Heidegger's student who traced nineteenth-century thought in From Hegel to Nietzsche and reread Nietzsche's eternal recurrence
Born in Munich to a Christian family of Jewish descent, he studied with Husserl and Heidegger and took his doctorate in 1923 on Nietzsche's self-interpretation. He habilitated under Heidegger at Marburg in 1928 but was dismissed in 1935 because of his Jewish descent. In exile in Rome he finished a book on Nietzsche's eternal recurrence (1935), and while teaching at Tohoku Imperial University in Japan he wrote From Hegel to Nietzsche (1941), a history of thought from Hegel through the Young Hegelians, Marx and Kierkegaard to Nietzsche. In the United States, Meaning in History (1949) read the philosophies of history from Vico to Marx as secularised Christian eschatology; back at Heidelberg from 1952, he published a critique of his teacher Heidegger.
Also known as: Karl Lowith · Karl Loewith
Activities and affiliations
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1928–1935
Germany state institutionsPrivatdozent at the University of Marburg
Education -
1936–1941
Japan state institutionsProfessor at Tohoku Imperial University
Scholarship and theory -
1952–1964
Germany state institutionsProfessor of philosophy, Heidelberg UniversityMain
Scholarship and theory
Career Timeline
- 1919Studied with Husserl and Heidegger at Freiburg
- 1923Doctorate on Nietzsche's self-interpretation
- 1928Habilitation under Heidegger at Marburg
- 1934Exile in Rome
- 1935Dismissed from Marburg; Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same
- 1936–1941Professor at Tohoku Imperial University
- 1941From Hegel to Nietzsche; moved to the United States
- 1941–1952Taught at Hartford Theological Seminary and the New School
- 1949Meaning in History
- 1952–1964Professor of philosophy at Heidelberg
- 1953Heidegger: Thinker in a Destitute Time