German philosophy

As German philosophy is called the philosophy of the German language area. Due to the split German history, the German philosophy began naturally relatively late to develop a genuinely national profile - significant contributions to European history of traditional German philosophers but at all times.

Only since the 18th century, a typical German approach to the philosophy begins to develop, which includes not only the content and language, but also the habit of philosophers. German philosophy remains for a long time was an academic matter; the public participates in the debates and issues no part.

In her university environment, the German philosophers preferred access to problems that arise from the scientific developments in the disciplines of each era. The philosophical schools and movements adapt to this trend.

The Middle Ages

The conditions for development of the humanities were created with Charlemagne starting in the Carolingian and Ottonian Renaissance by monastery and palace schools to be set up in which the septem artes liberales, the seven liberal arts are taught. This ancient texts are mainly rezipiert that are written exclusively in Latin.

The first German philosophical terminology is created by the Swiss Notker Labeo; but this is not included in the written works (see the 17th century ). This language development is mainly in the context of German mysticism, the main one being Meister Eckhart, is completed. Another representative of the German mystic Hildegard von Bingen.

In the High Middle Ages, Albertus Magnus is the most important representatives of German philosophy, which was held under the pan-European influence of scholasticism.

At the beginning of the 15th century lives Nicholas of Cusa, who determined the overriding priority of philosophy dialectical thinking of the case together of opposites, coincidentia oppositorum. This concern is total contradiction to the prevailing understanding of the logical contradiction thinking as falsehood thinking. He was the first illustrates his method of thinking with mathematical considerations on the concept of infinity: in the infinitely large circumference and precisely coincide and become identical. In infinitesimally small sphere and point coincide. With its philosophy Kues takes many thinkers anticipated, including Copernicus and Kepler, the the next century in his first half strongly specific.

Humanism, Reformation and the Copernican revolution - the 16th century

• Nicolaus Copernicus
• Reformation, Luther
• Humanism from Italy / Renaissance

System philosophy in the 17th century

• Until the 17th century were legal and natural philosophy ( Paracelsus ) is predominant

The first universal thinkers of modern times was Leibniz, who worked in Berlin from the mid-17th century. He was the founder of German rationalism. With his theory of monads, he tried to give an explanation of the world, on the one hand consider the mechanistic worldview of the French philosopher Descartes, on the other hand should also be consistent with the religious ideas of the time. To this end, he designed a rationalistic - idealistic thinking building, in the center of the Monad, vibrant, simple units of which the whole world should be constructed. Since God represents the Urmonade, he has used this function to coordinate all monads in a harmoniously ordered cosmos and thus to generate a so-called pre-established harmony. Therefore, Leibniz thought our world as the best of all possible.

Be the first Christian Thomasius served in his philosophical works of the German language, which had hitherto been always written in Latin. Thomasius it was that held in 1687, the first German -language university lecture.

The German Enlightenment in the 18th century

The German Enlightenment is part of a spiritual movement or flow, the zeitigte effect in the 17th and 18th centuries in many parts of Europe. Its roots can be found mainly in France and England. Significant Recon | representative of the German Enlightenment were Christian Thomasius, Christian Wolff, Moses Mendelssohn, Lessing, Kant, Herder, and many others.

The first German reconnaissance aircraft was Christian Thomasius. He announced the end of the 1680s that he would keep his lectures now in the German language. This also meant a break with the scholastic philosophy school of orthodox theology, as a return to everyday language and everyday problems. He asked questions of practical wisdom in the center of his thinking, and urged his readers and students for the independent thinking. This requirement was fundamentally new. Previously it was in the context of academic philosophy to make reflections on the authority opinions spiritual mentor. Thomasius but not enough so, he demanded rather that the authorities are to question yourself. This kind of philosophical thinking, which involved their own experiences and their own readings of various authors, he called eclecticism. From the eclecticism leads a thread up to Kant's conception of maturity.

Kant's so-called critical philosophy provides four key questions:

• What can I know?
• What should I do?
• What may I hope?

• What is man?

The answers to these questions studied Kant in his three major works, the critics. In each of the reviews the possibilities of knowledge for a particular section of reality are examined and category systems worked out to describe the same. 1781 appears the Critique of Pure Reason, in which he studied mathematics, natural sciences and metaphysics at their options. The Critique of Practical Reason (1788 ) studied ethics, politics and law, while the Critique of Judgment in 1790 with the production of works of art and technical devices and the consequent possible knowledge employed.

Although he has given himself the time probably most detailed answer to his four basic questions that he has not failed in his famous essay answering the question is: What is Enlightenment in 1784 Other food for thought to ask about these issues. The requested therein courage to their own thinking and shaking off all tutelage, he showed himself in a variety of scientific and individual to the issues of the time -oriented essays and articles.

19th century - the machine age

The Kantian philosophy, which finished a whole chapter of philosophy, the dispute between empiricists and rationalists, became the starting point for new debates and systems.

Here, the German idealists relied on the so-called idealistic elaboration of the "thing -in-itself " problem, while the realists were based in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to the realistic variant in the second edition of the same work.

With the German idealism of German philosophy gained worldwide recognition. Its main representatives were Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, in particular Hegel a formative appeared in several directions; both Hegelianism and Marxism are based, among other things on his mind.

• Vormarz

The second half of the 19th century was characterized by the industrialization and brought forth corresponding philosophies: that sentence would probably have found the support of the man who coined the phrase determines the being of consciousness. This set was one of the guiding principles of the philosophy of Karl Marx. The great advances in science and technology also resulted in Marx's thinking to a law of nature applied social theory and a deterministic view of history.

• Turn to empirical knowledge
• Positivism

The second major flow of the 19th century was the life philosophy with its main representatives Dilthey, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

20th century - mystification of reality

The 20th century brought with his new scientific insights in the recovered in recent periods since the secularization of spiritual security again falter. The uncertainty principle of Heisenberg, the relativity theories of Einstein, and the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, to name just three important examples had an impact on the lifestyle of the era and thus in Art ( Abstract Art, Kandinsky), science and philosophy. Such was the beginning of the 20th century neo-Kantianism and phenomenology as the most important new trends in philosophy.

• From the phenomenology of Heidegger and Jaspers, the German philosophers developed the philosophy of existence during this era.
• Starting from the Marxist Ernst Bloch developed his philosophy of hope.

German philosophy after the Second World War

After the Second World War, the German philosophy turned focus on topics from anthropology, sociology, ethics, and philosophy of language.

• Hans Georg Gadamer ( philosophy of language ): Anglo-Saxon model space
• Adorno and the Frankfurt School (critical theory, sociology )
• Anthropology ( Arnold Gehlen )
• ( Re) Europeanisation and internationalization
• Logical- epistemological and methodological orientation of critical rationalism, including KR Popper
• Habermas: discourse ethics
• Practical philosophy