DOCSLIB.ORG

The Idolatry of Philosophy

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Idolatry of Philosophy The Idolatry of Philosophy Johann Georg Hamann’s Critique of his Contemporaries as Driven by his Notion of Philosophical Superstition and Idolatry Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn vorgelegt von Matthew Cierzan aus Iowa, die Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika Bonn 2019 Gedruckt mit der Genehmigung der Philosophischen Fakultät der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn Zusammensetzung der Prüfungskommission: Prof. Dr. Rainer Schäfer (Vorsitzender) Prof. Dr. Michael Schulz (Betreuer) Prof. Dr. Phil. Andreas Pangritz (Gutachter) PD Dr. Christian Rode (weiteres prüfungsberechtigtes Mitglied) Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 13.7.2018 2 Table of Contents Abbreviations and Translations .......................................................................................................................................... 6 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................ 7 Course of Argumentation .................................................................................................................................................................. 7 Superstition (Aberglaube) – Idolatry (Abgotterei, Idolatrie, Götzendienst) ....................................................................... 8 Tracing the Thread .................................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Contribution of this Study ...................................................................................................................................................................... 14 Example: Socratic Memorabilia.................................................................................................................................................... 15 Glimpsing the Issue............................................................................................................................................................................ 15 CHAPTER I ................................................................................................................................................................................. 18 Review of Scholarship ............................................................................................................................................................................. 18 Faith, Superstition, and Idolatry .................................................................................................................................................. 22 Critique Criticized ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 23 Empiricism and the Blind Philosophers ........................................................................................................................................... 28 Setting the Stage: Hamann’s Interlocutors ..................................................................................................................................... 30 A Post-Cartesian Epoch .................................................................................................................................................................... 31 The Rationalism of Christian Wolff ............................................................................................................................................ 32 Encyclopedic Knowledge ................................................................................................................................................................ 34 The Berlin Enlightenment .............................................................................................................................................................. 36 Idolatry, Superstition, and Atheism ................................................................................................................................................... 40 CHAPTER II ............................................................................................................................................................................... 45 Turning Things on Their Head: The Superstition of His Century ........................................................................................... 45 The Enlightenment Critique of Superstition .................................................................................................................................. 47 Purging Religion of Superstition ......................................................................................................................................................... 49 Foundation of Faith: the Foundation of Knowledge ................................................................................................................... 51 The Empirical Starting Place of Faith .............................................................................................................................................. 53 Empiricism, Language, Reason ........................................................................................................................................................... 56 Language and Communication ........................................................................................................................................................... 57 Religious Faith ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 59 The Singularity of the Christian Faith ....................................................................................................................................... 60 Faith and Historical Revelation .................................................................................................................................................... 61 Christian Faith: a Framework for Philosophy........................................................................................................................ 64 Condescension of God....................................................................................................................................................................... 67 3 Faith and Reason: Two Interdependent Faculties of Human Knowledge .......................................................................... 71 Philosophical Superstition ..................................................................................................................................................................... 76 Hamann's Critique of Superstition and Hans Blumenberg's Metaphorology ................................................................... 77 Foundations of Philosophy beyond Reason: Blumenberg's Absolute Metaphors ................................................. 78 Hamann’s Notion of History .......................................................................................................................................................... 85 The Road to Superstition: Its Causes ................................................................................................................................................. 88 Limitations of Abstract Reason .................................................................................................................................................... 88 Reason, Knowledge, and Eschatology ....................................................................................................................................... 90 Contingency of Reason and Faith ................................................................................................................................................ 91 System as the Worst Form of Abstraction ............................................................................................................................... 94 Abstraction Relativized .................................................................................................................................................................... 96 Examples of Superstition ....................................................................................................................................................................... 98 Superstition in Kant’s System of Pure Reason ....................................................................................................................... 98 Superstitious Elements in the Thought of Moses Mendelssohn: “The State of Nature” .................................. 103 Chapter III .............................................................................................................................................................................. 107 From Superstition to Idolatry ........................................................................................................................................................... 107 Philosophical Idols Specified ............................................................................................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • De Sade. Männlichkeit Und Sexuelle Erniedrigung
    Gert Hekma De Sade. Männlichkeit und sexuelle Erniedrigung Die Entstehung neuer Männlichkeitsideale im 18. Jahrhundert wird von der Histo­ riographie recht unterschiedlich datiert und erklärt. Randolph Trumbach glaubt den Ursprung des heterosexuellen Mannes im England der 1730er Jahre gefunden zu haben und meint, dass dieser Mann bewies, kein molly (kein Homosexueller in der zeitgenössischen Terminologie) zu sein, indem er zu Huren ging. 1 Ungefähr zur selben Zeit habe europaweit der Kampf gegen die Masturbation eingesetzt und da­ mit ein Diskurs, der sowohl die Sexualisierung der männlichen Kultur bewirkte als auch an die männliche Keuschheit appellierte, womit das Sexuelle zum Kern eines neuen Erziehungssystems avancierte.2 Nach Thomas Laqueur entsteht die Ge­ schlechterdichotomie, durch die sich Männer zum überlegenen Geschlecht erklär• ten, erst gegen Ende des Vernunftzeitalters.3 Abigail Solomon-Godeau untersuchte die markanten Veränderungen in der Repräsentation des Männlichen, insbesondere die Verschiebung vom femininen und libidinösen zum tapferen und keuschen Mann. Dieser Wandel lasse sich auch an den veränderten Bekleidungsgewohnheiten ablesen. Der neue Mann drückte seine Tugenden durch eine nüchterne Kleidung aus und sah herrschaftliche Pracht und Zurschaustellung nicht mehr als männliche Privilegien, sondern als weibliche Attribute.4 Die Ideale der Französischen Revolu­ tion führten zur Trennung von öffentlich und privat, wobei das politische Feld den Männern zugesprochen wurde und auch die Kontrolle über Frauen und Kinder im privaten ,Reich, umfasste. George L. Mosse hat darauf hingewiesen, dass Johann Joachim Winckelmanns Studien über die klassische griechische Kunst genauso zur Entwicklung des neuen Ideals einer muskulösen Männlichkeit beigetragen haben wie die Befreiungskriege gegen die napoleonische Armee.5 Die neuen maskulinen Ideale waren recht zwiespältig.
    [Show full text]
  • Universidade Do Estado Do Rio De Janeiro Centro De Ciências Sociais Instituto De Filosofia E Ciências Humanas Gabriel Dirma De
    Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro Centro de Ciências Sociais Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas Gabriel Dirma de Araujo Leitão Friedrich Jacobi sobre a crença, ou realismo e idealismo transcendental Rio de Janeiro 2017 Gabriel Dirma de Araujo Leitão Friedrich Jacobi sobre a crença, ou realismo e idealismo transcendental Tese apresentada como requisito parcial para a obtenção do título de Doutor em Filosofia, ao Programa de Pós-graduação em Filosofia, da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Área de concentração: Filosofia Moderna e Contemporânea. Orientador: Prof. Dr. Ricardo José Corrêa Barbosa Rio de Janeiro 2017 CATALOGAÇÃO NA FONTE UERJ/REDE SIRIUS/ BIBLIOTECA CCS/A L533 Leitão, Gabriel Dirma de Araujo Friedrich Jacobi sobre a crença, ou realismo e idealismo transcendental / Gabriel Dirma de Araujo Leitão. – 2017. 291f. Orientador: Ricardo José Corrêa Barbosa.. Tese (Doutorado) - Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas. Bibliografia. 1. Filosofia alemã - Teses. 2. Idealismo alemão – Teses. 3. Realismo – Teses. I. Barbosa, Ricardo José Corrêa, 1961-. II. Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas. III. Título. CDU 1(430) Autorizo, apenas para fins acadêmicos e científicos, a reprodução total ou parcial desta tese, desde que citada a fonte. ______________________________ ___________________________ Assinatura Data Gabriel Dirma de Araujo Leitão Friedrich Jacobi sobre a crença, ou realismo e idealismo transcendental Tese apresentada, como requisito parcial para a obtenção do título de Doutor em Filosofia, ao Programa de Pós-graduação em Filosofia, da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Área de concentração: Filosofia Moderna e Contemporânea.
    [Show full text]
  • Hamann and Kierkegaard'
    Hamann and Kierkegaard' by RONALD GREGOR SMITH Between Johann Georg Hamann (1730-88) and S0renKierkegaard(i8i3-55) there was an extraordinary connexion. Hamann indeed was the figure who more than any other of modern times influenced Kierkegaard both in the form and content of his authorship and also, at a deeper level, in his very existence. It is notoriously difficult to understand Hamann’s writings, and it is per­ fectly possible for varying interpretations to be established with some show of consistency with Hamann’s own words. The trouble is that Hamann’s range is so wide, and so deep, that his epigones do not find it easy to reflect his richness. As Lessing wrote in a letter to Herder: His writings seem to be given out as tests for those gentlemen who call themselves polybistores. For you really do need a bit of panhistory in order to read them. A traveller can be easily found; but a mere stroller is hard to come upon.2 (Seine Schriften scheinen als Prüfungen der Herren aufgesetzt zu sein, die sich für Polyhistores ausgeben. Denn es gehört wirklich ein wenig Panhistorie dazu. Ein Wanderer ist leicht zu finden; aber ein Spazier­ gänger ist schwer zu treffen). Yet in spite of those difficulties, and in spite of the fact that I am not one of those polyhistores of whom Lessing speaks, I am not entirely convinced that Lessing is right when he attributes to Hamann a certain inconsequentiality and lack of deliberation in his interests. Nor is it enough to rescue Hamann from oblivion by setting him in the literary context of influences upon him and effects of his thoughts upon others.
    [Show full text]
  • Hume, Jacobi, and Common Sense
    1 HUME, JACOBI, AND COMMON SENSE AN EPISODE IN THE RECEPTION OF HUME IN GERMANY AT THE TIME OF KANT Jacobi's dispute with Mendelssohn over the alleged Spinozism of Lessing 0 was to be important for the development of subsequent German philosophy, especially because it quickly became intertwined with the reception of Kant's critical philosophy. So far as this paper is concerned, however, we are inter- ested in it only because in the course of it Jacobi appealed to Hume's authority to defend his use of the term "faith" or "belief" (both rendered in German as Glaube ). This appeal, as we shall see, set in motion as intricate a play of conflicting views as can be found in the history of philosophy. It forced hidden ambiguities to light, and exposed conceptual affinities and differences where none would have been suspected. Jacobi himself did not have Hume particularly in mind in his original attack on Mendelssohn. His concern was to publicize what he took to be the Spinozistic implications of Enlightenment philosophy. Yet one can understand why, in retrospect, Jacobi could have appealed to Hume's authority. For Jacobi's brief against Mendelssohn was based on the claim that, when divorced from its basis in sensations and left to its own devices, reason could quite consistently argue itself into conclusions untenable at the level of common experience. Jacobi had accordingly pleaded with Mendelssohn to abandon his rationalistic ways, and to heed to a more primordial authority than that of philosophy--namely to an innate certainty about what is real, a certainty that animates our experiences from the beginning and pervades all levels of language.
    [Show full text]
  • Kant's Practical Postulates and the Limits of the Critical System
    Kant’s Practical Postulates and the Limits of the Critical System Sebastian Gardner The topic that I wish to consider is the significance, both systematic and historical, for Kant’s system as a whole, of the postulates of pure practical reason, more specifically, of the two theological postulates concerning the existence of God and personal immortality which form the basis of Kant’s moral theology. My discussion will focus on the problems of Kant’s moral theology in the eyes of his early contemporaries, for whom it constituted a crux in Kant’s project. Different views were taken by Kant’s contemporaries of what exactly these problems signified regarding the future of Critical philosophy. For the thinkers I will be looking at here, the miscarriage of the moral theology constituted a fatal fault in the Kantian project. For the German Idealists, the moral theology instead provided a vital clue as to how the Kantian system could be transformed into a more radical idealism, while confirming that it needed to be. The role of the practical postulates in the development of German Idealism demands a separate treatment; what I will argue here is simply that the practical postulates do indeed represent a point at which Kant’s philosophical system displays a deep and interesting tension, in light of which both historical responses are prima facie intelligible. I. Kant on practical cognition Let me begin with some examples of Kant’s use, in connection with the moral theology and practical postulation, of the concept of practical cognition, praktische Erkenntnis. The following, key statements are taken from the second and third Critiques: [T]he concept of freedom, insofar as its reality is proved by an apodictic law of practical reason, constitutes the keystone of the whole structure of a system of pure reason, even of speculative reason; and all other concepts (those of God and immortality) ..
    [Show full text]
  • Selected Bibliography
    SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHIES For the first editions of Hamann: Schulte-Strathaus, Ernst. Bibliographie der Original-A usgaben deutscher Dich­ tungen im Zeitalter Goethes. Nach den Quellen bearbeitet. Vol. I, Part 1. Munich and Leipzig: G. Muller, 1913. (Johann Georg Hamann = pp. 1-19). Definitive bibliography of literature: Scmeiner, Lothar. "Bibliographie der Hamann-Forschung," in Johann Georg Hamanns Hauptschritten erkltirt. Vol. I: Die Hamann-Forschung, pp. 141-176. See commentaries below. SOURCES Funck, Heinrich. (ed.) Brietwechsel zwischen Hamann und Lavater. Konigsberg: 1894. (Also in Altpreuss. lVIonatsschritt, N.F. 31, 1894, pp. 95-147). Gildemeister, C. H. Johann Georg Hamann's, des lVIagus im Norden, Leben und Schritten. 6 vols. Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1857-1873. (Vol. V con­ tains the correspondence with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi). Nadler, Josef. (ed.) Johann Georg Hamann. Stimtliche Werke. Historisch-kritische Ausgabe. 6 vols. Vienna: Herder, 1949-1957. Roth, Friedrich, and Wiener, Gustav Adolph. (eds.) Hamann's Schriften. 8 vols. Berlin and Leipzig: G. Reimer, 1821-1843. Ziesemer, Walther, and Henkel, Arthur. (eds.) Johann Georg Hamann. Brief­ wechsel. Vols. I-IV. Wiesbaden: Insel-Verlag, 1955-1959. (To be published in eight volumes.) COMMENTARIES Blanke, Fritz, et al. Johann Georg Hamanns Hauptschriften erkltirt. To be published in eight volumes, of which the following have appeared: Vol. I - Die Hamann-Forschung (Introduction by Fritz Blanke, History of Interpretation by Karlfried Grunder, and Bibliography by Lothar Schrei­ ner). Gutersloh: Bertelsmann, 1956. Vol. II - Sokratische Denkwurdigkeiten. ErkHi.rt von Fritz Blanke. Gutersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1959. Vol. IV - Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache. Erkliirt von Elfriede Buchsel. Gutersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1963. 202 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • Losing Touch: Rethinking Contingency As Common Tangency in Continental Thought
    Losing Touch: Rethinking Contingency as Common Tangency in Continental Thought Liane Francesca Carlson Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 © 2015 Liane Francesca Carlson All rights reserved ABSTRACT Losing Touch: Rethinking Contingency as Common Tangency in Continental Thought Liane F. Carlson This dissertation grows out of the collapse of traditional Christian justifications for evil in the wake of Enlightenment critiques of religion and the atrocities of the twentieth century. Skeptical of teleological narratives that sought to domesticate suffering as part of a necessary plan - whether God’s plan, or some more secularized ideal of progress - a generation of Critical Theorists adopted the concept of contingency as their central tool for political critique. Defined as the realm of chance, change, and the unnecessary, contingency serves for most contemporary thinkers to remind us that even seemingly natural categories, such as sex, race, and religion could have been otherwise. Yet in using contingency to make sweeping statements about the nature of history, scholars often overlook how contingency is understood on the ground by those who feel their bodies and identities abruptly made unstable. This project seeks to reground contingency in the specificity of human experience by returning to a neglected Christian tradition that understood contingency as a state of finitude, defined in contrast to the necessary, impassive God. For such thinkers, contingency was experienced most acutely in the sense of touch as it renders the body vulnerable to the external world and the passions as they ambush the soul.
    [Show full text]
  • On James's Arguments for Freedom, and Their Relation to Kant's
    8. Round Kant or Through Him? On James’s Arguments for Freedom, and their Relation to Kant’s Robert Stern My title is a reference to a famous remark that James makes about Kant: I believe that Kant bequeathes to us not one single conception which is both indispensable to philosophy and which philosophy either did not possess before him, or was not destined inevitably to acquire after him through the growth of men’s reflection upon the hypotheses by which science interprets nature. The true line of philosophic progress lies, in short, it seems to me, not so much through Kant as round him to the point where now we stand. (WWJ 5:139)1 This comes at the end of his 1904 essay “The Pragmatic Method,” where he is arguing that Kant’s critical philosophy is not really much of an advance on the approach of the “English- speaking philosophers,” who he sees as the ancestors of pragmatism insofar as they “introduced the custom of interpreting the meaning of conceptions by asking what difference they make for life.” “Thus,” James claims, “when all is said and done, it was they, not Kant, who introduced ‘the critical method’ into philosophy, the one method fitted to make philosophy a study worthy of serious men. For what seriousness can possibly remain in debating philosophic propositions that will never make an appreciable difference to us in action? And what matters it, when all propositions are practically meaningless, which of them be called true or false?” Given this 1 References to James 1975-88 are given with the abbreviation WWJ, followed by volume and page number.
    [Show full text]
  • Herder's Debate with Kant
    [Intellectual History Archive 2, 2018] Piirimäe, Imperialism and Peace HUMAN RIGHTS, IMPERIALISM AND PEACE AMONG NATIONS: HERDER’S DEBATE WITH KANT Eva Piirimäe,12 University of Tartu I Human rights is a central normative idea in contemporary political thinking. Yet it is also increasingly common to argue that this idea is not a ‘fixed thing’. As Lynn Hunt has suggested, it is rather a ‘field of conflict’ or ‘a programme, an outlook, embedded in our political and cultural imagination and sensibility’.3 Perhaps it is therefore not entirely surprising that strongly diverging interpretations have been put forward about the origins of this idea during the recent decade. Lynn Hunt herself has charted its complex and often ruptured evolution, tracing its origins back to the emerging values of bodily integrity and empathetic selfhood in the eighteenth century.4 Samuel Moyn, by contrast, has argued that there is not much in common between the Enlightenment’s ‘eternal’ or natural rights of man and human rights, the latter constituting ‘a different conception altogether’.5 The Enlightenment’s natural rights were to be achieved through the construction of spaces of citizenship in which rights were accorded and protected, while human rights are ‘entitlements that might contradict the sovereign nation-state from above and outside’.6 Even more recently, in an Oxford Amnesty lecture of 2012, James Tully has restated the idea of the Enlightenment origins of human rights, focusing on the ways in which rights are derived and seen to be implemented both within states as well as outside them.7 In his lecture, Tully provides what he characterises as a ‘simple historical overview’ of two distinctive traditions of human rights.
    [Show full text]
  • Jacobi and the Pantheism Controversy
    · Chapter 2 . Jacobi and the Pantheism Controversy 2.1. The Historical Significance of the Pantheism Controversy Along with the publication of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft in May 1781, the most significant intellectual event in late eighteenth-century Germany was the so-called pantheism controversy between F. H. Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn. 1 The controversy began in the summer of 1783,2 initially as a private quarrel between Jacobi and Mendelssohn. But, two years later, the dispute became public and engaged almost all the best minds of late eighteenth-century Germany. Among the celebrities who took part in it were Kant, Herder, Goethe, and Hamann. Furthermore, each party to the dispute had a large supporting cast, including such later stars as Thomas Wizen­ mann, who defended Jacobi, and Karl Leonhard Reinhold, who popularized Kant. It is difficult to imagine a controversy whose cause was so incidental­ Jacobi's disclosure of Lessing's Spinozism-and whose effects were so great. The pantheism controversy completely changed the intellectual map of eigh­ teenth-century Germany; and it continued to preoccupy thinkers well into the nineteenth century. The main problem raised by the controversy-the dilemma of a rational nihilism or an irrational fideism-became a central issue for Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. It is indeed no exaggeration to say that the pantheism controversy had as great an impact upon nineteenth-century philosophy as Kant's first Kritik. 3 The first and most visible effect of the controversy was the remarkable rise in the fortunes of Spinozism in Germany. Nearly all the major figures of the classical Goethezeit-Goethe, Novalis, Holderlin, Herder, F.
    [Show full text]
  • „Oh, Was Ein Langsamer Deutscher Nicht Alles Fragt!”*
    Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Bölcsészettudományi Kar DOKTORI DISSZERTÁCIÓ UTASI KRISZTINA ÉSZ ÉS KINYILATKOZTATÁS KÖZÖTT. A FRAGMENTENSTREIT ESZTÉTIKATÖRTÉNETI JELENTŐSÉGÉRŐL Filozófiatudományi Doktori Iskola Doktori Iskola vezetője: Dr. Kelemen János egyetemi tanár Esztétika Doktori Iskola Esztétika Doktori Iskola vezetője: Dr. Radnóti Sándor egyetemi tanár A bizottság tagjai és tudományos fokozatuk: A bizottság elnöke: Dr. Bacsó Béla, az MTA doktora Hivatalosan felkért bírálók: Dr. Radnóti Sándor, az MTA doktora Dr. Horváth károly, PhD A bizottság titkára: Dr. Szécsényi Endre, PhD A bizottság további tagjai: Dr. Weiss János, az MTA doktora Dr. Papp Zoltán, PhD Dr. Pintér Tibor, PhD Témavezető: Dr. Balassa Péter, az MTA doktora Dr. Fodor Géza, az MTA doktora 2 „Oh, was ein langsamer Deutscher nicht alles fragt!”* „Azt mondja a rest: ordító oroszlán van az úton! Oroszlán van az utcákon!”** 3 Tartalom Bevezetés 4 1. A ’lassú német’: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 12 2. Taktika és vívótudomány: Schmidt és Goeze 42 3. A ’névtelen’ és töredékei 58 4. Tudós háborúk 82 5. Szünet a teológiai harcban 105 Exkurzus: Mendelssohn ’élő írás’ fogalma 132 6. Gyűrűk és ékkövek: az igaz vallás mibenlétének kérdése 150 7. A költői nyelv alkalmazásának elméleti háttere 171 8. Válasz egy felesleges kérdésre: Nathan der Weise 194 9. A Nathan der Weise mint Anti-Candide 218 Appendix 239 Bibliográfia 242 4 Bevezetés „Endlich fiel man darauf, selbst das, was mich zu einem so langsamen oder wie es meinen wüstigen Freunden scheint, so faulen Arbeiter macht, selbst das man mir nutzen zu wollen: Die Kritik.”1 A lessingi életművet vagy annak egyes szegmenseit szisztematikus szempontok alapján feldolgozni kívánó kutató nincs irigylésre méltó helyzetben, hisz munkája többszörösen is akadályokba ütközik.
    [Show full text]
  • Early Nineteenth Century German Idealism and Historical Perspectives in Beethoven’S Eroica Variations, Op
    EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMAN IDEALISM AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES IN BEETHOVEN’S EROICA VARIATIONS, OP. 35 A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS by Alessandra Tiraterra May 2017 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Charles Abramovic, Advisory Chair, TU Keyboard Department Dr. Sara Davis Buechner, TU Keyboard Department Dr. Maurice Wright, TU Composition Department Dr. David Cannata, External Member, TU Music Studies Department © Copyright 2017 by Alessandra Tiraterra All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT This study argues that the dialectic and the metamorphosis of the basso del tema and tema in Beethoven’s Eroica Variations, Op. 35 mirror the stages of the philosophical thought of German Idealism. The philosophical systems of the post-Kantian generation were housed in the values of the Goethezeit, in which the concept of self was regarded as fundamental for the worldview. In Germany these systems generated a new intellectual ethos that merged cultural nationalism with the glorification of the self (Burnham). Beethoven’s music gave reliable expression to the values of the Goethezeit, depicting the self as a spiritual entity with a constitutive autonomy, a possibility for self-transcendence, and a fundamental condition of struggle for freedom. While research has focused on Beethoven’s heroic style (Broyles) and the philosophy of his music (Adorno), there is very little literature on the relationship between Beethoven’s music and the philosophical thought of the time. In 1930 Schenker discussed the use of the Eroica theme in the Eroica Variations (Marston): first, the material is stated in its simple form; then, rhythmic structure, dynamics, tempo, texture, and key transform it.
    [Show full text]