Cool conduct : the culture of distance in Weimar Germany / Helmut Lethen ; translated by Don Reneau.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lethen, Helmut

Series:

Weimar and now ; 17.

Weimar and now ; 17

Standardized Title:

Verhaltenslehren der Kälte. English

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Conduct of life.

Physical Description:

xiv, 249 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2002]

Language Note:

Translated from the German.

Summary:

Cool Conduct is an elegant interpretation of attitudes and mentalities that informed the Weimar Republic by a scholar well known for his profound knowledge of this period. Helmut Lethen writes of "cool conduct" as a cultivated antidote to the heated atmosphere of post-World War I Germany. Distance and closeness, he says, are crucial elements in the study of human culture, and he cites Schopenhauer's famous parable of the porcupines. Trying to herd together in winter weather in order to keep warm, the porcupines must position themselves at an optimal distance from one another: too close together, they will pierce others with their quills; too far apart, they will freeze. The effort, and ultimate failure, of artists and thinkers to find this optimum distance in human affairs is the subject of Lethen's wide-ranging study.

The work of Helmut Plessner, who defined people and society in the terms of the new objectivity and provided an anthropological foundation for the construction of the cool persona, is Lethen's centerpiece. In place of ideals like sharing and community, aloofness and distance could shape an intellectual space where the Third Reich lawyer Carl Schmitt, avant-gardist Bertolt Brecht, dadaist Walter Serner, and war writer Ernst Junger might coexist. Lethen shows how many of those who ostensibly championed cool conduct found themselves playing with fire as Germany advanced inexorably toward National Socialism and World War II.

Contents:

1. Fending Off Shame: The Habitus of Objectivity 1

2. The Rapture of Circulation and Schematicism 21

3. The Conduct Code of the Cool Persona 33

4. The Cool Persona in New Objectivity Literature 101

5. The Radar Type 187

6. The Creature 195.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-238) and index.

ISBN:

0520201094

OCLC:

46866259