Diskussion:Max Picard

Jim Mott

Max Picard was important as one of the few thinkers writing from a truly mystical sensibility in the 20th century. Championed by the religious existentialist Gabriel Marcel and befriended by the poet Rilke, Picard was a deeply introspective and valuable writer in his day -- "someone to know" as one contemporary critic put it.

But his stark, rather extreme criticism of modernism may have consigned him to seeming irrelevance in the second half of the 20th century. His best work is, at heart, both invocation of and elegy to the ideals, ideas and subtleties that nourished the human spirit in other places and times but which the modern world simply left no place for. After his death in the early 1960s, he almost completely disappeared from the cultural landscape, with a few of his books kept in print in the USA, sadly, by a publisher known as a strident political and religious reactionary.

Yet Picard is too rich, nuanced and deep a thinker to be pigeon-holed on the right, and he has much to offer the present age. For example, his contemplative writing often reflects a graceful melding of Christian and Buddhist sensibility, not by prescription or explication but through poetic realization. In his best work, he shifts consciousness into a dimension where the value of the small, the real, the humble, and the invisible is affirmed and truly felt.

Overall, his writing is mixed - some passages or whole books conspicuously more or less inspired than others. His more ambitious political and social essays, while sometimes narrow with limitations, contain unique insights and valuable perspectives - for example, his insistence that an "atomized" modern world makes it easier for the demonic to arise and consolidate power over more humanistic tendencies in (Hitler Within Us).

Unfortunately some of his best, most distinctive writings (e.g., "The Human Face") are hard to find. This could change if a revival in interest in Max Picard puts more of his work back in print. Of the books currently available, "The World of Silence" is most highly recommended.

Jim Mott 9/06 jimmott.com (nicht signierter Beitrag von 70.100.126.230 (Diskussion) 05:39, 13. Sep. 2006 (CEST))

• == Englischer Text! ==

sollte übersetzt werden... wer kann's? (nicht signierter Beitrag von 134.96.79.200 (Diskussion) 22:18, 15. Jan. 2007 (CET))

polare Schlagwörter

In diesem Artikel über Max Picard wird ausgesagt, Picard habe "konservativ-religiöse Beiträge" geleistet. In seinem Buch "die Flucht vor Gott" kritisiert Picard aber die "polaren Schlagwörter", wie er sie nennt (Quelle: Picard, Max, Die Flucht vor Gott, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1958, Seite 48), daher halte ich es für unangebracht "konservativ-religiös" zu schreiben (Mal abgesehen davon, dass diese Aussage nicht mit meiner Sicht auf Max Picard's Weltsicht vereinbar ist). (nicht signierter Beitrag von 31.164.1.165 (Diskussion) )

Sei mutig, bearbeite den Artikel („Seite bearbeiten“). Hilfe erhältst du unter Wikipedia:Fragen zur Wikipedia oder im Wikipedia:Mentorenprogramm. Viele Grüße, --Polarlys (Diskussion) 22:41, 4. Sep. 2012 (CEST)