Odo Marquard

Odo Marquard ( born February 26, 1928 in Stolp, Pomerania ) is a German philosopher. He was professor of philosophy at the Justus -Liebig- University of Giessen and president of the Universal Society for Philosophy in Germany.

Life

Marquard was born the son of a doctorate fisheries biologist Otto Marquard and attended from 1934 to 1945 schools in Kolberg ( Pomerania ), Sonthofen (Allgäu ) and Falkenburg ( Pomerania ). As a member of the Volkssturm in 1945 he became a prisoner of war. He made in 1946 in Treysa (Hessen) graduated from high school. From 1947 to 1954 he studied philosophy, German and Protestant and Catholic theology in Münster and Freiburg, among others in Joachim Ritter and Max Müller. In 1954 he received his doctorate at Müller in Freiburg with the work On the problem of the logic of appearances in connection with Kant.

Between 1955 and 1963, Marquard was a research assistant to Joachim Ritter in Münster, where he in 1963 with the writing On the depotentiation of transcendental philosophy. Some philosophical motives of a newer psychologism in philosophy habilitation. In the secondary literature Marquard is often associated with the " knight school", although these, unlike almost all other knights student, was also influenced by ideas of critical theory and has represented later to some positions this school significantly different theses. In the following two years he taught philosophy as a lecturer in Munster, until he was appointed in 1965 as Professor of Philosophy by casting. 1982-1983 he was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin. He retired in Giessen in 1993.

Marquard was 1985-1987 President of the General Society for Philosophy in Germany. In 1984 he received the Sigmund Freud Prize for scientific prose. In 1992 he was awarded the Erwin Stein Prize. A year after his retirement, he was awarded the honorary doctorate from University of Jena. 1995 he was appointed the German Academy for Language and Literature in Darmstadt for ordinary member. For his life's work 1996, he was awarded the Ernst Robert Curtius Prize for essay writing. For his eloquence in 1998 with the orator Cicero Price 2008 Marquard was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.

He is married to the Romance languages ​​Traute Marquard and has a son.

Thinking

Marquard's writings - mainly shorter essays - are characterized by an equally poignant and humorous as sometimes polemical style for which he coined the term " Transzendentalbelletristik ". Early work is dedicated to the particular historical and natural philosophy of German idealism and the return of idealistic motives in the context of psychoanalysis.

In the course of an increasingly critical examination of the modern philosophy of history, which is interpreted as a theoretical response to the crisis of the formulated by Leibniz Theodizeeprogramms, Marquard passes through the turn to anthropology to a skeptical philosophy of human finitude. At its heart is the finding that the conditional by mortality life shortness of people limited in principle in all efforts to distance themselves to any extent of de facto default and thus contingent orders of life and orientations to them at first skeptical of their legitimacy reviewed and, if necessary, to change. As a decrepit mortal and flawed being man after Marquard remains permanently reliant mainly to build on conventional targets and to compensate for its constitutional shortcomings - an argument that clearly identifies him as conservatives.

On the basis of this anthropological assumptions Marquard formulated his skeptical motivated demand for a "Farewell to the principle " in philosophy, his pluralistic "In Praise of Polytheism " and the separation of powers as well as his philosophical " Apology of chance ". With them he puts himself in line with a contrast to the social criticism of the earlier Frankfurt School and the discourse ethics, which is criticized as a contemporary form of the philosophy of history " Übertribunalisierung " of human life world and thwarted by an ethical " Usualismus ," the face of political utopianism, totalizing critique programs and exaggerated claims of legitimacy makes the anthropologically -related " inevitability of customary practices " and the agreement in principle ability of modern bourgeois world law.

Powerful effect was in particular the application of the compensation idea on the origins and social task of the humanities, with the Marquard anknüpfte in the opening lecture of the Annual Meeting of the West German Rectors' Conference on May 5, 1985 in Bamberg considerations Joachim Ritter. The humanities have the function to compensate for the inevitable damage to human life-world in the wake of the principle affirmed evaluate the process of social modernization:

"For the people: these are their stories. But stories must be told. The do the humanities: they compensate modernization damage by telling them; and the more is more objective, the more - compensatory - must be told: otherwise people die of narrative atrophy. [ ... ] The more modern the modern world becomes, the more unavoidable the human sciences, namely as narrative and science. "

Works (selection)

• On the problem of the logic of appearances in connection with Kant about the possibilities and limits a compromising Genealogy of metaphysics. Diss phil. Freiburg im Breisgau 1954
• Skeptical method in the view of Kant ( Symposium Vol 4) Alber, Freiburg / Munich 1958, 3rd unveränd. Edition 1982, ISBN 3-495-44033- X.
• Difficulties with the philosophy of history. Suhrkamp ( stw 394), Frankfurt am Main 1973, ISBN 3-518-27994-7.
• Farewell to the principal. Reclam (UB 7724 ), Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-15-007724-9.
• Apology of the contingent. Reclam (UB 8351 ), Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-15-008351-6.
• Transcendental idealism, romantic natural philosophy, psychoanalysis ( Habil = 1962). Dinter, Cologne 1987
• Aesthetica and anesthetics. Schöningh, Paderborn, 1989, ISBN 3-7705-3750-5.
• Skepticism and approval. Reclam (UB 9334 ), Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-15-009334-1.
• Blessing in disguise. Fink, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7705-3065-9.
• Instead of philosophy. Reclam (UB 18049 ), Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-15-018049- X.
• Building on our heritage. Reclam ( Reclam series ), Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-050040-0.
• Individual and separation of powers. Reclam (UB 18306 ), Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-15-018306-5.
• Skepticism in the modern age. Reclam (UB 18524 ​​), Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 3-15-018524-6.
• Finiteness of Philosophy. On Aging. Edited by Franz Josef Wetz, (UB 20278 ). Philipp Reclam Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-020278-4.
• Individuals. Lectures on the philosophy of existence. Edited by Franz Josef Wetz, (UB 19086 ) Philipp Reclam Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-019086-9.