Jocelyn Holland

Man as a Drunken Town-Musician

The sciences are on stage again.1 This self-referential assertion is less trivial and less timeless than it sounds. Not knowledge, but science could certainly only have existed since the Greek vowel-alphabet connected an alternating interface between the elements of letters and the elements of nature. As Jesper Svenbro has shown, what for the ionian philosophers of nature arose out of itself in fact only arose from writing. Therefore, everything which can be called science must be able to appear as text. The elements, whether Heraclitus’ or Mendeljew’s, are first given only in the sign of their names, and thus in Latin they have become ‘data.’ Yet this basic relation between knowledge and writing has been so deep-seated that it has scarcely reappeared. Almost in the same historical moment when Galileo directed all modern physics to the reading of that book which Nature was supposed to have written herself in geometric or, subsequently, algebraic signs, the modern novel and modern theater stepped in as evidence that modern readers and spectators enjoy the effects of those fictions most of all when they are altogether free of science. Not only the age of Goethe, but first and foremost the one to whom this age owes its name bears eloquent witness to that effect, despite his love for mother nature and her open secrets. Goethe claimed that the intuition of nature could only take place however as far or as much as fortunate eyes were able to intuit and to see. Still, that elementary technique of culture

Angeln, Blatt, Constellation: Plural Forms in Nietzsche's Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne

In irgend einem abgelegenen Winkel des in zahllosen Sonnensystemen flimmernd ausgegossenen Weltalls gab es einmal ein Gestirn, auf dem kluge Thiere das Erkennen erfanden. The well-known opening fable of Nietzsche’s essay Ueber Wahrheit und Luge im aussermoralischen Sinne1 emerges from a corner—a Winkel—though no particular one.2 It relies upon the multitude of points in space and moments in time, a region defined

Transplanting the Metaphysical Organ: German Romanticism between Leibniz and Marx by Leif Weatherby (review)

‘Kolonie’ und ‘Kindheit’ nachzeichnet: Die “Quasi-Demokraten” (121) der Weimarer Republik versuchten die Kinder mit neuen Werten zu kolonisieren, statt dass sie, wie Benjamin moniert, die kindliche Erfahrung als Reservoir für die einstige Neuordnung der Verhältnisse geachtet hätten. Ebenfalls der praktischen Politik widmet sich Jeanne Marie Gagnebin. Sie fragt nach der Aktualisierbarkeit von Benjamins Begriffen und Figuren für die Kritik an gegenwärtigen politischen Verhältnissen. An der Benjamin-Rezeption in Brasilien während und nach der Militärdiktatur (1964–1985) weist sie auf, welche politische Bedeutung dem Konzept des Eingedenkens im Rahmen der Erinnerungsarbeit zukommen kann. Die Figur der “Mittelbarkeit,” die Christine Blättler und Christian Voller der Beschäftigung mit Walter Benjamin als politischem Denker zugrunde legen, kann in der Praxis zu verschiedenen Arten des Umgangs führen, wie die versammelten Beiträge zeigen. Der Schwerpunkt des Bandes liegt auf den politisch-philosophischen Schriften, und so ist es in erster Linie der Kommentar—der historische, genealogische oder text-philologische—, dem sich viele der Beiträge zuwenden. Vor allem die Arbeiten von Uwe Steiner, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky und Gérard Raulet erschließen der Benjamin-Forschung komplexe historische Gedankengefüge, innerhalb derer die weitere Beschäftigung mit Benjamins Denken als politischem erfolgen kann. Davor tritt die Lektüre als anderes Verfahren des Umgangs in dem Band etwas zurück. Besonders Esther Leslie hat sich seiner in einer aufschlussreichen Studie angenommen. Zu erwähnen sind auch Wolfram Ette, Daniel Loick, Gerhard Scheit. Derart rührt der Band auch am Problem des Verhältnisses von Kommentar und Deutung, ihrer Einsätze und Aussichten. Das liegt nicht zuletzt an den Verflechtungen des Politischen in Benjamins Schriften, zu dem der Band neue und weiterführende Einsichten gibt.

Sailing Ships and Firm Ground: Archimedean Points and Platforms

It is tempting to see in the life of Archimedes an event that could serve as a foundational moment to the myth of the Archimedean point, where the promised firm point from which to move the earth is itself given a basis and physical context for exposition. As earthbound as Archimedes himself, this foundation is not celestial – not a point in the far reaches of space – but rather terrestrial in nature, located in proximity to the border of land and sea. It is the moment when Archimedes the mathematician launches a half-built ship with the aid of one of his inventions. Further details and further interpretations are open to debate. The ship in question, the Syracusan, seems to have been no ordinary one. The Deipnosophists (literally: “banquet of the learned”) by the third-century writer Athenaeus cites an epigram by Archimelus that celebrates the scale of the great ship in a poem: “Surely it equals Aetna in its height, /Or any isle which rises from the sea…Sure ‘twas the giants’ work, who hoped to reach / By such vast ladder to the heights of heaven. Its topmost mast reaches to the stars; and hides / Its mighty bulwarks ’mid the endless clouds” (Athenaeus 333). Athenaeus confirms that the Syracusan was a world unto itself, complete with baths, horse stalls, sumptuous chambers, and a court of law for the king. Even half-built, it would have been an impressive feat to transfer such a ship from dry dock to the water. Athenaeus records this as well: “And when there was a great inquiry as to the best method of launching it into the sea, Archimedes the mechanician launched it by himself with the aid of a few persons. For having prepared a helix he drew this vessel, enormous as it was, down into the sea” (Athenaeus 329). The Syracusan is a vessel whose symbolic dimensions can neither be overlooked nor overstated, given that the quintessential paradox of the Archimedean point – the hypothetical separation of part and whole – is contained within this construction. Archimedes, the Syracusan, launches the ship, the Syracusan – itself a model of the political and cultural environment in which he inhabits – into the water (again, according to legend), suggesting that a firm point is all he would need to displace the earth itself from its axis into the oceanic depths of the universe. In each case, any claim to an external position is hypothetical: the earthbound Archimedes cannot displace the globe he dwells upon, and the Syracusan who displaces the Syracusan is, redundant as it sounds, still in Syracuse.