Philosophy of life : German Lebensphilosophie 1870-1920 / Frederick C. Beiser.
'Philosophy of Life' explores the intellectual movement Lebensphilosophie, which flourished in Germany from 1870 until 1920, led by Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Simmel. This was the first Western intellectual movement to develop an entirely secular and humanist conception of life, believing tha...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford, United Kingdom ; New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
[2023]
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| Summary: | 'Philosophy of Life' explores the intellectual movement Lebensphilosophie, which flourished in Germany from 1870 until 1920, led by Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Simmel. This was the first Western intellectual movement to develop an entirely secular and humanist conception of life, believing that the meaning of life had to be found in life itself. "Life is for the Lebensphilosophen a fundamentally contingent matter. It is possible for life to exist, but it is also possible for it not to exist; in other words, there is no contradiction in assuming that it does not exist. This means that life does not like Spinoza's substance or Schelling's absolute come into existence by the necessity of its own nature alone. It is necessary to distinguish, therefore, between the essence and existence of life. We cannot prove the existence of life simply through knowledge of its essence; we can know of the existence of life only through experience. The contingency of life means that it is all the more valuable; because it is possible for it not to be, we cannot take it for granted. The three major Lebensphilosophen Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Simmel do not have a general metaphysical theory about life. They do not explain how it differs from matter or mind, and they do not discuss its origins or the stages of its appearance in nature. They also have little interest in biology. There is a simple reason for this lack of interest: their concern is not with life in general but with one particular form of it, namely, human life. Life as the subject of Lebensphilosophie is, as Dilthey put it, the life lived by human beings. Although the main interest of the Lebensphilosophen is human life, this does not mean that they were unaffected by developments in biology. On the contrary. Like all German intellectuals after 1860, they were profoundly influenced by Darwinism. They accepted the main lesson of Darwin's theory of evolution: that the origins of life lie in nature alone and require no explanation through supernatural or teleological causes. Any explanation of the origins of life, they were convinced, would have to be in naturalistic terms. It was largely because of the success of Darwinism that, in their ethics, the Lebensphilosophen directed their attention to life in this world and had no interest in immortality"-- |
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| Physical Description: | viii, 174 pages ; 23 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780192899767 0192899767 |