Cultural Materiality and Spiritual Alienation

Abstract

This article takes its point of departure in Phillip Blond’s Christian criticism of secular materialisms and the failure of modern thought to appreciate the true materiality of creation. He challenges secular thought and returns to a combination of Greek and Christian Trinitarian thought, in order to reach for a new ground for political theology. Blond’s Christian ontological claims are contested, but an aspect of them is brought into the context of cultural creation and related to questions of the spiritual dimension of cultural arte-facts in a secular setting. Against the background of Friedrich Nietzsche’s struggle with the difficulty of singling out a pure secular culture from the old and (in his view) stifling religious heritage in society and culture, this article suggests that a radical notion of human intentional (but finite) creation, analogous to Blond’s idea of God’s infinite creative intention, may be helpful for a construction of a materialistic critical theory about contingent spiritual obstacles to political change.     

Leo Strauss's Adherence to Nietzsche's “Atheism From Intellectual Probity”

Abstract

The role of labor unions has increasingly been the focus of scholarly analyses in recent years as the world has experienced the most encompassing wave of democratization. In his seminal article proposing a typology of four different modes of labor union behavior depending on their treatment by the former authoritarian regimes, J. Samuel Valenzuela (1989) observed that labor unions will best contribute to a successful consolidation of the new democracies if they do not press excessively for the satisfaction of narrow interests. Conversely, if their demands are too harshly denied by the new democratic elites, unions may be disloyal to new governments and thus undermine the transition process (Valenzuela 1989, 451). In a similar fashion, Adam Przeworski argued that the containment of excessive wage increase demands by unions is critical for the success of economic transition reforms (1991, 181). In her comprehensive comparative analysis of labor union and business roles in democratic transitions in Latin America and Eastern Europe, Joan M. Nelson concluded that in both economic and political reforms within the transition processes, unions can and do play crucially supportive roles but can likewise cause slowdowns, and stalemates (1994).     

Analogien in Physik und Technik im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert

In this paper the use of analogies in physics and in technology is analysed. First the important role philosophically deep rooted analogies played in romantic physics is discussed. The work of Schelling and Ritter is treated in particular. Second the mechanical analogue models in the kinetic theory of gases and in electrodynamics are examined, as well as the severe philosophical criticism which they received. A sketch of the theory of the electron gas is presented as an example for the success and the shortcomings of analogue models. Finally mechanical and electric analogue models in technology are considered; moreover biological analogies in engineering research, and the principle of similitude as applied to model experiments in shipbuilding are discussed. The analysis of the historical examples shows that in the 19th and 20th century the word “analogy” is no longer a vague notion. It represents a scientific method, which, however, inevitably leads to both an extension of the original theoretical models and to special theories of mapping.     

“Man ist nicht umsonst Philologe gewesen …”. Zur Bildungskritik Friedrich Nietzsches

Up to now, Nietzsche's ideas on culture and education have been figured out mainly from his early writings. Accordingly, most authors ascribed to him a negative, at least reluctant attitude towards science and studies. On the contrary, in this paper it is argued that Nietzsche, from time to time, reconsidered and changed his thoughts and that he rather favoured science and studies. To be more specific, four periods may be distinguished. As a boy Nietzsche strived for a religious education. But while a pupil at Schulpforte he changed his mind and strongly pleaded for a secular, historically dominated erudition. Again during the seventies in Basle, he pointed out the dangers of a one-sided historism, but in his later years he returned to his high esteem of history. — Basically Nietzsche was interested in a hermeneutical theory combining artistic vision and scholarly work.     

Myth,perspective, and affirmation in Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy

While the Apollonian and Dionysian in Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy are often understood as a rehashing of Schopenhauerian metaphysics, recent accounts have shown that his use of these concepts is at odds with such a metaphysics, interpreting them instead as myths. I follow this insight that Nietzsche is engaging in mythmaking in BT, but I argue that proponents of this view have missed an important dimension of that mythmaking: that Nietzsche presents multiple narratives of Apollo and Dionysus from different perspectives, each of which offers different senses of tragic affirmation. This perspectival feature of BT sheds light on the more formal ‘perspectivism’ articulated in the Third Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, as Nietzsche uses perspective in both cases to generate an epistemic alternative to the life-denying features of modern science. Thus, the metaphysical discussions of the early Nietzsche are inseparable from the development of a stylistic practice that constitutes a radical rejection of metaphysics for the later Nietzsche, and this style is part of a project of generating a more life-affirming approach to knowledge.     

Why Nietzsche embraced eternal recurrence

Nietzsche's embrace of the idea of eternal recurrence has long puzzled readers, both because the idea is inherently implausible and because it seems inconsistent with other aspects of his philosophy. This paper offers a novel account of Nietzsche's motives for that embrace—namely that Nietzsche found in eternal recurrence the only possible way to reconcile three potent and apparently conflicting convictions: (1) there are no Hinterwelten (“worlds-beyond”), (2) the great love (take joy in) all things just as they are (amor fati), and (3) all joy wills eternity. The case for this account has two parts. I show first that Nietzsche was deeply committed to each of these principles at or before the time the idea of eternal recurrence “came to” him in 1881 and second that these principles, though in apparent conflict, can, as Nietzsche understood them, be reconciled by, and only by, the idea of eternal recurrence. It follows, I argue, that the idea of eternal recurrence was originally independent of Nietzsche's conceptions of the will to power and the Übermensch.     

“Fabelhafte Dinge”: Arzneimittelnarrative zu Coca und Cocain im 19. Jahrhundert

“Fabulous Things”. Drug Narratives about Coca and Cocaine in the 19th Century. This contribution focuses on the history of Coca leaves and Cocaine in the second half of 19^th century Europe. Even though, to date, no direct link has been established between the activities of the Milano physician Paolo Mantegazza, and the Göttingen chemist Friedrich Wöhler, it is not a mere coincidence that both published their findings in the same year, namely, 1859. Mantegazza authored the first treatise claiming that Coca had psychoactive qualities and touted its broad therapeutic faculties; he claimed that it should be introduced into European pharmacotherapy. In Wöhler's laboratory, cocaine was isolated from leaves by his pupil Alfred Niemann; later, Wilhelm Lossen refined and corrected Niemann's results. Narratives about medicinal drugs often streamline history into a story that starts with multiple meanings and impure matters and ends with well‐defined substances, directed at clear‐cut diseases and symptoms. In the case of Coca, however, the pure substance triggered no such process well into the 1880s, whereas the leaves continued to circulate as an exotic, pluripotent drug whose effects where miraculous and yet difficult to establish.     

Progress,decline and redemption: understanding war and imagining Europe, 1870s–1890s

Abstract

The aim of this article is to shed light on the ways in which ideas of and discourses about Europe were influenced by some readings of war and war violence from the 1870s to the 1890s. This aim is pursued by considering the dichotomy progress/decadence, a crucial opposition for grasping images and notions of Europe as well as interpretations of warfare violence. The article focuses on the works of Max Nordau, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the young Paul Valéry at a time when, in intellectual and academic circles, there was an increasing fear of European decadence and degeneration.     

Europe—An historian's view

The late John Burrow, one of the most stimulating promoters of the distinctively interdisciplinary enterprise that is Intellectual History, was a vital member of what has become known as the ‘Sussex School’. In exploring the resonances of his singular and richly idiosyncratic contribution, this article places his unique historical sensibility within a series of interpretative contexts, demonstrating the vitality of writings that will continue to inspire and inform scholarship in the field for decades to come.