Günter Abel

Günter Abel ( born November 7, 1947 in Homberg ) is a German philosopher and since 1987 Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Technical University of Berlin.

Life

Abel studied philosophy, history, Romance languages ​​and political science at the University of Marburg and the University of Lausanne. After a PhD on the philosophy of the Stoics 1974, Abel habilitated in 1981 with a dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche. Since 1987 he has been Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Technical University of Berlin. 1999 to 2001 he was Vice President of the Technical University of Berlin, from 2002 to 2005 he was president of the German Society for Philosophy ( DGPhil ). Since 2008 he is member of the board of the worldwide umbrella organization of national philosophy companies FISP (Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie ), since the end of 2010, he is member of the Institut International de Philosophie. Since 2011 he holds a visiting professorship at the ETH Zurich in 2013, he was appointed an associate fellow of the Collegium Helveticum ETH Zurich.

Work

Developed by Günter Abel " Common signs and interpretive philosophy " is based on the critical insight that human speech, thought and action, our worldview and self- understanding and the understanding of other individuals are bound by a practice of interpretation and use of signs. All human life full trains, from perception through to reflection and action are thus characterized as " interpretive " and " konstruktional " and taking place in character, which means that human experiential reality always and already by description, icon, and interpretation systems dependent on their functions. This is found by Abel, ultimately, the idea of ​​a non- interpreted reality as wrong. Because of this constitutive role of interpretations Abel speaks - following Nelson Goodman's talk of " ways of world production " (ways of world making ) - Interpretation of worlds. Starting from these basic considerations Abel has developed a heuristic three-stage model of the character and interpretation relations, which he brings in various areas and topics of philosophy used. His publications include elaborations of the neck in partly overlapping areas of epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of knowledge and Sciences ( " Knowledge Research " ), philosophy of language, symbol theory, philosophy of perception, ethics, creativity theory, philosophy of art and aesthetics.

Abel is a highly regarded Nietzsche expert who tries to explain elements of Nietzsche's philosophy with the methods of modern analytic philosophy and justify. A particular focus is on the epistemology of Nietzsche, which has some points of contact with Abel's own interpretation of philosophy.