The genius decision : the extraordinary and the postmodern condition / Klaus Ottmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ottmann, Klaus.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Genius.

Postmodernism.

Aesthetics, Modern.

Physical Description:

181 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Putnam, Conn. : Spring Publications, 2004.

Summary:

The author of numerous books and essays on artists ranging from Michelangelo to Mark Rothko and Wolfgang Laib presents a postmodern reevaluation of genius -- the disruption of the ordinary, by artists and writers, that cannot be explained solely in geographical, cultural, or formal terms. Ottmann's thoughts presented in this study should be considered as fragments that form a horizon of conceptual events across the aesthetical and ethical discourses of five of Western philosophy's most influential thinkers: Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger. The book suggests that while there is no essentialist quality of genius, the postmodern artist can reach the extraordinary by way of an active-passive Genius Decision, which is engaged in an activity of failure in its desire to represent the nonrepresentable.

Contents:

Part 1 Argument

1 The Question of Genius 10

2 Physical and Accidental Genius vs. the Genius Decision 15

3 The Sensus Communis Aestheticus and the Resolve of the Antinomy of Taste 20

4 The Question of the Extraordinary 25

Part 2 Exposition

1 Kafka and the Pressing of the Abject 35

Writing As Failure

The Theory of Abjection

Abject, Jouissance, and the Mirror Stage

The Paradoxes of Jouissance

2 Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis (Discourse on Jouissance I) 55

Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge

Spinoza's Discourse on Jouissance

The Deferred Sacrifice

3 Kierkegaard's Theory of the Leap (Discourse on Jouissance II) 65

Kierkegaard's Subjective Minimalism

Form As Ideology

The Case of Abraham

The Genius and the Apostle

Kierkegaard and the Sacrifice of Jouissance

Kierkegaard's Active-Passive Leap

Wheeler's Delayed-Choice Experiment and the Collapse of Uncertainty

Kierkegaard's Failure

4 Nietzsche's Active Aesthetic and the Ur-Eine (Discourse on Jouissance III) 101

Nietzsche and the Ecstasy of Communication

Nietzsche's Active-Reactive Aesthetic

The Ur-Eine: Nietzsche's Substratum of Desire

Nietzsche's Apologia for Slavery in the Name of Jouissance

5 Wittgenstein's Leap (Discourse on Jouissance IV) 125

Certitude

The Ladder of Certitude

Standing Fast While Running Against the Boundary of Language

6 Heidegger's Being and Abject (Discourse on Jouissance V) 145

The End of All World Pictures

The Failure of Philosophy

Nothingness as Abject

The De-cision

2 The Question of the Postmodern 169

1 The Antinomy of Aesthetic Semblance and the Paradoxes of the Genius Decision 171.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0882145754

OCLC:

53846311