Reviewed by:

• Theatre and Knowledge by David Kornhaber
• Paul A. Kottman (bio)

David Kornhaber's Theatre and Knowledge is about as long, in terms of word count, as a typical academic essay, though it is published in the series 'Small Books on Theatre and Everything Else.' I mention this upfront to distinguish Kornhaber's book from typical, lengthier academic monographs. Kornhaber's "book" (paper? essay?) is—as the series Preface puts it—eminently "readable in one sitting by anyone with a curiosity about the subject." Theatre and Knowledge offers an enjoyable, breezy survey of questions that animate a variety of philosophical and theatrical traditions around the world: What does the theatre allow us to know? What is the relationship between philosophical knowledge ("justified true belief") and the knowledge claims made in theatrical presentations?

Kornhaber does an admirable job of introducing students to a range of key texts and traditions in which such questions take center stage. (Advanced undergraduate or post-graduate students—or the curious reader—seem to be the target audience of this book.) One of the most admirable aspects of Theatre and Knowledge is the range of its references—from Plato to the Sanskrit drama Sakuntalā (c. 400 CE), from medieval morality plays to Goethe and Stoppard, from Confucius to Deleuze. Kornhaber's examples are mostly, but by no means exclusively, 'Western'—and he provides his readers a keen sense of the sheer pervasiveness of the problems he raises, in a variety of religious, artistic, and philosophical registers. Students of comparative literature and drama would do well to note his example.

Because the book is a survey, it does not need to advance any groundbreaking new thesis about its topic. Nothing Kornhaber says is beyond question, and nothing he says—to this reader, at least—sounds any wildly false notes, either. The book succinctly and very ably recounts "ways in which merely entering a theater always ushers us into a direct encounter with knowledge," and it provides readers with many opportunities to further pursue this encounter in other works (5).

Kornhaber does slip in one claim which I found intriguing—he promises that his book will ask "what it is that the theater alone allows us to know" (19, my emphasis). By this he means: how the theatre "unsettle[s] and expand[s] the idea of knowing in ways that no other practice can achieve" (19).

No other practice? Given that Kornhaber turns—in the next sentence—to a religious drama (The Play of Adam in 1150 CE Normandy), one wonders whether or how the theatre manages to distinguish itself, as an allowance of knowing, from the historical development of religious rituals. Kornhaber's own examples, in fact, remind us of the way in which the theatre might arouse our "justified true belief" in ways or venues or occasions which can be very hard to [End Page 538] distinguish from, say, the Catholic mass or a Hindu festival or a social-religious processions in which suspended disbelief might be at play. Kornhaber wants to say something about the specificity of the theatre's relation to the allowance of knowing—yet, at almost every turn, that relation is shot through with religious (and, in this sense, with extra-theatrical) claims upon that relation. Kornhaber is well-aware of this, of course, which makes his promise to say something about what "the theater alone allows us to know" even more revealing. What is "the theater alone"?

In short—to pose the question that is begged by Kornhaber's book throughout—what could make the theatre itself into an object of knowledge (whose relation to knowledge as such could then be scrutinized)? How to say, with any confidence at all, that we know something about the "theater alone"?

Let us try this question one other way, slipping in a suggestion: if, as Kornhaber notes, Plato was the first to try to authorize philosophy by distinguishing philosophy from the theatre, then perhaps this was because Plato sensed that the achievement of any philosophical knowledge (well, of any knowledge whatsoever) somehow depended—at...

审核人：

• David Kornhaber 的戏剧与知识
• 保罗·A·科特曼（简历）

大卫·科恩哈伯 (David Kornhaber) 的《戏剧与知识》( Theatre and Knowledge ) 就字数而言，与典型的学术论文一样长，尽管它发表在“关于戏剧和其他一切的小书”系列中。我提前提到这一点是为了将 Kornhaber 的书与典型的、冗长的学术专着区分开来。Kornhaber 的“书”（论文？论文？）正如系列序言所说的那样，“任何对这个主题有好奇心的人都可以一口气读完”。戏剧与知识提供了一个令人愉快、轻松的问题调查，这些问题激发了世界各地的各种哲学和戏剧传统：戏剧让我们知道什么？哲学知识（“正当化的真信念”）之间的关系是什么？

Kornhaber 在向学生介绍一系列以此类问题为中心的关键文本和传统方面做得非常出色。（高等本科生或研究生——或好奇的读者——似乎是本书的目标读者。）戏剧与知识最令人钦佩的方面之一是它的参考范围——从柏拉图到梵文戏剧Sakuntalā（约公元 400 年），从中世纪的道德剧到歌德和斯托帕，从孔子到德勒兹。Kornhaber 的例子大部分是，但绝非完全是“西方的”——他让他的读者敏锐地感受到他在各种宗教、艺术和哲学领域提出的问题的普遍性。比较文学和戏剧的学生最好注意他的例子。

因为这本书是一个调查，它不需要提出任何关于其主题的开创性新论文。Kornhaber 所说的一切都是毫无疑问的，而且他所说的——至少对这位读者来说——听起来也没有任何错误的音符。这本书简洁而巧妙地叙述了“仅仅进入剧院总是让我们直接接触知识的方式”，它为读者提供了许多机会，在其他作品中进一步追求这种接触（5）。

Kornhaber 确实提到了一个我觉得很有趣的说法——他承诺他的书会问“只有剧院才能让我们知道什么”（19，我的重点）。他的意思是：戏剧如何“以其他实践无法实现的方式来扰乱和扩展了解的想法”（19）。

没有其他练习？鉴于 Kornhaber 在下一句中转向宗教戏剧（公元 1150 年诺曼底的亚当戏剧），人们想知道剧院是否或如何设法将自己与宗教仪式的历史发展区分开来，作为了解的允许. 事实上，Kornhaber 自己的例子提醒我们，剧院可能会以难以区分[End Page 538]与天主教弥撒或天主教弥撒或印度教节日或社会宗教游行可能会在其中发挥作用。Kornhaber 想谈谈剧院的特殊性与允许知道的关系——然而，几乎在每一个转折点，这种关系都充满了对这种关系的宗教（并且，在这个意义上，是戏剧外的）要求。当然，科恩哈伯很清楚这一点，这使得他承诺说一些“只有剧院才能让我们知道”的事情更加具有启发性。什么是“单独的剧院”？

简而言之——提出 Kornhaber 的书自始至终提出的问题——什么可以使剧院本身成为知识的对象（然后可以仔细检查其与知识本身的关系）？怎么说，完全有信心，我们对“剧院单独”有所了解？

让我们以另一种方式尝试这个问题，并提出一个建议：如果正如 Kornhaber 所指出的，柏拉图是第一个尝试通过区分哲学与戏剧来授权哲学的人，那么这也许是因为柏拉图感觉到任何哲学知识的成就（嗯，任何知识）不知何故取决于——在……