Hubertus asked:

I can't find a proper English word for the German Lebensphilosophie.Perhaps you can help out. My
text below explains:

"...This was the insight the thinkers of Lebensphilosophiein the wake of Kant, Schopenhauer,
Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger and many others started from.
Lebensphilosophieis NOT 'philosophy of life', it is not concerned with what life 'is', but it is
philosophizing under the leading idea that thinking is problem-solving in the service of life, or even
better and more precise that thinking is problem-solving to serve the interests of the thinker. The core
question of Lebensphilosophieis not so much 'is it true?' but 'is it important and why should it be?'
Nature poses no problems — WE do."

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Very interesting... it sounds like they're going back to the Greek notion of rationality: Plato and
Aristotle's idea that the happy man is the rational man, and that the highest purpose and the best way
to live is to embody, in effect, rationality. Take a look at Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethicson this. To put
it another way, the field of cognitive science is concerned with the mind as, in effect, a
problem-solving system, where even our perceptions are the way they are because of theorieswe
hold (both consciously and unconsciously) about the world.

Steven Ravett Brown