Description
Book SynopsisShows that German idealist and romantic theories of literature and aesthetic judgment are closer to the heart of metaphysics and ethics than previously thought. This title explores the contributions of Schelling, Holderlin, and others to the aesthetics of tragedy, and charts the fate of the speculative philosophy in terms of the tragic.
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Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Key to Works Cited
Introduction
1. The Oldest Program toward a System in German Idealism
The Philological Dispute
Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus: Text and Translation
Commentary
The Tragic Absolute?
2. Three Ends of the Absolute
Absolute Inhibition: Schelling
Absolute Separation: Hölderlin
Absolute Density: Novalis
A Note on Absolute and Relative Death
3. At the Stroke of One
A Peripheral Reading of Schelling's Treatise on Human Freedom
Excursus on Sehnsucht: Languor, the Languid, and Languishment
The Peripheral Reading (continued)
An Indifferent Reading of Schelling's Treatise on Human Freedom
4. God's Trauma
The Earliest Notes toward Schelling's The Ages of the World
The Genealogy of Time, and the Golden Age
Trauma, Repression, and the Absolute Past
An Excursion to Samothrace
5. God's Footstool
From the 1811 Draft of Die Weltalter, with Variants from the 1810
Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen and the 18271828 System der Weltalter
From the Sketches toward the Second Proposed Volume of
Die Weltalter, "The Present"
The Olympian Zeus of Pausanias's Guide to Greece
The Forlorn Foot of Divinity
6. Brazen Wheels
Freedom to Burn: Schelling's Tenth Letter
Absolute Mythology: The 18021803 Philosophy of Art
The Klang of Music, the Fine Arts, and Tragedy
Ironclad Necessity
7. Voices of Empedocles
"Dame Philosophy Is a Tyrant"
Essence or Accidents?
Nefas or Destiny?
Formal Aspects of the Three Drafts of Hölderlin's Mourning-Play
Rhea's Disappearance and the Rise of the Doppelgänger
8. Hölderlin's "Translations" of Sophocles
The Labors of Translation
The Reviews
Absolute Intensity and the Task of the Translator
Translating "Theatrality"
9. A Small Number of Houses in the Tragic Universe
At the Center of Aristotle's Thought: The Poetics
Divine Betrayal: Hölderlin's "Notes on Oedipus"
In the Figure of Death: Hölderlin's "Notes on Antigone"
10. Hölderlin's Tragic Heroines
Three Commentaries: Kommerell, Reinhardt, Loraux
Jocasta's Shadow, Antigone's "Ath, Niobe's Tears, Danaë's Gold
Return to Jocasta
11. Antigone's Clout
Lacan on the Essence of Tragedy
Lacan on the Tragic Dimension of Psychoanalytic Experience
Antigone between Two Deaths, Two Births
12. Nietzschean Reminiscences
Not a Single New Goddess?
"Against the Oncoming Night"
Kavqarsi~ and "Ekstasi~ in Absolute Music, Absolute Rhythm
The Tragic Absolute
Appendix: Plot Summaries of The Death of Empedocles
Bibliography
Index