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Through an in-depth analysis of Johannes Nomsz's play Iemant en Niemant (1768), this article explores how the seemingly anachronistic genre of zinnespel (morality play) could serve to negotiate key issues of eighteenth-century aesthetical discourse. The combination of abstract ideas and sensual images ingrained into this genre made it an ideal vehicle with which to approach one of the primary problems of the period, namely the mediation between reason and the senses. Nomsz's play deals with this rationalist/empiricist divide concerning the moral philosophical question of whether reason or feelings guide human ethical behaviour. Through empathy with the allegorical character of Nobody, Nomsz draws his audience into the teeth of a moral dilemma through emotion rather than teaching them a moral lesson. At the same time, he connects moral sentiments to a rational procedure of moral self-judgement by staging conscience as an inner court. I call this way of applying the late medieval genre of morality play to the key questions of eighteenth-century aesthetics and philosophy 'Enlightened zinnespel'. Turning to the zinnespel with its special capacity to merge mind and senses indicates that at this time, the role of art changed. Art was no longer seen as a medium of knowledge transference, but as a medium that could generate knowledge in a unique way because of its ability to combine cognitive, affective, and sensual dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most significant difficulties that we encounter today in the post-truth era is in constructing a reality in the gap between deceptive pre-given facts and how we experience them in our lives. This gap is mostly caused by our incapacity to see reality beyond the given frames and this very characteristic of post-truth enforces us to examine the meaning of seeing more extensively. Two particular reasons make seeing things and people even more difficult: first, the claim of transparency in politics is essentially deceptive; it suggests us a way of seeing, but what it does, is rather to determine what or whom to see and from which aspect we are allowed to see them. As a result, for politics, transparency turns into a means to a desired end. Second, instrumentalization in politics works effectively only when its administrators and its subjects become invisible 'nobodies' who can only act and see in the pregiven limits of reality. For an alternative political approach, this article turns to a phenomenological understanding of reality which emphasizes that reality can only be constituted in the plurality of aspects. For a reconstitution of reality and politics, first, this study offers an analysis of the strong need for such a plurality that requires the inclusion of the invisibles at all levels; second, in order to develop a genuine sense of embodied plurality, it proposes a new political category, here termed 'the politics of the invisible'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evil deeds may be committed intentionally or out of madness, but it is those who follow orders that present us with the most complex moral, philosophical and psychological questions. In writing about the banality of evil, Hannah Arendt argues that 'in granting pardon, it is the person and not the crime that is forgiven; in rootless evil there is no person left whom one could ever forgive.' Arendt postulates that 'being a person' necessarily entails the acts of memory and thought. This paper explores Arendt's ideas on memory and thought and how these processes can become subverted in the service of a higher order. Clinical material illustrates Whitmer's idea of dissociation as an 'impairment of subjectivity' as distinct from Freud's view of dissociation as a form of repression. This shift in theoretical perspective sheds new light on our understanding of the totalitarian state of mind, i.e. of the mind of a 'nobody', and the conditions within which evil is committed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]