Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68) was not a philosopher. In fact, Winckelmann had a strong interest in distancing himself from academic philosophy as he knew it. As Goethe reports, Winckelmann “complained bitterly about the philosophers of his time and about their extensive influence.” Still less was Winckelmann a Kantian philosopher; the first edition of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason did not appear until 1781, thirteen years after the fifty-year-old Winckelmann was shockingly murdered in Trieste. Nevertheless, many of Winckelmann’s ideas were (...) philosophically rich and suggestive and interestingly relevant to the philosophical problems that were later to be addressed by Kant and his philosophical contemporaries. It is no wonder, then, that Winckelmann’s influence can be detected in the works of some of the most important philosophically oriented thinkers of Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In addition to Kant himself, these thinkers included Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). (shrink)

Book digitized by Google from the library of the University of Michigan and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.

Toward the beginning of 2013, I received reports of passages in the Black Notebooks that offered observations on Jewry, or as the case may be, world Jewry. It immediately became clear to me that the publication of the Black Notebooks would call forth a wide-spread international debate. Already in the Spring of 2013, I had asked Professor Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, last private assistant – and in the words of my grandfather, the “chief co-worker of the complete edition”, – if (...) he might review the Notebooks as a whole, based on his profound insight into the thought of Martin Heidegger, and in particular, review those Jewish-related passages that were the focus of the public eye. Publications about the Black Notebooks quickly came to propagate catchy expressions such as “being-historical anti-Semitism” and “metaphysical anti-Semitism”. The first question that obviously arises is: Does the thought of Martin Heidegger exhibit any kind of anti-Semitism at all? In this book Professor von Herrmann now advances his hermeneutic explication. With Professor Francesco Alfieri of the Pontificia Università Lateranense he has found a colleague who has drawn up a comprehensive philological analysis of volumes GA 94 through GA 97 of the Complete Edition. The fact that Heidegger designated the hitherto published “black notebooks” as Ponderings and as Observations has been given little consideration. He intentionally placed them at the conclusion of the Complete Edition because without acquaintance with the lectures, and above all, with the being-historical treatises that would come to be published in the framework of the Complete Edition, they would not be comprehensible. (shrink)

The text of the book of Nahum poses many challenges to exegetes and readers of the text. Nahum 3 in particular, challenges modern readers with its violent imagery and the derogatory language towards women. The article attempts to propose cultural sensitive readings of two different ‘cultures’, namely, reading Nahum in its historical context and from a perspective of feminist interpretation. Most serious exegetes agree that the reading of texts, in this case, a prophetic text, should first and foremost be interpreted (...) in its historical and social context. It is also true that readers or hearers of the text react to and give meaning to the text. Our cultural embeddedness plays a major part in the process of ‘meaning-giving’ to the texts we interpret. The argument put forward in this article is that interpreters should be accountable for the meaning they ascribe to and promote of a particular text. (shrink)

Trauma is left, right and centre in the whole book of Nahum. The book reflects the oppression and hardship that Judah had experienced at the hands of the imperial power Assyria. For many a reader, the violent and derogative content of this book is in itself a traumatic experience. In this article, the focus is on Nahum 2:2–11 (Masoretic Text [MT]), which depicts the downfall of Nineveh and its traumatic effects on its citizens. Besides the analysis of the text, a (...) reading from trauma theory is made to enhance insights into the text. It is argued that the text served the purpose of offering hope to the people of Judah who relied on Yahweh for relief from their own traumatic experiences. (shrink)

Positiv greifbar wird dies vor allem darin, daß das Subjekt über die dualistische Perspektive eines personalen und nicht-personalen Weltbewußtseins verfügt, die für es unhintergehbar und alternativlos ist. Zudem wird innerhalb der idealistischen Theorien diesem nicht-personalen, transzendentalen Subjekt die Fähigkeit beigelegt, aufgrund seiner apriorischen Anschauungsweisen und Begriffe die Wirklichkeit zu einer Objekt-Welt zu konstituieren, wobei dies ebenso die Realität der physischen Entitäten betrifft wie das Fremdseelische oder andere Personen. Ein Grundzug dieser Weltkonstitution ist etwa für Fichte die empirisch nicht ableitbare, apriorische (...) Entgegensetzung von Ich und Welt. Darüber hinaus muß sich das Subjekt dieser transzendentalen Konzeption hinsichtlich seiner eigenen Realität so verstehen, daß es seine Wirklichkeit ursprünglich für sich aus sich selber heraus realisiert, was bei Fichtes Theorie, aber auch in Kants Opus Postumum zu einer Theorie ursprünglicher Setzungs-Handlungen des Ich führt. Ferner ist diese Theorie transzendentaler Subjektivität mit einem Konzept empirischer Erkenntnis verknüpft, indem sie die Objektivität und Wahrheitsansprüche dieser Erkenntnis begründet und rechtfertigt. Nicht zuletzt entspringt dem nicht-personalen Begriff des Ich auch jenes autonome Selbstverständnis, worin ebenso das Bewußtsein von Freiheit verankert ist wie die Möglichkeit, sich selber moralisch Verantwortung zuzuschreiben. (shrink)

1. Grundgestalt, Bewegung, Stufung.--[Beilage]: Musik-Beispiele.