INSTITUTE OF MODERN LANGUAGES
School of Advanced Study * University of London
ERNST BLOCH CENTRE FOR GERMAN THOUGHT
Biological Thought and the German Left
Seminar Series February-March 2019
When & Where
Seminars take place on Mondays, from 4 to 6 pm. Unless otherwise stated, all seminars will take place in Room 246, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU.
4 February 2019 | 11 February 2019 | 18 February 2019 | 4 March 2019 | 11 March 2019 | 25 March 2019
>>> Advance online registration<https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events?subinstitute_id=Ernst%20Bloch%20Centre%20for%20German%20Thought%20%28BLOCH%29>
Guest Convenor: Cat Moir (Sydney/IMLR)
When the new science of biology emerged around 1800 it transformed the way people saw the world. Biology challenged religious ideas by providing a scientific understanding of life for the first time. But almost as soon as it was founded the science became a worldview. Thinkers across the politics spectrum invoked biological ideas - cell theory, evolution, genetics, organicism, metabolism - to explain social and political phenomena. Thinkers across the political spectrum invoked biological ideas - cell theory, evolution, genetics, organicism, metabolism - to explain social and political phenomena. From the mid-19th century, right-wing thinkers like Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain used biological arguments to naturalise social, sexual, and racial inequality. The convenient simplicity of such ideas leant them a widespread appeal, particularly in times of crisis. As Europe struggled to recover after the First World War, fascists used biological concepts of race to explain real and perceived social ills. These ideas were institutionalised with the foundation of the Nazi biological state in 1933.
As a result of this legacy, the political reception of biological thought has traditionally been viewed almost exclusively through the lens of its influence on the right, but biological ideas have also had a profound and widespread influence on left-wing intellectual traditions and movements. This term the German Philosophy Seminar examines the impact of biological ideas on the German left in the period from biology's foundation as a science around 1800 until the rise of the Nazi biological state in 1933. Reading texts by liberal, socialist, communist, anarchist, and feminist writers influenced by biological theories and concepts, the seminar aims to reconstruct the history of biology's reception among left-wing thinkers in Germany in the 19th and early 20th centuries in order to transform our understanding of both the history of the scientific discipline of biology, and of German social and political thought.
Reading list:
* Extracts from Karl Vogt, Physiologische Briefe für Gebildete aller Stände (1847) and Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft (1855)
* Extracts from Ludwig Büchner, Kraft und Stoff. Empirisch-naturphilosophische Studien (1855) and Darwinismus und Sozialismus oder Der Kampf um das Dasein und die moderne Gesellschaft. Darwinistische Schriften (1894)
* Extracts from Friedrich Engels, Dialektik der Natur (1883)
* Extracts from Helene Stöcker, Sexualpädagogik, Krieg und Mutterschutz (1916) and from contributions to Mutterschutz and Die neue Generation
* Extracts from Silvio Gesell, Die allgemeine Enteignung im Lichte physiokratischer Ziele (1926)
* Julius Schaxel, Das biologische Individuum. In: Erkenntnis. An international journal of analytic philosophy, Bd. 1 (1930/31)
Institute of Modern Languages Research
School of Advanced Study | University of London
Senate House | Malet Street | GB- London WC1E 7HU
Website http://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk<http://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/>
The University of London is an exempt charity in England and Wales. We have cut carbon emissions from University buildings by 32% and are committed to cutting emissions by 43% by 2020. Please think before you print.
########################################################################
To unsubscribe from the GERMAN-STUDIES list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=GERMAN-STUDIES&A=1
|