Andreas Dorschel
Andreas Dorschel (born 1962 in Wiesbaden) is a German philosopher. Since 2002 he has been a professor of aesthetics and the head of the Institute for Music Aesthetics at the University of the Arts Graz in Austria. He studied philosophy, musicology and linguistics at Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Vienna, earning an MA in 1987 and a PhD in 1991. He completed his habilitation at the University of Bern in 2002 and has taught at universities in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom. He was a visiting professor at Emory University in 1995 and at Stanford University in 2006. In 2007 he helped give the Graz Institute for Music Aesthetics its name.
Dorschel has held numerous roles in academic and research organizations. He has served on the boards of science foundations and participated in European research programs, and he has advised on music and philosophy through the Royal Musical Association. He has had a long-running exchange of ideas with music and philosophy and has been influenced by Denis Diderot, Arthur Schopenhauer and R. G. Collingwood. He also worked closely with the late philosopher Roger Scruton on music and aesthetics.
Key ideas in his work include:
- Freedom as choice: In Die idealistische Kritik des Willens (1992), Dorschel argues that freedom is realized through making sensible choices, not simply by being under moral laws or by predetermined reasons. He rejects determinism and questions the idea that free will and law are the same. He also notes that predicting one’s own future behavior is problematic because predicting would change what one does.
- Rethinking prejudice: In Rethinking Prejudice (2000; reissued 2019), he argues that prejudices are not simply true or false because they are prejudices. They can be true or false, intelligent or foolish, good or bad, regardless of their status as prejudices.
- The aesthetics of useful things: In Gestaltung – Zur Ästhetik des Brauchbaren (2002), he challenges the focus on function in design philosophy and emphasizes looking at purpose and technology. He argues that design should be understood through the concepts of purpose and technology rather than function alone.
- Metamorphosis in thought and culture: In Verwandlung. Mythologische Ansichten, technologische Absichten (Mutation. Mythologische Views, Technological Purposes, 2009) he explores how metamorphosis (not just change) has shaped ideas in myth, religion, alchemy and modern genetics.
- History of ideas: In Ideengeschichte (2010) he explains that ideas are situated and emerge in response to problems. He uses the image of “teams of ideas”—not just isolated ideas—and emphasizes the social and historical context in which ideas arise and spread.
- Tragicomic time: In Mit Entsetzen Scherz (2022), he examines how tragic and comic elements can complement each other. Time plays a crucial role: tragedy unfolds over a long arc, while comedy is often about a moment. He develops a poetics of tragicomic incidents across works from ancient Greece to modern Austria.
- Broader methodological stance: Dorschel is critical of narrow academic writing in philosophy. He promotes using diverse forms—dialogue, letters, monologues, and philosophical storytelling—to develop and present positions more richly. He published Wortwechsel (2021), a collection of ten dialogues with an introduction to the philosophy of dialogue.
Awards and recognition include the Caroline-Schlegel-Preis in 2014 and election to the Academia Europaea in 2019. He has held fellowships at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study (2020/21) and the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study (2024/25).
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 17:09 (CET).