Max Wundt

Max Wundt (29 January 1879 – 31 October 1963) was a German philosopher.

Biography

Max Wundt, the son of eminent psychologist Wilhelm Wundt and his wife Sophie Mau, was born in Leipzig. He attended the Nicolaischule in Leipzig. After graduating from high school, he studied German and classical philology and philosophy in Leipzig, Freiburg, Berlin and Munich. After receiving his doctorate in 1903 with a historical thesis on Herodotus under Justus Hermann Lipsius, Wundt went on a year long travel to Italy and Greece. In 1906, he became a probationer at the Gymnasium in Dresden-Neustadt. After his habilitation in 1907 with Theobald Ziegler and Clemens Baeumker on the subject of "Intellectualism in Greek Ethics," he worked as a private lecturer in Strasbourg. There he married Senta (1885-1961), the daughter of the national economist Baron August Sartorius von Waltershausen.

Wundt was called up for military service in August 1914, and was commissioned in the field in January 1915. In May 1915 he was promoted to lieutenant in the reserve and assigned as a company commander. Against Natorp's opposition, Wundt became an associate professor at Marburg for the summer semester of 1918 due to Erich Jaensch's intercession.

In the fall of 1918, he worked for a few months at the reopened University of Dorpat. In 1920, at Bruno Bauch's instigation, he accepted a call to become a full professor at Jena, succeeding Rudolf Eucken. In 1924, he was admitted to the editorial board of the journal of the Pan-German League Deutschlands Erneuerung, which already included Georg von Below, Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Heinrich Claß. From 1929 until his retirement in 1945, Wundt worked as a historian of philosophy at the University of Tübingen. Since 1942, he was a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

Philosophy and world view

Wundt was primarily concerned with the history of Greek philosophy until World War I. He was less concerned with philological research than with interpretation in relation to the present. In pre-Socratic thought, the figure of the sage stands in the foreground for him. In contrast, philosophy emancipated itself in the classical period. Through individualization, there is then a relapse into the mystical beginnings in Hellenism. Greek philosophy must always be related to its Christian telos. He defined Platonism as the "rebirth of culture from the spirit of the subject." Plato's idealism, he said, serves man in times of crisis to orient himself toward higher goals.

In Marburg, Wundt thaught, among other things, on the "Philosophy of War". In a 1918 speech on the "German conception of the state," he described "command and obedience" as the basis of every moral relationship. As late as 1920, he perceived the general enthusiasm of the Germans at the entry into the war in 1914 as a moment "when a sacred feeling melted the German people together in all its members and estates, and a consciousness of inner unity and of the true value of itself broke through in fervent enthusiasm."

He was among those who opposed the Weimar Republic from the outset: "This state is un-German from root to summit." Wundt's concern with the political changes is also evident in his writings after the World War, which now deal also with the political situation of the present from the völkisch perspective. In ethics, he pursued the project of a "German ethics" based on the values of loyalty and honor. In addition to a number of books, Wundt wrote regularly in relevant journals, such as Deutschlands Erneuerung, Kreuzzeitung, Sonne, Türmer, and Deutsches Adelsblatt. In addition, Wundt was in 1917/18 co-founder of the conservative "German Philosophical Society", which was directed as a counterweight against the "Kant Society".

In 1920, he co-founded the "Gesellschaft Deutscher Staat," an conservative association of university professors close to the DNVP, of which he was chairman in 1924. In 1925, he joined the general board of the Pan-German League and in 1927, he became co-editor of the journal Nationalwirtschaft, which was oriented towards the Corporate State.

From 1932, he supported Rosenberg's Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur. In Tübingen, Wundt, together with Gerhard Kittel, ran the Forschungsabteilung Judenfrage des Reichsinstituts für Geschichte des Neuen Deutschlands (Research Department for the Jewish Question of the Reich Institute for the History of New Germany); at a conference of the Reich Institute, he gave a lecture on the topic of "Judaism in Philosophy." This contribution, was published in 1937 as Das Judentum in der Philosophie ("Judaism in Philosophy") and in 1939 as an article in the Völkischer Beobachter.

In the Soviet occupation zone, Wundt's writings Was heißt völkisch? Deutsche Weltanschauung. Grundzüge des völkischen Denkens, Volk, Volkstum, Volkheit, Aufstieg und Niedergang der Völker, and Die Wurzeln der deutschen Philosophie in Stamm und Rasse were censored, and placed on the list of literature to be eliminated. In the German Democratic Republic, this list was enlarged with his books Der ewige Jude and Die Ehre als Quelle des sittlichen Lebens in Volk und Staat ("The Honor as the Source of Moral Life in People and State").

Works

• De Herodoti elucutione cum sophistarum comparata (1903)
• "1. Antigone v. 569." In: Philologus (1906; pp. 154–56)
• "XIV. Die Schlußscene der sieben gegen Theben." In: Philologus (1906; pp. 357–81)
• Der Intellektualismus in der griechischen Philosophie (1907)
• Geschichte der griechischen Ethik (1908/1911; 2 volumes)
• Wilhelm Meister und die Entwicklung des modernen Lebensideals (1913)
• Platons Leben und Werk (1914)
• Griechische Weltanschauung (1917)
• "Deutsche Staatsauffassung." In: Deutschlands Erneuerung (1918; pp. 199–202)
• Plotin. Studien zur Geschichte des Neuplatonismus (1919)
• Die deutsche Philosophie und ihr Schicksal (1920)
• Vom Geist unserer Zeit (1922)
• "Ein Wendepunkt in Augustins Entwicklung." In: Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der Älteren Kirche (1922, pp. 53–64)
• Staatsphilosophie. Ein Buch für Deutsche (1923)
• "Augustins Konfessionen." In: Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (1923; pp. 161–206)
• Kant als Metaphysiker. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie im 18. Jahrhundert (1924)
• "Nachtrag zu Augustins Konfessionen." In: Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (1924; p. 154)
• Die Treue als Kern deutscher Weltanschauung (1924)
• Was heißt völkisch? (1924; 4th edition. 1927 as Volk, Volkstum, Volkheit)
• Die Zukunft des deutschen Staates (1925)
• Der ewige Jude (1926)
• Deutsche Weltanschauung. Grundzüge völkischen Denkens (1926)
• "Deutsche Weltanschauung. Eine Entgegnung." In: Völkischer Beobachter (1927)
• Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Sein Leben und seine Lehre (1927)
• "Max Zepf, Augustins Confessiones." In: Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (1928; pp. 199–202)
• Fichte-Forschungen (1929)
• "Zur Chronologie augustinischer Schriften." In: Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der Älteren Kirche (1929, pp. 343–46)
• "Von Platon zu Aristoteles. Bemerkungen zur Entwicklung der griechischen Staatsidee". In: Karl Larenz (ed.): Rechtsidee und Staatsgedanke. Festschrift Julius Binder (1930, pp. 188–206)
• Geschichte der Metaphysik (1931)
• "Zu Hegels Gedächtnis". In: Völkischer Beobachter (1931)
• Der Sinn der Universität im deutschen Idealismus (1933)
• "Der Gedanke des Volkstums in der Geschichte der Philosophie". In: Ganzheit und Struktur. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstage Felix Kruegers (1934, pp. 9–27)
• "Platon als völkischer Denker". In: Aus Unterricht und Forschung (1934, pp. 124–28)
• Platons "Parmenides" (1935)
• "Kant und der deutsche Geist." In: Archiv für die gesammte Psychologie (1936, pp. 106–16)
• Ewigkeit und Endlichkeit. Grundzüge der Wesenslehre (1937)
• Die Ehre als Quelle sittlichen Lebens in Volk und Staat (1937)
• Die deutsche Schulmetaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts (1939)
• Die Sachlichkeit der Wissenschaft. Wissenschaft und Weisheit. Zwei Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (1940)
• Aufstieg und Niedergang der Völker. Gedanken über Weltgeschichte auf rassischer Grundlage (1940)
• "Christian Wolff und die deutsche Aufklärung". In: Theodor Haering (ed.): Das Deutsche in der deutschen Philosophie. (1941, pp. 227–47)
• Die Wurzeln der deutschen Philosophie in Stamm und Rasse (1944)
• Die deutsche Schulphilosophie im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (1945)
• Hegels Logik und die moderne Physik (1949)
• "Die Zeitfolge der platonischen Gespräche." In: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung (1949, pp. 29–56)
• "Wandlungen des Descartes-Bildes." In: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung (1953, pp. 315–25)
• Untersuchungen zur Metaphysik des Aristoteles (1953)
• "Kants Stellung im Wegestreit." In: Kant-Studien (1954; pp. 286–96)
• "Die geschichtlichen Grundlagen von Leibniz' Metaphysik." In: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung (1957; pp. 497–503)

External links

• Works by Max Wundt at JSTOR
• Works by Max Wundt at German National Library