Philosophy and German Literature, 1700-1990 by Nicholas Saul (review)

Abstract

266 Reviews Philosophy and German Literature, 1700-1990. Ed. by Nicholas Saul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2002. xii +324pp. ?47.50. ISBN0-521-66052-1 (hbk). According to the famous remark by J. K. A. Musaus, the Germans are 'das Volk der Dichter und Denker', but although many studies, as Nicholas Saul observes in his introduction to Philosophy and German Literature, iyoo-1990, have examined the interplay between German literature and philosophy, few have investigated 'the concrete dialogue of literature and philosophy in Germany, as a whole, through the history of modernity'. So the ambition of these six essays, by John A. McCarthy, John Walker, Ritchie Robertson, Russell A. Berman, Robert C. Holub, and Saul himself, is 'to reconstruct, analyse and evaluate how poets and philosophers in Germany really did interact with one another through their writings, epoch by epoch, in the modern period as a whole' (p. 2). McCarthy's opening survey, 'Philosophy and Literature in the German Enlightenment', rightly emphasizes the emergence of aesthetics in the mid-eighteenth century as a separate discipline, noting the Enlightenment's 'in? herent proclivity to sensibility' (p. 30), as reflected in the slogan (attributed here to Charles Bonnet, but also associated with Hemsterhuis and Morelly) 'je sens, done je suis' (p. 18). What McCarthy sees as a co-operation between literature and philo? sophy in the eighteenth century begins, Saul suggests in 'The Pursuit ofthe Subject: Literature as Critic and Perfecter of Philosophy 1790-1830', to break down in the epoch of Classicism and Romanticism. Saul traces the history of productive misunderstanding which is post-Kantian philosophy, and identifies Schiller and Goethe as inaugurating 'the tradition of aesthetic modernism' (p. 69). With Kleist, however, whose poetic vocation is said to be motivated by the critique of philosophy, the al? leged 'utopian aesthetic consensus' begins to decay (p. 87), so that John Walker, in 'Two Realisms: German Literature and Philosophy 1830-1890', can distinguish be? tween not just two realisms but two differentconceptions of art: as 'critique', and as 'redemption' (p. 105). Walker reads the nineteenth century as a series of struggles between realism and idealism, arguing that 'German realism no less than classicism and Romanticism is philosophically informed' (p. 146). In 1908 Karl Kraus noted satirically that Musaus's Germans were becoming 'das Volk der Richter und Henker', and in 'Modernism and the Self 1890-1924' Ritchie Robertson picks up the histor? ical narrative, focusing on such conservative modernists in Germany and Austria as Thomas Mann, Rilke, and Hofmannsthal. The main philosophical influences in this period are Schopenhauerand Nietzsche, and Robertson sees philosophy'smain legacy to literature in the conception of a self that is minimal and embattled; in the notion of the unconscious; and in a return to the body and the senses. For Gottfried Benn, of course, everything that his generation discussed and thought through had already found expression in Nietzsche, but, as Russell A. Berman shows in 'The Subjects of Community: Aspiration, Memory, Resistance 1918-1945', the relationship be? tween literature and philosophy in this period can be seen to be much more complex: 'notwithstanding a sense of growing estrangement between subject and object, Wilhelmine culture was able to maintain a superficially cohesive landscape of meaning, no matter how fraught with neo-Kantian dualities' (p. 197). Finally, in 'Coming to Terms with the Past in Postwar Literature and Philosophy' Robert C. Holub moves the story forward to the end of the 1990s: not just Adorno and Horkheimer, Jaspers, Heidegger, Habermas, Gadamer, Luhmann, but also the post-Wall perspectives of a broader intellectual kind, such as Christa Wolf, Daniel Goldhagen, Rafael Seligmann, and Esther Dischereit. As the recent remarks by Martin Walser show, however, the conclusion that 'German-speaking writers were just as preoccupied with the legacy of the Third Reich after the fall of the Wall as before' (p. 288) may be in need of urgent revision. MLRy 99.1, 2004 267 As always with multi-authored volumes, it is intriguing to note the similarities and differences among the contributors. For instance, in the case of Hegel, both Saul and Walker concentrate on the lectures on aesthetics; whereas, in the case of Nietzsche (al? ways much harder forcritics to...