The Tragic Absolute: German Idealism and the Languishing of God

489 Pages·2005·33.69 MB·English

by  David Farrell Krell

THE TRAGIC
ABSOLUTE
GERMAN IDEALISM AND THE
LANGUISHING OF GOD
David Farrell Krell
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
III.()OMIN(;TON AND INDIANAPOLIS
Studies in Continental Thought
John Sallis, general editor
Consulting Editors
Robert Bernasconi J. N. Mohanty
Rudolph Bernet Mary Rawlinson
John D. Caputo Tom Rockmore
David Carr Calvin O. Schrag
Edward S. Casey t Reiner Schurmann
Hubert Dreyfus Charles E. Scott
Don Ihde Thomas Sheehan
David Farrell Krell Robert Sokolowski
Lenore Langsdorf Bruce W. Wilshire
Alphonso Lingis David Wood
William L. McBride
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Krell, David Farrell.
The tragic absolute : German idealism and the
languishing of God / David Farrell Krell.
p. cm. - (Studies in Continental thought)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-253-34536-7 (cloth: aIk. paper) - ISBN
0-253-21753-9 (pbk. : a1k. paper)
1. Idealism, German-History. I. Title. II.
Series.
B274S.K74 2005
141'.0973-dc22
2004027629
1 2 3 4 5 10 09 08 07 06 05
Remembering gratefully
Carlo Petzold (1918-2003)
and
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS • XI
KEY TO WORKS CITED • xvii
Introduction • 1
1. The Oldest Program toward a System in German Idealism • 16
The Philological Dispute • 18
Das iilteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus:Text and Translation • 22
Commentary • 26
The Tragic Absolute? • 41
2. Three Ends oft he Absolute • 45
Absolute Inhibition: Schelling • 47
Absolute Separation: Holderlin • 52
Absolute Density: Novalis • 59
A Note on Absolute and Relative Death • 67
3. At the Stroke of One • 70
A Peripheral Reading of Schelling's Treatise on Human Freedom • 73
Excursus on Sehnsucht: Languor, the Languid, and Languishment • 84
The Peripheral Reading (continued) • 89
An Indifferent Reading of Schelling's Treatise on Human Freedom • 94
4. God's Trauma • 104
The Earliest Notes toward Schelling's The Ages of the World • 108
The Genealogy ofT ime, and the Golden Age • 117
Trauma, Repression, and the Absolute Past • 130
An Excursion to Samothrace • 135
5. God's Footstool • 149
From the 1811 Draft of Die Weltalter, with Variants from the 1810 Stuttgarter
Privatvorlesungen and the 1827-1828 System der Weltalter • 152
VB
Contents
From the Sketches toward the SecondProposcd Volume of Die Weltalter,
"The Present" • 165
The Olympian Zeus of Pausanias's Guide to Greece • 170
The Forlorn Foot of Divinity • 172
6. Brazen Wheels • 179
Freedom to Burn: Schelling's Tenth Letter • 183
Absolute Mythology: The 1802-1803 Philosophy ~f'Arl • 187
The Klang of Music, the Fine Arts, and Tragedy • 192
Ironclad Necessity • 203
7. Voices ofEmpedocles 210
"Dame Philosophy Is a Tyrant" • 213
Essence or Accidents? • 222
Nefas or Destiny? • 228
Formal Aspects of the Three Drafts of Holderlin's Mourning-Play • 232
Rhea's Disappearance and the Rise of the Doppelganger • 237
8. Holderlin'~ "Translations" of Sophocles • 250
The Labors ofT ranslation • 256
The Reviews • 263
Absolute Intensity and the Task of the Translator • 268
Translating "Theatrality" • 275
9.A Small Number of Houses in the Tragic Universe • 280
At the Center of Aristotle's Thought: The Poetics • 281
Divine Betrayal: Holderlin's "Notes on Oedipus" • 292
In the Figure of Death: Holderlin's "Notes on Antigone" • 310
10. Holderlin's Tragic Heroines • 322
Three Commentaries: Kommerell, Reinhardt, Loraux • 324
Jocasta's Shadow, Antigone's f\TT], Niobe's Tears, Danae's Gold • 338
Return to Jocasta • 351
11. Antigone's Clout • 354
Lacan on the Essence ofT ragedy • 357
Lacan on the Tragic Dimension of Psychoanalytic Experience • 382
Antigonc bctween Two Deaths, Two Births • 388
12. Njetzschean Reminiscences • 391
Not a Singlc Ncw Goddcss? • 392
"Against thl" Onwllling Night" • 407
VIII
Contents
Kci8apOlC; and vEKoTaalC; in Absolute Music, Absolute Rhythm • 409
The Tragic Absolute • 425
ApPENDIX: PLOT SUMMARIES OF The Death rfEmpedoc/es • 433
BIBLIOGRAPHY • 437
INDEX • 447
IX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to all the colleagues and friends who have encouraged this work
over the years. The following list is surely incomplete, but let me do my best
to remember them here.
Chapter 1 was originally presented as an address to the Hegel Society of
Great Britain-I no longer remember precisely when, perhaps shortly before
or shortly after I joined the Philosophy Department of the University of
Essex in 1983. At all events, an enlarged version later appeared in The Owl of
Minerva 17, no. 1 (Fall 1985): 5-19. I am grateful to the Society and to the
editors and readers of the journal. The present version has expanded greatly,
thanks to the assistance of Professor Christoph Jamme of the Universitat
Liineburg.
Chapter 2 appears under the title "Three Ends of the Absolute: Schelling
on Inhibition, Holderlin on Separation, and Novalis on Density," in Research
in Phenomenology 32 (2002): 60-85; and, under the title "Inhibition, Separa
tion, Density: Ends of the Absolute in Schelling, Holderlin, and Novalis," the
piece will also appear in Idealism without Absolutes: Philosophy at the Limits of
Romanticism, ed. Tilottama Rajan and Arkady Plotnitsky (Albany: State Uni
versity of New York Press, 2004). My thanks to Jim Risser,John Sallis, Tilot
tama Rajan, and Arkady Plotnitsky. My thanks also to the students and fac
ulty of the University of Western Ontario's Centre for the Study of Theory
and Criticism, led at that time by Tilottama Rajan, and to David Clark, who
heard an earlier version of this chapter and helped me to reconsider the mat
ters discussed in its final part. The piece has been revised for its appearance
here.
Chapter 3 began as a seminar at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in
Pcrugia, Italy, in the early 1980s. It was then published as "The Crisis of Rea
son in the Nineteenth Century: Schelling's Treatise on Human Freedom
(1 ROl))" in the volume Thl' Colll:~illm Phamomenologicum: The First Ten Yean,
XI
Acknowledgments
ed.John Sallis, Giuseppina Moneta, and Jacques Taminiaux (The Hague: M.
Nijhoff, 1989), 13-32. My thanks to the editors and to all the colleagues of
the Collegium over the years, especially John Sallis, Charles Scott, and Walter
Brogan. A French version of the seminar was presented in Nice in early De
cember of 1990 upon the invitation of Domique Janicaud, whose death in
August of 2002 leaves so many of us bereft. And, while it may seem odd, I
would like to express my thanks to Herman Melville, whose "The Bell
Tower" has given me so much-at the stroke of one. Someone asked me re
centlywhether I was ashamed to be a U.S.-American and I replied that I was
not-but that I was ashamed of George W. Bush because he clearly has read
relatively little Melville.
Chapter 4 was written especially for this volume. It appears in a different
form under the title" 'Das Vergangene wird gewl1flt, das Gewuflte faber} wird
erziihlt': Trauma, Forgetting, and Narrative in F. W. J. Schelling's Die Weltal
of
ter," in Philosophy and the Discourses Trauma, ed. Linda Belau and Petar Ra
madanovic, on-line in Postmodern Culture 11, no. 2 (January 2001), at
of
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmcl. Book publication in Topologies Trauma:
of
Essays on the Limit Knowledge and Memory, ed. Linda Belau and Petar Ra
madanovic (New York: Other Press, 2002), 3-31. My thanks to Linda Belau
and Petar Ramadanovic for their kind invitation to submit the chapter to
them. And my thanks to my students over the years from 1992 to 2000 at
DePaul University, where so much of the work gathered up into this book
including this chapter-was presented in graduate seminars.
Jason Wirth of Oglethorpe University asked me to contribute chapter 5,
"God's Footstool," to a forthcoming edited volume on Schelling entitled
Schelling Now, also to be published by Indiana University Press. In the present
volume it is revised and expanded. Readers interested in Schelling owe a great
deal to Jason Wirth's work as translator, commentator, and teacher. Unfor
of
tunately, his Schelling book, The Conspiracy Life (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 2003), appeared too late for me to make reference to it in
the present volume-I intend to learn from it in the future.
Chapter 6, "Brazen Wheels," written especially for this volume, was also
presented as a lecture at the conference "Elective Affinities: German Philoso
phy and Music," at the University of Wisconsin in October 2003, the pro
ceedings of which are to be published. It appears here in greatly expanded
t()rm. My thanks to Jost Hermand and Gerhard Richter for the Madison
Workshop on philosophy and music, and to Sabine Modersheim, an essential
Ill(;mber of the Wisconsin team.
"Voices of Ernpedoc1es," chapter 7, was originally a lecture course pre-
XII