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Norman Roessler and Anthony Squiers (eds.). Philosophizing Brecht: Critical Readings on Art, Consciousness, Social Theory and Performance
- Edited by Markus Wessendorf
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- Book:
- The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 45
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 09 February 2021
- Print publication:
- 20 November 2020, pp 344-348
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Summary
The relationship between poetry and philosophy is one that has been discussed since time immemorial, from Aristotle and Plato to present-day thinkers like Jean-Luc Nancy. Bertolt Brecht's status as both a poet and a thinker has not been spared this discussion, with some, like Theodor W. Adorno, considering him a poet of inadvertent truths with little philosophical insight—a Vulgärmarxist—and others, like Hans-Thies Lehmann, seeing in Brecht's poetry, his theater, the point at which the difference between poetry and philosophy, theater, and theory dissolves. The relationship between thinking and doing, between theory and practice, and the question of art's transformative and interventionist potential have been at the heart of Brecht scholarship since its inception and show no signs of going away soon, to which this new volume, Philosophizing Brecht, also testifies.
The title of this book seems to place the volume at the center of precisely this discussion. Philosophizing Brecht comprises an interesting mix of contributions, some excellent, that examine a number of different aspects of Brecht's relationship to and potential for various philosophical and theoretical discourses, both historically and today. The book brings together an introduction, seven contributions, and an “(In)Conclusion”—although it must be noted to begin with that, although not unusual by any means for Brecht scholarship, it is disappointing that a collected volume of this nature, published in the year 2018, does not feature any contributions by female scholars. The contributions examine various discourses, including acting theory (Peter Zazzali), film studies (Jeremy Spencer), and philosophy (various contributors), as well as Brecht's views on the “Tuis” (Philip Glahn), his derogatory term for intellectuals, during his exile. The volume thus gives the reader real food for thought regarding a range of heterogenous topics, which overall provide some interesting new approaches towards thinking about Brecht and his legacy.
The introduction is written by Anthony Squiers, who also contributes an article later on in the volume on the “virtue of courage” in Plato/ Socrates and Brecht. Unfortunately, the introduction does not really tell the reader where the volume is heading.
Singularity and Remainder: Brecht’s Theater of Others
- Edited by Markus Wessendorf
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- Book:
- The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 45
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 09 February 2021
- Print publication:
- 20 November 2020, pp 46-67
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Bertolt Brecht's relationship to realism has been a hotly contested topos in Brecht research since time immemorial. Some claim links between Brecht and the programmatic bourgeois realists of the nineteenth century, while others claim that Brecht condemned and rejected realism. However, both of these positions at either end of the spectrum fail to recognize that Brecht's interest in realism seems to have had little to do with merely aligning himself with or rejecting realist aesthetics. Instead, in the 1930s and 1940s and in the Messingkauf (Buying Brass) too, he seems to have been rethinking existing concepts of realism and theater in a paleonymic manner (Jacques Derrida). There is one aspect of this conceptual rethinking that has seemingly received little attention, namely Brecht's renegotiation of the idea of the Mensch, the human being, which is carried out in particular in his Messingkauf and other texts written at a similar time during his exile, such as “Die Straßenszene” (“The Street Scene”). In this article, I contend that the concept of the human being negotiated in these texts puts Brecht's thinking in close proximity to discussions of alterity and the Other, revealing a theater that is ultimately nothing less than a theater of Others.
The concept of “egology” derives from Husserlian phenomenology: for Edmund Husserl, as for René Descartes, there is nothing in the world that does not relate back to the perceiving subject; the subject is “the ground for all worldly objects since what defines them as objects in the first place is that they are given in consciousness.” The world is thus egological due to the fact that it is rooted in the ego, the Self. Emmanuel Levinas picks up on the concept of egology and uses it in his critique of ontology to describe an order that violently excludes the Other from the totality of its self-referentiality. In his book Totality and Infinity, Levinas posits against this egological order a radical exteriority, an infinitude that moves toward the Other, welcoming the Other as Other. It does not overcome the ego of the Self; rather, the Self, by overcoming its own interiority and finitude, stays open to the Other by acknowledging that it “escapes [the Self’s] grasp by an essential dimension.”
Fragment, Figur, Revolution. Georg Büchners Woyzeck und Bertolt Brechts Der Messingkauf
- from Focus: Brecht & Büchner
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- By Lydia J. White, Universität Hamburg
- Edited by Theodore F. Rippey
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- Book:
- The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 39
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 24 October 2017
- Print publication:
- 15 March 2016, pp 218-235
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Summary
“Es ist…falsch, in Fragmenten über das Fragment schreiben zu wollen…. Doch was soll man anderes tun?” schreiben Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe und Jean-Luc Nancy in ihrem Fragment über das Fragment, Noli me frangere. Ja, was soll man anderes tun? Trotz seines Titels kann der vorliegende Aufsatz auf Grund der sparsam überlieferten Zeugnisse von Brechts Auseinandersetzung mit Georg Büchners Woyzeck keine direkte Kontinuität zwischen seinem Messingkauf und dem Büchnerschen Text präsentieren. Vielmehr soll aufgezeigt werden, dass sich Spuren von Brechts Darstellungstheorie schon in Woyzeck bemerkbar machen. Es geht um die Revolution – aber um eine Revolution jenseits des jeweiligen persönlichen und politischen Denkens der Revolution, die auf verschiedene Art und Weise immer im Begriff bleibt, sich in diesen Texten zu vollziehen.
Es kann so kommen…
Zwischen 1939 und 1955 entstanden, fällt der Messingkauf im Vergleich zu Brechts zahlreichen anderen theoretischen Schriften durch seine teils dialogische, teils lyrische, teils essayistische und durchweg fragmentarische Form auf. In meiner momentan entstehenden Dissertation bilden die Frage, warum Brecht seinen größten Versuch einer Theatertheorie auf diese Weise schreibt, sowie die Frage, warum er diesen Text nicht zu Ende schreibt, den Ausgangspunkt meiner Auseinandersetzung mit der Theater-Theorie oder dem Theorie-Theater des Messingkaufs und deren Darstellung. Warum ist Brecht am Messingkauf gescheitert? Inwiefern kann dieses Scheitern als ein gleichzeitiges Gelingen betrachtet werden? Und inwieweit ist dieses Scheitern eben das Resultat von Verstrickungen zwischen Inhalt und Form im Text – des Verhältnisses zwischen Theorie und Praxis?
Die Dialoge des Messingkaufs sollten Brechts ersten Plänen nach über vier Nächte hinweg von Begegnungen zwischen einem Philosophen und einigen “Theaterleuten” auf der Bühne nach dem Ausklang einer Theatervorstellung handeln und von den Gesprächen, die zwischen diesen Figuren über das Theater stattfinden, während die Kulissen von einem Bühnenarbeiter abgebaut werden. Es geht also um ein Theater nach der Vorstellung und vor der Vorstellung, um ein Theater im Ab-Bau, um ein Theater, das de konstruiert wird, “denn,” so der Bühnenarbeiter, “morgen wird etwas Neues probiert.” Dazu hat Brecht am Anfang “das ganze einstudierbar gedacht, mit experiment und exerzitium.” Der Titel des Textes ergibt sich aus einer Äußerung des Philosophen, der seine Rolle im Theater als die eines Messinghändlers beschreibt, der “zu einer Musikkapelle kommt und nicht etwa eine Trompete, sondern bloß Messing kaufen möchte.”
Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2015
- Print publication:
- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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