Greece Hotels Travel :: The Tyranny of Greece over Germany: A study of the influence exercised by Greek art and poetry over the great German writers of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries
Greece Hotels Travel - The Tyranny of Greece over Germany: A study of the influence exercised by Greek art and poetry over the great German writers of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries
Customer Rating: Summary: The Germans look on art as cultural phenomena that has deep significance for understanding reality Comment: I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. E. M. Butler's book "The Tyranny of Greece Over Germany," is a great way to learn about German philosophers like G. W. F. Hegel and writers like Goethe's ideas on how art, religion, and philosophy interact and should not be seen as sharp divisions of thought.
It is important to note that the Germans look on art as more than art just like the Ancient Greeks. They look on art as cultural phenomena that has deep significance for understanding reality and not just to study experiences and such. Hegel is reacting to the modern model of aesthetics and the expression theory of Kant. Hegel looks on art as a fundamental development of the "spirit" spirit meaning thought culture and so on. Hegel had this relation between art, religion, and philosophy by religion he means a more developed religion that has more of an element of thought in it and how it talks about the nature of the world and the creation and purpose of the world. However, art in terms of poetry and the visual arts Hegel thinks is the first form that spirit takes as a sensuous form. The idea of a sensuous medium seems to be a necessary condition, in that art is fashioned in its own kind of material into a product that communicates something. Hegel says forms of art in history come before developed systems like religion and philosophy. By that, he means the human spirit is evolving and that the first forms indicate the representing of ideas and spiritual notions of sensuous forms. He does not at all hold to the idea that art is simply the expressions of subjective faculties. Hegel thinks of art as a manifestation of elements of reality, but in an early form. This is Hegel's developmental theory that spirit progresses. Organized religion expands to getting into philosophy that gets much closer to the truth by being more conceptual and theoretical.
The important influence Hegel had is on the overall theory of Greek tragedy as an avenue to thought and not just tragedy. For example, throughout my years of studying the play "Antigone," I have been impressed by learning the fact that between Aristotle and Freud critics, philosophers and scholars have written so much about the play. There can be no doubt this is due to the fact as I have discovered "Antigone" was so successful at providing a lens for one to "see," and thus understand the essence of human life with all its tragic pitfalls. In particular, Hegel spent a considerable amount of time gleaning lessons from "Antigone" that have helped me to use it as a lens to "see" more clearly how humans have to question and ultimately choose between competing moral choices.
According to Hegel's account of Greek tragedy, Hegel did not view Greek tragedy as a collision between good and evil, but between competing goods. In addition, Hegel proposes in his interpretation of Greek tragedy, that the sufferings of the tragic hero are merely the means of reconciling the opposing moral goods--between two entirely ethical worlds that clash and cannot come together. Both Antigone and Creon have a moral vision or belief that they are destined to follow, which is the one-sidedness of their moral vision that clashes with the one-sidedness of the other character's moral vision. Both sides of contradiction are justified. Hegel finds that it is the conflict of irreconcilable yet justifiable moral worlds that will lead to the tragic death of the hero in Greek tragedy. This is an important point that Hegel makes, because I have found throughout my life that like Antigone, rarely am I given the opportunity to choose between good and evil. Usually I have been faced with the tougher moral choice of having to choose between moral goods. This is a great book that explores Hegel's philosophical writings, which opens up the world disclosiveness of Greek tragedy and the lessons they can still teach us today.
I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, philosophy of art, Greek culture, and Greek tragedy.
Customer Rating: Summary: A Mournful Paean to German Scholarship on Greece Comment: This is a delightful book, first published, I believe, in 1935. It includes chapters on Winckelmann, Lessing and Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Holderlin, Heine and a concluding chapter that includes a section on Nietzsche. A fine examination of the (over) 200 year fascination of Germany with ancient Greece. This wonderfully sentimental and evocative work, that is tinged throughout with the spice of despair, both examines and exhibits said fascination. See especially the chapters on Holderlin and Heine in this regard. I was still quite young (in high school) when I first read this book and it left me yearning for more Greece, and also, I add somewhat sheepishly, a bit of Ms. Butler too! Yes, of course it is not really serious scholarship, but rather a romance with and about such scholarship. But nonetheless, it is filled with fine observations. I pick two at (or near) random:
"Goethe and Shakespeare, Homer and Dante, tower above their fellows but stand with them on the earth. Their range is immeasurably wider than Holderlin's, but no one has ever reached the same dizzy heights. [...] Then came the time when this life in poetry gradually changed to a life in prophecy"
"Dionysus, who came late into Greece, came late into Germany too. Heine ushered him in and then left it to Nietzsche..."
Thus the Germans went from admiring the Greek gods to wanting to be them, which would not have been a problem if their conception of the gods did not go from the light of Apollo to the shadows of Dionysus. - With results that even today, in our dumbed-down world, are studied in civics classes throughout the land. 'Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.' ...It really is such a pity that this bittersweet study is so long out of print.
