Edgar Landgraf

Bowling Green State University, GREAL, Faculty Member

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I am Professor of German at Bowling Green State University (Ohio). I studied in Zürich, Chicago, and Baltimore, receiving my Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University in 1998. My research interests include German literature, aesthetics, and philosophy from the Enlightenment to today as well as critical improvisation studies, performance studies, systems theory and theories of posthumanism. Recent publications include articles on improvisation, Goethe, Kant, Kleist, Nietzsche, and Johannes Müller. My book Improvisation as Art. Conceptual Challenges, Historical Perspectives was published in 2011 with Continuum (reissued as paperback by Bloomsbury in 2014). An anthology Posthumanism in the Age of Humanism: Mind, Matter, and the Life Sciences After Kant, coedited with Gabriel Trop and Leif Weatherby, appeared October 2018. I am currently working on a monograph on Nietzsche’s Posthumanism and an anthology coedited with Elliott Schreiber with the title “Goethe at Play: Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800” (under review).

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Papers by Edgar Landgraf

Nietzsche’s Entomology: Insect Sociality and the Concept of the Will

Nietzsche-Studien

The article traces Nietzsche’s references to insects in his published and unpublished writings ag... more The article traces Nietzsche’s references to insects in his published and unpublished writings against the backdrop of his study of the entomological research of his time (esp. through his reading of Alfred Espinas’s Die thierischen Gesellschaften). The first part of the article explores how Nietzsche’s entomology allows us to add a posthumanist perspective to the more familiar poststructuralist readings of Nietzsche, as the entomological research he consulted offered him a model for understanding how rudimentary processes can lead to the formation of structures and higher organizations with emergent properties. The second part of the article revisits Nietzsche’s conceptions of the will and the will to power against the backdrop of his references to insect sociality and the influence of Wilhelm Wundt. It shows that Nietzsche’s deconstruction of the will as an umbrella concept and his will to power are attempts to model the emergence of complex edifices from simple operations under w...

Educational Environments: Narration and Education in Campe, Goethe, and Kleist

Goethe Yearbook, 2017

Romantic Love and the Enlightenment: From Gallantry and Seduction to Authenticity and Self-Validation

Comparative Literature, 2004

Today, the adjective "romantic" has lost much of its luster. Although still used in popular cultu... more Today, the adjective "romantic" has lost much of its luster. Although still used in popular culture to sell books and movies, romantic ideals carry little more than a sentimental value. Long gone are the days of romantic suicides. In our age, romance at best makes us smile. Indeed, since Harry met Sally, passion appears to have found its most suitable representation in the "romantic comedy," an emotionally charged yet uncommitted genre whose humor thrives on the protagonists' sentimental stance towards their sentimentality. This is not to downplay the persisting significance of the concept of love, so apparent in the seemingly endless repetition of this topos both in high and popular culture. Love has remained the primary medium for the expression and experience of the modern self. In love, we wish to express ourselves authentically and find ourselves acknowledged and appreciated for who we are. Or, to follow a more precise formulation by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann: "Was man [heute] in der Liebe sucht, was man in Intimbeziehungen sucht, wird somit in erster Linie dies sein: Validierung der Selbstdarstellung." 1 Under the aegis of self-validation, the concept of love came to subsume an ever increasing multitude of emotional, sensual, sexual, and even intellectual practices which-as long as they promote the experience and authentication of one's self-has challenged many of the traditional social norms and ideals that have guided romantic interactions for many centuries. 2 While the quest for selfvalidation has broadened the standards for acceptable romantic interactions, the reliance on "authenticity" has increased. Lovers today are expected to adhere to an ideal of communication that emphasizes genuineness, truthfulness, and originality. Although it is rarely contemplated whether authenticity is indeed desirable or even possible, for the purpose of self-validation it appears to be indispensable. This is notable considering that the demand for authenticity contradicts traditional definitions of "passion" where the self experiences itself outside of itself. As a brief glance at Denis de Rougement's seminal work on Love in the Western World indicates, the change from "passion" experienced as a loss of self to the emphasis on self-validation is largely a post-WWII phenomenon. In 1940, de Rougement defines the goal of modern love still in terms of the "man of passion" who seeks "to be

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Comprehending Romantic Incomprehensibility. A Systems- Theoretical Perspective on Early German Romanticism

MLN, 2006

Eine wirklich transzendentale Buffonerie. Improvisation und Improvisationstheater im Kontext der frühromantischen Poetologie

Paradoxien des Unvorhersehbaren. Kunst - Medien - Praxis, 2000

The Psychology of Aesthetic Autonomy. The Signature of the Signature of Beauty

Karl Philipp Moritz, 2000