Background
Lowith, Karl was born on January 9, 1897 in Munich.
Associated with phenomenology and existentialism
Lowith, Karl was born on January 9, 1897 in Munich.
Löwith was one of the most prolific German philosophers of the twentieth century. The bibliography of his works comprising more than 300 titles. He went to Italy and in 1936 he went to Japan (Tohoku University).
But because of the alliance between the Third Reich and Japan he had to leave Japan in 1941 and went to the United States of America. From 1941 to 1952, he taught at the Hartford Theological Seminary and the New School for Social Research.
In 1952 he returned to Germany to teach as Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, where he died. He is probably most known for his two books From Hegel to Nietzsche, which describes the decline of German classical philosophy, and Meaning in History, which discusses the problematic relationship between theology and history.
Löwith describes this relationship through famous western philosophers and historians, including Burckhardt, Marx, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Voltaire, Vico, Bossuet, Augustine and Orosius. This explains the tendency in history (and philosophy) to an eschatological view of human progress.
He was an important witness in 1936 to Heidegger"s continuing allegiance to National Socialism.
Lowith’s philosophy consists, in large part, of a ^stained critique of Hegelian thought. His early Writings, composed under the influence of and in faction to Heidegger's existential analysis, contain a view of man’s existence in the world according to which man is essentially ‘fellow u>an, defined by his social roles and he lamiliar forms of everyday existence; and the w°rld itself is essentially, not the environmental ^°rld, but the shared human world Sitwell) constituted by the fundamental l-Thou structure.
Heidelberg Academy for Sciences and Humanities.