The Sacrifice Of Poetic Man

The mission of Holderlin's Thinking (das Denken) is to trace an expression of the unification between the intensity (die Innigkeit) and its alien in his tragic-dramatic poetry (das tragischdramatische Gedicht), in which he has to also display this unification with an invisible poetic method. Through comprehending the contradiction of "the identity and distinction of the intensity at the same time" by the tragic thinking, the intensity finally comprehends its alien, and Holderlin's Mourning-Play reveals deity in this contradiction. The three moments of Holderlin's thinking establish the ground of the "Absolute Poetry", with which Holderlin refers his poetry to a figuration of the knowledge of the wisdom. In accordance with this thinking, the Destiny (die Bestimmung) appears at first as the unification between Nature and Art inside a pure life, and then as the negative of this unification in the commonwealth of this pure life. The pure life in Holderlin's Mourning-Play is the Greek poet and philosopher Empeodcles and the commonwealth is the Sicilian City-State Agrigen. For the negative he has to accomplish the unification between Nature and Art in the commonwealth by turning himself to be a Human God. It would be groundless and unreasonable for Empedocles'Self-sacrifice, if the requirement of the fate of the Epoch was not appeared as the last moment of the destiny. The Epoch requires Empedocles'sacrifice, through which Empedocles overcomes the deepest chasm between Nature and Art, and the destiny realizes itself in his free activity. Corresponding to such thinking and destiny, Holderlin exhibits the knowledge of distinctions between epochal humanity and humanity itself in his Mourning-Play. This is the Topic (die Sache) of Holderlin's Mourning-Play. Empedocles proclaims the universal regulation of humanity given from the unification between Nature and Art, but the Agrigent people, who live in an anarchic order of the regulation of humanity, refuse to accept his teaching. In order to establish the unification and the universal humanity in his commonwealth, Empedocles has to trick the Agrigent people into his congruence with them and that he is the God of their religion. Except Empedocles himself no one knows that his God-becoming is a deception. Stopping this deception is the breakthrough for Holderlin in Fichte's philosophy.In the negative from his commonwealth Empedolces understands his destiny determined by his Epoch. His sacrifice forges the true deity of the Epoch. This suicide Act is the Self-negative of Art, by which Art can assimilate the Negative into itself, and dissolves itself into the ancient and sacred Nature. Meanwhile Nature appears in this sacrifice not only as the mother of Art, but also as its Father. Nature becomes the Lord of the Time and the ground of All-things. Through Empedolces'regress to Nature human being becomes the relative of the sacred Nature, and human deity gets rid of the limited human thinking and really establishes itself, because it arrives at the invisible ground of the endless, which is the true source of human deity.