Alexander Pfänder was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 philosopher and phenomenologist. He was born in Iserlohn

Iserlohn

Iserlohn is a city in the Märkischer Kreis district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the largest city by population and area within the district and the Sauerland region.-Geography:...

 and spent his entire academic career in Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

, where he was a student of Theodor Lipps

Theodor Lipps

Theodor Lipps was a German philosopher. Lipps was one of the most influential German university professors of his time, attracting many students from other countries. Lipps was very concerned with conceptions of art and the aesthetic, focusing much of his philosophy around such issues...

 and one of the founding members of the Munich circle of phenomenologists

Munich phenomenology

Munich Phenomenology, refers to the group of philosophers, psychologists and phenomenologists that studied and worked in Munich at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Edmund Husserl published his masterwork, the Logical Investigations and began the phenomenological movement...

. As a professor Pfänder was also influential in conveying and promoting a version of phenomenology that differed from Edmund Husserl

Edmund Husserl

Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...

's "transcendental" orientation. His early phenomenological analysis of will

Will (philosophy)

Will, in philosophical discussions, consonant with a common English usage, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are called "willing" or "voluntary" and sometimes pejoratively "willful"...

ing (1900) in fact predated Husserl's breakthrough in phenomenology (Logical Investigations, vol. II (1901)). In spite of his talents as a writer and a teacher, Pfänder did not come into prominence as did Heidegger with Being and Time

Being and Time

Being and Time is a book by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, particularly...

(1927) and has consequently been overshadowed by subsequent developments out of Heideggerian and Husserlian orientations. Nevertheless, his detailed analyses of various phenomena, such as willing and attitudes (Gesinnungen), have been undeservedly ignored. Moreover, his development of the concept of an "understanding psychology" also merits attention, which it has not received due to its treatment in a work with an unfashionable title (The Soul of Man (1933)).

Works

• Phänomenologie des Wollens: Eine psychologische Analyse (1900)
• Logik (1921) English translation: Logic Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 2009.
• Die Seele des Menschen (1933).

External links

• 'Pfänder, Alexander (1871–1941)', Encyclopedia of Philosophy