Kurt Flasch, born in 1930 in Mainz, studied philosophy, history, classical philology, and German studies in Bonn and Frankfurt, where he earned his doctorate in 1956 and his habilitation in 1969. From 1970 to 1995, he was a full professor of philosophy at the Philosophical Institute of Ruhr University Bochum. Additionally, he gave numerous guest lectures, including at the Sorbonne in Paris. Kurt Flasch authored many publications and received several awards, including the Sigmund Freud Prize for Scientific Prose (2000) from the German Academy for Language and Literature, the Hannah Arendt Prize (2009), and the Joseph Breitbach Prize (2012). Burkhard Mojsisch, Flasch's successor at his Bochum chair, is a specialist in the philosophy of antiquity and the Middle Ages and has also made a name for himself as a translator, like Flasch.