The way of the world
Subtitle: a Festschrift for R. H. Stephenson
By: edited by Paul Bishop
Contributors: Stephenson, R. H. (Roger H.)
Series: Cultural studies and the symbolic -- volume 4; Cultural studies and the symbolic -- 4.
Publisher: Maney Publishing
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Leeds, UK
Language: eng
Number of pages: 154
ISBN-13: 9781906540951
Subjects: German literature; History and criticism
Description: "We turn our attention to the 'world', in the sense in which Nietzsche (in 'The Gay Science', [sec.]108) contrasts 'the astral order in which we live' as opposed to 'the total character of the world' which is, he tells us, 'in all eternity - chaos'. For Cassirer, the function of the symbol was to give form and thus, ultimately, to give birth to the world; as he puts it in volume 1 of 'The Philosophy of Symbolic forms', we must seek to understand how, in 'the function of linguistic thinking, the function of mythical and religious thinking, and the function of artistic perception', we attain 'an entirely determinate formulation, not exactly of the world, but rather making for the world' - 'eine ganz bestimmte Gestaltung nicht sowohl der Welt, als vielmehr eine Gestaltung zur Welt'. And yet the world has, as the title of a famous Restoration comedy puts it, its 'ways'; after they have created it, e ven the symbol forms inhabit a specific politico-cultural context. To put it another way: how does one negotiate the 'symbolic forms' and the bureaucratic world of application forms? The volume is offered as a Festschrift for Roger Stephenson, who recently retired from the William Jacks Chair of Modern Languages (German) at the University of Glasgow. It consists of a collection of essays reflecting his interests in various aspects of modern German and European literature, and [in] particular his engagement with Weimar classicism, the so-called 'Meisterdenker' tradition of ideas, and his commitment to close reading - illuminated by theory - within a broad cultural context"--Publisher's description,  back cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.

"A list of the publications and papers given by R. H. Stephenson": p. [137]-152.
Table of contents: title: Introduction / Paul Bishop; title: R. H. Stephenson : an appreciation; title: I. Goethe and Goethezeit, Nietzsche and modernity. On Lessing's life and works : biographical reflections / H. B. Nisbet ; Schiller, Humboldt and the welfare state / T.J. Reed ; Symbolization and hierarchization : reflections on two early Goethe poems / Martin Swales ; Women's lives after divorce in the European novel around 1800 / Karl Leydecker ; Transference of art, transference of violence  : on Nietzsche's 'eccentricity' / Barbara Naumann; title: II. Cassirer, symbolic forms, analytical psychology. Cassirer and Jung on mythology, imagination, and the symbol / Paul Bishop ; Symbolism and 'Basisphänomene' / John Michael Krois ; Work and technology in Ernst Cassirer : or, The rehabilitation of instrumental reason / Birgit Recki ; Constructing the world in symbols : Aby M. Warburg and Ernst Cassirer on imagery / Isabella Woldt.