Analyzing features of Wittgenstein's philosophical work and including in-depth textual analyses, this study investigates the impact of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work on contemporary German and French novelists. Drawing upon aesthetics, architectural history, philosophy of science, and photography, the book seeks to explain why references both to Wittgenstein as a person, as well as to his work are more pervasive than other equally renowned twentieth century philosophers and asks why some authors such as Händler and Roubaud, are less well-known and only partially translated into English.
While there are countless philosophical and psychological studies that focus on sources of the self, narcissism has found relatively little attention in a pre-Freudian context. The Self as Muse fills this gap by examining various aspects of narcissism and their significance for the outpouring of creativity in late eighteenth and nineteenth-century German literature. In many Eighteenth-century works of the period narcissism refers to the creation of an idealized image of the self and the desire to merge with this image. It provided an impetus for poetic production as writers resorted to the Greek myth of Narcissus to express what they perceived as the inner workings of their soul. Yet they were also acutely aware of the vain, and therefore narcissistic, motivations for their explorations of the self. While those influenced by the Pietist tradition attempted to distinguish between an 'unselfish' self-scrutiny and self-indulging vanity, others like Goethe took advantage of narcissism's creative potential and integrated it into their aesthetic endeavors. The abundance of confessional and autobiographical accounts, the burgeoning of poetry drawing on personal experience, the emergence of a type of drama that is based on empathy, and the concern with an individual's ability to control one's senses and emotions in general testify to an unprecedented interest in notions of the self in German literature. MathSs explains the emergence of narcissism in the literature of the period as a sense-inspired concept that aims to bring about a better comprehension of both the self and other human beings, and how writers used narcissism to improve the moral behavior of their readers. It examines eighteenth-century representations of narcissism against the background of Freudian and post-Freudian notions of the concept, and explores narcissism as a creative process that engages both reader and writer in the production of meaning. By showing narcissism's pervasive allure for a broad array of literary productions, MathSs shows that narcissism is a constitutive force not only in literary production but also in the construction of modern subjectivity. Yet this construction is by no means complete and invites the reader to strive toward the illusive image of an ideal.
Analyzing features of Wittgenstein's philosophical work and including in-depth textual analyses, this study investigates the impact of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work on contemporary German and French novelists. Drawing upon aesthetics, architectural history, philosophy of science, and photography, the book seeks to explain why references both to Wittgenstein as a person, as well as to his work are more pervasive than other equally renowned twentieth century philosophers and asks why some authors such as Händler and Roubaud, are less well-known and only partially translated into English.
In Inconceivable Effects, Martin Blumenthal-Barby reads theoretical, literary and cinematic works that appear noteworthy for the ethical questions they raise. Via critical analysis of writers and filmmakers whose projects have changed our ways of viewing the modern world-including Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, the directors of Germany in Autumn, and Heiner Mueller-these essays furnish a cultural base for contemporary discussions of totalitarian domination, lying and politics, the relation between law and body, the relation between law and justice, the question of violence, and our ways of conceptualizing "the human." A consideration of ethics is central to the book, but ethics in a general, philosophical sense is not the primary subject here; instead, Blumenthal-Barby suggests that whatever understanding of the ethical one has is always contingent upon a particular mode of presentation (Darstellung), on particular aesthetic qualities and features of media. Whatever there is to be said about ethics, it is always bound to certain forms of saying, certain ways of telling, certain modes of narration. That modes of presentation differ across genres and media goes without saying; that such differences are intimately linked with the question of the ethical emerges with heightened urgency in this book.
This text offers a lively analysis of the issues which currently face the English legal system, but without getting into the level of detail found in other texts.
This text offers a lively analysis of the issues which currently face the English legal system, but without getting into the level of detail found in other texts.
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