Thomas Seebohm

Thomas Seebohm (born William Thomas Mulvany Seebohm, July 7, 1934, Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia – August 25, 2014, Bonn) was a German phenomenological philosopher. His diverse interests included Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl, hermeneutics, and logic. Seebohm also delved into the history of philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of the formal sciences, methodology and philosophy of the human sciences, 19th-century British Empiricism, American pragmatism, analytic philosophy, philosophy of law, practical philosophy, and the development of the history of philosophy in Eastern Europe. Despite this wide range, he was primarily recognized as a phenomenologist, viewing himself as a "creative phenomenologist" who analyzed issues from a transcendental phenomenological perspective. Born in Gleiwitz, he graduated high school in 1952 and trained as a cabinetmaker until 1954. He pursued university studies in philosophy, Slavic languages, literature, and sociology at various German universities, earning his PhD summa cum laude from the University of Mainz in 1960 with a dissertation on Husserl's transcendental-phenomenological approach in relation to Kant's critique. From 1960 to 1965, he conducted research on medieval Russian philosophy and culture, later publishing his findings. He began his academic teaching career as an assistant at the University of Mainz in 1965, followed by a visiting professorship at Pennsylvania State University in 1970. After a year as a professor at the University of Trier, he became a full professor at Pennsylvania State University from 1973 to 1984, with visiting appointments at The New School for Social Research and the University of Heidelberg. He then returned to the University of Mainz as Professor of Philosophy. Throughout his career, Seebohm taught courses on German idealism, phenomenology, logic, and hermeneutics. He held several significant academic positions, including chairman of the Philosophische Seminar, secretary of the Inner Circle of the Allgemeine Gesellschaft für Philosophie in Germany, and honorary member of the North American Kant Society. He also served as president of the Kant Gesellschaft and editor of Kant Studien, and received the Ballard Prize for his book "Hermeneutics, Method and Methodology."