Karl W. Aschenbrenner (November 20, 1911, in Bison, Kansas – July 4, 1988, in Budapest, Hungary) was an American philosopher, translator (into English of works in Latin and German) and prominent American specialist in analytic philosophy and aesthetics, author and editor of more than 48 publications including five monographs, 27 articles and 16 book reviews.
According to the notice posted at "In Memoriam", a site maintained by the Academic Senate of the University of California,[4] Aschenbrenner was descended from Volga Germans immigrants to Kansas.
He served an instructor at Reed College for two years, then as a meteorologist lieutenant in the United States Naval Reserve from 1943 to 1946.
His principal instructor was Jacob Loewenberg, the leading Kantian at Berkeley and department chair (1935–1941) while Aschenbrenner was studying for his doctorate.
The "In Memoriam" notice remarks: "Whereas Indo-European languages express appraisals almost entirely by the use of special vocabularies, Magyar possesses verb endings that contribute a crediting or pejorative sense to the resulting compound.
"[9] Receiving favourable notice at the time of publication, with reviews in German, Dutch and Spanish journals, were Aschenbrenner's three major works in the field of analytic philosophy which should be treated as a precursor to today's computer-aided content analysis.
"[10] Antonio Cua in Philosophy East and West referred readers to Concepts of Value: "For an illuminating discussion of appraisive creativity in general.
"[11] Aschenbrenner's works appear in 113 publications and are held in the collections of 2,371 library holdings according to WorldCat Identities page; link below.