Henrich, Dieter

Selfhood, subjectivity, self-consciousness – the mere mention of the terms already suffices to arouse a massive suspicion of Idealism. The German philosopher, and most recent recipient of the Leopold Lucas Prize, Dieter Henrich, however, has placed just these concepts at the centre of his philosophical work. An Idealist in a post-Idealist age?

"I find that every philosopher who has something of weight to teach and communicate has an inner orientation, a philosophical orientation, against which he measures himself […] For me, this orientation is Kant; for Heidegger, it is Aristotle; and for my teacher Gadamer, Plato" (interview, German World Service, March 31, 2008). Thus the eighty-one year-old Professor puts his philosophical roots in a nutshell. The coming to grips with Kant is noticeable in every twist of his thought. Kant stands for the capacity of the subject to act, for the active determination of goals and the human freedom to decide for or against morality. Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre, the structuralists and the deconstructionists, are supposed to have made a clean sweep of these authentically Idealist positions. But defying the philosophical mainstream of the twentieth century, Henrich has proved two things towards the rehabilitation of self-consciousness: its persistence and the immense advantage of a broad philosophical foundation.

Stations

Dieter Henrich, born in 1927 in Marburg, studied philosophy in his hometown, in Frankfurt am Main and in Heidelberg. In Heidelberg in 1950, he received his Ph.D. under Hans-Georg Gadamer for a work on the foundations of Max Weber’s theory of knowledge. Following his habilitation in 1955/56, Henrich taught as Full Professor at Berlin and Heidelberg. His interpretation of classical works of philosophy soon made him an internationally sought-after scholar. He became a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Harvard, Columbia and Yale in the United States, and at the University of Tokyo in Japan. Since 1970, Henrich has been President of the International Hegel Association. In 1981 he accepted an appointment in Munich, where he taught as a Full Professor until his retirement in 1994. Among other honours, Henrich is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and (since 1969) a member of the comité directeur of the International Society for Philosophy.

The many awards he has received in various branches of scholarship attest to the breadth of his field of activity: in 2004 he received the International Kant Prize of the Zeit Foundation for "his outstanding interpretations of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant", and in the same year the German Language Prize of the Henning Kaufmann Foundation; in 2006 he was given the Bavarian Order of Maximilian for Science and Art, and most recently the Leopold Lucas Prize of the Protestant Theological Faculty of the University of Tübingen (2008).

The broad foundation

Henrich has produced comprehensive studies on the epoch of German Idealism. Further, he has explored the philosophical roots of Friedrich Hölderlin’s thought He has treated questions about the foundations and methodology of philosophy. "Classical" domains of philosophy such as ethics, aesthetics and cultural theory have also been subjects of his studies. The chief reference point for his work has always been Immanuel Kant, for his philosophy contains the essential philosophical questions that have occupied Henrich throughout his life. On the basis of Kantian philosophy, and so to say contrary to the zeitgeist, Henrich has succeeded in delineating a new theory of self-consciousness. And this project has been a success, for Henrich’s philosophy of a "conscious life" has made him one of the most famous contemporary German philosophers.

From self-consciousness to a free project of life

"Human beings do not merely live; they have to lead their lives in accord with a knowledge of themselves. Of all the things that constitute human being, man’s self-consciousness is therefore the most elemental and immediate" (Denken und Selbstsein, Frankfurt am Main, 2007). Thus Henrich outlines the central argument with which he rehabilitates the Idealist subject. Is this simply a defiant attempt to eke out the life of a philosophy to which he feels, for whatever reasons, beholden? By no means. Henrich openly confronts, for example, the results of modern brain research which has already partly established that human brain activities are frequently preceded by physical actions with which the former are correlated. Yet Henrich retains the fundamental significance of the subject’s knowledge and freedom of will. Freedom, according to Henrich, is not exhausted in individual acts of choice; if we are looking for freedom, we must seek it in the development of basic attitudes. And this rests on processes that cannot be intelligibly discussed in terms of pressing or not pressing a button. Thus Henrich does actually keep alive Idealist traits in the post-Idealist age: "I manoeuvre the meaning of freedom away from the decision for or against a certain action here and now, and towards the freedom bound up with accepting and pursuing a project of life" (interview, German World Service, March 31, 2008 ).

Selected bibliography Denken und Selbstsein. Vorlesungen über Subjektivität (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2007), ISBN-13: 978-3518584811 Die Philosophie im Prozess der Kultur (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2006), ISBN-13: 978-3518294123 Grundlegung aus dem Ich. Untersuchungen zur Vorgeschichte des Idealismus. Tübingen - Jena 1790- 1794 (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2004), ISBN-13: 978-3518583913 Versuch über Kunst und Leben. Subjektivität, Weltverstehen, Kunst (Carl Hanser Verlag München, 2001), ISBN 3446198571 Bewusstes Leben. Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Subjektivität und Metaphysik (Reclam, Stuttgart, 1999=, ISBN-13: 978-3150180105