Ivan Soll
Encyclopedia
Ivan Soll is an American philosopher who is a Professor Emeritus
in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
in the United States. He retired in May 2011. His teaching and research focused on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
, German philosophy
in general, existentialism
, aesthetics
, and various figures of continental philosophy
.
scholar and translator Walter Kaufmann while at Princeton University
. Soll completed his A.B. at Princeton University in 1960 with a senior thesis titled "Futility, Freedom and Freud: A Critical Triptych on the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre". He then pursued graduate studies in philosophy at Harvard University
, the University of Munich, and Princeton University where he received his Ph.D. in 1966 with a dissertation titled "Hegel’s Search For Absolute Knowledge".
Soll taught the majority of his academic career at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He came to UW-Madison as an Instructor in Philosophy in 1964, and taught there until his retirement in May 2011. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1966, promoted again to associate professor with tenure in 1969, and to full professor in 1973. He has also held visiting professorships at Justus-Liebig University (Germany), the University of Auckland
, and the Bosphorus University, Istanbul. His philosophical interests include continental philosophy - especially German philosophy
, Friedrich Nietzsche
, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
, Arthur Schopenhauer
, Jean-Paul Sartre
, Albert Camus
, and existentialism generally. He also focused on the intersections of philosophy and literature
, the history of philosophy
, aesthetics, philosophical psychology, and philosophy of life.
He has published widely in aesthetics, and complements his academic knowledge with expert proficiency in the manufacture of fine art books. Ivan has exhibited his hand-crafted art books in many galleries around the world, and he has integrated the experience in doing so with his academic work. In the area of German philosophy, he has written the influential Introduction to Hegel's Metaphysics, has authored more than 50 scholarly articles, and has given nearly 130 talks at various national and international venues.
Ivan has been the recipient of NEH, ACLS, and UW-Madison IRH fellowships, as well as a Bellagio fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation and a German D.A.A.D award. He has frequently been the lead professor at UW-Madison study abroad programs: in London (twice), Florence (five times) and Budapest (twice).
Documented in the book Genius In Their Own Words: The Intellectual Journeys of Seven Great 20th-Century Thinkers edited by David Ramsay Steele (forward by Arthur Danto) a mediated series of questions posed by Soll were presented to the famed French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre on various aspects of Sartre's philosophy with Sartre providing his answers to Soll's questions.
Professor Soll contributed three introductions to Walter Kaufmann's Discovering the Mind series of books which were some of the last published works from Kaufmann. Soll has also authored several encyclopedia entries on different topics of philosophy. He continues to be discussed by younger Nietzsche scholars like Bernard Reginster who engaged with his ideas in the 2006 book The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism.
Professor Soll's courses on Nietzsche and Existentialism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison continue to be popular courses in the Wisconsin Philosophy Department. He regularly teaches Introduction to Philosophy thereby introducing the discipline to many new students.
Soll and his wife, Marta Gomez, have produced original artists' books collaboratively at their Tiramisu Press in Madison, Wisconsin.
Ivan Soll was a participant in the Peter Sloterdijk
lecture series seminar and conference workshop, May 19 to 23, 2008 at the University of Warwick
where he discussed the relationship between the philosophies of Sloterdijk and Nietzsche.
Professor Soll completed an essay on Charles Darwin's influence on German philosophy for a volume on Darwin to be published in Turkey, and an essay on Nietzsche's anti-moralism for a conference in Britain in 2010. For the 2010 Summer he taught in Istanbul.
In 2010 he gave the lead-off lecture at a conference in England on Nietzsche's Postmoralism and the keynote address in German, titled Lob der Illusion (In Praise of Illusion), at a conference in Germany.
Emeritus
Emeritus is a post-positive adjective that is used to designate a retired professor, bishop, or other professional or as a title. The female equivalent emerita is also sometimes used.-History:...
in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
in the United States. He retired in May 2011. His teaching and research focused on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, German philosophy
German philosophy
German philosophy, here taken to mean either philosophy in the German language or philosophy by Germans, has been extremely diverse, and central to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from Leibniz through Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger...
in general, existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
, aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, and various figures of continental philosophy
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
.
Background
Ivan Soll was a student of renowned NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
scholar and translator Walter Kaufmann while at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. Soll completed his A.B. at Princeton University in 1960 with a senior thesis titled "Futility, Freedom and Freud: A Critical Triptych on the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre". He then pursued graduate studies in philosophy at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, the University of Munich, and Princeton University where he received his Ph.D. in 1966 with a dissertation titled "Hegel’s Search For Absolute Knowledge".
Soll taught the majority of his academic career at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He came to UW-Madison as an Instructor in Philosophy in 1964, and taught there until his retirement in May 2011. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1966, promoted again to associate professor with tenure in 1969, and to full professor in 1973. He has also held visiting professorships at Justus-Liebig University (Germany), the University of Auckland
University of Auckland
The University of Auckland is a university located in Auckland, New Zealand. It is the largest university in the country and the highest ranked in the 2011 QS World University Rankings, having been ranked worldwide...
, and the Bosphorus University, Istanbul. His philosophical interests include continental philosophy - especially German philosophy
German philosophy
German philosophy, here taken to mean either philosophy in the German language or philosophy by Germans, has been extremely diverse, and central to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from Leibniz through Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger...
, Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
, Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
, Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, and existentialism generally. He also focused on the intersections of philosophy and literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, the history of philosophy
History of philosophy
The history of philosophy is the study of philosophical ideas and concepts through time. Issues specifically related to history of philosophy might include : How can changes in philosophy be accounted for historically? What drives the development of thought in its historical context? To what...
, aesthetics, philosophical psychology, and philosophy of life.
He has published widely in aesthetics, and complements his academic knowledge with expert proficiency in the manufacture of fine art books. Ivan has exhibited his hand-crafted art books in many galleries around the world, and he has integrated the experience in doing so with his academic work. In the area of German philosophy, he has written the influential Introduction to Hegel's Metaphysics, has authored more than 50 scholarly articles, and has given nearly 130 talks at various national and international venues.
Ivan has been the recipient of NEH, ACLS, and UW-Madison IRH fellowships, as well as a Bellagio fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation and a German D.A.A.D award. He has frequently been the lead professor at UW-Madison study abroad programs: in London (twice), Florence (five times) and Budapest (twice).
Notable Ideas and Contributions
Ivan Soll established his reputation among Nietzsche scholars with his 1973 essay "Reflections on Recurrence: A Re-Examination of Nietzsche's Doctrine" which puts forth a novel interpretation of Nietzsche's idea of the eternal recurrence. Soll's interpretation states that the literal possibility of the eternal recurrence is not as important as taking on the idea for what its consequences imply. Soll argues that the implications of this idea force the individual to evaluate past, current, and future life choices. This is an existential argument and a very important aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy that is highlighted by Soll.Documented in the book Genius In Their Own Words: The Intellectual Journeys of Seven Great 20th-Century Thinkers edited by David Ramsay Steele (forward by Arthur Danto) a mediated series of questions posed by Soll were presented to the famed French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre on various aspects of Sartre's philosophy with Sartre providing his answers to Soll's questions.
Professor Soll contributed three introductions to Walter Kaufmann's Discovering the Mind series of books which were some of the last published works from Kaufmann. Soll has also authored several encyclopedia entries on different topics of philosophy. He continues to be discussed by younger Nietzsche scholars like Bernard Reginster who engaged with his ideas in the 2006 book The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism.
Professor Soll's courses on Nietzsche and Existentialism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison continue to be popular courses in the Wisconsin Philosophy Department. He regularly teaches Introduction to Philosophy thereby introducing the discipline to many new students.
Soll and his wife, Marta Gomez, have produced original artists' books collaboratively at their Tiramisu Press in Madison, Wisconsin.
Ivan Soll was a participant in the Peter Sloterdijk
Peter Sloterdijk
Peter Sloterdijk is a German philosopher, television host, cultural scientist and essayist. He is a professor of philosophy and media theory at the University of Art and Design Karlsruhe. He currently co-hosts the German show Im Glashaus: Das Philosophische Quartett.-Biography:Sloterdijk's father...
lecture series seminar and conference workshop, May 19 to 23, 2008 at the University of Warwick
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...
where he discussed the relationship between the philosophies of Sloterdijk and Nietzsche.
Professor Soll completed an essay on Charles Darwin's influence on German philosophy for a volume on Darwin to be published in Turkey, and an essay on Nietzsche's anti-moralism for a conference in Britain in 2010. For the 2010 Summer he taught in Istanbul.
In 2010 he gave the lead-off lecture at a conference in England on Nietzsche's Postmoralism and the keynote address in German, titled Lob der Illusion (In Praise of Illusion), at a conference in Germany.
Ph.D. Students
Ivan Soll served as Ph.D. Dissertation Advisor to these students:- Maudemarie Clark (Ph.D. 1976) - Nietzsche's Attack On Morality
- Robert Good (Ph.D. 1978) - Sartre's Theory Of The Other
- Steven Weiss (Ph.D. 1989) - Human, All-Too-Human: Nietzsche's Early Genealogical Method
- Judith Norman (Ph.D. 1995) - The Idea Of Intellectual Intuition From Kant To Hegel
- Robert Horton (Ph.D. 1996) - Overcoming Kant's Legacy: Schopenhauer's Theories Of Action, Will And Reason
- Theodore Kinnaman (Ph.D. 1996) - The Origins Of Kant's Critique Of Judgment
- Gil Shepard (Ph.D. 1999) - Schopenhauer's Metaphysics Of The Will
Original Works
- Introduction to Hegel's Metaphysics (University of Chicago Press, October 1969)
Articles, book chapters, and introductions
- "Reflections on Recurrence: A Re-Examination of Nietzsche's Doctrine, die Ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen" Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays By Robert C. Solomon (Garden City, N.Y. : Anchor Press, 1973)
- "Sartre's Rejection of the Freudian Unconscious," in Paul A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Vol.XVI (La Salle, Ill.: The Library of Living Philosophers, 1981) pp. 582–604.
- Goethe, Kant, and Hegel: Discovering the Mind, Vol. 1 by Walter Kaufmann (Editor), Ivan Soll (Introduction)
- Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Buber: Discovering the Mind, Vol. 2 by Walter Kaufmann (Editor), Ivan Soll (Introduction)
- Freud, Adler, and Jung: Discovering the Mind, Vol. 3 by Walter Kaufmann (Editor), Ivan Soll (Introduction)
- "Pessimism and the Tragic View of Life: Reconsiderations of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy," Reading Nietzsche By Robert C. Solomon, Kathleen M. Higgins (Oxford University Press, 1990)
- "Nietzsche on Cruelty, Asceticism, and the Failure of Hedonism," Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals By Richard Schacht (University of California Press, 1994)
- "Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and the Redemption of Life Through Art," Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche's Educator By Christopher Janaway (Oxford University Press, 1998)
- "Nietzsche on the Illusions of Everyday Experience," Nietzsche's Postmoralism: Essays on Nietzsche's Prelude to Philosophy's Future By Richard Schacht (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
- "Attitudes toward Life: the Existential Project of Nietzsche's Philosophy," International Studies in Philosophy (2002)
- "On the Death of the Author: A Premature, Postmodern Postmortem," The Dialogue, Yearbook of Philosophical Hermeneutics (2002)