HISTORY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS, 2016 VOL. 42, NO. 7, 951–964 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2016.1161538
Existentialism as a Political Problem in Karl Löwith’s Thought Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz Faculty of International and Political Studies, Institute of Political Science and International Relations,The Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Kraków, Poland SUMMARY
KEYWORDS
The aim of this paper is to make a case for the claim that Karl Löwith’s thought is predominately preoccupied with one major philosophic– historical problem that may be broadly labelled existentialism. This notion is usually employed by Löwith in order to grasp the various phenomena and developments within the European (or Western) history in the modern age. I claim that the meaning assigned by Löwith to the notion of existentialism is inseparable from its political consequences. In other words, I attempt to reconstruct the notion of existentialism in Löwith’s thought primarily as a political problem. By advancing this argument, I am inclined towards the view that Löwith’s œuvre deserves more careful reception from political theorists than it has yet received.
Karl Löwith; modernity; existentialism; decisionism; political theory
Contents 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Reconsidering Löwith’s thought Reconstructing modernity Post-Hegelian breakthrough and the decline of the bourgeois-Christian world Political consequences Conclusions
1. Reconsidering Löwith’s thought In 1936 in the Italian-German Cultural Institute in Rome, Carl Schmitt—as one of the invited speakers—lectured about the concepts of ‘total state’ and ‘total war’.1 His auditorium included German-Jewish émigré Karl Löwith, the philosopher who had left Germany in 1934 in the wake of the emerging national socialism and the increasing obstacles to his academic career at the University of Marburg, and stayed in Italy supported by a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship. It is also possible that another German émigré, Erik Peterson, the protestant theologian who had converted to Catholicism and lived in Italy since 1933, a friend of both Schmitt and Löwith, was also present during that event. It is noteworthy that Schmitt was apparently not aware that Löwith stood behind the thorough critique of his political decisionism published in 1934 under the CONTACT Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz
[email protected] 1 Karl Löwith, My Life in Germany before and after 1933, trans. Elizabeth King, foreword by Reinhart Koselleck (London: The Athlone Press, c1994), 91. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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