Adolf Reinach 1883 – 1917
Adolf Bernhard Philipp Reinach was a German philosopher, lawyer, and one of the most original of the early phenomenologists. A pupil of Husserl and the leading philosophical voice of the Munich-Gottingen circle, he applied phenomenological method to the philosophy of law, developing in his Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law a celebrated theory of social acts: promises, commands, and other speech acts that create normative realities by their very performance. Killed in the First World War at thirty-three after volunteering for the German army, he left a deep mark on Edith Stein, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, and a wider Catholic phenomenology.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Phenomenology
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Adolf Reinach:
“There are a priori truths in the realm of social acts.”
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Attributed to Adolf Reinach:
“A promise creates an obligation that did not exist before.”
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Attributed to Adolf Reinach:
“Phenomenology must investigate the structures of action as well as of thought.”
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Attributed to Adolf Reinach:
“Law has eternal foundations beneath its historical forms.”
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Attributed to Adolf Reinach:
“Speech acts are not mere words; they are realities.”