François Hemsterhuis, Œuvres philosophiques


Book Description

This book has been published in open access thanks to the financial support of the Open Access Book Fund of the University of Groningen. François Hemsterhuis (1721-1790) was a Dutch philosopher on the crossroad of Enlightenment, Classicism and Romanticism. He published his treatises in French, with a beautiful lay-out. They were read and discussed immediately, by outstanding philosophers and artists like Diderot, Jacobi, Herder, Goethe, Novalis and Schleiermacher. This critical edition of Hemsterhuis’s OEuvres philosophiques, together with an early German translation, Vermischte philosophische Schriften, published in 1782-1797. François Hemsterhuis (1721-1790) war ein niederländischer Philosoph auf dem Schnittpunkt von Aufklärung, Klassizismus und Romantik. Er veröffentlichte seine Abhandlungen auf Französisch, in elegantem Layout. Bereits unmittelbar nach ihrem Erscheinen bildeten sie den Stoff zahlreicher Diskussionen unter berühmten Dichtern und Denkern wie Diderot, Jacobi, Herder, Goethe, Novalis und Schleiermacher. Die vorliegende kritische Ausgabe der Œuvres philosophiques von Hemsterhuis beinhaltet auch die zeitgenössische deutsche Übersetzung, Vermischte philosophische Schriften, die in 1782 und 1797 veröffentlicht wurde. François Hemsterhuis (1721-1790) était un philosophe néerlandais sur le carrefour des Lumières, le Néo-classicisme et le Romantisme. Il a publié ses traités en français, avec une belle mise en page. Ils ont été lus et discutés immédiatement par des philosophes et des poètes réputés comme Diderot, Jacobi, Herder, Goethe, Novalis et Schleiermacher. Cette édition critique offre des Œuvres philosophiques de Hemsterhuis, accompagnée d’une traduction allemande contemporaine, Vermischte philosophische Schriften, publiée en 1782-1797.




François Hemsterhuis


Book Description




Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill


Book Description

Jacobi's polemical tract Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Herr Moses Mendelssohn propelled him to notoriety in 1785. This work, as well as David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism, Jacobi to Fichte, and the novel Allwill, is included in George di Giovanni's translation. In a comprehensive introductory essay di Giovanni situates Jacobi in the historical and philosophical context of his time, and shows how Jacobi's life and work reflect the tensions inherent in the late Enlightenment.




Space and Time in Artistic Practice and Aesthetics


Book Description

When the Enlightenment thinker Gotthold Ephraim Lessing wrote his treatise Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry in 1766, he outlined the strengths and weaknesses of each art. Painting was assigned to the realm of space; poetry to the realm of time. Space and Time in Artistic Practice and Aesthetics explores how artists since the eighteenth century up to the present day have grappled with the consequences of Lessing's theory and those that it spawned. As the book reveals, many artists have been - and continue to be – influenced by Lessing-like theories, which have percolated into the art education and art criticism. Artists from Jean Raoux to Willem de Kooning and Frances Bacon, and art critics such as Clement Greenberg, have felt the weight of Lessing's theories in their modes of creation, whether consciously or not. Should we sound the death knell for the theories of Lessing and his kind? Or will conceptions of temporality, spatiality and artistic competition continue to unfold? This book - the first to consider how Lessing's writings connect to visual art's production - brings these questions to the fore.




With(Out) Trace: Interdisciplinary Investigations into Time, Space and the Body


Book Description

This book, With(out) Trace: Inter-Disciplinary Investigations into Time, Space and the Body, unpacks many of the issues that surround the idea of trace: what we intentionally, an unintentionally, leave behind as well as how trace can help us to move forward. In particular this volume looks at how interdisciplinarity can suggest new ways of seeing and, subsequently, exploring interconnections between time, space and the body.




Petrus Camper in context


Book Description

‘A meteor of spirit, science, talent and activity’ – thus Goethe described Petrus Camper (1722-1789). Goethe’s words contain all the elements that make Camper such a fascinating figure in the history of science and arts in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic. This volume sheds new light on Camper’s versatility, engagement, and charisma in all fields and disciplines he ventured into and published on. It not only addresses his scientific activities, findings, and opinions, but also delves into his careers at the universities of Franeker, Amsterdam, and Groningen, his travels, relationships, friendships, and feuds, as well as the ways he communicated his wide-ranging research. Eleven case studies illustrate Camper’s views on eighteenth-century life and society, which motivated not just his scientific, but also his political, societal, literary, and artistic practice. Together they amount to a plea for an integration of all aspects of his scholarly life and persona.




From Bayle to the Batavian Revolution


Book Description

This book is an attempt to assess the part played by philosophy in the eighteenth-century Dutch Enlightenment. Following Bayle’s death and the demise of the radical Enlightenment, Dutch philosophers soon embraced Newtonianism and by the second half of the century Wolffianism also started to spread among Dutch academics. Once the Republic started to crumble, Dutch enlightened discourse took a political turn, but with the exception of Frans Hemsterhuis, who chose to ignore the political crisis, it failed to produce original philosophers. By the end of the century, the majority of Dutch philosophers typically refused to embrace Kant’s transcendental project as well as his cosmopolitanism. Instead, early nineteenth-century Dutch professors of philosophy preferred to cultivate their joint admiration for the Ancients.




Friedrich Jacobi and the End of the Enlightenment


Book Description

Places Friedrich Jacobi as figure at the crux of modernity, showing how he shaped German idealism, Romanticism and existentialism.




Between Secularization and Reform


Book Description

The authors revisit the idea that Enlightenment spearheaded secularization. This book invites all to look at the Enlightenment religiosity as founded on a merger of religious criticism and heterodoxy.




Anima Mundi: The Rise of the World Soul Theory in Modern German Philosophy


Book Description

This work presents and philosophically analyzes the early modern and modern history of the theory concerning the soul of the world, anima mundi. The initial question of the investigation is why there was a revival of this theory in the time of the early German Romanticism, whereas the concept of the anima mundi had been rejected in the earlier, classical period of European philosophy (early and mature Enlightenment). The presentation and analysis starts from the Leibnizian-Wolffian school, generally hostile to the theory, and covers classical eighteenth-century physico-theology, also reluctant to accept an anima mundi. Next, it discusses early modern and modern Christian philosophical Cabbala (Böhme and Ötinger), an intellectual tradition which to some extent tolerated the idea of a soul of the world. The philosophical relationship between Spinoza and Spinozism on the one hand, and the anima mundi theory on the other is also examined. An analysis of Giordano Bruno’s utilization of the concept anima del mondo is the last step before we give an account of how and why German Romanticism, especially Baader and Schelling asserted and applied the theory of the Weltseele. The purpose of the work is to prove that the philosophical insufficiency of a concept of God as an ens extramundanum instigated the Romantics to think an anima mundi that can act as a divine and quasi-infinite intermediary between God and Nature, as a locum tenens of God in physical reality.