Günther Anders
Günther Anders (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʏntɐ ˈandɐs]; born Günther Siegmund Stern, 12 July 1902 – 17 December 1992) was a German-born philosopher, journalist and critical theorist.
Günther Anders | |
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Anders in 1929 | |
| Born | Günther Siegmund Stern 12 July 1902 Breslau, German Empire (now Wrocław, Poland) |
| Died | 17 December 1992 (aged 90) Vienna, Austria |
| Alma mater | University of Freiburg |
| Spouses | |
| Parent(s) | William Stern Clara Joseephy |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Continental philosophy, phenomenology |
Trained as a philosopher in the phenomenological tradition, he obtained his doctorate under Edmund Husserl in 1923 and worked then as a journalist at the Berliner Börsen-Courier. At that time, he changed his name Stern to Anders. He unsuccessfully tried to get a university tenure in the early 1930s and ultimately fled Nazism to the United States. Back to Europe in the 1950s, he published his major book, The Obsolescence of Humankind, in 1956.
An important part of Gunther Anders' work focuses on the self-destruction of mankind, through a meditation on the Holocaust and the nuclear threat. Anders developed a philosophical anthropology for the age of technology, dealing with such other themes as the effects of mass media on our emotional and ethical existence, the illogic of religion, and the question of being a thinker. He was awarded the Sigmund Freud Prize shortly before his death, in 1992.