Mimesis, the notion that art imitates reality, has long been recognized as one of the central ideas of Western aesthetics and has been most frequently associated with Aristotle. Less well documented is the great importance of mimetic theories of literature, theater, and the visual arts during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In this book, the most comprehensive overview of the theory of mimesis since Auerbach's monumental study, Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf provide a thorough introduction to the complex and shifting (...) meanings of the term. Beginning with the Platonic doctrine of imitation, they chart the concept's appropriation and significance in the aesthetic theories of Aristotle, Molière, Shakespeare, Racine, Diderot, Lessing, and Rousseau. They examine the status of mimesis in the nineteenth-century novel and its reworking by such modern thinkers as Benjamin, Adorno, and Derrida. Widening the traditional understanding of mimesis to encompass the body and cultural practices of everyday life, their work suggests the continuing value of mimetic theory and will prove essential reading for scholars and students of literature, theater, and the visual arts. (shrink)
Mimesis, the notion that art imitates reality, has long been recognized as one of the central ideas of Western aesthetics and has been most frequently associated with Aristotle. Less well documented is the great importance of mimetic theories of literature, theater, and the visual arts during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In this book, the most comprehensive overview of the theory of mimesis since Auerbach's monumental study, Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf provide a thorough introduction to the complex and shifting (...) meanings of the term. Beginning with the Platonic doctrine of imitation, they chart the concept's appropriation and significance in the aesthetic theories of Aristotle, Molière, Shakespeare, Racine, Diderot, Lessing, and Rousseau. They examine the status of mimesis in the nineteenth-century novel and its reworking by such modern thinkers as Benjamin, Adorno, and Derrida. Widening the traditional understanding of mimesis to encompass the body and cultural practices of everyday life, their work suggests the continuing value of mimetic theory and will prove essential reading for scholars and students of literature, theater, and the visual arts. (shrink)
The first part of the article (§§ 1-3) illustrates the critical relation the authors establish with the leading figures of philosophical anthropology in terms of their engagement with “world-openness” (Weltoffenheit). This notion cannot be reduced to the objectivity that confronts man as a spiritual being, as in Max Scheler, but rather makes it possible to grasp the limits of distancing objectification; in Arnold Gehlen, the coercion to action derived from the indeterminacy of man’s relation with the world is not sufficient (...) to comprehend the role of culture for the constitution of the human animal itself; and with the biological means utilized by Helmuth Plessner it is not possible to account entirely for the human capacity to establish relations by means of society. Historical anthropology, as the second part (§§ 4-5) of the article shows, aims to respond to such deficiencies by bringing to light the numerous historical and cultural forms of openness to a plurality of worlds. Freeing itself of any abstract and binding anthropological norm that claims to define the essence of man, historical anthropology investigates human structures and phenomena through a series of transdisciplinary studies centering on themes such as the body, ritual, mimesis and the performative dimension in its entirety, performance and performativity. (shrink)
In this article, a philosophical conception of the relationship of language to emotions is developed. Based on a conceptual analysis, the language-game of emotions is described, the core of which is the interchangeability of „I» and «thou». A series of insights is derived from empirical observation: The first-person perspective expresses the experience of an emotion in its singularity. The second-person perspective allows the speaker to participate in the emotional situation of the «thou». In children’s acquisition of language, the child’s natural (...) emotional experience is re-configured in language through the involvement of the second person. The second person forms the crucial precondition enabling a general understanding of emotions. With its «outside» viewpoint the second person can also consider emotional states from the perspective of observation — a perspective that can be expanded to the third person. (shrink)
Wie machen wir uns als Menschen? Diese Frage liegt vor allen Problemen der Philosophie und der Wissenschaften vom Menschen. In diesem Band wird sie als Grundfrage der Anthropologie behandelt. Anthropologie ist als »erste Philosophie« eine Reflexion über die Selbst-Verständigung des Menschen. Wie der Mensch sich macht, wird als Entwurf seiner selbst untersucht. Gunter Gebauer exploriert das Projekt aus verschiedenen Richtungen, die in das Zentrum der aktuellen Wissenschaften vom Menschen führen: die Körpertechniken, der Habitus, die Sprache, die Selbstsorge, die Empathie. Der (...) Band wendet sich an Leser*innen mit Interesse an einem vertieften Verständnis des Menschen und der Wissenschaften vom Menschen. (shrink)
In this article I argue that, with the liberation of the hand from the tasks of locomotion in human evolution, unconscious use of the hands begins to create cultural forms. The first feature of the...
