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THE IMPLICIT PHILOSOPHER Hugo Von Hofmannsthal in the Tradition of German Philosophy

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THE IMPLICIT PHILOSOPHER Hugo Von Hofmannsthal in the Tradition of German Philosophy THE IMPLICIT PHILOSOPHER Hugo von Hofmannsthal in the tradition of German Philosophy Carl Tertio Druml The Implicit Philosopher Hugo von Hofmannsthal in the Tradition of German Philosophy June 2015 Author: Carl Tertio Druml 10223649 Philosophy: Thesis for the Degree of Master of Arts Universiteit van Amsterdam Supervisor: Dr. Elsbeth Brouwer Second Reader: Dr. Michiel van Lambalgen Abstract For people familiar with the oeuvre of the Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) it may seem like a strange thesis to call him a philosopher. He was a poet, a playwright, a librettist, and an essay writer: but a philosopher? In this thesis, I investigate the counter-tradition of Ger- man philosophy, as brought forth by philosophers such as J.G. Herder and F. Schlegel, and their philosophy of language. After discussing some of Hof- mannsthal’s contemporary Viennese philosophers (for example, F. Mauth- ner) and writers (for example A. Schnitzler), I will place Hugo von Hof- mannsthal in this counter tradition. Especially in his essayistic work and diaries, we can find a plethora of evidence, that shows that Hofmannsthal was not only mindful to problems of language, he was also - if not a first-tier thinker - definitely in the second row of philosophy of language. As a literary figure, his works feature an often more belletristic-aesthetic, yet his oeuvre is definitely one of the most interesting accounts of (literary) investigation of the boundaries of language, and can be seen as partly anticipating later philosophers, for example Ludwig Wittgenstein. Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 The “Implicit Philosopher” and his Origin 3 2.1 HerderandHamann-ReactiontoKant . 3 2.2 Humboldt and Schlegel - Romantic Conception of Language . 9 2.3 Nietzsche-EthicsandLanguage. 15 3 Fin de Si`ecle Vienna and Language 20 3.1 Mauther and Mach - Philosophy and Science . 21 3.2 Bahr and Kraus - Cultural and Social Critique . 27 3.3 JungWienandSprachskepsis . 30 4 Hugo von Hofmannsthal 34 4.1 Hofmannsthal’sPhilosophyofLanguage . 35 4.1.1 Ein Brief -PhilosophyofLanguage. 45 4.1.2 Der Schwierige -SilenceandParole. 48 4.2 Hofmannsthal’sGeneralPhilosophy . 51 5 Conclusive Remarks 56 Acknowledgements I am especially grateful to Dr. Elsbeth Brouwer for her supervision with my thesis, her excellent feedback on my writing, and her suggestions for further readings. My warmest thanks also to Prof. Dr. Michiel van Lambalgen for agreeing to be the second reader. Additionally I would like to thank Arian Lehner for the design of the cover. Lastly I would like to thank Mag. Michael Berthold for getting me acquainted with the topic in the first place. i 1 Introduction Sprechen ist ein ungeheurer Kompromiss - Hugo von Hofmannsthal, 20.20.1921 While the quote above fits the topic of this thesis perfectly: constructing the Hofmannsthal the Artist language philosophy of Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), I should start it o↵ with a contradiction: Hofmannsthal was no philosopher. He was not a philosopher, but an artist. His body and soul strived into the artistic domain, from his first poems in his tender teenage years, to his most mature work, the play der Turm, nothing can be said with more certainty than this: Hofmannsthal was an artist. One only has to consider the poetry of his youth, which was never the poetry of ayoungperson,1 or his oeuvre for the stage, which goes from poetic-lyrical plays to blunt comedies and into sublime opera-librettos; one has to read his almost mythological short stories, or the flamboyantly colored essayistic work, which has perhaps no equal in the German language. The conclusion will always be the same: Hofmannsthal could have never expressed anything outside the aesthetic form. Hofmannsthal’s contemporary Otto Weininger wrote that there are no new Art and Philosophy philosophical or artistic ideas, because both of them are timeless,2 and exactly this is where the solution to the paradox lies: Hofmannsthal was so much an artist, that his artistic ideas crossed back into the philosophic realm. Any aesthetic inquiry into the soul of the world will, if it goes deep enough, necessarily be a philosoph- ical investigation. In his gorgeous collection of aphorisms, the Buch der Freunde, Hofmannsthal asserts that “Das Plastische entsteht nicht durch Schauen, sondern durch Identifikation”3 which goes right into the core of the matter. According to Hofmannsthal you could not form a three dimensional opinion about any object by mere observation: only through identification can we achieve recognition. Hof- mannsthal was therefore not a mere thinker, philosophy is not a precise term for his inquiries; he identified with every matter always as an artist. Yet the dusty wooden banalities of our every day can come to life in the eye of the artist! Hofmannsthal managed to describe the lure of the cinema in the bleakest tones, to paint the “prehistoric” mountains of Austria in the most vivid color, and more than one of his discussions of other writers is actually more plea- surable to read than the very authors he discussed. As a writer and retired poet, however, one of the topics of the utmost importance to him remained the question 1“Hofmannsthal (hat) niemals, nicht einmal in den ersten Gedichten, wirkliche Jugendlyrik geschrieben (...).” Hermann Broch, Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit (M¨unchen: R. Piper & Co, 1964) p.149. 2See chapter quote of section 2 for the full quote. Otto Weininger, “Die Kultur und ihr Verh¨altnis zum Glauben”, Uber¨ die letzten Dinge (Wien, Osterreich:¨ Matthes und Seitz, 1904) p.118. 3Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Buch der Freunde [1922]”, Reden und Aufs¨atze III: 1925-1929, Aufzeichnungen, ed. Bernd Schoeller, Ingeborg Beyer-Ahlert, and Rudolf Hirsch (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1980) p.292. 1 of the possibilities and boundaries of language. Hofmannsthal proved there, with his fondness for identification and immersion, that his thoughts surpassed mere aesthetic consideration by far. He already asked questions in his adolescence, that would only reach philosophical mainstream half a century later! Therefore Her- mann Broch called Hofmannsthal’s essayistic work his “philosophisches Tagebuch im Ereignis des Daseins”.4 But also the artist, and especially one as mindful to the tradition as he was must have been influenced by other writers and philosophers! This is also where the essay will start: there exists a German counter-tradition in philosophy, that demanded a philosophical language which is closer to a natural or artistic way of writing - this thesis will explain why Hofmannsthal was the epitome of such a development. At the same time, inquiries into the nature of language have a strong tradition in the German-speaking world: the second topic of interest is to reconstruct the material that must have influenced Hofmannsthal’s view of language and critique thereof. The Struc- The remainder of this thesis will, therefore, be structured as follows: in sec- ture of this Work tion (2), I will explore the philosophical underpinnings that Hofmannsthal and his contemporaries built upon. It will be structured in a chronological way, with section (2.1) discussing the early language philosophy and opposition to Kant of the philosophers J.G. Herder and J.G. Hamann. Section (2.2) will investigate the Romantic extension to the system by W. von Humboldt and F. Schlegel. F. Ni- etzsche’s view on language and subjectivity will be discussed in section (2.3). In section (3.1) we will have arrived in Hofmannsthal’s time with a discussion of his contemporaries F. Mauthner and E. Mach and their influence. Section (3.2) will introduce the famous cultural and social critics H. Bahr and K. Kraus and their impact on the (literary) contemporaries, who will be discussed in section (3.3), this section will prove to be a literary overview, and provide reasons why Hugo von Hofmannsthal should be awarded a special place within the group of Austrian Sprachskepsis-writers. The third part of the thesis, the actual discussion of Hof- mannsthal, starts in section (4). His philosophy of language will be dissected in section (4.1) and will receive special scrutiny through a discussion of his major works Ein Brief (section 4.1.1) and the play Der Schwierige (section 4.1.2). Sec- tion (4.2) explicates some di↵erent, non-analytical, aspects of his philosophy. The essay concludes in section (5). 4Broch p.148. 2 2 The “Implicit Philosopher” and his Origin Es gibt keine neuen philosophischen Gedanken, ebenso wie es keine neuen k¨unstlerischen Themen gibt. Das liegt aber daran, daß Philosoph und K¨unstlerals Individualit¨atenzeitlos sind, aus ihrer Zeit nie zu be- greifen und mit ihr nie zu entschuldigen. Im Philosophen und K¨unstler liegt Ewigkeit. -OttoWeininger,Die Kultur und ihr Verh¨altniszum Glauben, p.118 Just as science and philosophy were once indicated by the word philosophy Implicit Philosophy alone, as scientific texts once read just like philosophical tractates (and of course as philosophical tractates were seen as scientific ones), there must have always been a counter-tendency to conjoin art and philosophy, to create texts of high philosophical - and aesthetic - value. Vienna in 1900, the city of decadence and art pour l’art par excellence might be the epitome of such movements. The literary Sprachskepsis movement radicalized the philosophical ideas about language that the Romantic philosophers had advocated for, scientists wrote in aestheticizing styles and all came together in bringing forward a notion of subjectivity heightened to its extreme. Philosophy of language, the language of philosophers and questions of subjectivity are the triad of questions that had been around for a long time in the German tradition, and will also serve as the basis for the further investigation. This tendency to conjoin art and philosophy did not originate in the Romantics, but in the times of the German enlightenment, and as many other movements, one might even see Kant as its initiator (even if for negative reasons).
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