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5/28/2018 Drama of Ideas
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What is known as drama of Ideas? How do you classifyArms and the Man
as a drama of ideas?
Drama of Ideasor the drama of social criticism in the real sense is a modern
development. A number of contemporary problems and evils are subjected to
discussion and searching examinations and criticism in these plays. Thus in it, the
structure and characterization are of subordinate importance; it ids the discussion
that counts. Ibsen and then Shaw, Galsworthy and Granville Barker were the chief
exponents of this realistic drama of ideas.
To Shaw, drama was preeminently a medium for articulating his own ideas
and philosophy. He enunciated the philosophy of life force which he sought to
disseminate through his dramas. Thus Shavian plays are the vehicles for the
transportation of ideas, however, propagandizing they may be. Shaw wanted to cast
his ideas through discussions.
Out of the discussions in the playArm s and the ManShaw breaks the idols
of love and war. The iconoclast Shaw pulls down all false gods which men live, love
admire and adore. By a clever juxtaposition of characters and dialogues, Shaw
shatters the romantic illusions about war and war heroes Shaws message is that
war is no longer a thing of banners and glory, as the nineteenth century dramatist
saw it, but a dull and sordid affair of brutal strength and callous planning out. The
dialogues of Bluntschli, Riana and Sergius go to preach this message with great
success. Here to quote Sergius who says, War is a hollow sham like love. One
thing however be remembered that inArms and the Man,Mr. Shaw does not, as
some imagine attack war. He is not Tolstoy an in the least. What he does is to
denounce the sentimental illusion that gathers around war. Fight if you will, says he
but for goodness sake dont strike picturesque attitudes in the limelight about it.
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View it as one of the desperately irrational things of life that may, however, in certain
circumstances be a brutal necessity. Bluntschli is the very mouth piece of the play
that exposes the dreamful reality of war. There is a lot of learning in the
disillusionment of Riana and Sergius.
But this is not the whole message Shaw intends to convey through his Arms
and The Man. In the play he has taken a realistic view not only of war and heroism
but of love and marriage. He has taken a realistic view of life as a whole. He has
blown away the halo of romance that surrounds human life as a whole. His message
in this play is, therefore, the destruction not only of the conventional conception of
the heroic soldier but of the romantic view of marriage, nay, of life as a whole. He
pleads for judging everything concerning human life from a purely realistic point of
view. This is the message he conveys through the play, Arms and The Man. The
hero Bluntschli here serves the mouth piece of the author. He is the postal of level -
headedness that sees through emptiness of romantic love and romantic heroism. He
towers about all others and shatters all the pet theories and so called high ideas, and
converts Raina and Sergius to his own views and succeeds in life because he faces
facts and his no romantic illusions about him.
Further, as all the propaganda plays goArms and The Manlacks action and
instead of action it contains plenty of dramatic dialogues. It is not a lie if we say
the Arms and The ManShaws a perfectcombination of the elements of action and
discussion. The conversation between Raina and Captain Bluntschli, for example in
the act-I, is extremely lively and through the mouth of the chocolate cream soldier.
Shaw gives expression to his own heresies about the glories of warfare. The fugitive
soldier talks to the universality of the flaying instinct, but his talk is not an end in
itself. He argues only with a view to persuading Raina to give him shelter and to
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protect him from the raids of Bulgarian soldiers. Thus there is not a scrap of
discussion for the sake of discussion. The action of the drama require that Rainas
hatred of a cowardly should be disarmed, her romantic notions blasted and
sympathy and pity aroused. As soon as this end has been achieved, the tired soldier
drops down fast asleep. He instinctively realizes that he has become Rianas poor
dear; and there is no need for further argument.
Ardhendu De
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drama-of-ideas-how-do.html#sthash.Av1K8MY6.dpuf
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Theater, Performance, Philosophy Conference 2014
Martin Puchner and the Drama of Ideas
Publi le 14 janvier 2014 parAnna Street
Martin Puchner has a track record of border crossingsin life as much as in
his prolific academic career. Born and raised in Germany, he exchanged his
undergraduate student life at the University of Konstanz for the University of Bologna
and later the University of California at St. Barbara and Irvine. Having studied
literature, history and philosophy, he ultimately earned his PhD in Comparative
Literature at Harvard University in 1998. Puchner first taught at Columbia University,
and since 2010 has been the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of
English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University.
His scholarship is wide-ranging and striking in the originality of its approach
be it to world literature, dramatic theory, or the nexus between philosophy and
theater. His three books The Drama of Ideas, Poetry of the Revolutionand Stage
Frightshare a common concern: they approach their subject from beyond its
disciplinary borders and seek to explode internally upheld categorizations. Stage
Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Dramaapproaches drama through its
otherliterature. The closet dramas of Yeats, Stein or Beckett are exceptional here
not because of their embrace but their resistance and indeed suspicion of the
theatrical situation. Ultimately, antitheatricality turns into the mode that offers new
impulses for the stage. In Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestoes, and the
Avant-Gardes, Puchner explores the border between aesthetic genre and political
action by reading the manifestos power as based on its literary qualities. The
manifesto becomes a testing case for how literature may insert itself and perform in
the world. The book was the winner of the James Russell Lowell Award.
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PuchnersDrama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theatre and
Philosophyagain reads two archenemies together: theatre and philosophy. Platos
dialogues turn into dramatic pieces that embody the deep involvement of the two
disciplines with one another. The drama of ideas that Puchner sketches here is
ultimately not geared towards the sphere of corporeality but rather reveals the
possibility of staging thought rather than action. For the new discipline of
performance philosophy, Puchners book is a groundbreaking work because it opens
up new avenues for thinking philosophy through the theatre. The Drama of Ideaswas
awarded the Walter Cabott Channing Prize as well as the Joe A. Callaway Prize for
the Best Book on Drama or Theatre in 2012, and described by the jury as a work of
exceptional literary power and disciplinary consequence.Puchners interventions
continue to question and redefine disciplinary frames. He is at the forefront of
thinking about theories of the theatreand at yet another border: that of
performance and philosophy.
Martin Puchner is also the Director of the Mellon School of Theatre
and Performance Research at Harvard University, which offers emerging scholars
from around the globe a forum for exploring and contributing to the future of the
discipline. His output of edited volumes and sourcebooks is wide-ranging and
reinforces the interdisciplinary scope of his expertise, whether in political theory,
modernist aesthetics, metatheatre or, most recently, world literature.
Selected bibliography:
Puchner, Martin. Norton Anthology of World Literature. General Editor,
with Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Wiebke Denecke et. al. (New York: Norton, 2012)
Puchner, Martin. The Drama of Ideas. Platonic Provocations in Theatre
and Philosophy(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
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Puchner, Martin. Norton Anthology of Drama. 2 vols. General Editor,
with J. Ellen Gainor and Stanton Garner, Jr. (New York: Norton: Norton, 2009)
Puchner, Martin. Modern Drama: Critical Concepts. Editor, 4-volume
anthology of critical writing (New York: Routledge, 2008)
Puchner, Martin.Against Theatre: Creative Destructions on the
Modernist Stage. Editor, with Alan Ackerman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
Puchner, Martin. Poetry of the Revolution. Marx, Manifestoes and the
Avant-Gardes.(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006)
Puchner, Martin. Introduction to Tragedy and Metatheatre: Essays on
Dramatic Form, by Lionel Abel. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 2003)
Puchner, Martin. Stagefright. Modernism, Anti-Theatricality and
Drama.(London and Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002)
[Written by: Ramona Mosse]
http://tpp2014.com/martin-puchner-drama-ideas/
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The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy(review)
Freddie Rokem
From:Comparative Drama
Volume 45, Number 4, Winter 2011
pp. 445-447 | 10.1353/cdr.2011.0030
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
Since my warm recommendation of Martin Puchners new book appears on its
back cover, and he at the same time composed a text appearing on the back cover
of my own recently published Philosophers and Thespians: Thinking
Performance (Stanford University Press, 2010; reviewed by Lydia Goehr
in Comparative Drama), I hesitated to write this review when asked. But instead of
recusing myself, I thought this would be an opportunity to raise some general issues
concerning what I believe is a new direction (and perhaps even a new field) in the
research of drama, theater, and performance, as well as for a philosophy that draws
attention to the complex relationships between the discursive practices of these two
fields. Puchners contributions to this emerging area of research, to which he, in
different ways, has already drawn attention in his previous work, most prominently
in Poetry and Revolution (Princeton University Press, 2006), demand a thorough
engagement.
One of the key issues in The Drama of Ideas is how to read Platos dialogues
and how to understand their main character, Socrates. The question is not on what
grounds Plato will ban the arts from the ideal state and the (anti-theatrical) prejudices
to which this position has given rise. Puchners major concern is rather what kind of
texts Plato composed and in which sense many of his dialogues are actually
theatrical, not only in the sense that they are dialogical and can be performed, but
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mainly because they are profoundly connected to the theater of his own time. This is
not a novel idea as such, but Puchner forcefully advances this claim, turning it into
the intellectual and scholarly motor igniting a Platonic, alternative historiography of
Western theater, a dramatic Platonism even overshadowing the much more
canonized Aristotelean one. Puchner convincingly carves out a Platonic tradition
based on a dynamic combination of dramas where Socrates is the main character,
developing scenes in Platos dialogues and dramatic texts with a strong
philosophical basis, on the one hand, and philosophical writings (not necessarily
written as dialogues) of theatrical philosophers [who] think of drama and theater as
their primary categories (125) on the other.
One of the theoretical issues Puchner grapples with is how the genre of the
dialogues, in particular, the Phaedo and the Symposium, is constructed. This is an
extremely complex issue, because both works, which are indeed among the most
dramatic of Platos dialogues, are actuallyretold by a direct or indirect witness to a
curious listener who wants to learn what the participants at the occasions depicted in
these dialogues said and how they, in particular Socrates, acted and reacted. Both
dialogues (as well as The Republic, for example) are narrative reconstructions of
past events.
Thus, after providing an analysis of the poetics of the Platonic dialogue in the
first chapter (an issue to which I will return), Puchner surveys the hitherto unknown
history of what he terms the Socrates play, plays where Socrates figures as the
protagonist. This is an impressive collection of sometimes less exciting plays, but
they are important for a fuller understanding of the totality of the Platonic tradition. In
an appendix Puchner provides a bibliography of more than one hundred such plays,
indicating that more than half of them were written after 1900. The next stage in
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Puchners argument for a drama of ideas is a chapter devoted to a group of
modern playwrights, including Strindberg, Kaiser, Wilde, Shaw, Pirandello, Brecht,
and Stoppard. Puchner argues that they can be understood as Platonic, not only
because they are non- or anti-Aristotelian, but also in their own right, relying in
different ways on Platos own dramatic practices where ideas become materialized
through scene, character, and (inter-)action. The materializer of ideas par
excellance is of course Brecht, and the question in which way his anti-Aristotelianism
turns him into a Platonist (not just the initiator of epic theater) needs to be carefully
studied, an endeavor for which Puchner provides a very useful starting point.
Mar t in Puc hne rThe Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in
Theater and Philosophy
Reviewed work(s): The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and
Philosophy. Martin Puchner. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xii+254.
Markus Wessendorf
University of Hawaii at Mnoa
One of the dualisms that have informed the history of Western theater theory
since Greek antiquity is the opposition between Aristotles affirmation of theatrical
mimesis and Platos antitheatricalism. Whereas Aristotle, in hisPoetics(ca. 330
BCE), laid out the rules for a tragedys effective appeal to an audiences emotions,
Plato is mainly remembered as the philosopher who, in his Republic(ca. 375 BCE),
condemned theatrical representations as detrimental to society and demanded
that art should engage the intellect. Even though, in more recent times, Aristotelian
mimesis was rejected first by the theater avant-garde and later by postmodern
theorists, this has not led to a Plato Renaissance in recent practices, theories, and
histories of drama and performance. Martin PuchnersThe Drama of Ideas: Platonic
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Provocations in Theater and Philosophyaims to correct this situation by establishing
Plato as the foundational figure of an alternative history of Western theater that
unsettles the prevailing perception of the Greek philosopher as an enemy of the
theater. Even more ambitiously, Puchner intends to demonstrate the historical
impact and continuing relevance of dramatic Platonism with regard to modern
theater and philosophy.
Puchners revisionist approachproceeds from a dramatic understanding of
Platolets call it dramatic Platonism (33), that is, the assumption that Plato,
despite his reputation as an idealist philosopher, was first and foremost a playwright
who dramatized the tug-of-war between material reality and the realm of abstract
forms. Even though Platos dialogues evoke universal and unchanging forms, these
will never and can never appear by themselves; they manifest themselves by
indicating that whatever and whoever is present onstage is connected to forms and
thus cannot derive stability and identity from mere matter (33).
Puchner argues that Platos dialogues represent an alternative form of drama,
which reconfigures Aristotles notions for different philosophical ends.
PlatosPhaedo(ca. 385378 BCE), for example, appropriates the form of tragedy by
using a potentially tragic plot device, Socratess death, to teach Socratess own
untragic theory of forms, which implies the immortality of the soul and its separation
from the body. Puchner argues that the constant oscillation between human drama
and abstract argument in Phaedocompels the audience to alternate between
weeping and laughingthe first out of pity for Socrates, the latter because his
message has sunk in. In his Symposium(ca. 385380 BCE), on the other hand,
Plato not only portrays Socrates as a comic stage philosopher (64) but also points
toward comedy in his depiction of the pitfalls of love and the different ways in which
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bodily reality interferes with philosophical reflection. Contrary to traditional comedy,
which ridicules intellectual endeavors by confronting them with the material world,
Plato suspends his philosophical comedy between the pull of ideas and the lure of
bodies. Puchner also maintains that Plato, in addition to classical theater genres,
reassembles other aspects of Greek dramaturgy: character, action, and audience.
Platos dialogues are written in prose, instead of verse, and feature small casts of
characters, but no choruses. The dramatic action consists in philosophical
conversations of a didactic nature more likely to be performed as staged readings
rather than full theatrical productions. The climactic plot of Aristotelian tragedy is
replaced by a meandering and often inconclusive stop-and-go rhythm of questions
and answers (26). Platos intended audience is a small group of active listeners
intellectually capable of joining in the dialogue, thereby replacing the far larger and
more passive audience of the Greek amphitheater.
Puchner also recognizes the influence of Plato the dramatist in the history of
the Socrates Play (37), that is, a type of play that dramatizes aspects of Socratess
life (such as his trial and death and his relationships to Alcibiades and Xanthippe)
and occasionally even integrates passages from Platos dialogues. Although
Puchner acknowledges that the Socrates Play is a minor and neglected genre, he
nevertheless regards it as major evidence of Platos continued dramatic legacy since
the Renaissance. Since most of the discussed plays by Amyas Bushe, Jean-Marie
Collot, Francis Foster Barham, and others not only follow a conventionalthat is,
Aristoteliandramaturgy but also exploit the human interest in Socratess foibles,
they undermine rather than prove Puchners point. Generally, Puchner equates too
easily the dramatic value of Socratess life and personality with an interest in Platonic
philosophy.
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In his central chapter Puchner analyzes how dramatic Platonism, Platonic
dialogue, and the Socrates play have influenced the Drama of Ideas (73) of modern
playwrights from August Strindberg to Tom Stoppard. Puchners Plato-centric case
studies of these playwrights make for interesting reading and shed new light on
supposedly familiar material. Strindberg, for example, wrote his own Socratesplay
(1903), but it was marred by the same misogyny that characterizes many of his other
works. Georg Kaiser not only published a manifesto on Platos drama, in which he
argued that the play of thought should replace a theater based on viewing pleasure,
he also incorporated passages from the Republicand theSymposiumintoAlcibiades
Delivered(191719). A surprising spin on Platos philosophy of forms can be found
in Oscar Wildes dialogueThe Decay of Lyingfrom 1889, which inverts the
hierarchical relationship between art and nature byinsisting that nature imitates art
and that art itself is nonmimetic but directly related to ideas. Puchner also shows
how the Socratic figure of the comic stage philosopher reappears in George Bernard
ShawsMan and Superman(1903) and Tom StoppardsJumpers(1972). The plot of
Luigi PirandellosSix Characters in Search of an Author(1921) illustrates the Platonic
notion that the artist must impose form onto the chaos of ever-changing life. Bertolt
BrechtsThe Messingkauf Dialogues(193751) is conceived as a Platonic dialogue
between a philosopher and various theater practitioners, in which the philosopher
tries to convince the practitioners of his new theater concept by inviting them to view
theater through a philosophical lens.
Puchner claims that modern drama should be understoodspecifically as
Platonic (73), and all of the discussed plays are Platonic to the extent that they
involve theoretical debate and a non-Aristotelian experimentation with dramatic form.
Yet, despite the obvious interest in the realm of ideas, not one of the plays is
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invested in resuscitating Platos theory of abstract forms. Each one of the mentioned
playwrights adopts selected Platonic devices and concepts for a very specific reason
that transcends the notion of a return to Plato for Platonisms sake: socialism for
Shaw, aestheticism for Wilde, communism for Brecht, and so on. Unfortunately,
Stoppard is the only post-1950s playwright discussed in The Drama of Ideas. (Itamar
MosessOutragefrom 2003, for example, should have been included since it
features Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Alcibiades, and Brecht as characters.) Puchner
states that modern drama can be called Platonic also in its insistence that theater
be an intellectually serious undertaking, a theater of ideas (73), but his repeated
emphasis on a dramatic Platonism that will invoke abstract forms (33) also
suggests that only a modern theater continuing Platos legacy can be taken seriously
as a theater of ideasthereby excluding a wide range of intellectually demanding
works by Richard Foreman, Heiner Mller, Caryl Churchill, Rimini Protokoll, and
many others.
Puchner starts his chapter on dramatic philosophy with a discussion of Sren
Kierkegaard, who uses various dramatic aliases in his work and conceives of irony
as an abstraction from existence. Despite his avowed anti-Platonic position, Friedrich
Nietzsche uses the title character of Thus Spoke Zarathustra(188385) to present
his philosophy through dialogue and interaction, with speech being the main
dramatic action. Existentialism, with its notion that existence precedes essence,
suggests a new relationship between philosophy and the theater: Jean-Paul Sartres
main philosophical work, Being and Nothingness(1943), is often interrupted by
dramatic scenes that reveal a playwrights imagination; Albert Camus, on the other
hand, conflates existentialist act and theatrical acting, arguing that actors, despite
their recognition of the worlds hollowness and ephemerality, continue to act.
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Puchner considers Kenneth Burke the culmination of philosophys dramatic turn
(163) because of Burkes application of such dramatic concepts as agent, agency,
act, purpose, and scene to the analysis of major philosophical works. To Gilles
Deleuze, philosophy is contingent with the theater: his proposed Platonic theater no
longer represents ideas but provides a technique for generating endless series of
repetitions and proliferations of conceptual personae. Puchner also relates Alain
Badious critique of Deleuze as a Platonist in disguise, whose concern with
multiplicities conceals a Platonic conception of the One. Similar to Deleuze,
however, Badiou envisions a philosophical theatricality that defines the essence of
philosophy as an act. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Iris Murdochs
Platonic novels and plays and Martha Nussbaums revisionist reading of
the Symposiumas a philosophy of emotions.
Puchner convincingly demonstrates the dramatic traits of these philosophers,
but he fails to provide evidence for their interest in Platos abstract forms (with the
exception of Badiou). One major omission in this chapter are the Socratic dialogues
by Paul Valry (Dance and the Soul[1923]). Overall, Puchners return to Plato reads
like a classicists dream of returning to an irretrievable past when the validity of
Platos theory of forms was not yet undermined by language philosophy and
poststructuralism. Puchner attacks philosophies of relativism and a culturalism of
difference (197), but instead of critically engaging with these approaches and
proving them wrong, he takes Platos assertions that theremustbe an absolute
point of reference for knowledgetheremustbe a single idea of the good (195) at
face value. Puchners underlying motivation is extremely vague, namely, to imagine
a projective universal, a universalism to comethe possibilities that differences can
be bridged (197). Different from Badiou, however, this potentially totalitarian
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universalism to come is not tied to any particular political project. The dramatic
Platonism proposed by Puchner deconstructs itself given the extended and rather
contradictory notions that the concept is supposed to encompass. On one hand,
Puchner rejects the idealist Plato of uniform identity, contagious imitation, and
immaterial essence, thereby forfeiting any believable return to essentialism. On the
other hand, Puchner nevertheless insists that theater and philosophy point to truth,
the universal, the idea, even if these terms cannot and should not be filled with
content (198). Ultimately, the Platonic provocations promised in the title of
Puchners book turn out to be an empty gesture.
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The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy(review)
Nickolas Pappas
From:Modern Drama
Volume 54, Number 2, Summer 2011
pp. 257-260 | 10.1353/mdr.2011.0024
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
Plato the philosopher, meet Plato the dramatist. The philosopher's name has
come to mean idealism, asceticism, and conservatism: stern dogmas, rigidly held.
But the dramatist that this same Plato had been since his youth persisted when the
young man turned from tragedy to philosophy, embedding those severe tenets of
Platonism in a new literary form that blends dramatic genres; and this dialogue form
subverts Platonic dogmatism. If Plato's metaphysics leads the mind away from
human bodily contingency, his form of writing leads that same mind back into
particularities. The Forms may reside in Plato's heaven, but the dialogues draw their
readers back down to earth. Indeed, modern thinkers who understand their project
as the overturning of Platonism are late arrivals to that task; as Martin Puchner notes
in The Drama of Ideas, "[I]t was Plato's dramaturgy that effectively 'overturned'
Platonism" (171).
Some scholars read Plato as Puchner does, emphasizing Plato's mode of
writing if not to the exclusion of doctrine then at least so that drama undermines or
qualifies doctrine. In my opinion, the more closely you look at this approach, the
more problematic it becomes. Besides negating almost the entire tradition of
Platonism, this interpretation abandons too many unforgettable, bold, uniquely
Platonic proposals about reality and human nature, offering little in exchange but
truisms about the human need for stable moral discourse.
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The Drama of Ideas does not dwell on Plato himself. Four of its five meaty
chapters take the first chapter's conception of Plato the dramatist and trace his
modern influence. In Puchner's view, Plato the dramatist generated a subterranean
tradition that has run along beneath the philosophical tradition for five-hundred years.
Interestingly, though Puchner does not underscore this point, the underground
stream of Platonic writing begins simultaneously with the above-ground river's
reappearance in the modern west. Marsilio Ficino, who translated Plato into Latin in
the fifteenth century, also inaugurated the genre of the Socrates play, with which the
legacy of dramatic Platonism begins.
Puchner identifies four phases or strands in the submerged tradition,
beginning (chapter two) with the Socrates play that put Plato's characters on the
modern stage, followed (chapter three) by the modern drama of ideas, the theatre of
Strindberg and Kaiser, Wilde and Shaw, and varieties of meta-theatre produced by
Pirandello, Brecht, and Stoppard. Then come two philosophical traditions in which
Puchner espies a slyer theatricality. Chapter four brings Continental thinkers
together under the rubric "Dramatic Philosophy," from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
through Sartre and Camus to Kenneth Burke and Gilles Deleuze. Those
philosophers are followed by another set: Iris Murdoch, Martha Nussbaum, and Alain
Badiou, the "new Platonists" of chapter five.
It is not hard to see Socrates plays as Platonic. Puchner tells a fascinating
story about the authors who dramatized the trial and death of Socrates or
the Symposium's dinner party. But he turns from these clear Platonic inheritances to
figures in theatre and philosophy whose names are widely known, but not as
Platonists. Some of these inheritances are more plausible than others. As Puchner
notes, Walter Benjamin had already connected Brecht with Plato (106); and perhaps
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Wilde, Pirandello, and Stoppard do show the influence of the new possibilities that
Plato discovered in mimicking conversations. Even so, locating these playwrights in
a history of dramatic Platonism depends on Puchner's having described that
Platonism correctly in the first place. This is the book's weak point, because it relies
on a contentious and extreme reading of Plato. Puchner's Plato "is not an idealist but
rather a dramatist" (8), and the Socrates in his dialogues "not the historical Socrates
but a fictional character" (45). The Platonism in modern thought is not "traditional
Platonism" (74, 171). If Plato the dramatist proves to be, as I think he is, impossible
to square with the author who spells out arguments for specific doctrines, then
dramatists like Pirandello are misinformed about Plato rather than informed by him. It
might still be true that Puchner has assembled a group of playwrights who took
themselves...
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_drama/summary/v054/54.2.pappas.html
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