In 1813 Isaak von Sinclair published a poem entitled “The New Acquaintance.” It recounts a meeting between himself, his friend Friedrich Hölderlin, and one other unidentified guest whom Sinclair awaited with keen anticipation. Because of Hölderlin’s well established friendship with Hegel it has been assumed in the past that the unknown acquaintance was in fact Hegel. However, at the time to which the poem refers, Hegel was a relatively obscure and unknown figure with no reputation. If we are therefore to (...) accept that the poem does indeed allude to Hegel then we must assume that Sinclair, as early as 1813, had recognized Hegel’s genius and wanted retrospectively to associate his name with the newly rising star of German philosophy. In that case we must ask why he refrained from mentioning Hegel by name or at least making the character of the unknown unambiguously clear? In translating this poem for the first time into English I offer for consideration another candidate as the “acquaintance,” namely, Wilhelm Heinse. (shrink)

In his appendix to Soemmerring’s On the organ of the soul, Kant famously rejects the idea of a local presence or seat of the soul in the brain as fundamentally misguided. „By contrast, a virtual presence“ of the soul, considered as a conceptual construct, is said to make it possible to treat „the question regarding the sensorium commune as a merely physiological task“. Where Kant’s German original reads „möglich“, Arnulf Zweig in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (...) translates surprisingly as „impossible“. This cardinal error shall be communicated to readers who do not habitually consult the German original. Against this background, I illuminate the Kantian position with in-depth material from Kant’s respective drafts and in contrast to the syncretistic–materialistic approach of Johann Jacob Wilhelm Heinse. (shrink)

ArgumentIn this paper I will argue that the scientific investigation of skulls and brains of geniuses went hand in hand with hagiographical celebrations of scientists. My analysis starts with late-eighteenth century anatomists and anthropologists who highlighted quantitative parameters such as the size and weight of the brain in order to explain intellectual differences between women and men and Europeans and non-Europeans, geniuses and ordinary persons. After 1800 these parameters were modified by phrenological inspections of the skull and brain. As the (...) phrenological examination of the skulls of Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm Heinse, Arthur Schopenhauer and others shows, the anthropometrical data was interpreted in light of biographical circumstances. The same pattern of interpretation can be found in non-phrenological contexts: Reports about extraordinary brains were part of biographical sketches, mainly delivered in celebratory obituaries. It was only in this context that moral reservations about dissecting the brains of geniuses could be overcome, which led to a more systematic investigation of brains of geniuses after 1860. (shrink)

Hearing has traditionally been regarded as the second sense--as somehow less rational and less modern than the first sense, sight. Reason and Resonance explodes this myth by reconstructing the process through which the ear came to play a central role in modern culture and rationality. For the past four hundred years, hearing has been understood as involving the sympathetic resonance between the vibrating air and various parts of the inner ear. But the emergence of resonance as the centerpiece of modern (...) aurality also coincides with the triumph of a new type of epistemology in which the absence of resonance is the very condition of thought. Our mind's relationship to the world is said to rest on distance or, as the very synonym for reason suggests, reflection. Reason and Resonance traces the genealogy of this "intimate animosity" between reason and resonance through a series of interrelated case studies involving a varied cast of otologists, philosophers, physiologists, pamphleteers, and music theorists. Among them are the seventeenth-century architect-zoologist Claude Perrault, who refuted Cartesianism in a book on sound and hearing; the Sturm und Drang poet Wilhelm Heinse and his friend the anatomist Samuel Sömmerring, who believed the ventricular fluid to be the interface between the soul and the auditory nerve; the renowned physiologist Johannes Müller, who invented the concept of "sense energies"; and Müller's most important student, Hermann von Helmholtz, author of the magisterial Sensations of Tone. Erlman also discusses key twentieth-century thinkers of aurality, including Ernst Mach; the communications engineer and proponent of the first nonresonant wave theory of hearing, Georg von Békésy; political activist and philosopher Günther Anders; and Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

Aber nicht den Verdeutlichungen der Denker, sondern dem Deuten der Dichter sind die Not und das Irrsal der Nacht anvertraut. Darum redet Hölderlin den Dichterfreund Wilhelm Heinse an : »Aber Freund! wir kommen zu spät. Zwar leben die Götter Aber über dem Haupt droben in anderer Welt. Endlos wirken sie da und scheinens wenig zu achten, Ob wir leben, so sehr schonen die Himmlischen uns. Denn nicht immer vermag ein schwaches Gefäß sie zu fassen, Nur zu Zeiten erträgt (...) göttliche Fülle der Mensch.« Diese Distichen-Reihe beginnt mit einem zweifachen »Aber« und antwortet so auf jenen Anruf, der zuvor an den Dichter-Genossen gerichtet war : »So komm! daß wir das Offene schauen«. Das Offene ist wie das offene Meer grenzenlos und wie der offene Himmel unverstellt. Das Offene nun, das der vom Dichter- und Nachtgott getriebene Sänger zu schauen aufbricht, ist die grenzenlose Einheit von Himmel und Erde, von Sterblichen und Unsterblichen, in der sich einst der Gott unverstellt zeigte. Aber wir sind Abendländer und Epigonen. Wir kommen zu spät. Das »Brautfest der Götter und Menschen« ist vorüber. Über unser hesperisches Geschlecht ist die Nacht der Götterferne hereingebrochen. (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)

A idéia da vida concerne um objeto tão concreto e, se se quiser, tão real, que ela parece ter ultrapassado o âmbito da lógica, tal como é comumente concebida. Certamente, se a lógica não contivesse nada além de formas de pensamento, vazias e mortas, então não poderia ela tratar de nenhum conteúdo tal como a idéia ou a vida. Se, porém, a verdade absoluta é objeto da lógica e a verdade como tal consiste essencialmente em conhecer, então o conhecer teria (...) que, pelo menos, ser tratado por ela. (shrink)

I present and explain the Bohmian account of collapse in quantum mechanics.