In Taberna

"It is only in an individualistically disintegrated society that the aesthetically productive subject could shift the intellectual center into itself, only in a bourgeois world that isolates the individual in the domain of the intellectual, makes the individual its own point of reference, and imposes upon it the entire burden that otherwise was hierarchically distributed among different functions in a social order. In this society, it is left to the private individual to be his own priest. But not only that. Because of the central significance and consistency of the religious, it is also left to him to be his own poet, his own philosopher, his own king, and his own master builder in the cathedral of his personality. The ultimate roots of romanticism and the romantic phenomenon lie in the private priesthood. If we consider the situation from aspects such as these, then we should not always focus only on the good-natured pastoralists. On the contrary, we must also see the despair th...

"From Kant on, the philosophy of the nineteenth century assumes more and more the character of a philosophy of will. In Kantian thought we find but little preoccupation with the human will, less even than in Luther's, whose essay De servo arbitrio belongs among the fundamental writings of Protestantism. But Schopenhauer declared the human will to be "the thing as such." This identification would have  been incomprehensible to Kant, for Kant declared it impossible to understand and define the nature of things, "as such." The idea of the supremacy of the human will culminates in Nietzsche's "will for power." That power was the foremost goal of the will was claimed by Nietzsche as passionately as it was denied by Schopenhauer. The manner in which Nietzsche campaigns for his will-for-power idea reminds one of Callicles in Plato's Gorgias. The philosophy of will has peculiar premises and consequences. It is obvious, first of all, that those ...

"It is certain, that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have the preference above the accurate and abstruse; and by many will be recommended, not only as more agreeable, but more useful than the other. It enters more into common life; moulds the heart and affections; and, by touching those principles which actuate men, reforms their conduct, and brings them nearer to that model of perfection which it describes. On the contrary, the abstruse philosophy, being founded on a turn of mind, which cannot enter into business and action, vanishes when the philosopher leaves the shade, and comes into open day; nor can its principles easily retain any influence over our conduct and behaviour. The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian."

Let us study the relation of technology to quite another field, the organization of schools and universities. As the technician enters this field, he converts all institutions of learning to his interest; that is, he promotes technical training, which as he claims, is the only up-to-date, useful, practical knowledge. The significance of reforms in this direction must not be underestimated. They constitute a direct attack against the idea of a "rounded education" (encyclios disciplina) that prevailed in classical and medieval times. The consequences of this attack do not, obviously, consist alone in the decline of the role of grammar in education, in the retreat of astronomy and music, in the disappearance of dialects and rhetoric. This slashing, whereby of the seven classical "free arts" only arithmetic and geometry have survived, is by no means all. The technical science which comes to a position of supremacy is both empirical and causal. Its inroads into education...

"The Dionysian trajectory of Hölderlin's poem now becomes stronger and stronger, its architecture changes, the dithyrambic comes to the fore. The firm, presumptuous construction of ancient verses is no longer sufficient, the hymn formed in free rhythms takes its place. The language in "Patmos", the pictures, the landscapes are Dionysian. The longing, pulling and tugging begins, the wanderings begin, which, unlike in the elegy "Der Wanderer", lead after the mouth of the Danube, to Greece, the Caucasus, Asia Minor, the islands, all the way to India, into the realms of the triumphant Dionysian festival and triumphal procession. Dionysus is not mentioned in "Patmos", but he is always present, most palpably in the "Mysteries of the Vine", where Christ and his disciples sit together. The mystery of the vine is a Dionysian mystery. If this Dionysian vine remains unharmed by Christianity, then we can say: it is good. Under it one can rest; in th...

"One of the least pleasing effects of modern refinement is the havoc it has made among the hearty old holiday customs. It has completely taken off the sharp touchings and spirited reliefs of these embellishments of life, and has worn down society into a more smooth and polished, but certainly a less characteristic surface. Many of the games and ceremonials of Christmas have entirely disappeared, and like the sherris sack of old Falstaff, are become matters of speculation and dispute among commentators.They flourished in times full of spirit and lustihood, when men enjoyed life roughly, but heartily and vigorously; times wild and picturesque, which have furnished poetry with its richest materials, and the drama with its most attractive variety of characters and manners. The world has become more worldly. There is more of dissipation, and less of enjoyment. Pleasure has expanded into a broader, but a shallower stream, and has forsaken many of those deep and quiet channels where it f...