Literature And Religion: Pascal, Gryphius, Lessing, Holderlin, Novalis

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The great visions of Gryphius, Lessing, Holderlin, and Novalis, visions of peace, freedom, and humanity, have not been refuted. They were simply not realized in the modem era and they point to a different future...the lofty intellectuality and morality of Pascal the Catholic as well as the radical Christianness of Kierkegaard the Protestant have to be taken in here just as much as the mystical depth of Dostoyevsky the Russian and the enigmatic darkness of Kafka the Jew. The eclipse of God, the subsequent twilight of the gods, the downfall of the modem pseudogods can be followed by a new morning in a paradigm of postmodernity (a name for what is as yet unknown). Yes, let us look forward. If I read the signs of the times rightly, toward the end of our century rebellion against the Kafkaesque world is everywhere afoot.... Literature and religion in one: a theme of hope for a new futurean era that can bring forth literature in which great theology and great aesthetics enter once again into an exemplary intimacy. Hans Knng, from Literature and Religion Up until the seventeenth century, Western culture was essentially synonymous with Christian culture. Then, on the very border between the medieval and the modem worlds, this unity of authority and belief began to crumble. For the first time, an intellectual life developed that was independent of the church, and modem, rational man surged toward new models of the world, society, the church, and theology. In Literature and Religion, Hans Knng and Walter Jens survey the complex, vital, and contradictory search for faith over the past three hundred years through the key works of eight great writers. At the dawn of modernity, Blaise Pascal was theprototype of the new modern man, measuring religion against develop

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