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Oswald Spengler
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (; 29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work, ''The Decline of the West'' (''Der Untergang des Abendlandes''), published in 1918 and 1922, covering human history. Spengler's model of history postulates that human cultures and civilizations are akin to biological entities, each with a limited, predictable, and deterministic lifespan. Spengler predicted that about the year 2000, Western civilization would enter the period of pre‑death emergency whose countering would lead to 200 years of Caesarism (extra-constitutional omnipotence of the executive branch of government) before Western civilization's final collapse. Spengler is regarded as a nationalist and an anti-democrat, and he was a prominent member of the Weimar-era Conservative Revolution. Although h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 45, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes. Nietzsche's writing spans philosophical polemics, poe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Decline Of The West
''The Decline of the West'' (german: Der Untergang des Abendlandes; more literally, ''The Downfall of the Occident''), is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler. The first volume, subtitled ''Form and Actuality'', was published in the summer of 1918. The second volume, subtitled ''Perspectives of World History'', was published in 1922. The definitive edition of both volumes was published in 1923. Spengler introduced his book as a " Copernican overturning"—a specific metaphor of societal collapse—involving the rejection of the Eurocentric view of history, especially the division of history into the linear "ancient-medieval- modern" rubric. According to Spengler, the meaningful units for history are not epochs but whole cultures which evolve as organisms. In his framework, the terms "culture" and "civilization" were given non-standard definitions and cultures are described as having lifespans of about a thousand years of flourishing, and a thousand years of decline. To Spen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus (; grc-gre, Ἡράκλειτος , "Glory of Hera"; ) was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire. Little is known of Heraclitus's life. He wrote a single work, only fragments of which have survived. Most of the ancient stories about him are later said to be fabrications based on interpretations of the preserved fragments. His paradoxical philosophy and appreciation for wordplay and cryptic utterances has earned him the epithet "the obscure" since antiquity. He was considered a misanthrope who was subject to melancholia. Consequently, he became known as "the weeping philosopher" in contrast to the ancient philosopher Democritus, who was known as "the laughing philosopher". The central idea of Heraclitus' philosophy is the unity of opposites. One of his most notable applications of this idea was to the concept of impermanence; he saw the world as constantly in flux, changing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Haushofer
Karl Ernst Haushofer (27 August 1869 – 10 March 1946) was a German general, professor, geographer, and politician. Through his student Rudolf Hess, Haushofer's conception of Geopolitik influenced the development of Adolf Hitler's expansionist strategies. He coined the political use of the term ''Lebensraum'', which Hitler adopted in ''Mein Kampf'' and used to motivate global Nazi expansionism and genocide. Under the Nuremberg Laws, Haushofer's wife and children were categorized as '' Mischlinge''. His son, Albrecht, was issued a German Blood Certificate through the help of Hess. Life and career Haushofer belonged to a family of artists and scholars. He was born in Munich to Max Haushofer, a well-known professor of economics, politician and author of both academic and literary works, and Adele Haushofer (née Fraas). On his graduation from the Munich Gymnasium (high school), in 1887, Haushofer entered the 1st Field Artillery regiment "Prinzregent Luitpold" of the Bavari ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northrop Frye
Herman Northrop Frye (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century. Frye gained international fame with his first book, '' Fearful Symmetry'' (1947), which led to the reinterpretation of the poetry of William Blake. His lasting reputation rests principally on the theory of literary criticism that he developed in '' Anatomy of Criticism'' (1957), one of the most important works of literary theory published in the twentieth century. The American critic Harold Bloom commented at the time of its publication that ''Anatomy'' established Frye as "the foremost living student of Western literature." Frye's contributions to cultural and social criticism spanned a long career during which he earned widespread recognition and received many honours. Biography Early life and education Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, but raised in Moncton, New Brunswick, Frye was the third child of He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge. In spite of his position, during his entire life only one book of his philosophy was published, the 75-page ''Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung'' (''Logical-Philosophical Treatise'', 1921), which appeared, together with an English translation, in 1922 under the Latin title '' Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''. His only other published works were an article, "Some Remarks on Logical Form" (1929); a book review; and a children's dictionary. His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book ''Philosophical Investigations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theodor Adorno
Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blueger, Latvian professional ice hockey forward for the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League (NHL) * Theodor Burghele, Romanian surgeon, President of the Romanian Academy * Theodor Busse, German general during World War I and World War II * Theodor Cazaban, Romanian writer * Theodor Fischer (fencer), German Olympic épée and foil fencer * Theodor Fontane, (1819–1898), German writer * Theodor Geisel, American writer and cartoonist, known by the pseudonym Dr. Seuss * Theodor W. Hänsch (born 1940), German physicist * Theodor Herzl, (1860–1904), Austrian-Hungary Jewish journalist and the founder of modern political Zionism * Theodor Heuss, (1884–1963), German politician and publicist * Theodor Innitzer, Austrian Cathol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leo Frobenius
Leo Viktor Frobenius (29 June 1873 – 9 August 1938) was a German self-taught ethnologist and archaeologist and a major figure in German ethnography. Life He was born in Berlin as the son of a Prussian officer and died in Biganzolo, Lago Maggiore, Piedmont, Italy. He undertook his first expedition to Africa in 1904 to the Kasai district in Congo, formulating the African Atlantis theory during his travels. During World War I, between 1916 and 1917, Leo Frobenius spent almost an entire year in Romania, travelling with the German Army for scientific purposes. His team performed archaeological and ethnographic studies in the country, as well as documenting the day-to-day life of the ethnically diverse inmates of the Slobozia prisoner camp. Numerous photographic and drawing evidences of this period exist in the image archive of the Frobenius Institute. Until 1918 he travelled in the western and central Sudan, and in northern and northeastern Africa. In 1920 he founded the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alois Riehl
Alois Adolf Riehl (; 27 April 1844 – 21 November 1924) was an Austrian neo-Kantian philosopher. He was born in Bozen (Bolzano) in the Austrian Empire (now in Italy). He was the brother of . Biography Riehl studied at Vienna, Munich, Innsbruck and Graz. He earned his PhD from Innsbruck in 1868. He habilitated at Graz at 1870. He worked as a full professor of philosophy at Graz from 1878, then at Freiburg (from 1882 as a replacement for Wilhelm Windelband), Kiel and Halle, and finally at Berlin, where he commissioned Mies van der Rohe to design his house in Neu babelsberg. For Riehl, philosophy was not the teaching of '' Weltanschauung'', but principally a criticism of perception. He was the doctoral advisor of Paul Hensel and Oswald Spengler. Riehl died in Neubabelsberg, near Potsdam,Riehl, Alois (Aloys) at Deutsche Biographie [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gustave Le Bon
Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon (; 7 May 1841 – 13 December 1931) was a leading French polymath whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. He is best known for his 1895 work '' The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind'', which is considered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology. A native of Nogent-le-Rotrou, Le Bon qualified as a doctor of medicine at the University of Paris in 1866. He opted against the formal practice of medicine as a physician, instead beginning his writing career the same year of his graduation. He published a number of medical articles and books before joining the French Army after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. Defeat in the war coupled with being a first-hand witness to the Paris Commune of 1871 strongly shaped Le Bon's worldview. He then travelled widely, touring Europe, Asia and North Africa. He analysed the peoples and the civilisations he encountered under the umbrella of the na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Mach
Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach ( , ; 18 February 1838 – 19 February 1916) was a Moravian-born Austrian physicist and philosopher, who contributed to the physics of shock waves. The ratio of one's speed to that of sound is named the Mach number in his honour. As a philosopher of science, he was a major influence on logical positivism and American pragmatism. Through his criticism of Newton's theories of space and time, he foreshadowed Einstein's theory of relativity. Biography Mach was born in Chrlice (german: Chirlitz), Moravia (then in the Austrian Empire, now part of Brno in the Czech Republic). His father, who had graduated from Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, acted as tutor to the noble Brethon family in Zlín in eastern Moravia. His grandfather, Wenzl Lanhaus, an administrator of the Chirlitz estate, was also master builder of the streets there. His activities in that field later influenced Ernst Mach's theoretical work. Some sources give Mach's birthp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work '' The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind noumenal will. Building on the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Schopenhauer developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that rejected the contemporaneous ideas of German idealism. He was among the first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy, such as asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world-as-appearance. His work has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism. Though his work failed to garner substantial attention during his lifetime, Schopenhauer had a posthumous impact across various disciplines, including philosophy, literature, and science. His writing on aesthetics, morality, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
