The Self-Fashioning of the Bourgeoisie in Late-Eighteenth-Century German Culture: Bertuch'sJournal des Luxus und der Moden

Abstract This essay charts the German eighteenth-century physician and writer Johann Georg Zimmermann’s monumental work on solitude. The essay draws on but also challenges recent historiography on two counts. First, it situates Zimmermann’s discourse on solitude in the context of the early modern cultura animi tradition, in which philosophy provided a cure for a soul perceived as diseased and perturbed by passion and desire. Placed in this context, solitude comes into view not primarily as a passive state of rest and tranquillity connected to the rural life, but as active, therapeutic and exercise-oriented work on the self. Second, it argues that Zimmermann also shaped his discourse in relation to the increasingly radical late eighteenth-century exploration of subjectivity and selfhood, an exploration that reflects the emergence of the modern conception of the unique individual and autonomous self.

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"The Stranger Within Thee": Concepts of the Self in Late-Eighteenth-Century Literature.

Eighteenth-Century Studies ◽

10.2307/2738285 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 189

Author(s):

John Sitter ◽

Stephen D. Cox ◽

Frederick Garber ◽

Arnold Weinstein

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

The Self ◽

Eighteenth Century Literature ◽

Late Eighteenth Century ◽

Late Eighteenth ◽

The Stranger ◽

Century Literature

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Faith and Reason

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198718406.013.14 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Russell Re Manning

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Final Section ◽

Composite Model ◽

Turn Of The Century ◽

The Self ◽

Century Model ◽

Faith And Reason ◽

Clear Cut ◽

Late Eighteenth Century ◽

Late Eighteenth

This chapter sets out the late eighteenth-century background to the emergence of ‘faith and reason’ as a composite pair, framed by the apparent Kantian disjunction between faith and reason. The author shows first that Kant’s denial of knowledge is far from a clear-cut statement of an either/or contrast of faith and reason, and, second, that it is the characteristically Kantian gesture of ‘making room’ that sets the agenda. The second section traces the relation of faith and reason as a dyadic pair in Schleiermacher, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. A final section considers the legacy of the nineteenth-century model, notably the extent to which it provided the groundwork for the self-perception of the generation who came of age at the turn of the century that theirs was a time of crisis in which the composite model of ‘faith and reason’ split open into the distinctively twentieth-century model of ‘faith or reason’.

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Beethoven & Freedom

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199769322.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Daniel K L Chua

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

French Revolution ◽

The Self ◽

Time And Space ◽

The Core ◽

Relevant Today ◽

Late Eighteenth Century ◽

Late Eighteenth ◽

Core Value ◽

The Aesthetic

Beethoven’s music is often associated with freedom. Chua explores the nature of this relationship through an investigation of the philosophical context of Beethoven’s reception and hermeneutic readings of key works. Freedom is arguably the core value of modernity since late eighteenth-century; Beethoven’s music engages with its aspirations and dilemmas, providing a sonic ‘lens’ that enables us to focus on the aesthetic, philosophical, and theological ramifications of its claims of progress and autonomy and the formation of the self and its values. Taking his bearings from Adorno’s fragmentary reflections on Beethoven, Chua charts a journey from the heroic freedom associated with the Eroica Symphony to a freedom of vulnerability that opens itself to ‘otherness’. Chua’s analysis of the music demonstrates how various forms of freedom are embodied in the way time and space are manipulated in Beethoven’s works, providing an experience of a concept that Kant had famously declared inaccessible to sense. Beethoven’s music, then, does not simply mirror freedom; it is a philosophical and poetic engagement with the idea that is as relevant today as it was in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

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Sensitive limit

Fleshing Out Surfaces ◽

10.7228/manchester/9780719087967.003.0004 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Mechthild Fend

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

French Revolution ◽

Human Body ◽

The Body ◽

The Self ◽

Distinctive Features ◽

Late Eighteenth Century ◽

French Art ◽

Late Eighteenth ◽

Definition Of

This chapter focuses on the significance of skin in neoclassical art and aesthetics. The most distinctive features of neoclassicism - an emphasis on the contour and a preference for more finished surfaces - are understood as elements crucial for the visual formation and understanding of the human body, its surface and borderlines. The culture of neoclassicism, extending well beyond the realm of art and art discourse, was generally characterised by a heightened concern with the shaping of the body and the safeguarding of its boundaries. Skin as the body's physical demarcation, was increasingly perceived not merely as an envelope and organ, but as the boundary of the self. The chapter considers the new attention to skin and contour in late eighteenth-century French art discourse, in particular in Watelet's and Levesque's Dictionnaire des beaux-arts. It equally looks at the discussion of membranes and the definition of skin as ‘sensitive limit‘ in the works of anatomist Xavier Bichat and analyses a set of portraits by Jacques-Louis David painted in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

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