Tom Rockmore
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300120080
- eISBN:
- 9780300134735
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300120080.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This book examines one of the great lacunae of contemporary philosophical discussion—idealism. Addressing the widespread confusion about the meaning and use of the term, the book surveys and ...
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This book examines one of the great lacunae of contemporary philosophical discussion—idealism. Addressing the widespread confusion about the meaning and use of the term, the book surveys and classifies some of its major forms, giving particular attention to Kant. It argues that Kant provides the all-important link between three main types of idealism: those associated with Plato, the new way of ideas, and German idealism. The book also makes a case for the contemporary relevance of at least one strand in the tangled idealist web, a strand most clearly identified with Kant: constructivism. In terms of the philosophical tradition, constructivism, it offers an important approach to knowledge after the decline of metaphysical realism.Less
This book examines one of the great lacunae of contemporary philosophical discussion—idealism. Addressing the widespread confusion about the meaning and use of the term, the book surveys and classifies some of its major forms, giving particular attention to Kant. It argues that Kant provides the all-important link between three main types of idealism: those associated with Plato, the new way of ideas, and German idealism. The book also makes a case for the contemporary relevance of at least one strand in the tangled idealist web, a strand most clearly identified with Kant: constructivism. In terms of the philosophical tradition, constructivism, it offers an important approach to knowledge after the decline of metaphysical realism.
Eric Downing
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501715907
- eISBN:
- 9781501715938
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501715907.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book explores connections between the practices of reading and magic during the realist and modernist periods in German literature and thought, with a particular focus on divination. Divination, ...
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This book explores connections between the practices of reading and magic during the realist and modernist periods in German literature and thought, with a particular focus on divination. Divination, historically long associated with the reading of literature, engages an issue of critical importance to this cultural moment, that of futurity: both the different ways that the future figured in the reading of texts at this time, and the evident (or apparently evident) fading of its force as a narrative determinant or article of historical faith. In case studies of works by Gottfried Keller, Theodor Fontane, and Walter Benjamin, this study investigates divinatory readings not just of texts but of the world, its things, their forces, and their relations to the human. It approaches both the texts and the world that supports such readings against the background of the notion of “sympathy” that, in both ancient and pre-modern times, allowed for future reading and that, it argues, persists in the realist and modernist periods in the form of “Stimmung.” And it traces the significant transformations of “sympathy” and “Stimmung” that accompany the changing shape of reading, magic, and the future in German art and thought during this period.Less
This book explores connections between the practices of reading and magic during the realist and modernist periods in German literature and thought, with a particular focus on divination. Divination, historically long associated with the reading of literature, engages an issue of critical importance to this cultural moment, that of futurity: both the different ways that the future figured in the reading of texts at this time, and the evident (or apparently evident) fading of its force as a narrative determinant or article of historical faith. In case studies of works by Gottfried Keller, Theodor Fontane, and Walter Benjamin, this study investigates divinatory readings not just of texts but of the world, its things, their forces, and their relations to the human. It approaches both the texts and the world that supports such readings against the background of the notion of “sympathy” that, in both ancient and pre-modern times, allowed for future reading and that, it argues, persists in the realist and modernist periods in the form of “Stimmung.” And it traces the significant transformations of “sympathy” and “Stimmung” that accompany the changing shape of reading, magic, and the future in German art and thought during this period.
