Lebensphilosophie

[1] Lebensphilosophie criticised both mechanistic and materialist approaches to science and philosophy[1] and as such has also been referred to as the German vitalist movement,[2] though its relationship to biological vitalism is questionable.

], and Friedrich Nietzsche, Lebensphilosophie emerged in 19th-century Germany as a reaction to the Age of Enlightenment, rise of positivism and the theoretical focus prominent in much of post-Kantian philosophy.

[8] The first elements of a Lebensphilosophie are found in the context of early German Romanticism which conceived existence as a continuous tension of "the finite towards the infinite", an aspiration that was always disappointed and generated either a withdrawal into oneself and detachment with an attitude of pessimistic renunciation, or on the contrary exaltation of the instinctive spirit or vital impulse of the human being, a struggle for existence or a religious acceptance of the destiny of man entrusted to divine providence.

[9] The Lebensphilosophie movement bore indirect relation to the subjectivist philosophy of vitalism developed by Henri Bergson, which lent importance to immediacy of experience.

[10] An early systematic presentation was formulated by the German psychologist Philipp Lersch [de], who, while primarily studying Bergson, Dilthey and Spengler, saw Georg Simmel and Ludwig Klages as Lebensphilosophie's most important representatives.

The questions that the Lebensphilosophie poses find a first answer in the fifteen lectures held in 1827 in Vienna by Friedrich Schlegel who sees the nucleus of divine revelation in the highlighting of the infinite in the finite of man.

Referring to this romantic vision, both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, with completely different results, exalt the active character of life, contrasting it with the staticity of idealistic perfection of rationalism.

Nietzsche conceives life as a continuous growth and overcoming of those values consolidated over time that would hypocritically try to normalize existence in current morality.

The typical attempt of humanity to found its life on certainties, seeking them in religion, science, moral values, causes it to die out, overwhelmed by the proverbial "modern culture".

"[28] In 1794, Immanuel Kant opposed this type of “salon philosophy” in his essay Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis [de].

In 1827, Friedrich Schlegel's lectures on the Lebensphilosophie, which were explicitly directed against the "system philosophers" Kant and Hegel, helped the philosophy of life to gain wider attention.

[29][additional citation(s) needed] The interpreting soul, however, includes both the distinguishing, connecting, deductive reason, as well as the pondering, inventing, presaging imagination; it encompasses both forces, standing in the middle between them.

But it also forms the turning point of the transition between understanding and will, and, as the connecting middle link, fills the gap that lies between the two and separates them.It was not until the second half of the 19th century until Lebensphilosophie could be tangibly identified as a real movement.

Lebensphilosophie precursor Arthur Schopenhauer's 1818 work The World as Will and Representation, was not a success upon its release, but found its audience following the failure of the German revolutions of 1848–1849 and the subsequent mood of the country.

Throughout his work, Nietzsche developed ideas that are considered to be inspiration for the Lebensphilosophie, such as a view of world events as an organic structure and the concepts of the will to power and the eternal return.

[45] The philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel agreed with Kant when he stated that human cognition possesses a priori categories of thought, but argued that these undergo a development.

Just as we can conceive of time as either a mathematical series of successive points or a continuous flow (durée) that we experience, we can also know the objects around us according to these two methods: analysis on the one hand and intuition on the other.

Classical movements such as idealism and/or rationalism place this form of knowledge central, while analysis according to Bergson can never penetrate reality itself, but can at most play a role in our practical dealings with the world.

Lebensphilosophie became a part of the reaction towards the contemporary zeitgeist, which was characterized by the rapid progress of technology, industrialization and the rationality of the positive sciences and the modern economy.

[7] Oswald Spengler is occasionally cited as a Lebensphilosophie representative of the interwar period, having introduced a very populist form in his work, that was popular in post-World War Germany (i.e. Weimar Republic), especially amongst the politically right-wing circles.

It's quick dissipation following the second world war is believed to be due to the associations that this type of philosophy had leading to Nazism and fascism, which also appealed to similar biological, vitalistic and irrational elements.

The philosopher Otto Friedrich Bollnow for example, claims to be a follower of the Lebensphilosophie developed by Dilthey, but also connects this movement with insights from existentialism and phenomenology.

The direct influence of Lebensphilosophie thinkers on academic philosophy remained limited, despite their great popularity with the masses, mainly because of their hostility to reason and science.

For example, Bertrand Russell states in his 1946 book A History of Western Philosophy that according to Lebensphilosophie; "intellect is the misfortune of man, while instinct is seen at its best in ants, bees, and Bergson" and concludes that for "those to whom action, if it is to be of any value, must be inspired by some vision, by some imaginative foreshadowing of a world less painful, less unjust, less full of strife than the world of our every-day life, those, in a word, whose action is built on contemplation, will find in this philosophy nothing of what they seek, and will not regret that there is no reason to think it true.

"[66] In his 1953 book, The Destruction of Reason, Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács also strongly criticized the Lebensphilosophie and characterized it as an extreme form of irrationalism, which served as a method to justify the ruling ideology of the "imperialist bourgeoisie" (i.e. bourgeois nationalism).

In Germany the corresponding school [to vitalism], known as Lebensphilosophie ("philosophy of life"), began to take on aspects of a political ideology in the years immediately preceding World War I.

In associating "reason" with the shortcomings of "civilization" and "the West", Lebensphilosophie spurred many German thinkers to reject intellection in favour of the irrational forces of blood and life.

He additionally pointed to Oswald Spengler and his work (primarily The Decline of the West) being a key part in “reconstructing [German vitalism] as a philosophy of militant reaction” following the first world war, resulting in a “veritable, direct prelude to fascist philosophy.”[7] Intellectual historian Carl Müller Frøland concluded that Lebenphilosophie movement experienced an "Völkisch-Ideological Turn", which formed the ideological basis for the Nazism.

[63] The Israeli-American historian Nitzan Lebovic identified Lebensphilosophie with the tight relation between a "corpus of life-concepts" and what the German education system came to see, during the 1920s, as the proper Lebenskunde, the 'teaching of life' or 'science of life'—a name that seemed to support the broader philosophical outlook long held by most biologists of the time.

In his book Lebovic traces the transformation of the post-Nietzschean Lebensphilosophie from the radical aesthetics of the Stefan George Circle to Nazi or "biopolitical" rhetoric and politics.