The Tragic Absolute German Idealism and the Languishing of God [Paperback]

This is vintage Krellhe is as always, a reader in the best sense of the word.... Dennis J. Schmidt

Krell is a strong and often eloquent writer... I regard this to be one of his most important works.... Jason M. Wirth

In The Tragic Absolute, David Farrell Krell shows that German Idealist and Romantic theories of literature and aesthetic judgment, especially when it comes to tragedy, are closer to the heart of metaphysics and ethics than previously thought. Krell not only explores the contributions of Schelling, H?lderlin, Novalis, Hegel, and Nietzsche to the aesthetics of tragedy, he also charts the fate of the absolute and speculative philosophy in terms of the tragic. Krell explodes the usual conception that aesthetic judgments about literary genres are relatively marginal subjects for philosophy. Indeed, in Krells view, even God himself, the very absolute of traditional metaphysics, is seen as languishing and condemned to tragic downfall. Questions concerning the death of God, the role of trauma and forgetting in narrative, the overcoming of barriers between humans and other living beings, and the role of music and rhythm as sources of ecstasy are highlighted in this keen, precise, and lively book.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Key to Works Cited

Introduction
1. The Oldest Program toward a System in German Idealism
The Philological Dispute
Das ?lteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus: Text and Translation
Commentary
The Tragic Absolute?

2. Three Ends of the Absolute
Absolute Inhibition: Schelling
Absolute Separation: H?lderlin
Absolute Density: Novalis
A Note on Absolute and Relative Death

3. At the Stroke of One
A Peripheral Reading of Schelling's Treatise on Human Freedom
Excursus on Sehnsucht: Languor, the Languid, and Languishment
The Peripheral Reading (continued)
An Indifferent Reading of Schelling's Treatise on Human Freedom

4. God's Trauma
The Earliest NotelÃ$