"The greater the conceptual significance of a literary product, the more it should be assumed that it is based on an idea that determines the whole, and that the deeper consciousness of the time to which it belongs is reflected in it"
About this Quote
Big ideas, Baur insists, are never just personal flair; they are historical evidence. The more conceptually ambitious a work is, the more we should treat it as organized by a governing idea, and as a kind of seismograph for its era’s “deeper consciousness.” That’s not a cozy claim about timeless genius. It’s a provocation: stop reading great literature as an isolated aesthetic object and start reading it as an artifact that betrays the pressures, contradictions, and tacit assumptions of its moment.
The intent is methodological, almost disciplinary. Baur, a 19th-century theologian steeped in German historicism and the emerging “higher criticism,” is training readers to look for architecture: the hidden scaffolding that makes a text feel inevitable. “Should be assumed” is doing heavy lifting here. He’s arguing for a default stance of suspicion toward surface-level readings. If a work matters, it’s because it crystallizes something that was already in the air.
The subtext is that authors are less sovereign than they think. Even when a writer believes they’re inventing freely, the “time to which it belongs” is ventriloquizing through them. That’s a theological move in secular clothing: meaning is not merely expressed; it’s disclosed, almost revealed, by history.
Context sharpens the edge. Baur helped pioneer ways of reading biblical and early Christian texts as products of conflict, development, and ideology rather than direct transcripts of divine events. This line generalizes that approach to literature at large. Great works, for Baur, aren’t escapes from history; they’re history, concentrated and stylized.
The intent is methodological, almost disciplinary. Baur, a 19th-century theologian steeped in German historicism and the emerging “higher criticism,” is training readers to look for architecture: the hidden scaffolding that makes a text feel inevitable. “Should be assumed” is doing heavy lifting here. He’s arguing for a default stance of suspicion toward surface-level readings. If a work matters, it’s because it crystallizes something that was already in the air.
The subtext is that authors are less sovereign than they think. Even when a writer believes they’re inventing freely, the “time to which it belongs” is ventriloquizing through them. That’s a theological move in secular clothing: meaning is not merely expressed; it’s disclosed, almost revealed, by history.
Context sharpens the edge. Baur helped pioneer ways of reading biblical and early Christian texts as products of conflict, development, and ideology rather than direct transcripts of divine events. This line generalizes that approach to literature at large. Great works, for Baur, aren’t escapes from history; they’re history, concentrated and stylized.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Ferdinand
Add to List
