Agnes Taubert – Wikipedia

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German writer and philosopher (1844-1877)

Agnes Marie Constanze von Hartmann[1] (née Taubert; 7 January 1844 – 8 May 1877) was a German writer and philosopher, known for her 1873 book Pessimism and Its Opponents and its contribution to the pessimism controversy in Germany.

Biography[edit]

Taubert was born in 1844, in Stralsund.[2] She was the daughter of an artillery colonel,[3] who was friends with the father of the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann.[4] In 1872, Taubert married Von Hartmann in Berlin-Charlottenburg and had a child with him.[2]

Taubert was a staunch supporter of her husband’s work Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869) and wrote two books which both critiqued and defended his ideas,[5] under the pen name A. Taubert.[6] Her work Pessimism and Its Opponents (1873) was a major influence on the pessimism controversy in Germany.[5] In the text, she defined the problem that philosophical pessimism engages with as “a matter of measuring the eudaimonological value of life in order to determine whether existence is preferable to non-existence or not”; like her husband, Taubert argued that the answer to this problem is “empirically ascertainable”.[7]

Taubert died in 1877, of “an attack of a rheumatism of the joints”,[8] which was described as “extremely painful”.[9]

Taubert has been described as “one of the first women to have a prominent role in a public intellectual debate in Germany”[5] and has been compared to Olga Plümacher, a contemporary woman philosopher, who also had a significant role in the pessimism controversy,[10] as well as the German-American philosopher Amalie J. Hathaway.[11]

References[edit]

  1. ^ “T”. Namensverzeichnis Sterbberegister 1877 (PDF) (in German). Landesarchiv Berlin. p. 78. Retrieved 2021-11-02.
  2. ^ a b Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der briefadeligen Häuser [Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the post-aristocratic houses] (in German). Gotha: J. Perthes. 1907. p. 270.
  3. ^ Hall, Granville Stanley (1912). Founders of Modern Psychology. New York; London: Appleton. p. 184.
  4. ^ Tsanoff, Radoslav A. (1931). The Nature of Evil. New York: The Macmillan Company. p. 344.
  5. ^ a b c Beiser, Frederick C. (2016). “The Pessimism Controversy, 1870–1890”. Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860–1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 168. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198768715.001.0001. ISBN 9780198768715.
  6. ^ Cusack, Andrew (2021). Johannes Scherr: Mediating Culture in the German Nineteenth Century. Boydell & Brewer. p. 137. ISBN 978-1-64014-057-8.
  7. ^ Dahlkvist, Tobias (2007). Nietzsche and the Philosophy of Pessimism: Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Leopardi (PDF) (Doctoral thesis). Uppsala University. p. 78
  8. ^ Beiser, Frederick C. (2016). “Two Forgotten Women Philosophers”. After Hegel: German Philosophy, 1840–1900. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 217. doi:10.23943/princeton/9780691163093.001.0001. ISBN 9780691173719.
  9. ^ Hartmann, Edward von (1895). The Sexes Compared and Other Essays. Translated by Kenner, A. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. pp. v.
  10. ^ Roehr, Sabine (2015-10-27). “After Hegel: German Philosophy 1840–1900 by Frederick C. Beiser (review)”. Journal of the History of Philosophy. 53 (4): 790–791. doi:10.1353/hph.2015.0073. ISSN 1538-4586. S2CID 170193435.
  11. ^ Bensick, Carol (2018-04-12). “An Unknown American Contribution to the German Pessimism Controversy: Amalie J. Hathaway’s ‘Schopenhauer’“. Blog of the APA. Retrieved 2021-02-06.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

Further reading[edit]