Von Theokrits Leben wissen wir wenig. Geboren wohl zu Beginn des 3. Jh.s. v. Chr. im sizilischen Syrakus, hat ihn das landliche Lebensumfeld gepragt. Eine Reise nach Alexandreia, der Metropole des Ptolemaerreiches, fuhrte ihn vermutlich mit Kallimachos und Apollonios Rhodios sowie dem Lehrdichter Arat zusammen; belegt ist das freundschaftliche Verhaltnis zu dem in Milet praktizierenden Arzt und Epigrammdichter Nikias. Als Todesdatum kommen die 60er Jahre in Frage, aber auch ein erheblich spaterer Zeitpunkt. Die politischen und wirtschaftlichen Veranderungen seit dem 4. (...) Jh. - die Herrschaft der Makedonenkonige bedeutete das Ende der Autonomie fur die demokratisch organisierten kleinen griechischen Stadtstaaten - blieben nicht ohne Einfluss auf die Dichtkunst: Die Abkehr vom Gesellschaftlich-Offentlichen und die Hinwendung zum Elitar-Privaten; der Verzicht auf die grosse Form des Epos und der Tragodie, statt dessen die Bevorzugung kleinerer Formen. Vorausgesetzt ist gleichzeitig ein verandertes Rezeptionsverhalten: Die Werke der alexandrinischen Dichter richten sich nicht an eine grosse Zuhorerschaft im Theater, sie wollen vielmehr den gebildeten einzelnen Leser, der all die literarischen und mythologischen Anspielungen und Variationen bis hin zur Parodie verstehen kann, erreichen und erfreuen. Ebenso unverkennbar ist der Innovationswille bei den Themen der eidyllia Theokrits: die Hirtenwelt mit einer besonderen Akzentuierung des Erotischen, das stadtische Leben, die landliche Arbeitswelt der Bauern und Fischer... Die realitatsgesattigte Darstellung des Alltags der kleinen Leute steht allem Pathos des Heroischen, das Archaik und Klassik pragte, vollig fern. Daruber hinaus stellt die distanzierende Ironie mit ihren Hinweisen auf die Schwachen und Defizite der Protagonisten nicht nur einen deutlichen Gegensatz zur literarischen Tradition dar, sondern auch zu jenen Nachfolgern, die sich oft auf ein idealisierend-verengendes Theokrit-Bild berufen haben: Vergil und andere Bukoliker sowie die Verfasser von Schaferdichtung spaterer Zeit. Deren heile Idyllenwelt entspringt haufig der kitschig-verklarenden Sehnsucht moderner Stadtmenschen nach dem vermeintlich einfachen und naturlichen Landleben. Allein am Wort selbst ist die Bedeutungsverschiebung unverkennbar: Das realitatsnahe "kleine Bildchen" des Theokrit mit seinen oft derb-obszonen Spassen hat wenig gemein mit der romantisierenden Idylle franzosischer Rokokodichtung.". (shrink)

For over a century, the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard has been at the center of a number of important discussions, concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently, fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary aesthetics, especially literary theory. Despite his relatively short life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested to by the 26-volume Princeton University Press edition of all of his published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, most of which (...) consists of what are called his "journals and notebooks." Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one of history's great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term "diaries." By far the greater part of Kierkegaard's journals and notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of subjects--philosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his published works, to be sure--but we can also see whole galaxies of concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with his times and with himself. Volume 6 of this 11-volume series includes four of Kierkegaard's important "NB" journals, covering the months from early May 1849 to the beginning of 1850. At this time Denmark was coming to terms with the 1848 revolution that had replaced absolutism with popular sovereignty, while the war with the German states continued, and the country pondered exactly what replacing the old State Church with the Danish People's Church would mean. In these journals Kierkegaard reflects at length on political and, especially, on ecclesiastical developments. His brooding over the ongoing effects of his fight with the satirical journal Corsair continues, and he also examines and re-examines the broader personal and religious significance of his broken engagement with Regine Olsen. These journals also contain reflections by Kierkegaard on a number of his most important works, including the two works written under his "new" pseudonym Anti-Climacus and his various attempts at autobiographical explanations of his work. And, all the while, the drumbeat of his radical critique of "Christendom" continues and escalates. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being reproduced. (shrink)

This commentary argues that business-society scholars are seriously disconnected from nature. This is problematic because our theorizing about nature largely happens as a mental exercise, thereby restricting our bodies and emotions as power means of transcending the human–nature dualism. As a solution, I offer practical ways for business-society scholars to develop a “deep nature connection.”.

The essay published here in English was one of the earliest documents of the birth of the form of idealism which Giovanni Gentile called “Actual Idealism.” The most celebrated full-length statement of it was published in 1916 as General Theory of the Spirit as Pure Act. But there is no other essay in which the relation between Gentile’s view and the great German tradition from which it derives is made so plain.

The beginnings of Hegel’s interest in “logic” as a branch of philosophy are somewhat obscure. In a lecture of 1830 Schelling claimed that Hegel first began to attend to the subject only because “his friends at the University” suggested that it was a good topic for his lectures because it was being neglected. Schelling’s object by then was evidently to suggest that Hegel’s “logic” had always been a superficial pretense. But Hegel was alive to contradict him. So I think his (...) statement of the facts must be right as far as it goes. I do not therefore believe that Hegel came to Jena with any “logical” manuscripts. In my view, it was Schelling himself—especially in his System of Transcendental Idealism —who sparked Hegel’s interest in the subject. (shrink)

“I am now convinced” wrote Hegel in 1796, “that the highest act of Reason, the one through which it encompasses all Ideas, is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness only become sisters in beauty - the philosopher must possess just as much aesthetic power as the poet.” The essentially Kantian inspiration of this dictum is evident, for it is the architectonic pattern of the three Critiques that dictates the structure of this program for a new beginning of speculation (...) after Kant’s attack. The theory of “beauty” in the third Critique is to provide the bridge between “truth” in the first, and “goodness” in the second Critique. (shrink)