Vittorio Hösle

Steven Rendall

Short History of German Philosophy

Nora Kreft

la filosofia spiegata a una ragazzina

Aristotele e il dinosauro

Goethe ist der umfassendste deutsche Dichter, Dickens der wohl größte englische Schriftsteller seit Shakespeare. Bisher ist kaum gesehen worden, wie viel drei von Dickens` Romanen Goethes berühmtestem Roman "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre" verdanken, dessen Themen sie subtil abwandeln. In diesem Buch geht es aber keineswegs nur um Goethes Einfluss auf Dickens, sondern besonders um die Art und Weise, wie beide Schriftsteller nach der Aufklärung an einer neuen Form christlicher Literatur arbeiten, deren beachtliche Unterschiede viel zu tun haben mit den intellektuellen Unterschieden zwischen Deutschland und England. Eine Analyse Goethes autobiographischer Schriften "Dichtung und Wahrheit" und "Italienische Reise" sowie ein methodologisch grundlegender Aufsatz zum Literaturvergleich runden dieses Buch ab, das für Germanisten, Anglisten und Philosophen gleichermaßen gedacht ist.

Goethe und Dickens als christliche Dichter

Vittorio Hösle bietet in diesem Buch eine Übersicht über die deutsche Philosophiegeschichte vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Er beginnt mit einer Erörterung der Frage, inwieweit es überhaupt legitim ist, den Gang der deutschen Philosophiegeschichte von den restlichen europäischen Philosophiegeschichten abzusondern, und endet mit verhaltener Skepsis hinsichtlich des Überlebens deutscher Philosophie im 21. Jahrhundert. Der Sonderweg deutscher Philosophie beginnt im Mittelalter mit Meister Eckhart und Nicolaus Cusanus. Eine neue Pointierung wird durch die Reformation gewiesen, die gerade wegen ihrer antiphilosophischen Polemik einen Neubeginn des Denkens ermöglicht und die für Deutschland so charakteristische Verbindung von Philosophie und Philologie hervorbringt. Leibniz, Kant und die Fundierung der Geisteswissenschaften im späten 18. Jahrhundert sind Voraussetzungen der Synthese des Deutschen Idealismus, auf die mit Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx und Nietzsche eine rasche Auflösung des Christentums ebenso wie der bisherigen Vernunftmetaphysik folgt. Die Neubegründungen der Philosophie bei Frege und im Logischen Positivismus, bei den Neukantianern und in der Phänomenologie Husserls werden als die wirkungsmächtigsten Versuche des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts dargestellt; auf sie folgt die Philosophie des Nationalsozialismus (Martin Heidegger, Arnold Gehlen, Carl Schmitt) und schließlich diejenige der Bundesrepublik (Hans-Georg Gadamer, Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas und Hans Jonas). Das Buch ist eine auf gründlicher Kenntnis der Primärquellen beruhende Gesamtinterpretation der deutschen Philosophie. Zugleich versteht es sich als Rückblick auf den "deutschen Geist."

Rückblick auf den deutschen Geist

Eine kurze Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie

The volume The Many Faces of Beauty joins the rich debate on beauty and aesthetic theory by presenting an ambitious, interdisciplinary examination of various facets of beauty in nature and human society. The contributors ask such questions as, Is there beauty in mathematical theories? What is the function of arts in the economy of cultures? What are the main steps in the historical evolution of aesthetic theories from ancient civilizations to the present? What is the function of the ugly in enhancing the expressivity of art? and What constitutes beauty in film? The sixteen essays, by eminent scientists, critics, scholars, and artists, are divided into five parts. In the first, a mathematician, physicist, and two philosophers address beauty in mathematics and nature. In the second, an anthropologist, psychologist, historian of law, and economist address the place of beauty in the human mind and in society. Explicit philosophical reflections on notoriously vexing issues, such as the historicity of aesthetics itself, interculturality, and the place of the ugly, are themes of the third part. In the fourth, practicing artists discuss beauty in painting, music, poetry, and film. The final essay, by a theologian, reflects on the relation between beauty and God.

The Many Faces of Beauty

Dimensions of Goodness is based on the second conference of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, whose aim is to bridge the normative and descriptive dimensions of knowledge by bringing in as many disciplines as possible to address fundamental philosophical issues. While the first conference dealt with the elusive topic of beauty, the second addressed crucial issues of ethics. In the first section of this volume, the German philosophers Franz von Kutschera and Markus Gabriel discuss the nature of values and the reasons why we believe that normativity has a place in the world. In the second section, the British historian Jonathan Israel, the American theologian Jennifer Herdt, and the editor of the volume analyse epochal changes in our moral beliefs, due to Enlightenment, Christianity, and the general evolution of moral ideas, which is presented in a way that markedly differs from Alasdair MacIntyre’s famous account. The third section explores both the light that the exact sciences shed on the process of decision making (in the contributions by the Italian neuroscientist Camillo Padoa-Schioppa and the Canadian psychologist Clive Seligman) as well as the ethical challenges that modern science has brought forward in areas such as the responsibility of scientists, bioethics and medical ethics in chapters by the Swiss chemist and Nobel laureate Richard Ernst, the American bioethicist and historian of biology Jane Maienschein, and the American philosopher and legal scholar Anita Allen. The fourth section focuses on specific challenges of our time – the British philosopher Robin Atfield explores the principles of environmental ethics, the Swiss business ethicist Georges Enderle investigates goodness in economy, the Mexican elder statesman (former Secretary of Economy and of Foreign Affairs) Luiz Ernesto Derbez Bautista looks at the challenges of development, and the American legal scholars Steven D. Smith and Mary Ellen O’Connell examine the place of religion in the American constitution and the power of international law in limiting violence respectively. Finally, the last section consists of a chapter by the well-known Chinese intellectual Wang Hui on Lu Xun’s struggle to find a middle way between respect of one’s own tradition and the demands of globalization. There is probably no other volume in which so many different disciplines come together to try to find a convergence of perspectives on basic moral issues. The book will be invaluable to those who believe that goodness is the focal point of most academic disciplines and that academia can find a stronger point of unity in a common reflection on what goodness in various areas means.

Dimensions of Goodness

The first English Translation of Hösle's Moral und Politik-- an outline of a political ethics for the twenty-first century.

Morals and Politics

In this extended essay, Vittorio Hösle develops a theory of the comical and applies it to interpret both the recurrent personae played by Woody Allen the actor and the philosophical issues addressed by Woody Allen the director in his films. Taking Henri Bergson's analysis of laughter as a starting point, Hösle integrates aspects of other theories of laughter to construct his own more finely-articulated and expanded model. With this theory in hand, Hösle discusses the incongruity in the characters played by Woody Allen and describes how these personae are realized in his work. Hösle focuses on the philosophical issues in Allen's major films by exploring the identity problem in Play It Again, Sam and Zelig, the shortcomings of the positivist concept of reality in A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, the relation between reality and art in The Purple Rose of Cairo, the objective validity of morality in Crimes and Misdemeanors, the power of evil in Shadows and Fog, and the relation between art and morality in Bullets over Broadway. He cites Allen's virtuosic reinterpretation of older forms of expression and his integration of the fantastic into the comic universe--elements like the giant breasts, anxious sperm, extraterrestrials, ghosts, and magicians that populate his movies--as formal moves akin to those of Aristophanes. Both an overview of Allen's work and a philosophical analysis of laughter, Hösle's study demonstrates why Allen's films have more to offer us--morally, philosophically, and artistically--than just a few laughs. "In Woody Allen, Vittorio Hösle goes a long way toward explaining everything you wanted to know about Allen but were afraid to ask. Just why exactly is he funny, and why does his humor have a strong appeal for academics? In his comprehensive analysis of Allen's work, Hösle outlines a workable theory of humor, illustrates his conclusions by referring to the films and prose, and points out several philosophic motifs underlying Allen's deceptively complex comedies. Hösle's work elevates the enjoyment of Allen's films from guilty pleasure to satisfying intellectual engagement with an intriguing contemporary thinker and artist." --Richard A. Blake, S.J., Boston College "Vittorio Hösle presents a compelling overview of Allen's work in which he discusses different theories of laughter and argues for the priority of the incongruity theory as the only one able to answer the normative question, what distinguises good from bad laughter? On this theoretical basis he goes on to delve into both the humor and the philosophical profundity of Allen's films." --Sander Lee, Keene State College

An Essay on the Nature of the Comical

Woody Allen

Vittorio Hösle bietet in diesem Buch eine Übersicht über die deutsche Philosophiegeschichte vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Er beginnt mit einer Erörterung der Frage, inwieweit es überhaupt legitim ist, den Gang der deutschen Philosophiegeschichte von den restlichen europäischen Philosophiegeschichten abzusondern, und endet mit verhaltener Skepsis hinsichtlich des Überlebens deutscher Philosophie im 21. Jahrhundert. Der Sonderweg deutscher Philosophie beginnt im Mittelalter mit Meister Eckhart und Nicolaus Cusanus. Eine neue Pointierung wird durch die Reformation gewiesen, die gerade wegen ihrer antiphilosophischen Polemik einen Neubeginn des Denkens ermöglicht und die für Deutschland so charakteristische Verbindung von Philosophie und Philologie hervorbringt. Leibniz, Kant und die Fundierung der Geisteswissenschaften im späten 18. Jahrhundert sind Voraussetzungen der Synthese des Deutschen Idealismus, auf die mit Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx und Nietzsche eine rasche Auflösung des Christentums ebenso wie der bisherigen Vernunftmetaphysik folgt. Die Neubegründungen der Philosophie bei Frege und im Logischen Positivismus, bei den Neukantianern und in der Phänomenologie Husserls werden als die wirkungsmächtigsten Versuche des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts dargestellt; auf sie folgt die Philosophie des Nationalsozialismus (Martin Heidegger, Arnold Gehlen, Carl Schmitt) und schließlich diejenige der Bundesrepublik (Hans-Georg Gadamer, Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas und Hans Jonas). Das Buch ist eine auf gründlicher Kenntnis der Primärquellen beruhende Gesamtinterpretation der deutschen Philosophie. Zugleich versteht es sich als Rückblick auf den «deutschen Geist».

Rohmer is one of the most popular French directors of the second half of the 20th century, one of the members of the famous Nouvelle Vague that reconstituted French cinema based on the theoretical principles articulated in the Cahiers du Cinéma – from whose editorship he was fired when the conservative Catholic opposed its turn toward politicization. Like some of his colleagues, Rohmer is extremely interested in both the history and the philosophy of film: Brother of the noted French philosopher René Scherer, he begins his career as a film critic In his films, deep moral conflicts as well as the search for one's own identity emerge from the intricacies of seemingly superficial everyday life interactions, particularly between a man and a woman. Hösle's book puts Rohmer in the context of a long French tradition of reflected eroticism, with Marivaux, Musset, Stendhal, and Jean Renoir as crucial figures, and shows how Rohmer both recognizes the inner logic of eroticism and subjects it to moral demands that he inherits from his Catholic background. For Rohmer, the tension between the two can usually only be solved by some unexpected event that can be interpreted as an equivalent of grace.

Filmmaker and Philosopher

Eric Rohmer

Nora K.

Dieser philosophische Briefwechsel besteht aus authentischen Briefen zwischen einem Erwachsenen und einem Kind. Der Erwachsene, Vittorio Hösle, ist von Beruf Philosoph. Das Kind, Nora K., war zu Beginn des Briefwechsels elf Jahre, am Ende dreizehn Jahre alt. Die Kinderfragen Noras sind große Fragen der Philosophie: Ist die Seele ewig? Haben Tiere ein Bewußtsein? Ist das Weltall unendlich? Vittorio Hösle lotst Nora in seinen Antworten mit sicherer Hand durch die Labyrinthe philosophischen Denkens. (Quelle: Homepage des Verlags).

ein philosophischer Briefwechsel für Kinder und Erwachsene

Das Café der toten Philosophen

Nora K

A series of letters between a professor of philosophy and an eleven-year-old girl.

An Exchange of Letters for Children and Adults

The Dead Philosophers' Cafʹe

No overall history of the philosophical dialogue has appeared since Rudolf Hirzel's two-volume study was published in 1895. In The Philosophical Dialogue: A Poetics and a Hermeneutics, Vittorio Hösle covers the development of the genre from its beginning with Plato to the late twentieth-century work of Iris Murdoch and Paul Feyerabend. Hösle presents a taxonomy and a doctrine of categories for the complex literary genre of the philosophical dialogue, focusing on the poetical laws that structure the genre, and develops hermeneutical rules for its correct interpretation. Following an introduction that employs the categories of subjectivity and intersubjectivity to classify philosophy's modes of expression, Hösle's book is structured by the classical triad of the production, inner structure, and reception of the literary dialogue. To explain what is meant by "philosophical dialogue," Hösle first deals with the specific traits of philosophical dialogue in contrast to other literary forms of philosophy and its special status among them. Second, he distinguishes the philosophical dialogue as a literary genre from actual philosophical conversation, and as a philosophical literary genre from nonphilosophical literary dialogues. Finally, he takes up the connection between literary form and philosophical content in the philosophical dialogue. Numerous authors of dialogues are discussed, with a special focus on Plato, Cicero, Augustine, Hume, and Diderot. Originally published in Germany as Der philosophische Dialog: Eine Poetik und Hermeneutik (2006), this book not only contributes to the philosophical discussion of dialogue but to a great extent defines it. This fine translation will prove useful to both philosophers and literary critics in the English-speaking world. "With its exceptionally clear and powerful argumentation, the book might become the defining work for the study of dialogue. Paraphrasing Kant, one could say that in philosophy mere theory without a history is empty, while history without a theory is blind. Yet in his work Hösle achieves a unique synthesis of historical perceptivity and systematic rigor. This book will be read for many years to come." —Dmitri Nikulin, New School for Social Research

A Poetics and a Hermeneutics

The Philosophical Dialogue

In an accessible narrative that explains complex ideas in clear language, Vittorio Hösle traces the evolution of German philosophy and describes its central influence on other aspects of German culture, including literature, politics, and science, from the Middle Ages to today. A Short History of German Philosophy addresses the philosophical changes brought about by Luther’s Reformation, and then presents a detailed account of German philosophy from Leibniz to Kant; the rise of a new form of humanities; and the German Idealists. The following chapters investigate the collapse of the German synthesis in Schopenhauer, Marx, and Nietzsche. Turning to the twentieth century, the book explores the rise of analytical philosophy; the foundation of the historical sciences; Husserl’s phenomenology and its radical alteration by Heidegger; the Nazi philosophers Gehlen and Schmitt; and the main West German philosophers after 1945. Arguing that there was a distinctive German philosophical tradition from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, the book closes by examining why that tradition largely ended in the recent past. A philosophical history remarkable for its scope, brevity, and lucidity, this is an invaluable book for students of philosophy and anyone interested in German intellectual and cultural history.

A Short History of German Philosophy

The story of German philosophy from the Middle Ages to today This concise but comprehensive book provides an original history of German-language philosophy from the Middle Ages to today. In an accessible narrative that explains complex ideas in clear language, Vittorio Hösle traces the evolution of German philosophy and describes its central influence on other aspects of German culture, including literature, politics, and science. Starting with the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart, the book addresses the philosophical changes brought about by Luther's Reformation, and then presents a detailed account of the classical age of German philosophy, including the work of Leibniz and Kant; the rise of a new form of humanities in Lessing, Hamann, Herder, and Schiller; the early Romantics; and the Idealists Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The following chapters investigate the collapse of the German synthesis in Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche. Turning to the twentieth century, the book explores the rise of analytical philosophy in Frege and the Vienna and Berlin circles; the foundation of the historical sciences in Neo-Kantianism and Dilthey; Husserl’s phenomenology and its radical alteration by Heidegger; the Nazi philosophers Gehlen and Schmitt; and the main West German philosophers, including Gadamer, Jonas, and those of the two Frankfurt schools. Arguing that there was a distinctive German philosophical tradition from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, the book closes by examining why that tradition largely ended in the decades after World War II. A philosophical history remarkable for its scope, brevity, and lucidity, this is an invaluable book for students of philosophy and anyone interested in German intellectual and cultural history.

Vittorio Hösle

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