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8 - Hölderlin's Mythopoetics: From ‘Aesthetic Letters’ to the New Mythology
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- By Luke Fischer
- Edited by Rochelle Tobias, The Johns Hopkins University, Maryland
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- Book:
- Hölderlin's Philosophy of Nature
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 08 October 2020
- Print publication:
- 15 April 2020, pp 143-163
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Summary
Introduction
Like his contemporaries, Friedrich Schiller and Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), Friedrich Hölderlin's approach to poetry was deeply informed by his philosophical thought. While Hölderlin has long been regarded as a philosophical poet, his most influential philosophical interpreter, Martin Heidegger, severed his poetry from the context of German idealism. In recent decades, in contrast, Hölderlin has come to be identified not only as a philosophical poet but also as a crucial figure in the development of post-Kantian philosophy (in important respects anticipating and influencing Friedrich Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel). However, there is still a need for further research on the precise and complex connections between Hölderlin's philosophical views and his poetry. The present essay gives particular attention to how Hölderlin's aesthetics informs the mythological dimensions of his poetry.
Hölderlin's philosophical aesthetics underpinned his poetry and also played a decisive role in the emergence of absolute idealism – in contradistinction to subjective idealism. While Hölderlin, Schelling and Hegel followed Kant and Fichte – and earlier, Descartes – in granting a pivotal place to the thinking subject, their deepest concern was to overcome the opposition and dualism between subject and object and to articulate the ultimate unity of mind and world, which they termed the ‘Absolute’. With regard to the philosophical importance granted to poetry and, more specifically, mythology, as well as a shared interest in articulating a deeper unity between mind and nature, there is an especially close proximity between Hölderlin and Schelling. (Their shared views, as I later elaborate, are vitally relevant to our contemporary situation of ecological crisis.) Hegel, relative to the Romantics and Hölderlin, is known for lowering the status of art in comparison to philosophy; art, according to Hegel, has twice been superseded – by the Christian religion and the philosophy of absolute idealism – as a form of Absolute Spirit. It is remarkable that Hegel nevertheless identifies the crucial role that aesthetics plays in the emergence of the philosophical standpoint of absolute idealism.
In his lectures on aesthetics Hegel explains that it is Schiller, especially in his On the Aesthetic Education of Humankind in a Series of Letters (1795), who makes a decisive breakthrough towards absolute idealism by demonstrating how the beautiful reconciles oppositions that are not yet fully reconciled in Kant's aesthetics.
Introduction: Goethe and Environmentalism
- Edited by Adrian Daub, Elisabeth Krimmer
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- Book:
- Goethe Yearbook 22
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 27 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2015, pp 3-22
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Summary
In Memoriam
Martin Harrison (1949–2014), poet and critic
GLEICH UND GLEICH LIKE AND LIKE
Ein Blumenglöckchen A little bellflower
Vom Boden hervor Forth from the ground
War früh gesprosset Had sprung up early
In lieblichem Flor; In charming full bloom;
Da kam ein Bienchen There came a little bee
Und naschte fein:— And finely nibbled:—
Die müssen wohl beide They must both surely
Für einander sein. (Goethe, MA 9:105) Be made for one another.
Goethe and the Onset of the Anthropocene
OVER A DECADE AGO, the scientists Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer applied the term “Anthropocene” to describe the current geological era, which they regard as the first era in which large-scale transformations of the earth are driven by human impacts. As Steffen et al. put it in a more recent article, human influence “has become so large and active that it now rivals some of the great forces of Nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system.” In addition to influencing the carbon cycle, they explain, “humans are (i) significantly altering several other biogeochemical, or element cycles …; (ii) strongly modifying the terrestrial water cycle …, altering the water vapour flow from the land to the atmosphere; and (iii) likely driving the sixth major extinction event in Earth history.” The great task of the future, they agree, will have to involve major changes in the way we think about and behave toward the natural world; it will require us to develop new strategies for sustainability that involve intensive research, and, as Crutzen and Stoermer put it, “wise application” of this research (18).
Crutzen and Stoermer as well as Steffen et al. date the beginning of the Anthropocene to 1800, coinciding with the rise of industry and hence of energy-dependent processes, which significantly increased the human imprint on the environment. Whereas in 1750 the Industrial Revolution had barely begun, by 1850 England and much of Western Europe had been completely transformed. The year 1800 thus marks an important turning point and a fundamental reorientation in the history of the earth and humanity. As Steffen et al. write, the beginning of the Anthropocene is “one of the great transitions … in the development of the human enterprise” (847).
Goethe contra Hegel: The Question of the End of Art
- from Special Section on Goethe and Idealism
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- By Luke Fischer
- Edited by Daniel Purdy, University of Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- Goethe Yearbook 18
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 01 April 2011, pp 127-158
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Summary
Kein Mensch will begreifen, daß die höchste und einzige Operation der Natur u. Kunst die Gestaltung sei.…
(MA 20.1:197)[No one is prepared to grasp that, both in nature and in art, the sole and supreme process is the creation of form.…]
—Goethe, letter to Zelter, October 30, 1808IN THIS ESSAY I OUTLINE the basic ideas of Goethe's mature aesthetics (from the time of his Italian journey and later) and argue that Goethe's conception of art offers important alternatives and resistance to the Hegelian thesis of the “end of art.” My contribution is divided into three main parts. The first part consists of two sections devoted to articulating Goethe's aesthetics; due to the intimate connection between nature (in particular, metamorphosis) and art in Goethe, one section sketches Goethe's view of nature and scientific knowledge, while the second section articulates Goethe's conception of art as a higher metamorphosis of nature. The second main part outlines the place of art in Hegel as a moment of Absolute Spirit. I argue that Hegel's aesthetics is primarily a content aesthetics according to which art is basically a form of knowledge that is inferior to philosophy, as opposed to Goethe's, which emphasizes the significance of the unique form of art's sensual appearance. Given this difference, contrary to Goethe, Hegel does not envisage a truly unique vocation for art (for Goethe knowledge and art have two very distinct, though related, tasks).
3 - A community and ecosystem genetics approach to conservation biology and management
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- By Thomas G. Whitham, Northern Arizona University, Catherine A. Gehring, Northern Arizona University, Luke M. Evans, Northern Arizona University, Carri J. LeRoy, The Evergreen State College, Randy K. Bangert, Idaho State University, Jennifer A. Schweitzer, University of Tennessee, Gerard J. Allan, Northern Arizona University, Robert C. Barbour, University of Tasmania, Dylan G. Fischer, The Evergreen State College, Bradley M. Potts, University of Tasmania, Joseph K. Bailey, Northern Arizona University
- Edited by J. Andrew DeWoody, Purdue University, Indiana, John W. Bickham, Purdue University, Indiana, Charles H. Michler, Purdue University, Indiana, Krista M. Nichols, Purdue University, Indiana, Gene E. Rhodes, Purdue University, Indiana, Keith E. Woeste, Purdue University, Indiana
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- Book:
- Molecular Approaches in Natural Resource Conservation and Management
- Published online:
- 05 July 2014
- Print publication:
- 14 June 2010, pp 50-73
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
The emerging field of community and ecosystem genetics has so far focused on how the genetic variation in one species can influence the composition of associated communities and ecosystem processes such as decomposition (see definitions in Table 3–1; reviews by Whitham et al. 2003, 2006; Johnson & Stinchcombe 2007; Hughes et al. 2008). A key component of this approach has been an emphasis on understanding how the genetics of foundation plant species influence a much larger community. It is reasoned that because foundation species structure their ecosystems by creating locally stable conditions and provide specific resources for diverse organisms (Dayton 1972; Ellison et al. 2005), the genetics of these species as “community drivers” are most important to understand and most likely to have cascading ecological and evolutionary effects throughout an ecosystem (Whitham et al. 2006). For example, when a foundation species’ genotype influences the relative fitness of other species, it constitutes an indirect genetic interaction (Shuster et al. 2006), and when these interactions change species composition and abundance among individual tree genotypes, they result in individual genotypes having distinct community and ecosystem phenotypes. Thus, in addition to an individual genotype having the “traditional” phenotype that population geneticists typically consider as the expression of a trait at the individual and population level, community geneticists must also consider higher-level phenotypes at the community and ecosystem level. The predictability of phenotypes at levels higher than the population can be quantified as community heritability (i.e., the tendency for related individuals to support similar communities of organisms and ecosystem processes; Whitham et al. 2003, 2006; Shuster et al. 2006).