ModernGermanLiterature18801950

442 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE

Niebfs.9 Weininger has glitter of style and dazzling paradoxes
(Geschkcht tmd Charakter, 1903; tfer die kt^ten Dinge, 1903).

The Freudian doctrine was countered by the philosophy of the
vitalists (die Vitali$ten\ Vitaliswttf—ljebenspbilosophie), whose sys-
tem, with its stressing of intuition as against experimental science,
arrives at much the same results as Bergson: their Lebensschmng-
kraft and Bergson's elan vital come to much the same thing. With
them there is a revival of metaphysics, although the leaders -

HERMANN COHEN (1842-1918), PAUL NATORP (1854-1924), EKNST

CASSIRER (1874-1945) - are keen mathematicians. GEORG SIMMEL
(1858-1918) stands out among the Gescbichfspbilosopben, and touches
literature closely by his contacts with Stefan George and Rilke;
his Berlin lectures on Stefan George in 1900 are historically im-
portant. Another bridge from philosophy to literature is provided
by the Gegenstandstheork of ALEXIUS VON MEINONG (1853-1921) and
fatphanowenoloffsche Methods of Max Scheler and Edmund Husserl.
MAX SCHELER (1875-1928) is no table for his revaluation of values:
he puts these in stages, with religious values above intellectual
values; for Rtdtur he substitutes 3!tildwig> and for him this means
character and 'integral humanism9* Very close to literature again is
WILHELM DILTHEY (1833-1911), the apostle of Geisteswissenscbaftw.
his Das Erlebnis und die Dichtmg (1906), with its interpretation of
poetry by the personal experience of the poet, has provided aca-
demic critics with a safe historical means of approach, while the
Freudian method has been applied more by brilliant journalists as
justification for their feats of intuition. Intuition is justified, too,
by EDMUND HUSSERL'S (*859-i938) method of 'phanomenohgische
"Rjeduktiori* by *reine Schtw*: what matters is not the 'hie etnunc Dasein
der Gegenstande* or their existmtia but their essential that is, not
Dasein but Wesen matters; this is the source of the 'wesenbaftel&nsf
of the expressionists and explains their iteration of the old mystic
exhortation: Menschy werde msmtluh! (p, 472). Expressionism and
New SaMichkeit are influenced by LEOPOLD £IEGLER?S (1881-)
Florentmische Introduktion %u timr Philosophic der Architektur und der
bildenden Kanste, in which the nature of space is interpreted, and by
WILHELM WORRINGER'S (1881- ) Abstraktion mdEinfuhlung (1908),
in which spiritual reality supplants impressionistic reality. The
modern conflict of spiritual values with the mechanisation of life
is the theme of WALTHER RATHENATJ (1867-1921); he protests
against the overlordship of machinerv. hut a wni>c that- fV>A tnorlii'tifi