Karl Löwith (January 9, 1897 – May 26, 1973), was a German philosopher, a student of Heidegger.

Löwith was born in Munich. Though he was himself Protestant, his family was of Jewish descent and he therefore had to emigrate Germany in 1934 because of the National Socialist regime. He went to Italy and in 1936 he went to Japan. But because of the alliance between the Third Reich and Japan he had to leave Japan in 1941 and went to the USA.[1] From 1941 to 1952, he taught at the Hartford Theological Seminary and the New School for Social Research. In 1952 he returned to Germany to teach as Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, where he died.

He is probably most known for his two books From Hegel to Nietzsche, which describes the decline of German classical philosophy, and Meaning in History, which discusses the problematic relationship between theology and history. Löwith's argument in Meaning in History is that the western view of history is confused by the relationship between Christian faith and the modern view, which is neither Christian nor pagan.[1] Löwith describes this relationship through famous western philosophers and historians, including Burckhardt, Marx, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Voltaire, Vico, Bossuet, Augustine and Orosius.[2] The modern historical consciousness is, according to Löwith, derived from Christianity. But, Christians are not a historical people, as their view of the world is based on faith. This explains the tendency in history (and philosophy) to an eschatological view of human progress.

Karl Lowith was the son of a Munich artist and studied philosophy and biology in Munich, Freiburg and Marburg. He began his teaching career in 1928 as Privatdozent in Marburg, working under Heidegger, but was forced to leave in 1934. After two years in Rome he held a chair at Tohku University, Sendai, Japan from 1936-1941. In 1941 he moved to the Theological Seminary at Hartford, Connecticut and, in 1949, to the New School for Social Research, New York. In 1952 he returned to Germany as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg where he remained until his retirement. He died in 1973. His best known work, From Hegel to Nietzsche , was published in Zurich in 1941 and in English translation in 1964. In Max Weber and Karl Marx Lowith, whose philosophical approach was a product of Heidegger's existentialism, showed how there was a convergence towards a common 'life philosophy'. Lowith's analysis of the philosophical anthropology of these two major social scientists shows that much of the ideological dispute between Marxism and Sociology has been the result of mutual misunderstanding.