Odo Marquard

Odo Marquard (26 February 1928 – 9 May 2015) was a German philosopher. He is considered as a member of the Ritter-School.

Marquard was born in Stolp, Farther Pomerania. He studied philosophy, German literature, and theology in Münster and Freiburg. From 1965 to 1993, Marquard held a chair for philosophy at the University of Gießen. In 1984 he was awarded the Sigmund Freud Prize by the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung.

A proponent of philosophical hermeneutics and skepticism, Marquards work focuses on aspects of human fallibility, contingency and finitude. He rejects idealist, rationalist and universalist conceptions and defends philosophical particularism and pluralism. Criticized by Jürgen Habermas as a representative of German neoconservatism, his philosophy has been described as a form of liberal conservatism with various parallels to postmodern thought and the work of Richard Rorty.