Mental Illness as Irony: Hegel's Diagnosis of Novalis Reid, Jeffrey
Studia hegeliana : revista de la Sociedad Española de Estudios sobre Hegel = Journal of the Spanish Society for Hegelian Studies,
06/2024, Volume:
10
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Hegel reads the poet Novalis as an expression of terminal irony, a pathological case of Gemüt, where the conscious mind is alienated from reality and turns its negativity inwards on the contents of ...its own natural soul. The condition of self-feeling, presented in Hegel’s “Anthropology”, is a self-consumption that manifests itself somatically in the physical disease (consumption) from which Novalis dies. The poet’s literary production represents a pathological fixation that impedes the dynamic organicity of Hegelian Science. As such, Novalis’s mental illness and death constitute an expression of romantic irony and an ongoing threat to Hegel’s philosophy.
The concept of
(
) is a central concept to Hegel’s
. At the same time, it is one of the most difficult to understand for the contemporary reader. Despite the numerous specialized works dedicated to ...this topic, there is no study dedicated to the semiotic experience of consciousness, to which Hegel devotes memorable pages in
. This contribution aims to highlight the experience of consciousness when its object is represented by
or the individual as a system of signs.
O artigo tem como objetivo reconhecer o motivo do inquietante como uma categoria estética fundamental no universo romântico, especialmente na obra “O homem da areia” de E.T.A. Hoffmann. A hipótese ...central deste trabalho é que o fenômeno do inquietante, no que diz respeito à leitura do texto de Hoffmann, tem sido interpretado de forma restrita pela tradição psicanalítica. Para alcançar esse objetivo, em primeiro lugar será proposto uma caracterização provisória do inquietante como categoria estética; em seguida será apresentado uma visão geral sobre o assunto baseado no conto “O homem da areia”; na terceira parte será exposto a interpretação psicanalítica do inquietante de Sigmund Freud em contraste com a proposta de Ernst Jentsch; e por último, será abordada a tarefa de uma poética do inquietante. O universo poético dos românticos alemães é caracterizado por tornar evidente um mundo interior marcado com matizes claro-escuro, onde a obra literária tenta mostrar o que nem sempre é visível.
ABSTRACT This paper involves the psychoanalytic and iconological analysis of two paintings by the Romantic artist Carl Alexander Simon held at the Schlossmuseum in Weimar: Selbstbildnis mit ...Tirolerhut and Die Braut des Künstlers. Simon produced these paintings in 1830, almost 20 years before travelling to South America, where he continued his artistic career and carried out an ambitious colonisation scheme. This is the first study to scrutinise these paintings. This essay’s primary purpose is to unveil overlooked aspects of Simon’s works, determining the extent to which intricate personality traits began to emerge in these works. The central argument is that various features of these paintings are early instantiations of a messiah complex which will be determinant to understanding his colonising endeavour in Chile.
Knowledge about empathy is part of the study of artistic expressions, among which stand out works of personalities such as the Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci, who was concerned with the ...connection between science and art during his creative research full of imagination and sensitivity to nature and human anatomy. The word empathy emerged among critics of German art as the term
, which was used within the aesthetic bias by philosophers and art historians. It emphasized the idea that a viewer perceiving an object could establish a link between it and themselves, projecting the object 'into themselves'. That is, the artwork could be experienced by the observer as if the viewer belonged predominantly to the object, in such a way that its characteristics could be actually felt through the expression of emotions, feelings and thoughts. This analysis of art appreciation required a great deal of knowledge and contemplation of nature, as understood by the German Romanticists, who had enormous admiration for da Vinci and his universal and systematic mind-a mind which reacted against formalisms, building his intellectual and sensory systems based on both his observation of nature and his own criteria. In particular, the art of painting for Leonardo was a way to demonstrate a mental discourse, just as the most important aspect of human portraits is to represent-in gestures and facial expressions-the states of mind and emotions. These are facts that German Romanticists tried to explain as the relationship between empathy and a work of art. The present manuscript aims to describe empathy from an artistic view, considering the roots of this word in German Romanticism; to comment about Leonardo da Vinci and the expression of art in the Renaissance; and, finally, to discuss the expression of his art in relation to empathy.
This article examines the role played by 'feeling' (Gefühl) and 'love' within the philosophy of German Romanticism. After an introduction (I) to the actual debate on German Romanticism, paragraph II ...sketches an analysis of the concept of Gefühl at the end of the eighteenth century and highlights the differences with its actual meaning. The successive three sections are dedicated to three pivotal figures of German Romanticism: F. Schlegel (III), Novalis (IV), and Baader (V). Similarities and differences between these authors will be emphasized. It will be demonstrated that they deny the reason˗feeling opposition, and that 'feeling' and 'love' are at the heart of their ontology, epistemology, and conception of subjectivity, conditioning the Romantic human-nature relationship and Romantic political philosophy. In the concluding remarks (VI), this paper explains how German Romanticism can still help to better understand the role of feelings in politics.
At the turn of the Enlightenment, the Italian language represented one of the topoi of German musical literature. While most philosophers and men of letters of the Romantic era were reluctant to ...consider Italy as the promised land of art, E.T.A. Hoffmann obviously represents an exception. The ‘yearning for the musical’ demonstrated in his literary language is the fruit of an incessant sound quest, a ‘search for a musical language’ with unexpected results. This study is largely centered on the Italian language, which represents for Hoffmann the language of music par excellence, and on the opposition between the delirium of the imagination and the reality of the Alltägliche. While using an intermedial comparative approach, which considers the texts in the Italian language used by Hoffmann as music-generating texts, we analyze here not only the relationship between music and language, but also the relationship between music and what one could define as the textus receptus of the Italian language in the Germanic context.
"This is the first full-scale biography, in any language, of a towering figure in German and European Romanticism: August Wilhelm Schlegel whose life, 1767 to 1845, coincided with its inexorable ...rise. As poet, translator, critic and oriental scholar, Schlegel's extraordinarily diverse interests and writings left a vast intellectual legacy, making him a foundational figure in several branches of knowledge. He was one of the last thinkers in Europe able to practise as well as to theorise, and to attempt to comprehend the nature of culture without being forced to be a narrow specialist. With his brother Friedrich, for example, Schlegel edited the avant-garde Romantic periodical Athenaeum; and he produced with his wife Caroline a translation of Shakespeare, the first metrical version into any foreign language. Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature were a defining force for Coleridge and for the French Romantics. But his interests extended to French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literature, as well to the Greek and Latin classics, and to Sanskrit. August Wilhelm Schlegel is the first attempt to engage with this totality, to combine an account of Schlegel’s life and times with a critical evaluation of his work and its influence. Through the study of one man's rich life, incorporating the most recent scholarship, theoretical approaches, and archival resources, while remaining easily accessible to all readers, Paulin has recovered the intellectual climate of Romanticism in Germany and traced its development into a still-potent international movement. The extraordinarily wide scope and variety of Schlegel's activities have hitherto acted as a barrier to literary scholars, even in Germany. In Roger Paulin, whose career has given him the knowledge and the experience to grapple with such an ambitious project, Schlegel has at last found a worthy exponent. "
The formation of Albrecht Dürer’s cult in German romantic culture is an important problem of modern art history, since the image of the German master, created in the first half of the 19th century, ...still influences the perception of his work. The article analyses the works of the Nazarene artists and German masters from Munich and Dusseldorf, where the Nazarene traditions were especially strong. Special attention is paid to the design and organization of the so-called Dürer-Feste. In addition, the works of romantic masters have been identified, in which the influence of the style and iconography of Dürer’s works is especially clearly manifested (by P. Cornelius, F. Pforr, E.N. Neureuther, L.E. Grimm). The main subjects associated with the romantic cult of A. Dürer are identified: friendship with Raphael, work for Maximilian I, receiving the coat of arms from the hands of the emperor, and connection with contemporary artists. The peculiarity of the romantic cult of Dürer is special attention to the personality and biography of the master, which manifested itself in the theory and everyday practices of German artists. At the same time, in the art of German Romanticism, references to Dürer’s work are not so frequent. They are found mainly in graphic works, the plots of which are associated with patriotic or historical themes. The article shows that the image of Dürer in the German romantic culture is multifaceted. The Nuremberg master was perceived as a pious Christian artist, an outstanding engraver, a symbol of the chivalric Middle Ages, and at the same time a bright representative of the burghers of Early Modern times. But first of all, the artists of the Romantic era praised Dürer as the embodiment of the national idea and the direct predecessor of modern German painters.
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