LIEBERT (Levy), ARTHUR

LIEBERT (Levy ), ARTHUR (1878–1946), German philosopher. Born in Berlin, he was coeditor of Kant-Studien, the publication of the Kant Society. From 1925 to 1933 he was professor of philosophy at the High School for Commercial Sciences, Berlin. When the Nazis came to power, he moved to Belgrade. There he founded and edited Philosophia, which appeared from 1936 to 1938. Its purpose was to unite around him the anti-Nazi philosophers. During World War ii Liebert lived in England; shortly after the end of the war, he returned to Berlin where he died in 1946. Liebert's philosophy developed from that of the neo-Kantian Marburg school, led by Hermann *Cohen. Liebert's own contribution was that he attached great importance to the concept of "value." Philosophers should be concerned with the "evaluation" of being, and not only its existence. Reality not only exists, but "value" is found in it: it symbolizes something, and its own purpose is concealed in it. Liebert regarded metaphysics as necessary for investigating the totality of being. Through reason's dialectical activity, a metaphysical system is built up, but it can never achieve perfection. In this process, spirit and reason are the basic foundation of life itself. Liebert's major works include Das Problem der Geltung (1914), Der Geltungswert der Metaphysik (1915), Vom Geist der Revolutionen (1919), Die geistige Krisis der Gegenwart (1923), Die Krise des Idealismus (1936), Der universale Humanismus (1946), and Von der Pflicht der Philosophie in unserer Zeit (1938).

[Aaron Gruenhut]