical themes he dealt with.

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Concept of experience

The plural concept of experience and the criticism of empiricism play a central role in Leidhold's work. In his work “Politische Philosophie”, Leidhold defines experience as the “conscious reference” of an experienced person to an experienced person and, on this basis, identifies five dimensions of experience: sensory experience, imagination, self-confidence, religious experience and finally “speculative experience” or wealth sanity. Since the structure of experience is not culturally bound but universal, Leidhold's concept of experience forms the basis for intercultural hermeneutics .

Religious experience and absent presence

According to Leidhold, the peculiarity of religious experience lies in the fact that it is not based on an active reference by the experiencer, but instead on the reference by an “absent presence”. As “absent presence”, Leidhold describes the source that refers to humans (“ presence ”) without itself entering the horizon of reference (“absence”). On this basis, Leidhold shows that the various forms of decay of religions are based on the misinterpretation of this source: The negation of the “presence” of the source leads to nihilism , while the negation of the “absence” leads to the immanentization of the divine in the various substitute religions.

Noetic turn

On the basis of the criterion of whether the particular structure of religious experience in a religion becomes transparent or not, Leidhold differentiates between the non-articulated and the articulated type of religious consciousness. He mentions the cosmological myth of the Egyptians or Sumerians as examples of the first type, and the religions that go back to well-known authors such as Zarathustra , Moses , Laozi or Buddha as examples of the second . Leidhold calls the transition from the non-articulated type to the articulated type noetic turn. He documents this phenomenon using a wealth of material from the history of ideas.

Empirical metaphysics

Against the thesis of Wolff and Kant that metaphysics is based on pure reason, Leidhold develops an empirically founded metaphysics. At the same time, he makes a radical departure from the classical philosophy of being in that he does not regard being, but time as the highest concept.

Person and ensemble

In his view of humans, Leidhold differentiates between the established biological foundation (“hominity”) and the open existence as a person (“humanity”). Due to the existence of humans as a person who is always in a communicative context with others, the specifically humane form of coexistence, according to Leidhold, is not the herd, but the "ensemble", i. H. the consciously designed, common order, the earliest type of which already appeared in the Horde and which developed into its paradigmatic form in the Greek polis.

History of experience

In his current project on the history of experience, Leidhold examines both the structure of experience and how it develops from the Paleolithic to the present, as well as its effects on the dynamics of cultures and political orders. His main thesis advocates a paradigm shift: the structure of human experience changes over the course of human history. This thesis goes against the general consensus that the architecture of experience is a universal constant. In contrast, Leidhold identifies eight transformations of the structure of experience (including the discovery of imagination and contemplation, of spiritual experience and the unconscious) that have developed in different regions at different times. He shows how the different mix of experience structures determine both the characteristics of cultures and their respective political conceptions. This "history of experience" includes both an interdisciplinary theory of experience that combines neurological, philosophical-systematic and historical aspects - as well as a detailed intercultural analysis of historical material from the Paleolithic to the present.

other activities

  • 1981 ff: Development of the simulation games SINTAKTIKON and POL & IS
  • 1986–1996: Founding and management of the "Research Group Simulations - FOGS e.V." (together with Claudia Floritz, Jörg Hahn, Thomas Sommer and Wolfgang Zauner)
  • 1997–2001: Initiator and spokesman for the Virtual University Systems - VIRTUS project , funded by the Bertelsmann and Nixdorf foundations, as well as supported by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and private sponsors
  • 1997–2011: Development of the online platform for teaching and academic work ILIAS
  • 1998–2000: Member of the “Expert Group on University Development through New Media” of the Bertelsmann Foundation
  • 1999–2000: Advising the Expert Council for the Evaluation of Universities in North Rhine-Westphalia
  • 2001–2004: Initiator and consortium leader of the nationwide project Political Science Online (PolitikON) in cooperation with the German Association for Political Science
  • 2001–2005: Member of the "New Media and Knowledge Transfer" commission of the German Rectors' Conference
  • 2001–2008: Project management of various projects such as JOIN !, SHARE, OpenDock, BAZAAR, evoLearn, funded by the European Union
  • 2007–2011: Project management and participation in various projects such as biotechnology in changing values (ELSA discourse), Unirep-Online , Demo-Credit (XENOS project series), * funded at federal and state level
  • since 2011: Initiator and head of the cooperation network Global Theory Network
  • since 2013: Project leader of the Modern Art and the Political Discourse project in collaboration with the Boris Lurie Art Foundation, New York

literature

Monographs

  • God's presence, On the logic of religious experience, Darmstadt 2008, ISBN 978-3-534-21046-6
  • Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in two treatises, ed. And introd. by Wolfgang Leidhold, 2nd rev. ed., Indianapolis, In. 2008, ISBN 978-0-86597-774-7
  • Democracy - Chances and Challenges in the 21st Century, Wolfgang Leidhold, André Kaiser (Eds.), Münster (et al.) 2005, ISBN 3-8258-8001-X
  • Political Philosophy, 2. verb. Ed., Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2755-8
  • Crisis under the Southern Cross, The Pacific Island Region and International Security, International Politics and Security, Vol. 27, Baden-Baden 1991, ISBN 3-7890-2298-5
  • Ethics and politics in Francis Hutcheson, Practical Philosophy, Vol. 21, Freiburg 1985, ISBN 3-495-47558-3

Articles and contributions

  • History and Experience, in: S. Fink, R. Rollinger, eds., Oswald Spenglers Kulturmorphologie. A multi-perspective approach, Wiesbaden 2018, pp. 489-521.
  • Architecture as a symbolic form, in: (Im) possible! - Artists as Architects, Herford 2015, pp. 76–77.
  • Paths and aberrations in the transparent society, On the past and present of digital culture, in: Diepolitische Demokratie, Sankt Augustin 2014 (526), ​​pp. 12–18.
  • Towards a History of Experience, the Changing Structure of Conscious Participation, APSA 2012.
  • The Noetic Turn: from Zarathustra to the Wisdom of Salomon, APSA 2011.
  • Democracy, religion, experience. In: Elke-Vera Kotowski , Reinhard Sonnenschmidt (Hrsg.): Boundaries between politics and religion. Munich 2009, pp. 13–32.
  • Everything flows, On the Metaphysics of Becoming, Heraklit versus Parmenides, in: Jörg Martin (Ed.), World in the Flow, Case Studies for the Model of Homeostasis, Stuttgart 2008, pp. 43–56.
  • Truth and Decision, in: Petra Huse, Ingmar Dette (eds.), Adventure of the Spirit - Dimensions of the Political, Festschrift for Walter Rotholz, Baden-Baden 2008, pp. 303–311.
  • Rationality - What Else? in: Marcel van Ackeren , Orrin Finn Summerrell (eds.), The Political Identity of the West, Platonism in the Dialogue of Cultures, Frankfurt am Main (et al.) 2006, pp. 189–199.
  • Reason, experience, religion, comments on John Lockes' Reasonableness of Christianity, in: Lothar Kreimendahl (Ed.), Enlightenment, Interdisciplinary Yearbook for Research into the 18th Century and Its History of Impact, Volume 18, Hamburg 2006, pp. 159–178.
  • Mythos and Logos, in: Marcel van Ackeren, Jörn Müller (Ed.), Understanding Ancient Philosophy, Understanding Ancient Philosophy, Darmstadt 2006, pp. 72–86.
  • Aristotle (384–322 BC), in: Wilhelm Bleek , Hans J. Lietzmann (ed.), Classics of Political Science, From Aristoteles to David Easton, Munich 2005, pp. 19–32.
  • John Balguy, in: Helmut Holzhey, Vilem Mudroch (eds.), Great Britain, North America, the Netherlands, The Philosophy of the 18th Century, Vol. 1, Basel 2004, pp. 142–144.
  • Joseph Butler, in: Helmut Holzhey, Vilem Mudroch (eds.), Great Britain, North America, the Netherlands, The Philosophy of the 18th Century, Vol. 1, Basel 2004, pp. 153–163.
  • Gerschom Carmichael, in: Helmut Holzhey, Vilem Mudroch (eds.), Great Britain, North America, the Netherlands, The Philosophy of the 18th Century, Vol. 1, Basel 2004, pp. 139–142.
  • Francis Hutcheson, in: Helmut Holzhey , Vilem Mudroch (Eds.), Great Britain, North America, The Netherlands, The Philosophy of the 18th Century, Vol. 1, Basel 2004, pp. 125–139.
  • William Leechman, in: Helmut Holzhey, Vilem Mudroch (eds.), Great Britain, North America, the Netherlands, The Philosophy of the 18th Century, Vol. 1, Basel 2004, pp. 150–153.
  • John Taylor, in: Helmut Holzhey, Vilem Mudroch (Eds.), Great Britain, North America, The Netherlands, The Philosophy of the 18th Century, Vol. 1, Basel 2004, pp. 144–146.
  • George Turnbull, in: Helmut Holzhey, Vilem Mudroch (Eds.), Great Britain, North America, The Netherlands, The Philosophy of the 18th Century, Vol. 1, Basel 2004, pp. 146–150.
  • Knowledge society, in: Karl-Rudolf Korte, Werner Weidenfeld (Hrsg.), Germany Trend Book, Facts and Orientations, Opladen 2001, pp. 429–460.
  • The creative project, genealogy and concept, in: Harald Bluhm , Jürgen Gebhardt (eds.), Concepts of Political Action, Creativity - Innovation - Praxes, Baden-Baden 2001, pp. 51–72.
  • About time, in: Andreas Pigulla, Christine Moll-Murata, Iris Hasselberg (eds.), Understanding East Asia, Peter Weber-Schäfer in honor, Festschrift on the occasion of his retirement, Munich 2000, pp. 201–216.
  • Aristotle, Political Science and Practical Philosophy, in: Wolfgang Leidhold (Ed.), Politics and Politeia, Forms and Problems of Political Order, Festgabe für Jürgen Gebhardt for his 65th birthday, Würzburg 2000, pp. 423–444.
  • Francis Hutcheson, in: Lothar Kreimendahl (Ed.), Philosophers of the 18th Century, an Introduction, Darmstadt 2000, pp. 87-103.
  • Tendencies and concepts of a new world order - about principles and components of a global order model, in: Politisches Denk, Jahrbuch 1997, Stuttgart (et al.) 1997, pp. 75-100.
  • The rediscovery of the old world, Machiavelli and the analysis of international relations, in: Der Staat 2 (1992), pp. 187-204.
  • The American party system between erosion and renewal, From the “Crisis of American Parties” to the Service Party, in: Zeitschrift für Politik 37 (1990), pp. 361–374.
  • Eric Voegelin, together with Jürgen Gebhardt, in: Karl Graf Ballestrem u. Henning Ottmann (Ed.), Political Philosophy of the 20th Century, Oldenbourg 1990, pp. 123–145.
  • Historiengenesis - Politogenesis, on the analysis of the emergence, order and self-interpretation of political ensembles, in: Peter Hampe (edit.), Symbols and Order Forms in a Comparison of Civilizations, Scientific Symposium in Memoriam Eric Voegelin, Tutzing 1990, pp. 59–92.

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang Leidhold  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ W. Leidhold: “God's Presence. On the logic of religious experience ”, Darmstadt 2008.
  2. ^ Leidhold, Wolfgang (2018). History and Experience, in: S. Fink, R. Rollinger, eds., Oswald Spenglers Kulturmorphologie, A multi-perspective approach, Wiesbaden: Springer. pp. 489-521. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-658-14041-0_21
personal data
SURNAME Leidhold, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist, philosopher and artist
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Dortmund