Weimar Thought: A Contested Legacy Edited by Peter E. Gordon and John P. McCormick (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Weimar Thought: A Contested Legacy Edited by Peter E. Gordon and John P. McCormick Christian Rogowski Weimar Thought: A Contested Legacy. Edited by Peter E. Gordon and John P. McCormick. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. Pp. 464. Cloth $35.00. ISBN 978-0691135106. The dazzling diversity and complexity of intellectual activity that emerged in German speaking central Europe in the wake of the cataclysm of the First World War eludes the grasp of a single individual and raises the question of whether it is possible to talk of “Weimar Thought” as a unified concept, even if the term is useful as a necessary shorthand. The sheer variety of voices and the bewildering simultaneity of competing, often inherently contradictory, world views cannot easily be accommodated under a unified conceptual heading. Using a lens of “continuity and crisis” (1), editors Peter E. Gordon and John P. McCormick deftly acknowledge and discuss the theoretical quandaries to which their project is subject. The present volume explicitly seeks to address expert and general reader alike. Any given reader—including this reviewer—is inevitably reduced to the status of a novice in areas beyond his or her own particular expertise. Many of the essays, in a sense, provide summaries of major intellectual trends in the Weimar period. The introduction does a brilliant job of summarizing the nineteen essays assembled here. Since the introduction is easily available online on the publisher’s website, a review that provides a kind of “summary” of such “summaries” runs the risk of redundancy. Instead, I wish to highlight which specific contributions I personally find particularly enlightening, and which ones less so, based on my own, perhaps idiosyncratic, interests, and offer some general comments on the particular merits and limitations of this essay collection. Most likely, my own reading experience as a reviewer—reading in a linear fashion, from cover to cover—will differ from that of “regular” readers, who will presumably pick this or that chapter selectively in accordance with their own interests and concerns. Some overlaps and repetitions are inevitable in a volume of this kind—Max Weber looms large, for instance, in the essays of John P. McCormick (legal theory), David Kettler & Colin Loader (sociology), Dana Villa (political theory), and Peter E. Gordon (theology). Not all articles adhere to the format of aiming to provide a survey of a given field of knowledge. Frederick Beiser’s chapter on “the fate of Neo-Kantianism” in the Weimar Republic launches a lengthy, albeit informative, discussion of the origins and main tenets of neo-Kantian thought and then embarks on a somewhat speculative narrative on the objections other contemporary philosophical schools (historicism, nihilism, and pessimism) would have had, had they taken Neo-Kantianism seriously as a worthy opponent. Michael P. Steinberg outlines art historian Aby Warburg’s fascinating Mnemosyne “picture atlas” project in an essay that culminates in a plea to preserve the independence of the Warburg Library in London. Another chapter, that of Martin A. Ruehl on poet Stefan George and his circle, also is perhaps too narrow in [End Page 682] focus to fit into the collection comfortably. By way of contrast, contributions such as Cathryn Carson’s insightful discussion of fundamental debates within the sciences, or John V. Maciuika’s engaging account of the history of the Bauhaus, more clearly fulfill the book’s promise. Suzanne Marchand offers a refreshingly nuanced assessment of the many variants and meanings of “orientalism” in Weimar German culture. She does so in breezy, crystal clear prose that is a pleasure to read. On the whole, the volume is well edited, with mercifully few misprints, although there are a few mistakes—”principle/principal” (32); “to effect/to affect” (103)—that are the bane of a teacher’s existence and that should perhaps not occur in a publication by a leading academic press. A major glitch occurs with a misspelling of the subordinating conjunction “whether” as “weather”—charmingly, when mention is made of a storm (326). More disturbing is the appearance of a mysterious “Friedrich Herder” in the main text (117) and in the index (432)—he turns out, of course, to be identical with the separately listed eighteenth-century philosopher of...