German Philosophy: From Kant to Habermas (Online) at Freie Universität Berlin

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Please visit our website www.fubis.org for any organisational changes that might affect the course programme. Philosophy has constituted a central element in the emergence of modern German culture. This philosophy course addresses the historical reality of this "German moment of philosophy" in two subsequent phases. In the first part, we follow the emergence and full deployment of German philosophy from its Kantian beginnings to Hegel's grand but fragile synthesis, trying to understand its richness as well as its fragility. In a second part, we discuss the later renewal of German philosophy in the late 19th century and its historical tragedy in the 20th century. This will include a discussion of the new beginnings of philosophy since the mid-19th century, from Marx and Nietzsche via Frege and Mach to Husserl and Wittgenstein, who reacted to the scientific and political revolutions of the late 19th and early 20th century. Martin Heidegger as an established pro-Nazi philosopher and Max Horkheimer as the leading philosopher of the "Frankfurt School" driven into exile are studied as philosophers immersed into the "night of the 20th century". Finally, post-World War II developments in philosophy (as exemplified by JÃ¼rgen Habermas and Ernst Tugendhat) will be investigated as pathways out of the self-destructive turn that the "German moment of philosophy" took in the first decades of the 20th century and as passages into an emerging world philosophy.