Goethe's concept of the daemonic : after the ancients
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Goethe's concept of the daemonic : after the ancients
（Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture / edited by James Hardin）
Camden House, 2006
Available at 1 libraries
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [271]-290) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The first book to examine Goethe's writings on the daemonic in relation to both Classical philosophy and German Idealism.
For Plato, the daemonic is a sensibility that brings individuals into contact with divine knowledge; Socrates was also inspired by a "divine voice" known as his "daimonion." Goethe was introduced to this ancient concept by Hamannand Herder, who associated it with the aesthetic category of genius. This book shows how the young Goethe depicted the idea of daemonic genius in works of the Storm and Stress period, before exploring the daemonic in a series of later poetic and autobiographical works. Reading Goethe's works on the daemonic through theorists such as Lukacs, Benjamin, Gadamer, Adorno, and Blumenberg, Nicholls contends that they contain arguments concerning reason, nature, and subjectivity that are central to both European Romanticism and the Enlightenment.
Angus Nicholls is Claussen-Simon Foundation Research Lecturer in German and Comparative Literature at the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations in the Department of German, Queen Mary, University of London.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Ancients and Their Daemons
The Daemonic in the Philosophy of the Sturm und Drang: Hamann and Herder
Romanticism and Unlimited Subjectivity: "Mahomets Gesang"
Werther: The Pathology of an Aesthetic Idea
Kantian Science and the Limits of Subjectivity
Schelling, Naturphilosophie, and "Machtiges UEberraschen"
After the Ancients: Dichtung und Wahrheit and "Urworte. Orphisch"
Eckermann, or the Daemonic and the Political
Epilogue: Socrates and the Cicadas
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