scholarly journals Macbeth and the passions' "proper stuff"

Sederi ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 71-101
Author(s):  
Zenón Luis Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
The Self ◽  
Outward Appearance ◽  
Early Modern Philosophy ◽  
Bodily Sensations ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Shakespearean Tragedy

This essay examines early modern conceptions and representations of the passions in relation to issues of self-knowledge in texts ranging from Renaissance psychology to Shakespearean tragedy –with a particular focus on Macbeth. Considered in essence processes of the mind, the passions were believed to manifest themselves through material symptoms such as bodily effects, facial gestures and discourse. Accordingly, the early modern philosophy of man saw in the study of these material manifestations a vehicle to access the soul. By tracing the methodologies for translating the material side of human experience –words, gestures, bodily sensations and signals– into less material truths, early modern philosophy and theatre explored the certainties about inwardness as a necessary dimension of the self, as well as the uncertainties about the ultimate essence of such interiority. In this, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, for its constant focus on outward appearance and rhetoric, stresses the need to focus on matter as a vehicle to explore interiority. And yet –and in keeping with the principles of earlier Renaissance humanists– the play acknowledges the utter impossibility to know the ultimate essence of the inward self.

The Baroque and Philosophy

2018 ◽  
pp. 601-622
Author(s):  
Michael Moriarty
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The Self ◽  
Early Modern Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
Baroque Art ◽  
Art And Architecture

Although the concept “baroque” is less obviously applicable to philosophy than to the visual arts and music, early modern philosophy can be shown to have connections with baroque culture. Baroque style and rhetoric are employed or denounced in philosophical controversies, to license or discredit a certain style of philosophizing. Philosophers engage with themes current in baroque literature (the mad world, the world as a stage, the quest for the self) and occasionally transform these into philosophical problems, especially of an epistemological kind (are the senses reliable? how far is our access to reality limited by our perspective?) Finally, the philosophies of Malebranche and Berkeley, with their radical challenges to so-called common sense, and their explanation of conventional understandings of the world as based on illusion, have something of the disturbing quality of baroque art and architecture.

Selbstrealisierung

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 129-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Leinkauf
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Self ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Psychological Activity ◽  
Modern Sense

This article tries to give a survey of anthropological thinking in early modern philosophy, taking ‘anthropology’ not in its modern sense and not even sensu strictu as for example Otto Casman did it in his work from the late 16th century, i.e.: as the physiology of the human being, but sensu lato as a philosophical reflection on the condition of man as an ‘animal rationale’. The arguments focus on three ‘directions’ of the inner movement of the mental and psychological activity of mankind (towards God, towards the mind itself, towards the world), which, taken all together, form the total concept of “Selbstrealisierung” (realisation of the self).

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie Levinson
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Conceptual Structure ◽  
Field Theories ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Early Modern Philosophy

The Introduction explains the combination of a narrative arc and conceptual structure in the organization of the book. The former, primarily diachronic, discussion is concerned with the development of the field of Romanticism since the 1980s, presented through both a review of scholarship and exemplary readings of well-known lyric poems. The latter, predominantly synchronic, presentation entails an argument for the analytical value of field theories of form—that is, frameworks drawn from early modern philosophy (Spinoza) and postclassical life- and physical sciences, especially models of self-organization. As an alternative to the external, retrospective perspective provided by, for example, Rita Felski in The Limits of Critique, it draws on the work of Martin Heidegger, Pierre Macherey, and the poet-critic J. H. Prynne to offer a conjunctural approach.

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