Certified German translators
Rush Jobs Accepted
Office in New York
Member of the American
Translators Association
German PhilosophyThroughout the centuries, Germans have made many important contributions to Western thought. Some of the finest philosophical minds have shaped and added to German philosophy, reasoning metaphysical problems of ontology and epistemology—as well as more concrete pursuits, such as moral imperatives and the relations of power between different social classes—with graceful logic and often good humor. German philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Marx have all made invaluable contributions to Western thought, and established a long tradition of German philosophy that continues even today. Immanuel Kant, a student and eventual faculty member at the University of Königsberg during the mid 18th century, taught logic and metaphysics, and wrote extensively on the subject of epistemology. In Kant’s masterwork, A Critique of Pure Reason, he argues that it is impossible for human beings to know the world in totality, because while we can comprehend the universe through experience and it is also possible for us to comprehend through purely mental processes, we cannot view things from a completely neutral position. Kant also wrote a treatise on morality, The Metaphysics of Morals, which established what Kant called the categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” These seminal texts are still studied today, evidence that Kant’s remains one of the great works of German philosophy. One of Kant’s ideological successors in German philosophy is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German Idealist who spent his life improving on Kant’s original work. A theology student, Hegel spent his career developing a philosophy that engaged with and developed the philosophies of his contemporaries. He worked with difficult ontological questions and developed a philosophy that is still regarded for its complexity today. He also became well known for his use of dialectics in his work—dialogues in which the arguing parties share some common definitions and inferences about a certain point but do not agree about it, and attempt to persuade one another using logic and reason. Probably among the most controversial figures in German philosophy is Karl Marx. A noted philosopher, economist, and sociologist of his time, Marx posited that all of history was a struggle between social classes for dominance. He predicted that capitalist society would be replaced by a classless society, which he described as “communist.” He believed that the working classes would one day overthrow their capitalist masters, seizing the means of production and assuming control of society. Though little known in his lifetime, Marx’s theories have since influenced the course of world events as nations have put his communist theories into practice. Another great figure of German philosophy is Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, a philosopher of the late nineteenth century whose influence can still be felt today. He wrote on a wide variety of subjects, such as ethics, aesthetics, science, religion, and power relations. Nietzsche’s philosophy has been lauded by figures as diverse as W. B. Yeats, H. L. Mencken, and Adolph Hitler. Although he did not achieve prominence in his lifetime, Nietzsche is an undisputed luminary of German philosophy. |