Human Chemistry (Volume Two)

Human Chemistry (Volume Two)
Author: Libb Thims
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2007-09-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1430328401

Volume two begins with Goethe's theories of affinities, i.e. the chemical reaction view of human life in 1809. This is followed by the history of how the thermodynamic (1876) and quantum (1905) revolutions modernized chemistry such that affinity (the 'force' of reaction) is now viewed as a function of thermodynamic 'free energy' (reaction spontaneity) and quantum 'valency' (bond stabilities). The composition, energetic state, dynamics, and evolution of the human chemical bond A?B is the centerpiece of this process. The human bond is what gives (yields) and takes (absorbs) energy in life. The coupling of this bond energy, driven by periodic inputs of solar photons, thus triggering activation energies and entropies, connected to the dynamical work of life, is what quantifies the human reaction process. This is followed by topics including mental crystallization, template theory, LGBT chemistry, chemical potential, Le Chatelier's principle, Muller dispersion forces, and human thermodynamics.

Nietzsche & Anarchism: An Elective Affinity and a Nietzschean reading of the December ’08 revolt in Athens

Nietzsche & Anarchism: An Elective Affinity and a Nietzschean reading of the December ’08 revolt in Athens
Author: Christos Iliopoulos
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1622736478

This book aims to establish the bond between Friedrich Nietzsche and the anarchists, through the apparatus of “elective affinity”, and to challenge the boundaries of several anarchist trends – especially “classical” and “post” anarchism – and “ideologies” like anarchism and libertarian Marxism. Moreover, it highlights the importance of reading Nietzsche politically, in a radical way, to understand his utility for the contemporary anarchist movement. The review of the literature concerning the Nietzsche-anarchy relationship shows the previously limited bibliography and stresses the possibility of exploring this connection, with the methodological help of Michael Löwy’s concept of “elective affinity”. The significance of this finding is that the relevant affinity may contribute to an alternative, to the dominant, perception of anarchism as an ideology. It may also designate its special features together with its weaknesses, meaning the objections of Nietzsche to certain aspects of the anarchist practices and worldview (violence, resentment, bad conscience), thus opening a whole new road of self-criticism for the anarchists of the twenty first century. In addition, the location and analysis of the elective affinity serves the debunking of the Nietzschean concepts used by conservative and right-wing readings in order to appropriate Nietzsche, and of the accusations that the German philosopher had unleashed against anarchists, which reveals his misunderstanding of anarchist politics. The final part of this book applies the whole analysis above on a Nietzschean reading of the December ’08 revolt in Athens based on the “Of the Three Metamorphoses” discourse from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, offering an alternative view of the events that shook Greece and also had an important global impact.

Faust, Part II

Faust, Part II
Author: Goethe
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2009-04-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0141930942

In this sequel to Faust, Mephistopheles takes Faust on a journey through ancient Greek mythology, conjuring for him the insurpassably beautiful Helen of Troy, as well as the classical gods. Faust falls in love with and marries Helen, embodying for Goethe his 'imaginative longing to join poetically the Romantic Medievalism of the germanic West to the classical genius of the Greeks'. Further to the themes of redemption and salvation in this great drama, are Goethe's eerie premonitions of modern phenomena such as inflation and the creation of life by scientific synthesis.

Elective Affinities

Elective Affinities
Author: Lydia Goehr
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2008
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780231144803

As illustrated in Goethe's famous novel of the same name, elective affinities are powerful relationships that crystallize under changing conditions. In this new book, Lydia Goehr focuses on the history of elective affinities between philosophy and music from German classicism, romanticism, and idealism to the modernist aesthetic theory of Theodor W. Adorno and Arthur C. Danto. Aesthetic theory, she argues, depends on a dynamic philosophy of history centered on tendencies, yearnings, needs, and potentialities. With this in mind, she recasts the theses of Adorno and Danto regarding the death or end of philosophy, art, music, and human experience as arguments for continuation and survival. Elective Affinities tracks the migration of aesthetic and critical theory from Germany to the United States following the catastrophic period of the twentieth century marked by the Second World War.

After Jena

After Jena
Author: Peter J. Schwartz
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780838757192

After Jena is the first scholarly work in English to set Goethe's influential and controversial novel Elective Affinities (Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 1809) squarely within the turbulent time in which it was written. Peter J. Schwartz explores the era of rapid modernization following Prussia's defeat at the battle of Jena-Auerstedt (1806)--a battle that permitted Napoleon to extend French hegemony throughout Continental Europe and to dissolve or reform the institutional structures of the German ancien regime. Adducing evidence from many spheres and applying the tools of several disciplines, Schwartz persuasively shows how Elective Affinities reflects post-Jena changes in marriage, property and inheritance law and in the political role of the German nobility. He links questions of character, fate and sacrifice in the novel to modern problems of sovereignty and legitimacy and investigates how key scenes in the novel comment implicitly on Napoleon, Rousseau, the French Revolution, and the politics and aesthetics of the German Romantics. After Jena reveals the novel's ethical core to be a calculus of political legitimacy, and its aesthetics a means of conciliating tensions provoked by modernity's onrush. It will be of special interest to students of literature, history, philosophy, art history and aesthetics. Illustrated. Peter J. Schwartz is Assistant Professor of German at Boston University.