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Precht completed his high school diploma in 1984 at the Schwertstrasse high school in Solingen and then completed community service as a community helper. He then studied philosophy, German and art history at the University of Cologne. He completed his doctorate in 1994. phil. in German studies. His doctoral thesis deals with Robert Musil's play "The Man Without Qualities". He remained at the university as a research assistant for a few more years. In 1997, Precht received the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship and worked at the conservative national newspaper Chicago Tribune. In the same year his work "Noah's Legacy" was published, which distinguishes him as a critical-philosophical writer on the topics of ethics, humans and animals. Two years later he received a scholarship from the "Heinz Kühn Foundation" of North Rhine-Westphalia, which supports young journalists. In the same year he and his brother Georg Jonathan wrote the novel "The Ship in the Noor", which on the surface tells a detective story, but is actually an educational story.
During this time, in 2000, Precht was awarded the Journalism Prize by the "Health Foundation" for outstanding biomedical publications. In the two years 2000/2001 he worked as a scholarship holder at the European College of Journalism in Berlin. During this time, the award winner emerged as an essayist and columnist for various media such as "Literaturen", "Die Zeit", "Frankfurter Rundschau", "FAZ" and the station "Deutschlandfunk". As a freelancer, he hosted the radio program "Tageszeichen" on WDR from 2005 to 2008, which took a critical stance on social events. In 2007 his book was titled "Who am I - and if so, how many?" published and became a bestseller with over 700,000 copies sold. According to Buchreport, the popular scientific introduction to fundamental questions of philosophy was the most successful German non-fiction book in 2008 and took third place among the bestsellers from 2000 to 2010. It remained in the rankings for non-fiction books for many years and occupied the top spot on the "Spiegel" bestseller list from 2008 to 2012.
At the latest, Richard David Precht was widely popular throughout Germany as a philosophical author. The film adaptation of his autobiographical book "Lenin only came as far as Lüdenscheid" not only made him better known, but also the actual work. The film was seen by over 20,000 viewers in German arthouse cinemas in 2018. Precht's subsequent publications include his book "Be yourself. A History of Philosophy 3" from 2019 published by "Goldmann". The busy philosopher and critical admonisher devotes his works to various political and social topics such as social responsibility, euthanasia, unconditional basic income, civil society, education, migration, the European Union, digitalization, biotechnology and reproductive technology. In 2017, Precht received the PETA Progress Award for "Thinking about Animals."
His 2018 non-fiction book "Hunters, Shepherds, Critics. A Utopia for Digital Society" dealt with the effects of the digital revolution on the world of work and society.
