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Just finished reading Plato's Protagoras and Meno dialogues (they were both in one book). Figured I needed to expand the works of Plato I've read and who can't love wacky 'knowledge is remembering what you learned before you were a human' theories? Still don't know what virtue is though 
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Nov 16, 2006 04:47
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 03:45 |
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Just finished reading an excellent book called The Seduction of Culture in German History by Wolf Lepenies. Basically argued that traditionally, with the possible exception of Goethe, German cultural figures have argued for the substitution of the dirty dealings of politics for the supposedly pure realm of aesthetics and 'kultur'. No sort of democratic mythos ever appeared since culture was above that, indeed political power may destroy the purity of culture (he quotes a piece of Nietzsche, writing after the Prussian victory against France, where victory may be the worst thing possible for culture in Germany, while France would become a cultural powerhouse. Ever the ironist, for Germany to be rejuvenated, Nietzsche was suggesting it needed to be defeated). The role of the State in all this was simply to promote culture, although secondarily. This tradition meant some intellectuals could hide in Nazi Germany and not protest at all (since the cultural man must look inward), and called it internal exile. This, even though they never resisted, was considered dissent for them. Lepenies also follows heavily Thomas Mann's journey through this, from the person aloof from politics to someone trying to support the Weimar republic by giving a Romantic justification for it (Lepenies details how he tried to combine Whitman and Novalis) although perhaps never giving up those German illusions. He ultimately failed though, republicanism was seen alien to Germany. He did leave Germany, and became an American citizen. He also describes how German culture travelled to America and France(one just needs to read Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida to see the influence of Nietzsche and Heidegger) or, alternatively, battled with French and American culture. He also describes how culture evolved after the post-war humiliation - it ultimately became the saving grace and, indeed never died despite Adorno's haunting comment that after Auschwitz there is no more poetry. He considers whether Nazism may ultimately have been the most apolitical act, a simple attempt to become absolutely cultural with its theatrical effects, and its totalitarian stance on aesthetics. Hitler was humanised by claiming he was really an artist, all he wanted to do was create an artistic piece (the State as culture again). Indeed many artists and intellectuals may have been taken in by the theatricality, mesmerised by the form not the content - a certain mysticism appealing to the Romantic side during the Nuremberg Rallies. Afterwards, the notion of a "cultural nation" was the only thing keeping the country together - indeed may be the country should never be put together again. Lepenies argues with a certain irony that the idea of destroying the political State of Germany would render Germans similar to their victims the Jews: stateless cultural exiles. In a certain sense they may always have been, the culture of Germany always being valued above the nation of Germany. He also discusses how dealing with the guilt of Nazism may have taken on a certain aspect of German transcendent thought, a sort of Kantian notion of radical evil with a metaphysical aspect (although opposed by some, like Arendt's 'banality of evil'). Another irony: in trying to memorialise this evil the monuments built often seen to be following National Socialism's architectural philosophy. As for modern Germany, he mentions how in the united Germany the idea of culture has changed due to differing experiences during the divided Cold War. In the east the old philosophy still stands due to the totalitarian state invoking the old ideas, while integration in the West whittled away at it as consumerism rose.
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Dec 18, 2006 13:42
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