Lorenz Bruno Puntel (born Lourencinho Bruno Puntel ; ; ; 22 September 1935 â 16 July 2024) was a Brazilian-born German philosopher who established the school of structural-systematic philosophy. Professor emeritus at the University of Munich, Puntel was named as one of the great contemporary philosophers, articulating his ideas from the most varied traditions.
Puntel studied philosophy, theology, philology and psychology in Munich, Innsbruck, Vienna, Paris, and Rome. He earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Munich (1968) and in Catholic theology (1969) from the University of Innsbruck. He became a professor at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Munich in 1975. He was a student of Karl Rahner and studied with Martin Heidegger, whose philosophy concerned him throughout his life.
Puntel died in Augsburg, Bavaria on 16 July 2024, at the age of 88.
Puntel established the school of structural-systematic philosophy which tries to reconstruct the systematics of philosophy from a very unique viewpoint: it involves the elaboration of a theoretical language, abandoning the idea of a language of predicates. Puntel drew on sources ranging from G. W. Leibniz, German idealism, Heidegger's phenomenology, and even analytic philosophy.
From 1983, Puntel was a visiting professor at Pittsburgh, Harvard and Princeton. Retired in 2001, in 2016, he received an honorary doctorate from the Munich School of Philosophy.
He also received the Findlay Book Prize in 2011.