In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reflections on Raphael PAUL BAROLSKY The essence of all appreciation and analysis of art is the translation of visual perceptions into compelling verbal form. —Ralph Lieberman cultural unity Horace Walpole, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Balzac, Friedrich Hegel, Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, Pierre Renoir, Nathaniel Hawthorne, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Heinrich von Kleist, Franz Grillparzer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, George (...) Eliot, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, Roger Fry, Bernard Berenson, Theodor Hetzer, Roberto Longhi, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Stendhal are among the many essayists, critics, novelists, poets, painters and art historians who have responded to Raphael’s work as painter, architect or archeologist over the centuries. I can well imagine all of those listed above, among many others, united in an imaginary painting similar to the School of Athens—in other words, a vision that reconciles their various views of the world in a harmony analogous to the unity of philosophers in Raphael’s great fresco. Raphael is a towering figure in the history of European culture. The year 2020 was the 500th anniversary of the death of the great painter in Rome at the age of thirty-seven. In the wake of recent exhibitions that commemorated the artist’s achievement, I propose to touch briefly and lightly on a few aspects arion 28.2 fall 2020 100 reflections on raphael of Raphael’s life and works. Please think of these remarks as a series of suggestions, not attempts at definitive interpretation. I think of this essay as a rather experimental piece. THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS i should like to begin with a few brief remarks on what must be Raphael’s most famous work of art. I mean his School of Athens (fig. 1), which is, like Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Last Supper or like Michelangelo’s David and Creation of Adam, an image widely known and admired. What more is there to say about The School Of Athens, one of the central images in the Stanza della Segnatura? You might spend the rest of your life reading about this great work and never understand it fully. Nevertheless, I want to focus for a moment on a central detail of the work and, on the basis of my description, point to a significant aspect of the fresco that has been universally overlooked. First the description, then the aperçu. Fig. 1. School of Athens. Ca. 1510–1512. Photo Credit : Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY. Paul Barolsky 101 At the center of the School of Athens we behold the two great philosophers of classical antiquity: Plato and Aristotle. Plato holds a copy of his Timaeus, a dialogue that concerns the harmony of the heavens; Aristotle holds a copy of his Ethics, a work that pertains to human relations in this world. It was the goal of Renaissance thinkers to create a harmony or concord of the thought of these philosophers: a Concordia Platonis et Aristotelis. Raphael’s fresco, as is well known, presents the visual ideal of such harmony. Whereas Aristotle gestures downward, alluding to this world, in which his Ethics matter, Plato points heavenward, evoking the order of the cosmic realm described in Timaeus. Raphael makes visible the ideal of concordia when he movingly pictures the way in which the two philosophers gaze into each other’s eyes, as if to suggest this harmony. Borrowing from the language of Raphael ’s friend, Baldassare Castiglione, Raphael renders “the joining” of their souls. The monumental architecture of the scene, which echoes Bramante and has taproots in Piero della Francesca and Perugino, consists of three barrel-vaults beyond which we see patches of blue sky and puffs of cloud (fig. 2). The grandiose architecture of the image magnifies Raphael’s philosophers. Within this architectural framework, Plato’s gesture is deeply meaningful, since it prompts the viewer to look up and thus ascend toward the perfection of the celestial realm, beyond the imperfections of the physical world. Above the first barrel vault in the fresco we behold a section of the drum of a dome which is open to the sky. Within this section of drum there are two columns that are lined up directly... (shrink)

This is a comprehensive, integrated account of eighteenth and early nineteenth century German figurative aesthetics. The author focuses on the theologically-minded discourse on the visual arts that unfolded in Germany, circa 1754-1828, to critique the assumption that German romanticism and idealism pursued a formalist worship of beauty and of unbridled artistic autonomy. This book foregrounds what the author terms an "Aesthetics of Figurative Theo humanism". It begins with the sculptural aesthetics of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Gottfried Herder before moving on (...) to Karl Philipp Moritz, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder and Friedrich Schelling. The reader will discover how this aesthetic tradition, after an initial obsession with classical sculpture, chose painting as the medium more suited to the modern self's exploration of transcendence. This paradigm-shift is traced in the aesthetic discourse of Friedrich Schlegel and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In this work, the widespread prejudice that such aesthetics initiated a so-called "Modern Grand Narrative of the Arts" is deconstructed. One accusation directed at 18th century aesthetics has been that it realised into "Art" what had previously been a living, rich tissue of meaning: this work shows how Figurative Theo humanism's attention to aesthetic values was never detached from deeper theological and humanistic considerations. Furthermore, it argues that this aesthetic discourse never forgot that it emerged from modern disenchantment-far from occluding the dimension of secularization, it draws poignant meaning from it. Anyone with an interest in the current debates about the scope and nature of aesthetics (philosophers of art, theology, or religion) will find this book of great interest and assistance. (shrink)

Reprint. Originally published: T'ubingen: C.F. Osiander, 1822.

"Die Grundlage... ist... ein Programm, welches ich im vorigen Jahre unter dem Titel: "Historische und philosophische Beitr'age zur Erl'auterung des Spinozismus' ausgegeben habe. Aber... hier... sehr erweitert.".

On cover: Zusammenhang des Spinozismus mit der Cartesianischen Philosophie.

Die Themen Kreativität, Selbsttranszendenz und Gewalt erzeugen in der Forschung des Soziologen und Sozialphilosophen Hans Joas eine Spannung, aus der ein kreativer und eigener Denkansatz in der deutschen Sozialwissenschaft entstanden ist. Er schöpft aus der Quelle einer langjährigen Auseinandersetzung mit dem US-amerikanischen Pragmatismus und seiner Betonung der Bedeutung menschlicher Handlungen. Daraus hat Joas eine eigene Position zur Entstehung von Werten und Normen entwickelt. Seine neueren Forschungen zur Entstehung der Menschenrechte als einem Prozess der Verarbeitung von Gewalterfahrung sowie der Sakralisierung der (...) Person setzen dieses Programm konsequent fort. (shrink)

Der isländische Historiker, Dichter und Politiker Snorri Sturluson war eine Ausnahmegestalt des nordischen Mittelalters. Die Beiträge international renommierter Forscher diskutieren den aktuellen Stand der Forschung und bringen selbst neue Ansätze ein. Dabei werden neben religionshistorischen und historischen Themen auch Fragen der Biographie, der Wissenschaftsgeschichte und der Textüberlieferung behandelt.

Reprint of the ed. published by C. F. Osiander.

Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915) est le fondateur de l'ecole de Heidelberg, l'autre grand courant neokantien qui apparait au meme moment que l'ecole de Marbourg, et dont Heinrich Rickert et Emil Lask furent des representants eminents. C'est Windelband qui pose les fondements de la philosophie des valeurs qui caracterise le neokantisme de Heidelberg. Ce volume presente un choix d'opuscules, qui relevent essentiellement de la philosophie de la connaissance, fondement de toute investigation philosophique pour les neokantiens. C'est en effet sur une analyse (...) logique des processus cognitifs que sont fondes non seulement l'assimilation de la verite a une valeur - sans pour autant que la verite se dissolve, car Windelband et les autres membres son ecole cherchent a fonder la transcendance de la valeur et donc a sauvegarder la verite comme telle -, mais aussi la theorie de la science qui distigue la methode nomothetique des sciences exactes de la methode idiographique propre a l'histoire. (shrink)

Heinrich Rickert (1863-1936) war einer der bedeutendsten deutschen Philosophen vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg und gilt neben Wilhelm Windelband als einer der Hauptvertreter der südwestdeutschen Schule des Neukantianismus. Seine auch heute noch anregende Philosophie hatte großen, interdisziplinären wie internationalen Einfluss. Die philologisch-kritische Ausgabe macht die Schriften endlich wieder verfügbar.

This volume of the Complete Works provides the first English translation of Nietzsche's unpublished notes from Summer 1886 through Fall 1887. In these writings we find drafts of new prefaces for the second editions of his earlier works, notes for the soon-to-appear On the Genealogy of Morality, and crucially, fragments and plans for an anticipated "master work" under the title "The Will to Power." This projected work, as is now well-known, was never written by Nietzsche; instead, it was fraudulently assembled (...) by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and his friend Heinrich Köselitz (aka Peter Gast), and published under Nietzsche's name after his death. Only now, with the publication of this volume and the ones that precede and follow it, are English readers able to examine for themselves the full set of unpublished writings of the last creative period of Nietzsche's life. Taking into account the latest editorial work on his final notebooks, and including a detailed account by Mazzino Montinari of Nietzsche's decision not to complete a "master work," this volume documents the evolution of Nietzsche's thinking on such important themes as nihilism, eternal recurrence, and the revaluation of all values as it presents his late 'Nachlass' free from the distortions perpetrated against it over a century ago. (shrink)