Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts into Tears

by László F. Földényi, Ottilie Mulzet (Translation)

An exemplary collection of work from one of the world’s leading scholars of intellectual history

“Földényi . . . stage[s] a broad metaphysical melodrama between opposites that he pursues throughout this fierce, provoking collection (expertly translated by Ottilie Mulzet). . . . He proves himself a brilliant interpreter of the dark underside of Enlightenment ambition.”—James Wood, New Yorker

László Földényi’s work, in the long tradition of public intellectual and cultural criticism, resonates with the writings of Montaigne, Walter Benjamin, and Thomas Mann. In this new essay collection, Földényi considers the continuing fallout from the collapse of religion, exploring how Enlightenment traditions have not replaced basic elements of previously held religious mythologies—neither their metaphysical completeness nor their comforting purpose. Realizing beautiful writing through empathy, imagination, fascination, and a fierce sense of justice, Földényi covers a wide range of topics including a meditation on the metaphysical unity of a sculpture group and an analysis of fear as a window into our relationship with time.

Genres: Philosophy, Essays, Nonfiction, Literature, Criticism, History, Theory

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

László F. Földényi is professor and chair in the theory of art at the University of Theatre, Film, and Television, Budapest, and a member of the German Academy. He has written numerous award-winning books and lives in Budapest.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even the most nightmarish of dreams, which, according to surviving accounts, the great mystics suffered, can be viewed in the light of certain divine connections to which the sleep can entrust himself upon awakening.

Don't be seduced by the title. That's how all this started. Doing my best to support the indie (I also opened a paypal account to buy Rick Harisch's mammoth novel) I grabbed this in Louisville and was soon snaked by the dreaded buyer's remorse. Oh that does sting! I'm sure the recent craze for Magyar letters led to this being translated but most readers will soon be baffled. there's not much there there (tipping a hat to G Stein), but that is an allusion to the Földényi Turn as I note: begin with a quote form Whitman, Stendhal etc and this lament the passing or failure of something. All of this is rhetorical. No one is actually hurt by such. Yet there's a dearth of rigor. he doesn't hide behind the density of jargon as many in the post-structuralist camp have been charged. As a day job nerd I am free to say he's the square smoking a bowl at the party, the one whom you don't want to spend time with. It isn't healthy. You can do without this Hungarian Žižek.

I was ready to abandon this early on but I did eventually like two of the essays. Sleep and the Dream is a meditation on this departure and the narrative we are helpless but to accept. The other one concerned Kleist and the cultural impact of his suicide.

The concluding two essays detailing Artaud and Canetti were interesting but fell short of captivating. That said, I did consider whether the latter's Crowds and Power warranted an approach. Something about he and Koestler, something which glistens when I'm half-turned.

[Bilal Y. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kitabın bana fikirsel olarak bir şeyler kattığını düşünmüyorum. Dostoyevski ve Hegel ile ilgili algımı da sarsmadı. Ne var ki, Földenyi'nin çırpınışlarından garip bir haz aldığımı söyleyebilirim.

[Josh Borders · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciate how many of Foldenyi's essays veer into territory where it's easy for him to make one more leap and then dunk on Hegel. That's commitment, worthy of a four-star rating all on its own.

Like all essay collections, there are studs and duds. Studs: the title essay, "That Which Never Ceases to Hurt Stays in the Memory," "Sleep and the Dream," "Kleist Dies and Dies and Dies," and the final essay on Canetti. It's obvious that the author views himself as an intellectual descendant of Canetti, a polymath whose work crossed disciplines but never really found acceptance in any particular academic community. That formlessness works against Foldenyi in some of the collection's duds, particularly the opening "Mass and Spirit," which gave me brief book buyer's remorse.

I would've been more receptive to some of the arguments collected here about the supposed disenchantment of the world a few years ago, before the explosion of astrology, the TikTok teens trying to hex the moon, etc., but I still think Foldenyi is fundamentally correct that we have lost our sense of wonder. It's just what we're doing with that loss (and subsequent search) that would make for more interesting/provocative reading.

[Mayk Can Şişman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Üç bölümden oluşan adeta 3 şarkılık EP tadındaki kitapta en çok ikinci metni çok sevdim. Kitaba adını veren deneme -ya da benim düşünce sistemime göre EP ile aynı isme sahip video şarkısı- ve son bölüm beni pek de kesmedi. Fakat ikinci denemede özellikle çok sevdiğim Nobel ödüllü Macar yazar Imre Kertész’le ilgili kısım müthiş etkiledi beni. Kertész’in ‘kitle toplumu’ ve yeni bir ‘Auschwitz ihtimali’ üzerine söylediği o cümleyi kendi adıma 2022’de karşılaştığım ve etkilendiğim en şahane cümle ilan ediyorum. Kitabın geri kalanı bana pek değmese de bazen işte tam da böyle oluyor, hiç ummadığınız bir anda bir cümle ya da kelime sizi şaşırtmayı, üzerine düşündürmeyi başarıyor. Kertész için bile kitaba şans verilebilir.

[Artemis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short review:

Never has a book used the word “metaphysical” so many times and given so little insight into what that word might mean.

Also damn this guy really hates Hegel.

Long review;

I was entranced by the title - how could you not be - when I saw this essay collection at the west village McNally Jackson in October. Unfortunately, the title is probably the best part of this collection of works.

Földényl is very well-read and culturally literate. His constant allusions to other thinkers started off as gratifying (it’s always nice to recognize the allusions being made), but ended up revealing this collection’s biggest weakness - the time spent on it would be infinitely better spent reading the primary texts.

This collection, per the introduction, wants to focus on the metaphysical - which is never really defined - and capture luminal aspects of existence. But despite the word metaphysical cropping up a huge amount of times, the essays seem only loosely connected (although his voice is very distinct and you can tel they are all of the same thinker) and don’t reveal much about this said metaphysical.

The main theoretical thread of his titular essay, Dostoyevsky reads Hegel in Siberia and bursts into tears, is basically covered in the introduction alone of Negative Dialectics (I’m referring to his psychoanalysis of Hegel and the pathological urge to systematize). The juxtaposition between Hegel and Dostoyevsky was nice, it is an interesting way to think of Dostoyevsky (the foil to the systematizer; the one who chronicles the individual), but nothing revelatory.
His essay on power and the human body is covered in basically any Foucault.

His essay on Sleep and the Dream hints at something that is new to me (although who knows if it’s original) - I’m reproducing the part I’m referring to incase I ever want to revisit it:

“By day, when I’m awake, I usually observe my body from without, and although I am capable of imagining myself as a physical body, I don’t identify myself with it. In a similar way, I don’t identify with my soul either. If I’m awake, for the most part I think of it, as it were, as someone (or something), which cannot exist without me, and yet is not completely identical to me. I would almost speak of it in the third-person singular. This is Descartes’s final inheritance: not even I can avoid his influence. In the moment when I begin to speak about the body or about the soul, I unwittingly behave as if it were possible to distinguish between them. And in doing so I imperceptibly differentiate myself from them. I create a differentiation between the soul and the body. And as I am the victim of an illusion, in the depths of my heart (my soul), I cannot either identify with what I refer to as body or soul. As I fall asleep, the force of this inheritance abates. Neither my body nor my soul undergoes any changes, but the misconception that there can be a body without a soul, and a soul without a body, becomes threadbare. And I finally become identical with them: I will be fully one with my body and my soul. In falling asleep, instead of that diurnal illusion [chiara’s note: di-urnal, for both day and duality ha], the validity of that experience—that one cannot be pictured without the other; they cannot even be separated from one another—comes into force” (172-3).

The necessary alienation of the Cartesian inheritance is something I hadn’t thought of explicitly before - I do not, in fact, identify with just a body or just a soul (or brain, as my scientific proclivity is more wont to call it), which leaves somehow a third element that must exist, as a unifier? This conclusion may not be entirely logically sound but it does ring true with an intuition that there is something different from the body+soul combo, something that accurately captures the self. This is probably, when I think about it, the first-person-perspective, which encapsulates both the intellectual aspect of the soul and the inescapably physical experience of the body, which we after all access via our first person perspective. But I digress.

The other notable portion of the book - the only one I’d be tempted to revisit - is the account of the Romantic’s conception of the fragment (in the essay (The Shadow of the Whole: the Romantic Fragment):

“For the romantics, the fragment is the manifestation of nonidentity, just as it is in the traditional Christian conception. The decisive difference is that for the Romantics, this nonidentity is not the manifestation of lack, but of fulfillment. The fragment truly points to something beyond itself—namely, it is no longer identical with its own self, not because it is a shard of the past or future but because it is burdened with the idea of its own definitive fragmentary nature. It becomes complete by means of the prevailing lack within it. And this ensures a kind of internal infinity on its behalf, which can only be compared to the infinity of the positive Whole. It is precisely because of its nonidentity that the fragment may become divine. Parallel to the accelerated secularization of the beginning of the Romantic era, the transformation of the positive idea (ideology) of identity into the positive experience of nonidentity can be observed. From this point on, the final word belongs to tragic dualism, which, according to Hans Urs von Balthasar, ‘heroically sees imperfectability (as the eternal return) as absolute (with Nietzsche); or else the fragment experiences in its ‘failure’ (Jaspers) and in its ‘determination to accept death (Heidegger), a gleam of wholeness which one sees and shares only in renouncing it’ (139). [Balthasar quote at end is A Theological Anthropology]

This whole line of ideas is very interesting and obviously needs a lot more elaboration (and preferably some logical notation when it starts making claims about identity, would be easier to follow), but obviously the takeaway here is that I need to read the Romantics he’s alluding to, and/or Balthasar.

He had some interpretations of Goya (primarily El Sueño de la razon produce monstruos, which was not very impressive - we had a better interpretation in my arthum class), and a whole essay (A natural scientist in reverse) devoted to Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the sea of fog. The latter was alright; some interesting ideas (tldr the romantic subjugated nature in the same way that the natural scientist does, and also reifies the self in his very desire to escape the self, plus some analysis on why the fog can be seen as the desire to escape the self) but nothing really new there either.

Overall, another book I wish I hadn’t read, simply because of the opportunity cost. I’ll only be reading tried and true classics for at least the rest of the month I’m really sick of wasting my time. (Note that it’s not a truly condemning insult to be called a waste of time - there are simply too many works of confirmed genius to waste on anything lesser).

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was worth reading for the title alone, though it turns out that the title is a bit of a red herring since Dostoyevsky may or may not have read Hegel when he was in Siberia and probably didn't burst into tears if he did. The idea behind the title is that when Dostoyevsky was in Siberia he might have read Hegel's bit about Siberia being outside of the flow of history, which Dostoyevsky might have taken as a slight on his beloved Russia or which might have caused Dostoyevsky to cry at a point in his life when he was embracing the spiritual and rejecting the rationalism of people in the Hegelian camp despite the pivotal position of Hegel for Russian intellectuals of Dostoyevsky's generation.

The bigger idea that runs through all of these essays is that the excessive rationalism of the Enlightenment caused Western culture to lose something vital and important. Sometimes there is deep wisdom and humanity to be found in the irrational that is lost in rationalistic reductionism. We need to embrace the whole, not just the parts, to experience happiness, melancholy, fear and the transcendent in ways that were part of pre-Enlightenment thinking and that defy rational analysis. Maybe we shouldn't be maximizing happiness. That diminishes the importance of what happiness can be on a deeper level and suggests that unhappiness is a thing to be squashed like a bug when that is neither possible nor desirable. In short, we need to re-enchant the world, but we need to do it in a way that is deeply connected to the natural world and to our human core, not with technology or Harry Potter-style magic. The Romantics rejected rationalism, but Mr. Foldenyi sees in them a modern sentimentalism that is as alienated from the natural world as the rationalism of the Enlightenment.

Sometimes Mr. Foldenyi gets a bit too religious for me without acknowledging that he is doing so, and sometimes he goes too far in blasting rationalism and in failing to acknowledge the great value that we have gotten from rational thinking, but I can mostly get behind his program. It was an interesting book that articulated a lot of ideas that I have been thinking about for a while in ways that I didn't always agree with, but that were mostly smart and stimulated my thinking.

[Hendrik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alleine der Titel bekommt von mir schon mal fünf Sterne. Sehr kurzweilige Kritik an Hegels vernunftbasiertem Geschichtsbild, wonach nur den an den Klippen der Vernunft Hängengebliebenen Glück, Erfolg und Ruhm beschieden ist. Ganze Völker und Erdteile werden von Hegel aus der Geschichte verbannt, so auch der weinende Dostojewski in seinem sibirischen Exil. In dieser von der Vernunft begrenzten Welt, bleibt kein Platz für Leid, Verzweiflung, Irrationalität, Transzendenz und letztendlich geht auch die Freiheit verloren.

[belisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

bölük pörçük görünse de anlatımında hoş bir şeyler vardı, birkaç ufuk açıcı çıkarım yakaladım...

içinde adı geçen kitapların bir bölümünü (Kolima Öyküleri ve Ölü Evinden Anılar) okumak için bu metne ara vermiştim, o nedenle uzun sürdü

[Oğuz Kayra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dostoyevski Sibirya'da Hegel Okuyup Gözyaşlarına Boğuldu, Dostoyevski'nin idam cezasından kurtulup Sibirya'ya kürek mahkumu olarak sürülmesiyle birlikte, burada kentin savcısı Vrangel ile dostluk kurması üzerine [Ölüler Evinden Anılar üzerine çalıştığı sıralarda] verdiği bir kitap siparişinden yola çıkılarak oluşturulan, fikri bu temelden alan ince bir kitap.
Burada Dostoyevski'nin dostu Vrangel aracılığıyla Almanya'dan Hegel siparişi verdiği bilgisi var. [Kaynak Vrangel'in anıları] Vrangel bu kitabın isminden bahsetmese de Hegel'in Tarih Felsefesi kitabının sipariş verildiği sonrasında yazarın kardeşine yazdığı mektuplardan da açığa çıkıyor.

«Çünkü tarih, özünü dışarı attıklarına açık eder.»

"Dostoyevski'yi mucizelere inandıran belki de tarihten sürgün edilişiydi ancak bu inanç modern dünyayı yöneten kanunların acımasızlığıyla olan tecrübesinden doğmuş olabilirdi. Hegel tarih felsefesi derslerini on yıldır veriyor olmasına rağmen bu fikir aklının ucundan bile geçmemişti. Dostoyevski'ninse bu gerçeği anlamak için on yıl düşünmeye ihtiyacı yoktu."

Kitapta Ölüler Evinden Anılar için «Cehennemin İncili» olarak bahsediliyor. 2024 yılında okunacak Dostoyevski kitaplarına Yeraltından Notlar ve Karamazov Kardeşler ile birlikte ilk sıradan giren kitaplar bunlar oldu. Şalamov'un Kolıma Öyküleri, Soljenitzin'in Ivan Denisoviç'in Bir Günü ve İmre Kertesz gibi toplama kampı [edebiyatı?] anılarını yazan yazarların da kitaplarının bahsi geçmekte. Bunları da bir araya sığdırabilirsem okuyacağım çünkü kitapta Földenyi'nin de dediği üzere; «Gerekli olan imkansız olanla sınır komşusudur.»

Bu kitapla birlikte Földényi'nin Türkçe'de yer alan iki kitabını da okumuş bulundum. Umarım diğerleri de çevrilir. Bu yıl tanıştığıma en çok memnun olduğum isim oldu Macar filozof.

[Deniz Ata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bahsi geçen kitapları okumadığım için yarı - fransız okudum .Ama tabiki kendime pay biçeceğim cümle- düşünceler buldum .

Yazarın üslubu beklediğim gibi değildi .Kitabın adı zihnimde daha romantik imgeler oluştururken gerçekte çarptığım duvar sanki yoğun bir hegel - dosto okuması yapıp gaza gelip yazılmış cümleler gibiydi .

[Zorua64 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vraiment la mise en lumière de tout ce qui cloche avec Hegel c cool de donner la parole aux oubliés de l'histoire universelle qui en sont contemporains

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

The essays collected in this brilliantly titles volume explore the fallout resulting from the post-Enlightenment world's rejection of an all powerful God in favour of the virtues of reason. How to satisfy the longing for a connection to some kind of wjole? How to cope with the many periods of darkness that have descended on our world in the centuries since? Hungarian professor of the theory of art, Földényi, has a broad sweeping perspective and turns his eye to the philosophical and metaphysical concerns that have confronted Dostoyevsky, Kleist, Casper David Friedrich, Nietzsche, Antonin Artaud, Canetti and others. The title essay which explores the impact Dostoyevsky's years of exile in Siberia had on his view of Europe and his subsequent work is excellent, but there are so many fascinating questions that arise in all of the pieces that this is a book that will not only stay with me for a long time, but guide much of my reading in the months to come.

A longer review will follow.

[Darija Svetozarevic · Rating 3 out of 5]

S’Buech isch bi mir lang diheime umeglege und es hät mich lang abgschreckt. Wie kreativ de Titel au isch, ich ha min jahrelange Lieblingsruss Dostojewskij nöd welle in Verbindig bringe mittem Hegel. Hegel isch zwar de Vertreter vom Idealismus höchstpersönlich und sini Werk sind wück die wirkmächtigste für d’Gschichtsphilosophie ABER er isch im Irrglaube gsi, er chönt s’Unerklärliche erkläre. Das isch ihm halt natürlich nöd glunge, vielmeh hät er ne Art selbstverstümmlig vorgnoh.

De Titel löst ja scho viel us. Dostojewskij, Hegel, Träne? Klar, so ne Kombi macht neugierig aber am Endi ischs meh e philosophisch-essayistischi Usenandersetzig mit de Frag, was Rationalismus und Idealismus mit eus machet. Hät Dostojewskij wück hüllend Hegel glese in Sibirie? Gwüss nöd.

D’grösseri Idee, wo sich dur de Essay zieht, isch, dass d’Ufklärig mit ihrem extreme Rationalismus öppis Wichtigs verlore hät. D’irrationali Erfahrig, d’Emotion, s’Metaphysische, das alles isch im rationalistische Denke irgendwie "verschwunde". Foldényi argumentiert, dass mir d’Welt wieder verzaubere müend aber nöd mit Technologie oder Fantasie, sondern mit ere tüfe Verbindig zu Natur und zu eus selber. (Würd ich persönlich wück nöd hundert prozentig unterschribe aber isch guet)

Teilwis wirkt er für mich echli z’eschatologisch und gaht mit sinere Kritik am Rationalismus eifach en Schritt z’wiit. Er unterschätzt villicht, was Rationalismus eus alles bracht hät. Abschlüssend: S’Buech hät trotzdem Gedanke in mir usglöst und isch e gueti Usenandersetzig mit nem Thema, wo mich scho länger bschäftigt. Nöd immer eifach, aber spannend.

[Jerre · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 that I'm rounding off to 4, definitely some interesting ideas in here though my lack of knowledge on some topics held me back a bit. Additionally, there were also some points I just didn't agree with but still fun to read.

[Michael Baranowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of often brilliant essays built around the theme of the importance of transcendence in a world that's become almost entirely materialistic. It flags a bit later on (or maybe I'm the one who flagged), and my lack of in-depth knowledge of 20th century high culture was an impediment, but what was good about it (for me) was fantastically good, and well worth my time.

[Benji · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Those most beset by commands are children. It is a miracle that they ever survive the pressure and do not collapse under the burden of the commands laid on them by their parents and teachers. That they in turn, and in equally cruel form, should give identical commands to their children is as natural as mastication or speech ... No child, not even the most ordinary, forgets or forgives a single of the commands inflicted on it.'

The command is what unites every living being, whether animal or human. Such living beings are capable of survival only if they obey, if they fulfill the rules of the game dictated to them through these commands. If they did not do so they would fall to pieces, be destroyed.

Canetti described the command as that which is by definition evil. And yet, without the command, the world would not remain as it is. That pessimistic historical view, which in Crowds and Power can frequently be sensed, here gains decisive contours. At such moments, one comes across the traces of Canetti's concealed gnosticism. The world (or the cosmos, of which the human being forms as much a part as the animal or inanimate nature) is held together by something which can be designated evil. And yet I may perceive evil only if I have consciousness of the good. What would be this good? - a world in which there were no commands that yet would not fall apart from the lack of them.

Can anything like that be experienced? No, says Canetti. But he suggests that - despite every rational principle to the contrary - such a world should exist. The dictatorship of commands must be shattered, he writes not as a historian or political scientist but with the voice of a preacher:
'We must have the courage to stand against [the command] and break its tyranny. The full weight of its pressure must be removed; it must not be allowed to go more than skin-deep. The stings that man suffers must become burrs which can be removed with a touch.' And until this happens, we will be forced to endure the eternal endangerment of our own individuality; we may exist only as the excrement of power.

[Georgina Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

De lo mejor que leí en el año. Laszlo Foldenyi en este libro es exactamente lo que me gusta leer: un montón de referencias artísticas tejidas para presentar un mismo tema en todos los ensayos. El tema central además es interesante, la dualidad en distintos niveles: “luz y oscuridad, Hegel y Dostoyevsky, la razón y los monstruos, felicidad y melancolía, Fausto y Mefistófeles...”. Todas las referencias me llevan a descubrir nuevos autores que no conocía y ahora quiero leer, pero también hay más referencias a pinturas, obras de teatro y cine (¡quiero ver todo de Eric Rohmer y aprender más de Artaud!).

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Földényi es uno de los ensayistas contemporáneos más notables, y aunque su obra ha sido traducida al español desde principios de este siglo, no deja de ser un autor singular en el contexto editorial latinoamericano. Si bien las comparaciones con escritores como Mann o Canetti pueden ser exageradas, acaso meras estrategias comerciales, es cierto que Földényi se inscribe en una tradición de ensayo intelectual que, salvo excepciones como Ortega y Gasset o Paz, ha florecido mayormente en otras lenguas gracias a las distintas amalgamas históricas entre filosofía continental europea, prosa de ideas y poética del saber. Diría que Földényi es un ensayista temáticamente cercano a la sociología cultural de un Wolf Lepenies pero estilísticamente más afín a la vertiente italiana y literaria de un Rizzante, Baricco, Calasso —por momentos me recordó, entre ensayistas latinoamericanos actuales, al Pablo Maurette de "El sentido olvidado"—.

La idea central del libro no es nueva: casi todos los ensayos gravitan alrededor de conocidos debates en torno a la interpretación histórica de la Ilustración y los desafíos filosóficos, culturales y espirituales de un mundo sin centro, unidad, dios, absoluto, trascendencia. Esto es palpable sobre todo en los primeros textos y regresa de forma constante en frases que remiten a tópicos existencialistas de mediados del siglo pasado, y en no pocas ocasiones al léxico crítico de Heidegger: la muerte como horizonte filosófico, nuestro paso involuntario por el mundo —arrojados a este sin haberlo pedido, como se decía en la vieja jerga existencial— o el olvido de las cuestiones más importantes en favor de la dominación tecnológica y la razón instrumental.

Dicho esto, me llama la atención que Földényi logre diferenciarse de las múltiples reencarnaciones del discurso del malestar cultural. Se trata de un libro con un registro más creativo, histórico y libre que el que usualmente se encuentra en las intervenciones de cierto heideggerianismo pop —à la Byung Chul-Han— o incluso en los momentos menos lúcidos de críticos más serios —pienso en Agamben—. Tras una presentación más elaborada de su premisa durante los ensayos iniciales, Földényi hace del leitmotiv del libro un pretexto para explorar cuestiones menos generales, a través de episodios de la historia intelectual y cultural moderna de Europa, algunos de ellos conocidos y otros relativamente marginales.

Por esta razón creo que los mejores ensayos vienen en la segunda mitad: el ensayo sobre el romanticismo y el fragmento, sobre el cuerpo, sobre Goya y El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. Antes de los textos finales sobre Artaud y Canetti, extraordinarios los dos, está un ensayo sobre el doble suicidio de Heinrich von Kleist y Henriette Vogel en noviembre de 1811: mi ensayo favorito del libro y uno de los más interesantes que he leído recientemente, en especial para quienes se interesen por las relaciones entre vida (o muerte) y literatura.

[armghan ahmad · Rating 5 out of 5]

sharp, insightful, and laced with all manners of profundity, László’s essays are dense jewels for the critically inclined. the essays on Dostoevsky and morality, Kleist and suicide, and the spiritual notion of fragments are all expansive in their scope whilst being precise in their direction. this was well worth the read

[Lenno · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like the book would be better if there was a rewrite to capture the technological changes in the last few years. But really good arguments are layed down. Not an easy book which took me a few weeks and a lot of breaks. But I really enjoyed it.

Also on top: the title is just a gem

[Torsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kurzer, geistreicher Essay des ungarischen Philosophen. Die abendländische Vernunft behauptet sich, indem sie das Andere verdrängt. Dostojewski bricht bei der Hegellektüre in Tränen aus, weil Sibirien, der Ort seiner Verbannung und seines Leidens, die Hölle, für Hegel nicht geschichtswürdig ist. Ebenso verfährt Hegel mit Afrika, dem paradiesischen Land der Kindheit und des Goldes, auch es schliesst die absolute Vernunft aus der Geschichte aus. Der Ausschluss von Himmel und Hölle aus der Vernunft bezeugt den Tod des Göttlichen, während sich die Vernunft selbst an seine Stelle setzt, dies die eigentliche Hölle...

[Ffiamma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"chi vuole guardare il mondo solo con razionalità, prima o poi sarà vittima dell'irrazionalità- più rapidamente e più vistosamente di quello che desidera soprattutto vivere liberamente. la ragione non è padrona e creatrice della libertà, ma vi prende solo parte. la libertà è determinante; la ragione ne è solo uno strumento e non l'origine. tutto ciò che è razionale o irrazionale, lo è entro certi limiti; la libertà invece, che è il solo attributo divino dell'uomo, trascende ciò che è razionale e irrazionale. mi rende libero solo quello che trascende da me- trovo me stesso là dove allo stesso tempo mi perdo"

[Buse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kitabın ilk olarak ismi dikkatimi çektiği için okumaya karar vermiştim. Günümüz insanının yarattığı tarih ve gerçeklik algısına Dostoyevski’nin Sibirya’sından uzanan bir serzeniş…✨keyifli ve akıcı bir okumaydı.

[Grace Camille · Rating 4 out of 5]

The mass feels itself to be omnipotent, but it places its
"divine" power in the service of "demonic" goals. It wishes to rule over everything: the price of this desire is that it regards the living cosmos itself as a dead mass of material to be conquered. But does that death not ricochet back onto the crowd itself? The mass of people never would have formed if these same people had not seen material as finally and definitively dead. For that death was what gave birth to their mass — that particular modern variation of human beings assembled in a crowd, which, when we turn up in its midst, gives us the impression of having glimpsed the living dead, and who otherwise can seem the liveliest of all. (12)

Nobody looks back at us from a mirror. We can try to bravely face ourselves: our gaze is engrossed in the eyeballs of a stranger, who stares fixedly into nothingness. Not only does this stranger not look outward, he does not even look inward. He is dead, numb — if we pay long attention - even haunting. We could easily end up like Narcissus as we try to discover the principle of our vitality in that which is nonliving. We try to reach vitality via the detour of a phantom existence. We seek the criterion of life in that which is dead. This, of course, makes life itself dead. Lifeless, numb, ghostly. And yet all we wished to do was examine vitality. (25)

Whoever insists on viewing the world rationally at all costs eventually falls victim to irrationality - and such people always do so more quickly and more visibly than those whose primary wish is to live freely. Reason is not the master and the creator of freedom but rather receives its own share from it. Freedom itself is deter-minative; the mind is merely one of its instruments and does not engender it. Everything that is rational or irrational finds itself within the confines; freedom, however - the one single divine element of humans — is beyond rationality and irrationality. I become free only through that which surpasses (transcends) me-I find myself only in that in which I lose myself once and for all. (30)

The church did not exaggerate. Reality itself surpassed every possible imaginary depiction of hell. And then colored it gray. And this made hell even more frightening than before, when its proximity was indicated by tongues of flame, lakes of tar, and pitchforks. That was something you ran away from. But no one can do battle with grayness. (46)

The persistent lack of transcendent experience causes unhappiness; and every attempt to stop up this lack with our command to "Be happy!" — no matter with what variations, confirming universal access to material goods— is futile. That kind of unhappiness is not the same thing as melancholy. Melancholy assists us in attaining deeper realization; in contrast, mere unhappiness, as it were, empties us, makes us apathetic, deprives us of our own inherent creative energy. Melancholy can even animate; unhappiness exclusively frustrates. (87)

Namely, PRESENCE offers a sense of the divine: in the moment when we experience our own temporally unique presence, we are torn away from the pressure of surrounding circumstances. Maps, compasses, or milestones merely betray where one is in terms of location; they do not indicate whether one is PRESENT. Presence is not a state that can be physically registered. (89)

The proximity of HAPPINESS is haunted by the miracle, by the feast or by love.And even if we don't pronounce it, in the meantime there is still a word we must consider: god. (93)

And the reason the human being is not completely master of his own self is not that he has yet to arrive at the state of freedom, but that he is a metaphysical creature who with his entire being is nested within a series of connections that greatly surpass him. He has received the gift of existence without ever having been asked about it, and he will lose his life as well without having been asked for his consent. (120)

'If something is to stay in the memory it must be burned in: only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory' - this is a main clause of the oldest (unhappily also the most enduring) psychology on earth... Man could never do without blood, torture, and sacrifices when he felt the need to create a memory for himself." (158)

This is one of the peculiar traps of the civilization of the modern age- I can only experience what is most natural with no pangs of remorse when I am unconscious of it. (173)

There is a great deal of difference between someone who dies of life and someone who says yes to death. Kleist did the latter. As opposed to the FEAR of death, he was sustained by the PASSION of death. (215)

[Kayleigh]

DNF-ed at about 60%. The author has some good ideas, but he argues for them primarily by arguing against philosophers whose work he at best misunderstood and at worst intentionally misrepresents. I wasn’t even sure what he meant by “metaphysics”—certainly not what philosophers since Aristotle have meant by the term.

The titular essay was the best of the 7 or 8 I finished, perhaps because by writing in the spirit of Dostoevsky, the author was forced to take a clear philosophical stance. Throughout the rest of the essays, he dances around terms such as “transcendence” and “the divine,” hiding the flaws in his arguments behind their ambiguity.

While it might be petty, I finally put the book down after a long, condescending of a girl with a tattoo of a Shakespeare quote: “Observing the girl’s face, I suspected that she was not really aware of the precise meaning of these words; even if she knew some English, she would hardly be familiar with the word ‘thine,’ and she certainly would never be interested in the source of the quote.” He follows this charitable description with a clear misunderstanding of a quote from Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony.” At least justice has a sense of humor.

[Adam Roesner · Rating 4 out of 5]

The opening essay is one of my favorite pieces of writing in the last year. Foldenyi writes with an art that one can't but admire. There are other essays in this book that I found enjoyable as well but I have the same trouble here as I have when reading Gramsci or some Zizek- I am not familiar enough with the source material to understand much of what he makes of them. This is sometimes not much of an issue (as is the case for chapters devoted to pieces of art which he describes well enough) but sometimes I feel that I am missing much. C'est la vie.

[Logan Bryck]

Földényi definitely has some old-man-bemoaning-the-decline-of-civilization energy, but I won't say he's wrong. I wouldn't give this a hearty recommendation—in retrospect, I think I felt pretty done with it after about the first six essays (out of fourteen). Földényi's thoughts are certainly valuable and challenging, but the essays can be quite scattershot, moving on from interesting ideas too quickly and then dwelling on seemingly fruitless minutiae for far too long. Still, the ideas that do resonate are fascinating challenges to prevailing thought on secularization, reason, and progress.

[Trisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ very much enjoyed reading this collection of essays! i liked how he rejects rationality as a stand-in for the idea of god, and the questions he throws at us: where can we find god (whatever ‘god’ might be) in this material world, & how can we experience transcendence when we have been removed from history? i found the most well written essays to be ‘happiness & melancholy’, ‘belief in the devil’, and ‘mass & spirit’, while some of the others were a bit hard to follow (idk if this was because of the style or all the references i didn’t quite catch).

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to follow at times, but could be a translation issue. Loved the idea overall though.

[Doni · Rating 2 out of 5]

My main take away was that I should read Canetti's Crowds and Power.