Das Lied Des Todes

Schubert's Lieder and the Philosophy of Early German Romanticism

This study of Franz Schubert's settings of poetry by Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis introduces the fascinating world of early German Romanticism in the 1790s, when an energetic group of bold young thinkers radically changed the landscape of European thought. Schubert's encounters with early Romantic poetry some twenty years later reanimated some of the movement's central ideas. Schubert set eleven texts from Schlegel's Abendröte poetic cycle and six poems drawn from Novalis' religious and erotic poetry. Through detailed analyses of how various musical structures in these songs mirror and sometimes even explicate the central ideas of the poems, this book argues that Schubert was an abstract thinker who used his medium of music to diagram the complex ideas of a highly intellectual movement. A comparison is made to the hermeneutic theory of that time, primarily that of Schleiermacher, who was himself linked to the early Romantics. Through exploration of ideas such as Schlegel's representation of the necessary interdependence of part and whole and Novalis' strong association of religious and erotic experience, along with their musical representations by Schubert, this book opens an intriguing world of thought for modern readers. At the same time, Feurzeig explores some of Schubert's little-known songs, which range from quirky to charming to exquisite.

Das Maß des Menschen

Protagoras beansprucht, die Jugend erziehen zu können. Warum nicht? Wenn «Mensch Maß aller Dinge» ist, kann jeder jeden ‘besser’ machen... Für Plato geht das nicht auf. Insofern Pädagogik Menschen dazu bringen will, ‘bessere’ Wesen zu werden, verlangt sie nach Plato ein gesundes Verständnis von ‘Sein’ überhaupt. Diese Studie untersucht die ontologischen Implikationen des Homo mensura-Satzes, Protagoras’ Prämisse, im ‘Theaitetos’ – einem Dialog, der selten ontologisch gelesen wird. Wenn der protagoräische Prämisse den pädagogischen Anspruch nicht trägt, dürfte der ‘Protagoras’ gar nicht eigentlich von den erzieherischen Fragen handeln, die diskutiert werden. Es könnte sich herausstellen, dass er einen ‘verborgenen’ Diskurs enthält... Protagoras claims to be able to educate the young. If «Man is Measure of Everything», anybody can make everybody ‘better’... To Plato, this doesn't add up. Insofar as pedagogy aims at making humans become better beings, to Plato it supposes a sound conception of ‘being’ per se. This study explores the ontological implications of homo mensura, Protagoras’ premiss, in the ‘Theaetetus’ – a dialogue which is rarely read ontologically. If the Protagorean premiss doesn't support the pedagogical claim, the ‘Protagoras’ might not even be about the educational questions under discussion, but turn out to contain a ‘hidden’ discourse...

Schau-Platz des Todes