Biography

New Publication 2023

The Right Not to Lie. The Ex-Jesuit in Autobiographical Interview on Sexual Hypocrisy, State Ecclesiaticism and Academic Discourse Disease, Europabuch Verlag, Berlin - Rome 2023, 500 pages. (First reviews available on Amazon.)

Presentation article about the book

First review by Daniel Bigalke

Key Biographical Data

Born September 17, 1942 in Duisburg-Rheinhausen into a large merchant family.

Abitur 1962 at the Municipal Natural Sciences Gymnasium Rheinhausen. Graduation speech as PDF

1962-64 Jesuit novitiate at Burg Eringerfeld (Westphalia)

1964-1967 Philosophy studies at the Jesuit College of Philosophy in Pullach near Munich, completed with Licentiate (thesis: "Intentio as Meaning in Thomas Aquinas")

1967-1970 Teaching assistant at the same college, with additional studies in philosophy, German literature, and psychology at the University of Munich

1970-1971 Studies at the Hegel Archive of the University of Bochum (with a scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation)

1972 Doctorate summa cum laude at the University of Bonn with the Hegel study "The Logic of the 'Phenomenology of Spirit'" (under Prof. Klaus Hartmann), for which he was awarded the Geffrub Prize 1973 of the University of Bonn. Gerhart Schmidt served as second examiner.

1974 Diploma in Catholic Theology at the Philosophical-Theological College St. Georgen in Frankfurt/Main

1974-1977 Philosophical-theological advanced studies at the Institut Catholique in Paris

1975 State-recognized Habilitation in Philosophy at the Philosophical-Theological College St. Georgen in Frankfurt/Main (unanimous), based on the dissertation assessed as a "masterwork" as well as the script for the first lecture "Social Philosophy", which appeared partially in 1976 as a book under the title "Reflection as Social System. Toward a Reflection Theory of Society", published like the dissertation by Bouvier Verlag in Bonn.

1977 Renunciation of the Jesuit professorship in Frankfurt/Main as well as a guest professorship at the Universitas Gregoriana in Rome, for philosophical reasons of conscience. Since then living in the Rhineland as an adult education lecturer, with research grants from the German Research Foundation and a professorial replacement at the University of Bonn (Chair for Kant Research), as well as working as a speaker and freelance writer.

From autumn 1997 to spring 2002 Guest Professor for Social Ecology (succeeding Rudolf Bahro) at Humboldt University Berlin. Since then, increased lectures domestically and internationally.

Since 2001 married to Christel Cleve-Heinrichs. Living partly in Duisburg, partly in Berlin for family reasons.

More on the Philosophical Biography

The 17-year-old's first publication appeared in a school newspaper. It bore the heading: "And Reason Veils Her Face. Thomas Mann's Engagement with Political Thinking Between the Two World Wars" (in the school newspaper VOX of the municipal gymnasiums of Rheinhausen, October 1960).

The 17-year-old passionately engaged with Thomas Mann's cultural philosophy, that is, with the remarkable transformation of this initially unpolitical writer into a highly responsible political thinker. The integration-through-differentiation of religious worldview, German culture, politics, and economics was already his theme based on the influential but clarity-seeking, pre-democratic "Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man" (1918). The impetus came less from gymnasium instruction than from an extracurricular seminar "The Engagement of German-language Literature Between the Two World Wars," in which Heinrichs became equally attentive to Ernst Jünger and especially to Gottfried Benn. The latter's poetry on interpreting the "modern self" proved no less formative for Johannes Heinrichs than Mann's cultural-patriotic "Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man." Gottfried Benn was chosen by him as his so-called "Abitur poet," alongside Novalis, the author of the mystical "Hymns to the Night" as well as the Catholicizing Romantic of "Christendom or Europe" - all themes that have lost nothing of their political and cultural explosiveness to this day.

As Johannes Heinrichs then believed, the Jesuit order was neither monastically world-fleeing nor trapped in dogmatically bound intellectual mediocrity, but open to the cultural and intellectual currents of the time. He enjoyed this openness to a certain degree during his philosophical education from 1964-1967 at the Jesuits' philosophical college in Pullach near Munich (with Licentiate) and the subsequent years as a research assistant there. However, already the phase as a teaching assistant from 1967-70 became difficult, because it led the one awakened to dialogical thinking and thinking-together beyond what he saw as the often half-hearted "transcendental scholasticism" of his teachers like Johannes B. Lotz and Josef de Vries. The 68 debates offered an entirely colorful and strongly challenging picture of intellectual currents.

In a critical engagement with Marx, it seemed to Heinrichs in 1975 that he had rediscovered the four social subsystems (economy, politics, culture, basic values/legitimation). In doing so, he drew a sharp boundary to the Marxist base-superstructure doctrine, according to which the economic system as base determines the entire ideological superstructure (state, culture, religion). The four subsystems are, in his view, equally ranked. The "system of basic values," as he later called it, following Max Weber's terminology, can be the determining system, as for example in medieval-ecclesiastical rule. However, any of the other subsystems can equally act as the leading force. Hegel recognized a developmental schema along the same stages 1-4: Family (economy), Civil Society (public sphere/politics), Art and Religion (culture), Absolute Knowledge (comprehensive system of philosophy as basic values). Marx seemed to him to have provided only a dialectical counterpoint to the intellectual-historical development outlined by Hegel.

The Dialogical Abyss Between Humans

Heinrichs' search culminated in 1975 in the discovery that conversation between humans has a fundamentally more abyssal, reflexive character than the sensory perception of the physical objects of our bodily and extra-bodily environment. In every human dialogue, even in an argument, a mutual recognition of the other as a conscious, self-conscious subject occurs. This mutual recognition as subject becomes, in methodical reflection or in philosophical consideration of the dialogue structure, an objectively determinable, four-stage structure. Moreover, this four-stage dialogical deep structure has an astonishing similarity to the four-stage system structure of society.

The four-stage action and conversation structure in general (as well as the social one) is particularly interesting because it is characteristic not only of successful actions and interactions, but also of mis-communication, which can only be defined and understood as failed mutual recognition relationships. Both types of communication consist of multiple sending and response operations. The discovery of this four-stage structure, which will prove to be a constant in the "dialogue research" still to be developed, corresponds roughly to the discovery of the hereditary information constant DNA in biology.

In the winter of 1970/71 Heinrichs went for a year to the renowned Hegel Archive of the Ruhr University Bochum (with a scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation). The work "The Logic of the 'Phenomenology of Spirit'" was created. In its conception, his aim was to extract the formal conceptual structure from the Phenomenology - Hegel's developmental logic of consciousness. His doctoral supervisor was Klaus Hartmann, a professor unconventional for the times. Heinrich Rombach (Würzburg) was the second examiner. The two professors nominated the work for the Geffrub Prize 1973 of the University of Bonn.

Parallel to the final steps of the doctorate, Heinrichs acquired the diploma in Catholic theology (1974) in a few semesters at the Philosophical-Theological College St. Georgen/Frankfurt.

Three Years of Departure in Paris

The real departure began only in 1974 with a multi-year stay in Paris, where he began a habilitation project at the Institut catholique, with its excellent possibilities for inspiration (Ricoeur, Levinas, Girard...). After Klaus Hartmann had retired in Frankfurt, the opportunity opened for him to complete his habilitation at the Jesuit philosophical faculty St. Georgen, even without a prior theology degree, which had meanwhile been completed. The title of his habilitation thesis was: "The Fourfold Meaning-Structure of Practical Communication," but later: "Reflection and Social System." In retrospect, the fourfold communication structure he discovered proved to be an Archimedean point for future systematic philosophy.

Conflict of Conscience - Departure from the Order

Heinrichs could not foresee that the acceptance of his habilitation at the most conservative institution within the Church - the Jesuit faculty - would lead to ever stronger tensions with the Church leadership (bishops and superiors general). The Roman Church leadership reacted negatively despite the completed habilitation. They demanded that he take a special oath of faith, in addition to the then-usual anti-modernist oath. The reasons for this are noteworthy even from today's perspective. When the doctorate in theology was finally denied to him for the factually completed habilitation, while teaching authorization was not granted on the grounds that he had no publications to show, his position in the Jesuit order (as within the Catholic Church in general) had deteriorated hopelessly. In such circumstances, he made the momentous decision in 1977 to leave the Jesuit order.

The deeper reason lay in the fact that those responsible had misjudged an unconventional and ingenious philosophical approach. They had not understood that he was on the way to creating a Catholic, albeit very open, what would today be called an ecumenical and interreligious transcendental systematics.

A Transcendental Theory of Reflection

What Heinrichs began as a young philosopher in the Hegel work, partially already earlier with Thomas Aquinas, was a new approach of a transcendental-philosophical kind. The nature of reflection theory lies not in positing transcendental reflection in the manner of Fichte as the supreme formal principle (I = I), but in grasping the four modes of creative reflection (of the I toward its other, the You, the world, thinking, the highest Being/God) as content of theoretical reflection. This approach became 40 years later, under the title "Critique of Integral Reason," Volumes 1 and 2 (Stuttgart 2018), a structural foundational work for psychology and anthropology. He could only sense this at the time, but had clearly grasped that this involved a new approach to transcendental idealism that promised to make the approaches of Kant and Fichte, Schelling and Hegel comprehensible.

The Development of the Reflection System

What happened in the following years up to today was the stringent and detailed elaboration of his early approach into a full philosophical systematics, but also into the scientific foundation of an action and communication theory, toward which sociology, sociolinguistics, even systems theory were oriented. This results in a value-oriented systemic democratic model of human society with consequences extending to concrete constitutional questions.

The principles are:

1. A reflection-theoretically understood philosophical semiotics that systematically distinguishes and connects the stages of action, language, art, mysticism/religion.

2. Social philosophy that grounds the four subsystems of society (economy, politics, culture, basic value system) and their internal connection from the four reflection stages.

3. An integral anthropology/psychology that leads beyond the fragmentations usual today.

4. A profound philosophical history that traces the development of human consciousness.

These areas have been elaborated since leaving the order in over 30 books and countless essays. A philosophical system in the best sense emerged: not a rigid conceptual edifice, but a living organism of mutually illuminating insights.

Political Engagement

Parallel to theoretical work, increasingly concrete political engagement developed. Criticism of the existing party system and the vision of a "revolution of democracy" through a value-stage democracy became the leitmotif. Numerous lectures at home and abroad, the founding of initiatives, and the development of concrete constitutional drafts testify to this effort toward practical realization of philosophical insights.

Value-stage democracy envisions four equal parliaments, corresponding to the four social subsystems:

• Economic Parliament
• Political Parliament
• Cultural Parliament
• Basic Values Parliament

This model promises to overcome the concentration of power in the hands of professional politicians and party apparatuses in favor of a matter-oriented democracy of competent representatives from all areas of society.

Reflection as a Way of Life

Heinrichs' philosophical work is not academic intellectual game-playing, but the expression of a way of life. Reflection, understood as conscious self-relatedness in all its forms, permeates thinking and acting, theory and practice. It concerns a "lived reflection" that proves itself in personal existence as well as in the shaping of the social.

This biography is therefore more than a stringing together of dates and works. It traces the path of a thinker who not only theoretically penetrates the great questions of philosophy but embodies them in his life and work. A path that leads from youthful seeker through order-bound scholar to free philosopher and engaged world citizen - while always remaining true to the same basic intuition: the unity of reflection and life, spirit and deed, theory and practice.