Leben oder Papier: Zur Philosophiehistorie Kurt Flaschs

The following review discusses Kurt Flasch's most recent publications. Despite the seemingly diverse topics explored in them, the review endeavors to highlight the methodological and historiographical convergences that exist between all of them. The inquiry also intends to examine the significance of the contradiction between the utilization of biographical and the psychological interpretation as elements of intellectual history and a history of ideas which is almost exclusively focussed on manifest or explicit discursive statements, as established in Flasch's work. In the course of the individual discussions, the advantages as well as the disadvantages for the history of philosophy resulting from the avoidance or employment of psychological-biographical features in their specific contexts should become apparent.
Kurt Flasch, Hans Blumenberg. Philosoph in Deutschland: Die Jahre 1945 bis 1966, 2. durchgesehene Auflage, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2019. 620 S. Ders., Christentum und Aufklärung. Voltaire gegen Pascal, 2. durchgesehene Auflage, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2021. 436 S. Ders., Katholische Wegbereiter des Nationalsozialismus. Michael Schmaus, Joseph Lortz, Josef Pieper, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2021. 192 S.