Weimar Culture - Philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy during the Weimar Republic pursued paths of enquiry into scientific fields such as mathematics and physics. Leading scientists became associated as a group that was called the Berlin Circle. Among many influential thinkers, Carl Hempel was a strong influence in the group. Born in Berlin, Hempel attended the University of Göttingen and the University of Heidelberg, then returned to Berlin, where he was taught by influential physicists Hans Reichenbach and Max Planck, and logistics with mathematician John von Neumann. Reichenbach introduced Hempel to the Vienna Circle, who were an existing informal association of "scientifically interested philosophers and philosophically interested scientists", as Hempel put it. Hempel was intrigued by the logical positivism ideas discussed by the Vienna Circle, and he developed a similar network, the Berlin Circle. Hempel's reputation has grown to the extent that he is now considered one of the leading scientific philosophers of the 20th century. Richard von Mises was active in both groups.

Germany's most influential philosopher during the Weimar Republic years, and perhaps of the 20th century, was Martin Heidegger. Heidegger published one of the cornerstones of 20th century philosophy during this period, Being and Time (1927). Being and Time influenced successive generations of philosophers in Europe and the United States, particularly in the areas of phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics and deconstruction. Heidegger's work built on, and responded to, the earlier explorations of phenomenology by another Weimar era philosopher, Edmund Husserl.

The intersection of politics and philosophy inspired other philosophers in Weimar Germany, when radical politics included many thinkers and activists across the political spectrum. During his 20s, Herbert Marcuse was a student in Freiburg, where he went to study under Martin Heidegger, one of Germany's most prominent philosophers. Marcuse himself later became a driving force in the New Left in the United States. Ernst Bloch, Max Horkheimer and Walter Benjamin all wrote about Marxism and politics in addition to other philosophical topics. From the perspective of Jewish philosophers in Germany, they also considered the problems posed by the "Jewish question". Political philosophers Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt received their university education during the Weimar Republic and moved in Jewish intellectual circles in Berlin, and were associated with Norbert Elias, Leo Löwenthal, Karl Löwith, Julius Guttmann, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem, and Alexander Altmann. Strauss and Arendt, along with Marcuse and Benjamin, were among the Jewish intellectuals who managed to flee the Nazi regime, eventually immigrating to the United States. Carl Schmitt, a legal and political scholar, was also a vocal fascist supporter of both the Nazi regime and Spain's Franco; however, he published works of political philosophy that remained studied by philosophers and political scholars with radically different views, such as Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, and his contemporaries Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Leo Strauss.