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S i d e b a r
Dietrich von Hildebrand, 1889-1977
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This Rock
Volume 18, Number 4
 April 2007 
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Dietrich von Hildebrand was an original philosopher, religious writer, heroic anti-Nazi activist, courageous Christian witness, and passionate proponent of beauty and culture.
Born in 1889 as the son of a famous German sculptor, von Hildebrand grew up in the rich artistic setting of Florence and Munich. He studied philosophy under Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology and a giant of twentieth-century philosophy, and under Adolf Reinach, and was profoundly influenced by his close friend, German philosopher Max Scheler, who helped to pave the way for his conversion to Catholicism in 1914.
By 1930 von Hildebrand had become an important voice in German Catholicism, perhaps best known for his pioneering work on man and woman and on marriage. One can trace the chapter on marriage in Gaudium et Spes of Vatican II back to von Hildebrand’s writings in the 1920s, in which he argued that the marital act has not only a procreative meaning but a no less significant unitive meaning. But he also distinguished himself in other ways during his years at the University of Munich, most of all through his ethical writings and through his book, The Metaphysics of Community, in which he used the resources of phenomenology to rethink fundamental issues of social philosophy and of moral philosophy. Von Hildebrand had an unusual affinity for beauty which he never considered a mere luxury but a human necessity. Toward the very end of von Hildebrand’s life, this lifelong passion came to fruition in the magisterial two-volume study in the philosophy of beauty, the Aesthetics.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, von Hildebrand left his native Germany and dedicated himself to resisting Nazism. He moved to Vienna and founded a journal for combating at the level of philosophical first principles the rising Nazi ideology and for defending the independence of Austria against Germany. With the German occupation of Austria in 1938, von Hildebrand became a political fugitive; fleeing through Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, France, Portugal, and Brazil, he eventually arrived in the United States in 1940.
Von Hildebrand wrote many works unfolding the faith and morals of Catholicism, such as Purity and Virginity, Marriage, Liturgy and Personality, and, above all, Transformation in Christ, now recognized as a classic of Christian spirituality.
In the United States, von Hildebrand taught at Fordham University until his retirement in 1959. Many of his most important philosophical works––among them Ethics, What is Philosophy?, The Nature of Love, Morality and Situation Ethics, The Heart, and Aesthetics ––were completed in the United States.
Through his many writings, von Hildebrand contributed to the development of a rich Christian personalism, which in many ways converges with that of Pope John Paul II.
Von Hildebrand died in New Rochelle, New York in 1977.
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