Kristin Gjesdal: "Romanticism and Revolution"

Kristin Gjesdal, Temple University: "Romanticism and Revolution: Art and Politics in Germaine de Staël, Karoline von Günderrode, and Bettina Brentano von Arnim"

Abstract
This presentation explores the contributions of nineteenth-century women to aesthetics and political thought. Through a novel reading of works by Germaine de Staël, Karoline von Günderrode, and Bettina Brentano von Arnim, it homes in on the philosophical arc from early romanticism to late-century socialism. The aim is to demonstrate new aspects of romanticism and idealist philosophy, but also to indicate how this reinterpretation challenges traditional concepts in aesthetics. In this way, the presentation seeks to demonstrate how we, in paying attention to the works of women philosophers, can uncover new historical lines and gain new systematic tools for addressing key issues in contemporary philosophical thought, including issues relating to the relationship between philosophy, politics, and art.

Kristin Gjesdal is professor of philosophy at Temple University. Her scholarship covers philosophy of interpretation (hermeneutics), phenomenology, philosophy of art, and modern European philosophy. She the co-editor of Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition and the forthcoming Oxford Handbook to Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in the German Tradition. She is the editor and co-editor of six further volumes in her areas of research. Her monographs include Gadamer and the Legacy of German Idealism (CUP 2009), Herder’s Hermeneutics (CUP 2017/2019), and The Drama of History: Ibsen, Hegel, Nietzsche (OUP 2021). She is currently working on a study of nineteenth-century women philosophers, preliminary entitled “Unruly Women,” as well as two shorter projects dedicated to Germaine de Staël: an overview of Staël’s philosophy (under contract with CUP) and a more focused study of Staël’s theory of selfhood (under contract with OUP).