Includes "Coldness and Cruelty," by Gilles Deleuze, a study of masochism and sadism, as well as "Venus in Furs," the original novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.

En la literatura de Sacer-Masoch y Sade, vida y obra parecen confundirse. Ese sería el precio a pagar por la experimentación conjunta de cuerpo y escritura. Lo cierto es, como intentará plantearse, que la unidad que conforman vida y escritura en las novelas de ambos se desplaza el horizonte de la vivencia personal. A partir de los conceptos de “crítica” y “clínica” se mostrará cómo en cada caso se articula una lógica de la perversión en que se pone en (...) juego un vitalismo literario. (shrink)

The paper is primarily devoted to Nietzsche’s account of cruelty, which represents an indispensable key to understanding Nietzsche’s genealogical project in many of its essential aspects. This study is complemented by parallels with two other outstanding intellectual figures of the late nineteenth century: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Dostoevsky wrote that “civilisation has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty.” Nietzsche went a step further in this assessment: not only (...) does civilisation not make us immune to cruelty, but it must itself be seen to emerge directly from cruelty at every significant step it has taken. What brings Nietzsche close to Masoch, on the other hand, is the fact that these historical or even prehistorical developments that have shaped humankind and civilisation are not only related to cruelty, but must be observed as various forms of the internalisation (“spiritualisation”, “deification”) of cruelty. The core of the study is devoted to analyses of different forms and aspects of Nietzsche’s concept of the internalisation of cruelty (in relation to power-relations, subject-object relations, mutations of pleasure, and perversions). (shrink)

‘À quoi sert la littérature?’, Deleuze opens his book on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with a question that this paper will pose again, trying to propose an answer to it, and to put to test the methodological approach that can be obtained from that answer: what are the uses of literature and, more specifically, how could the philosopher use literature, what could be done with it? To this end, this paper will focus on Deleuze’s symptomatological conception of literature. (...) The second part of the paper will be dedicated to the reading of two novels, 1984 by George Orwell and The Circle by Dave Eggers. The novels will be put in in a relation of resonation with two concepts sketched in Deleuze’s Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle: Foucauldian disciplinary societies and control societies. These novels will be considered as signaletic material, symptomatologies of two conditions of society, from which this paper proposes to extract two types of signs: Signs of Order and Signs of Suggestion. These signs will be made react with the concepts of Foucault and Deleuze, in order to see if they can produce the ground for a therapeutic. The paper will therefore combine literary symptomatologies and philosophical aetiology, in the attempt to make them react together, Foucault and Orwell, Eggers and Deleuze, to extract and describe signs from the literary material considered that may be brought to the fore only after the consideration of the causes of the most important symptoms of discipline and control. (shrink)

In his stunning essay, Coldness and Cruelty, Gilles Deleuze provides a rigorous and informed philosophical examination of the work of the late 19th-century German novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Deleuze's essay, certainly the most profound study yet produced on the relations between sadism and masochism, seeks to develop and explain Masoch's "peculiar way of 'desexualizing' love while at the same time sexualizing the entire history of humanity." He shows that masochism is something far more subtle and complex (...) than the enjoyment of pain, that masochism has nothing to do with sadism; their worlds do not communicate, just as the genius of those who created them - Masoch and Sade - lie stylistically, philosophically, and politically poles a part.Venus in Furs, the most famous of all of Masoch's novels was written in 1870 and belongs to an unfinished cycle of works that Masoch entitled The Heritage of Cain. The cycle was to treat a series of themes including love, war, and death. The present work is about love. Although the entire constellation of symbols that has come to characterize the masochistic syndrome can be found here - fetishes, whips, disguises, fur-clad women, contracts, humiliations, punishment, and always the volatile presence of a terrible coldness - these do not eclipse the singular power of Masoch's eroticism. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Reform der Wissenschaften, zur Herstellung der Einheit zwischen Theorie und Praxis, Teil 1" verfügbar.

For the English speaking reader of today, Ranke is surprisingly inaccessible; indeed, he has become something of a patron saint, more praised than read. Now all his major works have been translated, while almost none of his letters, notes, or essays, so important in getting an informal appraisal of his craft of history, is in English. Many of his of books, whether in German or in English, are no longer in print, and the modern reader is less likely to bear (...) up with the four or six volume works which are. Thus the purpose of this anthology is to bring attention to some of the riches which a reader might find in a more extended study of Ranke's histories. Its emphasis is on Ranke as an historian, with translations of essays and addresses which lay down his program for research, politics, and the relationship between and historian's values and his work. It also attempts to give some sense of Ranke's literary skill, by including examples of his historical portraiture from his History of the Popes, History of France, and History of the Reformation. Finally, a selection of letters and brief reflections culled from his works and notes tries to recapture the man, whose own inner development joined with the tendencies of his age to make him a world-historical figure in Ranke's own sense of the word. (shrink)

Masochism is inseparable from the contract; but even while projecting it on the dominatrix, it pushes the contract to the extreme, takes its mechanisms apart, maybe even renders it ridiculous.

1. Bd. Einleitung. Der altarische Himmelsgott, das höchste gute Wesen. -- 2. Bd. Naturverehrung und Lebensfeste.

In the long line of French Sade studies, Deleuze's essay Coldness and Cruelty marks out a special place. By discussing Masoch both in addition to and in contrast to Sade, Deleuze reveals the stakes of his book: he wants to unmask the concept of sadomasochism as a clinical nonentity. In their paper, the authors explain the arguments supporting this project and show their relation to Deleuze's reading of Bergson. They then argue that there is a second, similarly Bergsonian criticism (...) of Freudian psychoanalysis operating in the background of Coldness and Cruelty. This more wide-ranging criticism takes Freud to task for conceiving perversion, like neurosis, in Oedipal terms. This conception, Deleuze holds, forgets that perversion and neurosis represent two different worlds that essentially have nothing to do with each other despite crossing in clinical experience. (shrink)

Ranke (1795-1886) championed objective writing based on source material and established the study of history as a major university discipline. These essays, presented in October 1986 at a conference held to mark the centennial of his death, place the German historian in the context of the developing discipline and introduce important issues and problems in European historiography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Die bedeutung der jüdischen feste nach Philo.--Der nomos. insonderheit Sabbat und feste, in philonischer beleuchtung, an der hand von Philos schrift De septenario.--Die religions- und kulturgeschichtliche stellung Philos.--Agada bei Philo.--Ursprung, begriff und umfang der allegorischen schrifterklärung.--Die alexandrinische lehre von den mittelwesen oder göttlichen kräften, insbesondere bei Philo, geprüft auf die frage, ob und welchen einfluss sie auf das mutterland Palästina gehabt.

Die Autorinnen und Autoren untersuchen in ihren Beiträgen europäische Endzeit- und Untergangsvorstellungen von der Spätantike bis hinein ins 21. Jahrhundert, welche lange Zeit über in Anlehnung an die biblischen Apokalypsen und allen voran an die neutestamentliche Johannes-Offenbarung entstanden. Das Hauptaugenmerk liegt auf den dahinter auszumachenden sozialen Dynamiken und diskursiven und medialen Faktoren, die gerade auch in End-Setzungen grundlegende identitätsstiftende, einheits- und gemeinschaftsbildende Funktionen erkennen lassen. Der kulturwissenschaftlich ausgerichtete und unter diesem Blickwinkel ausführlich eingeleitete Band unterteilt sich in drei die Moderne (...) und drei die Frühe Neuzeit und das Mittelalter behandelnde Abschnitte mit den Schwerpunkten: Allmachtsformen, Medienregulative, Denken der Kontingenz, typologische Schemata, Differenz und Gemeinsinn und Zeithorizonte. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Arbeit benutzt anstatt der üblichen Peano-Russellschen Zeichen die Peirce-Schröderschen Zeichen. Ich bedaure es aus mehr als einem Grunde schwer, daß man von denselben abgewichen is...

Im ersten Teil dieser Arbeit zeichne ich den Weg nach, der Chisholm zur Theorie der Zwei Aspekte und damit zur Behandlung von Gustav Theodor Fechners Lehre über das Verhältnis von Leib und Seele geführt hat. Es wird dabei weniger darauf ankommen, Chisholms Argumente zu bewerten als vielmehr zu zeigen, wie diese dazu führen können, eine totgeglaubte Theorie, die Theorie der Zwei Aspekte, und einen ziemlich obskuren Autor, Gustav Theodor Fechner, attraktiv erscheinen zu lassen. Im zweiten Teil werde ich versuchen, aus (...) den vielen Schriften Fechners ein einigermaßen vollständiges Bild seiner Ansichten über das Verhältnis von Leib und und Seele zu erstellen. Ich gelange zu dem Schluß, daß die klassischen Probleme der Theorie der Zwei Aspekte auch in Fechners Werk keine befriedigende Lösung finden. Im dritten Teil werde ich zeigen, daß der Begriff der Person, der aus Chisholms Version der Theorie der Zwei Aspekte fließt, in Fechners Philosophie keinen Platz hat. (shrink)

Im ersten Teil dieser Arbeit zeichne ich den Weg nach, der Chisholm zur Theorie der Zwei Aspekte und damit zur Behandlung von Gustav Theodor Fechners Lehre über das Verhältnis von Leib und Seele geführt hat. Es wird dabei weniger darauf ankommen, Chisholms Argumente zu bewerten als vielmehr zu zeigen, wie diese dazu führen können, eine totgeglaubte Theorie, die Theorie der Zwei Aspekte, und einen ziemlich obskuren Autor, Gustav Theodor Fechner, attraktiv erscheinen zu lassen. Im zweiten Teil werde ich versuchen, aus (...) den vielen Schriften Fechners ein einigermaßen vollständiges Bild seiner Ansichten über das Verhältnis von Leib und und Seele zu erstellen. Ich gelange zu dem Schluß, daß die klassischen Probleme der Theorie der Zwei Aspekte auch in Fechners Werk keine befriedigende Lösung finden. Im dritten Teil werde ich zeigen, daß der Begriff der Person, der aus Chisholms Version der Theorie der Zwei Aspekte fließt, in Fechners Philosophie keinen Platz hat. (shrink)