Philosophisches Interesse an Augustin: Von Dilthey und Troeltsch zu Scheler und Heidegger

Kurt Flasch

doi:10.5771/9783465146834

Summary

Kurt Flasch has published several seminal studies on Augustine. Here he presents a new, decidedly different book on Augustine in Germany, set against the backdrop of the ‘Gründerzeit’ and with far-reaching implications for the present day. He illustrates Augustine’s central ideas through the reflections of German scholars of Augustine from the period spanning roughly 1860 to 1939, who spent decades seeking to identify and discuss the foundations of Augustinian thought. The book begins with the major influencers Dilthey and Troeltsch; it touches on Nietzsche and discusses at length the Augustine of Nietzsche’s learned friend Overbeck; it brings together philosophers and historians of various denominations, analyses Protestant and Catholic theologians, and, with strict selectivity, presents just one of the numerous dogmatic advocates of Augustine. Among the renowned German scholars of Augustine, Flasch identifies not only Scheler and Heidegger but also the party leader and German Reich Chancellor Hertling. Flasch examines: What purpose does Augustine serve in the dramatic German history of these decades? He is concerned with the new concept of the Reich, Protestant theology and war-like nationalism, as well as the Catholic interpretation of Augustine at a time of prescribed Thomistic rigidity. He asks: Has German Christianity in these decades, estranged from tradition, alienated its own classic? What did leading German thinkers seek and find in him as fundamental?