The article explores a number of closely related concepts in Eric Santner’s wide-ranging and yet concentrated oeuvre: the concept of the flesh, which is at the center of The Royal Remains, along with two more recent additions to Santner’s lexicon, the “void of knowledge” and “surplus scarcity,” both developed in Untying Things Together. Examining the logic and correlation of these concepts, the paper seeks to highlight certain tensions in Santner’s thought but also the possibilities his analyses of human stasis offer. (...) Alfred Döblin’s modernist classic Berlin Alexanderplatz then serves as a short test case (but also counterexample) of what we might call, taking our cues from Santner’s thinking, the “dreamwork of modernism.”. (shrink)

Blumenberg’s preoccupation with Husserl aimed at the anthropological implications of the latter’s transcendental phenomenology. The paper addresses some connections in Blumenberg’s posthumous Beschreibung des Menschen (Description of Man), in particular the nexus between body/embodiment, lifeworld, and intersubjectivity, to critically assess a few of his claims. The paper concludes by turning to two key concepts for Blumenberg’s anthropological transformation of Husserl’s phenomenology: self-preservation and reflection.

The philosopher Hans Blumenberg whose hundredth anniversary was celebrated last year is known above all for wide-ranging historical studies: onmyth, on philosophical metaphors, on the idea of secularization and the genealogy of the modern age. He is less well known as a critical reader and commentator of Husserl’s phenomenology. The article surveys and reviews Blumenberg’s ‘phenomenological writings’, now available in four separate volumes, by examining a number of prominent motifs in Blumenberg’s unfinished engagement with Husserl. First, his preoccupation with Husserl’s (...) shift from suspending the natural attitude to subsequent efforts to account for its recalcitrance; then his qualifications concerning Husserl’s notion of the pure subject and the lifeworld. The essay concludes with a discussion of visibility as the key to Blumenberg’s critical engagement with Husserl’s phenomenology. (shrink)

The field of aesthetics has long left behind the boundaries that once delimited its territory. Its scope has widened, and its spectrum has become remarkably div.

Violence seems to be the central preoccupation in the work of Heiner Müller: from the early plays on the painful birth of a new socialist state, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), built on the ruins of one and overshadowed by the rise of another totalitarian system, to the political parables and allegories borrowed from Greek and Shakespearean tragedy; from his adaptations of some of the bloodiest episodes of the French, Russian, and German revolutions to the late dramatic experiments bent on (...) shattering the theatrical form itself. The concern with violence is indeed so pervasive as to appear obsessive. Violence is.. (shrink)

In praise of cruelty : Bataille, Kafka, and Ling-Chi -- Fragmentary description of a disaster : Claude Simon -- The resistance to pathos and the pathos of resistance : Peter Weiss -- Medeamachine : the "fallout" of violence in Heiner Müller -- Epilogue : Francis Bacon, or, The brutality of fact.

The phenomenology of time-consciousness marks one of the high points of Blumenberg’s philosophy; the issue is broached in Lifetime and World Time (1986), on the one hand, and in the posthumously published works Description of Man (2006), Theory of the Life-World and Phenomenological Writings (2018), on the other hand. Setting out from Blumenberg’s critical analysis of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, this article endeavors to reconstruct and interpret the most important aspects of Blumenberg’s own descriptions of the structures of time-consciousness. Special attention (...) is paid to the concept of “presence” in Husserl’s lectures, whose metaphysical premises Blumenberg addresses, and to the concept of “recollection” (Erinnerung). (shrink)

In the present study we investigated the stability and malleability of cadets’ definitions of success (mastery and performance goal orientations) contextualized within a certain motivational climate (mastery and performance climates). Based on data from three military academies, the results revealed that cadets’ goal orientations and their perceptions of the motivational climate remained relatively stable throughout the two years of study across three time-points. We also found that a mastery climate predicted individual mastery orientation, and that a performance climate predicted individual (...) performance orientation. These findings contribute to achievement goal theory by clarifying the importance of considering goal orientation contextualized within a certain motivational climate over time. Implications for future research and practice are discussed. (shrink)