Julius Bahnsen

Julius Friedrich August Bahnsen ( born March 30, 1830 in Tønder, North Schleswig, † December 7, 1881 i in Lauenburg Pomm. ) Was a German philosopher. Bahnsen is considered the founder of characterology as well as a real - dialectical method of philosophical reflection, which he designed in his two-volume " contributions to characterology " ( 1867) and in his following works, among others, his major work, " The contradiction in the knowledge and essence of the world " (1880 /82), further developed.

Biographical data

Born in 1830 in Tønder, Schleswig, as son of the seminar director Christian August Bahnsen began Julius Bahnsen 1847 in Kiel his studies in philosophy and - under Gregory Wilhelm Nitzsch - philology. In Schleswig -Holstein War 1848-1851 he fought in 1849 against the Danes and fled as a result of the disarmament of the Schleswig-Holstein army in 1850 in Baden-Württemberg, Tübingen. There he studied - at the suggestion of Jakob Friedrich Reiff ( "system of volitions ", 1842) - Schopenhauer's philosophy and his doctorate in 1853 at Friedrich Theodor Vischer ( " aesthetics or science of beauty ", 1846/57 ) on a Theme from the aesthetics. It was followed by numerous jobs as a house and secondary school teachers. 1862 Bahnsen joined to a position as a teacher at Progymnasium in Pomeranian Lauenburg, where he lived until his death on December 7, 1881.

Philosophical works

As a student of Schopenhauer Bahnsen dared connect the Hegelian dialectic ( the Bahnsen can apply only in the abstract ) with Schopenhauerschem monism. In this connection, namely, the unreasoning all- one will Schopenhauer as the fundamental nature of the world and that the only thing accepted, but not such that it is the same in many individuals, but so that he is as much as it does the same, their immutable nature, is their immutable will of nature in its character. Schopenhauer's will is thus divided not only in itself but also out into a multiplicity of individual wills.

This characterological aspect of his teaching, which was the starting point for the work of such philosophers as Ludwig Klages, are Bahnsens "Contributions to characterology " (1867 ) and the essays " On the relationship between will and motive " (1870 ) and " mosaics and silhouettes " (1877 ) dedicated. Since the essence of unreason contrary, that of the irrational will subsequent directions of the will consists in particular in the simultaneous existence of each other, it follows that not only the reality of an uninterrupted struggle of real contradictions ( real dialectic ), but also the interior of each individual insoluble dilemma opposite directions of the will ( the will of collision ) expire. Bahnsen negates salvation of countless " Willenshenaden " and posits the permanence of the existence of contradiction as a fundamental nature of the world, which the law of this world is a tragic world order.

The realdialektische side of his teaching has Bahnsen in the treatise " On the Philosophy of History" (1871 ) and in his major work " The contradiction in the knowledge and essence of the world " (1880 /82), the tragic fruit of the same in his Festschrift for Tübingen anniversary " the tragedy as world law and the humor as an aesthetic form of the metaphysical " (1877 ) laid down.