Academic Illusions in the Field of Letters and the Arts: A Survey, a Criticism, a New Approach, and a Comprehensive Plan for Reorganizing the Study of Letters and Arts

Theoretical discussion. Hebbel Agnes Bernauer. Allegorism. Lessing Laokoon. Herder first Wäldchen. Goethe Zueignung. Kleist Penthesilea. Grillparzer Sappho. "Necessity" as a requisite of the "Idea": Thomas Mann Die Buddenbrooks.

In accordance with the primary premise of dialectic absolutism from classical antique Greek philosophy to the present time, essence is identical with the highest degree of abstraction controlled by the dialectic processes inherent in the "reason," which is assumed as the absolute, ultimate locus and measure of all truth and cognition. In a work of poetry and art and in an entity of culture this essence is called the "idea." This idea in dialectic absolutism can not be a generalization contained within the given integral creative whole. For, a poetic-artistic-cultural whole pertains primarily, according to the dialectic-absolutistic assumption, not to the supreme reality of the supposed "reason," but only to the lesser reality of the "senses" or "empirical phenomena," and can as such not express "essence." All the poetic-artistic data have to undergo transformation or translation at the hands of the "reason" before they can become available as constituents of "ideas."

This complex and elaborate theory of rationalism can be simplified into the sentence, that the meaning of a

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