On September 12, 1949, the liberal politician Theodor Heuss, party leader of the „Freie Demokratische Partei“ (FDP), was elected by the Bundesversammlung (Federal Convention) as the first Bundespräsident, i. e. head of state, of the newly founded Bundesrepublik Deutschland. As a young man Heuss had been a close friend and political ally of Friedrich Naumann, the protestant pastor and left wing liberal politician, supported by Ernst Troeltsch. Heuss then working as a political journalist for liberal newspapers (...) and Naumann’s weekly journal Die Hilfe, was an admirer of Troeltsch, and since 1910 they often met in Heidelberg, at Villa Fallenstein, Ziegelhäuser Landstraße 17, where Max and Marianne Weber as well als the Troeltschs lived; Heuss frequently visited Max Weber’s Sunday jour fixe. When in 1915 Troeltsch became a professor at the Philosophical Faculty of Berlin University Heuss regularly kept in contact with him especially through Hans Delbrück’s „Mittwochabend“, a weekly gathering of liberal intellectuals, professors, politicians and journalists discussing political reforms and the ongoing war. Both Troeltsch and Heuss, 19 years younger, demanded the democratization of the Deutsches Reich, and after the end of the war and the revolution of 1918/19 they became members of the newly founded left wing liberal party „Deutsche Demokratische Partei“ (DDP). After Troeltsch’s sudden death on February 1st, 1923, Heuss wrote an obituary, and, together with his wife Elly Heuss-Knapp, attended the funeral service conducted by Adolf von Harnack. Heuss was a member of the „Demokratischer Klub Berlin“, founded in 1919 by liberal politicians, bankers and academics to regularly discuss the political situation of the new democratic state, the Weimar Republic. Unknown until now, seven weeks after Troeltsch’s death the „Demokratische Klub“ invited its members (the club only had male mebers!) to a memorial act for Troeltsch. On this occasion Heuss delivered a speech „Zu Ernst Troeltschs Gedächtnis“ („To the Memory of Ernst Troeltsch“) which is published here for the first time. (shrink)

Der Briefwechsel zwischen Lotte Tobisch, Mitglied des Wiener Burgtheaters, und Theodor W. Adorno begann im September 1962 und setzte sich bis zum Tod des Philosophen 1969 fort; er umfaßt etwa 280 Briefe, Ansichtskarten und Telegramme. Der Briefwechsel ist das Dokument einer Freundschaft über die Generationen, über die sozialen Positionen, die Formen der Intellektualität und die Temperamente hinweg. Lotte Tobisch von Labotýn, ein Vierteljahrhundert jünger als der Philosoph, hatte den sozialen Hintergrund, den er schätzte: >nicht bürgerlich, vielmehr adelig, nonkonform, mit (...) der Gesellschaft auf ironische Distanz vertraut. Durch ihren verstorbenen langjährigen Gefährten, den um fast 40 Jahre älteren Chefdramaturgen des Burgtheaters Erhard Buschbeck, Trakls Jugendfreund, war sie zugleich indirekte Zeitgenossin des Wien nach der Jahrhundertwende - jener heroischen Zeit der großen musikalischen Revolution durch Schönberg und seine Schule, der sich Adorno als Komponist und Philosoph verbunden fühlte. Lotte Tobisch, bekannt als Schauspielerin und durch ihre literaturkritischen Beiträge, war auch mit Günter Anders, Gershom Scholem, Fritz Hochwälder, Carl Zuckmayer, Ludwig von Ficker, Elias Canetti, Richard Neutra und anderen Größen des geistigen Lebens verbunden und befreundet. Sie erschloß für Adorno eine Beziehung nicht nur zum zeitgenössischen Wien, sondern zugleich, und emotional bedeutsamer, zum Wien seiner Jugend und seiner musikalischen Lehrzeit. (shrink)

"The terrain of the self is vast," notes renowned psychiatrist Arnold Ludwig, "parts known, parts impenetrable, and parts unexplored." How do we construct a sense of ourselves? How can a self reflect upon itself or deceive itself? Is all personal identity plagiarized? Is a "true" or "authentic" self even possible? Is it possible to really "know" someone else or ourselves for that matter? To answer these and many other intriguing questions, Ludwig takes a unique approach, examining the art (...) of biography for the insights it can give us into the construction of the self. In The Biography of the Self, he takes readers on an intriguing tour of the biographer's art, revealing how much this can tell us about ourselves. Drawing on in-depth interviews with twenty-one of our most esteemed biographers--writers such as David McCullough (the biographer of Truman and Theodore Roosevelt), Wallace Stegner (John Wesley Powell), Gloria Steinem (Marilyn Monroe), Leon Edel (Henry James), Peter Gay (Freud), Diane Middlebrook (Anne Sexton), and many others--and interweaving fascinating observations of his own practice, Ludwig takes us through the labyrinthine hall of mirrors we term the self and shows us how malleable, elusive, and paradoxical it can be. In chapters such as "The 'Real' Marilyn," "Psychoanalyzing Freud," "How Did Hitler Live With Himself?" and "What Madness Reveals," we sit in as biographers talk not only about their work, but about their subjects (Allan Bullock on Hitler and Stalin, for instance, or Arnold Rampersad on Langston Hughes) and how their subjects saw themselves. Ludwig describes how biographers must impose a narrative structure on their subjects' lives to create order out of a mass of often contradictory views, baffling behavior, and inconsistent self-representations, much in the same way that psychotherapists try to foster self-awareness and understanding in their patients. In his concluding chapter, Ludwig introduces a new concept--biographical freedom--which brilliantly reconciles free will and determinism. We can, he asserts, become biographers of ourselves. Like the biographer, we are constrained to consider all the available facts of our lives--the personal experiences, cultural forces, and predetermined scripts that shape us--but we remain free to interpret, emphasize, and fashion these givens into a cohesive and meaningful narrative of our own choosing. This thought-provoking volume offers not only a wide-ranging and informative commentary on the biographer's art, but also a highly original theory of the self. Readers interested in biography and in the lives of others will come away with a new sense of what it means to be a "person" and, in particular, who they are. (shrink)

This addition to the Midwest Studies in Philosophy series comprises the most recent volume on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein to date. Here 16 philosophers explore both the challenges Wittgenstein presented to philosophy as well as the responses to those challenges from such noted thinkers as Kripke. By addressing various questions raised by Wittgenstein's work, these original essays aim to illuminate in one way or another the impact Wittgenstein's legacy has had on 20th-century philosophy.

Lebensgang Laus -- Laus Meditationes von 1717 und 1719 -- Rezeption der Meditationes bei Johann Georg Eisen und Ludwig Wilhelm Koenemann -- Texte der Meditationes -- Meditationes philosophicae de Deo, mundo, homine -- Philosophische Betrachtungen von Gott, der Welt und dem Menschen -- Meditationes, Theses, Dubia philosophico-theologica -- Philosophisch-theologische Betrachtungen, Lehrsätze und Bedenken -- Exkurs: Lau als Kameralist -- Entwurff einer wohl-eingerichteten Policey, Frankfurt am Main 1717 (Auszug).

Resumo : O objetivo do texto é abordar a temática dos meios de comunicação como instrumento de poder à luz da indústria cultural conforme Theodor Adorno. Busca-se responder à seguinte questão: como a indústria cultural reproduz as relações de poder no capitalismo contemporâneo? Para a consecução de tal objetivo, o texto apresenta as seguintes etapas: uma breve contextualização histórica e teórica da Teoria Crítica - vertente filosófica à qual Adorno e outros autores se filiaram - a definição da indústria (...) cultural conforme Adorno em seus principais argumentos, os efeitos da indústria cultural e do capitalismo organizado, a postura crítica frente ao contexto referido e a nova postura de Adorno nos anos 50 e 60 frente aos meios de comunicação. A principal tese do artigo leva ao entendimento de que a indústria cultural incorpora toda uma racionalidade de dominação e disciplina da vida social e reprodução da ordem capitalista vigente, acabando com as contradições no âmbito das manifestações artísticas na medida em que somente o lucro é visado. Summary : The aim of this text is discuss communication means as power instrument in the light of culture industry according to Theodor Adorno. There is a main question which the article seeks an answer: how does culture industry reproduce power relations in contemporary capitalism? In order to concretize this aim, this text presents the following parts: a brief historical and theoretical contextualization of Critical Theory - Adorno and other authors' philosophical current - culture industry concept according to Adorno, culture industry and organized capitalism effects, critical position on this context and Adrono's new posture in the fifties and sixties on communication means. The article's main thesis points to evaluation of culture industry1s rationality of domination and discipline of social life and reproducing of actual capitalist order. This leads to the end of contradictions in art, considering that profit is the only aim. Keywords : Culture Industry, Communication, Power. (shrink)

The introduction (pp. 7-29) discusses Nazi denigration of "Jewish philosophy, " from Spinoza to Bergson and Husserl, and the elevation of "German" philosophers, particularly Eckhart and Nietzsche, to the role of forerunners of Nazism. The chapters on the work of the four Jewish philosophers mention briefly their murder by the Nazis (in the case of Benjamin, his death while fleeing the Nazis).

This is a comprehensive biography of Ludwig Prandtl (1875-1953), the father of modern aerodynamics. His name is associated most famously with the boundary layer concept, but also with several other topics in 20th century fluid mechanics, particularly turbulence (Prandtl's mixing length). Among his disciples are pioneers of modern fluid mechanics such as Heinrich Blasius, Theodore von Kármán and Walter Tollmien. Furthermore, Prandtl founded the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA) and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Strömungsforschung in Göttingen, both of them seeds for the (...) growth of fluid mechanics in Germany. Yet Prandtl was also a representative of aeronautical research - from Imperial Germany via the Weimar Republic to the "Third Reich". Although not a party member, he assumed the role of a goodwill ambassador for Nazi Germany. This objective treatment of his career will be of interest to all scientists and historians wanting to learn more about Prandtl's influence and the early development of fluid- and aerodynamics. (shrink)

In this paper the author reconstructs the Klagesian positions that, according to him, have possibly inspired Walter Benjamin in his reflection on “aura”. Ludwig Klages’ thought, in fact, and especially the notion of “Nimbus-Aura”, had an interesting resonance in the work of Walter Benjamin. The author shows that Benjamin has probably shared with Klages the idea that human history is indeed rooted in what we might call “myth”, differently from Theodor Adorno, who intends to criticize Klages’ influence in (...) Benjamin’s notion of “aura”, dialectilizing the mythical “origin” and characterizing it as fiction. In the author’s view, moreover, if in Klages this root receives nourishment from the universal symbolism of matter, that Klages intends as originally “auratic”, in Benjamin this root becomes the starting point through which, by means of artistic reproducibility, the human pattern moves away from the myth. (shrink)

A study of the enormous influence of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche on turn-of-the-century German literature. The aim of this book is to explore "that post-Nietzschean archipelago of German literature which no one mind can hope to map, let alone inhabit" (Michael Hamburger) and to introduce it to the English-speaking reader for the firsttime, in accessible form. The study starts from the assumption that the daring imagery and cosmic sweep of Thus Spake Zarathustra provided the impetus for the creation of (...) visionary epics and cosmological poetic universes. The book is original in that it presents for the first time a selection of writers hitherto regarded as impossible of access and reduces their epic scope to manageable proportions while preserving their essential meaning. Among thewriters treated are Alfred Mombert, Theodor Däubler, Rudolf Pannwitz, Ludwig Derleth, Alfred Schuler, Ludwig Klages, Christian Morgenstern, and the members of the Friedrichshagen Circle. Furness draws on the most recent scholarship and provides a fascinating account of a 'lost generation.' The book will be of interest to Nietzsche scholars, to students of Lebensphilosophie, and to those interested in German literature around the turn of the century. It will be of special interest to those drawn to the creation of myths and to radical religious thought. Raymond Furness is professor and former chair of German at St.Andrews University, Scotland. He has published widely on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German literature. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein/ Karl R. Popper/ Claude Levi-Strauss/ Martin Heidegger/ Karl Jaspers/ Hannah Arendt/ Ernst Bloch/ Max Horkheimer/ Theodor W. Adorno.

The Ukrainian translation of the work of the German neo-Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno "Education after Auschwitz" is dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the liberation of prisoners of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. In this work, which Theodor Adorno read as a report on Hesse Radio on April 18, 1966, the previous theme of special importance – the cultivation of a new, anti-ideological education in post-totalitarian society as a means of humanistic educational influence on this society – was (...) continued. Adorno suggested that his listeners see as a humanistic need for a post-totalitarian society to spread in its cultural space through the education the each person's understanding of own guilt for the Auschwitz tragedy. According to the philosopher, in this way, it is possible to restore the civilization of the coexistence of man and society, and it will make it impossible to repeat the horrors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Another factor that should prevent the return of Auschwitz crimes, Adorno called the presence of knowledge about the genesis of an authoritarian character, which is the socio-psychological cause of the suffering of innocent people. Having considered the socio-cultural and anthropological factors of the emergence of an authoritarian character, Adorno identified the undoubted psychological dependence of the bearers of a manipulative character on the authoritarian government. The origins of the authoritarian government German philosopher found in the current state of European culture as one that has lost the spiritual energy needed for its own transformation. In accordance with his basic philosophical and educational beliefs, Adorno postulated the new education as an anti-ideological enlightenment, as knowledge that educates primarily politically aware young citizens, as an effective means of preventing the return of authoritarian government and, consequently, the repetition of Auschwitz. (shrink)

In their work The German Ideology, the founders of Marxism assert that the prerequisite of post-capitalist (defined by them as communist) society is the universal development of human abilities and all social relations. But then on the same page, contrary to this statement, it is alleged that the abolition of private property is not only highly topical but it is also an imperative history-making task. In Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels explain that economic crises recurrently shaking capitalist (...) society expose an apparent contradiction between the productive forces and the capitalist relations of production – therefore, these relations must be eliminated for the preservation of society. Nonetheless, the same treatise affirms that the bourgeoisie cannot exist without revolutionizing not only the productive forces but also the relations of production. But in this case it stands to reason to recognize that there is no conflict between productive forces and production relations, and, therefore, there is no crisis of the capitalist system, either. Paradoxes in the communist theory of Marxism stem not merely from erroneous conceptions but reveal the fact that Marxism as an ideology comes into conflict with its scientific social theory. Hence, these paradoxes disclose the relative independence of the social theory of Marxism from its ideological postulates. (shrink)

[The bee and the wasp, or the civil and the romantic].