Abstract

In contrast to the discussion of theater in the tradition of Western philosophy from Plato and Aristotle through Rousseau and Diderot to Artaud and Brecht, who either devalued or valorized theatricality, Hegel adopts an intermediate point of view between these two extremes. He neither devalues nor valorizes theatricality, but rather maintains that it constitutes an essential dimension of poetic drama through which it presents its ideal and fictive reality to sense perception. While in pre-modernity dramatic poetry was able to represent and reconcile the conflicts between ethical substantiality and individual subjectivity, it is a completely different matter in moder-nity. In the course of the progressing ethical de-substantialization of individual subjectivity, modern drama tends towards pure theatricality and loses its ability to reconcile ethical conflicts spiritually.