Odo Marquard

Odo Marquard (1928–2015) was a German philosopher and essayist. He studied philosophy, German studies and theology, and completed his habilitation in Münster in 1963. From 1965 until his retirement in 1993, he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Giessen. In his pointed and often humorous essays, he took a critical view of the possibilities of philosophy and coined the term “Inkompetenzkompensationskompetenz” (“incompetence-compensation competence”). Marquard received, among other honors, the Sigmund Freud Prize for Scientific Prose, the Cicero Speaker Prize and the Hessian Cultural Prize for Science in 1997.