serious

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The seriousness or seriousness (borrowed from medieval Latin seriositas for the "serious" or "seriousness") means - as opposed to recklessness - a targeted risk-conscious intellectual or mental attitude that ultimately, the survival of something (person, family, race Ecosystem, dignity, values, theory, concept, soul ...). This is often accompanied by a maintained, measured, planned, creative mind and will. With regard to descriptions and theories , seriousness aims at the consistent correspondence of statements with reality (→  truth , honesty ). Serenity , a playful attitude, irony and humor balance the excessive or pedantic seriousness and point towards a more comprehensive appropriateness.

General meaning

The credibility of a person or an institution depends on the seriousness with which they communicate . Phrases like “I take this matter seriously” or “I take you seriously” reveal this epistemological meaning even in everyday language .

With regard to the typically European separation between seriousness, or art and entertainment, seriousness represents an important cultural-theoretical reference category. In Grimm's German dictionary, "Ernst" is given the Latin metonym "veritas" and synonyms such as "severitas", "sedulitas" and “Studium” translates as: “and so serious and game, serious struggle where it comes to life, and game, mere jousting, tournament often oppose each other (...). but already ahd. ernust, even more resolute mhd. ernest, expresses the serium, certum, verum, without any thought of struggle and against which insult and seriousness, joke and seriousness (...) are opposed ”.

The seriousness category is of central importance in European intellectual history, in philosophy, religion, music and cultural politics.

The seriousness of an individual depends, among other things, on their appearance. Even dubious people can be upgraded in their seriousness through external changes. Seriousness is therefore subjective and dependent on the cultural and value context.

Serious in selected areas

Seriousness and entertainment in cultural politics

The term serious plays an important role in the classification of a work in the musical collecting societies (see the distribution regulations of GEMA or AKM ). Serious music ( classical music ) gets a higher Tantiemeneinstufung as light music ( light music ). Since seriousness is a criterion of art and of what is culturally superior, it is of particular relevance in the cultural-political discourse . While music of a serious nature deserves subsidies , the state only supports works of light music within the framework of quality-independent economic promotion if they have potential for indirect profitability , i.e. positive effects for gastronomy , overnight stays or other consumption can be expected. Basically, the term serious is important in projects in which art institutions (e.g. theater, opera, concert, festival) are to cooperate with the creative industries (pop-rock ensembles, commercial feature film, games industry, design, etc.). So far, there are no binding models for such inter-aesthetic and inter-institutional penetrations.

Serious in music

The separation between “serious music” and “popular music” is a specific feature of European collecting societies. In Austria, the legal basis for this division into two quality classes was created in 1936 by the collecting societies law. The collecting society AKM practiced this different classification of the royalties of works - like many other European collecting societies also - however much earlier. The separation between serious and popular music led to legal disputes in the collecting society AKM in the 1960s, which were the subject of daily newspapers for years.

Serious in entertainment

The manifestations of the codes of seriousness within the clichés of entertainment are manifold. The interplay of seriousness and entertainment in the form of collaborations between the United States Department of Defense and the Hollywood film industry has a long tradition in the entertainment policy of American commercial cinema . With Bollywood , India also developed an economically extremely successful and entertainment-politically significant film culture. In both Germany and the USA, the encounter between seriousness and entertainment in the context of propaganda can be demonstrated in the field of film, but also in the form of entertainment products that are critical of culture and society, such as the Chaplin classics Modern Times (USA 1936) or The great dictator (USA 1940).

Today, commercial feature films, popular music and the games industry form a large stage, a “frequency” for global discourses within globally networked media societies . What offended the aesthetic feelings of the middle-class socialized media critics of the early twentieth century - just think of Walter Benjamin's famous essay on the loss of the aura of works of art through technical reproduction - today forms a fundamental pattern of media communication of identity programs. Virtualization, transauthority and serial formation of the entertainment cultures do not have to lead to a restricted worldview dominated by reality-distorting ideologies, but also generate differentiated perspectives. With the increasing importance of media entertainment, the backward-looking European high culture and its classic canon of works lost their importance. As a result of this shift in meaning, its once so successfully cultivated protest and subversion character dissolved in entertainment culture .

Serious in European philosophy

From antiquity to modern times, a concept of seriousness can be demonstrated in European intellectual history, in which cheerfulness also has its place as a principle of distance necessary for the process of knowledge. Knowledge - for example that in the context of aesthetic perception - principally requires a distance from the object of perception. Using word search programs in full-text research, it can be seen that the term serious plays a major role in European philosophy in epistemological, existential and anthropological questions. However, this rank of the term did not inspire an abundance of monographic representations, as with its counter-categories “play” and “laugh”.

On the subject of seriousness, Plato and Aristotle spoke out . In Greek, however, the term has a much further - even moral qualities implying - connotation. According to Sigbert Latzel , the scriptures by Plato and Aristotle relating to “seriousness” cannot be read as a theory of seriousness. Of fundamental importance to the work of understanding the concept Ernst in the existential philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard . In the twentieth century, the French moral philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch devoted himself to the subject of "seriousness".

Serious in the Bible

In Bible translations, seriousness mostly appears in the context of truth, diligence and determination. In Grimm's German dictionary it says:

"After this the following additional evidence will be self-evident, serious always denotes what is really meant, true, firm and eager, the contrast between joke and fun: it is my real seriousness. ps. 108, 2; o that my life would take your rights seriously. 119, 5; I hate you seriously, that's why you are enemies of me. 139, 22; the lord is close to all who call him seriously. 145, 18; and all the people scream seriously
to the Lord. Judith 4, 7; think that the lord can help and fear in earnest. wise Sal. 1, 1; My child, take note of my word seriously. Sir 16, 24; God seriously
fear is wisdom. 21, 13; But if you don't mean it, you will only get angry. 32, 19; and wiltu serve god, so let it be serious. 18, 23; they showed such seriousness against all irish enemies. 1 Macc. 8, 11; therefore shaw the goodness and the seriousness of god (...). Rom. 11, 22; Such talk and condemnation and punishment with all seriousness. Tit. 2, 15.12 ".

Serious in intercultural communication

In the truth systems and mentality programs of various ethnicities and their cultures, the seriousness category is a key concept. Assessments such as those of the American ethnologist Clifford Geertz, who sees Europe as a country “where historical pessimism is so often seen as a feature of lifestyle and education” or the Findings from a study published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2009 , according to which there is a deep cultural pessimism in Europe , provide points of attack for comparative research. Intercultural differences are systematically examined within organizational theory and management science.

As different as the seriousness views, as different as the evaluation of wit and fun. It is well known that not all nations laugh at the same joke. In the Euro etiquette for managers , John Mole shows - but more intuitively than scientifically precise - different programs of cheerfulness and seriousness. He said about Germany: "While an American or a British person may feel obliged to throw in jokes at meetings or presentations, or an Italian or French may be carried away with occasional funny remarks, a German always remains serious".

The discrepancy between a European intellectual history , in which serenity as a distance principle of knowledge also plays a fundamental role, and the official culture of Europe, which primarily cultivates passion and dissonance in theater, opera, concerts, festivals and promoted feature films Gottfried Kinsky-Weinfurter in his book Der Europäische Ernst . With the exclusion of the cheerful from the official seriousness, the importance of the formerly representative state high culture decreased: “The artistic concept of official European culture (synonym: 'legitimate culture') and the subsidy bases are based on the separation between entertainment and seriousness, body and mind , Reproduction and original , series and unique , worthless and value , commercial and non-commercial, the ' foreign ' and the 'own' ”. As a result of this separation, according to Kinsky-Weinfurter, the public, continental European seriousness is determined by hostility to the body, lust , willingness to pain, contempt for entertainment, the pedagogy of art and dogmas of dissonance.

Serious in sport

In sports that are at high risk to health or survival, such as B. climbing, there is a scale of seriousness , which is independent of the difficulty and which is aimed at the technical safety risk and psychological pressure.

See also

Wiktionary: Ernst  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: serious  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Seriousness  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: serious  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

literature

  • Walter Benjamin : The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility. Three studies on art sociology, Frankfurt am Main 1996 (1st edition 1963). ISBN 3-518-13305-5 .
  • Andreas Dörner: Political culture and media entertainment. On the staging of political identities in the American film and television world, Konstanz 2000. ISBN 3-87940-676-6 .
  • Andreas Elter : The war sellers. History of US Propaganda 1917–2005. Frankfurt am Main 2005. ISBN 3-518-12415-3 .
  • Clifford Geertz : World in Pieces. Culture and Politics at the End of the 20th Century. From the English by Herwig Engelmann. Edited by Peter Engelmann. 2nd revised edition 2007. ISBN 978-3-85165-785-2 .
  • Gottfried Kinsky-Weinfurter: Film music as an instrument of state propaganda. The culture and industrial film in the Third Reich and after 1945, Munich 1993. ISBN 3-88295-180-X
  • Gottfried Kinsky-Weinfurter: "The AKM's relationship with the Austrian umbrella organizations 'Arbeiter Sänger-Bund' and 'Ostmärkischer Sängerbund' with regard to music protection levies and the promotion of serious music", in: Paulus Ebner, Structures of Musical Life in Vienna. On musical club life in the First Republic (with the collaboration of Christian Böhm, Gottfried Kinsky-Weinfurter, Gertraud Pressler, Astrid Schramek), in: Friedrich C. Heller (Ed.), Studies on the History of Music in Austria. Publications by the Institute for Music History at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Volume 5, Frankfurt am Main 1996, 120–130. ISBN 3-631-30375-0
  • Gottfried Kinsky-Weinfurter: The European seriousness. Identity in the Age of Popular Culture Dislocation. A contribution to audiovisual anthropology. Vienna 2009. ISBN 978-3-85165-882-8 . Text excerpts: http://issuu.com/passagen/docs/kinsky_weinfurter
  • Sigbert Latzel: The serious person and the serious. A language-related analysis, Munich 2001. ISBN 3-89129-807-2
  • Konrad Paul Liessmann: Without pity. On the concept of distance as an aesthetic category with constant consideration of Theodor W. Adorno. Vienna 1991. ISBN 3-900767-81-5 .
  • John Mole: Euro etiquette for managers . Frankfurt / New York 1992, ISBN 3-593-34592-7 .
  • Jochen Schulte-Sasse: Literary evaluation . Stuttgart 1971, ISBN 3-476-10098-7 .
  • Michael Theunissen : Ernst, in: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Volume 2. Ed. By Joachim Ritter, Karlfried founder, Gottfried Gabriel, Darmstadt 1972, Sp. 720–723. ISBN 978-3-7965-0115-9 .
  • Michael Theunissen: The term Ernst in Søren Kierkegaard, 3rd ed., . Freiburg – Munich 1982, ISBN 3-495-44030-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.zeno.org/Kirchner-Michaelis-1907/A/Ernst?hl=ernst
  2. ↑ cf. Latzel 2001
  3. ↑ cf. Kinsky-Weinfurter 2009
  4. ↑ (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, German Dictionary (1862), Volume 3, Sp. 923f.)
  5. ↑ cf. Kinsky-Weinfurter 1996, 120-130
  6. ↑ cf. Kinsky-Weinfurter 1993, 205-210
  7. ↑ cf. Parents 2005
  8. ↑ Kinsky-Weinfurter 2009
  9. ↑ cf. Benjamin, 1996
  10. ↑ cf. Dörner 2000
  11. ↑ cf. Kinsky-Weinfurter 2009, 77-105
  12. ↑ cf. Schulte-Sasse 1971, 13-16; see. Liessmann 1991
  13. ↑ Latzel 2001, 13
  14. ↑ cf. Theunissen 1982
  15. ^ Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, German Dictionary (1862), Volume 3, Sp. 924 f.
  16. ↑ Geertz 2007, 18f.
  17. ^ Mole 1992
  18. ↑ Mole 1992, 54f.
  19. ↑ (Vienna, 2009)
  20. ↑ Kinsky-Weinfurter 2009, 130