Oscar Wilde once mused over a varnished skull in someone's library
and piped, "Death, how Gothic- life, how Greek." These two strains
riddle Western civilization, and Oscar was being witty about it,
while Germany's Karl Lowith, in his brilliant book, is being
very... German. Yet if reading his book is like entering the tomb
of intellect, the tomb itself is a splendid storehouse. The work
encompasses 19th century German romanticism and Europe's
bourgeois-Christian ethos. Under the Gothic (and other names can
define it) is Hegel's nether-world of absolutism, the
reconciliation between philosophy, religion, art and the state.
Representing the neo-Greek revival is, of course, Nietzsche.
Bertrand Russell dismissed both; Herr Lowith (not even bothering to
dismiss Russell) subjects them to an amazingly minute screening,
probably the most structurally impressive they and their
revolutionary redefinitions of man have received. The whole book,
moreover, bulges with cultural offshoots and conflicting schools,
from Goethe's nature-humanism to such left-wing Hegelians as Ruge,
Bauer and Strauss. In addition, there are discussions of Marx,
Stirner and Kierkegaard often as penetratingly aphoristic as those
given the star performers. A whole century of ideological
developments, of, in fact, all the dominations under which the
world uneasily lies today, is here sorted out, studied and
synthesized. A "last word" book. Essential. (Kirkus Reviews)
Beginning with an examination of the relationship between Hegel
and Goethe, L?with discusses how Hegel's students, particularly
Marx and Kierkegaard, interpreted----or reinterpreted----their
master's thought, and proceeds with an in-depth assessment of the
other important philosophers, from Feuerbach, Stirner, and
Schelling to Nietzsche.
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