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Lebensphilosophie

Lebensphilosophie (German: [ˈleːbm̩s.filozoˌfiː]; meaning 'philosophy of life') was a dominant philosophical movement of German-speaking countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which had developed out of German Romanticism. Lebensphilosophie emphasised the meaning, value and purpose of life as the foremost focus of philosophy.[1]

Clockwise from top left: Bergson, Dilthey, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

Its central theme was that an understanding of life can only be apprehended by life itself, and from within itself. Drawing on the critiques of epistemology offered by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, notable ideas of the movement have been seen as precursors to both Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggerian existential phenomenology.[1]

Lebensphilosophie criticised both mechanistic and materialist approaches to science and philosophy[1] and as such has also been referred to as the German vitalist movement,[2] though its relationship to biological vitalism is questionable. Vitality in this sense is instead understood as part of a biocentric distinction between life-affirming and life-denying principles.[3]

While often rejected by academic philosophers, it had strong repercussions in the arts.[4]

Overview

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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 Age of Enlightenment, rise of positivism and the theoretical focus prominent in much of post-Kantian philosophy.[1][5][6] As such, Lebensphilosophie is defined as form of irrationalism, as well as a form of Counter-Enlightenment.[7][6]

The first elements of a Lebensphilosophie are found in the context of early German Romanticism which conceived existence as a continuous tension of "the finite towards the infinite", an aspiration that was always disappointed and generated either a withdrawal into oneself and detachment with an attitude of pessimistic renunciation, or on the contrary exaltation of the instinctive spirit or vital impulse of the human being, a struggle for existence or a religious acceptance of the destiny of man entrusted to divine providence.[6]

Wilhelm Dilthey was the first to seek to account for a "pre-theoretical cohesion of living", by taking the phenomenological turn and relying on the historical experience of life, by highlighting relationships specific to life (Lebensbezüge), that Martin Heidegger would later considered both as a fundamental step, but also insufficiently radical.[8]

In a 2010 article, Jean-Claude Gens distinguishes four aspects in Dilthey's vision of the notion of life:[9]

  1. Life is never what it is except for consciousness, life insofar as it is lived. It is nothing of being but purely relative, thought in terms of excitement and mobility. Dilthey is the first to see representation no longer in aptitudes or faculties but in terms of mode of behavior. This vision will considerably influence Martin Heidegger.
  2. Life is characterized by the mobility of its unfolding. Life has the world as its correlate. There is no world except the lived. The texture of the world is that of these meaningful configurations. Dilthey calls this world the "world of the spirit" which therefore has configurations that are always singular and changing over time.[10]
  3. The expression Life translates for us what is best known, most intimate, but also most obscure (abysmal). Life always exceeds what consciousness can grasp, it is an enigma not theoretical, but an enigma that matters for a living person.[11]
  4. These changing configurations characterize "historicity," that is, the creativity of life that unfolds in singular worlds. There is only singularity in the spiritual dimension of the worldliness of human life and not in the unity of a world specific to a single humanity. For Dilthey, conflicts between configurations are less representative of a Darwinian struggle than the expression of the enigmatic character of life.

The Lebensphilosophie movement bore indirect relation to the subjectivist philosophy of vitalism developed by Henri Bergson, which lent importance to immediacy of experience.[12]

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.

The infinite in the finite

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The Lebensphilosophie tries to make sense of an continuous and unresolved clash between "the infinite and the finite", that is shown in the incessant fading of living beings. The questions that the Lebensphilosophie poses find a first answer in the fifteen lectures held in 1827 in Vienna by Friedrich Schlegel who sees the nucleus of divine revelation in the highlighting of the infinite in the finite of man.

Referring to this romantic vision, both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, with completely different results, exalt the active character of life, contrasting it with the staticity of idealistic perfection of rationalism.

Schopenhauer reveals the essential irrationality of living that manifests itself in the will to live (German: Wille zum Leben) , the senseless noumenal essence of everything in the world that has the sole purpose of increasing itself.

Nietzsche conceives life as a continuous growth and overcoming of those values ​​consolidated over time that would hypocritically try to normalize existence in current morality. Life, in Nietzsche's thought, contrary to Darwinism, is never adaptation, conservation, but continuous growth without which the living being dies. The typical attempt of humanity to found its life on certainties, seeking them in religion, science, moral values, causes it to die out, overwhelmed by the proverbial "modern culture".

Reception

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Max Scheler wrote a first overview of the Lebensphilosophie in 1913, in which he pointed out the similarities between Nietzsche, Dilthey and Bergson.[13] An early systematic presentation was formulated by the German psychologist Philipp Lersch [de], who, while primarily studying Bergson, Dilthey and Spengler, saw Georg Simmel and Ludwig Klages as Lebensphilosophie's most important representatives.[14]

Philosopher Fritz Heinemann considered the Lebensphilosophie as an intermediate stage in the transition from the philosophy of spirit to the philosophy of existence.[15] Georg Misch, Dilthey's student and son-in-law, worked out the relationship between the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl and the Lebensphilosophie in 1930.[16]

Before the second world war, Lebensphilosophie drew derision from neo-Kantian and rationalist thinkers, such as Heinrich Rickert[17] and Ernst Cassirer.[18]

Connection to Nazism

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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."

— Richard Wolin[12]

Following the second world war, various studies have found links between Lebensphilosophie and Nazism.[7][19][additional citation(s) needed]

In his 1953 book, The Destruction of Reason, Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács saw that Lebensphilosophie represented irrationalism from the standpoint of the "imperialist bourgeoisie" (i.e. bourgeoisie nationalism of the German Empire). He concluded that it was a ideological forerunner to Nazism, pointing to Oswald Spengler and his work (primarily The Decline of the West) being a key part in “reconstructing [German vitalism] as a philosophy of militant reaction” following the first world war, resulting in a “veritable, direct prelude to fascist philosophy.”[7]

Intellectual historian Carl Müller Frøland concluded that Lebenphilosophie movement experienced an "Völkisch-Ideological Turn", which formed the ideological basis for the Nazism. He saw that the biopolitical vitalism of Lebenphilosophie was easily connected with social Darwinist thought, with an co-current strain of Nietzchean-style vitalism mixed with Völkisch nationalism rising within Imperial Germany. At outbreak of the first world war, these ideas fused into a proverbial "war-worshipping vitalism", which was an progenitor of Nazism.[20]

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.[19]

Frederick C. Beiser, in his book Philosophy of Life: German Lebensphilosophie 1870-1920 found that Nazis had appropriated some of its themes to their ideology. However, Beiser notes that "there is really very little in common" between national socialism and Lebensphilosophie thought.[21]

List of notable theorists

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See also

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People indirectly associated with the Lebensphilosophie movement

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Gaiger, Jason (1998). "Lebensphilosophie". In Craig, Edward (ed.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Routledge.
  2. ^
    • "Ludwig Klages". Encyclopædia Britannica. 19 March 2024. Klages was a leader in the German vitalist movement (1895–1915),
    • "Klages, Ludwig (1872–1956)". Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved September 26, 2020 – via Encyclopedia.com. Klages was the principal representative in psychology of the vitalist movement that swept Germany from 1895 to 1915.
  3. ^
    • Sprott, W. J. H. (1929). "Review: The Science of Character by Ludwig Klages; W. H. Johnson". Mind. New Series. 38 (152). Oxford University Press: 513–520. doi:10.1093/mind/XXXVIII.152.513. JSTOR 2250002.
    • Lebovic, Nitzan (2006). "The Beauty and Terror of Lebensphilosophie: Ludwig Klages, Walter Benjamin, and Alfred Baeumler". South Central Review. 23 (1). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 23–39. doi:10.1353/scr.2006.0009. S2CID 170637814.
  4. ^ Cf. Manos Perrakis (ed.), Life as an Aesthetic Idea of Music. Universal Edition, Vienna/London/New York, NY 2019 (Studien zur Wertungsforschung 61), ISBN 978-3-7024-7621-2.
  5. ^ a b Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger, Open Court, 2013.
  6. ^ a b c Ruggiano, Michele (1981). L'infinito nella sensibilità romantica (in Italian). University of California: G. Ricolo.
  7. ^ a b c Lukács, György (1981) [1953]. "Chapter IV. Vitalism (Lebensphilosophie) in Imperialist Germany". The Destruction of Reason. Humanities Press. ISBN 9780391022478.
  8. ^ Introduction dans Le jeune Heidegger 1909-1926, VRIN, coll. « Problèmes et controverses », 2011v, p. 19
  9. ^ Jean-Claude Gens, L'Herméneutique diltheyenne des mondes de la vie, Revue Philosophie n 108, hiver 2010, p. 67.
  10. ^ Jean-Claude Gens page 68-69.
  11. ^ Jean-Claude Gens p. 69.
  12. ^ a b 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."
  13. ^ Max Scheler: Attempts at a Philosophy of Life, first in: Die weissen Blätter, 1st year, No. III (Nov.) 1913, republished with additions in: Max Scheler: Vom Umsturz der Werte, 1915, republished as 4th edition by Maria Scheler, Francke, Berlin and Munich 1972, 311–339
  14. ^ Philipp Lersch: Contemporary Philosophy of Life, Munich 1932, reprint in: Philipp Lersch: Horizons of Experience. Writings on the Philosophy of Life, edited and introduced by Thomas Rolf, Albunea, Munich 2011, 41–124
  15. ^ Fritz Heinemann: New Paths of Philosophy. Mind, Life, Existence. An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1929, and Fritz Heinemann: VIVO SUM. Fundamental Remarks on the Meaning and Scope of Life Philosophy. In: New Yearbooks for Science and Youth Education, 9 (Issue 2/1933), 113–126
  16. ^ Georg Misch: Philosophy of Life and Phenomenology. A discussion of Dilthey’s movement with Heidegger and Husserl. [1931], 2nd edition. Teubner, Leipzig/ Berlin 1931.
  17. ^ Heinrich Rickert: The Philosophy of Life. Presentation and Critique of the Philosophical Fashions of Our Time [1920], 2nd ed. Mohr, Tübingen 1922
  18. ^ Ernst Cassirer: Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Part III: Phenomenology of Knowledge. (1929), reprint of the 2nd edition 1954, WBG, Darmstadt 1982, p. 46.
  19. ^ a b Nitzan Lebovic, The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of a Nazi Biopolitics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
  20. ^ Frøland, Carl Müller (2020). Understanding Nazi Ideology: The Genesis and Impact of a Political Faith. McFarland, Incorporated. p. 95-96. ISBN 9781476637624.
  21. ^ Beiser, Frederick C. (March 21, 2023). "Introduction". Philosophy of Life: German Lebensphilosophie 1870-1920. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780192899781. Lebensphilosophie. Some of its themes were appropriated by the Nazis, who tried to make them the philosophy of their movement.[...] Yet there is really very little in common between national socialism and Lebensphilosophie. The aggressive hypernationalism, racism, and imperialism characteristic of Nazism have no precedent in Lebenphilosophie.

Further reading

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Academic journals
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