Melancholy has been interpreted as a deadly sin or demonic temptation to nonbeing, yet its histor... more Melancholy has been interpreted as a deadly sin or demonic temptation to nonbeing, yet its history of interpretation reveals a progressive coming to terms with the dark mood that ultimately unveils it as the self's own ground and a trace of the abysmal nature of God. The book advances two provocative claims: that far from being a contingent condition, melancholy has been progressively acknowledged as constitutive of subjectivity as such, a trace of divine otherness and pathos, and that the effort to transcend melancholy—like Perseus vanquishing Medusa—is a necessary labor of maturing self-consciousness. Reductive attempts to eliminate it, besides being dangerously utopian, risk overcoming the labor of the soul that makes us human. This study sets forth a rigorous scholarly argument that spans several disciplines, including philosophy, theology, psychology, and literary studies. It prompts the reader toward philosophical reflection on melancholy and its relation to maturing theological understanding and the cultivation of a profound self-consciousness.
Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts 3, no. 2 (fall 2008): 10–20, 2008
This essay analyzes Karl Jaspers’s view of melancholia and schizophrenia developed in General Psy... more This essay analyzes Karl Jaspers’s view of melancholia and schizophrenia developed in General Psychopathology, further explored in the comparative psychiatric study Strindberg and van Gogh—Swedenborg-Holderlin (1922) and expanded in the Groningen Lectures on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche collected in Reason and Existence (1935). The analysis, undergone in order to define the role and significance of the condition of human existence within Jaspers’s philosophical thought expounded in his magnum opus Philosophy (1932), involves a discussion of his pluralistic clinical approach to the psychopathology of melancholy and schizophrenia as well as his own existential interpretation of the morbid psyche.
Melancholy has been interpreted as a deadly sin or demonic temptation to nonbeing, yet its histor... more Melancholy has been interpreted as a deadly sin or demonic temptation to nonbeing, yet its history of interpretation reveals a progressive coming to terms with the dark mood that ultimately unveils it as the self's own ground and a trace of the abysmal nature of God. The book advances two provocative claims: that far from being a contingent condition, melancholy has been progressively acknowledged as constitutive of subjectivity as such, a trace of divine otherness and pathos, and that the effort to transcend melancholy—like Perseus vanquishing Medusa—is a necessary labor of maturing self-consciousness. Reductive attempts to eliminate it, besides being dangerously utopian, risk overcoming the labor of the soul that makes us human. This study sets forth a rigorous scholarly argument that spans several disciplines, including philosophy, theology, psychology, and literary studies. It prompts the reader toward philosophical reflection on melancholy and its relation to maturing theological understanding and the cultivation of a profound self-consciousness.
Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts 3, no. 2 (fall 2008): 10–20, 2008
This essay analyzes Karl Jaspers’s view of melancholia and schizophrenia developed in General Psy... more This essay analyzes Karl Jaspers’s view of melancholia and schizophrenia developed in General Psychopathology, further explored in the comparative psychiatric study Strindberg and van Gogh—Swedenborg-Holderlin (1922) and expanded in the Groningen Lectures on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche collected in Reason and Existence (1935). The analysis, undergone in order to define the role and significance of the condition of human existence within Jaspers’s philosophical thought expounded in his magnum opus Philosophy (1932), involves a discussion of his pluralistic clinical approach to the psychopathology of melancholy and schizophrenia as well as his own existential interpretation of the morbid psyche.
Uploads
Books by Alina N. Feld
Papers by Alina N. Feld
Book Reviews by Alina N. Feld