Description
Book SynopsisIt explores for the first time the life-force (Lebenskraft) debate in Germany, which was manifest in philosophical reflection, medical treatise, scientific experimentation, theoretical physics, aesthetic theory, and literary practice esp.1740-1920. The history of vitalism is considered in the context of contemporary discourses on radical reality (or deep naturalism).
Trade Review“The Early History of Embodied Cognition unquestionably advances Romantic literary scholarship.” - Gabriel Finkelstein, University of Chicago US in Modern, Vol. 108 No. 1 pp. 200-201.
Table of ContentsPreface Establishing Parameters: Lebenskraft and Artifact 1. John A. McCarthy (Vanderbilt U), “Introduction: Life Matters” 2. Jennifer Wynne Hellwarth (Allegheny College PA), “Pneuma—Sexuality—Sex Difference: From Arabic to European Philosophy and Medical Practice” 3. Ingo Uhlig (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), “Ordnung des Lebendigen. Naturgeschichtliche Malereien im Kabinett der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle” 4. Brian T. McInnis (USMA, West Point, NY). “Haller, Unzer, and Science as Process” Blood, Nerves, Resonance 5. James Kennaway (Newcastle, UK), “Lebenskraft, the Body and Will Power: The Life Force in German Musical Aesthetics” 6. Alexis B. Smith (U of Oregon), “Ritter’s Musical Blood Flow Through Hoffmann’s Kreisler” 7. Alice Kuzniar (U of Waterloo, CAN), “Romantic Vitalism and Homeopathy’s Law of Minimum” 8. Ann C. Schmiesing (U of Colorado, Boulder). “Folklore and Physiology: The Vitality of Blood in the Works of the Brothers Grimm” Fitness and Fitting In 9. Nicholas Saul (U of Durham, UK). “Fitness, Nerves, the Degenerate Body and Identity: Radical Reality and Modernity in Max Nordau’s Aesthetics and Fiction” 10. Stephanie Hilger (U of Illinois, Urbana/Champain). “No Body? Radical Gender in Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years (1907)” 11. Cate Reilly (Princeton U). “Naturphilosophie and Murder: The Limits of Scientific Explanation in Döblin’s Die beiden Freundinnen” The Lebenskraft-Debate Recast: The Posthuman and Radical Mediation 12. Heather Sullivan (Trinity U TX). “Agency in the Anthropocene: Goethe, Radical Reality, and the New Materialisms” 13. Monica Ledoux (Vanderbilt U), “Lebenskraft, Radical Reality, and Occidental Medicine: How Science is Leading us back to a Holistic View” Epiloque: John A. McCarthy, “Lebenskraft Legacies” Select Bibliography Notes on the Contributors
