Weltanschauung

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See also: weltanschauung

German

Etymology

Welt (world) +‎ Anschauung (outlook, view), first attested in Immanuel Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgment, 1790).

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Noun

Weltanschauung f (genitive Weltanschauung, plural Weltanschauungen)

  1. worldview, weltanschauung, philosophy of life, ideology
    Synonyms: Denkweise, Ideologie, Lebensphilosophie, Philosophie, Weltansicht, Weltbild, Weltsicht, Weltvorstellung
    • 1790, Immanuel Kant, “§ 26 Von der Größenschätzung der Naturdinge, die zur Idee des Erhabenen erforderlich ist [§ 26 Of that estimation of the magnitude of natural things which is requisite for the Idea of the Sublime]”, in J.H. Bernard, transl., Kritik der Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgment]:
      Denn nur durch dieses und dessen Idee eines Noumenons, welches selbst keine Anschauung verstattet, aber doch der Weltanschauung, als bloßer Erscheinung, zum Substrat untergelegt wird, wird das Unendliche der Sinnenwelt in der reinen intellektuellen Größenschätzung unter einem Begriffe ganz zusammengefaßt, obzwar es in der mathematischen durch Zahlenbegriffe nie ganz gedacht werden kann.
      For it is only by means of this faculty and its Idea of a noumenon,—which admits of no intuition, but which yet serves as the substrate for the intuition of the world, as a mere phenomenon,—that the infinite of the world of sense, in the pure intellectual estimation of magnitude, can be completely comprehended under a concept, although in the mathematical estimation of magnitude by means of concepts of number it can never be completely thought.

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