Robert Eisler and the Magic of the Combinatory Mind
The Forgotten Life of a 20th-Century Austrian Polymath
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Beschreibung
Robert Eisler, the polymathic Jewish Austrian scholar and Holocaust survivor, faded into obscurity after his death in 1949. A contemporary and associate of Walter Benjamin, Aby Warburg, and Gershom Scholem, Eisler spent his early years in fin-de-siècle Vienna and trained as an art historian and economist. In this book, the first in English devoted to Eisler’s life and thought, Brian Collins takes us through the development of Eisler’s ideas about the philosophy of values, comparative mythology, Christianity, psychoanalysis, monetary policy, and anthropology. Collins also explores the bizarre and sometimes tragic events that defined Eisler’s life, including his arrest for art theft in 1907, his controversial reconstruction of a physical description of Jesus, and the fifteen months he spent in Dachau and Buchenwald, the inspiration for his final book, Man into Wolf: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism, and Lycanthropy.
Robert Eisler, the polymathic Jewish Austrian scholar and Holocaust survivor, faded into obscurity after his death in 1949. A contemporary and associate of Walter Benjamin, Aby Warburg, and Gershom Scholem, Eisler spent his early years in fin-de-siècle Vienna and trained as an art historian and economist. In this book, the first in English devoted to Eisler’s life and thought, Brian Collins takes us through the development of Eisler’s ideas about the philosophy of values, comparative mythology, Christianity, psychoanalysis, monetary policy, and anthropology. Collins also explores the bizarre and sometimes tragic events that defined Eisler’s life, including his arrest for art theft in 1907, his controversial reconstruction of a physical description of Jesus, and the fifteen months he spent in Dachau and Buchenwald, the inspiration for his final book, Man into Wolf: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism, and Lycanthropy.
Explores the life and work of Robert Eisler, one of the most interesting yet forgotten thinkers of the 20th century Combines historical narrative with an exploration of the wide array of intellectual currents of the mid-20th century Discusses Eisler's ideas about philosophy of values, comparative mythology, Christianity, psychoanalysis, monetary policy, and anthropology
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Brian Collins
Themen in »Robert Eisler and the Magic of the Combinatory Mind«
scholem walter benjamin Friedrich Murawski William Buiter Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Stimmen zu »Robert Eisler and the Magic of the Combinatory Mind«
“Collins’s book is the first full-length study of the brilliant if eccentric Austrian-Jewish polymath, Robert Eisler. … Collins has done us the service of brilliantly synthesizing an unbelievably rich textual corpus and allowing us to enjoy, even if (because?) we never fully penetrate its secrets, the ‘magic of the combinatory mind.’” (Bruce Rosenstock, Religious Studies Review, Vol. 47 (4), December, 2021)
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“Robert Eisler and the Magic of the Combinatory Mind is a fascinating, well-researched, and beautifully-written book that brings to light both an unusual personality and a remarkable set of intellectual concerns. These concerns include a range of issues—the origin of violence, the function of money, the role of the sky in the cultural imagination—that would today belong to a variety of distinct disciplines. Brian Collins offers us not only a first glimpse of the life and work of this extraordinary thinker but also an inkling of what scholarly passion can produce when it is not restricted by contemporary academic constraints and standards.”
-- Amir Engel, Lecturer in German Language and Literature, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and author of Gershom Scholem: An Intellectual Biography
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