22 Facts About Julius Bahnsen

In 1862, Julius Bahnsen acquired an employment at a progymnasium in Lauenburg, Hinterpommern, where he lived until his death.

Julius Bahnsen negates a redemption of the countless will units and postulates the permanence of the existence of the contradiction as a basic nature of the world, whereby the law of this world becomes a tragic world order.

The real-dialectical side of his teachings Julius Bahnsen laid down in the paper On the Philosophy of History, his central work The Contradiction in the Knowledge and Being of the World, and his anniversary publication to the jubilee of the city Tubingen The Tragical as World Law and Humour as Aesthetic Shape of the Metaphysical.

At the beginning of his delve into philosophy, Julius Bahnsen developed an interest in Hegelianism, which was in decline yet still popular in early 19th century Germany.

From Hegel's teachings, Julius Bahnsen found his panlogism and radical rationalism dissatisfying.

In Julius Bahnsen's view, there was a stark mismatch between the unconcealed irrationality of the world and the naive theories, rationalizations and explanations of various philosophers.

However, Julius Bahnsen believed that Heraclitus's postulate of an underlying Logos and Hegel's idea of the rational spirit had misled them and had contaminated Hegel's formulation of the dialectic with progressivism and historicism.

Julius Bahnsen accepted a "modified" form of Hegel's dialectic, but by removing the metaphysical driving entity, there remained a void to be filled in his worldview.

Julius Bahnsen had always harbored an interest in psychology, specifically the method of examination of individual characters and temperaments.

Julius Bahnsen viewed each person as unique and as a result of this view, could not entirely accept Schopenhauer's preference for monism.

Similar to fellow German pessimist Philipp Mainlander, Julius Bahnsen leaned towards ontological pluralism and asserted that there is no unified will, but only individual wills, with their own specific cravings, aims and wishes.

Julius Bahnsen's ideas are arguably more unsettling than Mainlander's notion of a will-to-die, yet strangely similar to Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of the eternal return.

Julius Bahnsen developed a close friendship with fellow philosopher Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, until they eventually fell out and became philosophical rivals.

In contrast, Julius Bahnsen rejected Hegel's rationalism and accepted his dialectic in a negative form, while integrating it with a pluralized version of Schopenhauer's metaphysics of will.

Hartmann criticized Julius Bahnsen's pluralism and claimed that the common point between all "individual wills" is a singular will.

Whilst Julius Bahnsen criticized Hartmann, claiming that his "Hegelian rationalism" corrupted the teachings of Schopenhauer's essentially purposeless will.

Hegel's spirit could not be combined with the Schopenhauerian will, Julius Bahnsen asserted, because this geist is teleological and has always had an end-goal.

Julius Bahnsen countered that feeling is the will's non-representational goal and that not all of the will's aims are rational.

From this observation, Julius Bahnsen concluded that tragedy exposes precisely this inner contradiction that is inherent in the world.

Julius Bahnsen complained that a typical Christian missionary would claim that one should just "do the right thing and be rewarded", yet there is not one "right" thing.

Julius Bahnsen stated that the pessimist preserves his "idealist heart" but utilizes the "cold calculation of the head" to strike a middle ground.

Julius Bahnsen was critical of "hedonistic" pessimism - the position that the pains of the world outnumber its pleasures in quality and quantity.