Background
Plages, Ludwig was born in 1872 in Hannover, Germany.
Plages, Ludwig was born in 1872 in Hannover, Germany.
Chemistry (PhD 1901). PhySlcs and Philosophy at Munich University, where !n 1905 he founded the Seminar für Ausdrucksünde, which soon became Germany’s leading £fntre for characterological psychology.
Klages is best known as a psychologist who drew conclusions reaching as far as cosmological principles from human expressions such as handwriting or rhythm and metre, unlike most of contemporary psychology, which relied on either introspection or experiment. In fact Klages. trained as a chemist, soon came to regard experimental science as technocratic: ‘we will not solve the mystery for ‘riddle’—Rätsel] of the world in this way; at the most, we will reduce the price of artificial butter’. Technocratic science lends justifica- lion to, and constitutes a form of, the subjugation of life by the will as it reduces knowledge to skills necessary to manipulate isolated aspects of reality, and natural diversity to categorized uniformity. ‘Numerical science’ is superficial and circular because it only allows the description of appearance or of causes. KJages claims that his own ‘phenomenological science’, by contrast, is capable of genuine holistic insight by allowing the essence of reality to reveal itself in envisionment—understood as phenomenological emergence rather than mystical revelation. This new science of emergence holds out what little hope there is left to heal the rift that has marred Western culture since in Socratic philosophy Geist inserted itself 'like a wedge’ between body and soul, depriving the body of life and disembodying the soul. The inner dynamic of Geist as intellect leads to human and environmental disaster. In the course of history man, as the ‘bearer of the intellect’, has ‘torn himself apart along with the planet which gave him birth’. Klages saw this ‘rape of nature by humanity’ as a consequence of patriarchy and therefore regarded the revival of older, matriarchal forms as a positive alternative. These environmental and gender concerns may account for the recent resurgence of interest in Klages in Germany. Widely read between the wars and denounced as a protofascistic irrationalist after the Second World War, Klages now seems due for a revival given that he used the term ‘logocentrism’ for Western thinking decades beofore it became the focus of Derridian critiques. Sources: Edwards; H. E. Schroder (1966. 1972) Ludwig Klages: Die Geschichte seines Lehens.