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German philosophy

Specialty in philosophy, focused on German language origin

  • 42 min read
  • 6 chapters

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German philosophers are central to major philosophical movements such as rationalist Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, German idealists and romanticists such as Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, dialectical materialist Karl Marx, and existentialist Friedrich Nietzsche.

German philosophy influenced both contemporary philosophical schools: analytic philosophy such as Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the logical positivist Vienna Circle; and continental phenomenology and hermeneutics such as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Frankfurt School critical theory. Heidegger and Wittgenstein are two of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Naturally, most German universities study continental philosophy.

Middle ages

Medieval philosophy was often Christian philosophy and tied to theology. The first German philosophical controversy happened during the Carolingian Renaissance in the year 848, when the deacon at the Benedictine Abbey of Fulda in Hesse, Rabanus Maurus (c. 780–856), known as "the first teacher of Germany", and a student of Charlemagne's preferred scholar Alcuin of York, responded to Gottschalk of Orbais' doctrine of double predestination.

Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism

Latin literacy had declined so much that Notker Labeo (c. 950–1022) translated the Roman Neoplatonist Boethius, Capella, and some Aristotle, inventing the first German philosophical vocabulary.

The few twelfth-century Renaissance German philosophers during the High Middle Ages begin with Hugh of Saint Victor (c. 1096–1141), who studied at the abbey of Saint Victor in Paris, and was a Neoplatonic mystic influenced by Plato's Timaeus and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the "progenitor of ... negative theology."

Otto of Freising (c. 1111–1158) was likely Hugh's student and introduced to Germans the new, complete logic of Aristotle. Hugh also influenced Italian Peter Lombard (c. 1096–1160), author of the Sentences (c. 1150).

Neoplatonist nun and polymath Hildegard von Bingen (c. 1098–1179) called the "Sibyl of the Rhine" knew Latin and wrote on theology, cosmology, and natural philosophy (science). In works like Scivias (1151), she wrote God infused life with greenness.

Albert the Great

Aristotle's other works became available from translators in Spain, one of whom was Herman the German. The most eminent German Scholastic, Dominican friar Saint Albert the Great (c. 1200–1280), taught the Physics and Nicomachean Ethics at Paris and Cologne. He influenced students such as Neoplatonist Theodoric of Freiberg (c. 1250–c. 1311), Italian Aristotelian Saint Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274), and Aristotle translator William of Moerbeke (c. 1225–c. 1286).

German Dominicans were usually Albertists, Aristotelians with a blend of Neoplatonism like Theodoric, such as Ulrich (c. 1225–1277) and Hugh Ripelin of Strassburg (c. 1205–c. 1270).

Albertists were contrasted with the purely Aristotelian Thomists following Aquinas, such as John of Lichtenberg (c. 1275–c. 1315), Heinrich of Lübeck, Heinrich of Gorkum (c. 1378–1431), Nicholas and Thomas of Strassburg (c. 1275–c. 1357), and John (c. 1280–c. 1340) and Gerhard of Sterngassen. The Paulinerkirche at Göttingen housed relics of Aquinas.

British Franciscan Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308) died shortly after coming to teach in Cologne, buried at the Church of the Friars Minor; and had limited influence in Germany, despite exceptions such as Scotist Heinrich von Werl (c. 1400–c. 1463). Henry the German (c. 1245–1340) was an Augustinian hermit.

Meister Eckhart

Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c. 1328), an influential Neoplatonic mystic at Cologne, wrote the Book of Divine Consolation. Eckhart combined Theodoric's mysticism with the non-philosophical mysticism found among beguine orders, like Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1207–c. 1282), author of The Flowing Light of the Godhead.

Meister Eckhart was posthumously condemned for heresy, and defended by Henry Suso (1295–1366). Eckhart influenced the Friends of God and Brabantine priest John of Ruusbroec (1294–1381), who influenced the Brethren of the Common Life and Devotio Moderna proponent Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1471), author of The Imitation of Christ.

Albertist Berthold of Moosburg succeeded Eckhart at Cologne, influencing Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361) and Heymeric de Campo (1395–1460). A contemporary Thomist at Cologne was Lambertus de Monte (c. 1430–1499).

Modistae

Thomas of Erfurt was the most influential of the Aristotelian so called modistae or speculative grammarians arguing for realism on the problem of universals across 13th and 14th-century Northern Europe.

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