An Essay on Man

An Essay on Man
Author: Ernst Cassirer
Publisher: Felix Meiner Verlag
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2023-06-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3787320377

Angeregt von Freunden und Kollegen, legte Ernst Cassirer 1944 im amerikanischen Exil mit dem Essay on Man eine komprimierte und zugleich überarbeitete Fassung seiner Kulturphilosophie vor, in der er die dreibändige Philosophie der symbolischen Formen in ihren Hauptgedanken fortführt. Dabei wird der wohl wichtigste Bestandteil der Cassirerschen Kulturphilosophie, die Idee der Humanität, thematisiert und zusammenfassend begründet. Mit Bezugnahme auf das komplexe und vielschichtige Gefüge von Sprache, Mythos, Religion, Kunst, Geschichte und Wissenschaft bestimmt Cassirer den Menschen als »animal symbolicum«, als ein Wesen, das Symbole schafft und sich durch Symbole verständigt. Dank seiner klaren, verständlichen Sprache und Argumentationsstruktur ermöglicht der »Essay on Man« nicht nur dem philosophischen Fachpublikum, sondern auch einem weiteren Kreis interessierter Leser den Zugang zu Cassirers Denken. Er darf somit als allgemeine Einführung in die Philosophie Cassirers verstanden werden. Inhalt: Part I. What is man? I. The Crisis in Man's Knowledge of Himself II. A Clue to the Nature of Man: the Symbol III. From Animal Reactions to Human Responses IV. The Human World of Space and Time V. Facts and Ideals Part II. Man and Culture VI. The Definition of Man in Terms of Human Culture VII. Myth and Religion VIII. Language IX. Art X. History XI. Science XII. Summary and Conclusion

The Emergence of Literary Criticism in 18th-Century Britain

The Emergence of Literary Criticism in 18th-Century Britain
Author: Sebastian Domsch
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2014-08-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110362066

This study tries, through a systematic and historical analysis of the concept of critical authority, to write a history of literary criticism from the end of the 17th to the end of the 18th century that not only takes the discursive construction of its (self)representation into account, but also the social and economic conditions of its practice. It tries to consider the whole of the critical discourse on literature and criticism in the time period covered. Thus, it is distinctive through its methodology (there is no systematic account of the historical development of critical authority and no discussion of the institutionalization of criticism of such a scope), its material of analysis (most of the many hundred texts self-reflexively commenting on criticism that are discussed here have been so far virtually ignored) and through its results, a complex history of criticism in the 18th century that is neither reductive nor the accumulation of isolated aspects or author figures, but that probes into the very nature of the activity of criticism. The aim of this study is both to provide a thorough historical understanding of the emergence of criticism and as a consequence an understanding of the inner workings and power relations that structure criticism to this day.

The Fragmentary Poetic

The Fragmentary Poetic
Author: Sandro Jung
Publisher:
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2009
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

The Fragmentary Poetic is the first study of the mode of the fragmentary eighteenth-century poetry. Revisiting traditional literary historiography, it offers a fresh account of the "Pindaric" impulse, a mode informing deliberate fragmentation. Its "amphibian" nature accommodates its transgeneric use in genres as varied as the ode and the epic, deploying the ruin as an emblem of its deliberate resistance to closure or the sublime to indicate rupture. The study discusses the ode, the long-poem, imitations of Spenser, Macpherson's "reinventions" of the epic, and poems engaging with memory and ruin. Poets variously utilized the fragmentary as a mode reflecting human fallibility, but also (paradoxically) as evidence for original completeness and authenticity. Detailed discussions of poems include works ranging from Thomson and Young to Macpherson, Charlotte Smith, and Wordsworth. Scholars of both eighteenth-century and Romantic period poetry will find this book a useful guide to the generic complexity of eighteenth-century poetry. This account of the polymorphous nature of the fragment and definitional and formal fluidity enables scholars to rethink eighteenth-century form and to appreciate a pervasive mode that found its most varying expression in the poetry of the period. Sandro Jung is the James Thomson Fellow in Eighteenth- and Ninteenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Salford.