Hans-Georg Gadamer was of the "Frankfurter Schule"? - get Inklings for me please!


[correction at the bottom of the article]

You know, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, I also liked Chesterbelloc, both authors. But not Mr Gadamer.

I do not know whom he is named after. I am to the best of my knowledge not named after him. In 1947 - I think he was not known yet - had my mother been a boy, she would have born that name.

Early 19th C - Petter Lundal
1854 - Hans Petter Lundahl
1900 Gustav Georg Lundahl
1947 - Birgitta Lundahl
1968 - Hans Georg Mikael Elitzur Lundahl (me)

Hans after Hans Petter.

Georg after Gustav Georg.

Mikael after a kind Jew who helped my mother when she had been abandoned by my father. Without hurting her honour.

Elitzur - which is nearly a Hebrew version of Petter - after an uncle who had recently died, Elis (a Swedish form of Elias).

Sounds like Orthodox Jewish customs, naming someone after relatives?

No, we were a Christian family. Or Christian and Agnostic to Atheist.

And very definitely not of the Frankfurter Schule.

Isaac Baschevi Singer was seen at home - but not much read by me. I preferred Swedish, English, German authors. Astrid Lindgren. CSL, JRRT, GKC and Belloc. Karl May, Erich Kästner, Waldemar Bonsels. And, back to Swedes, lots of Bland Tomtar och Troll - a series of fairy tales which were illustrated by one man, not very dissimilar to Carl Larsson but collected from different sources, often translated, including one Japanese of a straw mantle that had belonged to a tengu. And another one from Arabia Felix, a k a Jordan these days. I also preferred comics. DC were much read, Tomahawk and Jonah Hex more than Superman. But the real remaining relish was from Hergé, Spirou (Franquin and others), and Goscinny.

It may interest some that Goscinny and Gilbert Keith Chesterton had the same style in humour. But NOT the same theology. René was asked in NY whether he wanted to make his name serious and be born again of Water and Holy Spirit. He answered Re-Nay. Gilbert was born beneath the water tower of a part of London. It did not take him that much water to get baptised, even if they joked about it. My theology is with Gilbert.

And neither with Hans-Georg Gadamer nor even with Goscinny. But of the two, Goscinny is at least readable.

I wonder how stupid people can be if they think a man is of the Frankfurter Schule for having lived part of his life in Frankfurt and being named Hans-Georg. But the hyphen is in the passport and not when I sign my name handwritten. And the few but early childhood years in Frankfurt were closer to Goscinny than to Gadamer.

And on the issue of beer, Goscinny and Gilbert agree. It is - in moderate quantities - good. Kent Hovind was asking what beer had to do with sportsmen. WELL, before they had Red Bull ... you know alcohol (etyl-alcohol, etanol) is a very simple carbohydrate. A simpler and faster one than glucose and fructose, which are simpler and faster than saccharose and lactose which are simpler and faster than starch. Cellulose cannot be digested by men, we are not horses. And on this subject his idea is far from Biblical, unless he thinks God intended everyone to live as a nazir. He does not, check his hair. Nor do I, despite my hair.

BUT Creationist author Edgar Andrews and the Apologist couple Dale and Elaine Rhooton were among my early reads. Supplemented by Wurmbrandt. So, no use trying to get me into Apostasy, Darwinism or Communism. Nor, for that matter, back into Protestantism. There are similar good things to say, not for Bergoglio, but for Papacy. And even better ones for more important Catholic Doctrines. It would still be there as good arguments on all these issues, even if I went away. I am not a quitter, for that matter. At 14 one tried to get me to Pentecostalism or Apostasy. Failed. Became Lutheran and got baptised after some years with very little practise of religion. Discussions about where the Bible came from and getting to know the history of the Reformation made me a Catholic.

I was already a Reactionary. You know, preferring Franco to Azaña, Gustav IV Adolf and Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to Robespierre and Napoleon, feudalism to Rousseau, for that matter even Rousseau to Voltaire, Reagan to Communism. Plato to Epicurus. Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus to Stanley and Livingstone. Monks to Salvationists. Home schooling to discipline and social integration. Wine cellars to hospitals.

I am a nightmare for the guys and feminists who are running my poor Sweden. And not bent on changing - except to oppose them on even more issues, perhaps. I was already a Creationist and now a Geocentric. I was already a Fundamental Bible believer, now a Catholic. Without ceasing to be what I was. And without reducing these fundamental issues to a question merely of my own identity.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Philip Neri
26 / V / 2014

Correction:

It seems I was wrong on the philosophic affiliation of Hans-Georg Gadamer. I seem to have got his position wrong as that of Derrida and Habermas, known opponents of his. If it is really more than 3 years ago I wrote above, if it has not been hacked to insert a too early date, it is also remarkable that no one pointed out to me I had gotten Gadamer wrong. If a wiki was deliberately sabotaged, it is remarkable that my own update on the matter came so much later than presumably that of the wiki.

The correction is not extremely important. This article is not about Hans-Georg Gadamer, but about the fact he and Frankfurter school are very marginal to me and who is not so. If I confused him with Frankfurt school and Frankfurt school with him, you can gather both are marginal to me : if I had cared about either, I would have taken care not to get into such a confusion./HGL

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