Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño: Philosophical Crossroads ed. by Andrés Lema-Hincapié and Conxita Domènech (review)

The editors’ introduction to this collection of essays lays out the ambitious project of challenging the entrenched perception that Iberia’s Catholic orthodoxy and geographic isolation prevented the modern philosophical currents of Western Europe from taking root on the peninsula. To confront this contention, an eclectic group of philosophers and Hispanists demonstrates the interaction of philosophy with one symbolic Spanish text, La vida es sueño. As a point of departure, the focus on this play unifies what might otherwise be an incongruent volume in its consideration of philosophy written both on and off the peninsula before, during, and after the time of Calderón.

Philosophers will find of great interest those essays that employ the play as a test case to examine modern philosophical arguments. The choice of this emblematic work of literature to evaluate Iberian philosophy immediately engages the book with a question answered valiantly by philosopher Jorge J. E. Gracia: “Is La vida es sueño philosophy or literature?” (65). His answer (spoiler alert: it is literature) relies on demonstrating the difficulty of adequately translating literary works, exemplified by La vida es sueño. Along similar lines, philosopher C. Ulises Moulines uses Segismundo and his fabricated dream experience as a thought experiment to answer the twentieth-century philosophical question of realism, that is, “whether the external world is real” (21). While the literary scholar may wish for greater attention to the established body of critical theory, these philosophical studies expand the interpretative possibilities of the play, giving ample food for thought as to its early modern and even modern philosophical undercurrents.

The literary scholar will feel more at home in the chapters in which works of post-Calderón philosophy are used in more traditional hermeneutic analysis of the work. Philosopher Danièle Letocha demonstrates that a Hegelian reading of Segismundo distinguishes his character from the oft-compared Don Rodrigue from contemporary French playwright Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid. Literary scholar Nelson R. Orringer draws a comparison between the self-perception of Segismundo and the personal reality of Miguel de Unamuno, both of whom increasingly came to view their lives as dreams.

Of particular note are those chapters that examine the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophical underpinnings that may have influenced the composition of the play. Andrés Lema-Hincapié, versant in both literary studies and philosophy, investigates the similarities between Calderón’s and Descartes’s theories of doubt and sleep/wakefulness. Hispanists Conxita Domènech and Jennifer Brady interpret Segismundo as neither the ideal Christian nor the pure Machiavellian ruler, but the perfect Baroque prince according to the ideas of contemporary essayists, among them Baltasar Gracián. While these studies stop short of arguing for direct influence on Calderón, they demonstrate the degree to which the play was imbued in important Western European philosophical conversations. Two other scholars go even further, including Hispanist Henry W. Sullivan, who argues for “clear and direct” textual influence from the Jesuit philosopher Francisco Suárez, visible in both La vida es sueño and the writings of Descartes. Similarly, philosopher Jorge Aurelio Díaz argues that Calderón had an “apologetic intention” (142) to demonstrate Catholic notions of free will, firmly grounded in the rhetoric of Counter-Reformation thought. In this logic, Basilio’s divinations represent the predestination of John Calvin and Martin Luther, while Segismundo’s resolve to change his fate shows that free will can supersede determinism. These chapters defy any hint of anachronism and go furthest in achieving the goal, set forth in the introduction, of demonstrating Iberian philosophical ideas that clearly communicated with the rest of the continent. As such, the essays will appeal to scholars of any field who have an interest in intellectual history and who seek more fully to understand philosophy and its cultural expression.

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