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Norbert Elias QUOTES

Norbert Elias QUOTES

1 " I wish you all the pleasurable excitement one can have without hurting others and one's own dignity. "

― Norbert Elias

2 " Tässä kommunistien ja kapitalistien näkemykset käyvät yksiin: molemmat ajattelevat saman paradigman mukaisesti, että talous on jokaisen yhteiskunnan keskeisin alue. Itse en ole samaa mieltä. Hitaasti hiipivä identiteettikriisi, joka liittotasavaltaa on kohdannut, on vähintään yhtä vaarallinen. "

― Norbert Elias , The Germans

3 " Death is a problem of the living. Dead people have no problems. "

― Norbert Elias

4 " The peculiarity of innovative fantasies in the form of works of art is that they are fantasies kindled by material which is accessible to many people. In a word, they are de-privatised fantasies. That sounds simple, but the whole difficulty of artistic creation shows itself when someone tries to cross this bridge — the bridge of de-privatisation. It could also be called the bridge of sublimation. "

― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius

5 " A vallás, a mindenható Isten büntető és üdvözítő mivoltának tudata önmagában sohasem hat "civilizálólag" vagy az affektusokat tompítólag. Ellenkezőleg: a vallás mindenkor éppen annyira "civilizált", mint amennyire az a társadalom vagy az a réteg, amelynek a vallása. "

― Norbert Elias , The Civilizing Process

6 " Az egyes emberi terveknek és cselekedeteknek ez az alapvető összeszövődése olyan változásokat és alakzatokat idézhet elő, amelyeket egyetlen ember sem tervezett vagy hozott létre. Ebből, az emberek interdependenciájából, egészen sajátos rend származik, amely kényszerítőbb és erősebb, mint az őt alkotó egyes emberek akarata és esze. Az összeszövődésnek ez a rendje szabja meg a történelmi változás menetét; ez alapozza meg a civilizáció folyamatát. "

― Norbert Elias , The Civilizing Process

7 " Moreover, the change hinted at in this statement does not concern merely the social position of the artist. With it, the canon of artistic creation, or expressed differently, the structure of art, also changed. But such connections do not emerge very clearly if the transition from art production for a personally known employer or patron to art production for a paying public, from patronage to the free, more or less anonymous market, is considered merely as an economic event. To take this view is to overlook an essential point: that this was a structural change in the relation of people to each other, which can be precisely defined. In particular, it involved a power-gain by the artist in relation to his public. This human change, this change in the balance of power — not simply between individuals as such but between them as representatives of different social functions and positions, between people in their capacity as artists and as public — remains incomprehensible as long as the pattern of our thinking aims solely at spinning out dehumanised abstractions. "

― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius

8 " [T]he social canons and methods by which people build up instinct controls in their communal life are not brought into being deliberately; they evolve over long periods, blindly and without plan. Irregularities and contradictions in drive-controls, huge fluctuations in their severity or leniency, are therefore among the recurrent structural features of the civilizing process. "

― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius

9 " The acquired knowledge, which includes acquired thinking or, in Freudian terms, the "ego", opposes the more animal energy-impulses when they try to take control of the skeletal muscles and thus of action. That these libidinal impulses also flow through the chambers of memory in their effort to control human action, kindling the fire of dream fantasies in them — that in the work of the artist they are purified by a stream of knowledge until they finally merge with it — therefore represents a reconciliation between originally antagonistic tendencies of the personality. "

― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius

10 " The trouble is that such categories do not take us much further. They are academic abstractions that do not do justice to the process-character of the observable social data to which they refer. Underlying them is the idea that the tidy division into epochs we usually find in history books best fits the actual course of social development. Each figure who is known through the magnitude of his or her achievement is then allocated to one epoch or the other as its high point. On closer examination, however, it not uncommonly emerges that outstanding achievements occur most frequently at times which could at most be called transitional phases if static concepts of epochs are used. In other words, such achievements arise from the dynamics of the conflict between the canons of older declining classes and newer rising ones. "

― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius

11 " Unlike dream ideas, those of the artist are attuned both to the material and to society. They are a specific form of communication, intended to elicit applause, resonance of a positive or negative kind, to arouse jor or anger, clapping or booing, love or hate. "

― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius

12 " The libidinal fantasy-stream only becomes significant for other people, i.e. capable of mediation, if it is socialised through fusion with the canon, while at the same time energizing and individualizing the canon or the conscience. "

― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius

13 " People who hold the position of outsiders in relation to certain established groups, but who feel equal or even superior to them on grounds of their personal achievements or sometimes even their wealth, may bitterly resist the humiliations to which they are exposed; they may also be fully aware of the human frailties of the established group. But as long as the power of the establishment remains intact it and its canon of behavior and feeling and exert a strong attraction on outsiders. It is often the latters' greatest wish to be recognised as equals by those who treat them so openly as their inferiors. The curious fixation of the wishes of people in outsider positions on recognition and acceptance by their establishment causes this goal to become the focus of all their acts and desires, their source of meaning. No other esteem, no other success carries so much weight for them as the esteem of one circle in which they are regarded as inferior outsiders, as success in their local establishment. "

― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius

14 " In the course of the changing relationship between those who produce art and those who need and buy it, the structure of art changes, not its value. "

― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius

15 " In other words, the more differentiated, relatively developed societies have cultivated a comparatively high tolerance for highly individualised ways of further developing the existing art canon; this facilitates experimentation and the breaching of stale conventions and can thus help to enrich the artistic pleasures available through seeing and hearing. "

― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius

16 " De um modo geral, as vítimas da história, os grupos menos poderosos que foram derrotados, têm tido apenas uma pequena oportunidade de serem recordados. O principal quadro de referência do que é recordado como história continua sendo até hoje um Estado, e os livros de história ainda são, sobretudo, crônicas de Estados. "

― Norbert Elias , The Germans

17 " É hoje comum confundir a necessidade social de responsabilizar pessoas individualmente pelos danos e sofrimentos que infligiram a outras com a necessidade social de explicar, em termos sociológicos e também psicológicos, como e porque os sofrimentos e os danos aconteceram. A segunda necessidade não extingue a primeira. Ambas têm seu lugar no curso dos acontecimentos humanos. Mesmo que se esteja completamente orientado para a condenação, deve-se, não obstante, procurar uma explicação; e a tentativa de explicar não é, necessariamente, uma tentativa de desculpar. "

― Norbert Elias , The Germans

18 " As pessoas que estão preparadas para usar a violência e o homicídio como instrumentos normais de política nunca podem sentir-se livres do medo de que outros possam recorrer aos mesmos instrumentos contra eles. "

― Norbert Elias , The Germans

19 " But the significance of this experience for Mozart's personal development — and so for his development as a musician or, to put it differently, for that of his music — cannot be convincingly and realistically assessed if one merely describes the fate of the individual person, without also offering a model of the social structures of his time, especially where they led to differences of power. Only within the framework of such a model can one discern what a person like Mozart enmeshed in this society was able to do as an individual, and what — no matter how strong, great or unique he may have been — he was not able to do. "

― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius

20 " The pinnacle of artistic creation is achieved when the spontaneity and inventiveness of fantasy-stream are so fused with knowledge of the regularities of the material and the judgement of the artist's conscience that the innovative fantasies emerge as if by themselves in a way that matches the demands of both material and conscience. This is one of the most socially fruitful types of sublimation process. "

― Norbert Elias , Mozart: Portrait of a Genius