Robert Spaemann (5 May 1927 – 10 December 2018) was a German Catholic philosopher. He is considered a member of the Ritter School. Spaemann's focus was on Christian ethics. He was known for his work in bioethics, ecology and human rights. Although not yet widely translated into languages other than his native German, Spaemann was internationally known, and his work was highly regarded by Pope Benedict XVI He was also a personal advisor of Pope John Paul II and a friend of Joseph Ratzinger.

Life

Robert Spaemann was born in Berlin in 1927 to Heinrich Spaemann and Ruth Krämer. His parents were originally radical atheists, but both entered the Catholic Church in 1930, and after his mother's early death, his father was ordained a Catholic priest in 1942. Spaemann studied at the University of Münster, where in 1962, he was awarded his Habilitation. He was Professor of Philosophy at the Universities of Stuttgart (until 1968), Heidelberg (until 1972) and Munich, where he worked until he was made Emeritus Professor in 1992. He also became Honorary Professor at University of Salzburg and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Catholic University of Lublin in 2012.

Work

Spaemann's two most important works were Glück und Wohlwollen (Happiness and Benevolence, 1989) and Personen (Persons, 1996). In Happiness and Benevolence, Spaemann sets forth a thesis that happiness is derived from benevolent acting and that we are created by God as social beings to help one another find truth and meaning in an often confused and disordered world: "The paradigm of acting from benevolence is any action by which we come to the help of human life which requires this help...only when we are helped do we learn to help ourselves, that is, to enter into that indirect relationship with ourselves which is constitutive of for all rationality which is not strictly instrumental, [and instead] constitutive for all ethical practice.'" He participated in the Ratzinger Circle of Alumni (Schülerkreis, a private conference with Joseph Ratzinger that was convened from the late 1970s.

Proof of God from Grammar

In 2005, Spaemann published an article for the German newspaper Die Welt, arguing for the existence of God using the future perfect. The argument goes as followed: He concludes: To preserve the reality of the present, there must be an absolute consciousness in which everything that happens is stored. That conciousness being God.

Books in English

Articles in English

Books in German

Articles in German