Rüdiger Dannemann: I Shall Be Free No. 10, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Klappentext

Few, if any, songwriters of the twentieth or twenty-first century have attracted as much attention from intellectuals and philosophers as Bob Dylan. Although he is neither an intellectual nor a philosopher in the narrow sense, it is entirely legitimate to speak of Dylan's song philosophy. Beyond the rigid conventions and limitations of modern philosophical discourse, the artist claims the same liberties once enjoyed by the philosophers of antiquity: unconditional subjectivity rather than systematic constraint, a celebration of the moment, and the unleashing of a multiplicity of perspectives on the world and the self. Dylan's lifework demonstrates that songs can address anything that exists and make it tangible. The milestones of his avant-garde folk and rock music-now classics heard around the world-are therefore nothing less than "historical signs."

The book traces Dylan's song philosophy through six stages, seeking to capture the different dimensions of his exploration of the world: the early sociopolitical period; the transformation of popular music into a medium for the advanced art of modernism; the opening of his work to the multiplicity of traditions with which it could engage; the turn toward religion and transcendence; and then, upon waking, the plunge into disorientation and crisis. The great body of late work, in which the end-times pilgrim takes stock, can be understood as the final stage of his odyssey in search of meaning, truth, and redemption. In the epilogue to this tightly argued volume, Dylan's philosophy of modern song emerges as a distinctive mode of a different, "wild" kind of thinking that remains relevant in the twenty-first century-as an indispensable corrective.

What unites every stage of Dylan's songwriting is the pursuit of liberation. For he understands freedom-to borrow a pattern of thought from Hegel-as first of all, and always also, negative freedom: never a settled condition but a perpetual struggle.