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Karl Löwith
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OverviewAI-generated
Karl Löwith was a German philosopher and university teacher, born on 9 January 1897 in Munich. He was educated at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the University of Freiburg, studied under Martin Heidegger, and participated in World War I.
Löwith worked in Heidelberg and Marburg, employed by Heidelberg University, the University of Marburg, Tohoku University and the University of Freiburg. He was a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, recognised in the American Academy Arts Sciences collection, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is credited with 96 works, including Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen. His archives are held at the German Literature Archive Marbach. He died on 26 May 1973 in Heidelberg.
Synthesized by Vinony from 25 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, Open Library, Vinony collections. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Born
- 9 January 1897
- Died
- 26 May 1973
- Works
- 96
Top works
- Studienausgabe
- 人間存在の倫理
- 神と人間と世界
- Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen
- 知識・信仰・懐疑
via Open Library + Wikidata
Key facts
- Born
- ( 1897-01-09 ) 9 January 1897, Munich , Kingdom of Bavaria , German Empire
- Died
- 26 May 1973 (1973-05-26) (aged 76), Heidelberg , West Germany
- Spouse
- Ada Löwith
- Alma mater
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München , University of Freiburg
- Doctoral advisor
- Martin Heidegger
- Era
- 20th-century philosophy
- Region
- Western philosophy
- School
- Continental philosophy , Phenomenology
- Institutions
- Tohoku University , Hartford Theological Seminary , New School for Social Research , Heidelberg University
- Main interests
- Philosophy of history , Philosophical anthropology , Secularization , Existentialism
- Notable ideas
- Secularization thesis (modern progress as secularized eschatology)
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Karl
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Germany
- Place of birth
- Munich
- Place of death
- Heidelberg
- Occupation
- university teacher
- Educated at
- University of Freiburg
- Employer
- University of Marburg
- Languages spoken
- German
- Student of
- Martin Heidegger
- Conflict
- World War I
- Work location
- Marburg
Show 7 more facts
- date of birth
- 1897-01-09
- date of death
- 1973-05-26
- member of
- Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
- nominated for
- Nobel Prize in Literature
- name in native language
- Karl Löwith
- archives at
- German Literature Archive Marbach
- P8168
- Excalibur
via Wikidata · CC0
~8 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Karl Löwith ( German: [ˈløːvɪt]; 9 January 1897 – 26 May 1973) was a German philosopher best known for his critiques of historicism and his analysis of secularization in modern thought. A student of Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl during the Weimar Republic, Löwith developed a distinctive philosophical position that questioned the progressivist assumptions underlying much of nineteenth and twentieth-century European philosophy, and is considered one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.
His most influential work, Meaning in History (1949), argued that Enlightenment philosophies of history from Giambattista Vico to Karl Marx represented secularised versions of Christian eschatology, transforming theological concepts of divine providence and salvation into immanent historical processes whilst retaining their underlying structure, which he argues is incoherent without their providential origin. This analysis established him as a major humanist critic of the notion that history possesses inherent meaning or direction (telos).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Karl Löwith” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.