TY - BOOK AU - Sven Greitschus PY - 2024 CY - Berlin, Germany PB - Peter Lang Verlag SN - 9783631902110 TI - Idealist Epistemology and the Baudelairean Experience of Modernity T2 - Fragments in the Dark DO - 10.3726/b20823 UR - https://www.peterlang.com/document/1459030 N2 - 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. KW - German Idealism, Second Empire, material modernity, Charles Baudelaire, Space, Time, Society, Fatalism LA - English ER -