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We describe people who are “consumed” or “devoured” by
ambition as if by a predator or an out-of-control inferno. Thinkers
since deepest antiquity have raised these questions, approaching
the subject of ambition with ambivalence and often trepidation—as
when the ancient Greek poet Hesiod proposed a differentiation
between the good and the bad goddess Eris. Indeed, ambition as a
longing for immortal fame seems to be one of the unique hallmarks
of the human species. While philosophy has touched only
occasionally on the problem of burning ambition, sociology,
psychoanalysis, and world literature have provided rich and more
revealing descriptions and examples of its shaping role in human
history. Drawing on a long and varied tradition of writing on this
topic, ranging from the works of Homer through Shakespeare, Freud,
and Kafka and from the history of ancient Greece and Rome to the
Italian Renaissance and up to the present day (to modernity and the
current neoliberal era), Eckart Goebel explores our driving passion
for recognition — that insatiable hunter in the mirror — and
power.
We describe people who are “consumed” or “devoured” by
ambition as if by a predator or an out-of-control inferno. Thinkers
since deepest antiquity have raised these questions, approaching
the subject of ambition with ambivalence and often trepidation—as
when the ancient Greek poet Hesiod proposed a differentiation
between the good and the bad goddess Eris. Indeed, ambition as a
longing for immortal fame seems to be one of the unique hallmarks
of the human species. While philosophy has touched only
occasionally on the problem of burning ambition, sociology,
psychoanalysis, and world literature have provided rich and more
revealing descriptions and examples of its shaping role in human
history. Drawing on a long and varied tradition of writing on this
topic, ranging from the works of Homer through Shakespeare, Freud,
and Kafka and from the history of ancient Greece and Rome to the
Italian Renaissance and up to the present day (to modernity and the
current neoliberal era), Eckart Goebel explores our driving passion
for recognition — that insatiable hunter in the mirror — and
power.
According to Freud's later works, we do not really feel well or
free within civilization. Our discontent never disappears, and we
shall never become completely reliable members of society. Alcohol
already suffices, Freud tells us, to ruin the fragile architecture
of sublimations. Since 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle, '
sublimation seems to be nothing more than a euphemism for
suppressing the drives. We sublimate because we did not get or were
not allowed to have what we 'actually' wanted. Is sublimation a
mere surrogate or perhaps even the name psychoanalysis found for
'theoria' in the twentieth century? With Freud as its pivot, Goebel
provides an intellectual history of sublimation, which also serves
as an introduction to other key ideas associated with the authors
discussed, such as Schopenhauer's philosophy of music, the will to
power in Nietzsche, the structure of Freudian psychoanalysis,
Adorno's concept of modern art, or Lacanian ethics. In examining
both its prehistory and reception, Goebel argues that sublimation
can be reconsidered as the road toward an individual and social
life beyond discontent.
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