Ernest Gellner

Ernest Gellner ( born December 9, 1925 in Paris, † November 5, 1995 in Prague ) was an anthropologist, sociologist and philosopher.

Life

Ernest Gellner arrived in Paris as the son of Rudolf and Anna Gellner (born Fantl ) a German- Bohemian family of Jewish origin to the world. His father Rudolf Gellner, interested in the sociology and Max Weber, research in Paris on the French political theorist Joseph de Maistre and had worked as a journalist for German -language newspapers before he became a merchant. His uncle was the theater director Julius Gellner. Shortly after Ernest Gellner's birth pursed his family to Prague, where he grew up first. There he attended a just founded school, which combined the English model of the Grammar School with European curricula. In 1938, he fled from the German army to England and fought in World War II on the side of the British Army. Later he became professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, then professor of anthropology ( social anthropology ) at the University of Cambridge. In 1993 he went to Prague at the Central European University.

Work

Ernest Gellner was an important theorist of modern society and its differences from the traditional societies. Michael Lessnoff has called him a " prophet of modernity." His influence on different subjects makes him an unusually eclectic figure of the academic world, with contributions to philosophy, sociology, history and social anthropology. Based on Gellner wrote the British newspaper The Independent in the output of 8 November 1995, mutatis mutandis: " a crusade of a man for the critical rationalism, in defense of the universalism of the Enlightenment, against the ebbing of idealism and relativism ." Would be more accurate to clarify in which sense the atheist secular Gellner used the term idealism. Its not less well-known friend and fellow critical rationalism, the sociologist and philosopher Hans Albert dedicated his book " Critique of Pure hermeneutics, 1994 " with the words "Page IX: ... that he was probably the first critics of the Anglo-Saxon idealism, emerged from the thinking of Ludwig Wittgenstein. "

In Germany Gellner has become known to nationalism, especially by his theories. For Gellner was " nationalism " a political principle, which assumes consistency between policy and national unity. Nationalism emerged after Gellner only in the modern world.

Furthermore, his work, of which only a few works have been translated into German, a significant systematization of the history of ideas. According to Gellner's own statement has made him the work of Karl Popper, his colleague at the London School of Economics and Political Science, affected the most. The second largest influence on his thinking may have had Max Weber. Perry Anderson wrote this, that of all the sociological thinkers in the post- Weber Gellner was the one who " has remained the central intellectual issues of Weber closest ". The sociologist David Glass commented on Gellner, that he was not sure whether the next revolution of links or by operation of law would - at least he was sure of it, that Gellner the first of those shot will be.

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