Hedwig Conrad-Martius 1888 – 1966
Hedwig Conrad-Martius was a German Catholic phenomenologist and one of the leading figures of the Munich-Gottingen circle around Husserl and Reinach. A friend of Edith Stein, with whom she shared a long philosophical conversation, she developed in her Real Ontology, Time, and The Self-Construction of Nature a phenomenology that moves resolutely from the description of appearances to the metaphysical analysis of being itself. Forbidden to teach during the National Socialist period because her husband was Jewish, she returned to academic life only in 1949 with an honorary professorship at Munich. Her work has shaped subsequent Catholic phenomenology and the philosophical reception of biology.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Phenomenology, Christian
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Hedwig Conrad-Martius:
“Phenomenology must penetrate to the being of things, not merely their appearance.”
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Attributed to Hedwig Conrad-Martius:
“Real ontology takes seriously what daily experience already knows.”
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Attributed to Hedwig Conrad-Martius:
“Time is the form in which being unfolds itself.”
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Attributed to Hedwig Conrad-Martius:
“Nature is the open page on which God's wisdom is written.”
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Attributed to Hedwig Conrad-Martius:
“The plant lives a life that we cannot but recognize as life.”