Utopian Landscapes and Ecstatic Journeys: Friedrich Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse, and Mircea Eliade on the Terror of Modernity

Numen ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-102
Author(s):  
Kocku von Stuckrad
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Hermann Hesse ◽  
Mircea Eliade ◽  
Conditio Humana ◽  
Modern Condition

AbstractAgainst the background of fascism and the disasters of two world wars, during the first decades of the twentieth century many European intellectuals were formulating negative responses to “modernity” and to what they regarded as the decline of human civilization. Often, these intellectuals sought for alternatives to the modern conditio humana and looked for solutions in religion, art, or philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche’s conceptualization of the Dionysian and the Orphic is of particular importance for such a discourse of modernity. After introducing Nietzsche’s contribution as a referential framework, the article compares two representatives of this intellectual discourse: Hermann Hesse and Mircea Eliade. At first glance, Hesse, the writer and poet, does not seem to have much in common with Eliade, the scholar of religion and writer of novels. Upon closer examination, however, there are remarkable similarities in their work and their evaluation of the modern human condition. For Hesse, it was art, music, and literature that provided the antidote against the predicaments of modern culture. Eliade shared Hesse’s search for an alternative to the modern condition and found it in the pure religion outside of time and space, in the illud tempus of the homo religiosus. For him, it was shamanism in particular that provided a model for a contact with the absolute world of truth untouched by the “terror of history.” The article argues that these dialectical responses are part and parcel of the project of European “modernity” itself, rather than representing an “anti-modern” claim.

Imagination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Kind
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Way

Imagination is a speculative mental state that allows us to consider situations apart from the here and now. Historically, imagination played an important role in the works of many of the major philosophical figures in the Western tradition – from Aristotle to Descartes to Hume to Kant. By the middle of the twentieth century, in the wake of the behavioristic mindset that had dominated both psychology and philosophy in the early part of the century, imagination had largely faded from philosophical view and received scant attention from the 1960s through the 1980s. But imagination returned to the limelight in the late twentieth century, as it was given increasing prominence in both aesthetics and philosophy of mind. In aesthetics, interest in imagination derives in large part from its role in our engagement with works of art, music, and literature. For example, some philosophers have called upon imagination to capture the essence of fiction, while others have called upon it to explain how listeners understand the expressive nature of musical works. Yet others have seen imagination as centrally involved in ontological questions about art; in particular, they take works of art to be best understood as in some sense imaginary objects. In philosophy of mind, imagination plays an especially important role in discussions of mindreading, that is, our ability to understand the mental states of others. While theory theorists claim that we do this by calling upon a folk theory of mind, simulation theorists claim that we mindread by simulating the mental states of others – with simulation typically cashed out in terms of imagination. More generally, philosophers of mind who are interested in questions of cognitive architecture tend to be especially interested in imagination and its relationship to belief and desire. In fact, imagination has come to play an important role in a wide variety of philosophical contexts in addition to aesthetics and philosophy of mind. It has traditionally been central to discussions of thought experimentation and modal epistemology, where an analogy is often drawn between the way perception justifies beliefs about actuality and the way imagination seems to justify beliefs about possibility. Imagination has also been invoked to explain pretence, dreaming, empathy, delusion, and our ability to engage in counterfactual reasoning.

The Doctor Faustus Dossier

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Daub
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Twentieth Century Music ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Doctor Faustus ◽  
Public Lives ◽  
Nazi Era ◽  
The Impact

Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann, two towering figures of twentieth-century music and literature, both found refuge in the German-exile community in Los Angeles during the Nazi era. This complete edition of their correspondence provides a glimpse inside their private and public lives and culminates in the famous dispute over Mann's novel Doctor Faustus. In the thick of the controversy was Theodor Adorno, then a budding philosopher, whose contribution to the Faustus affair would make him an enemy of both families. Gathered here for the first time in English, the letters are complemented by diary entries, related articles, and other primary source materials, as well as an introduction that contextualizes the impact that these two great artists had on twentieth-century thought and culture.

Ważyk metafizyczny? / Ważyk – A Metaphysician?

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-47
Author(s):  
Jerzy Święch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Late Phase ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Self Sufficiency

Summary Adam Ważyk’s last volume of poems Zdarzenia (Events) (1977) can be read as a resume of the an avant-garde artist’s life that culminated in the discovery of a new truth about the human condition. The poems reveal his longing for a belief that human life, the mystery of life and death, makes sense, ie. that one’s existence is subject to the rule of some overarching necessity, opened onto the last things, rather than a plaything of chance. That entails a rejection of the idea of man’s self-sufficiency as an illusion, even though that kind of individual sovereignty was the cornerstone of modernist art. The art of late modernity, it may be noted, was already increasingly aware of the dangers of putting man’s ‘ontological security’ at risk. Ważyk’s last volume exemplifies this tendency although its poems appear to remain within the confines of a Cubist poetics which he himself helped to establish. In fact, however, as our readings of the key poems from Events make clear, he employs his accustomed techniques for a new purpose. The shift of perspective can be described as ‘metaphysical’, not in any strict sense of the word, but rather as a shorthand indicator of the general mood of these poems, filled with events which seem to trap the characters into a supernatural order of things. The author sees that much, even though he does not look with the eye of a man of faith. It may be just a game - and Ważyk was always fond of playing games - but in this one the stakes are higher than ever. Ultimately, this game is about salvation. Ważyk is drawn into it by a longing for the wholeness of things and a dissatisfaction with all forms of mediation, including the Cubist games of deformation and fragmentation of the object. It seems that the key to Ważyk’s late phase is to be found in his disillusionment with the twentieth-century avant-gardes. Especially the poems of Events contain enough clues to suggest that the promise of Cubism and surrealism - which he sought to fuse in his poetic theory and practice - was short-lived and hollow.

Dreams of a Black Commons on Turtle Island

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 454-473
Author(s):  
Rachel Zellars
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Wild Mushrooms ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
Indigenous Sovereignty ◽  
Black Land ◽  
The Human Condition

This essay opens with a discussion of the Black commons and the possibility it offers for visioning coherence between Black land relationality and Indigenous sovereignty. Two sites of history – Black slavery and Black migration prior to the twentieth century – present illuminations and challenges to Black and Indigenous relations on Turtle Island, as they expose the “antagonisms history has left us” (Byrd, 2019a, p. 342), and the ways antiblackness is produced as a return to what is deemed impossible, unimaginable, or unforgivable about Black life.While the full histories are well beyond the scope of this paper, I highlight the violent impossibilities and afterlives produced and sustained by both – those that deserve care and attention within a “new relationality,” as Tiffany King has named, between Black and Indigenous peoples. At the end of the essay, I return briefly to Anna Tsing’s spiritual science of foraging wild mushrooms. Her allegory about the human condition offers a bridge, I conclude, between the emancipatory dreams of Black freedom and Indigenous sovereignty.  

Das Internet der Tiere: Natur 4.0 und die conditio humana

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Alexander Pschera
Keyword(s):  
Industry 4.0 ◽  
Industrie 4.0 ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Conditio Humana ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Human Condition

"Neben der Industrie hat die Digitalisierung auch die Natur ergriffen. Die Tatsache, dass Tausende von Tieren mit GPS-Sendern aus- gerüstet und überwacht werden, erlaubt, analog zur Industrie 4.0 auch von einer Natur 4.0 zu sprechen. Dieses Internet der Tiere verändert den Begriff, den der Mensch von der Natur hat. Er transformiert die Wahrnehmung vor allem der Natur als etwas fundamental An- deren. Neben den vielen kulturellen Problematisierungen, die das Internet der Tiere mit sich bringt, lassen sich aber auch die Umrisse einer neuen, ganz und gar nicht esoterischen planetarisch-post-digitalen Kultur aufzeigen, die die conditio humana verändert. In addition to industry, digitalization has also taken hold of nature. The fact that thousands of animals are provided and monitored with GPS transmitters allows to speak of nature 4.0 by way of analogy to industry 4.0. This internet of animals changes our idea of nature. Most of all, it transforms the perception of nature as something fundamentally other. Beside the many cultural problems that the internet of animals implies, it can also outline a new, not at all esoteric planetary post-digital culture that is about to change the human condition. "

Los avatares del logos

2001 ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Leticia Flores Farfán
Keyword(s):  
Georges Bataille ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Mircea Eliade ◽  
The World ◽  
The Human Condition

Assuming with Georges Bataille that men is a being who is not in the world “like water within the water”, that is to say, in an immanent and lack of distinction state, but that its destiny is shaped in the permanent significant joint or logos to which its unfinished nature jeopardizes him, we analyze the form in which the mythical story, characterized like a sacred word with symbolic and ontological quality within the perspective of Mircea Eliade, gives account of the wound or the original tear that constitutes the human condition.

scholarly journals The Scientific and Cultural Journey to Ovarian Rejuvenation: Background, Barriers, and Beyond the Biological Clock

Medicines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Eric Scott Sills
Keyword(s):  
Ovarian Function ◽  
Platelet Rich Plasma ◽  
Hormone Replacement ◽  
Biological Clock ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Sex Reassignment Surgery ◽  
Older Woman ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Intractable Problem

Female age has been known to define reproductive outcome since antiquity; attempts to improve ovarian function may be considered against a sociocultural landscape that foreshadows current practice. Ancient writs heralded the unlikely event of an older woman conceiving as nothing less than miraculous. Always deeply personal and sometimes dynastically pivotal, the goal of achieving pregnancy often engaged elite healers or revered clerics for help. The sorrow of defeat became a potent motif of barrenness or miscarriage lamented in art, music, and literature. Less well known is that rejuvenation practices from the 1900s were not confined to gynecology, as older men also eagerly pursued methods to turn back their biological clock. This interest coalesced within the nascent field of endocrinology, then an emerging specialty. The modern era of molecular science is now offering proof-of-concept evidence to address the once intractable problem of low or absent ovarian reserve. Yet, ovarian rejuvenation by platelet-rich plasma (PRP) originates from a heritage shared with both hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and sex reassignment surgery. These therapeutic ancestors later developed into allied, but now distinct, clinical fields. Here, current iterations of intraovarian PRP are discussed with historical and cultural precursors centering on cell and tissue regenerative effects. Intraovarian PRP thus shows promise for women in menopause as an alternative to conventional HRT, and to those seeking pregnancy—either with advanced reproductive technologies or as unassisted conceptions.

The Theological Mediation

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-41
Author(s):  
Richard Viladesau
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Theology Of The Cross ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
Hans Urs Von Balthasar ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Reformation Theology ◽  
Late Modern

This chapter examines late modern reappropriations of the classical theology of the cross. In continuity with medieval and Reformation theology, these hold that Christ’s suffering was a divinely willed redemptive act, in vicarious satisfaction for human sin. The neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth, in line with the Reformed tradition, emphasizes election and covenant. The theme of divine kenosis, found in nineteenth century German an English thinkers, is taken up into Orthodox trinitarian soteriology by the Russian theologian Sergei Bulgakov, with strong attention to Patristic dogma. Hans Urs von Balthasar stresses Christ’s “descent into hell” as the central symbol of the divine entry into the lost human condition. Jürgen Moltmann sees the suffering of God as the only possible theological response to the horrors of the twentieth century, especially the Holocaust.

The Wages of Sin

2021 ◽  
pp. 227-246
Author(s):  
Kathleen Wellman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
Unique Ability

For these Christian histories, humanity endured punishment for its sins in the first half of the twentieth century. Bad ideas, rooted in a failure to adhere to biblical Christianity, bore horrifying fruit. These textbooks condemn liberalism as the root of evil forms of government—socialism, fascism, and totalitarianism—with little distinction among them. They use this period to define fundamental dichotomies—evil socialists versus godly capitalists, deplorable liberals versus admirable conservatives. Efforts to negotiate peace or maintain it—the Peace of Versailles, the League of Nations, and the United Nations—were reprehensible, reflecting a misplaced desire to remediate the human condition. The United States even made such efforts in the New Deal, which these curricula repudiate. Humanism penetrated modern culture through education, particularly in the social sciences. Evangelicals’ understanding of biblical prophecies gave them a unique ability to weigh and condemn the evils of the modern world.

Russian aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Terras
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Russian Art ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Architecture And Music

Aesthetics as a branch of philosophy, or in the sense of an explicitly stated theory of art, appeared in Russia no earlier than the seventeenth century, under the direct influence of Western thought. It developed in connection with the adoption of European art forms. Russian contributions in terms of original styles in all forms of art, as well as of certain aesthetic notions which may be credited to Russia, came in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and must be understood in context with European art and aesthetic thought. Russian art, music and literature, as well as the aesthetic notions guiding them, get their Russianness from the political and social background, a major factor in literature, and from a carrying over of traits found in Russian folk art, folk music and folklore, as well as in religious texts, iconography, architecture and music, whose Orthodox version is sharply distinct from their equivalents in the Roman Catholic West.

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