Ernst Kapp

Christian Ernst Kapp (* October 15, 1808 in Ludwigsburg city, Upper Franconia, † January 30, 1896 in Dusseldorf ) was an educator, geographer and philosopher. With his work outlines a philosophy of technology from 1877, he is considered one of the founders of modern philosophy of technology.

Life

Ernst Kapp was born as the last of 12 children in Ludwigsburg city in Upper Franconia. His father, a judicial magistrate, died when the son was six years old. He grew after by relatives and sometimes with strangers, since his mother died early. From 1824 to 1828 Ernst Kapp studied classical philology at the Royal Prussian University of Bonn and was first school teacher in Hamm. In 1830 he received a doctorate in history with the dissertation: De re navali Atheniensium. From 1830 to 1849 Kapp is a teacher of history and geography at the Gymnasium in Minden. Here he excels with different didactic works that require a consideration of the geography under historical and geographical aspects of the story below. "As a result of many years of mature reflection" ( as Viktor Hantzsch in the General German Biography ), these considerations lead eventually to Comparative general geography of 1845.

With this work, Ernst Kapp proves pupil Carl Ritter, the founder of modern scientific geography, as well as Hegel's anthropological and universal historical lectures on the Philosophy of History ( 1832-1845 ). This is where they Kapp specific development thinking is emerging that emphasizes the mutual dependence of the material conditions of the human environment and the mind. This Kapp remains committed to the Hegelian a priori of mind. The book further contains reflections on biogeography, Human Geography or Cultural Geography, which were later elaborated by Friedrich Ratzel, also on the relationship between land, sea, culture and history as it later similar in Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West (1923 ) and Carl Schmitt geopolitical considerations in land and sea ( 1942) can be found.

Kapp has identified three political- geographical culture areas:

• The " potamisch - oriental "
• The " Thalassian -classical "
• And the " oceanic - Germanic ".

As their defining and structuring factor he always sees it to the water.

As an avowed liberal ( The constituirte despotism and constitutional freedom (1849 ) ) looked Kapp, as he appeared to be losing his position, forced in 1849 to emigrate to America. His wife and five children followed him 1850, as his brother Alexander Kapp, a high school teacher in Soest and his nephew Friedrich Kapp, later to emerge as a historian and parliamentarian.

Ernst Kapp " swapped the spring with a spade " (Victor Hantsch ), he and his family founded Sisterdale, Texas Kendall County, which is also referred to as a "Latin Settlement ", and settled there as a cotton farmer. Kapp unfolded next to a number of activities: He was elected President of the "Association of free men ," a free thinker Association, was elected and took part in the surrender of the German- San Antonio newspaper. His opinion for the abolition of slavery in the Civil War aroused in Texas nuisance and forced him to sell the newspaper.

1865 Kapp returned with his family in poor health returned to Germany and settled in Dusseldorf as a Privatdozent down. Here he bought the second revised edition of his comparative general geography (1868 ) and wrote the outlines of a philosophy of technology. For the legislative history of the culture from new perspectives. (1877 ).

On January 30, 1896 Ernst Kapp died in Dusseldorf at the age of 87 years.

The organ projection thesis

The second chapter of the Principles of a philosophy of technology: - " The organ projection " (1877, p 29 ff ) can be found even today in many anthologies of art philosophy and anthropology, although the book itself ( with the exception of a hard to reach photomechanical reproduction of 1978) was never reissued. central thesis of the work is that all technical artifacts were to be understood ultimately as an organ projections. Thus, for example, a hammer to understand ultimately of thumb, a saw represents the incisors, a telescope is unconsciously internal structure of the eye, etc. the development of the book follows a growing complexity of technical equipment, on the then emerging telegraphy, which is understood as a nervous system, to the State as a reflection of the human organism in toto. technological development as an engine cultural development is always a putting forth of something that is already created in the organic intellectual people like to challenge the same moment as their concretion whose mental development and advance it.

The basic lines of a philosophy of technology may represent the first genuinely modern work of art philosophy, because it reverses the hitherto prevailing Cartesian metaphor of the organic as something merely mechanical completely and because it embeds the technical behavior of people in a specifically modern anthropology of the flawed being human how it is to be found first in the writings of Johann Gottfried Herder and later pronounced in Arnold Gehlen.

The thoughtful consideration how different may be their object by extension in space and time, lonely or lost never to infinity, but returns sooner or later on the same train to go back to where they had gone out to the people. With him, their connection remains uninterrupted, and what she finds after all search and discovery, is only the man who owned the most by the word meaning the "Thinker". ( Baselines, p.1)

Publications

• De re navali Atheniensium ( Diss, Bonn, 1830)
• Contribution to the creation of a safe passage of the historic and geographic education with special reference to the lower secondary school level ( Minden, 1831)
• The unity of the historical- geographical school education ( Minden, 1833)
• Guide the first school in the history and geography ( Minden, 1833. Seven editions until 1870)
• Hellas. Historic images for the instruction of youth ( Minden, 1833)
• De incrementis quae ratio docendae in Scholis historiae et geographiae CEPIT ( Minden, 1836)
• Philosophical or comparative general geography as a scientific representation of the potential differences and of human life in their internal connections. ( 2 vols, Braunschweig, 1845)
• The constituirte despotism and constitutional freedom (Hamburg, 1849)
• Comparative general geography in scientific notation. (2nd improved edition, Braunschweig 1868)
• Outline of a philosophy of technology. For the legislative history of the culture from new aspects ( publisher George Westermann, Braunschweig, 1877)
• Outline of a philosophy of technology. For the legislative history of the culture from new perspectives. ( Photomechanical reprint of the edition of 1877, with an introduction by Hans -Martin Sass, np, 1978)