Theodor Lessing, Philosophical Generations and Cycles of Cultural Criticism in Germany

Abstract

The article is the first study of the work of the German philosopher Theodor Lessing in Russian language. Lessing’s version of the “philosophy of life” is viewed through the lens of cultural criticism (Kulturkritik). The latter, according to the author, inherits the philosophy of F. Nietzsche and is the main discourse of criticism of technical modernity in the beginning of 20th century, shared by representatives of several intellectual generations in Germany. An “ideal type of criticism of technology” is identified, which is a special discourse within cul­tural criticism. It is shown in what respect Lessing is close to L. Klages and M. Scheler, and in what respect he anticipates the philosophical and anthropo­logical intuitions of O. Spengler and A. Gehlen. The author comes to the conclu­sion that the typologization of discourse of cultural criticism in German intellec­tual history provides an opportunity to observe the reproduction of its main elements over a certain period of time (in this case after the Second World War, i.e. after approximately 20 years of the dominance of the technocratic paradigm in the 1920s–1930s), and among Marxism and conservatism thinkers. The study uses the metahermeneutic methodology that pays attention to intellectual con­texts to uncover the life world or generational experience as it was lived in changing historical conditions