Martin Foss

Martin Foss (1889–1968) was a German-born American philosopher, professor, and scholar.

Martin Foss was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1889 and studied philosophy and law at German and French universities. He married Hilde Schindler, and they had two children, Oliver Foss, a painter, and the composer Lukas Foss. The Jewish family left Germany in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came into power, and for the next four years Martin Fuchs commuted secretly between Paris and Berlin. With the help of the Quaker community in the United States, the family was able to immigrate to the U.S. in 1937. The Quakers provided initial shelter for the family and advised Martin to change the family name from Fuchs to Foss. (It is unknown why the name was not changed to Fox, which is what "Fuchs" means.) Martin subsequently became an American citizen. He taught philosophy at Haverford College, where he retired as professor emeritus, as well as at Temple University. He died of a heart attack at the age of 79, while he was running to catch a plane at Heathrow Airport.

Martin Foss taught and wrote during a time when phenomenology dominated and influenced many thinkers, such as Martin Heidegger, Ortega y Gasset, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Existentialism was also popular, but his view of existence was based more on the views of Medieval thinkers such as Cusanus. Foss was considered to be an Aristotelian philosopher. He was a student of Max Scheler, whose works had a significant influence on his ideas about ethics, value and love.

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