Kategorie: Papers at the Max-Weber-Kolleg

Anders Moe Rasmussen presents a working paper on ‚Modernism as Nihilsm. Nihilism in Jacobi, Fichte and Kierkegaard Existential Thought Reconsidered. German Idealism as Existentialism‘

The project intends to pursue F.H. Jacobi´s “double philosophy”, his distinction between two radically different ways of thinking, one representing rationalism and idealism, in terms of nihilism, and the other his own realistic alternative, called “Glauben”, into post-Kantian philosophy. More specifically the project aims at uncovering the impact of Jacobi´s thinking on the philosophy of the later Fichte as well as on the thinking of Søren Kierkegaard. The essential claim of the project is that both Fichte´s later philosophy and

Kierkegaard´s thinking is to be interpreted as responses to a nihilistic worldview, as different qualifications of Jacobi´s notion of “Glauben”

Josef Römelt presents a working paper on ‚Theological Ethics within the rational conditions of Cultural Studies‘

The text offered for the colloquium is intended to demonstrate the increasing interest of geography in ethical questions. Part of the dissertation project describes a process of increasing sensitivity for ethical questions on the part of geography, which overcomes the scientific positivism of the second half of the 20th century and leads to the transdisciplinary questions of the 21st century. Under the heading of „moral geographies“, the PhD project attempts to discuss the results of these cultural studies processes in geography. This could be helpful hints to possibly supplementing this analysis (however, it has already turned out to be relatively broad). However, the aim of the dissertation project is to obtain helpful suggestions for theological ethics from the increasing sensitivity of geography to ethics. „Geographical“ terminology seems particularly helpful for the task of structuring ethical problems. For example, Integrative Ethics speaks of topology, aporetics and poristics as essential components of striving ethics. Just as in geography topography designs maps for orientation, in ethics the demonstration of topoi, i.e. problem centres, paths of possible solutions (poristics) and the description of cul-de-sacs (aporetics) should provide ethical orientation services. In connection with the ethics of responsibility, Hans Jonas contrasts the Christian principle of „charity“ with the principle of „responsibility at a distance“. This addresses the problem that present generations are capable of destroying the living conditions of future generations from an ecological point of view. The spatial metaphors from near (charity) and far (responsibility for the farthest) serve to describe ethical problems in spatial and temporal distance. In media ethics, the attempt to establish spatial and temporal presence via media services (immediacy of the individual’s fate, language of images …) is thematized, so that moral action become politically effective.

The collection of ideas for the analysis of further points of contact between geographical metaphors and attempts at ethical structuring would be helpful for the project.

Simone Wagner gives a working paper on ‚The Cistercians of the Upper Rhine. Foundation, Relationships and textual Production of female monasteries‘

This paper overviews the history of three south-western female Cistercian monasteries (Günterstal, Wonnental, Marienau) from the 13th to the 15th century. In order to analyse the specific and non-specific characteristics of female Cistercian monasteries in contrast to their male counterparts and other non-Cistercian female communities it focuses primarily on three different aspects: 1. the foundation of the monasteries and their affiliation to the Cistercian order, 2. their relations to different worldly and religious actors such as the father abbot as well as cities and 3. the written record of the monasteries.

Applying to all examples the relationship with the order was complicated and it is unclear whether they all were incorporated into the order or if this question was important for contemporaries. However, all communities developed a Cistercian identity. Nevertheless, they were also in (close) contact to other non-Cistercian religious actors and their religious lifestyle resembled other female communities. Equally, the relationship with cities was quite important for the south-western monasteries. The women had options to shift the boundaries being normatively imposed on them. Men and women did work together regarding administrative business and the nuns didn’t always adhere to strict enclosure. Their written record — though perhaps quantitatively not comparable to the men’s – should also be taken seriously and offers a lot of inside in 15th century religiosity.

Javier Francisco presents a working paper on ‚Clashes of Empires: Europe’s Zero-Sum Games in America‘

In my research project I investigate the paradox of European imperial longevity in the Americas when compared to the second European empires in Africa and Asia (19th-20th centuries). The aim is to offer a new argumentative narrative for understanding imperial cohesion and centrifugal forces that ultimately led to colonial secession. This narrative is based on zero-sum thinking which I interpret as a main driver. Herein, I identify several fragile phases which I use as a foundation for historical theory formation, while focusing on the US-American Revolution of 1776. I investigate how zero-sum thinking became a problem for imperial stability because colonists were no longer afraid of their potentially hostile neighbors (due to inter-imperial consolidation after the Treaty of Madrid of 1750 and France’s loss of the French and Indian War in 1763); because the thought of zero-sum expansion could still be pursued at the cost of the indigenous (“frontiers”); because zero-sum thinking was no longer a defining idea of economic growth and prosperity (mercantilism loses support); and because the spread of universalism of ‘sovereignty’ entered the socio-political stage and forced reforms that were not met (in the case of the British) or partially and insufficiently met (in the case of the Spanish, i.a. Cádiz Cortes). Following the argument of imperial fragility throughout the centuries, the US-American Revolution has to be seen in a historical line of fragility which was then ultimately cut.

Christina G. Williamson presents a working paper on ‚he strength of festival ties. Intentional networks, ‘portable communities’ and the transmission of common knowledge in the Hellenistic world‘

Panhellenic festivals, such as at Olympia, have long been understood as a major factor in the formation of the Greek community during the expansionist processes of colonisation and dispersal of communities across the Mediterranean in the archaic and classical periods. In the Hellenistic period, a new dimension to this phenomenon appeared as interurban festivals were increasingly being hosted by individual cities, modelled on the great panhellenic games. Delegates, athletes, and performers travelled across the Mediterranean, creating a ‘portable community’ that a trail of honorific monuments, victory lists, and civic decrees. These data lend themselves for analysing the cohesion of this expanding world through the lens of network analysis. Yet contrary to the general model, which presumes that innovation comes from random, or ‘weak-tie’ brokers outside the close knit, i.e. strong-tie group, these festivals operated on a shared concept of the past through which interurban connections were shaped. This paper examines these views of the past, their use in creating intentional connections, and the role of ritual in generating common knowledge as it seeks to gauge the strength of festival connections. As it does so, it argues that festival connectivity was anything but random. Although weak ties will have perpetuated the network in numerous ways, the backbone was founded in the strong-tie connectivity of a presumed shared heritage, however fabricated this may have been.

Aaron Plattner is going to present a working paper on ‚Pausanias in Amyklai and Lebadeia. Apollon’s throne and the oracle of Trophonios‘

Presumably a native of Asia Minor, Pausanias was a Greek writer of the second-century AD, who lived in the period of the Antonines. He is famous for being the author of ten books entitled Περιήγησις τῆς Ἑλλάδος (Periégesis tês Helládos, Engl. Description of Greece). The work’s focus is on the „classical“ Greece of the First Sophistic (5th century BC). Pausanias is mainly interested in the religious sphere of the archaic-classical period as well as its material, mythical, and ritual-performative forms of expression. Although, in his time, these sanctuaries, temples, aetiological narratives, rituals, festivals, cult images, etc. no longer existed to the full extent, Pausanias nonetheless selects some of these to picture them vividly on a textual level for his educated audience. He therefore applies the rhetorical stylistic device of ἔκφρασις (ékphrasis, Engl. description). Thus, it is in many cases hard to distinguish between historic and fictional utterances, especially for those who comprehend the work as a travel report or tourist guide.

Thus, my research project is a contribution to clarifying the question of how Pausanias’ idiosyncratic writing can be adequately described. By the means of a reinterpretation of the work’ intention, based on the analyses of approximately 30 descriptions, it can be shown that Pausanias is neither a tourist guide nor a peculiar historiographical piece of work, but rather a museum guide for educated women and men coming from different ethnic backgrounds and constituting the Roman elite, the museum being Roman Achaea, where the reader encounters the ubiquitous cultural highlights of the Greeks that are part of their collective memory. For Pausanias deliberately creates semanticized space, in which a collection of antiquities is not only admired by the reader, but in which the latter feels addressed by the described places and gains the impression to really be in situ.

The present paper is a first draft of my dissertation’s third chapter, as scheduled. It contains the discussion of two ekphrastic examples, the first being an object description (Apollon’s throne), and the second being a description of ritual practices (oracle of Trophonios). In both cases, the discussion’s aim is to show how the text tries to establish a connection to its reader in order to give him or her the impression of being present.

Thomas Sojer presents a working paper on ‚Apocalypse of the Cross‘

The apocalypse of the cross radically recalibrates the totality of all self-world relationships. It is the consequence of a disruption that is as life-changing as it is unavailable. Because of the apocalypse of the cross, Paul worked from the previously unknown and ‘foolish’ gospel of the cross to the previously known and, crucially, misunderstood scripture. For Irenaeus, scripture was previously like a myth but once brought to light by the cross it becomes the very flesh of Christ. Yet, these theologies of the cross in antiquity as well as in (late) modernity do not merely consist in interpreting the cross as such, but in interpreting by means of the cross the contemporary world, society, and most importantly one’s own cruciform conditio humana. The leftist political theorist Simone Weil experienced the apocalypse of the cross herself through the aesthetic performance of liturgy. However, Weil’s concept of the cross takes on a monstrous character. Imagined as a rape, the cross, for Weil, is bottomless affliction endured by a completely surrendered God facing the virtual omnipotence of evil. Within this tension, the paper portrays the fracture between a pre-modern ‘God certainty’ and a growing spiritual crisis of the modern and even more radicalized late modern religious habitus.

Sanam Roohi gives a working paper on ‚Telugu associations in the US: Caste differentiation and diasporic politics in a transregionally connected social field‘

American Telugu associations, built as a cultural platform to unite spatially dispersed Telugu diaspora have become key political intermediaries linking the US with Andhra and Telangana’s political landscape. Although the term Telugu point to their larger linguistic basis of membership, the caste character of these associations is reflected in the way particular communities exercise control of these associations and the alignments of these associations with caste affiliated political parties in India. In this paper I argue that these diasporic Telugu organisations are performing the role of caste associations, albeit in a refashioned way: as in colonial times, they work to make caste relevant, but now in a globalising milieu. Caste associations, a product of colonial modernity and increasing urbanisation have worked for the dynamically defined ‘interests’ of the community, which changes over time. While in colonial times, caste associations worked to unite sub-jatis, achieve upward mobility in the caste hierarchy, and wrest concessions from the British government, in post-independence era, their tryst with democratic politics have been lauded by scholars. With transnational migration and a sense of disintegration of community and cultural values among migrants in the USA, I argue that it is organizations like TANA and ATA that take up the project of building caste based community cohesiveness transnationally even as they attempt to become political mediators in local politics in India. In doing so, associational politics create a transnational social field where carefully crafted and performed caste differentiation between the two major caste groups – Kammas and Reddys pan out. Whereas Reddys and Kammas often see each other as opponents or rivals, they also regard themselves as the only two legitimate caste groups who can represent Telugus both in America and in Andhra. Therefore, the associational politics in the diaspora also point to how Reddy-Kamma rivalry has subsumed the political possibilities of other caste groups within a trans-regionally connected social field.

Armin Unfricht presents a working paper on ‚The Athenian Tyrannicides – A case study‘

In this paper, I apply the previously developed theoretical framework of my thesis – the sociological concept of the “Sacred”, as well as certain aspects of the “collective-” or “cultural memory”-theory derived from the historical and cultural sciences – to a first case-study, namely the Athenian “Tyrannicides”, Harmodios and Aristogeiton. Focal points of my research were the socio-political implications and forms of representation (narrative, material, ritualistic-performative) of the hero-cult in question.

Daniele Miano presents a working paper on ‚Liber, Fufluns, and the others: rethinking Dionysus in Italy between the fifth and the third centuries BCE‘

In response to a dossier of different theonyms and iconographic profiles for a set of gods in central Italy from the 5th–3rd centuries that correspond to
Dionysus, this chapter considers the relationship between Fufluns, Liber, Hiaco (and other by-forms) with reference to two main concepts.(a) Translation: based on the work of Jan Assman, Homi Bhabha and others, we may investigate to what extent these divine forms were ‘translations’ or ‘interpretations’ of a Greek archetype. (b) Multiplicity: following the work of Versnel, Henrichs and others, we may consider the cluster of gods under the rubric of religious polymorphism: was Dionysus one god or many? The chapter argues for the fragmentation of Dionysus in Italy in the 5th–3rd centuries, and for the significance of local myths and forms of worship of the god as against a generalized ‘Roman’ standard. The discussion focusses on two case studies, Vulci in Etruria and Praeneste in Latium, with particular reference to local colour. The Etruscan evidence surveyed comprises epigraphic and iconographic attestations of Fufluns Paχie on fifth-century ceramics and a fourth-century mirror respectively. Praenestine evidence analysed includes bronze mirrors and cistae which depict Fufluns, L(e)iber and Hiaco. In conclusion it addresses the significance of the fragmentation of Dionysus in Italy for the interpretation
of the Bacchanalian affair of 186 BCE.