The Drama of History

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.

• IntroductionChapter 1: Losing Time (The Vikings at Helgeland)Chapter 2: History Adrift; Subjectivity Probed (Peer Gynt)Chapter 3: Ruins of Antiquity (Emperor and Galilean)Chapter 4: Modern Times (A Doll's House)Chapter 5: Tragedy and Tradition (Ghosts)Chapter 6: Teaching History (An Enemy of The People)Chapter 7: History and Existence (Hedda Gabler)Conclusion

Gjesdal's book is erudite, precise, and rich in detail, yet still elegant and accessible...Gjesdal shows how the characters in Ibsens plays, more than representing certain philosophical ideas, actively demonstrate how these ideas might play out in an embodied life... Gjesdal's work is not just yet another testimony to the greatness of Ibsen's writing. Her purpose is more pointedly to show that drama can develop philosophical thought in ways that philosophy on its own perhaps cannot... Gjesdal's book makes for essential reading for anyone interested in the complex relationship between drama and philosophy in the nineteenth century, and for those seeking to free philosophical reflection from the confines of academic discourse in the twenty-first.