Frithjof Bergmann
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Frithjof Bergmann (born December 24, 1944, in Germany) is a Professor Emeritus of philosophy at the University of Michigan, where he regularly taught classes on existentialism and continental philosophy.
[edit] Background
Professor Bergmann first came to the US as a student, where he has lived and worked ever since. Apparently while still quite young, he entered the doctoral program in philosophy at Princeton and studied under Walter Kaufmann, receiving his Ph.D. in 1959 with a dissertation entitled "Harmony and Reason: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Hegel." After holding various positions, he arrived at Michigan in 1978.
In 1984, he started an organisation called the Center for New Work (sometimes called just "New Work") in Flint, Michigan, to help the many unemployed people after General Motors closed several plants there.
Professor Bergmann's interests include continental philosophy –- especially Hegel, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Existentialism generally –- and also social and political philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and philosophy of culture. His On Being Free (1977) was issued in a paperback edition in 1978 and had twelve printings. Professor Bergmann founded the Center for New Work in Flint in 1981, and has developed a number of suggestions about work as a calling and a vehicle of self-realization, in rotation with mainstream employment, and involving a self-sufficiency that technology itself makes possible. He resides in Ann Arbor and continues to write and lecture on the practical, social, and cultural implications of philosophical thought.[1]
[edit] Books
- On Being Free - University of Notre Dame, November 1977; ISBN 0-268-01492-2
- Menschen, Märkte, Lebenswelten - Differenzierung und Integration in den Systemen der Wohnungslosenhilfe - VSH Verlag Soziale Hilfe, 1999; ISBN 3-923074-65-4
