Eros And Inwardness In Vienna

Voorkant
University of Chicago Press, 2003 - 257 pagina's
Although we usually think of the intellectual legacy of twentieth-century Vienna as synonymous with Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytic theories, other prominent writers from Vienna were also radically reconceiving sexuality and gender. In this probing new study, David Luft recovers the work of three such writers: Otto Weininger, Robert Musil, and Heimito von Doderer. His account emphasizes the distinctive intellectual world of liberal Vienna, especially the impact of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in this highly scientific intellectual world.

According to Luft, Otto Weininger viewed human beings as bisexual and applied this theme to issues of creativity and morality. Robert Musil developed a creative ethics that was closely related to his open, flexible view of sexuality and gender. And Heimito von Doderer portrayed his own sexual obsessions as a way of understanding the power of total ideologies, including his own attraction to National Socialism. For Luft, the significance of these three writers lies in their understandings of eros and inwardness and in the roles that both play in ethical experience and the formation of meaningful relations to the world-a process that continues to engage artists, writers, and thinkers today.

Eros and Inwardness in Vienna will profoundly reshape our understanding of Vienna's intellectual history. It will be important for anyone interested in Austrian or German history, literature, or philosophy.
 

Geselecteerde pagina's

Inhoudsopgave

Introduction
1
Science and Irrationalism in Vienna 18481900
13
Otto Weiningers Vision of Gender and Modern Culture
45
Love and Human Knowledge
91
Sexuality and the Politics of the Fascist Era
137
Conclusion
183
Notes
191
Select Bibliography
235
Index
251
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Over de auteur (2003)

David S. Luft is a professor of history at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Robert Musil and the Crisis of European Culture and the coeditor and cotranslator of Robert Musil's Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses, the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.

Bibliografische gegevens