Constructing and Representing Reality: HEGEL AND THE MAKING OF ERICH AUERBACH'S MIMESIS

Hegel uses the term concept to signify a set of "philosophical categories that contain an accurate description of the real," according to which "the things that there are have reality only insofar as they reflect the structure of these concepts" (Wartenberg 102-3; Wallace 92- 96). [...]the concept (Begriff)3 determines the structure of reality.4 In Hegel's philosophy of history, the framework is determined by the concept of freedom-the history of the world "represents the successive stages in the development of that principle whose substantial content is the consciousness of freedom" (Hegel, Introduction: Reason 129- 30). [...]Any sensible consideration of the world discriminates between what in the broad realm of outer and inner existence [Dasein] is merely appearance, transitory and insignificant, and what truly merits the name actuality" (33).16 Reason "grasps the truth not by avoiding particularity and positivity, but precisely in what really is (which also means that it grasps not just the appearance, but rather the reality which forces itself into existence.)" In sum, the "universal has to pass into actuality through the particular" (Welch 1: 93). At this moment in history, based on his seminal essay "Figura" (1938; Scenes 11-76), Auerbach is arguing that the "Jewish-Israelitish realm of reality," its understanding of universal history, and its claim to absolute authority were transferred to the early Church: The most striking piece of interpretation of this sort occurred in the first century of the Christian era, in consequence of Paul's mission to the Gentiles: Paul and the Church Fathers reinterpreted the entire Jewish tradition as a succession of figures prognosticating the appearance of Christ, and assigned the Roman Empire its proper place in the divine plan of salvation. [...]while, on the one hand, the reality of the Old Testament presents itself as complete truth with a claim to sole authority, on the other hand that very claim forces it to a constant interpretive change in its own content; for millennia it undergoes an incessant and active development with the life of man in Europe. [...]Rosenberg interpreted the German defeat in World War I in light of the dark, legendary, mythical and demonic, powers of Norse mythology, arguing more specifically that the victories of the Allied Powers in that war are evidence of "an age when the Fenris Wolf ['fame-wolf'] broke his chains, when Hel [giantess and goddess who rules over Helheim, the underworld where the dead dwell] moved over the earth and the Midgardschlange [the Midgard Snake, a demonic monster which looped the whole earth with its giant length, whom Thor, the God of the thunder, killed] stirred the oceans of the world.