The Life and Work of Günther Anders

Günther Anders (1902, Breslau 1992, Vienna) studied philosophy with Husserl and Heidegger in Freiburg in the 1920s. Married to Hannah Arendt he worked in Berlin as a journalist and also wrote antifascist literature. He emigrated in 1933, first to Paris, then to the United States, where he worked and lectured at the New School for Social Research. Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were the major turning points in Anders' philosophical thinking. He returned to Europe in 1950 and settled in Vienna. He was one of the first to critically examine the Austrian victim myth. Increasingly, his primary interest turned to the issue of the growing predominance of technology in human life. In his main philosophical work Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen (1956) Anders developed what he called a 'philosophy of discrepancy,' an analysis of the gap between what we are able to produce and what we are able to imagine. He emerged as a central figure in the European antinuclear movement. He was also a critic of the American aggression in Vietnam. Over a long career stretching almost seventy years, Anders published numerous philosophical essays and diaries, fables, short stories, and poetry. This volume tries to recover and reintroduce the work of the most neglected German philosopher of the twentieth century (Jean-Pierre Dupuy).

Auteur

Gunter Bischof is the Marshall Plan Professor of History and director of Center Austria at the University of New Orleans.

Jason Dawsey teaches history at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Bernhard Fetz is director of the Literaturarchiv der Osterreichischen Nationalbibliothek and associate professor of German studies at the University of Vienna.

Texte du rabat

Günther Anders (1902, Breslau - 1992, Vienna) studied philosophy with Husserl and Heidegger in Freiburg in the 1920s. Married to Hannah Arendt he worked in Berlin as a journalist and also wrote antifascist literature. He emigrated in 1933, first to Paris, then to the United States, where he worked and lectured at the New School for Social Research. Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were the major turning points in Anders' philosophical thinking. He returned to Europe in 1950 and settled in Vienna. He was one of the first to critically examine the Austrian victim myth. Increasingly, his primary interest turned to the issue of the growing predominance of technology in human life. In his main philosophical work Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen (1956) Anders developed what he called a 'philosophy of discrepancy,' an analysis of the gap between what we are able to produce and what we are able to imagine. He emerged as a central figure in the European antinuclear movement. He was also a critic of the American aggression in Vietnam. Over a long career stretching almost seventy years, Anders published numerous philosophical essays and diaries, fables, short stories, and poetry. This volume tries to recover and reintroduce the work of "the most neglected German philosopher of the twentieth century" (Jean-Pierre Dupuy).

Résumé

This volume recovers and reintroduces the work of Gunther Anders (1902-1992), "the most neglected German philosopher of the twentieth century," according to Jean-Pierre Dupuy. In his main philosophical work, Die Antiquiert-heit des Menschen (1956), Anders developed what he called a "philosophy of discrepancy," an analysis of the gap between what we are able to produce and what we are able to imagine. Over a long career stretching almost seventy years, Anders published numerous philosophical essays, short stories, and poetry. His role as an arch-critic of ever more advancing technological mass society, in general, and the nuclear age, in particular, defined him as a public intellectual par excellence of the Cold War era.