FROM NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY TO KANT'S—AND BACK

Reflecting on Anthony Jensen's Nietzsche's Philosophy of History, this essay describes Jensen's account of the three‐stage development of Nietzsche's historiographical practices and metahistorical positions: from his early philological writings, through The Birth of Tragedy, and into the mature philosophy of history that Jensen uncovers in Toward the Genealogy of Morality and Ecce Homo, which, so Jensen argues, consists in ontological realism combined with representational anti‐realism. While Jensen notes the importance of a like‐minded readership for the success of Nietzsche's historiographical projects, the essay asks whether Nietzsche did in fact have such a readership and further emphasizes that the Genealogy and Ecce Homo are structured in such a way that they seek to create one. A similar structure is identified in Kant's “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective.” The essay concludes by reflecting on the significance of this similarity in light of the doctrines of eternal recurrence that are expressed in both Nietzsche's late writings and Kant's youthful cosmology.     

Friedrich Sunder and the boundaries of gender

The article explores the gendered imaginary in the Gnadenleben of Friedrich Sunder (1254–1328) and the formation of clerical masculinity in the context of feminine devotional life. Friedrich Sunder worked as a convent chaplain for a Dominican female community and lived within the convent's area. In his book Sunder employs language, images and devotional practices that can be considered in medieval culture to have been feminine. Almost simultaneously, however, he applied masculine roles and emphasised his own manliness. Although Sunder accepted female forms of religiosity and wrote on practices that were considered especially suitable for women, at the same time his priestly masculinity was defined by the physical boundary the cloister created between the enclosed feminine religiosity and that of a pastoral masculine priesthood. His discussion of gender within the mystical frame defined the boundaries of his own masculinity in the web of different traditions of both the proper way of life and the gendered nature of religious practices.     

A Decadence Baedeker: D’Annunzio’s The Triumph of Death

This article investigates how Gabriele D’Annunzio’s The Triumph of Death brings together Nietzsche’s ideas and Wagner’s music and interweaves them with the motifs of literary Decadence and the author’s own particular sexual politics. The novel is an experimental text striving to be a Gesemtkunstswerk, an integrated work that incorporates music, painting, poetry, regional folklore, and private thoughts about personal and national power. I discuss the novel’s themes of violent sexuality and the anxiety of powerlessness and explore their implications for the fascist political aesthetics in which D’Annunzio played a pioneering role.     

Idealistisch geprägte Axiomatik des Selbstorganisationsparadigmas

The essay shows that the axiomatics of the systemic‐cybernetic‐biological theory of self‐organization by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela have their roots in the philosophy of German Idealism. Especially the completely subject‐centered philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte already contains the central axiomatics of Maturana and Varela.     

Liberation Theology and "Democratic Futures" (By way of Karl Barth and Friedrich Schleiermacher)

Abstract

To engage the question of democratic futures, this essay considers Christian liberation theologies. It pursues an interpretative, constructive, and political agenda. Interpretatively, it identifies parallels between the methods and claims of liberation theologians and two classical theologians: Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth. Constructively, it suggests ways in which liberationist thought might improve theology in its Schleiermacherian and Barthian modes. Politically, it proposes that liberation theology— a mode of reflection both continuous with and constructively critical of classical theological outlooks— be viewed as a vanguard discourse that could dynamize the project of radical democracy     

Politics without democracy 1815–1914: Perception and preoccupation in British government

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.     

Two dramatic treatments of the ‘Déirdre’ legend: a case study in Irish betrayal

During the heightened cultural activity of the Celtic Revival, the moral ownership and utilisation of Ireland's literary remains became an important cultural issue. At the same time, many nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish writers were concerned to ‘retell’ ancient stories in ways which explored their relevance to the modern world. One of the most retold tales from the period was the story of Déirdre and the Sons of Usnach. The story of Déirdre broaches one of the most ubiquitous of human experiences – betrayal – and it does so in relation to both political and interpersonal behaviour. This essay examines two dramatic treatments from the early years of the century: W.B. Yeats's one-act Deirdre (1907) and J.M. Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows, unfinished at the time of his death and finally published in 1910. This essay looks to account for the particular ways in which each author inflects the legend in terms of their own concerns, and in particular how both Yeats and Synge engaged with a discourse of betrayal that – although always significant in Irish cultural history – was moving to a position of centrality in Irish national life in the years leading up to the revolutionary period.