Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Philosophica. Ethica-Aesthetica-Practica
Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Philosophica. Ethica-Aesthetica-Practica is an academic journal dedicated to practical philosophy, philosophy of culture and broadly conceived axiology. Its purpose is to support theoretical reflection and philosophical debate concerning critical issues of contemporary social and public life. The journal publishes articles which explore moral, aesthetic, and legal aspects of contemporary culture and society, as well as more theoretically and historically oriented research into practical philosophy and aesthetics. The journal aims to provide space for a confrontation of different perspectives from which the same or similar issues are perceived by representatives of different fields of knowledge, including philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, political and legal sciences as well as economy, medicine or religious or cultural studies.
The Beginnings of the Transformation of the Aesthetic Experience of Art at the Turn of the 20th and 21st Centuries
What is the experience of the digital revolution? We experience being in an expanded space of contact, AR and VR. The development of genetics, the possibility of interfering with the DNA of the organism has influenced works in the field of bio art. Man has excluded technological creations from the scope of nature, distinguishing part of his specificity as so different that he needs acceptance of his own activity. The experience of art is a certain shared manifestation of being, intersubjective, specific to man. Part of this experience is related to the specific time of creation and reception of a given creation. An attempt to capture the current change in experience, a certain atmosphere shared by the latest changes in art, using pioneering tools of science, is not only a possibility to answer the question about the current identity of the contemporary recipient, participant of the network. It is a search for a common direction of future works of art, technological inventions, imagining and building an environment that responds to the current need of art, to what kind of being we want to design for ourselves.
Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
From Hal 9000 to neo-Luddism. Who’s Afraid of Technology? Reflections on the Category of Experience
The article analyzes the phenomenon of technological anxiety, which is an inseparable element of the 4th Industrial Revolution, and its reverse. At the level of the individual, technological challenges open up, intensified by the excess of stimuli caused by information overload. In this context, the concept of the 4th Industrial Revolution proposed in 2016 by Klaus Schwab is juxtaposed with theoretical proposals such as Neil Postman’s “Technopol”, the reflections of James Ellul, or the radical manifesto of eco-terrorist Ted Kaczyński, concerning the future of industrial society. The article also attempts to define and indicate the sources of technological anxiety, from the feeling of uncertainty, dependence, exclusion, to the loss of control over the world and man himself. The frame is a reference to the text of culture in the form of the figure of the Hal 9000 computer from Stanley Kubrick’s film as a machine making decisions about human life and to the contemporary phenomenon of neo-Luddism inspired by the 19th movement of opponents of the development of technology. Methodologically, the article is based on the subject's literature and the analysis of popular culture texts. It also uses exemplification from the area of contemporary art, reaching for the category of artistic research.
Demystification of the Cloud as Invisible Technology: Aesthetic, Spatial and Affective Aspects in Art and Critical Infrastructure Studies
The article examines the topic of the technological Cloud as one of the features of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It focuses on the Cloud’s ambivalences, discussing its various aesthetic, spatial and affective aspects. The methods for approaching the phenomenon of the Cloud are developed both in theory, in the disciplines of critical infrastructure (CI) studies and art studies as well as in visual arts practice. The main theoretical stances, from which the article draws on, are developed by Benjamin H. Bratton, James Bridle and Tung-Hui Hu. The article also briefly outlines the history of CI studies with its main areas of research (e.g data centre studies) and examples from the field of art. The issues addressed in the article include: the invisibility and inaccessibility of the Cloud (as a networked hyperobject and as a technological infrastructure), the architecture of data centres and the ambiguous relation that Cloud establishes with its users, as well as ecological concerns. The Cloud as invisible technology is discussed from many perspectives, from the one that supports its development straightforwardly, to those which attempt to demystify its seemingly immaterial image and indicate critically its relations with extractivism as well as suggest proposals of resistance.
When Machine and Human Meet. Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
This article touches on the issue of human-technology relations in the age of artificial intelligence. It poses questions about the changes that have taken place in the field of art under the influence of advanced machine learning systems. The last decade of AI’s successes enforces the need to rethink the aesthetic categories, including an attempt to redefine the place and role of the artist in a technologically determined reality. The cited historical examples of aesthetic reflection accompanying computer art of the 1960s largely anticipated the changes taking place today, while also serving an important metacritical function. Today’s critical AI art can play a key role in raising awareness of the processes taking place and uncovering the workings of artificial intelligence algorithms, which are often locked in black boxes and their operations and assumptions inaccessible to human understanding.
The Process of Virtualizing Public Art: QR Graffiti, Art in Augmented Reality in Public Space, and Graffiti Created in VR
The virtualization of public art, which I approach as art in public space, street art, and graffiti, can be viewed from one side as its medialization, that is, a mediation of reception through media images functioning online. This process makes our experience of these art forms virtual in terms of their potentiality. On the other hand, the virtualization of public art can be approached as a process of gradually transferring it into the virtual space. In this second case, virtual space constitutes, if not the foundation, then at least an equal element of artistic realizations. These realizations are increasingly manifesting themselves primarily in a digital form, although each time in a physical space, which gradually loses its significance, undergoing hybridization. The process of virtualizing public art is illustrated by referring to examples of graffiti made in the form of stencils with artistic QR codes. Then, I point out artistic projects that explore the city by searching for contemporary art objects in the form of augmented reality, located in selected and marked areas on a map. As the final examples, I mention the work of Kenyan artists who create and promote the creation of graffiti in virtual space.
Aesthetic Experience in the Times of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Introduction
“Beautiful – do not touch” – this phrase, appearing in a seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis, is one of the ways in which Jacques Lacan describes the operation in the human psyche of the phantasm principle. It is a construct that I will try to introduce the reader to in this article, describing the direct impact of beauty and the transgression of its principle through the lens of clinical experience. My goal in taking up this “beautiful – do not touch” formula is to show how a concept usually associated with aesthetics has non-obvious but important clinical implications, and even defines a certain ethic of the subject towards sexuality. Another important aspect of this study is the juxtaposition of the problem of beauty with the question of femininity. And not only the one played out through the image, but especially the one that goes beyond representation in the feminine modality of pleasure.
This text is the first Polish translation of Joan Riviere’s renowned article Womanliness as a Masquerade, first published in 1929 in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. The title of the work refers to the dreams of a patient whose story Riviere recounts in the article. In her dreams, figures appear wearing masks to avoid disaster and harm. The titular “womanliness,” according to Riviere, is akin to such a mask—adopted to conceal masculinity and prevent retribution should its presence be revealed. Riviere posits that women desiring masculinity might don a “mask of womanliness” to evade anxiety and potential punishment from men. The text is particularly significant as it blurs the boundary between what could be considered authentic womanliness and masquerade. Riviere further argues that both masquerade and womanliness serve as defensive mechanisms to protect against anxiety and should not be seen as primary forms of sexual enjoyment. This work has resonated profoundly within psychoanalytic and philosophical circles. It influenced Jacques Lacan—both in his early and later teachings—regarding femininity and its connections to castration and the phallus. Sixty years after its publication, the article became a cornerstone of third-wave feminist thought, inspiring scholars like Judith Butler and her poststructuralist perspective on gender performativity. Today, the text continues to be a critical reference not only in feminist, queer, and gender studies but also for philosophical and psychoanalytic inquiries. Thinkers like Alenka Zupančič, exploring the philosophical dimensions of sex, frequently draw upon Riviere's analyses, even when critically engaging with them.
The Leftovers Manifesto – About the Viability of Friedensreich Hundertwasser's Ideas
Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s architecture sparks controversy and stirs emotions. For tourists and residents, it is an attraction that elicits enthusiasm, while specialists often regard it as a curiosity. His aesthetic elements – kitsch, camp, bricolage, DIY, and ecology – appeal to contemporary users and motivate their creativity. An extraordinary example is a community of homeless people in Jaworzno (Poland), who revitalized an old, over-century-old building gifted by the city authorities and are renovating another in Hundertwasser's style. Their fascination with Hundertwasser stems not just from admiration for his buildings but from his ideas in numerous manifestos. A deeper reading of his texts and personal experience of his art allowed amateurs to identify with his pro-environmental and pro-social views, actualizing them in place-making activities. This community’s efforts reflect the vitality of Hundertwasser’s aesthetics and architectural theory, encouraging creativity and action as part of the broader DIY culture.
“Female Gaze” in the Series Women’s Tales – between Branding Strategy and Feminist Self-reflection
The text is concerned with the analysis of the Women’s Tales series of short films in terms of their representativeness for the theory of the “female gaze.” The starting point for the discussion is the problem of companies’ involvement in the movement for gender equality and in the cultural industry solely for marketing purposes, which leads to brands' consumption of feminist discourse and the symbolic capital of the invited authors, with negligible significance of the projects for art and society. Therefore, the central question of the article is to what extent the initiative of the fashion house Miu Miu, which aims to support women in the film industry, uses the poetics of “female gaze” and enables its development and dissemination. The first part of the text – theoretical – discusses the concept of the “female gaze” and, based on four conceptions of “female gaze,” defines its characteristics. The second part – analytical – consists of a compre­hensive analysis of films from the Women’s Tales series, which are divided into four categories according to the dominant determinant of the “female gaze.” The inspection of the shorts enables them to be linked to various aspects of the “female gaze,” confirming the feminist dimension of the series and its critical approach to visual fetishism. Nevertheless, the Miu Miu project itself and the works produced within its framework, due to institutional conditions, have limited impact on mainstream art and remain the preserve of elite culture.
Joan Riviere: The Woman behind the Masquerade
Joan Riviere, a British psychoanalyst, is best known for her concept of femininity as masquerade, which gained recognition in feminist and philosophical circles through Judith Butler and her Gender Trouble. This paper analyzes Riviere’s life and work in the context of tensions between psychoanalysis, philosophy, and feminism. In part (I), I discuss why the relationship between these fields is not unproblematic. Part (II) focuses on Riviere’s biography, showing how various narratives – by Anna Verrall (Riviere’s mother), Ernest Jones, Sigmund Freud, and her collaborators – shape her image. The most interesting thread is Riviere's absence from discourse, the lack of reference to her, despite her significant contribution to psychoanalysis. While her concept appears in works at the intersection of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and feminism, her figure remains incomplete and elusive. More important than her image are the concrete actions she took, which had a real impact on the development of psychoanalysis. This paper, introducing Polish readers to Riviere’s figure, contributes to a deeper reflection on her contribution to the history of psychoanalysis and feminism.
Main Threads of the Psychoanalytic Debate Accompanying the Creation of Joan Riviere's "Femininity as a Masquerade"
The article serves as an introduction to Joan Riviere’s text Womanliness as a Masquerade (1929), aiming to prepare the reader for its study and analysis. It presents key concepts of debate within the early psychoanalytic movement. They constitute the theoretical background for Riviere’s interpretations of clinical cases. The article discusses Sigmund Freud's concepts of the Oedipus complex and castration, Sándor Ferenczi’s division of homosexuality into subject-centered and object-centered homoeroticism, Ernest Jones’s notion of aphanisis and his classification of two types of homosexual women. It also addresses Melanie Klein’s shift of the onset of the Oedipus complex to the pre-genital stage and her perspective on the formation of the superego. The analysis emphasizes how these theoretical threads are crucial for understanding the mechanism of womanliness as a masquerade, which, in Riviere’s interpretation, functions as a defence against anxiety. Furthermore, the article highlights the risk of obscuring the original clinical contexts of psychoanalysis in later feminist and philosophical adaptations of the concept of “masquerade.”
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Value Ethics, Moral Education and Ethical Education
The teaching of ethics in school is considered important and necessary. But can ethics be taught? And should its teaching consist in conveying knowledge about ethical concepts, possibly a discussion around them, or rather in shaping students’ moral attitudes and appropriate behaviour? The article engages in reflection on these problems with reference to various traditions of ethical thought and moral theory. It proposes to take the contemporary renewed Aristotelian virtue ethics as the main point of reference and basis for educational practice. The concept of phronesis as practical rationality, allowing the formation of moral judgements that are both context-sensitive and take into account the complexity of interests and goods that are difficult to agree upon, seems to be a still valid model for moral education. Teaching and discussion oriented towards the consideration of concrete cases and stories, i.e. training the skills of this type of judgement, avoids the dangers of learning focused on theoretical issues: becoming entangled in definitional ambiguities in defining moral values, or thinking detached from emotion and experience. Learning that consists of analysing a philosophical tradition runs the risk that the knowledge imparted will prove inadequate to the age and level of personal development of the student, generating moral subjectivism and relativistic scepticism. However, this argument is not directed against theorising and the introduction of abstract considerations in the educational process, even at the earliest stages: theorising and the construction of rational justifications are necessary but should result from the inspiration and development of intellectual predispositions, not from the transmission of ready-made knowledge.
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Teaching Methods in Ethical Education in the Netherlands
The article presents the position of ethics in school education programmes in the Netherlands and the goals and the practice of teaching it. The article discusses the results of research conducted in Dutch schools, aimed at examining which teaching methods are best for developing students’ knowledge and skills. It is also important to determine which model of interaction between students and teachers is the most beneficial one? The study used forms of teaching based on the scaffolding technique. It is based on collective development of problems and philosophical discussion by organizing questions, searching for alternative answers and providing diverse examples. Observations gathered in research confirm the good effectiveness of this method, especially when the reasoning process is clearly structured, the structure of wrongly formulated questions is corrected and metaconcepts appear. A comparative analysis of selected lessons allows me to conclude that the choice of teaching form has a decisive impact on the level of students’ involvement and, consequently, on the development of their skills. The active participation of the teacher as a coordinator of the discussion, initiating the dialogue and giving it a logically clear structure is also important. For this reason, it is important that teachers conducting classes have proper philosophical and methodological background.
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Ethics as a Subject of School Teaching in Poland
The article presents partial results of nationwide research devoted to teaching ethics. It discusses the place of ethics in the Polish education system and the development trends visible since its introduction (1991). When it comes to legislature, acts and ordinances of the Minister of National Education were analyzed. Next to legal acts also judgments of the Constitutional Tribunal, regulating the principles of teaching and assessing the subject of ethics, were discussed. An important aspect of these regulations, due to their practical consequences, is the positioning of ethics as an alternative to the religious education. Statistical data were also analyzed, allowing for a nationwide assessment of the development of interest in the ethics as a subject of school teaching – an increase in the number of schools in which the subject of ethics is taught (depending on the stage of education and the type of school), as well as an increase in the number of full-time equivalent for ethics teachers. The last-mentioned increase, although significant since 2014, is nevertheless small in absolute numbers; ethics still remains a niche subject. Over the years, one can observe an improvement in its status and an increase in social demand. However, the current definition of ethics as an optional subject means that the level of participation still remains low.
Citizenship as a Form of Ethics Education in the United Kingdom
In my article, I present the historical origins of the introduction of the subject of Citizenship in 2002 to British schools in the state sector, discuss its assumptions and present a translation of its syllabus. I also want to show that the subject of Citizenship is a form of ethical education. In the liberal English tradition, the state avoided influencing axiological decisions in the area of education, hence showing initiative in the sphere of ethical education is a significant fact. In the first part of the article, referring to the history of state education in Great Britain, I reconstruct the historical context in which I situate the introduction of the subject of Citizenship. In the second part, I point out the immediate circumstances of the introduction of the new subject by the Labour Party. In the third part, I examine the theoretical foundations of the Citizenship curriculum as presented in a document known as the „Crick Report”, published in 1998.
Civic Education and the Place of Religion at School Observations from the Perspective of Experiences in Spain
The article presents the contemporary situation of teaching ethics in secondary schools in Spain. It highlights the historical and systemic contexts related to the introduction of this subject into the curriculum in the 1980s, as well as its position in the curriculum as an alternative to religious education. It also diagnoses problems and deficits resulting from multiple legislative changes, inconsistent and instrumental treatment of this subject by legislators and its still visible undervaluation in the Spanish education system. Finally, it proposes a number of practical solutions related to the methodology of teaching ethics and the role that a teacher can play in the education process. These suggestions are an attempt to respond to the assumptions formulated by law regarding the objectives of teaching the subject “Ethical Values”, and above all, they emphasize the close connection of ethics with the development of civic attitudes, practical development of critical thinking skills, responsibility, and autonomy.
What Role should Emotional Education Play in Moral Education?
The article provides arguments for including social-emotional education in moral education. The first part of the article presents an analysis of the concept of “emotional intelligence”, considering the history of its creation and the methodological difficulties with which this concept is burdened. In the second part of the article, the expectations that can be placed on emotional education classes are formulated. The starting point is empirical research that examined the effectiveness of past attempts to provide emotional education to adolescents and adults. The last part of the article discusses the assumptions of the pedagogical movement that emerged in the 1990s, which calls for conducting classes in the field of so-called “character education”. Furthermore, experiences from social-emotional learning (SEL) classes developed by the University of Illinois are discussed. The text also briefly takes into account Spain's first experiences in the field of emotional education.
Etyka w szkole – od religii do edukacji etycznej i obywatelskiej
The Problem of Freedom and Evil in Kant’s Thought (Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone) and Schelling’s (Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom)
The aim of the article is to show the influence of Kant’s concept of freedom and evil on Schelling’s thought presented in his so-called writing on freedom. In the first part, I show the difficulties with explaining evil as a moral category within the framework of Kant's conception of freedom as rational autonomy, which is presented in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and in Critique of Practical Reason: Kant identifies freedom with obedience to moral law and in this manner he is not able to lay the foundations for making a choice between good and evil, nor the personal and individual nature of freedom of man as a sensual-rational totality. Then I show the unsatisfactory attempt to solve them in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, in which he takes up the issue of the possibility of evil as an act of freedom within the framework of the theory of maxims: Kant is not able to define the status of the propensity for evil as the extra-empirical basis for evil nor its generality. In the second part, I show Schelling’s original concept of freedom, in which he exhibits the individual and personal nature of freedom. This concept allowed him to make an attempt to solve the problem of evil taken over from Kant.
Hermes-Mercury an Ancient Allegory of Modern Łódź and an Undiscovered Patron of the City’s Sustainable Development
From the mid-nineteenth century, in industrial cities of the West, numerous architectural details appeared, exposing the figure and attributes of Hermes-Mercury, the Greek god of trade, merchants and thieves, traveller of travelers, messenger of gods and psychopompos, ruler of writing and communication, money and all measures. In Alexandrian syncretism, Hermes appears as the prophet Trismegistus, guardian of secret knowledge. As a philosophical Mercury, Hermes patronizes alchemical changes and, together with other secrets of royal art and esoteric knowledge, contributes to the masonic traditions. In modern times, Hermes has become the patron of industry, an ancient icon of modernity and capitalism, and so he became the hero of the graphics decorating the diplomas of world exhibitions, bookkeeping certificates, and labels of goods. The alchemical mercury, an intriguing personification of modernity perceived as fluid and ephemeral, brings with it the collapse of great narratives based on transcendence, which is expressed in the replacement of the symbol in the universe of Western culture by allegory. Meanwhile, the departure from allegory towards the posthuman vision of the city and the world allows us to see in Hermes’ semantic heritage the potential of sustainable development, free from metaphysics, the simplest emblem of which is the caduceus.
On the Difficulties in the Reception of Schelling – Remarks on the Margins of the Works of Ryszard Panasiuk
This article addresses two major issues. First, the reception of Schelling’s philosophy in Poland after World War II. Second, how Schelling’s philosophical abstractions should be understood. The contextual understanding of philosophy relied on by Ryszard Panasiuk in his research was taken as the basis for interpretation. The structure of the article is derived from these two basic assumptions: the first part – German Idealism in the Context of Marxist-Leninist Ideology – deals with the way in which Marxist-Leninist ideology, starting from a class-dialectical and “party” understanding of philosophy, regarded philosophical Idealism as the enemy. The point of reference will be Georg Lukács’ concept of “Die Zerstörung der Vernunft” and the interpretation of Schelling’s philosophy as Irrationalism. Part Two – The Origins of Schelling Research – deals with the problem of why research on Schelling and Idealism ceased after World War II. And consecutively, under what conditions and when the first monographic studies appeared. The third part – How to understand nature? – is a historical-critical and contextual interpretation of Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature. Schelling’s philosophy can be understood as a new anthropology, integrally linking Man and Nature. In this sense, it is the antithesis of rationalist reductionism.
The Problem of Secularity of the State and the Challenges of Modernity. On the Fringes of Religion and State Neutrality by Ryszard Panasiuk
The reference point of my text is Panasiuk’s essay devoted to the idea of secularity of the state, which I treat as a component of modernity. In the context of the crisis caused by the development of modernity, I pose the question of the possibility of preventive measures. I maintain that their effectiveness depends on whether it is possible to look at the current situation from the perspective of externality (transgression), to which worldviews that are often in conflict with each other refer. I argue that a secular state provides an opportunity for a fruitful dialogue between these worldviews by creating an opportunity for the implementation of preventive action.
Jürgen Habermas' Ethics of the Species as a Proposal for Regulating Biotechnological Progress
Jürgen Habermas argues that under conditions of liberal eugenics, the self-understanding of the species may change. Therefore, it is necessary to establish regulations that would control the development of new biotechnological methods. This must be done in order to preserve the basis of universalistic morality, which allows individuals to regulate their conflicts in a fair manner. According to Habermas, the self-understanding of the species we had until now assumes that individuals understand themselves as autonomous and equal. Such self-understanding is not possible when one individual determines the genetic characteristics of another. Jürgen Habermas proposes to regulate the development of biotechnology according to the ethics of the species, which is a reconstruction of the conditions of self-understanding we already have. The ethics of the species assumes that individuals should understand that their genetic traits have been formed naturally. Nevertheless, the ethics of the species does not prejudge the use of genetic manipulations for therapeutic purposes, for which, according to Habermas, the permission of future individuals can be assumed without affecting their self-understanding.
An Intellectual Will not Feed on Barren Ideas… Professor Ryszard Panasiuk on his Academic Career, the Warsaw School of the History of Ideas, and the Marxist Utopia
Professor Ryszard Panasiuk has been one of the leading Polish philosophers for the last few decades. His books on Hegel, the Young Hegelian movement and Marx belong in the history of ideas canon. This extensive interview with the Professor published here may be a valuable and original source in the history of the intelligentsia and humanities in “People’s Poland”. Professor Panasiuk narrates about his academic career, at the same time drawing a picture of the general changes in the academic philosophy in postwar Poland. He also devotes much attention to his relationship with Bronisław Baczko and other outstanding representatives of the famous Warsaw School of the History of Ideas. Moreover, the Professor examines the history of dissenting tendencies within Polish Marxism after October ’56 and explains the final decay of post-Stalinist orthodoxy in Polish intellectual life of that period. Marx constitutes an important, still worth studying, chapter in the history of European philosophy, but, as Professor Panasiuk argues, because of its concept of “radical community”, Marxism is essentially a utopian ideology.
Sztuka cierpienia w dramacie życia według Nietzschego. Preludium dionizyjskie
In der Zeit als die brüchige Existenz Nietzsches sich dem Ende neigte, entscheidet er sich für eine Retrospektion seines Lebens. Obwohl es ein endloses Ringen mit der Krankheit und Leiden war, Nietzsche bewertet es positiv, ja sogar drückt dafür seine Dankbarkeit aus, daß er sich besser kennenlernte und sein Potential vervollkommen konnte. Empfundenes Leid solidarisiert ihn mit Dionysos, der Schmerz der Zergliederung erfahren hat, aber auch Freude an vielmaliger Geburt zu neuem Leben. Dieselbe Freude ewigen Daseins sieht er beim Christus nicht und Christentum ist für ihn nur ein Ausdruck des Widespruchs gegenüber der Grundlage des Lebens. Nietzsches antichristliche Philosophie zeigt im Symbol des Dionysos eine unbedingte Liebe zum Leben mit allem, was es mit sich bringt. Formel amor fati ist ein Ausdruck schöpferischen Selbstverständnises eines Menschen, dank welchem die einzelne Existenz seinen eigentlichen Sinn aufnimmt.
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Metafora i interpretacja u Nietzschego. "Nietzsche et la métaphore" Sarah Kofman
L'article analyse l'interprétation deconstructive de la pensée de F. Nietzsche, qui a été presentée par Sarah Kofman sous l'influence de Jacques Derrida et à la base de sa critique de la tradition logocentrique. Kofman discerne deux périodes dans l'evolution de la philosophie de Nietzsche. Dans la premier Nietzsche part de la notion de la métaphore, qui detruit la possibilité du langage rationelle et objectif, mais qui se rapport symboliquement à l'essence dionysiaque du monde. Dans la seconde Nietzsche développe la notion de l'interprétation: la volonté de puissance n'est que l'interprétation, "la hypothèse interprétative" qui fonde la possibilité de l'interprétation en général. À la fin de l'article j'analyse les difficultés concernant l'interprétation presentée par Kofman.
Nietzsche – extreme philosophy of language?
The coherence of the Nietzschean conception of language is discussed in the article. First, Nietzsche's critique of the referential semantics and the correspondence theory of truth implied by the so-called "tropological" linguistic theory as well as the doctrine of perspectivism is questioned. Consequently, the core of the argumentation is to reveal the naturalistic and metaphysical assumptions of Nietzsche's strict relativistic philosophy of language and interpretation. The conclusiveness of the Nietzschean deconstruction of metaphysics as a pure language creation seems to be doubtful with regard to his construction of the 'will-to-power metaphysics'. Moreover, the reception of the Nietzsche’s philosophy as deconstructivistic after the II World War has to be revised while confronted with his hermeneutical philology. Finally, the status of the Nietzschean affirmation of reality as a play of interpretations in accordance with Paul de Man can be recognized as purely rhetorical.
Das Thema "Nietzsche und die Romantik" stellt eine unerschöpfliche Forschungsquelle und dabei ein mehrdimensionales, hermeneutisches Problem in der Literatur- und Philosophiegeschichte dar. Als erster nahm Karl Joël in seiner 1905 erschienenen Monographie "Nietzsche und die Romantik" die Frage der geistigen Verwandtschaft Nietzsches mit romantischen Autoren und der Verwurzelung seiner Philosophie in dem romantischen Komplex unter die Lupe. Aufschlussreiche Forschungsergebnisse lieferten darüber hinaus die Arbeiten von Ernst Behler, Linda Duncan, Ingrid Hennemann Barale, Steffen Dietzsch, Norbert Langer und Dirk von Petersdorff. Insgesamt gehen die Meinungen der Forscher über Nietzsches Verhältnis zur Romantik auseinander. Die einen lehnen entschieden die These, Nietzsche sei der Fortsetzer der romantischen Linie, ab. Die anderen dagegen betonen die weltanschaulichen Ähnlichkeiten in der Denkweise des deutschen Philosophen und der Jenaer Romantiker und halten Nietzsche für den wichtigsten Entdecker der romantischen Motive. Es unterliegt keinem Zweifel, dass Nietzsches Beziehung zur Romantik durch Ambivalenz gekennzeichnet ist. Man muss aber in seinem Falle zwischen den verschiedenen Gestalten und Phasen der Romantik unterscheiden. Mit Sicherheit tritt er gegen die Romantik als die schmerzen- und leidensmildernde Erscheinung auf, die mit "Hunger" und nicht "Überfluss" zu assoziieren ist. Die romantische Kunst als "stimulans des Lebens" wird dann der dionysischen gegenübergestellt, die das Leben bejaht und das Tragische am Leben erscheinen lässt. Die negative Einschätzung der Romantik verbindet sich hier vor allem mit der Kritik an Wagner und Schopenhauer, also den absoluten Meistern aus der Frühphase im Schaffen Nietzsches. Einen anderen Bezugspunkt bietet aber die unterschwellige, geistige Verwandtschaft Nietzsches mit den Schöpfern der Frühromantik, worauf bereits Ernst Behler hingewiesen hat. Die Periodisierung und Differenzierung der Romantik lag zu Lebzeiten Nietzsches nicht vor. Es bleibt auch eine offene Frage, inwieweit der Autor des "Zarathustra" mit den Werken der Jenaer Romantiker vertraut war. Seine Novalis-Lektüre ist zwar dokumentiert, die ästhetischen Vorlesungen von August Wilhelm Schlegel sollen ihm bekannt gewesen sein, aber die eventuelle Friedrich-Schlegel-Lektüre kann durchaus in Frage gestellt werden. Empirische Befunde können somit nicht als ein Ausgangspunkt für die Bearbeitung der Parallelen im Werk Nietzsches und der Jenaer Romantiker dienen. Den Schwerpunkt soll man auf die geistig verwandte ästhetische Weltwahrnehmung und die aktive Form des Denkens legen, das von der widersprüchlichen Struktur des Seins ausgeht. Die Hauptidee gründet sich auf die zerstörerisch-schöpferische, und dadurch ironische, Konzeption des Lebens, die an das Postulat der Poetisierung und Revolutionisierung der Welt, das in-Frage-stellen der Wahrheit und die dynamische, perspektivistische Weltauffassung gebunden ist. Zu den wichtigsten Begriffen der frühromantischen Ästhetik gehören: Poesie, Ironie, Witz, Humor, Fantasie; Nietzsche führt die Kategorie der Kunst, des Dionysischen, des Tragischen und des Übermenschen ein. In beiden Fällen handelt es sich um die Überzeugung, dass die Welt sich ständig in Bewegung, im Prozess des Schaffens befindet. Friedrich Nietzsche gehört zu der sogenannten ironischen Literatur, die Frühromantiker angefangen haben und die im 20. Jahrhundert von solchen Schriftstellern wie Thomas Mann, Walter Benjamin oder Ernst Jünger fortgesetzt wird.