scholarly journals "A Star of the First Magnitude within the Philosophical World": Introduction to Life and Work of Gustav Teichmüller

2016 ◽  
pp. 104-128
Author(s):  
Heiner Schwenke

In 1871, the German philosopher Gustav Teichmüller (1832-1888) moved from his Basel chair to the much better paid chair in Tartu, and taught there until his untimely death. Besides philosophy, he had studied various disciplines, including the natural sciences. In the preparation of his own philosophy, he explored the history of philosophy for more than twenty years and made pioneering contributions to the history of concepts. Only by the early-1880s did he begin to elaborate his "new philosophy", an original version of personalism, both anti-idealist and anti-materialist. He did this in three major works (Die wirkliche und die scheinbare Welt 1882, Religionsphilosophie 1886, Neue Grundlegung der Psychologie und Logik, posthumous 1889) which built upon each other. Unwritten remained the keystone of his philosophy, the Philosophie des Christentums, in which Teichmüller wanted to show that the philosophical contents of Christianity were encapsulated by his own personalism. One major objective of his philosophy, as I see it, was regaining reality---in particular the reality of the person---after it had been lost in the wake of the failure of modern representationalism. Notwithstanding its coherentist elements, I see Teichmüller's philosophy as a precursor of direct realism. Although he fell into oblivion soon after, his thoughts were received throughout Europe, notably by Friedrich Nietzsche, Aleksey Kozlov and Nicholas Lossky. His extensive literary remains, which are kept in Basel, remain to be explored.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-25
Author(s):  
Ștefan Bolea

The similitude between anxiety and death is the starting point of Paul Tillich's analysis from The Courage To Be, his famous theological and philosophical reply to Martin Heidegger's Being And Time. Not only Tillich and Heidegger are concerned with the connection between anxiety and death but also other proponents of both existentialism and nihilism like Friedrich Nietzsche, Emil Cioran and Lev Shestov. Tillich observes that "anxiety puts frightening masks" over things and perhaps this definition is its finest contribution to the spectacular phenomenology of anxiety. Moreover, Tillich has some illuminating insights about the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness, which are important for the history of the existential philosophy. It is interesting how the protestant theologian tries to answer to Heidegger: while the German philosopher asserted that we must avoid fear and we have to embrace anxiety as a route to personal authenticity, Tillich notes that we should transform anxiety into fear, because courage is more likely to "abolish" fear.


Author(s):  
Richard Moran

In addition to his contributions to the history of philosophy, Bernard Williams’s later work is concerned with more explicit reflection on the role of history in the constitution of the discipline of philosophy, the fact that, unlike the case of the natural sciences, the great figures of philosophy are part of the contemporary discussion in philosophy. In addition these reflections became increasingly concerned with what is distinctive about history as a form of knowledge, a form of knowledge which does not attract the attention of analytic philosophers. Historical knowledge is at once empirical and evidence-based but also, insofar as it concerns human affairs and institutions, obliged to make sense of and reconstruct the perspective of the practices and participants themselves. Part of the importance of historical understanding for Williams lies in its position as a model for humanistic knowledge that is non-reductionist while also being non-ideal, empirical, and “impure.”


2016 ◽  
pp. 91-103
Author(s):  
Eduard Parhomenko

Der Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit der Transformation der philosophischen Ansichten von Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762--1842), welcher an der Universität Tartu als Professor für theoretische und praktische Philosophie (1802--1838) wirkte. In der Geschichte der Philosophie wurde er vor allem als der Herausgeber von Immanuel Kants Logik-Vorlesungen (1800) bekannt. Jäsches Auseinandersetzungen mit Spinozismus und Pantheismus sind aber ebenso beachtenswert (Der Pantheismus nach seinen verschiedenen Hauptformen I--III, 1826--1832). Im allgemeinen wird Jäsche als ein strenger, eben orthodoxer Anhänger Kants charakterisiert. Dabei wird allerdings der Einfluss der Philosophie Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis auf seinen Kantianismus angesprochen. Der Aufsatz untersucht hauptsächlich den Einfluss der Glaubensphilosophie Jacobis, darunter seiner Kritik des Spinozismus und Pantheismus, auf die Verwandlung der Philosophie Jäsches zum Ende des ersten Jahrzehnts des 19. Jahrhunderts. Die Analyse konzentriert sich auf das Manuskript Liebe und Glaube. Es handelt sich hierbei um ein eigenartiges Denktagebuch, veranlasst durch den frühzeitigen Tod von Jäsches Frau Sally im Februar 1808. Jäsche versucht dort den Tod seiner Frau und die dadurch hervorgerufene seelische und philosophische Krise zu überwinden. Entscheidend ist hierbei, dass Jäsche, beim Versuch den Tod seiner Frau anhand der Philosophie Kants zu durchdenken, scheiterte, da die Philosophie Kants die übernatürliche Erfahrung, der Jäsche unmittelbar nach dem Tod seiner Frau teilhaftig wurde, nicht erklären konnte. Den Ausweg findet Jäsche durch die Glaubensphilosophie Jacobis. Im allgemeinen lässt sich sagen, dass Jäsches philosophische Ansichten im Rahmen der Philosophie Kants blieben, obwohl es im konkreten Falle nicht allein um eine Verschiebung von Akzenten geht, sondern um eine beträchtliche Umdeutung der zentralen Konzepte der Philosophie Kants.   This paper focuses on the transformation of the philosophical views of Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762--1842), professor of theoretical and practical philosophy at Tartu University (1802--1838). In the history of philosophy, Jäsche is known as a compiler and publisher of Immanuel Kant's handbook of lectures on logic (1800). His critique of Spinozism and pantheism is also noteworthy (Der Pantheismus nach seinen verschiedenen Hauptformen I-III, 1826--1832). Jäsche was characterised as a rather strict, even orthodox disciple of Kant's philosophy. However, it was noticed that his Kantianism was influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. This paper mainly examines the meaning of Jacobi's philosophical doctrine of belief or faith (Glaube), including the meaning of the criticism of Spinozism and pantheism during the turn in Jäsche's philosophy at the end of the first decade of the 19th century. The analysis focuses on one of Jäsche's manuscript works, entitled Liebe und Glaube (Love and Faith). This is a peculiar spiritual diary, the writing of which was induced by the death of Jäsche's wife, Sally in February 1808. In his diary Jäsche tries to explicate the tragedy and through it to overcome the spiritual as well as philosophical crisis that assailed him as a consequence of his wife's untimely death. The fact that Kant's philosophy did not help Jäsche cope with his wife's death became decisive, because through Kantianism he was unable to find a philosophical explication of the supernatural experience that he had lived through. Jäsche emerges from the bind thanks to Jacobi's philosophy of belief. Although, broadly speaking, Jäsche remained within in the framework of Kant's philosophy, this was not merely a matter of making small adjustments and shifting emphases, but rather entailed a thorough reconsideration of central notions of Kant's philosophy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 113-121
Author(s):  
Victoria E. Lutsenko

The article deals with some aspects of the philosophical outlook of I. G. Fichte. It was possible to identify key aspects of the philosophical views of the thinker. By analyzing his philosophical positions, the conviction is growing that he was a major and original thinker, who in a new way comprehended important philosophical problems and had a significant impact on subsequent generations of philosophers. As a result, the article allows us to understand the place and significance of the German philosopher in the history of philosophy, his contribution to the development of critical philosophy after Kant.


Author(s):  
O. A. Vlasova

This paper discusses the development of self-consciousness in the history of philosophy of the 20th century compared with the same development in the natural sciences. The author characterizes this stage of philosophical historiography as the “revolution of relativity.” This movement of self-consciousness was apparent in not only the humanities but also the natural sciences at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Awareness of probability is a fundamental achievement of non-classic physics, which has since reversed its paradigm. In contrast to the Newtonian scheme, quantum theory introduces the category of probability and insists that we can talk about certain physical phenomena only in a probabilistic mode and that the method of observation affects the phenomena observed. Consequently, any “object-subject” and “subject-subject” interaction involves the experience of the researcher, which thereby affects the results. The same model of interpretation lies at the basis of the turn toward self-consciousness in the history of philosophy of the 20th century. The classical history of philosophy is built on idealization and gives an objective description of the philosophical process. Following the other sciences, the philosophy of the 20th century understood that historical and philosophical reality largely depends on the historians of philosophy; that such reality is constructed by certain means; that there is a certain kind of historical and philosophical work; and that, with different strategies, methods and approaches, we obtain different results that are complementary to each other. The 20th century was a time of competing interpretations rather than gradually progressing historical and philosophical systems. This stimulated the search for own ideal of objectivity. For philosophical historiography, this is the hermeneutic ideal of the structural analysis of text or architectonic reconstruction. The historicalphilosophical revolution of relativity promotes the development of critical historiography and revises the foundations of its classical tradition.


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Wolf Feuerhahn

Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Isabelle Stengers fought against a state-controlled form of science and saw “nomadic science/concepts” as a way to escape from it. The transnational history of the term milieu marks a good opportunity to contribute to another theory of nomadic vocabularies. Traveling from France to Germany, the word milieu came to be identified as a French theory. Milieu was seen as an expression of determinism, of the connection between the rise of the natural sciences and the rise of socialism, and it deterred the majority of German academics. Umwelt was thus coined as an “antimilieu” expression. This article defends a “transnational historical semantic” against the Koselleckian history of concepts and its a priori distinctions between words and concepts. Instead of taking its nature for granted, a transnational historical semantic investigation should analyze the terminological and national status given to the objects of investigation by the term's users.


Author(s):  
Stephen Gaukroger

The aim of this chapter is to offer insight into what it would mean to bridge the methodological gap between the human and natural sciences, by examining one of the most interesting, yet under-studied, episodes in the history of philosophy and science: Herder’s and Goethe’s “science of describing.” Through the use of various artistic devices, Herder and Goethe developed a methodology that enabled them to better understand natural forms and gain insights into the relations between these forms––thereby paving the way for the study of living forms, i.e., biology. In addition to developing a systematic account of their methodology, the chapter will consider its relevance for contemporary attempts to overcome the gap between the human and natural sciences.


Author(s):  
Michael Lacewing ◽  
Richard G.T. Gipps

This section of the Handbook consists of five chapters that focus on how psychoanalysis intersects with the history of philosophy. Three themes are examined: philosophical anticipations of psychoanalytic ideas; the clarification of psychoanalytic ideas by situating them in their intellectual context; and alternative approaches to psychoanalytic material provided by philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Baruch Spinoza. Also considered in this section is how Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer anticipated aspects of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. The first chapter explores Schopenhauer’s conception of mankind’s motivations and his writings on madness, the second deals with Freud’s thinking on sexuality and the sexual drive, and the third describes an implicit concept of an unconscious first made explicit by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and later deployed to explicate human motivation by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The last two chapters discuss sublimation and the solipsistic aspect of Freud’s systematization.


2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe ◽  
Anita S. Hammer

The history of philosophy is widely considered as the history of exercises in speculation. However, it is also possible to understand philosophy not as the outcome of speculation, but at the attempt by philosophers to explain, make sense of, and ultimately share, their own experiences of a very subtle, powerful and spiritual nature. The growing field of performance philosophy begins to acknowledge the potential of considering philosophy as an expression of immediate experience rather than distant speculation. This acknowledgement can take the shape of employing performance to express philosophy — in more immediately experienced ways than verbal language is ever able to convey. Writing about this non-verbal dimension is difficult, and the result limited by its very nature, but in this article, we discuss the principle, and provide an example in the performance philosophy, captured under the term of body thinking, of German philosopher and dancer Aurelia Baumgartner.


2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe ◽  
Anita S. Hammer

The history of philosophy is widely considered as the history of exercises in speculation. However, it is also possible to understand philosophy not as the outcome of speculation, but at the attempt by philosophers to explain, make sense of, and ultimately share, their own experiences of a very subtle, powerful and spiritual nature. The growing field of performance philosophy begins to acknowledge the potential of considering philosophy as an expression of immediate experience rather than distant speculation. This acknowledgement can take the shape of employing performance to express philosophy — in more immediately experienced ways than verbal language is ever able to convey. Writing about this non-verbal dimension is difficult, and the result limited by its very nature, but in this article, we discuss the principle, and provide an example in the performance philosophy, captured under the term of body thinking, of German philosopher and dancer Aurelia Baumgartner.


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