NEH SUMMER INSTITUTE FOR COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY TEACHERS
COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY, June 25-August 3, 2001
NATURE, ART, AND POLITICS AFTER KANT:
REEVALUATING EARLY GERMAN ROMANTICISM
Co-Directors: Jane Kneller (Colorado State) and Karl Ameriks (Notre Dame)
The original description of the Institute included a general remark on background reading which is reprinted below ( A ). It was meant to cast something of a broad (but by no means exhaustive) net, so that participants could be reminded of a range of material from which they might begin to select items that seem especially valuable for their own perspectives.
We are now providing a shorter general core biography ( B ) that corresponds to what we recommend for all participants to consider reading before or during the Institute.
In addition, following the latest suggestions of the visiting speakers, we are adding a more detailed weekly schedule of readings ( C ), with an almost complete list of the core items for each week as well as a list of directly relevant background material.
We hope that you will also bring along lists that you might have of relevant readings and syllabi. In addition to the sessions directed by visiting speakers, there will be breakout sessions to discuss texts related to the speakers' work, before and during their visits, and also to present and discuss work by the participants. To prevent an overload, we will try to work out together various ways of subdividing the group (for meetings beyond the 'plenary' sessions of the speakers) so that participants can follow their own interests most effectively.
Obviously, not everyone can read everything on these lists, but they are meant to give at least a sense of what is most directly relevant.
A GENERAL BACKGROUND
A list of appropriate background reading for the Institute would include books such as:
P. Lacoue-Labarthe and J.L. Nancy, The Literary Absolute: The
Theory of Literature in German Romanticism (SUNY, 1988)
Theodore
Ziolkowski, The Institutions
of German Romanticism (Princeton, 1990)
Ernst Behler, German Romantic Literary
Theory (Cambridge, 1993)
& Frederick Beiser, The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (Cambridge 1996)
Jochen Schulte-Sasse, Theory as
Practice: A Critical Anthology of Early German Romantic Writings
(Minnesota, 1997)
& Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Art of the Modern Age (Princeton, 2000)
& Manfred Frank, 'Unendliche Annäherung': Die Anfänge der philosophischen Frühromantik (Suhrkamp, 1997, trans. forthcoming)
Andrew Bowie, From Romanticism to
Critical Theory: The Philosophy of German Literary Theory (Routledge,
2000)
There are many other important recent books that approach Romanticism from a broader perspective (e.g., by Berlin, Eagleton, Eldridge, Larmore, Rosen, Todorov). In English, an overview of many topics central to the period can be found in three recent books edited by the co-directors of the Institute:
& Autonomy and Community: Readings in Contemporary Kantian Social Theory, J. Kneller and S. Axinn (1998)
The Modern Subject: Conceptions of the
Self in Classical German Philosophy, K. Ameriks and D. Sturma (1995)
The Cambridge Companion to German
Idealism, K. Ameriks (2000)
B GENERAL CORE LIST
Primary:
& Kant: Critique of Judgment
& Schulte-Sasse: Anthology, esp."Earliest Program for a System of German Idealism," (pp. 72-3) and about 250 pages of excerpts from Novalis and Fr. Schlegel
& Beiser: Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (overlaps slightly with Schulte-Sasse)
& A. L. Willson: German Romantic Criticism (Continuum, 1982), includes selections from Jean Paul, Schleiermacher, Novalis, F. and A. Schlegel, W. von Humboldt, Görres, Kleist, Hölderlin, Grimm
Secondary:
& Behler: German Romantic Literary Theory
C WEEKLY SCHEDULE
u
Jane Kneller: June 26
Topic: Kant's Aesthetics and Romanticism
Core: Kant, Critique of Judgment
Background:
"Kant, Novalis, and Romanticism"
Hannah Ginsborg: June 28, 29
Topic: Kant and the Problem of Purposiveness
Core:
Kant, Critique of Judgment: First and second introductions
Analytic of the Beautiful; Deduction of Taste, sections 30-43
Critique of Teleological Judgment up to section 82
(Sections of special importance for my topics are sections IX and X of the First Introduction, section 10 of the Analytic of the Beautiful, and sections 61, 64 and 65 of the Critique of Teleological Judgment …)
Background:
"Kant on Aesthetic and Biological Purposiveness," in A. Reath, Reclaiming the History of Ethics
"Kant on Understanding Organisms as Natural Purposes," in E. Watkins, ed. Kant and the Sciences
v
Frederick Beiser: July 2, 3
Topic: The Romantic Conception of Nature: Hölderlin and Novalis
Core:
"The
Earliest System Program of German Idealism"
Background: German Idealism (in press)
Robert J. Richards: July 5
Topic: Goethe and the Erotic Authority of Nature
Core: (July 5)
From Goethe, Scientific Studies:
"Toward a General Comparative Theory"
"The Content Prefaced"
"Excerpt from Outline for a General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing with Osteology.”
Robert J. Richards: July 6
Topic: Goethe and Schelling on the Metaphysics of Nature
Core: (July 6)
From Goethe, Scientific Studies:
"A Study Based on Spinoza"
"The Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject"
"Fortunate Encounter"
"The Influence of Modern Philosophy"
"Judgment through Intuitive Perception"
Schelling,
From Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature:
"Preface to First Edition"
"Preface to Second Edition"
"Introduction"
"Supplement to Introduction."
Background:
“The Erotic Authority of Nature: Science, Art, and the Female during Goethe's Italian Journey," in Daston and Vidal The Moral Authority of Nature, (Chicago: forthcoming, 2001)
"Nature is the Poetry of Mind, or How Schelling Solved Goethe's Kantian Problems," in Friedman and Nordman, Kant and the Exact Sciences, (MIT Press, forthcoming, 2001)
Sources:
Goethe, Italian Journey (Penguin edition): pp179-95; 223-27; 258-60; 309-12
Selected Poems (vol. 1 of Princeton and Suhrkamp edition of Goethe's Works): pp. 106-107
Scientific Studies (vol. 12): pp. 53-6; 67-9; 117-26
Scientific Studies: pp. 8-10, 11-17, 18-21, 28-30, 31-2
Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (Cambridge edition) pp. 3-55
w
Theodore Ziolkowski: July 9, 10
Topic:
The Romantic Idea of Europe; Schlegel's Lucinde and Schleiermacher's On Religion in Counterpoint
Core:
Background: The Institutions of German Romanticism, Das Wunderjahr in Jena 1794/5
Karl Ameriks: July 11
Topic: The Critique of Romanticism
Core: Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, Chapter 4
Background:
"Introduction," Companion
Schaeffer, Art of the Modern Age, Chapters 1-2
x
Alice Kuzniar: July 16, 17
Topic:
C. D. Friedrich and Melancholy
Romanticism and Animal Consciousness
Core:
Background:
A. Kuzniar, Delayed Endings: Nonclosure in Novalis and Hölderlin
A. Kuzniar, Outing Goethe & His Age
Jay M. Bernstein: July 18, 19
Topic: The Idea of Painting: Nature and Medium from Lessing to Romanticism
Core:
Lessing, Laocoon, chapters 3, 14, 16-17
Background:
"Friedrich Schlegel and Romantic Irony," in Peter Szondi, On Textual Understanding
J.M. Bernstein, "Judging Life: From Beauty to Experience, from Kant to Chaim Soutine", Constellations 7/2, June 2000, pp. 157-177
y
Andrew Bowie: July 24, 25
Topic: Romanticism and Hermeneutics
Core: A. Bowie, Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism
Background:
A. Bowie, From Romanticism to Critical Theory
James Schmidt: July 26, 27
Topic: Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the French Revolution
Core:
Schiller, Aesthetic Education
In Beiser, The Early Political Writings:
"The Earliest System Program," pp. 3-5
Novalis, "Pollen" Sections 43-44, 49, 77, 85, 95, 101
Novalis, "Faith and Love," pp. 35-57
Novalis, "Christianity or Europe," pp. 61-79
Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragments, pp. 113-122
Hoelderlin, Selections
Hegel, Phenomenology, "Absolute Freedom and Terror."
Background:
Klaus Epstein, The Genesis of German Conservatism, 434-502
Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism
z
Azade Seyhan: July 30
Topic: Implications of the Critical Thought of the German Romantics
Core:
Schleiermacher, "On the Different Methods of Translation"
Novalis, "Aphorisms and Fragments" in Willson, German Romantic Criticism
W. Benjamin, "The Task of the Translator"
Freud, "Konstruktionen in der Analyse" (Constructions in Analysis)
Background:
A. Seyhan, Representation and Its Discontents: The Critical Legacy of German Romanticism
(Introduction, Chapter 6, and Afterword)
A. Seyhan, Writing Outside the Nation (pp. 23-40 in the chapter "Geographies of Memory" and "Pedagogical Gains" pp. 151-159)
Nature, Art,
and Politics after Kant / Colorado State University / Fort Collins,
CO 80521
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/ pictures courtesy of peter
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