Author: Joseph Acquisto
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030610144
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
This book traces the emergence of modern pessimism in nineteenth-century France and examines its aesthetic, epistemological, ethical, and political implications. It explores how, since pessimism as a worldview is not empirically verifiable, writers on pessimism shift the discussion to verisimilitude, opening up rich territory for cross-fertilization between philosophy and literature. The book traces debates on pessimism in the nineteenth century among French nonfiction writers who either lauded its promotion of compassion or condemned it for being a sick and unliveable attempt at renunciation. It then examines the way novelists and poets take up and transform these questions by portraying characters in lived situations that serve as testing grounds for the merits or limitations of pessimism. The debate on pessimism that emerged in the nineteenth century is still very much with us, and this book offers an interhistorical argument for embracing pessimism as a way of living well in the world, aesthetically, ethically, and politically.
Living Well with Pessimism in Nineteenth-Century France
Author: Joseph Acquisto
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030610144
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
This book traces the emergence of modern pessimism in nineteenth-century France and examines its aesthetic, epistemological, ethical, and political implications. It explores how, since pessimism as a worldview is not empirically verifiable, writers on pessimism shift the discussion to verisimilitude, opening up rich territory for cross-fertilization between philosophy and literature. The book traces debates on pessimism in the nineteenth century among French nonfiction writers who either lauded its promotion of compassion or condemned it for being a sick and unliveable attempt at renunciation. It then examines the way novelists and poets take up and transform these questions by portraying characters in lived situations that serve as testing grounds for the merits or limitations of pessimism. The debate on pessimism that emerged in the nineteenth century is still very much with us, and this book offers an interhistorical argument for embracing pessimism as a way of living well in the world, aesthetically, ethically, and politically.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030610144
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
This book traces the emergence of modern pessimism in nineteenth-century France and examines its aesthetic, epistemological, ethical, and political implications. It explores how, since pessimism as a worldview is not empirically verifiable, writers on pessimism shift the discussion to verisimilitude, opening up rich territory for cross-fertilization between philosophy and literature. The book traces debates on pessimism in the nineteenth century among French nonfiction writers who either lauded its promotion of compassion or condemned it for being a sick and unliveable attempt at renunciation. It then examines the way novelists and poets take up and transform these questions by portraying characters in lived situations that serve as testing grounds for the merits or limitations of pessimism. The debate on pessimism that emerged in the nineteenth century is still very much with us, and this book offers an interhistorical argument for embracing pessimism as a way of living well in the world, aesthetically, ethically, and politically.
Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics
Author: Aaron Brice Cummings
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666961760
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Book Description
Baudelaire’s Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre reconstructs a philosophical trialogue that might have been expected to take place between Benjamin Fondane, Walter Benjamin, and Jean-Paul Sartre over their philosophical readings of Charles Baudelaire, an exchange preempted by the untimely deaths of two of the interlocutors during the Nazi holocaust. Why did three of Europe’s sharpest minds respond to the terror of 1933-45 by writing about a long-dead poet? Aaron Brice Cummings argues that Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre turned to the poet of nihilism’s abyss because they recognized a fact of cultural history that remains relevant today: until sometime in the 2080s, the literary world will have to confront (even if to deny) the two-century window forecast by Nietzsche as the age of cultural and existential nihilism. Accordingly, the author examines the bitter metaphysics latent in Baudelaire’s motifs of the abyss, clocks, brutes, streets, and bored dandies. In so doing, this book confronts the nothingness which modern life encounters in the heart of art, ethics, ideality, time, memory, history, urban life, and religion.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666961760
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Book Description
Baudelaire’s Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre reconstructs a philosophical trialogue that might have been expected to take place between Benjamin Fondane, Walter Benjamin, and Jean-Paul Sartre over their philosophical readings of Charles Baudelaire, an exchange preempted by the untimely deaths of two of the interlocutors during the Nazi holocaust. Why did three of Europe’s sharpest minds respond to the terror of 1933-45 by writing about a long-dead poet? Aaron Brice Cummings argues that Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre turned to the poet of nihilism’s abyss because they recognized a fact of cultural history that remains relevant today: until sometime in the 2080s, the literary world will have to confront (even if to deny) the two-century window forecast by Nietzsche as the age of cultural and existential nihilism. Accordingly, the author examines the bitter metaphysics latent in Baudelaire’s motifs of the abyss, clocks, brutes, streets, and bored dandies. In so doing, this book confronts the nothingness which modern life encounters in the heart of art, ethics, ideality, time, memory, history, urban life, and religion.
Thought as Experience in Bataille, Cioran, and Rosset
Author: Joseph Acquisto
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
Examines how postwar French writers constitute the thinking subject and reshape its relation to the external social world. Joseph Acquisto analyzes the writings of three thinkers during and shortly after the Second World War who address the question of what it means to think, and what it means to constitute oneself as a thinking subject – at a time that seems to come "after everything"; with the ruins of attacked cities echoing the remains of a philosophical tradition that was confident in its establishment of human beings as rational, of reason leading to progress, and of both the self and the world as knowable. What Georges Bataille calls "inner experience" and Emil Cioran labels "thinking against oneself" is something akin to a drama; not a mere representation of the self in relation to the world, but a process of remapping the relation of subject to object of thought dialectically. Acquisto argues that both writers adopt an anti-systematic approach to thinking that implicates fragmentary writing as a way of turning answers about subject-object relations into questions. Acquisto contends that this stands in contrast to the approach of Clément Rosset, whose affirmation of the inaccessibility of the real leads to an anti-intellectual, grace-filled affirmation of life as it is given, under the guise of what he calls the "tragic." Bringing together thinkers that have seldom been discussed in a comparative light, Thought as Experience in Bataille, Cioran, and Rosset examines the affective dimensions of thought as experience and considers the political stakes of postwar thought as "out of order" with the world from which it springs.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
Examines how postwar French writers constitute the thinking subject and reshape its relation to the external social world. Joseph Acquisto analyzes the writings of three thinkers during and shortly after the Second World War who address the question of what it means to think, and what it means to constitute oneself as a thinking subject – at a time that seems to come "after everything"; with the ruins of attacked cities echoing the remains of a philosophical tradition that was confident in its establishment of human beings as rational, of reason leading to progress, and of both the self and the world as knowable. What Georges Bataille calls "inner experience" and Emil Cioran labels "thinking against oneself" is something akin to a drama; not a mere representation of the self in relation to the world, but a process of remapping the relation of subject to object of thought dialectically. Acquisto argues that both writers adopt an anti-systematic approach to thinking that implicates fragmentary writing as a way of turning answers about subject-object relations into questions. Acquisto contends that this stands in contrast to the approach of Clément Rosset, whose affirmation of the inaccessibility of the real leads to an anti-intellectual, grace-filled affirmation of life as it is given, under the guise of what he calls the "tragic." Bringing together thinkers that have seldom been discussed in a comparative light, Thought as Experience in Bataille, Cioran, and Rosset examines the affective dimensions of thought as experience and considers the political stakes of postwar thought as "out of order" with the world from which it springs.
The Sense of Decadence in Nineteenth-Century France
Author: Koenraad W. Swart
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401196737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
"It was the best oftimes. It was the worst oftimes. " The famous open ing sentence ofCharles Dickens' Tale oJ Two Cities can serve as a motto to characterize the mixture of optimism and pessimism with which a large number of nineteenth-century intellectuals viewed the con dition of their age. It is nowadays hardly necessary to accentuate the optimistic elements in the nineteenth-century view of history; many recent historians have sharply contrasted the complacency and the great expectations of the past century with the fears and anxieties rampant in our own age. It is often too readily assumed that a hundred years ago all leading thinkers as weil as the educated public were addicted to the cult of progress and ignored or minimized those trends of their times that paved the way for the catastrophes of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century the intoxicating triumphs of modern science undeniably induced the general public to believe that pro gress was not an accident but a necessity and that evil and immo rality would gradually disappear. Yet fears, misgivings, and anxieties were not as exceptional in the nineteenth century as is often imagined. Such feelings were not restricted to a few dissenting philosophers and poets like Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, 'Dostoevsky, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche.
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401196737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
"It was the best oftimes. It was the worst oftimes. " The famous open ing sentence ofCharles Dickens' Tale oJ Two Cities can serve as a motto to characterize the mixture of optimism and pessimism with which a large number of nineteenth-century intellectuals viewed the con dition of their age. It is nowadays hardly necessary to accentuate the optimistic elements in the nineteenth-century view of history; many recent historians have sharply contrasted the complacency and the great expectations of the past century with the fears and anxieties rampant in our own age. It is often too readily assumed that a hundred years ago all leading thinkers as weil as the educated public were addicted to the cult of progress and ignored or minimized those trends of their times that paved the way for the catastrophes of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century the intoxicating triumphs of modern science undeniably induced the general public to believe that pro gress was not an accident but a necessity and that evil and immo rality would gradually disappear. Yet fears, misgivings, and anxieties were not as exceptional in the nineteenth century as is often imagined. Such feelings were not restricted to a few dissenting philosophers and poets like Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, 'Dostoevsky, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche.
The Christian View of God and the World as Centring in the Incarnation
Author: James Orr
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Incarnation
Languages : en
Pages : 584
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Incarnation
Languages : en
Pages : 584
Book Description
Nineteenth Century
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1476
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1476
Book Description
The Nineteenth Century
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nineteenth century
Languages : en
Pages : 1884
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nineteenth century
Languages : en
Pages : 1884
Book Description
A Social History of Nineteenth-Century France
Author: Roger Price
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000544540
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414
Book Description
First published in 1987, A Social History of Nineteenth-Century France argues that the social impact of the French Revolution has been greatly exaggerated, and that in 1815 France was still predominantly a rural and pre-industrial society. The revolution introduced only very limited changes in social structures and relationships – the daily lives of ordinary people remained virtually unchanged. A much more decisive turning point in French history, the author suggests, was the period of structural change in economy and society, which began in the mid nineteenth century. The first part of the book looks at many changes in the economy and their effect on living standards and social environment. The second part identifies the social groups which make up French society and provides detailed analyses of their lifestyles and social relationships. Part Three considers the influence of such key institutions as churches, schools, and the state. Drawing on an exceptionally wide range of primary sources, this is likely to be the definitive overview of French society for many years to come and will be of interest to researchers of French history and European history.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000544540
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414
Book Description
First published in 1987, A Social History of Nineteenth-Century France argues that the social impact of the French Revolution has been greatly exaggerated, and that in 1815 France was still predominantly a rural and pre-industrial society. The revolution introduced only very limited changes in social structures and relationships – the daily lives of ordinary people remained virtually unchanged. A much more decisive turning point in French history, the author suggests, was the period of structural change in economy and society, which began in the mid nineteenth century. The first part of the book looks at many changes in the economy and their effect on living standards and social environment. The second part identifies the social groups which make up French society and provides detailed analyses of their lifestyles and social relationships. Part Three considers the influence of such key institutions as churches, schools, and the state. Drawing on an exceptionally wide range of primary sources, this is likely to be the definitive overview of French society for many years to come and will be of interest to researchers of French history and European history.
The Nineteenth Century and After
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nineteenth century
Languages : en
Pages : 1484
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nineteenth century
Languages : en
Pages : 1484
Book Description
New England Medical Monthly
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medicine
Languages : en
Pages : 746
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medicine
Languages : en
Pages : 746
Book Description