Idealist Epistemology and the Baudelairean Experience of Modernity: Fragments in the Dark

This study proposes an epistemological model on the basis of a streamlined and heavily modified German Idealism. With an analytical focus on the French Second Empire, the underlying research question is rather straightforward: how is knowledge created in material modernity? Using my epistemological model as a methodology for cultural criticism, a second research question emerges: how does the creation of knowledge in material modernity affect human existence? In this context, my argument revolves around the work of Charles Baudelaire, who, as the first poet of modernity, serves as a cultural-critical gateway. I conclude that the specific conditions of material modernity eventually produce an epistemological darkness ultimately leading to fatalism in the guise of a materialist teleology.

Sven Greitschus studied European cultural history at Bangor and Cambridge before returning to Germany. His research interests included nineteenth-century art criticism, the intersection between politics and aesthetics as well as semiotic code. He now works as a department head at the Federal Employment Agency, where questions of social development and integrity remain of great interest.