Overview

Henrik Ibsen's plays have long beguiled philosophically-oriented readers. From Nietzsche to Adorno to Cavell, philosophers have drawn inspiration from Ibsen. But what of Ibsen's own philosophical orientation? As part of larger European movements to reinvent drama, Ibsen and fellow playwrights grappled with contemporary philosophy. Philosophy of drama found a central place with figures such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Johann Gottfried Herder, but reached its mature form, in Ibsen's time, in the works of G.W.F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche.Kristin Gjesdal reveals the centrality of philosophy of theater in nineteenth-century philosophy and shows how drama, as an art form, offers insight into human historicity and the conditions of modern life. The Drama of History deepens and actualizes the relationship between philosophy and drama--not by suggesting that either philosophy or drama should have the upper hand, but rather by indicating how a sustained dialogue between them brings out the meaning and intellectual power of each. Her study reveals underappreciated aspects of Hegel's and Nietzsche's works through their reception in European art and investigates the philosophical dimensions of Ibsen's drama. At the heart of this interrelation between philosophy and drama is a shared interest in exploring the existential condition of human life as lived and experienced in history.

Full Product Details

9780190070762

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""Kristin Gjesdal has written a lucid, fascinating book that will be valuable both for literary scholars and for philosophers. Without in the slightest sacrificing attention to the distinctive literary dimensions of Ibsen's work, she shows in unusual detail how his dramas bear on modern historical self-consciousness and on philosophers concerned with the same problems of historicity, like Hegel and Nietzsche. The Ibsen who emerges from her study is as compelling a thinker as he is a dramatist."" -- Robert B. Pippin, The Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy and Chair of The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago"

Kristin Gjesdal has written a lucid, fascinating book that will be valuable both for literary scholars and for philosophers. Without in the slightest sacrificing attention to the distinctive literary dimensions of Ibsen's work, she shows in unusual detail how his dramas bear on modern historical self-consciousness and on philosophers concerned with the same problems of historicity, like Hegel and Nietzsche. The Ibsen who emerges from her study is as compelling a thinker as he is a dramatist. * Robert B. Pippin, The Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy and Chair of The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago *

Author Information

Kristin Gjesdal is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. Her areas of specialization include Nineteenth-Century philosophy, aesthetics, and hermeneutics. She is the author of Gadamer and the Legacy of German Idealism (Cambridge University Press, 2009/2011) and Herder's Hermeneutics: History, Poetry, Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2017/2019) and the editor and co-editor of seven volumes, including Ibsen's Hedda Gabler: Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2018). She is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available