Soziale Rolle und Ästhetische Vermittlung. Studien zur Literatursoziologie von A. G. Baumgarten bis F. Schiller

Habilitationsschrift Universität Zürich. 197

Die Bedeutung Schillers für Hegels Aesthetik

The treatment of esthetics by Schiller influenced the conception of esthetics in Hegel's lectures. The notion of appearance (Schein) acquired a fundamental importance in Hegel's esthetics. Schiller had made it possible for "appearance" to be made the corner-stone of an esthetic system by enlarging its importance and rescuing it from the negative valuation given it by the logic of rationalism and the analytical metaphysics of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Hegel could thus base his definition of the beautiful upon "appearance." On this definition of the beautiful is based the dialectical and historical method of Hegel's theory of the arts

Language Politics in German-Speaking Switzerland in the 18th Century - Between Linguistic Universalism and Cultural Particularism

Roundtable: Enlightenment in the Dutch and Swiss City Republic

Swiss Literary Culture since 1945: Productive Antagonisms and Conflicting Identities

The cultural dynamics of German-Swiss literature may be conceived in terms of the following four basic forces: 1) The multilingualism of Switzerland; 2) The bilingualism of the German-Swiss region; 3) The internally disparate cultural tendencies caused by federalism and regionalism; 4) The external integration into a supranational language-culture leading to a very close yet strongly selective affiliation with one or more neighboring national states and their cultural life. It is the hypothesis of my theoretical framework that the peculiarities of German-Swiss literature rest on a highly differentiated interplay between these four basic forces

Die Individualität in Stifters Spätwerk

Hegels These, wonach die schöne Kunst durch Gedanke und Reflexion überflügelt worden sei, weil diese es zum Bedürfnis machten, »allgemeine Gesichtspunkte festzuhalten und danach das Besondere zu regeln, so dass allgemeine Formen, Gesetze, Pflichten, Rechte, Maximen [...] das hauptsächlich Regierende« seien, scheint durch Stifters Spätwerk Bestätigung zu finden, worin das Ende der Kunst ebenfalls thematisiert wird und an deren Stelle abstrakte Ordnungen wie das >sanfte Gesetz< treten

Literary Authenticity and its Platonic Shadow – The Poetics of Epiphany in Hugo von Hofmannsthal and James Joyce (english version)

No discussion of literature and poetry in connection with the problem of authenticity can fail to evoke their epochal shadow of suspicion of the notoriously non-authentic. This goes back to Plato's Republic where questions regarding the inauthenticity of the mimetic arts result in a decisive verdict against poetry, which would consequently be banned from the state. What unfolds in Plato’s Republic could be called the first debate in Western philosophy on the question of authenticity. In its dialogizing we can already observe the formal, rhetorical and typological structures of argumentation that have defined the discourse on authenticity with regard to literature ever since. By systematizing Plato’s arguments into a “Configuration of the Authentic vs. Inauthentic” (‘gradualism’ / ‘distance vs. proximity’ / ‘fleeting vs. lasting’ / ‘being vs. seeming’ / ‘truth vs. untruth’ / ‘derived vs. original’ / ‘emphatic rhetoric of pathos’) the paper explores the interconnectivity of Joyce’s “Epiphanies” (1898/1904) and Hofmannsthal’s “Chandos Experience” (1902) as witnesses to the quest for literary authenticity at the turn of the 20th century

The Art of Interpretation as Interpretation towards Art

Critical analysis of Emil Staiger's essay "The Art of Interpretation" (1955), seen here as a performative staging of the act of hermeneutical understanding by a "Virtuose der Auslegung" (Virtuoso of exegesis) in Wilhelm Dilthey's sense in his "Die Entstehung der Hermeneutik" (The Rise of Hermeneutics, 1900). By this approach, a closer look reveals a cognitive dissonance between what Staiger says at the programmatic level and what he actually does at the performative step-by-step-level. Thus, his famous grounding of interpretation in intuition and feeling can be shown as being based on probability judgments (E. D. Hirsch) in an approximation process of "fuzzy logics" (Bart Kosko) within a spectrum of sound – if habitualized – knowledge. In its second part, the paper pursues the question of how and why it seems to Staiger and (practically) all the other interpreters unambiguously clear, that the poem is about art and beauty, whereas in several empirical surveys with college freshmen assigned to spontaneously interpret the poem almost all of them opted for a poem on bygone love or both – love and art. The disaccord between the two readings can be explained in terms of Jakobson's and Freud's/Lacan's theories of figurative substitution and transposition, i.e. the dichotomy between a metaphoric vs. metonymic reading. It then becomes obvious that the Staigerean interpretation of the lamp under the “sign” of art and beauty takes the metaphorical course alone, which allows the “condensation” of the artwork itself and beauty in general to shine forth in the lamp. By contrast, the poem opens up its love motifs to the freshmen readers when they interpret the lamp metonymically as a co-present “witness” to erotic events, i.e. as the result of a semiotic “displacement” connected with internal or external censorship (the “Doric precensorship” in terms of Peter Sloterdijk), whose taboo must itself first be breached in the interpretation

Scientific Writing Between Tabloid Storytelling, Arcane Formulaic Hermetism, and Narrative Knowledge

The present discussion contribution argues that O. Müller not only suppresses Goethe’s declared intentions with regard to the latter’s Theory of Colors and ignores his place in what in any case is a different scientific culture than his (Müller’s) own or Newton’s, namely a premodern culture of “narrative knowledge” in the sense specified by Lyotard. Moreover, Müller entangles himself in the paradox of wanting on the one hand to back up Goethe on the level of fact when the latter opposes the militant selfrighteousness of the Newtonian school, but doing so on the other hand by constructing an epic-heroic narrative of Newtonian militance, not to say eristic belligerence contradictory to Goethe’s own “tolerant enlightenment” in Lakatos’ sense. Thus, we are confronted with one of those cases where, as Paul de Man puts it, a multidimensional critical reading on the semiological as well as rhetorical levels shows “that the text does not practice what it preaches”

Medium Cut-Off (MCO) Membranes Reduce Inflammation in Chronic Dialysis Patients—A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial

Background To increase the removal of middle-sized uremic toxins a new membrane with enhanced permeability and selectivity, called Medium Cut-Off membrane (MCO-Ci) has been developed that at the same time ensures the retention of albumin. Because many middle-sized substances may contribute to micro-inflammation we hypothesized that the use of MCO-Ci influences the inflammatory state in hemodialysis patients. Methods The randomized crossover trial in 48 patients compared MCO-Ci dialysis to High-flux dialysis of 4 weeks duration each plus 8 weeks extension phase. Primary endpoint was the gene expression of TNF-α and IL-6 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), secondary endpoints were plasma levels of specified inflammatory mediators and cytokines. Results After four weeks of MCO-Ci the expression of TNF-α mRNA (Relative quantification (RQ) from 0.92 ± 0.34 to 0.75 ± 0.31, -18.5%, p<0.001)-α and IL-6 mRNA (RQ from 0.78 ± 0.80 to 0.60 ± 0.43, -23.1%, p<0.01) was reduced to a significantly greater extent than with High-flux dialyzers (TNF mRNA-RQ: -14.3%; IL-6 mRNA-RQ: -3.5%). After retransformation of logarithmically transformed data, measurements after MCO were reduced to 82% of those after HF (95% CI 74%–91%). 4 weeks use of MCO-Ci resulted in long- lasting change in plasma levels of several cytokines and other substances with a significant decrease for sTNFR1, kappa and lambda free light chains, urea and an increase for Lp-PLA2 (PLA2G7) compared to High-flux. Albumin levels dropped significantly after 4 weeks of MCO dialysis but increased after additional 8 weeks of MCO dialysis. Twelve weeks treatment with MCO-Ci was well tolerated regarding the number of (S)AEs. In the extension period levels of CRP, TNF-α-mRNA and IL-6 mRNA remained stable in High-flux as well as in MCO-Ci. Conclusions MCO-Ci dialyzers modulate inflammation in chronic HD patients to a greater extent compared to High-flux dialyzers. Transcription of pro-inflammatory cytokines in peripheral leukocytes is markedly reduced and removal of soluble mediators is enhanced with MCO dialysis. Serum albumin concentrations stabilize after an initial drop. These results encourage further trials with longer treatment periods and clinical endpoints