Anima Mundi: The Rise of the World Soul Theory in Modern German Philosophy (review)

2013 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-132
Author(s):  
Mogens Lærke
Keyword(s):  
German Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
Anima Mundi

scholarly journals For hendes ansigt skinnede som solen

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Britt Istoft
Keyword(s):  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Hildegard Of Bingen ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Spiritual World ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The World ◽  
Anima Mundi ◽  
Feminine Divine

The Gernman abbess and mystic Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) developped a richly nuanced theology of the feminine. At the heart of her spiritual world stands the numinous figure she called Sapientia or Caritas: Wisdom or Love, a theophany of the feminine aspect of the divine. In Hildegard's visionary work De operatione Dei, "The Book of Divine Works", written between 1163-1173, Caritas/Sapientia plays an important part. She is the central figure in five out of the ten visions, that comprises De operatione Dei. The first two visions picture Caritas as Anima Mundi, the world soul - the divine presense in the cosmos - and Creatrix, who creates the world by existing in it as an eternal, circling motion. The eighth vision presents Caritas/Sapienta as the "living fountain", that both quickens and reflects all creatures, and inspires the prophets, including Hildegard herself. The theme of the ninth vision is "Wisdom's vesture". Because Wisdom is both a cosmic and a microcosmic figure, her garb can represent the workmanship og either God or man. In the tenth vision Caritas rests in the center of the wheel of eternity and history, and is presented as the eternal archetype of the Virgin Mary. Besides being a theological necessity as mediator of creation, incarnation and salvation Hildegard's feminine divine also serves as a model for women, particularly consecrated virgins, who represent the feminine divine on earth.

scholarly journals Breaking Aesthetics and Universaling Plague in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz González Moreno
Keyword(s):  
Mary Shelley ◽  
The Self ◽  
The World ◽  
Poetic Inspiration ◽  
Last Man ◽  
Anima Mundi ◽  
The Last Man

Para los poetas románticos la imaginación era un puente necesario para salvar las distancias entre el mundo y el yo, y haciendo uso de ella estetizaron el mundo según las categorías estéticas de belleza y sublimidad. Es más, la Weltanschauung romántica permitió el resurgir del motivo del anima mundi, donde la naturaleza era fuente de inspiración, un ser vivo y madre nutricia. A lo largo de este artículo, me propongo explorar las cuestiones arriba mencionadas en la obra de Mary Shelley, The Last Man para mostrar hasta qué punto la autora consigue subvertir las pretensiones románticas y presentar una visión distópica del pensamiento romántico.Palabras clave: Romanticismo, estética, belleza, sublimidad, naturaleza, plagaABSTRACTFor Romantic poets imagination was understood as mainly a bridge to save distances between the world and the self; by means of imagination poets created an aestheticised world: nature was perceived either under the lineaments of beauty or of sublimity. Besides, the Romantic Weltanschauung favoured the resurgence of the anima mundi theme, which came to be very significant: firstly, because the spirit of nature favours poetic inspiration/ creation (wind and harp themes); and secondly, because nature is perceived as both an animated being and a nurturing-nursuring mother. Thus, my aim throughout this essay is to explore the concepts and themes stated above in Mary ShelleyKs The Last Man (1826) and to show how the author succeeds in subverting Romantic pretensions so that her work is to be understood as a dystopian vision of Romantic theory.Key words: Romanticism, aesthetics, beauty, sublimity, nature, plague

Technology and the Way: Buber, Heidegger, and Lao-Zhuang “Daoism”

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 307-327
Author(s):  
Eric S. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Spiritual World ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Technological Rationality ◽  
The Way

I consider the intertextuality between Chinese and Western thought by exploring how images, metaphors, and ideas from the texts associated with Zhuangzi and Laozi were appropriated in early twentieth-century German philosophy. This interest in “Lao- Zhuang Daoism” encompasses a diverse range of thinkers including Buber and Heidegger. I examine (1) how the problematization of utility, usefulness, and “purposiveness” in Zhuangzi and Laozi becomes a key point for their German philosophical reception; (2) how it is the poetic character of the Zhuangzi that hints at an appropriate response to the crisis and loss of meaning that characterizes technological modernity and its instrumental technological rationality; that is, how the “poetic” and “spiritual” world perceived in Lao-Zhuang thought became part of Buber’s and Heidegger’s critical encounter and confrontation with technological modernity; and (3) how their concern with Zhuangzi does not signify a return to a dogmatic religiosity or otherworldly mysticism; it anticipates a this-worldly spiritual (Buber) or poetic (Heidegger) way of dwelling immanently within the world.

“Imagination Is Now the World”: W.B. Yeats and the Staging of Visionary Experience

Modern Drama ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-150
Author(s):  
Daniel Larlham
Keyword(s):  
Mental Image ◽  
Dramatic Works ◽  
Keen Interest ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
The World ◽  
Anima Mundi ◽  
The Impact

Throughout his literary career, the poet and dramatist W.B. Yeats displayed a keen interest in the phenomenology of the mental image as well as a deep curiosity about the possible mystical functions of the imagination. This article examines the impact of Yeats’s evolving set of beliefs about the power of imaginative vision, including those derived from readings in occult philosophy and personal experiences at séances, upon his dramaturgical decisions as a playwright, particularly in his Noh-inspired “plays for dancers.” Yeats’s convictions about the most effective kinds of acting, staging, and scenography for these dramatic works served an overarching aesthetic and spiritual project: to transform the theatre into a visionary medium that, through the power of the poetic word, could restore a sense of connection to the “world-soul” or anima mundi for audiences of his industrialized, scientific, objectifying age.

German Philosophy

Philosophy ◽  
1958 ◽  
Vol 33 (127) ◽  
pp. 365-368
Author(s):  
F. H. Heinemann
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
The Other ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Stimulus Response ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Important Trend ◽  
Negative Sense

Encounter is one of the magical keywords of our time which seems to open up new vistas. Rencontre, Encounter, Begegnung, the Festschrift dedicated to Professor F. J. J. Buytendijk (Spectrum, Utrecht) is noteworthy for several reasons. First, the meanings of the three terms are by no means identical. In encounter the negative sense “meet in a hostile manner”, prevails in Begegnung the affirmative sense, whereas rencontre is neutral and can be used in both senses. Secondly, whereas Festschriften tend to become a nuisance, occasionally arranged by the recipients ad majorem auctoris gloriam, this one is well-deserved and well-arranged. Buytendijk is a leading Dutch biologist, physiologist and psychologist of European stature with an excellent resistance record. Since the contributors were asked to refer to his paper, La phénoménologie de la rencontre (Eranos Jahrbuch, XIX, 1950), the most important papers are contributions to a psychology of rencontre. Thus the volume becomes representative of an important trend in European biology and psychology. The collaboration of biologists, psychologists and psychiatrists with philosophers is exemplary and fruitful. A non-behaviourist and non-materialist experimental psychology, a personalist counterpart to a behaviourist stimulus-response psychology, emerges in outlines. It has transcended the isolated individual and isolated impressions and ideas, and regards man as a being-within-the-world together with other persons. the influence of Husserl's phenomenology and of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit is outstanding. New categories are used, such as “authentic” and “inauthentic” rencontre, and new problems arise, e.g. the smiling of a child interpreted as a primitive mode of rencontre (M. Chastaing, K. Goldstein), and that of “Se fermer et s’ouvrir” (H. C. Rumke). It is quite impossible to discuss here single contributions. It must suffice to say that they confirm Buytendijk's central conception that somehow mind is already present within the organism, and that on the other hand, blind necessity penetrates human affairs.

James Hillman's approach to architecture and the built environment: some conceptual complications and an attempt to resolve them

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-164
Author(s):  
Lucy Huskinson
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The World ◽  
Anima Mundi ◽  
A Site

This paper examines ambiguities and tensions within James Hillman's ideas about the psychological value of the architecture of the built environment in contrast to that of the natural world. In his published works Hillman often describes the built environment and the natural world as equivalent in value, but on other occasions he celebrates the latter to the detriment of former. These contrasting approaches have significant implications for his celebrated conception of anima mundi, where psyche is found in the ‘outside’ word as much as ‘within’ our individual minds. The decisive question therefore is whether the psyche for Hillman is found as readily within the built environment as it is the natural world. This paper argues that Hillman's overall position does not allow a split between city spaces and the natural world: that the built environment is no less a site for psyche than the natural world. After describing instances of Hillman's apparent denigration of the built environment within his published and unpublished archival material, I outline a resolution to the perceived split by utilising his notions of ‘pathologizing’ and aesthetics. The paper concludes that not all, but most, buildings and urban spaces fail to house psyche in the world. For Hillman, only a built environment that is able to engage our aesthetic sensibilities can succeed in doing so, but the vast majority of urban spaces remain anaesthetised by the ego's preoccupation with all things superficial, pleasurable, pretty, and functional.

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