Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: History Is Personal
- Prologue: Original Attributes, 425 B.C.–A.D. 1765
- I L'Âge des Ombres, 1765–1790s
- II Textual Salvation from Social Degeneration, 1790s–1808
- III Alternate Idealizations, 1807–1885
- 6 Hegel's Critique of “Those Plant-like Beings”
- 7 Schopenhauer's Justification for Good
- 8 Nietzsche's Inability to Escape from Schopenhauer's South Asian Sources
- Epilogue: Destinies Reconsidered, 1885–2004
- Conclusion: The Intersection of the Personal, the Philosophical, and the Political
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - Nietzsche's Inability to Escape from Schopenhauer's South Asian Sources
from III - Alternate Idealizations, 1807–1885
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: History Is Personal
- Prologue: Original Attributes, 425 B.C.–A.D. 1765
- I L'Âge des Ombres, 1765–1790s
- II Textual Salvation from Social Degeneration, 1790s–1808
- III Alternate Idealizations, 1807–1885
- 6 Hegel's Critique of “Those Plant-like Beings”
- 7 Schopenhauer's Justification for Good
- 8 Nietzsche's Inability to Escape from Schopenhauer's South Asian Sources
- Epilogue: Destinies Reconsidered, 1885–2004
- Conclusion: The Intersection of the Personal, the Philosophical, and the Political
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The fire is in the minds of men and not in the roofs of houses.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons (1872)THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA did not create a unified Germany after the defeat of Napoleon, but rather a set of loosely confederated states. Therefore, those who sought a unified Germany looked to cohesion of culture. George Mosse remarks of the middle decades of the century:
The revolutions of 1848, which seemed at first to give Germany another chance for unity, only resulted in frustration. The search for national roots, for a national stability upon which to form a true union was intensified between 1848 and 1870, and was accompanied by an increasing opposition to modernity. The modern world had denied to the Germans the unity which they had possessed long ago, and many felt that the movement for unity must draw its strength from those distant times rather than from the unpromising present.
By the 1870s, when the unification of Germany finally occurred after more than a half-century of failed attempts, the touted superiority of the bourgeoisie born of the Industrial Revolution gave way to what would come to be called a fin de siècle mood of spiritual emptiness. Despite the fact that public education became compulsory in France and Germany during this period, in literature the theme of modernity would increasingly come to be seen as entropy of spirit rather than triumph of human freedom.
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- The Indo-German IdentificationReconciling South Asian Origins and European Destinies, 1765–1885, pp. 162 - 176Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010