DOCSLIB.ORG

The Reality of Symbols

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Reality of Symbols The Reality of Symbols Edgar Wind as a Philosopher of Human-Thing Entanglement Koenraad Vos 1 2 The Reality of Symbols Edgar Wind as a Philosopher of Human-Thing Entanglement K.A.G. Vos S1451227 [email protected] Supervisor: prof. dr. C.A. van Eck Second reader: dr. L. Iribarren Baralt Arts and culture (research) 2015-2016 3 4 Table of Contents Preface 9 Introduction: the Problem of Human-Thing Entanglement 12 §1. Humanism, Knowledge, and Freedom. The Intellectual Context of Edgar Wind’s Philosophy 20 1.1. Introduction: Working with Two Cultures 20 1.2. A Short Biographical Note 21 1.3. The Ghost of Davos: Cassirer, Heidegger, and Wind 24 1.4. Culture and Humanism 27 1.5. The Problem of Freedom 30 1.6. The Status of Scientific Knowledge 32 1.7. Conclusion 34 §2. Between Entanglement and Detachment. Wind’s Theory of the Symbol 36 2.1. Introduction: “a deplorable lapse into empiricism” 36 2.2. Preliminary Remarks on Wind, Warburg, and the Development of Ideas 39 2.3. Against Autonomy: Kulturwissenschaft, Formalism and Geistesgeschichte 40 2.4. Friedrich Theodor Vischer’s Symbolic Theory and Robert Vischer’s Empathy Theory 44 2.4.1. Einfühlung Between Coalescence and Projection 45 2.4.2. Friedrich Theodor Vischer’s ‘Das Symbol’ 47 2.5. The Polarity of the Symbol 51 2.6. Einfühlung, Causality and Freedom 56 2.7. Epilogue: Denkraum and Continuity 61 §3. An Investigation From Within. Wind’s theory of the experiment 65 3.1. Introduction: Towards a Resolution of the Cosmological Antinomies 65 3.2. ‘Some Points of Contact between History and Natural Science’ 69 3.2.1. ‘Document and Instrument’ 70 3.2.2. ‘The Intrusion of the Observer’ 74 3.2.3. ‘The Self-Transformation of Man’ 82 3.3. The Antinomies and Understanding Nature 83 3.3.1. The First Antinomy: The Principle of Internal Delimitation 84 5 3.3.2. The Second Antinomy: Fundamental Uncertainty 88 3.3.3. The Third Antinomy: Configurative Time and Statistical Law 91 3.3.4. The Fourth Antinomy: The Modality of Events 99 3.4 Epilogue: Meaning in the World 102 Conclusion 105 Bibliography 113 6 7 “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” – John Donne, Meditation XVII 8 Preface This thesis grew from my time at Leiden University between 2013 and 2016. I am proud to say it can truly be considered the result of my encounters there. In my first semester I took part in two seminars that set the tone: one on the emerging field of new materialism in literary criticism and philosophy, the other on the art historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929) and the context of his work. Where contemporary philosophers are engaged in debates about the active force of materials and objects, things that have long been considered the passive backdrop for action, Warburg infused art history with an attention to the living force of images – albeit without anyone really realising the latter for apparently over half a century. The intriguing parallel between these two topics led me to start wondering what would happen if they were to collide. This thesis is an attempt at such a collision and perhaps the result is rather accidental when compared to the plans I drew up when I first started on the project. Somewhere in the wreckage are the remains of the question what the ideas of new materialism – whatever that may be – would mean for the practice of art history today. I do not know if I got any closer to an answer to that question. In fact, it would probably be correct to say that this thesis is not concerned with doing art history in any direct sense. Rather it has turned into a study of the philosophical problems associated with the material turn by historiographical means. The present study is definitely a testament to the relevance and richness of the thought that was developed by Warburg and by one of his close colleagues in the late 1920s, Edgar Wind (1900-1971). It is peculiar that I cannot recall the precise moment I became aware of his work as a philosopher. It seems this project has already taken so long that its origins have been lost in the mists of time. This length of time is also why I cannot end this preface without thanking the continent around me. Of course all the intellectual work involved would not have been possible without my supervisor Caroline van Eck. However, above all I truly value her continuing kindness and encouragement, despite my frustratingly slow progress over the past one and a half year. The phrase “I could not have done it without you” turns up an awful lot in acknowledgements like this. And so I do not hope the clichéd nature of this expression suggests that I am being disingenuous when I say that I could not have done this without Suzette van Haaren. I realise I have asked a lot of her. I could also not skip thanking my parents and their unwavering support. In addition I want to thank Ranoe Sewrattan, Lucas Derks, Annemieke Lensink, Sanne Coopmans and many others for the good conversations we were able to have and my fellow students, especially those who were with 9 me in the thesis seminar, Paris seminar, and ‘graduation support group’. Lastly I hope my friends forgive me for the seemingly negligible amount of attention I have given them during this period. I intend to make up for it. 10 11 Introduction: the Problem of Human-Thing Entanglement “It is an old puzzle where to draw the line between man and the objects of his environment. His head, we dare say, quite certainly belongs to him; without it, he would lose his 'identity'. But how about his hair? And if we let him have that, how about his hat? If his hat is taken away, or its shape is altered, is not the entire form of the man altered as well? A man accustomed to walking with a stick becomes another man if this stick is taken from him. His gait changes, his gestures, possibly the whole of his constitution.”1 Human beings are surrounded with stuff, things, materials. We form intimate relations with things; we grow accustomed to them; they change us. Even as I write this, the way I am and the way I do, the way I give meaning to marks on a screen – all those things are habitually changed by the things around me. In this digital age of smart devices this is perhaps more obvious than ever before, but the example above shows that the proposition that humans are determined by the material world that surrounds them is not only applicable to the contemporary era. Our current times, however, have come up with a specific name for this idea: human-thing entanglement.2 That is not to say this is a problem that we have only become aware of in the past thirty years. The above quotation by the art historian and philosopher Edgar Wind (1900-1971), whose work is the subject of this thesis, is a clear testament to this. However, the so-called material turn in the humanities and the social sciences has recently placed it at the centre of a great deal of scholarly interest.3 In the process a new range of problems has arisen. For example, almost 70 years after Wind the archaeologist Lambros Malafouris, with reference to Gregory Bateson’s example of a blind man’s stick, put the question in terms quite similar to those of Wind: “Where do we draw, and on what basis can we draw, a delimiting line across the extended cognitive system which determines the blind man’s locomotion?”4 Malafouris’ answer is typical of the many different branches of the material turn in its attempt at overcoming some form of the Cartesian dualism between mind and 1 Wind 1963 (1936), p. 263. 2 See Hodder 2016 for a recent example. 3 For a detailed overview of the material turn in archaeology and anthropology see Hicks, 2010, pp. 25-98; for an overview of different perspectives on materiality from an art historical perspectives see Rosler, Walker Bynum, Eaton, et al. 2013, pp. 10-37 and especially the note by Michael Ann Holly and its accompanying illustration. 4 Malafouris,2004, p. 58; Bateson 1973, p. 318. 12 matter, which also comes in other flavours such as subject/object. He argues that the conceptual gap between cognition and the material culture posed by the question should not necessarily be bridged, but rather that we should see mind and matter as continuous in some way. As such, the material turn’s most fundamental philosophical momentum is concerned with the age-old problem of the relation between mind and world, which it has reformulated under the header of ‘human-thing entanglement.’ The idea that there is a gap between mind and matter goes back not only to René Descartes (1596-1650), but perhaps more importantly to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who – and this is of course to put it in the most crude terms possible – proposed that we have an autonomous intellect that gives shape to the external world by means of its own capacities without ever encountering any physical object in itself.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Heraclitus on Pythagoras
    Leonid Zhmud Heraclitus on Pythagoras By the time of Heraclitus, criticism of one’s predecessors and contemporaries had long been an established literary tradition. It had been successfully prac­ ticed since Hesiod by many poets and prose writers.1 No one, however, practiced criticism in the form of persistent and methodical attacks on both previous and current intellectual traditions as effectively as Heraclitus. Indeed, his biting criti­ cism was a part of his philosophical method and, on an even deeper level, of his self­appraisal and self­understanding, since he alone pretended to know the correct way to understand the underlying reality, unattainable even for the wisest men of Greece. Of all the celebrities figuring in Heraclitus’ fragments only Bias, one of the Seven Sages, is mentioned approvingly (DK 22 B 39), while another Sage, Thales, is the only one mentioned neutrally, as an astronomer (DK 22 B 38). All the others named by Heraclitus, which is to say the three most famous poets, Homer, Hesiod and Archilochus, the philosophical poet Xenophanes, Pythago­ ras, widely known for his manifold wisdom, and finally, the historian and geog­ rapher Hecataeus – are given their share of opprobrium.2 Despite all the intensity of Heraclitus’ attacks on these famous individuals, one cannot say that there was much personal in them. He was not engaged in ordi­ nary polemics with his contemporaries, as for example Xenophanes, Simonides or Pindar were.3 Xenophanes and Hecataeus, who were alive when his book was written, appear only once in his fragments, and even then only in the company of two more famous people, Hesiod and Pythagoras (DK 22 B 40).
    [Show full text]
  • Songs of the Last Philosopher: Early Nietzsche and the Spirit of Hölderlin
    Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2013 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2013 Songs of the Last Philosopher: Early Nietzsche and the Spirit of Hölderlin Sylvia Mae Gorelick Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2013 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Recommended Citation Gorelick, Sylvia Mae, "Songs of the Last Philosopher: Early Nietzsche and the Spirit of Hölderlin" (2013). Senior Projects Spring 2013. 318. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2013/318 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Songs of the Last Philosopher: Early Nietzsche and the Spirit of Hölderlin Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College by Sylvia Mae Gorelick Annandale-on-Hudson, New York May 1, 2013 For Thomas Bartscherer, who agreed at a late moment to join in the struggle of this infinite project and who assisted me greatly, at times bringing me back to earth when I flew into the meteoric heights of Nietzsche and Hölderlin’s songs and at times allowing me to soar there.
    [Show full text]
  • David Friedrich Strauss
    DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS. By GUSTAV KRtGER, Giessen. SOMEyears ago Eduard Zeller, who is spending the evening of a long life in learned leisure at Stuttgart, published a selection of the letters of his friend Strauss.' The personality of Strauss was already well known to us from his published books2 and from personal notices in his Literarische Denkwiirdigkeiten, as well as from what Zeller has told us in his friend's biography3 pub- lished shortly after the death of Strauss. We become still bet- ter acquainted with him through his letters, which exhibit his mental development and maturity, his struggles, conflicts, doubts, and recovered faith, and reveal him as a man of integrity, into whose clear, thoughtful eyes we can look with warmest sympathy. Even one who is not concerned with the scientific questions which naturally occupy a large place in these letters, especially one who is interested, if only a little, in philosophical, aesthetic, and theological problems, will find himself richly rewarded by read- ing them. One thing only we miss: instead of having only Strauss' side in learned or personal discussion, or in friendly Ausgewdhlte Briefe von David Friedrich Strauss. Herausgegeben und erlau- tert von EDUARD ZELLER. Mit einem Portrat in Lichtdruck. Bonn: Emil Strauss, 1895. 2Gesammelte Schriffen von David Friedrich Strauss. Nach des Verfassers letzt- willigen Verfiigungen zusammengestellt. Eingeleitet und mit erklarenden Nach- weisungen versehen von EDUARD ZELLER. Mit zwei Portraits des Verfassers in Stahlstich. 12 Bande. Bonn: Emil Strauss, 1876-8. (New editions of the sepa- rate works of Strauss are still being continually published.) 3David Friedrich Strauss, in seinem Leben und in seinen Schriften geschildert von EDUARD ZELLER.
    [Show full text]
  • Psychophysics and the Prehistory of the Marburg School
    The Sensation and the Stimulus: Psychophysics and the Prehistory of the Marburg School Marco Giovanelli Abstract This paper analyzes the role played by Fechner’s psychophysics—the new science meant to measure sensation as a function of the stimulus—in the development of Marburg Neo-Kantianism. It will show how Cohen, in the early 1870s, in order to make sense of Kant’s obscure principle of the Anticipations of Perception, resorted to psychophysics’ parlance of the relation between stimulus and sensation. By the end of the decade, Cohen’s remarks encouraged the early ‘Cohen circle’ (Stadler, Elsas, Müller) to pursue what were often sophisticated analyses of the problem of the measurability of sensation. This paper argues that in reaction to these contributions, Cohen shifted his interests towards the history of the infinitesimal calculus in his controversial 1883 monograph, Das Princip der Infinitesimal-Methode. This book, with its characteristic amalgam of transcendental philosophy and history of science, paved the way to what, around 1900, would become the ‘Marburg school’ (Natorp, Cassirer, Görland and others). However, it also interrupted a promising discussion in Marburg on the problem of measurability in science. Keywords: Neo-Kantianism, Marburg School, Hermann Cohen, Psychophysics, Gustav Theodor Fechner, History of Measurement Theory Introduction In 1912, Ernst Cassirer (1912) contributed to the special issue of the Kant-Studien that honored Hermann Cohen’s retirement—his mentor and teacher, and the recognized founding father of the so-called ‘Marburg school’ of Neo-Kantianism (Poma, [1989] 1997). In the context of an otherwise rather conventional presentation of Cohen’s interpretation of Kant, Cassirer made a remark that is initially surprising.
    [Show full text]
  • (A) Natural Philosophy (Or Natural History): Its Meaning and Range 2
    Greek Natural Philosophy The Presocratics and their Importance for Environmental Philosophy First Edition By J. Baird Callicott, John van Buren, and Keith Wayne Brown Bassim Hamadeh, CEO and Publisher Marissa Applegate, Senior Field Acquisitions Editor Gem Rabanera, Project Editor Alia Bales, Associate Production Editor Miguel Macias, Senior Graphic Designer Alexa Lucido, Licensing Coordinator Sue Murray, Interior Designer Natalie Piccotti, Senior Marketing Manager Kassie Graves, Director of Acquisitions and Sales Jamie Giganti, Senior Managing Editor Copyright © 2018 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written permis- sion of Cognella, Inc. For inquiries regarding permissions, translations, foreign rights, audio rights, and any other forms of reproduction, please contact the Cognella Licensing Department at [email protected]. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for iden- tification and explanation without intent to infringe. Cover image copyright © 2017 Depositphotos/Jrleyland. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-5165-2856-1 (pbk) / 978-1-5165-2857-8 (br) In memory of our early teachers in Greek natural philosophy: José Benardete and Catherine Lord, Syracuse University;
    [Show full text]
  • Andrei Lebedev Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus
    DOI:10.30842/ielcp230690152352 Andrei Lebedev (RAS Institute of Philosophy/HSE University) IDEALISM (MENTALISM) IN EARLY GREEK METAPHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY: Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Xenophanes and others (with some remarks on the «Gigantomachia over being» in Plato’s Sophist) Abstract and table of contents: (1) Preliminary criticism of the presuppositions of the denial of existence of idealism in early Greek thought: pseudohistorical evolu- tionism, Platonocentrism that ignores the archaic features of Plato’s metaphysics and psychology, and the modern stereotype of «Presocratics» as physicalists, a product of the late 19th century (excessive) positivist reaction against Hegelianism and German idealism in the English-speaking historiography of Greek philosophy. (2) Demiourgos and creationism in Pre-Platonic philosophy. Creation by divine mind is a form of objective idealism (mentalism). (3) The thesis of Myles Burnyeat and Bernard Williams (no idealism in Greek philosophy) is criticized. We point to scholastic and ancient (Platonic) roots of Descartes’ substance dualism of body and mind, as well as to the even more ancient Pythagorean roots of Plato’s doctrine of immortal soul. (4) A provisional taxonomy of different types of idealism (mentalism) in ancient Greek philosophy is proposed. 11 types are distinguished. (5) The evidence of the Orphic-Pythagorean graffiti from Olbia on the early Pythagorean substance dualism of body and soul proves its Preplatonic origin. (6) Criticism of modern naturalistic interpretations of Pythagorean first principles peras and apeiron (Burkert, Huffman and others). Peras and apeiron (a geometrical analogue of later terms form and matter) are self- subsistent incorporeal mathematical essences, out of which physical bodies are «constructed» (ἁρμόζειν, another geometrical term for «construction») by the divine mind-demiourgos.
    [Show full text]
  • This Is a Self-Archived Version of an Original Article. This Version May Differ from the Original in Pagination and Typographic Details
    This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Backman, Jussi Title: Modernity in Antiquity : Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy in Heidegger and Arendt Year: 2020 Version: Accepted version (Final draft) Copyright: © 2020 Philosophy Documentation Center Rights: In Copyright Rights url: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en Please cite the original version: Backman, J. (2020). Modernity in Antiquity : Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy in Heidegger and Arendt. Symposium, 24(2), 5-29. https://doi.org/10.5840/symposium202024210 This is the accepted manuscript version of the following article: Jussi Backman, “Modernity in Antiquity: Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy in Heidegger and Arendt,” Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 24:2 (2020): 5–29, available in final form at https://doi.org/10.5840/symposium202024210. Modernity in Antiquity: Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy in Heidegger and Arendt Jussi Backman (University of Jyväskylä) This article looks at the role of Hellenistic thought in the historical narratives of Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. To a certain extent, both see—with G. W. F. Hegel, J. G. Droysen, and Eduard Zeller—Hellenistic and Roman philosophy as a “modernity in antiquity,” but with important differences. Heidegger is generally dismissive of Hellenistic thought and comes to see it as a decisive historical turning point at which a protomodern element of subjective willing and domination is injected into the classical heritage of Plato and Aristotle. Arendt, likewise, credits Stoic philosophy with the discovery of the will as an active faculty constituting a realm of subjective freedom and autonomy.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Socratic Method Ignacio L
    84 The Socratic Method On the Socratic Method Ignacio L. Götz Hofstra University Socrates, says Werner Jaeger, “is the greatest teacher in European history,” and yet we do not know what he really taught, nor whether he had a theory of teaching method.1 He wrote nothing but a couple of poems, now lost. Certainly, he was not trained to teach, and even though he obviously followed some kind of method, it was practiced rather than discussed.2 He admitted that his questioning was, at times, annoying like a gadfly, and that through his questioning he brought forth ideas as a midwife brings out an infant from the mother’s womb.3 Yet, these are descriptions, not theory. He also claimed that he was guided by “a divine sign,” and, further, that there was a dialectical method or art for discovering truth in ecstatic abandon, though it required training and practice (gymnasía).4 Yet neither the role of inspiration nor the dialectic of discovery are generally mentioned as part of his method. From the above, it would seem that Socrates’ method consisted of three parts or stages, a negative one of exposing error or untruth, a second one of acquaintance with the spiritual, and a third one of ascent to the contemplation of and union with Truth, Beauty, and the Good. This essay will present briefly the three parts of Socrates’ method, and it will attempt to explain why only the first part has been traditionally studied and its practice recommended to teachers.5 THE METHOD (1) In a very general way, Socrates’ method took the form of a dialectic — that is, literally, a talking-through (dia + lego), aimed at clarification and, eventually, some generalization.6 It was, in a sense, a reductio ad absurdum, a sort of fallibilistic argument which often resulted in confusion (aporía), but with the intention of prompting the interlocutors to re-build on solid and examined grounds.
    [Show full text]
  • In the Shadow of Anaximander: Philosophical Temperaments And
    Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 2013 In the Shadow of Anaximander: Philosophical Temperaments and Schopenhauerian Pessimism in Nietzsche's Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Christopher Robin Mountenay Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Mountenay, C. (2013). In the Shadow of Anaximander: Philosophical Temperaments and Schopenhauerian Pessimism in Nietzsche's Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/ 955 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IN THE SHADOW OF ANXIMANDER: PHILOSOPHICAL TEMPERAMENTS AND SCHOPENHAUERIAN PESSIMISM IN NIETZSCHE‘S PHILOSOPHY IN THE TRAGIC AGE OF THE GREEKS A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Christopher R. Mountenay December 2013 Copyright by Christopher R. Mountenay 2013 IN THE SHADOW OF ANXIMANDER: PHILOSOPHICAL TEMPERAMENTS AND SCHOPENHAUERIAN PESSIMISM IN NIETZSCHE‘S PHILOSOPHY IN THE TRAGIC AGE OF THE GREEKS By Christopher R. Mountenay Approved October 4, 2013 ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. Patrick Lee Miller Dr. Ronald Polansky Associate Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. Fred Evans Dr. Larry Michael Harrington Professor of Philosophy Associate Professor of Philosophy (Committee Member) (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. James Swindal Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • The Neo-Kantians and the Polemic on the History of Philosophy
    ISSN 2083-1978 3(10)/2019 e-ISSN 2391-775X http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/szhf.2019.028 Jacinto Páez Universidad Diego Portales, Chile e-mail: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0003-3623-5517 The Neo-Kantians and the Polemic on the History of Philosophy 1. Introduction The nineteenth century has been widely acknowledged as the age of his- tory. Through the label “historical century”, for instance, Friedrich Paulsen opposed his own epoch to the philosophical eighteenth century1. Through this sharp separation, Paulsen stressed not only the sudden ascent of his- tory to the dignity of science but also to the dislocation that history brought into philosophical endeavors. The novel science of history demanded a new set of tasks that philosophers should accomplish, such us the grounding of historical objectivity and the elucidation of its proper methodology. But in as much as this novelty gained an ever increasingly preponderance, an unavoidable question gained momentum: Should philosophy in the end be measured too by the standards of history? Or, using a term that has become 1 Friedrich Paulsen, Immanuel Kant. Sein Leben und seine Lehre (Stuttgart: Fromman, 1899), 402. 5 JACINTO PÁEZ popular, should philosophy be historicized? Under the light of this question the opposition acquired a different meaning. While the expression saeculum philosophicum synthesizes an epoch concerned towards atemporal rational truths, the expression saeculum historicum refers to a tendency towards the factual and ephemeral. And this tendency of course undercut philosophy’s traditional assumptions and pretensions. Even the association of the quest for the eternal with a specific moment in human history, with a specific century, is not more than a veiled but unavoidable recognition of the fragility of phi- losophical thinking.
    [Show full text]
  • JPT 7.1 F3 50-98 Catana.Indd
    The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 7 (2013) 50-98 brill.com/jpt Changing Interpretations of Plotinus: The 18th-Century Introduction of the Concept of a ‘System of Philosophy’ Leo Catana University of Copenhagen [email protected] Abstract This article critically explores the history and nature of a hermeneutic assump- tion which frequently guided interpretations of Plotinus from the 18th century onwards, namely that Plotinus advanced a system of philosophy. It is argued that this assumption was introduced relatively late, in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that it was primarily made possible by Brucker’s methodology for the history of philosophy, dating from the 1740s, to which the concept of a ‘system of philoso- phy’ was essential. It is observed that the concept is absent from Ficino’s com- mentary from the 15th century, and that it remained absent in interpretations produced between the 15th and 18th centuries. It is also argued that the assump- tion of a ‘system of philosophy’ in Plotinus is historically incorrect—we do not fijind this concept in Plotinus’ writings, and his own statements about method point in other directions. Eduard Zeller (active in the second half of the 19th century) is typically regarded as the fijirst to give a satisfying account of Plotinus’ philosophy as a whole. In this article, on the other hand, Zeller is seen as having fijinalised a tradition initiated in the 18th century. Very few Plotinus scholars have examined the interpretative development prior to Zeller. Schiavone (1952) and Bonetti (1971), for instance, have given little attention to Brucker’s introduction of the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’.
    [Show full text]
  • JPT 7.1 F3 50-98 Catana.Indd
    Leo Catana, 'Changing interpretations of Plotinus The 18th-century introduction of the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’ Catana, Leo Published in: International Journal of the Platonic Tradition DOI: 10.1163/18725473-12341250 Publication date: 2013 Document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Citation for published version (APA): Catana, L. (2013). Leo Catana, 'Changing interpretations of Plotinus: The 18th-century introduction of the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’. International Journal of the Platonic Tradition, 7(1), 50-98. https://doi.org/10.1163/18725473-12341250 Download date: 27. sep.. 2021 The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 7 (2013) 50-98 brill.com/jpt Changing Interpretations of Plotinus: The 18th-Century Introduction of the Concept of a ‘System of Philosophy’ Leo Catana University of Copenhagen [email protected] Abstract This article critically explores the history and nature of a hermeneutic assump- tion which frequently guided interpretations of Plotinus from the 18th century onwards, namely that Plotinus advanced a system of philosophy. It is argued that this assumption was introduced relatively late, in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that it was primarily made possible by Brucker’s methodology for the history of philosophy, dating from the 1740s, to which the concept of a ‘system of philoso- phy’ was essential. It is observed that the concept is absent from Ficino’s com- mentary from the 15th century, and that it remained absent in interpretations produced between the 15th and 18th centuries. It is also argued that the assump- tion of a ‘system of philosophy’ in Plotinus is historically incorrect—we do not fijind this concept in Plotinus’ writings, and his own statements about method point in other directions.
    [Show full text]