The Tragic Absolute: German Idealism and the Languishing of God

Table of Contents Contents Acknowledgments Key to Works Cited Introduction 1. The Oldest Program toward a System in German Idealism The Philological Dispute Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus: Text and Translation Commentary The Tragic Absolute? 2. Three Ends of the Absolute Absolute Inhibition: Schelling Absolute Separation: Hölderlin 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 Notes toward Schelling's The Ages of the World The Genealogy of Time, and the Golden Age Trauma, Repression, and the Absolute Past An Excursion to Samothrace 5. God's Footstool From the 1811 Draft of Die Weltalter, with Variants from the 1810 Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen and the 1827-1828 System der Weltalter From the Sketches toward the Second Proposed Volume of Die Weltalter, "The Present" The Olympian Zeus of Pausanias's Guide to Greece The Forlorn Foot of Divinity 6. Brazen Wheels Freedom to Burn: Schelling's Tenth Letter Absolute Mythology: The 1802-1803 Philosophy of Art The Klang of Music, the Fine Arts, and Tragedy Ironclad Necessity 7. Voices of Empedocles "Dame Philosophy Is a Tyrant" Essence or Accidents? Nefas or Destiny? Formal Aspects of the Three Drafts of Hölderlin's Mourning-Play Rhea's Disappearance and the Rise of the Doppelgänger 8. Hölderlin's "Translations" of Sophocles The Labors of Translation The Reviews Absolute Intensity and the Task of the Translator Translating "Theatrality" 9. A Small Number of Houses in the Tragic Universe At the Center of Aristotle's Thought: The Poetics Divine Betrayal: Hölderlin's "Notes on Oedipus" In the Figure of Death: Hölderlin's "Notes on Antigone" 10. Hölderlin's Tragic Heroines Three Commentaries: Kommerell, Reinhardt, Loraux Jocasta's Shadow, Antigone's "Ath, Niobe's Tears, Danaë's Gold Return to Jocasta 11. Antigone's Clout Lacan on the Essence of Tragedy Lacan on the Tragic Dimension of Psychoanalytic Experience Antigone between Two Deaths, Two Births 12. Nietzschean Reminiscences Not a Single New Goddess? "Against the Oncoming Night" Kavqarsi and "Ekstasi in Absolute Music, Absolute Rhythm The Tragic Absolute Appendix: Plot Summaries of The Death of Empedocles Bibliography Index.