Karl Löwith (; 9 January 1897 – 26 May 1973) was a German philosopher best known for his critiques of historicism and his analysis of secularization in modern thought. A student of Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl during the Weimar Republic, Löwith developed a distinctive philosophical position that questioned the progressivist assumptions underlying much of nineteenth and twentieth-century European philosophy, and is considered one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.
His most influential work, Meaning in History (1949), argued that Enlightenment philosophies of history from Giambattista Vico to Karl Marx represented secularised versions of Christian eschatology, transforming theological concepts of divine providence and salvation into immanent historical processes whilst retaining their underlying structure, which he argues is incoherent without their providential origin. This analysis established him as a major humanist critic of the notion that history possesses inherent meaning or direction (telos).
Forced into exile in 1934 due to his Jewish ancestry, Löwith spent periods in Italy, Japan, and the United States before returning to Germany in 1952, where he taught at Heidelberg University until his retirement. His experience of displacement shaped his philosophical outlook, reinforcing his scepticism towards grand historical narratives and systematic philosophies that claimed to discern the ultimate meaning of human existence.
Beyond his work on the philosophy of history, Löwith wrote extensively on nineteenth-century European thought, producing important studies of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Max Weber. His philosophical approach combined rigorous historical scholarship with a persistent questioning of modernity's assumptions about progress, reason, and the human condition.
Life
Löwith was born in Munich to a Christian family of Jewish descent. He was trained in phenomenology under Heidegger, and they developed a close friendship. However, this relationship became estranged with Heidegger's affiliation with Nazism, therefore Löwith had to emigrate from Germany in 1934 because of the Nazi regime. He was an important witness in 1936 to Heidegger's continuing allegiance to Nazism. He went to Italy and in 1936 he went to Japan (as did figures like Emil Brunner [1889-1966]) where he lectured at Tohoku University, which had its own tradition of phenomenology. But because of the alliance between the Third Reich and Japan he had to leave Japan in 1941 and went to the United States. From 1941 to 1952, he taught at the Hartford Theological Seminary and The New School for Social Research. In 1952, he returned to Germany to teach as professor of philosophy at Heidelberg, where he died.
Thought
His main influences include Heidegger, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard. His writing after WWII can be read in the same vein as other Christian philosophers and theologians of the 20th century. Often called responses to "crisis", Christian intellectuals of this era, such as Karl Barth (Protestant), Florovsky (Orthodox), and Erich Przywara (Roman Catholic), attempted to articulate an understanding of Christian faith in response to the challenges of scientism, secularism, and skepticism.
Meaning in History
Löwith's argument in Meaning in History is that the western view of history is confused by the relationship between Christian faith and the modern view, which is neither Christian nor pagan. The modern view is progressive, which is to say that it believes that the trajectory of history is moving towards a fulfillment in the bettering of the world by rational and technological means.
Löwith believes that the modern view is a sort of Christian "heresy" insofar that this depends on the theology that history has a linear movement, in contrast to Greek pagan cyclical view of history. He argues that the closer we get to the Biblical vision of history, " I cannot discover the slightest hint of a "philosophy of history".