We describe people who are “consumed” or “devoured” by ambition as if by a predator or an out-of-control inferno.

Thinkers since deepest antiquity have raised these questions, approaching the subject of ambition with ambivalence and often trepidation-as when the ancient Greek poet Hesiod proposed a differentiation between the good and the bad goddess Eris. Indeed, ambition as a longing for immortal fame seems to be one of the unique hallmarks of the human species. While philosophy has touched only occasionally on the problem of burning ambition, sociology, psychoanalysis, and world literature have provided rich and more revealing descriptions and examples of its shaping role in human history.

Drawing on a long and varied tradition of writing on this topic, ranging from the works of Homer through Shakespeare, Freud, and Kafka and from the history of ancient Greece and Rome to the Italian Renaissance and up to the present day (to modernity and the current neoliberal era), Eckart Goebel explores our driving passion for recognition - that insatiable hunter in the mirror - and power.

About the Authors

Eckart Goebel is Professor of German and Comparative Literature, University of T�bingen, Germany. He is the author of Konstellation und Existenz. Kritik der Geschichte um 1930: Studien zu Heidegger, Benjamin, Jahnn und Musil (1996), Am Ufer der zweiten Welt. Jean Pauls "Poetische Landschaftsmalerei" (1999), Der engagierte Solit�r. Die Gewinnung des Begriffs Einsamkeit aus der Ph�nomenologie der Liebe im Fr�hwerk Jean-Paul Sartres (2001), Charis und Charisma. Grazie und Gewalt von Winckelmann bis Heidegger (2006) and Jenseits des Unbehagens. Sublimierung von Goethe bis Lacan (2009). He serves on the Editorial Board of Oxford German Studies.

James C. Wagner, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the Department of German at New York University, USA.

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