Günther Anders

For the cameraman and cinematographer of the same name, see Günther Anders (cameraman).

Günther Anders (born Günther Siegmund Stern) (Breslau, 12 July 1902 – Vienna, 17 December 1992) was a Jewish philosopher and journalist who developed a philosophical anthropology for the age of technology, focusing on such themes as the effects of mass media on our emotional and ethical existence, the nuclear threat, the Shoah and the question of being a philosopher.

Biography

Günther Anders' grave in Vienna

At the time of his birth his native Breslau had become the 6th largest city in the German Empire, with a Jewish population of about 20,000, 4% of the city's population. He was the son of founders of child psychology Clara and William Stern as well as a cousin of Walter Benjamin. Anders was married three times, to the Jewish-German philosopher and political scientist Hannah Arendt from 1929 to 1937 , to the Jewish-Austrian writer Elisabeth Freundlich 1945–1955, and to Jewish-American pianist Charlotte Lois Zelka in 1957. Charlotte Lois Zelka was originally from Monrovia, California, toured Europe for two decades, and died of lung cancer in 2001 at the age of 71.

In 1923 he obtained a PhD in philosophy, Edmund Husserl being his dissertation advisor. His father was arguably the most significant intellectual influence in his life.

According to Harold Marcuse, Anders (Stern) studied, along with Harold's famous grandfather Herbert Marcuse, with philosopher Martin Heidegger, who was a Nazi Party member at that time. Günther Anders and his wife German Jewish Hannah Arendt, a lover of their then Nazi teacher Martin Heidegger, fled Nazi Germany in 1933, first to France and then to the United States. Hanna and Günther divorced in 1937 however.

Günther Anders returned to Europe in 1950 to live with his second wife Elisabeth Freundlich whom he met in New York, in her native Vienna. His literary executor is former FORVM editor Gerhard Oberschlick.

Work

Günther Anders was an early critic of the role of technology in modern life and in this context was a trenchant critic of the role of television. His essay "The Phantom World of TV," written in the late 1950s, was published in an edition of Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White's influential anthology Mass Culture as "The Phantom World of Television." In it he details how the televisual experience substitutes images for experience, leading people to eschew first-hand experiences in the world and instead become "voyeurs," His dominant metaphor in this essay centers on how television interposes itself between family members "at the dinner table." See "Die Welt als Phantom und Matrize. Philosophische Betrachtungen über Rundfunk und Fernsehen (The World as Phantom and Matrix. Philosophical Observations on Radio and Television) (1956)."

The Outdatedness of Human Beings
His major work, never translated into English, is acknowledged to be Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen'' ("The Outdatedness of Humankind"), which devotes a great deal of attention to the nuclear threat, making him an early critic of this element of human technology as well.

The two volume work is made up of a string of philosophical essays that start with an observation often taken from Anders' own diary entries dating back to his emigration in the U.S. in the 1940s.

To provide an example from the first chapter of volume one: “First Encounter with Promethean Shame – Today’s Prometheus asks: “Who am I anyway?”; 11 March 1942. “Shame about the ‘embarrassingly’ high quality of manufactured goods”. What are we embarrassed about? Anders’ answer to this question is simply “that we were born and not manufactured”.

Open Letter to Klaus Eichmann.
Just as Arendt in her "Eichmann in Jerusalem" elucidates the Banality of Evil by declaring that horrendous crimes can be committed by quite ordinary people, Anders explores the moral and ethical ramifications of the facts brought to light in the Eichmann trial in "We Sons of Eichmann. Open Letter to Klaus Eichmann". He suggested that the appellation "Eichmann" properly designates any person who ignored or failed to learn about, actively participated in or knew about the Nazi's crimes related to the destruction of European Jews. He explained his German speaking audience in Austria and Germany, among them writers finding ways to empathize with their father's generation, that "there was but one viable alternative not only for Eichmann's son Klaus but all "Eichmann sons," namely to repudiate their fathers since mourning them was not an option".

Quotes by and about Anders

"Foreword.""Outdatedness of Human Beings 1", 5th edition
"The three main theses: that we are no match for the perfection of our products; that we produce more than we can visualize and take responsibility for; and that we believe, that, what we can do, are allowed to do, no: should do, no: must do – these three basic theses, in light of the environmental threats emerging over the last quarter century, have become more prevailing and urgent than they were then."

Changing the world
"It does not suffice to change the world. We do that anyway. And to a large extent that happens even without our involvement. In addition we have to interpret this change. Precisely because to change it. That therefore the world does not change without us. And ultimately into a world without us."

from: Introduction. "Outdatedness of Human Beings 2"
This volume is "...a philosophical anthropology in the age of technocracy". With "technocracy" I do not mean the rule of technocrats (as if they were a group of specialists, who dominate today's politics), but the fact, that the world, in which we live and which determines us, is a technological one – which extends so far, that we are not allowed to say, that in our historical situation there is among other things technology, rather do we have to say: within the world's status called "technology" history happens, in other words technology has become the subject of history, in which we are only "co-historical".

Dedication."Outdatedness of Human Beings 1", 5th edition

Exactly half a century ago, in nineteen hundred and six, my father William Stern published, then twenty years younger and generations more confident than his son today, the first volume of his work "Person and Thing". His hope, to rehabilitate the "Person" through his struggle against an impersonal Psychology, he only unwillingly would have seen dashed. His very own kindness and the optimism of the times, to which he belonged, prevented him for many years, to understand that what makes a "Person" a "Thing", is not its scientific treatment; but the actual treatment of one human being by another. When overnight he was dishonored and chased away by the spurners of humanity, he was not spared the grief that comes from a better understanding into a world worse off.

In memory of him, who indelibly implanted the idea of human dignity in his son, these mournful pages on the devastation of human beings were written.

Love Yesterday. Notes on the History of Feelings. 1986.
Without knights no chivalry, without court no courtliness, without salon no charm, without material support no deference will last indefinitely, not even as make-believe. In the same manner what shrinks in a world that cheats us out of leisure and other preconditions of our privacy, are the subtleties of our emotional private lives.

from Jewish Origins. in: Paul van Dijk, Anthropology in the Age of Technology.
"His Jewish self-consciousness reveals itself in the acknowledgment that he is never more ashamed than when meeting a Jew who is ashamed to be a Jew. The Judaism that Anders represents with the fierceness and decisiveness that is so characteristic of him is, however, a modern, secular, and humanistic Judaism."

Works by Günther Anders

• The Outdatedness of Human Beings 1. On the Soul in the Era of the Second Industrial Revolution. 1956
• The Outdatedness of Human Beings 2. On the Destruction of Life in the Era of the Third Industrial Revolution.
• On Heidegger.
• Homeless Sculpture, On Rodin.
• Hiroshima is Everywhere. Diary from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. also The Man on the Bridge. 1951
• Visit to Hades. Auschwitz and Breslau 1966.
• Visit Beautiful Vietnam: ABC of Today's Aggression.
• Thesis on the Legitimacy of Violence as a Form of Self-Defense Against the Nuclear Threat to Humanity.
• My Jewishness. 1978
• Kafka, pro and contra. The Trial Records. 1982
• Heresies. 1996
• Philosophical Notes in Shorthand. 2002
• Little Mary. Bedtime Stories for lovers, philosophers and members of other professional groups. 1993
• Daily Notes: Records 1941–1992. 2006
• The View from the Tower. Tales. 1932
• Cosmological Humoresque. 1978
• The Writing on the Wall. 1967
• Narratives. Gay Philosophy. 1983
• The Molussian Catacomb. 1931
• Man Without World.
• Hunger March.
• The Atomic Threat. Radical Considerations.
• Burning Conscience: The Case of the Hiroshima Pilot Claude Eatherly, told in his Letters to Günther Anders 1961
• Exaggerations Towards Truth. Thoughts and Aphorisms. Somewhat reminiscent of Karl Kraus
• Love Yesterday. Notes on the History of Feelings. 1986.
• Günther Anders answers. Interviews and Explanations. 1987
• View from the Moon. Reflections on Space Flights. 1994
• We Sons of Eichmann. Open Letter to Klaus Eichmann.
• Nuernberg and Vietnam. Synoptical Mosaic.1968
• George Grosz. 1961
• Bert Brecht. Reflections and Memories. 1962
• The Dead. Speech on three world wars. 1966
• On Philosophical Diction and the Problem of Popularization. 1992
• The World as Phantom and Matrix. 1990
• The Final Hours and the End of All Time. Thoughts on the Nuclear Situation. 1972 ["Endzeit und Zeitenende"]

Works About Günther Anders

• Paul van Dijk, Anthropology in the Age of Technology, The Philosophical Contribution of Günther Anders. Value Inquiry Book Series, 103.
• (French) Edouard Jolly, Nihilisme et technique. Etude sur Günther Anders, EuroPhilosophie Editions, coll. "Bibliothèque de philosophie sociale et politique", février 2010.

External links

• Detailed site on Anders by Harold Marcuse, includes extensive bibliography of primary and secondary works