Classical German Research Articles

Introduction to the Special Issue “Lukács and the Critical Legacy of Classical German Philosophy”

Introduction to the Special Issue “Lukács and the Critical Legacy of Classical German Philosophy”

Sanskrit scholars in Nazi Germany

Abstract German Sanskrit scholars from the beginning of the 19th century addressed the problem of the kinship between the ancient Germans and Aryans – while romantic patriotism was gradually replaced by militant nationalism. After World War I racism, widespread not only in Germany, but also in other Western countries, became the essential element of the ideology of National Socialism. In the 30s all German scholars were forced to make compromises under the pressure of totalitarian power. However, only a few Sanskrit scholars can be called active supporters of the regime. They have different motives: from the frank careerism of Walter Wüst to the cautious conformism of Ludwig Alsdorf. Religious scholar Jakob Wilhelm Hauer claimed to be the prophet of the “Aryan Worldview”, and Bernhard Breloer was passionate about plans of building a new social and political system, in which the individual is completely subordinate to the state. The anti-Semitic policies and political persecutions of the Nazi period had disastrous consequences for classical German Indology.

Property and its Forms in Classical German Philosophy

Property and its Forms in Classical German Philosophy

Engels' Theoretical Contribution to Historical Materialism and its Contemporary Value Implication

As Marx's close comrade-in-arms and revolutionary partner, Engels undertook the major mission of perfecting Marxist philosophy in defense of Marx after Marx's death, but Engels's interpretation of Marxism caused scholars to explore the academic relationship between Marx and Engels, and his book Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (hereinafter referred to as Engels’Ludwig Feuerbach of 1888) became the focal point of the research on the academic relationship between the two. The work presents Engels' systematic interpretation of the materialist conception of history, his innovative formulation of Engels' theory of historical synergy and the fundamental question of phi-losophy, and is a strong proof of the consistency between the ideas of Marx and Engels. Engels' theoretical contribution to the materialist conception of history in the work still has valuable theoretical value in contemporary times, and inspires us to hold on to Marxism without wavering, and to innovate without stopping, in order to better guide our practice.

Опыт истолкования соотношения созерцания и преобразования в учении И. Канта

The author of this article sees the research problem in the fact that I. Kant in his ontological substantiation of the theory of knowledge shifted from the concept of contemplation to the concept of transformation, considering transformation to be the main factor that determines the method of cognition and constructs the object of knowledge. Kant – the founder of classical German Philosophy – uses the terms contemplation and transformation in an epistemological sense, taking into account a certain ideological foundation laid by the cultural and historical conditions of the epoch that were reflected in his teaching. At that time, the idea of the subject’s dominance, that was ruling the worldview of the new European man, was being established in culture. According to Kant, humans are beings whose normal state is that which corresponds to their consciousness. This state must be created by a person him/herself. Kant is talking about a world in which the phenomena of nature are transformed by humans. From that moment on, history began to move faster than the natural environment. The centre of a new, accelerated (compared with natural processes) development started to take shape, which allowed humans to escape from the influence of purely natural processes while remaining in the same space with them. Nature handed activity to humans. According to B.F. Porshnev, an updated periodization of a historical process, if it is objective and captures the process’s own rhythm, turns out to be acceleration. This was the context in which Kant’s epistemological approach originated. The assertion of the subject’s dominance transported thinkers to an ontologically new world, ruled not by the naked necessity of nature, condemning humans to a contemplative position that was criticized by K. Marx in his first thesis on Feuerbach, but by necessity linked with consciousness. This necessity is established by consciousness and becomes a conscious necessity, redefined by Kant and by a person him/herself.

The Battle of the Statues in Berlin, 1859–71: Reflections on the Public Image and Standing of the German Classical Authors

ABSTRACT The article examines the process that led to the erection in 1871 of the monument to Friedrich Schiller in the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin. In the twelve years that passed between the conception of the monument and the unveiling, the project was dogged by disputes about its legitimacy and the form it should take. The undercurrent of these disputes was political, reflecting tensions between liberal and conservative opinion in the period. After tracing the history of the project, the article concludes with broader reflections on the place of public monuments in the commemorative culture of our own time.

Sentimental Genres: The “Old English Elegy” and the Poetics of Nostalgia

ABSTRACT This study interrogates the scholarly construct known as the “Old English elegy.” This artificially formulated genre, which combines elements from eighteenth-century Classical German Elegy and nineteenth-century English nationalist nostalgia, comprises an unstable textual canon bringing together a modern perception of shared emotional, psychological, and affective discourses. To demonstrate how the pervasive influence of Romantic poetics and ethnonationalist anxieties underlies the inception and development of the discourse of “Old English elegy,” this study traces their influence across anthologies and critical editions of Old English poetry from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Close reading of a series of thematic and syntactic parallels across Old English texts further illustrates the arbitrary nature of the genre and evidences the need for a new critical terminology that acknowledges the horizontal intertextuality of Old English poetics.

Deleuze’s Challenge to Hegel’s Aesthetics—Chinese Aesthetics in the Confrontation between German Classical Aesthetics and Postmodernism

Deleuze’s Challenge to Hegel’s Aesthetics—Chinese Aesthetics in the Confrontation between German Classical Aesthetics and Postmodernism

Research on Some Criticisms of Fichte's Intellectualism Made by Schelling in Classical German Philosophy

Research on Some Criticisms of Fichte's Intellectualism Made by Schelling in Classical German Philosophy

Romanticism and humanism in classical German literature manifestation forms of tendencies

Romanticism and humanism in classical German literature manifestation forms of tendencies

A Comparison between Engels’s “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy” and Lenin’s “Materialism and Empirical Criticism”

A Comparison between Engels’s “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy” and Lenin’s “Materialism and Empirical Criticism”

Reflexividade como princípio – ou por que o eu não pode ser abolido

Based on an analysis of the thought of Kant, Fichte and Hegel, the article aims to show the centrality of the concept of reflexivity as a principle of knowledge and, therefore, as a fundamental tool for thinking, against the naturalistic vision, about both the self (and subjectivity) and the sciences themselves in contemporary times. Reflexivity is revealed here as a concept specific to the classical German philosophy.

СОВРЕМЕННОЕ БРЕНДИРОВАНИЕ КАК ПЕРЕОСМЫСЛЕНИЕ ТЕОРИИ РОСКОШИ В. ЗОМБАРТА

The views of the classic German sociologist W. Sombart regarding the social practices of luxury consumption are of undoubted scientific interest. The article, in relation to modern realities, examines the psychological types identified by Sombart that are predisposed to promoting the bourgeois way of life. Sombart's ideas regarding the ideological component of Western European capitalist entrepreneurship, revealed as a unity in the entrepreneur of the images of a conqueror, organizer and merchant, which has a mythological nature in Anglo-Saxon culture, are also being developed by modern researchers (the American anthropologist D. Graeber, for example). Comparison of Sombart's ideas with the views of M. Weber, L.N. Gumileva reveals aspect of inequality of behavioral inclinations within a nation and the inequality of expression of such inclinations between nations, which in no way contradicts modern science and ethics, since it can relate to the parameters of the distribution of types of temperament, and could also turn a material for the development of ethological studies of behavioral stereotypes, which are not enough in modern stage of science development

Imitation and the Inimitable: Scenes of (Failing) Translation in Goethe’s Lehrjahre and Novelle

Abstract This paper explores the theme of translation, pseudo-translation, and multilingualism in Goethe’s Lehrjahre and Novelle. Both texts stage processes of (failing) translation in order to reflect on issues of linguistic identity and linguistic homogeneity. Overall, Goethe’s latent inclusion of different languages in these texts demonstrates his deep engagement with language diversity, as he resisted the monolingualizing tendencies of his time. The paper argues that the two novels underscore the tension between embracing linguistic otherness and conforming to monolingual norms in German classicism.

Back from the Future. Remarks on Temporality and Totality in the Birth of Classical German Philosophy

Abstract In this paper I propose to study the different combinations between temporality and the idea of totality in the beginning of Classical German Philosophy. In order to do that I will analyze the image of liberation in the philosophical and practical articulation of a new mythology in the manuscript “The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism”, and the outlines of a theory of the Spirit in the documents written by Hegel in the first part of his Jena stage, more specifically, in the fragments of the period 1803/04. For this purpose I will take as specific objects the figures of an “eternal unity” [die ewige Einheit] to come and of an “absolute becoming” [das absolute Werden] of Spirit. The hypothesis I intend to develop holds that the confrontation of these two images can lead to duplicated consequences: on the one hand, this comparison would make it possible to relativize the binary readings that oppose as terms of a simple contradiction both conceptual lineages, Idealism and Romanticism. On the other hand it would express an insurmountable tension between two ways of thinking about the relationship between time and totality.

Nature and Naturalism in Classical German Philosophy. Edited by LucaCorti and Johannes‐GeorgSchülein. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2023. Pp. 250. £130.00.

Nature and Naturalism in Classical German Philosophy. Edited by LucaCorti and Johannes‐GeorgSchülein. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2023. Pp. 250. £130.00.

Military-diplomatic relations in the understanding of Immanuel Kant

The authors of the article reveal ideas about international relations in the light of the socio-political philosophy of the representatives of classical German thought of the 18th-19th centuries. In particular, the approach to world geopolitics by the outstanding German philosopher Immanuel Kant is considered. The problem of interpretation of international relations in the philosophy of Immaniul Kant belongs to the late period of his philosophical work. In this regard, the authors consider the ideas of I. Kant in the light of modern problems, prospects and trends in the field of international relations.

Fichte’s formal logic

Fichte’s Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre 1794 is one of the most fundamental books in classical German philosophy. The use of laws of thought to establish foundational principles of transcendental philosophy was groundbreaking in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and is still crucial for many areas of theoretical philosophy and logic in general today. Nevertheless, contemporaries have already noted that Fichte’s derivation of foundational principles from the law of identity is problematic, since Fichte lacked the tools to correctly present the formal parts of Foundations. In this paper, however, we argue that Fichte’s approach intuitively offers an important contribution to transcendental philosophy, and especially to philosophy of logic. We first point out the difficulties of Fichte’s logic in the Foundations and improve it in a second part on the basis of a formal system in which both propositional logic and syllogistic are combined.

Habit, Gesture and the History of Ideas

This paper explores the intertwinement of ontology and history that happened after the idealist turn of Kantian transcendentalism, particularly in classic German idealism and later in American pragmatism. The paper focuses on the less remarked-upon consequence of this intertwinement, namely the possibility of a new reading of history based on changes in concepts and habitual mentality. The paper proposes a new take on historiography that vindicates Hegel’s insight but changes his approach to a pragmatist one, more apt to face historical changes in a technical way and less easily twistable into ideological frameworks. The paper argues that the notion of habit, as phenomenologically and semiotically described by Peirce, is the fundamental cellule of the pragmatist take on the entanglement of history and ontology. The paper elaborates on the notion of habit, singling out a special form of it called “gesture” that can be a useful tool for reading the history of the human spirit without incorporating Hegel’s dialectic and Absolute. The paper compares the notion of gesture as it originated in the pragmatist tradition with the parallel use of the term in the early studies of Michel Foucault and argues that the notion of gesture is better equipped to tackle a theoretical reading of history.

(2946) Proposal to conserve the name Iris latifolia (Mill.) Voss (Iridaceae) against I. latifolia Heer (fossil Iridaceae)

(2946) Proposal to conserve the name <i>Iris latifolia</i> (Mill.) Voss (<i>Iridaceae</i>) against <i>I. latifolia</i> Heer (fossil <i>Iridaceae</i>)