Papers by Rochelle Tobias
A dossier of transcriptions, translations, and a critical-philological introduction to previously... more A dossier of transcriptions, translations, and a critical-philological introduction to previously unpublished manuscripts from the Scholem Archive in Jerusalem, Modern Language Notes 127.3 (2012) - "Walter Benjamin's and Gershom Scholem's Reading Group around Hermann Cohen's Kants Theorie der Erfahrung in 1918." - Gershom Scholem. "Uber Kant / On Kant." - Gershom Scholem. "Gegen die metaphysische Erorterung des Raumes."
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Jul 8, 2020
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Jul 8, 2020
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Jul 8, 2020
The Modern Language Review, 2007
... suggestions, critical responses, or invi-tations to present my work, including Ken Calhoon, R... more ... suggestions, critical responses, or invi-tations to present my work, including Ken Calhoon, Robert ... At the Press, Kathryn Wildfong, Kristin Lawrence, and Kathleen Fields made editing and publication a ... Robert Cohen, in Marat/Sade, The Investigation, The Shadow of the Body of ...
Phenomenology to the Letter
This paper examines Husserl’s theory of other minds through an unusual lens. It argues that Kafka... more This paper examines Husserl’s theory of other minds through an unusual lens. It argues that Kafka’s short story “Die Verwandlung” poses a unique challenge to Husserl’s account of the apprehension of other minds by highlighting the experience of a being (Gregor Samsa) that is like-minded but not like-bodied and hence cannot be recognized as a subject. It might be tempting to dismiss Kafka’s story as a mere play of the imagination, but such a judgment ignores the stakes of a work in which the protagonist is shown to constitute the world as an egological sphere while, at the same time, being excluded from the community of his fellow beings or subjects by virtue of his appearance. Gregor Samsa’s exclusion from the shared world of his family calls into question the normative basis of Husserl’s claims that it is through the motor coordination of another body that I discern a mind at work; I ‘appresent’ the consciousness of another that is never given directly to me but accompanies my perceptions. Kafka’s implicit critique of Husserl’s notion of analogical apprehension is all the more trenchant as his tale otherwise affirms the intentional structure of the universe so central to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. How do we respond to the animal in our midst? How do we acknowledge another that may be like-minded but not liked-bodied and in whom we cannot recognize ourselves? To what degree do we—or can we—inhabit a shared sphere when the subjectivity of another remains all but inaccessible to me? For Kafka, the answer to these questions lies in fiction, which is unique among genres in its capacity to represent other minds in the third person. In the second volume of Ideen, which Husserl wrote in 1912 but did not publish in his lifetime, he refers briefly to the playing of the violin to illustrate the ways in which the world we construct through our intentionality motivates us in turn: Höre ich den Ton einer Geige, so ist die Gefälligkeit, die Schönheit originär gegeben, wenn der Ton mein Gemüt ursprünglich lebendig bewegt, und die Schönheit als solche ist eben im Medium dieses Gefallens ursprünglich gegeben, desgleichen der mittelbare Wert der Geige als solchen Ton erzeugender, sofern wir sie selbst im Anstreichen sehen und anschaulich das Kausalverhältnis [...] erfassen. (Hua IV, pp. 186–87) 1 The work we call Ideen II is drawn from several sources and was compiled by multiple editors and scholars over a forty-year period. Husserl conceived the volume and wrote significant portions of it in 1912 but then set the text aside for other projects. Edith Stein produced two longhand versions of the work based on Husserl’s shorthand text as well his notes on related themes in 1916 and 1918, which Husserl edited, annotated, and revised. Between 1924 and 1925 Ludwig Landgrebe produced a typoscript of Ideen II and III based on Stein’s 1918 version, which Husserl also proceeded to edit and revise over a four-year period. Marly Biemel edited and compiled the text of Ideen II in printed in the Husserliana based largely on Stein’s 1918 longhand version and Landgrebe’s 1924-25 typoscript. See her Editorial Introduction in Hua IV, pp. viii-xx.
Konturen
This paper takes as its point of departure Husserl’s claim that the only world we can speak of is... more This paper takes as its point of departure Husserl’s claim that the only world we can speak of is the one given in consciousness or that presents itself to intuition. Husserl’s insistence on the world’s status as a phenomenon whose being can never be verified, as such a verification would require an act of mind, has led to the accusation that phenomenology is nothing but a form of idealism that discounts the validity of everything apart from consciousness. This paper turns this accusation on its head. To the extent that phenomenology addresses the role that consciousness plays in constituting the world, it draws attention to consciousness’ worldly aspects as not only the ground for all intuition but intuition itself in its sensuality. Consciousness is identical with what it observes, be it a bird in flight, the unfolding petals of a rose bud, or a discarded doll gathering dust in an attic. Rilke’s poetry more than any other exposes the sensuality of thought by exploring the inner co...
Hölderlin's Philosophy of Nature
This chapter considers the relation of rivers to history in Hölderlin’s late poetry and his trans... more This chapter considers the relation of rivers to history in Hölderlin’s late poetry and his translations of Pindar’s fragments. It argues that Hölderlin develops his theory of history through a broader reflection on the four elements, in which each element is said to need its opposite in order to restrain its potentially infinite expansiveness. The chapter shows that this is particularly true of the earth, which would turn into an ever-expanding desert, were it not for the paths that rivers etch in it. Such etchings at the same time submit the earth to a peculiar temporality in which the past returns as the future and antiquity reappears as modernity. Hölderlin’s cosmology is intertwined with his idea of historical reversals outlined in his letters to Böhlendorff and his remarks on Sophocles’ tragedies.
The Yearbook of Comparative Literature, 2012
Hofmannsthal in his essay George und Hofmannsthal, first published in 194 and then revised in 1... more Hofmannsthal in his essay George und Hofmannsthal, first published in 194 and then revised in 1955. In the essay, Adorno accuses the poet of artistic and political com-placency. 4 An aristocrat by birth, Hofmannsthal remained beholden to the interests of his class. This is at least the ...
Paul Celans pneumatisches Judentum: Gott-Rede und menschliche Existenz nach der Shoah, by Lydia K... more Paul Celans pneumatisches Judentum: Gott-Rede und menschliche Existenz nach der Shoah, by Lydia KoelleIn 1969, the poet Paul Celan took a trip to Israel which he had long considered but repeatedly postponed, either because he did not feel ready to visit the "Holy Land" or because he feared it would not meet his expectations as a survivor who first lost his home -- the German-speaking, Jewish community in Czernowitz -- in the Holocaust and who then in his adult years chose to live in exile in Paris. Less than a year after his trip to Israel, Celan committed suicide. Because his suicide followed so soon after his visit, critics have tended to identify it as a decisive moment in his biography, a moment which represents the culmination of his work and which explains why he took his life. The interpretation of this visit has invariably taken one of two forms, each of which resembles a sentimental narrative. Either the troubled poet, haunted by the events of the past, found the ...
Encyclopedia of the Bible Online
Uploads
Papers by Rochelle Tobias