Studied by 5 people
1848 Revolution and Counter Revolution
Context:
The german 1848 revolution was part of a series of European revolutions in which lower and middle class people were discontent with the traditional autocracy, advocating for liberal ideals with the lower class seeking improved working and living conditions
The counter revolution was seeking many of the same improvements; however, on a more nationalistic front.
Art:
political satires, posters, cartoons which uses distortion to its advantage;
open contemporary art
Women’s rights
Reading:
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
Marx introduces a sense of hope
“A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.”
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
Meaning:
Marx is describing how communism has already become a power in and of itself throughout Europe which is heavily opposed by the already existing powers in place.
Content:
Throughout the rest of the manifesto, Marx and Engels describe the constant battle between two major classes throughout history - the bourgeois and proletariat (working) classes - which has resulted in the modern capitalist class structure. This can only be fixed through the unification of a singular class.
Context:
This comes as time in which Europe was undergoing the 1848 revolutions which, although were not exactly in support of marxism, were liberal and nationalist in nature. They wanted to overthrow the political monarchs of the time and establish constitutional republics.
“Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?”
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
Content:
Throughout the rest of the manifesto, Marx and Engels describe the constant battle between two major classes throughout history - the bourgeois and proletariat (working) classes - which has resulted in the modern capitalist class structure. This can only be fixed through the unification of everyone in a classless society.
Context:
This comes as time in which Europe was undergoing the 1848 revolutions which, although were not exactly in support of marxism, were liberal and nationalist in nature. They wanted to overthrow the political monarchs of the time and establish constitutional republics.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes”
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
Content:
Throughout the rest of the manifesto, Marx and Engels describe the constant battle between two major classes throughout history - the bourgeois and proletariat (working) classes - which has resulted in the modern capitalist class structure. This can only be fixed through the unification of everyone in a classless society.
Context:
This comes as time in which Europe was undergoing the 1848 revolutions which, although were not exactly in support of marxism, were liberal and nationalist in nature. They wanted to overthrow the political monarchs of the time and establish constitutional republics.
“The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
Content:
Throughout the rest of the manifesto, Marx and Engels describe the constant battle between two major classes throughout history - the bourgeois and proletariat (working) classes - which has resulted in the modern capitalist class structure. This can only be fixed through the unification of everyone in a classless society.
Context:
This comes as time in which Europe was undergoing the 1848 revolutions which, although were not exactly in support of marxism, were liberal and nationalist in nature. They wanted to overthrow the political monarchs of the time and establish constitutional republics.
“The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.”
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
Content:
Throughout the rest of the manifesto, Marx and Engels describe the constant battle between two major classes throughout history - the bourgeois and proletariat (working) classes - which has resulted in the modern capitalist class structure. This can only be fixed through the unification of everyone in a classless society.
Context:
This comes as time in which Europe was undergoing the 1848 revolutions which, although were not exactly in support of marxism, were liberal and nationalist in nature. They wanted to overthrow the political monarchs of the time and establish constitutional republics.
“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
Content:
Throughout the rest of the manifesto, Marx and Engels describe the constant battle between two major classes throughout history - the bourgeois and proletariat (working) classes - which has resulted in the modern capitalist class structure. This can only be fixed through the unification of everyone in a classless society.
Context:
This comes as time in which Europe was undergoing the 1848 revolutions which, although were not exactly in support of marxism, were liberal and nationalist in nature. They wanted to overthrow the political monarchs of the time and establish constitutional republics.
“The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. Not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians. In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.”
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
Content:
Throughout the rest of the manifesto, Marx and Engels describe the constant battle between two major classes throughout history - the bourgeois and proletariat (working) classes - which has resulted in the modern capitalist class structure. This can only be fixed through the unification of everyone in a classless society.
Context:
This comes as time in which Europe was undergoing the 1848 revolutions which, although were not exactly in support of marxism, were liberal and nationalist in nature. They wanted to overthrow the political monarchs of the time and establish constitutional republics.
“You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society. In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.”
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
Content:
Throughout the rest of the manifesto, Marx and Engels describe the constant battle between two major classes throughout history - the bourgeois and proletariat (working) classes - which has resulted in the modern capitalist class structure. This can only be fixed through the unification of everyone in a classless society.
Context:
This comes as time in which Europe was undergoing the 1848 revolutions which, although were not exactly in support of marxism, were liberal and nationalist in nature. They wanted to overthrow the political monarchs of the time and establish constitutional republics.
“Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture. That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine”
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
Meaning:
Addressing some of the oppositions the bourgeois have against communism, including the idea that the destruction of class culture would diminish all culture which Marx argues are not the same.
Content:
Throughout the rest of the manifesto, Marx and Engels describe the constant battle between two major classes throughout history - the bourgeois and proletariat (working) classes - which has resulted in the modern capitalist class structure. This can only be fixed through the unification of everyone in a classless society.
Context:
This comes as time in which Europe was undergoing the 1848 revolutions which, although were not exactly in support of marxism, were liberal and nationalist in nature. They wanted to overthrow the political monarchs of the time and establish constitutional republics.
“Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life? What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.”
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
Content:
Throughout the rest of the manifesto, Marx and Engels describe the constant battle between two major classes throughout history - the bourgeois and proletariat (working) classes - which has resulted in the modern capitalist class structure. This can only be fixed through the unification of everyone in a classless society.
Context:
This comes as time in which Europe was undergoing the 1848 revolutions which, although were not exactly in support of marxism, were liberal and nationalist in nature. They wanted to overthrow the political monarchs of the time and establish constitutional republics.
Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil Key Terms
Will to truth, nihilism, dogmatism, free spirit, herd, servant and master morality, nationalism
“We Europeans of the day after tomorrow, we firstborn of the twentieth century—with all our dangerous curiosity, our multiplicity and art of disguises, our mellow and, as it were, sweetened cruelty in spirit and senses—”
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
Content:
He follows this by asking European philosophers to search for their own virtues that align with their recent beliefs/desires \n
Context:
“They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic (as opposed to the mystics of every rank, who are more honest and doltish—they talk about "inspiration"—): while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration", most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact:—”
“The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his "categorical imperative"—makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical preach”
“Suppose nothing else were "given" as real except our world of desires and passions, and we could not get down, or up, to any other "reality" besides the reality of our drives—for thinking is merely an interrelation of these drives to each other—:”
“Kant was first and foremost proud of his Table of Categories; with it in his hand he said: "This is the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics." Let us only understand this "could be"! He was proud of having DISCOVERED a new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori. Granting that he deceived himself in this matter; the development and rapid flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible something—at all events "new faculties"—of which to be still prouder!—”
“But let us reflect for a moment—it is high time to do so. "How are synthetic judgments a priori POSSIBLE?" Kant asks himself—and what is really his answer? "BY MEANS OF A MEANS (faculty)"—but unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially, imposingly, and with such display of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that one altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie allemande involved in such an answer.”
“All the young theologians of the Tubingen institution went immediately into the groves—all seeking for "faculties." And what did they not find—in that innocent, rich, and still youthful period of the German spirit, to which Romanticism, the malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet distinguish between "finding" and "inventing"! Above all a faculty for the "transcendental"; Schelling christened it, intellectual intuition, and thereby gratified the most earnest longings of the naturally pious-inclined Germans.”
“One can do no greater wrong to the whole of this exuberant and eccentric movement (which was really youthfulness, notwithstanding that it disguised itself so boldly, in hoary and senile conceptions), than to take it seriously, or even treat it with moral indignation. Enough, however—the world grew older, and the dream vanished. A time came when people rubbed their foreheads, and they still rub them today. People had been dreaming, and first and foremost—old Kant. "By means of a means (faculty)"—he had said, or at least meant to say. But, is that—an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep?”
“And as for the meaning of the dangerous formula "beyond good and evil," with which we at least guard against being mistaken for others: we are something different from "libres-penseurs," "liberi pensatori," "Freidenker," and whatever else all these honorable advocates of "modern ideas" like to call themselves.”
“.... economical in learning and forgetting, inventive in schemata, occasionally proud of tables of categories, occasionally pedants, occasionally night owls of work even in broad daylight; yes, when it is necessary even scarecrows—and today it is necessary: namely, insofar as we are born, sworn, jealous friends of solitude, of our own most profound, most midnight, most midday solitude:—that is the type of man we are, we free spirits! and perhaps you have something of this, too, you who are coming? you new philosophers? —”
1900s
Creativity/Symbolism/Vienna/Decadence Movement
The European symbolist and decadence movements of the late 19th-early 20th century were a reaction against literary realism and naturalism. They sought to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images.
Art and Literature:
Symbolic
Readings
George and Rilke Poems
“Come to the park they say is dead, and view” by Stefan George
“Giving Thanks” by Stefan George
"The Panther: in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris" by Rainer Rilke
"Blue Hydrangea" by Rainer Rilke
"The Last Evening" by Rainer Rilke
Duino Elegies by Rainer Rilke
Come to the park they say is dead, and view
The shimmer of the smiling shores beyond,
The stainless clouds with unexpected blue
Diffuse a light on motley path and pond.
The tender grey, the burning yellow seize
Of birch and boxwood, mellow is the breeze.
Not wholly do the tardy roses wane,
So kiss and gather them and wreathe the chain.
The purple on the twists of wilding vine,
The last of asters you shall not forget,
And what of living verdure lingers yet,
Around the autumn vision lightly twine.
“Come to the park they say is dead, and view” by Stefan George
Content:
The poem alludes to the surviving memories of the __ regime
There is a lot of nature imagery embedded in the poem to convey aspects of hope
The summer field is parched with evil fire, And from a shoreland trail of trodden clover I saw my head in waters thick with mire That wrath of far-off thunder dimmed with red. The mornings after frantic nights are dread: The cherished gardens turned to stifling stall, Untimely snow of bane the trees filmed over, And upward rose the lark with hopeless call.
Then through the land on weightless soles you stray, And bright it grows with colors you have laid, You bid us pluck the fruits from joyous spray, And rout the shadows lurking in the night… Did I not weave-you and your tranquil lightThis crown in thanks, who ever could have known That more than sun, long days for me you rayed, And evenings more than any starry zone.
“Giving Thanks” by Stefan George
Content:
Imagery is much more negative, especially in comparison to George’s earlier poems. It follows a characteristic style of poetry of the time in which the first stanza was descriptive and the second conveyed the deeper meaning through an apostrophe
I journeyed home: such flood of blossoms never Had welcomed me… a throbbing in the field And in the grove there was of sleeping powers. I saw the river, slope and shire enthralled, And you, my brothers, sun-heirs of the future: Your eyes, still chase, are harboring a dream, Once yearning thoughts in you, to blood shall alter… My sorrow-stricken life to slumber leans, But graciously does heaven's promise guerdon The fervent… who may never pace the Realm. I shall be earth, shall be the grave of heroes, That sacred sons approach to be fulfilled. With them the second age comes, love engendered The world, again shall love engender it. I spoke the spell, the circle has been woven… Before the darkness fall, I shall be snatched Aloft and know: through cherished fields shall wander On weightless soles, aglow and real, the God.
“Hyperion” by Stefan George
Rilke’s poems
Content:
A Case of Hysteria (Dora) by Sigmund Freud
Note 
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