A new Weltanschauung: The deposition of the ich by the es in Georg Buchner's Lenz

Abstract

Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche.... In the annals of modern philosophy, the name Georg Biichner is nowhere to be found. This disclosure is hardly surprising, considering that Biichner is not rememberec for the type of expository treatises typical of philosophy as a discipline. Biichner is instead recognized as an artist, best known for his three plays, Danton's Tod (1835), Leonce und Lena (1836), and Woyzeck (1836-7), and for the story, Lenz (1836). Biichner's distinction as an artist, however, does not ultimately remove him from the company of the great philosophers of his day. After all, any thinker, whether priest, scientist, historian, philosopher, poet, or artist oi the non-linguistic arts, is concerned primarily with the definition of human power and the extension of human knowledge. That is, all thinkers are united by their efforts to contribute to a "true" image of the human being and his or her world. The various spheres of human thought, therefore, differ less in content than in form.