Panagiotis Kondylis
[4] Born in 1943 in the small community of Drouva (Δρούβα) in the municipality of Olympia, Greece, where the Kondylis' family house is still standing today, he moved with his father, who was a military officer, at the age of six to Kifisia, Athens, where he attended school.He was interested in a number of areas of study including: the Enlightenment and the preceding Renaissance-era critiques of metaphysics; the philosophy of war and Clausewitz, as well as the work of Hegel and Marx; Western bourgeois culture and its decline; Conservatism; post-Modernity, and International Affairs.He also translated into modern Greek classic works by authors such as: Xenophon, Burnham, Machiavelli, Marx, Lichtenberg, Pavese, Montesquieu, Chamfort, Rivarol, Schiller, Cassirer and Carl Schmitt.[7] His final major work Das Politische und der Mensch (The Political and Man) remained unfinished at the time of his death, but nevertheless managed to present a unified social-scientific theory or "value-free" description of social phenomena, encompassing socio-ontological, sociological and historical aspects of the study of human affairs.Moreover, Kondylis examines the social relation as regards its "internal" mechanism of subjectivity and "external" mechanism of action, the friend–foe polarity and the social relation's continuity, in addition to exploring the concepts of understanding and rationality by way of an extensive examination and/or critique of numerous renowned authors such as Martin Buber, Émile Durkheim, Wilhelm Dilthey, Jürgen Habermas, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Niklas Luhmann, George Herbert Mead, Alfred Schütz, Talcott Parsons, Karl Popper, Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tönnies, Max Weber and Leopold von Wiese.However, the notion of function totally prevailed in the course of the 20th century in the context of overthrowing essence on a global scale (notwithstanding the ongoing and socially inevitable influence of various ideologies and religions); see The Decline of Bourgeois Thought- and Life-Forms below.From the point of view of the history of ideas, while the philosophers who did systematically set aside such dualisms were few and far between (e.g. Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, La Mettrie, de Sade, and to a lesser extent, Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, Hume), quantitatively, philosophers expounding versions of the traditional distinctions mentioned above, or at least maintained a normative stance necessary to seek social influence, prevailed for much of the European Modern Era, and Kondylis also analysed the basic stance(s) of such and other thinkers including: Alembert, Condillac, Condorcet, Grotius, Hegel, Hamann, Herder, Kant, Leibniz, Lessing, Maupertuis, Newton, Rousseau, Shaftesbury, Voltaire, and Wolff, in considerable detail, as well as referring to other (pre-)Enlightenment thinkers (in addition to those mentioned above) such as: Augustine, Aquinas, Aristotle, Bacon, Bayle, Berkeley, Bruno, Descartes, Erasmus, Galilei, Locke, Pascal, Plato, Pufendorf, Telesio, etc.In both The Enlightenment and Modern-era Criticism of Metaphysics, Kondylis runs a compelling interpretative thread through the constant reformulation of concepts and positioning and apparently overwhelming volume of argumentation, from the late Middle Ages until the 19th century (and 20th century in the case of Modern-era Criticism of Metaphysics, which includes analyses of: Bergson, Dilthey, Feuerbach, Heidegger, Malebranche, Mill, Nietzsche, Occam, Russell, Salutati, Spencer, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, and Zabarella), producing scholarly works that not only have a handbook or reference text quality but also an ability to provide insight into the motive forces of development of, and changes in, the history of ideas in the European Modern Era (see also Conservatism below) before the onset of the new Planetary Era.), like The Enlightenment, which broke new ground in its novel interpretation of such a pivotal period in European philosophy (see above), went against the grain of conventional wisdom on the history of conservatism understood simply as a reaction to the French Revolution as articulated by e.g. Karl Mannheim.What followed was an idealised image of pre-capitalist reality, whereby people lived united by the bonds of blood, tradition and mutual faith and protection, from the earth and in nature, preserving their existential essence from the fragmentation which is imposed by the advanced division of labour and the continuous hunt for material gain in a society cut up into competitive individuals.In Planetarische Politik nach dem kalten Krieg (Planetary Politics after the Cold War), Kondylis dealt with a number of matters e.g. conceptual confusion in the overtly polemical and unhistorical use of "conservative", "liberal" and "(social) democracy"; mass democracy as the world's first international social formation; the impact of communism on the 20th century; and "human rights" as predominantly American ideology but also amenable to interpretations contrary to American interests, i.e. the dissemination of universal human rights ideology will lead to a significant increase in international conflict and increase the worldwide trend towards anomy.He sought to eliminate artificial academic boundaries between e.g. "philosophy", "anthropology", "economics", "history", "sociology" and "politics" by emphasising the interconnectedness of such disciplines from the point of view of "value-free" i.e. "power claim"-free and non-normative scientific understanding.
OlympiaAthensUniversity of AthensGoethe University FrankfurtUniversity of Heidelberg20th-century philosophyWestern philosophySchoolContinental philosophyWestern MarxismConservatismSocial philosophypolitical philosophyphilosophy of cultureGermanThucydidesNiccolò MachiavelliMax WeberGreeceKifisiaMarxismFrankfurtHeidelbergDieter HenrichSchellingHölderlinMarxist philosophy of historyWerner ConzeReinhart KoselleckAncient OlympiaGoethe MedalHumboldt PrizeWissenschaftskollegUniversity of IoanninaPoliteiaAristotle University of ThessalonikiChristian democracyGreek nationalismMetaxismMonarchismAuthorityChristian valuesGreek cultureFamily valuesHellenocentrismLaconophiliaOrthodoxyPrivate propertySocial market economySocial orderProtectionismTradition4th of August RegimeGreek Civil WarGreek economic miracleGreek language questionGreek monarchy referendum, 1935Greek referendum, 1946Greek ResistanceLeonardopoulos–Gargalidis coup d'état attemptMetapolitefsiNational SchismBardisDragoumisElytisTheodoracopulosTsatsosVlachosAveroffGounarisKalogeropoulosKanellopoulosKaramanlisKapodistriasKoumoundourosMetaxasPapagosProtopapadakisRallis (Dimitrios)Rallis (Georgios)SamarasStefanopoulosStephanopoulosTsaldariTsaldaris (Konstantinos)LatinopoulouTsaldaris (Panagis)VelopoulosDemocratic RevivalGreek SolutionIndependent GreeksNational HopeNational Unity AssociationNew DemocracyPopular Orthodox RallySpartansVoice of ReasonDemocratic RenewalFreethinkers' PartyGreek RallyNapist PartyNational Radical UnionPeople's PartyPolitical SpringPopular Social PartyUnion of PopularsPanhellenic Liberation OrganizationEleftheros KosmosKathimeriniEnlightenmentClausewitzpost-ModernityXenophonBurnhamMachiavelliLichtenbergPaveseMontesquieuChamfortRivarolSchillerCassirerCarl SchmittHobbesLyotardFoucault