Editing German philosophy (section)

==20th century==
===Neo-Hegelianism===

[[Neo-Hegelianism]], also known as [[Post-Hegelianism]], was a trend developing in the early 20th century, mostly but not exclusively in Germany. Important German neo-Hegelians include [[Richard Kroner]], Siegfried Marck, Arthur Liebert, and Hermann Glockner, while the [[Frankfurt School]] can also be said to have been influenced by neo-Hegelianism.<ref>{{Cite book|title=A Short Philosophical Dictionary, fifth edition|last=Rosenthal, Mark & Yudin|first=Pavel|publisher=Gospolitizdat|year=1954|publication-place=Moscow|chapter=German Philosophy|chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/soviet/german-philosophy.htm|translator-last=P.|translator-first=Anton}}</ref>

===Spengler===
[[Image:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R06610, Oswald Spengler.jpg|thumb|upright|Oswald Spengler]]
[[Oswald Spengler]] was a German [[historian]] and [[philosophy of history|philosopher of history]] whose interests included [[mathematics]], [[science]], and [[art]] and their relation to his organic theory of history. The main work of Spengler, setting out his philosophy of history, ''[[The Decline of the West]]'', was published shortly after the defeat of [[German Empire|Imperial Germany]] in [[World War I]]. In this work, Spengler predicts the inevitable collapse of the capitalist civilization, which he identifies with [[culture of Europe|European culture]]. Spengler’s philosophy is imbued with [[elitism]] and a dislike for [[democracy]]. He declared the workers (the “fourth estate”) to be “outside of culture,” “outside of history”; the mass, Spengler wrote, is the end of everything, “radical nothing.” Spengler praised the “[[Prussian virtues|Old Prussian spirit]],” the monarchy, the nobility and militarism. For him, [[war]] is “an eternal form of higher human existence.”

Spengler’s philosophy of history” is based on the denial of scientific knowledge. The historical researcher, in his opinion, is the more significant, the less he belongs to science. Spengler opposes intuition to logical, [[reason|rational]] knowledge, denying the principle of causality and regularity in social life. Spengler rejects the possibility of knowing objective truth, defending absolute [[relativism]]. Along with historical regularity, Spengler rejects the concept of historical progress, tries to prove the meaninglessness of history and the absence of development in it. Spengler contrasts the scientific understanding of natural historical development with historical fatalism – predestination, “[[destiny]].” Spengler also denies the unity of world history. His history breaks down into a number of completely independent, unique “cultures,” special organisms above and beyond, having an individual destiny and experiencing periods of emergence, flourishing and dying.

Spengler reduces the task of the philosophy of history to comprehending the “morphological structure” of each “culture,” which supposedly is based on the “soul of culture.” According to Spengler, Western European culture entered a stage of decline already starting from the 19th century, that is, with the victory of [[capitalism]]; the period of its heyday was the era of [[feudalism]]. In his work ''[[Prussianism and Socialism|Preussentum und Sozialismus]]'' Spengler advances the idea of “German socialism” against “Marxist socialism”. It has been argued that Spengler's ideas had an influence on [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] and [[German National Socialism|Nazism]]. A philosophy of history close to Spenglerian views was promoted after the Second World War by the English historian [[Arnold J. Toynbee|Arnold Toynbee]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=A Short Philosophical Dictionary, fifth edition|last=Rosenthal, Mark & Yudin|first=Pavel|publisher=Gospolitizdat|year=1954|publication-place=Moscow|chapter=German Philosophy|chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/soviet/german-philosophy.htm|translator-last=P.|translator-first=Anton}}</ref>

===Analytic philosophy<!--'Austrian philosophy' redirects here-->===
{{Main|Analytic philosophy|Vienna Circle}}
====Frege, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle====
In the late 19th century, the predicate logic of [[Gottlob Frege]] (1848–1925) made the first substantial advance over [[Aristotelian logic]] since its inception in Ancient Greece. This was the beginning of [[analytic philosophy]]. In the early part of the 20th century, a group of German and Austrian philosophers and scientists formed the [[Vienna Circle]] to promote scientific thought over Hegelian system-building, which they saw as a bad influence on intellectual thought. The group considered themselves [[logical positivists]] because they believed all knowledge is either derived through experience or arrived at through analytic statements, and they adopted the predicate logic of Frege, as well as the early work of [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]] (1889–1951) as foundations to their work.

===Continental philosophy===
{{Main|Continental philosophy|existentialism}}
While some of the seminal philosophers of twentieth-century analytical philosophy were German-speakers, most German-language philosophy of the twentieth century tends to be defined not as analytical but 'continental' philosophy – as befits Germany's position as part of the European 'continent' as opposed to the British Isles or other culturally European nations outside of Europe.

<gallery class="center" |width="100" |height="100">
File:Edmund Husserl 1900.jpg|[[Edmund Husserl]]<br>(1859–1938)
File:Karl Jaspers 1910.jpg|[[Karl Jaspers]]<br>(1883–1969)
File:Heidegger 2 (1960).jpg|[[Martin Heidegger]]<br>(1889–1976)
File:Hannah Arendt 1933.jpg|[[Hannah Arendt]]<br>(1906–1975)
</gallery>

====Phenomenology====
[[Phenomenology (philosophy)|Phenomenology]] began at the start of the 20th century with the descriptive psychology of [[Franz Brentano]] (1838–1917), and then the transcendental phenomenology of [[Edmund Husserl]] (1859–1938). [[Max Scheler]] (1874–1928) further developed the philosophical method of phenomenology. It was then transformed by [[Martin Heidegger]] (1889–1976), whose famous book ''[[Being and Time]]'' (1927) applied phenomenology to [[ontology]], and who, along with [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]], is considered one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Phenomenology has had a large influence on Continental Philosophy, particularly [[existentialism]] and [[poststructuralism]]. Heidegger himself is often identified as an existentialist, though he rejected this.

====Hermeneutics====
{{Main|Hermeneutics}}
Hermeneutics is the philosophical theory and practice of interpretation and understanding.

Originally hermeneutics referred to the interpretation of texts, especially religious texts. In the 19th century, [[Friedrich Schleiermacher]] (1768–1834), [[Wilhelm Dilthey]] (1833–1911) and others expanded the discipline of hermeneutics beyond mere [[exegesis]] and turned it into a general humanistic discipline.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.stonybrook.edu/philosophy/research/ihde_6.html |title=Expanding Hermeneutics |access-date=2010-09-10 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604190525/http://www.stonybrook.edu/philosophy/research/ihde_6.html |archive-date=2011-06-04 }}</ref> Schleiermacher wondered whether there could be a hermeneutics that was not a collection of pieces of ad hoc advice for the solution of specific problems with text interpretation but rather a "general hermeneutics," which dealt with the "art of understanding" as such, which pertained to the structure and function of understanding wherever it occurs. Later in the 19th century, Dilthey began to see possibilities for continuing Schleiermacher's general hermeneutics project as a "general methodology of the humanities and social sciences".<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.mac.edu/faculty/richardpalmer/relevance.html |title=Richard e. Palmer: Hermeneutics and the Disciplines |access-date=2010-09-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928141532/http://www.mac.edu/faculty/richardpalmer/relevance.html |archive-date=2007-09-28 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

In the 20th century, hermeneutics took an '[[ontological turn]]'. Martin Heidegger's ''Being and Time'' fundamentally transformed the discipline. No longer was it conceived of as being about understanding linguistic communication, or providing a methodological basis for the human sciences – as far as Heidegger was concerned, hermeneutics is ontology, dealing with the most fundamental conditions of man's being in the world.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/hermeneutics/|title=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|first=C.|last=Mantzavinos|editor-first=Edward N.|editor-last=Zalta|date=22 June 2016|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|access-date=22 March 2018|via=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy}}</ref> The Heideggerian conception of hermeneutics was further developed by Heidegger's pupil [[Hans-Georg Gadamer]] (1900–2002), in his book ''[[Truth and Method]]''.

====Frankfurt School====
{{Main|Frankfurt School}}
[[File:JuergenHabermas.jpg|200px|thumb|Jürgen Habermas]]
In 1923, [[Carl Grünberg]] founded the [[University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research|Institute for Social Research]], drawing from [[Marxism]], [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]]'s psychoanalysis, and [[Max Weber|Weberian]] philosophy, which came to be known as the "[[Frankfurt School]]". Expelled by the [[Nazis]], the school reformed again in Frankfurt after [[World War II]]. Although they drew from Marxism, they were outspoken opponents of [[Stalinism]]. Books from the group, like [[Theodor W. Adorno|Adorno’s]] and [[Max Horkheimer|Horkheimer’s]] ''[[Dialectic of Enlightenment]]'' and Adorno’s ''[[Negative Dialectics]]'', critiqued what they saw as the failure of the Enlightenment project and the problems of modernity.

Since the 1960s, the [[Frankfurt School]] has been guided by [[Jürgen Habermas]]' (born 1929) work on [[communicative rationality|communicative reason]]<ref>Habermas, Jürgen. (1987). ''The Theory of Communicative Action''. Third Edition, Vols. 1 & 2, Beacon Press.</ref><ref>Habermas, Jürgen. (1990). ''Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action'', MIT Press.</ref> and linguistic [[intersubjectivity]].