Was There a Ritter School? A Chapter in the History of Philosophy in Germany

Abstract

In recent years the so-called Ritter School has received increasing attention in debates on the history of philosophy and political ideas in postwar Germany. Indeed, some of the country’s most important scholars and public intellectuals emerged from the circle around the philosopher Joachim Ritter in Münster, including philosophers such as Hermann Lübbe, Odo Marquard and Robert Spaemann, lawyers such as Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde and Martin Kriele, theologian Trutz Rendtorff, historian Rudolf Vierhaus, and art historian Max Imdahl. Many of Ritter’s disciples later held professorships at German universities and helped shape the academic landscape of the Federal Republic. Some of them also worked as publicists and consultants, held public office, served on university policy committees or in the legal and ecclesiastical systems and thus had a far-reaching influence on Germany’s public life and political culture. On closer inspection, however, classifying Ritter and his disciples as a philosophical school appears extremely questionable. Members of the presumed school itself as well as contemporary researchers question the label and prefer to regard the circle as a “forum for open thinking.” The article takes a closer look at the Ritter School and investigates to what extent the personal, theoretical and institutional connections between Joachim Ritter and his disciples can be adequately understood as a philosophical school. The author first provides an overview of the origins and development of the circle as it emerged from Ritter’s Collegium Philosophicum. Ritter’s own philosophical approach is then outlined, and its reception among his disciples is traced. Finally, a more detailed exposition of the principal characteristics of a philosophical school is the basis for a differentiated examination of the customary label “Ritter School” and an assessment of its significance for the philosophical discourse of West Germany.