Letter to the Editor: The Socratic Interplay of Distance and Sharing – Letters to the Editor

Re: “a genius and pioneer linguist” article by Ulrich Rudenauer (Culture, March 24).

In addition to the work “Aristep and some of his contemporaries”, which Ulrich Rudenauer emphasized in his review, there is another central work that deserves special attention, which used ancient philosophy as a source of spiritual impetus for modernity. Such is Wieland’s “Socrates mainomenos, or Dialogues of Diogenes von Sinope”, which he wrote in 1769 as professor of philosophy in Erfurt and caused a stir. In it, he paid homage to the canine philosophy of ancient cynicism (accepted by the term modern cynicism, which is so common today, was passively separated in the nineteenth century hostile to body and nature) with its most important representative Diogenes, who, like an independent individual, severely criticized the rich The powerful in society in this way corresponds to the political and humanistic ideal of the Enlightenment. However, Wieland deviates from this in his falsified depiction of the mythical encounter between Diogenes and Alexander, who no longer rejects him radically (“Get away from the sun!”), but instead receives a certain amount of admiration from him for desiring it. Invades. Just like his ruling counterpart, the ironic Napoleon in Wieland, the same in all seriousness, which Mr. Rimitsma referred to in the “Zeit” interview in his book (March 23, 2023, No. 13, p. 57), “For holding one of the most important men in world history.” However, Riemtsma admits that Wieland remained “sober” during the famous meeting with Napoleon in Weimar in 1807 and, unlike Goethe, “did not create a vague feeling” out of him. In contrast to Goethe, who betrayed the neo-Sturm und Drang stage of his youthful youth with his submissive attitude, Wieland, by keeping his distance from him, tended to do justice to that Socratic interplay of distance and engagement whose eccentric, freedom-loving Diogenes was. “Making the model of the social status of contemporary intellectuals” advanced. Leonard Fleischer, Gundelfingen