Heinrich Meier (born 8 April 1953) is a German philosopher. He has published on subjects including political theology, Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt. He led the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation from 1985 to 2022.
As a young man, Meier was engaged in radical politics as a nationalist and as a socialist, but became disillusioned with both ideologies. He began his academic career with studies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He then came to focus on political theology, Friedrich Nietzsche and Leo Strauss. [1]
Meier's book Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue (1988) is about the both open and private intellectual exchange between Carl Schmitt and Strauss. [2] Meier argues that political theology is at the centre of Schmitt's work and that his influence on Strauss was considerable. [3]
In The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy (1994), Meier further analyses Schmitt as a political theologian. [3]
Meier was the editor of Strauss' collected works in German. [4] Meier's book Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem (2003) evaluates Strauss and his critics, with the aim of encouraging self-criticism among philosophers. [5] The book argues that Strauss' main concern was never politics, but the conflict between reason and revelation. [4]
Robert Howse is critical of Meier's interpretation of the Schmitt–Strauss connection, arguing that Meier both exaggerates Schmitt's influence on Strauss and gives it an unfounded political dimension. Howse argues that the relationship between them was merely professional. [6]
From 1985 to 2022, Meier was the managing director of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation. Since 1999, he has taught as Honorarprofessor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. [1]
Leo Strauss was a 20th century German-American scholar of political philosophy. Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Strauss later emigrated from Germany to the United States. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books.
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich is a public research university in Munich, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke Ludwig IX of Bavaria-Landshut, it is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operation.
The University of Zürich is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine which go back to 1525, and a new faculty of philosophy.
Carl Schmitt was a German jurist, political theorist, geopolitician and prominent member of the Nazi Party.
The Philipps University of Marburg is a public research university located in Marburg, Germany. It was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Protestant university in the world. It is now a public university of the state of Hesse, without religious affiliation.
The Walhalla is a hall of fame that honours laudable and distinguished people in German history – "politicians, sovereigns, scientists and artists of the German tongue"; thus the celebrities honoured are drawn from Greater Germany, a wider area than today's Germany, and even as far away as Britain in the case of several Anglo-Saxon figures. The hall is a neo-classical building above the Danube River, in Donaustauf, east of Regensburg in Bavaria, the exterior modelled on the Parthenon in Athens.
Wilhelm Windelband was a German philosopher of the Baden School.
Adam Heinrich Müller was a German-Austrian conservative philosopher, literary critic, and political economist, working within the romantic tradition.
The Right Hegelians, Old Hegelians (Althegelianer), or the Hegelian Right were those followers of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the early 19th century who took his philosophy in a politically and religiously conservative direction. They are typically contrasted with the Young Hegelians, who interpreted Hegel's political philosophy as supportive of left-wing and progressive politics or views on religion.
Thomas Lee Pangle, is an American political scientist. He holds the Joe R. Long Chair in Democratic Studies in the Department of Government and is Co-Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Core Texts and Ideas at the University of Texas at Austin. He has also taught at the University of Toronto and Yale University. He was a student of Leo Strauss.
Political theology is a term which has been used in discussion of the ways in which theological concepts or ways of thinking relate to politics. The term is often used to denote religious thought about political principled questions. Scholars such as Carl Schmitt, a prominent Nazi jurist and political theorist, who wrote extensively on how to effectively wield political power, used it to denote religious concepts that were secularized and thus became key political concepts. It has often been affiliated with Christianity, but since the 21st century, it has more recently been discussed with relation to other religions.
The Concept of the Political is a 1932 book by the German philosopher and jurist Carl Schmitt, in which the author examines the fundamental nature of the "political" and its place in the modern world.
Events in the year 1899 in Germany.
Events in the year 1906 in Germany.
Liu Xiaofeng is a contemporary Chinese scholar and a professor at Renmin University of China. He has been considered the prototypical example of what is called a cultural Christian, meaning a believer who may lack a specific church identification or affiliation, and was, along with He Guanghu, one of the main forerunners of the academic field of Sino-Christian Theology. However, in recent years, his interest has shifted from studies in Christian theology to the political theories of Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt.
The Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation aims to promote science. The foundation was established in 1958 on the initiative of entrepreneur Ernst von Siemens. The managing director was the philosopher Heinrich Meier until March 2022. In the summer semester of 2022, the literary scholar Marcel Lepper took over the management. Since February 22, 2023, the foundation has been temporarily managed by Carola Schütt, who previously held the commercial management. Armin Mohler, who popularized the concept of the conservative revolution, chaired the foundation for many years from 1964 to 1985, making the foundation a central place for the “New Right” of the time.
"In Praise of Polytheism (On Monomythical and Polymythical Thinking)" (German: Lob des Polytheismus. Über Monomythie und Polymythie) is an essay by the German philosopher Odo Marquard, which was held as a lecture at the Technical University of Berlin in 1978. It was first published in 1979 in an anthology, and was published again in 1981 in Marquard's book Farewell to Matters of Principle (German: Abschied vom Prinzipiellen).
Events from the year 1831 in Germany
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