Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 73-20,631
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
THE EFFORT TO ESCAPE FROM TEMPORAL CONSCIOUSNESS AS EXPRESSED IN THE THOUGHT AND WORK OF HERMAN HESSE, HANNAH ARENDT, AND KARL LOEWITH Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Olsen, Gary Raymond, 1940- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 10/10/2021 18:13:22 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/288040 INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction. 1. The sign or "target" for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is "Missing Paga(s)". If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. You will find a good image of the page in the adjacent frame. 3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., was part of the material being photographed the photographer followed a definite method in "sectioning" the material. It is customary to begin photoing at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue photoing from left to right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is continued again — beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete. 4. The majority of users indicate that the textual content is of greatest value, however, a somewhat higher quality reproduction could be made from "photographs" if essential to the understanding of the dissertation. Silver prints of "photographs" may be ordered at additional charge by writing the Order Department, giving the catalog number, title, author and specific pages you wish reproduced. 5. PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received. Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 73-20,631 OLSEN, Gary Raymond, 1940- THE EFFORT TO ESCAPE FROM TEMPORAL CONSCIOUSNESS AS EXPRESSED IN THE THOUGHT AND WORK OF HERMANN HESSE, HANNAH ARENDT, AND KARL L&WITH. The Universityof Arizona, Ph.D., 1973 History, modern University Microfilms, A XEROX Company , Ann Arbor, Michigan THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFIEMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE EFFORT TO ESCAPE FROM TEMPORAL CONSCIOUSNESS AS EXPRESSED IN THE THOUGHT AND WORK OF HERMANN HESSE, HANNAH ARENDT, AND KARL LOWITH by Gary Raymond 01sen A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 19 7 3 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE I hereby recommend that this dissertation prepared under my direction by Gary Raymond Olsen entitled The Effort to Escape from Temporal Consciousness as Expressed in the Thought and Work of Hermann Hesse, Hannah Arendt, and Karl Lciwith be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy J 23 cdstertation Director Date After inspection of the final copy of the dissertation, the follov;ing members of the Final Examination Committee concur in its approval and recommend its acceptance:''-' : KCl£x^A ^ 3 y / 7 jr\, 31 < ^| 13 This approval and acceptance is contii ^ant on the candidate's adequate performance and defense of this dissertation at the final oral examination. The inclusion of this sheet bound into the library copy of the dissertation is evidence of satisfactory performance at the final examination. STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under the rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allow able without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manu script in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor, Professor James Donohoe, for making me aware of the philosophical implications of history and for giving me the freedom to explore my subsequent interests. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT V 1. INTRODUCTION: TIME AND THE WESTERN INTELLECTUAL CRISIS 1 2. TIME AND THE WESTERN MIND 6 3. GERMAN TEMPORAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 30 4. TO CASTALIA AND BEYOND: HERMANN HESSE'S CONFRONTATION WITH TIME 51 5. IN PURSUIT OF THE PRESENT: THE ROLE OF TEMPORALITY IN THE THOUGHT OF HANNAH ARENDT ... 90 6. MEANING AND TIME: KARL LOWITH'S ANTI-HISTORICISM 139 7. CONCLUSION 195 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 205 Tv ABSTRACT In the twentieth century, a great many Western thinkers, especially Germans, have been preoccupied with the philosophical, psychological and moral implications of the immersion of traditional absolutes in time and process. Many important intellectuals have contributed to this de velopment, some of them being Heidegger and Bergson in philosophy, Proust and Mann in literature, and Einstein in science. Generally they can be said to have radicalized in various ways the traditional view of time in Western civilization and to have insisted that previous efforts to transcend temporality were ill-founded. This idea, however, has engendered considerable opposition on the part of those who fear and deplore the relativism inherent in time-bound thought and activity. Among German intellectuals this opposition has been es pecially vocal and productive. In fact, the question of the nature and the scope of temporality has been the most important problem confronted by German thinkers in this century. This is certainly true in the cases of Hermann Hesse, Hannah Arendt and Karl L6Vith. Hermann Hesse's critique of temporality took form in the novels written after World War I. In Demian, v vi Siddhartha, Per Steppenwolf, Narziss und Goldmund and Die Morgenlandfahrt, Hesse chronicled his gradual but pervasive disillusionment with time. And in his last major work, Das Glasperlenspiel, he described "Castalia," a spiritual province devoted to cultural greatness and permanence. But Hesse ultimately rejected his imagined escape from time and concluded by affirming its hegemony, whatever the conse quences. Hannah Arendt likewise sought a way to avoid radical temporality and the antinomies of contemporary Western culture. In particular, she explored the phe nomenon seen as the unique and most frightening product of the twentieth century, totalitarianism. Basic to an understanding of the modern period and of totalitarianism was, she argued, an appreciation of the extent to which Western man has foresaken the extra-temporal absolutes of past ages. With this in mind she explored not only The Origins of Totalitarianism but also the problems of revolu tion and violence and the ways in which individuals have responded in this century to the crisis of belief. Unlike Hesse, she did not finally affirm time but rather clung to the hope that somehow a miracle of temporal-negation might occur in the present or the future. Karl Lo'with, unlike Hesse and Arendt, began his career as a disciple of Heidegger but soon discovered that vii time, in the guise of historicism, was the source of modern relativism and nihilism. After fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, Lowith devoted himself to the discovery of a way out of time. In Meaning in History (19 49), this effort assumed a Christian form but Lowith subsequently abandoned this kind of atemporal meaning in favor of the "permanence" which he found characterized the natural world. He seems to have concluded, contrary to the findings of Hesse and Arendt, that an avoidance of time remains well within the realm of possibility. This was, however, clearly a supra- rational evasion of time. Each of these thinkers attempted, in other words, to discover a non-temporal perspective valid for the con temporary imagination. Each ultimately failed but their failures remain among the most penetrating analyses of the modern spiritual crisis. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: TIME AND THE WESTERN INTELLECTUAL CRISIS It is no exaggeration to call the idea of time the most important philosophical and psychological problem of the twentieth century. That which for thousands of years was dismissed as unreal, merely contingent, superficial, has appeared at the very heart of reality. The Western thinker, formerly engaged in the pursuit of Plato's eternal world of forms and essences, has become a "Time-haunted man" for whom "Passing time, once almost meaningless, is now the inescapable beat . .11 "Time, alas, is our 2 3 essence;" we are immersed in the wild river of history. 1. J, B, Priestley, Man and Time (New York: Dell, 1968), pp. viii and 123. 2. William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1962), p. 110. 3. The river metaphor, along with that of the arrow in flight, represents the dominant symbolic rendering of the concept of time in Western thought.