Lebensphilosophie
Lebensphilosophie ("philosophy of life" or life-philosophy in German) is a philosophical school of thought which emphasises the meaning, value and purpose of life as the foremost focus of philosophy.[1]
Overview
Inspired by the critique of rationalism in the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche, Lebensphilosophie emerged in 19th-century Germany as a reaction to the rise of positivism and the theoretical focus prominent in much of post-Kantian philosophy.[1][2]
The Lebensphilosophie movement bore indirect relation to the subjectivist philosophy of vitalism developed by Henri Bergson, which lent importance to immediacy of experience.[3]
Twentieth-century forms of Lebensphilosophie can be identified with a critical stress on norms and conventions. The Israeli-American historian Nitzan Lebovic identified Lebensphilosophie with the tight relation between a "corpus of life-concepts" and what the German education system came to see, during the 1920s, as the proper Lebenskunde, the ‘teaching of life’ or ‘science of life’—a name that seemed to support the broader philosophical outlook long held by most biologists of the time. In his book Lebovic traces the transformation of the post-Nietzschean Lebensphilosophie from the radical aesthetics of the Stefan George Circle to Nazi or "biopolitical" rhetoric and politics.[4]
This philosophy pays special attention to life as a whole, which can only be understood from within. The movement can be regarded as a rejection of Kantian abstract philosophy or scientific reductionism of positivism.
Notable representatives
- Wilhelm Dilthey
- Friedrich Nietzsche (arguably, the first progenitor of Lebensphilosophie)
- Georg Simmel
- Jakob von Uexküll
- Hans Driesch
- Ludwig Klages
- José Ortega y Gasset (Spanish philosopher influenced by Dilthey)
- Hans Jonas
- Ferdinand Fellmann
See also
- Precursors
- German Idealism, the movement that provided the context for Lebensphilosophie[2]
- Philosophers of life not directly associated with the Lebensphilosophie movement
- Henri Bergson, notable for his studies of immediate experience
- Hannah Arendt, notable for her distinction between vita activa and vita contemplativa
- Pierre Hadot, notable for his conception of ancient Greek philosophy as a bios or way of life
- Giorgio Agamben, notable for his zoe–bios distinction
Footnotes
- ^ a b Gaiger, Jason (1998). "Lebensphilosophie". In Craig, Edward (ed.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Routledge.
- ^ a b Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger, Open Court, 2013.
- ^ Wolin, Richard. "Continental philosophy". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved April 24, 2011.
In Germany the corresponding school [to vitalism], known as Lebensphilosophie ("philosophy of life"), began to take on aspects of a political ideology in the years immediately preceding World War I. The work of Hans Driesch and Ludwig Klages, for example, openly condemned the superficial intellectualism of Western civilization. In associating "reason" with the shortcomings of "civilization" and "the West," Lebensphilosophie spurred many German thinkers to reject intellection in favour of the irrational forces of blood and life. In the words of Herbert Schnädelbach, at this point "philosophy of life tendentiously abolished the traditional difference between nature and culture and thus facilitated the success of the general biologism in the theory of culture, which culminated in National Socialist racism."
- ^ Nitzan Lebovic, The Philosophy of Life and Death Ludwig Klages and the Rise of a Nazi Biopolitics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
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