Naturalisierung im deutsch-jüdischen Spannungsfeld

The article reconstructs Gottfried Benn’s reception of Benedictus de Spinoza in his essay Goethe und die Naturwissenschaften, published in the Neue Rundschau in 1932. While Spinoza’s philosophy is fundamentally at odds with the conception of art as irrational, acausal, and transcendent, an idea runn...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Avraham Rot
Format: Article
Language:deu
Published: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg 2024-07-01
Series:Recherches Germaniques
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/rg/12043
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1841547551952601088
author Avraham Rot
author_facet Avraham Rot
author_sort Avraham Rot
collection DOAJ
description The article reconstructs Gottfried Benn’s reception of Benedictus de Spinoza in his essay Goethe und die Naturwissenschaften, published in the Neue Rundschau in 1932. While Spinoza’s philosophy is fundamentally at odds with the conception of art as irrational, acausal, and transcendent, an idea running through all of Benn’s works, Benn nevertheless positively invoked the Romantic neo-Spinozist concept of nature ‘hen kai pan’ (One and All) and praised Goethe as a Spinozist natural scientist, one who had endorsed Spinoza’s doctrine of monism while adding “nuance”. This can be read as a gesture towards contemporary German-Jewish admirers of Spinoza, especially towards Rudolf Kayser, the editor of the Neue Rundschau between 1922-1933, whose relationship to Benn is considered here in light of new archival findings, but also of the debate on the new physics and mathematics, which served in the German-Jewish tension field as a space for the articulation of questions of nationality, religion and anti-Semitism. However, this “monism”, which was appropriated in Benn’s writings between 1932-1933 through Goethe, also enabled the transition from a concept of universal metaphysical unity to the political-aesthetic celebration of the National Socialist “total” state.
format Article
id doaj-art-298aae04fc2c40249277ee10ed071699
institution Kabale University
issn 0399-1989
2649-860X
language deu
publishDate 2024-07-01
publisher Presses universitaires de Strasbourg
record_format Article
series Recherches Germaniques
spelling doaj-art-298aae04fc2c40249277ee10ed0716992025-01-10T14:27:34ZdeuPresses universitaires de StrasbourgRecherches Germaniques0399-19892649-860X2024-07-011915917710.4000/11uzyNaturalisierung im deutsch-jüdischen SpannungsfeldAvraham RotThe article reconstructs Gottfried Benn’s reception of Benedictus de Spinoza in his essay Goethe und die Naturwissenschaften, published in the Neue Rundschau in 1932. While Spinoza’s philosophy is fundamentally at odds with the conception of art as irrational, acausal, and transcendent, an idea running through all of Benn’s works, Benn nevertheless positively invoked the Romantic neo-Spinozist concept of nature ‘hen kai pan’ (One and All) and praised Goethe as a Spinozist natural scientist, one who had endorsed Spinoza’s doctrine of monism while adding “nuance”. This can be read as a gesture towards contemporary German-Jewish admirers of Spinoza, especially towards Rudolf Kayser, the editor of the Neue Rundschau between 1922-1933, whose relationship to Benn is considered here in light of new archival findings, but also of the debate on the new physics and mathematics, which served in the German-Jewish tension field as a space for the articulation of questions of nationality, religion and anti-Semitism. However, this “monism”, which was appropriated in Benn’s writings between 1932-1933 through Goethe, also enabled the transition from a concept of universal metaphysical unity to the political-aesthetic celebration of the National Socialist “total” state.https://journals.openedition.org/rg/12043artSpinoza (Benedictus de)Benn (Gottfried)spinozismmonism
spellingShingle Avraham Rot
Naturalisierung im deutsch-jüdischen Spannungsfeld
Recherches Germaniques
art
Spinoza (Benedictus de)
Benn (Gottfried)
spinozism
monism
title Naturalisierung im deutsch-jüdischen Spannungsfeld
title_full Naturalisierung im deutsch-jüdischen Spannungsfeld
title_fullStr Naturalisierung im deutsch-jüdischen Spannungsfeld
title_full_unstemmed Naturalisierung im deutsch-jüdischen Spannungsfeld
title_short Naturalisierung im deutsch-jüdischen Spannungsfeld
title_sort naturalisierung im deutsch judischen spannungsfeld
topic art
Spinoza (Benedictus de)
Benn (Gottfried)
spinozism
monism
url https://journals.openedition.org/rg/12043
work_keys_str_mv AT avrahamrot naturalisierungimdeutschjudischenspannungsfeld