Heinrich Meier (philosopher)

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Heinrich Meier (born April 8, 1953 in Freiburg im Breisgau) is a German philosopher and managing director of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation in Munich.

Life

Meier was a student from 1968 to 1972 publisher and editor of the far right student newspaper Im Brennpunkt (The Focal Point), which reached a total circulation of nearly 200,000 copies and a large distribution area had. The authors of this newspaper included Henning Eichberg, Bernd Kallina and Dietrich Murswiek.

After graduating from high school in Emmendingen in June 1973, he studied philosophy, political science, sociology and biology from 1973 to 1980 at the University of Freiburg with Wilhelm Hennis and graduating on 1985 a doctorate with his thesis on the Discourse on Inequality of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

In 1985 he succeeded Armin Mohler at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation in Munich and has been teaching as an honorary professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich since 1999. In 2006, he accepted a call from the University of Chicago as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Committee on Social Thought, with the obligation to teach one quarter a year.

As managing director of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation, Meier organized lecture evenings with renowned scientists from all disciplines from Europe and overseas. Part of the lectures has been published by Meier since 1985, and more than 100 volumes have been published so far. In addition, Meier has been published in the series Piper several lectures on various topics including, inter alia, the volumes Über die Liebe (About Love), Der Tod im Leben (Death in Life) and Über das Glück (About Happiness).

Work

Meier's thinking and writing apply to political philosophy, the origin of which he discussed in his inaugural lecture Why Political Philosophy? he has determined in four ways: first, with regard to their subject: the political or human things; second, with regard to the mode of philosophy: the political defense of philosophy understood as a philosophical way of life; third, in consideration of the rational foundation of the philosophical Way of life; fourth, as a place of self-knowledge of the philosopher.

Political philosophy as developed by Meier in its self-understanding is neither a philosophical sub-discipline nor a cultural phenomenon among others. Political philosophy is rather the turning of philosophy on itself, the reflection of its own possibility and its necessity in the individual philosophical activity. Whoever wants to establish philosophy as a conscious way of life cannot achieve this by deduction or by using an axiom of absolute certainty. If one desires to underpin philosophical life, one has to defend it against the most demanding alternative, against the sharpest opponent: one ought to justify it by eliciting it, by refuting the strongest alternative. The alternative, with which the political philosophers have always had to deal with was politics or political life with its demand for justice. This alternative was exacerbated by revelation and its claim to unconditional obedience to the almighty God, who embraced political theology, as a political theory in obedience to the faith. Both political philosophy and political theology pose the question of real life. But while political philosophy tries to answer the question of the right life entirely on the basis of human wisdom, political theology denies the possibility of human knowledge of the most important things.

The incompatibility of philosophy and revelation with regard to their respective foundations and their respective self-understanding has been adjusted over the past few centuries, at least in Europe, through attempts at synthesizing them, but with the strengthening of fundamentalist positions, political theology has also gained attention. With a view to regaining the horizon for political philosophy, Meier has more explicitly profiled the engagement of political philosophy with political theology than a philosopher before him. All of his writings and books, starting with his commentary on the Discourse on Inequality of Rousseau, testify to Meier's steadily deepening unlocking of the problem and its indispensability for the philosopher's self-knowledge. In his paper What is Political Theology? Meier gave a brief clarification of the origin of the term and the meaning of political theology.

In his book Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss und Der Begriff des Politischen – Ein Dialog unter Abwesenden (Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and "The Concept of the Political" - A Dialogue between Absent Men) published in 1988, Meier interprets the most famous book as the work of political theologian Schmitt, and comments on the philosophical criticism that Leo Strauss made in 1932 in his Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (Comments on Carl Schmitt), has practiced the concept of the political in Schmitt's position. As the first interpreter, Meier subjects the three versions of Schmitt's most famous work (the first and the third little known) to detailed analysis and shows how Leo Strauss Schmitt's philosophical provocation led his own political theology most clearly in the third and last one version from 1933.

Of particular importance in Meier's book is the first interpretation of the book The Leviathan in the State Doctrine of Thomas Hobbes by Carl Schmitt, which illuminates Schmitt's problems in dealing with the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes .

Meier's volume The Theological-Political Problem on the Subject of Leo Strauss (2003) gathers three of his essays on a subject that is no less Meier than that of Strauss: The Theological-political Problem, On The Genealogy of the Belief in Revelation and Death as a God: A Note on Martin Heidegger. In the 2006 American edition is The Theologico-Political Problem expanded by two previously unpublished English lectures by Leo Strauss on the subject: The Living Issues of German Post-War Philosophy (1940) and Reason and Revelation (1948). Meier understands the theological-political problem as the "inner connection" of all philosophical problems raised by Strauss, "from the dialogue of the old and the modern, through philosophy as a way of life and exoteric - esoteric art of writing to the critique of historicism." (p. 13)

The theological-political problem is the short formula for the questions to which political philosophy must be able to give a reasonable answer: it must refute the truth claim of revelation and think through the possibilities and limits of politics.

Honors

• 1973–1983: Scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation
• 1997: Peregrinus Prize from the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
• 2000: Georges Lurcy professorship at the University of Chicago
• 2003: Visiting professor at Boston College, Boston, USA
• 2005: Leibniz Medal of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences
• 2011: Honorary Senator of the Humboldt University in Berl
• 2013: Political Philosophy Cross-Examined: Perennial Challenges to the Philosophic Life. Essays in Honor of Heinrich Meier. Ed. V. Thomas L. Pangle and J. Harvey Lomax. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Writings

Independent publications

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes / Discourse on the origin and foundations of inequality among people. Critical edition of the integral text with German translation, an essay on the rhetoric and the intention of the work as well as a detailed commentary. Paderborn 1984. Schöningh, UTB for Science 1984. 7th edition 2019. Introductory essay in Chinese translation 2003.
• Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and "The Concept of the Political". For a dialogue among the absent. With the essay by Leo Strauss on the “concept of the political” and three unpublished letters to Carl Schmitt from 1932/1933. Stuttgart 1988. New edition Stuttgart, Weimar 1998. Third edition. With an afterword. 2013. French 1990. Japanese 1993. American 1995, 2006. Chinese 2002. Spanish 2008. Italian 2011. Russian 2012. Korean 2019.
• Carl Schmitt's Teaching - Four Chapters to Differentiate Political Theology and Political Philosophy. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 1994. Second edition. With an afterword. 2004. Third edition. With a review “The Controversy over Political Theology” 2009. Fourth edition 2012. American 1998, extended paperback edition 2011. Chinese 2004. French 2009. Italian 2013. French 2014. Japanese 2015. Italian 2017. Korean 2019.
• Leo Strauss's thinking movement. The history of philosophy and the intention of the philosopher. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 1996. Chinese 2002. American 2006. French 2006. Spanish 2006. Japanese 2010.
• Why political philosophy? Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2000. 2nd edition 2001. Chinese 2001. American 2002. French 2006. Spanish 2006. Japanese 2008.
• The theological-political problem - On the subject of Leo Strauss. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2003, Chinese 2004. French 2006. Spanish 2006. Japanese 2010.
• "Les rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire" - Rousseau on philosophical life. Munich 2005. 2nd edition 2010. Chinese 2006. Japanese 2008. French 2010. American 2010. Korean 2019.
• What is political theology? - What is Political Theology? Munich 2006.
• Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006. 7th edition 2008. Contains two previously unpublished lectures by Leo Strauss.
• About the happiness of philosophical life. Reflections on Rousseau's “Rêveries” in two books . CH Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-62287-8 . Chinese 2013. American 2016.
• Political philosophy and the challenge of the revelation religion . CH Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-65474-9 . Chinese 2014. American 2018. Italian 2019.
• Politics and practical philosophy. Commemorative speech at Wilhelm Hennis (scientific papers and speeches on philosophy, politics and intellectual history band 76) . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-428142910.
• What is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? A Philosophical Argument . CH Beck, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-406-70794-0 . Chinese 2019. American 2019.
• Nietzsche's legacy. "Ecce homo" and "The Antichrist". Two books on nature and politics . CH Beck, Munich 2019. ISBN 978-3-406-73953-8.

Leo Strauss: Collected Writings in six volumes

• Volume 1: Spinoza's criticism of religion and related writings. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 1996. With a “Foreword by the Editor”. 2nd revised and expanded edition 2001. 3rd revised and expanded edition 2008.
• Volume 2: Philosophy and Law - Early Writings. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 1997. With a “Foreword by the Editor”. 1st, revised reprint 1998. 2nd reprint 2004. 2nd, revised and expanded edition 2013.
• with Wiebke Meier (ed.): Volume 3: Hobbes' Political Science and Associated Writings - letters . Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2001. With a “Foreword by the Editor”. 1st, revised reprint 2003. Second, revised edition 2008.

Publications of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation

• The Challenge of Evolutionary Biology. Piper, Munich 1988. 2nd edition 1989. 3rd edition 1992.
• For The Diagnosis of Modernity. Piper, Munich 1990.
• with Gerhard Börner, Jürgen Ehlers : From the Big Bang to the complex universe. The cosmology of the present. Piper, Munich 1993.
• with Detlev Ploog: Man and his brain. The consequences of evolution. Piper, Munich 1997. 2nd edition 1998.
• Gerhard Neumann: About love. A symposium. Piper, Munich 2000. 2nd edition 2001. 3rd edition 2008. 4th edition 2010.
• with Friedrich Wilhelm Graf: Death in Life. A symposium. Piper, Munich 2004. 2nd edition 2008. 3rd edition 2009.
• About happiness. A symposium. Piper, Munich 2008. 2nd edition 2010.
• with Friedrich Wilhelm Graf: Politics and Religion: Diagnosing the Present. CH Beck, Munich 2013. 2nd edition 2017. ISBN 978-3-406-65297-4 .
• with Friedrich Wilhelm Graf: The future of democracy. Criticism and plea. CH Beck, Munich 2018. ISBN 978-3-406-72614-9 .

Literature

• Justin Michael Gottschalk: Knowledge or Power: Heinrich Meier and the Case For Political Philosophy (doctoral thesis at the University of California, San Diego, 2014)
• Political philosophy versus political theology? The question of violence in the area of ​​conflict between politics and religion, ed. by Wolfgang Palaver, Andreas Oberprantacher, Dietmar Regensburger, Innsbruck, Innsbruck University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-3-902811-12-7 (Interdisciplinary examination of Meier's distinction between political philosophy and political theology)
• J. Harvey Lomax: Carl Schmitt, Heinrich Meier, and the End of Philosophy, in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy Vol. 28/1 (Fall 2000).
• Marco Menon: Heinrich Meier e la sfida della teologia politica, in Il Politico 84/1 (2019), pp. 100–116.

References

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