What does it mean to be an aesthetic beholder? Is it different than simply being a perceiver? Most theories of aesthetic perception focus on 1) features of the perceived object and its presentation or 2) on psychological evaluative or emotional responses and intentions of perceiver and artist. In this chapter I propose that we need to look at the process of engaged perception itself, and further that this temporal process of be- coming a beholder must be understood in its embodied, (...) contextual and dynamic speci- ficity. Through both phenomenological and neuroscientific explorations I analyze what is characteristic about a more “aesthetic stance” and argue that there is a certain asym- metry between beholder and beheld, which has to do with a disengagement of goal- directed action, and which allows for other kinds of perceptual involvement than in a more “practical stance”. It is a multi-disciplinary project integrating a sensorimotor no- tion of aesthetic affordances, 18th century philosophy, and large-scale brain network findings. What ensues is a new dynamic framework for future empirical and theoretical research on aesthetic perception. (shrink)

This essay argues that nano-images would be best understood with an aesthetical approach rather than with an epistemological critique. For this aim, I propose a ‘techno-aesthetical’ approach: an enquiry into the way instruments and machines transform the logic of the sensible itself and not just the way by which it represents something else. Unlike critical epistemology, which remains self-evidently grounded on a representationalist philosophy, the approach developed here presents the advantage of providing a clear-cut distinction between image-as-representation and other modes (...) of existence of images, such as the one of ‘ imaginaction ’ that I draw from a comparison between far-field and near-field microscopies. Once this regime of imaginaction is distinguished from representation, I focus on nanotechnological percepts and argue that they follow a transmodal logic. I then draw the implications of this enquiry in terms of a new sensible condition that changes the way we think of non-living objects. Finally, I conclude that if techno-aesthetics dares to posit and articulate sensibility beyond the privileged sphere of subject/object relationships, it simultaneously engages us to consider the political character of our responsibilities towards the design of nano-engineered sensorial spaces. (shrink)

A debate between two aestheticians concerning the relative influence of Scottish and German philosophers on the contemporary discipline. -/- .

The main aim of this paper is to examine the practice of describing intellectual pursuits in aesthetic terms, and to investigate whether this practice can be accounted for in the framework of a standard conception of aesthetic experience. Following a discussion of some historical approaches, the paper proposes a way of conceiving of aesthetic experience as both epistemically motivating and epistemically inventive. It is argued that the aesthetics of intellectual pursuits should be considered as central rather than marginal to our (...) philosophical accounts of aesthetic experience, and that our views about the relation between the aesthetic and cognitive domains should be reconfigured accordingly. (shrink)

The main goal of the paper is to show that Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms may be viewed as a culmination of efforts of those thinkers who at the turn of the 19 th and 20 th century were a part of the so called anti-positivist movement. The paper focuses fore and foremost on those philosophers who in their attempts of grounding and defining Geisteswissenschaften were following the initial idea of Immanuel Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Cassirer’s symbolical monism is presented as (...) an attempt of identifying that “original need of human mind”, an attempt which ultimately paved way for determining and establishing a distinctively different type of reflection than the one found in natural sciences, despite all the multifariousness of seemingly unreconcilable results arrived at by different thinkers. The author argues that Cassirer’s conception – unlike those found in the works of Droysen, Dilthey, Rickert or Windelband – strives to ground Geisteswissenschaften’s conditions of possibility not on the Kantian concept of determining judgment, but on a concept of reflective judgment, i.e., not on the Kantian concept of the scheme, but on concept of symbol which in turn makes it possible to establish a methodological and symbolic-cultural unity of both natural sciences and humanities. (shrink)

he relationship between decadence and aesthetics is an intimate and complex one. Both the stock figure of the aesthete and the aestheticism of ‘art for art’s sake’ are classic decadent tropes with obvious sources in figures such as Théophile Gautier, Walter Pater, Joris-Karl Huysmans. Yet the links between aesthetics and decadence are more conflicted than might first appear: historically, aesthetics has served both as a site for the theorisation of decadence and as the basis of an attempt to stem it. (...) The purpose of this chapter is to examine these intricate ties. (shrink)

El artículo, de carácter aporético, asume como objetivo caracterizar sutilmente los desafíos de la educación artística, a partir de una crítica a la modernidad, hipermodernidad, así como a las manifestaciones de la sociedad estetizada. Se confuta la mirada de progreso desde una óptica emancipadora, con la premisa fundamental de lograr la elaboración del ¿por qué arte?, en los artistas.

It is a common thought that mathematics can be not only true but also beautiful, and many of the greatest mathematicians have attached central importance to the aesthetic merit of their theorems, proofs and theories. But how, exactly, should we conceive of the character of beauty in mathematics? In this paper I suggest that Kant's philosophy provides the resources for a compelling answer to this question. Focusing on §62 of the ‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’, I argue against the common view (...) that Kant's aesthetics leaves no room for beauty in mathematics. More specifically, I show that on the Kantian account beauty in mathematics is a non-conceptual response felt in light of our own creative activities involved in the process of mathematical reasoning. The Kantian proposal I thus develop provides a promising alternative to Platonist accounts of beauty widespread among mathematicians. While on the Platonist conception the experience of mathematical beauty consists in an intellectual insight into the fundamental structures of the universe, according to the Kantian proposal the experience of beauty in mathematics is grounded in our felt awareness of the imaginative processes that lead to mathematical knowledge. The Kantian account I develop thus offers to elucidate the connection between aesthetic reflection, creative imagination and mathematical cognition. (shrink)

The article deals with Kant’s doctrine of genius, presented in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, in connection with the latest discussion of which author of that time could have a decisive influence on Kant’s conception. In the first section, I reconstruct the line of Kant’s argument in CPJ §§ 46-50 where he explicates the nature of genius and show that its characteristics such as contrast to rules, the complementarity of taste, spirit as a principle of aesthetic ideas, the (...) proportion between the power of imagination and understanding become constitutive for his theory. In the second section, I refer to opinio communis in the research literature that Kant formed his theory of genius under the influence of the Scottish philosopher Alexander Gerard’s Essay on Genius. This opinion is shared by the vast majority of contemporary researchers. Still, its origins go back to the monograph of O. Schlapp. At the same time, other researchers claim that C. F. Gellert, or merely German philosophy of the XVIII century, had a significant influence on Kant’s theory. In the third section, on the example of Kant’s four propositions about genius head, the productive power of imagination, the proportion of understanding and the power of imagination, the difference of genius and scientific talent), I claim that similar views were common among various German and foreign authors of that time. Based on this, I argue that Kant’s conception of genius as a complex theory cannot be reduced to the influence of one author or one tradition. Hence its correct reconstruction should consider the rich and diverse material from different sources from aesthetics, poetics, rhetoric, art, and literature up to metaphysics. (shrink)

Hegel's theory of tragedy has polarized critics. In the past, many philosophers have claimed that Hegel's theory of tragedy removes Kant's critical insights and returns to pre-critical metaphysics. More recently, several have argued that Hegel does not break faith with tragic experience but allows philosophy to be transformed by tragedy. In this paper I examine the strength of this revised position. First I show that it identifies Hegel's insightful critique of Kant's theoretical assumptions. Yet I then argue that it fails (...) to note the practical importance of Kant's separation of knowledge and aesthetics. I propose an alternative approach to tragedy that builds from the revised view and yet maintains the autonomy of aesthetics. Tragedy represents an action, a set of events that are internally unified and yet cannot be reduced to theory. This is to say that tragedy confronts us with an aesthetic sphere of making and doing that, while constrained, is incessantly open and free. (shrink)

Hegel's theory of tragedy has polarized critics. In the past, many philosophers have claimed that Hegel's theory of tragedy removes Kant's critical insights and returns to pre-critical metaphysics. More recently, several have argued that Hegel does not break faith with tragic experience but allows philosophy to be transformed by tragedy. In this paper I examine the strength of this revised position. First I show that it identifies Hegel's insightful critique of Kant's theoretical assumptions. Yet I then argue that it fails (...) to note the practical importance of Kant's separation of knowledge and aesthetics. I propose an alternative approach to tragedy that builds from the revised view and yet maintains the autonomy of aesthetics. Tragedy represents an action, a set of events that are internally unified and yet cannot be reduced to theory. This is to say that tragedy confronts us with an aesthetic sphere of making and doing that, while constrained, is incessantly open and free. (shrink)

Contrary to both his own intentions and the views of both older and more recent commentators, I argue that Kant’s aesthetics remains within the confines of eighteenth-century aesthetics as a branch of empirical psychology, as it was then practiced. Kant established a plausible connection between aesthetic experience and judgment on the one hand and cognition in general on the other, through his explanatory concept of the free play of our cognitive powers. However, there is nothing distinctly ‘a priori’ or ‘transcendental’ (...) in his claim that this state of mind is what causes our pleasure in beauty or other aesthetic properties. Nor did Kant establish a genuinely a priori or transcendental principle that all human beings have the same disposition to experience a free play of their cognitive powers, let alone in response to the same objects. This failure, however, in no way limits the continuing significance of Kant’s aesthetic theory.Keywords: Alexander Gerard; Henry Home, Lord Kames; Immanuel Kant; Beauty; Taste; Free play of the cognitive powers. (shrink)

Ricœur’s philosophy never locates itself directly in the field of philosophical aesthetics inasmuch as philosophical aesthetics never arises as a field of major questioning and discursive development for Ricœur’s philosophy or as a field that would guide that philosophy. However, Ricœur maintains an ongoing but complex connection with aesthetics throughout his philosophical work. Here we defend the thesis that there are difficulties relating both to the complexity of Ricœur’s philosophy and to the crisis situation of aesthetics as an autonomous field (...) of philosophical inquiry. A more direct confrontation with philosophical aesthetics, such as that developed by analytic philosophy and critical theory today, is necessary in order to be aware of this connection between Ricœur’s philosophy and aesthetics. It then appears that if Ricœur’s philosophy makes it possible to maintain a certain autonomy of the field of aesthetics inherited from Kant, it is not through developing some unlikely “Ricœurian aesthetic” but thanks to a Ricœurian philosophy of aesthetics essentially determined on three levels: 1) the connection between poetics and aesthetics within a philosophy of imagination, 2) the connection between criticism and hermeneutics with regard the notions of text and distanciation, 3) the connection between ontology and communication that summarizes the two previous steps by combining phenomenological, analytic and critical perspectives. Thus it can be assumed that this autonomy of the field of aesthetics is possible only at a horizon of meaning determined by Ricœur’s philosophical anthropology: at the axiological level, the field of aesthetics differs upstream from the field of poetics and downstream from the field of ethics; at the ontological level, Ricœur’s philosophy of aesthetics concerns a region that is both intermediate between and congruent to those treated by Ricœur’s philosophy of imagination and by Ricœur’s philosophy of action. (shrink)

Our intuitions related to art are generally associated to ideas such as creativity, freedom of expression, experimentation. The fact that so many artists (especially writers, but also musicians, painters, performance artists) are or have been people with training in legal disciplines should be taken into account when considering the apparently extrinsic relationship between art and law. The question we have to answer is the following. When we make a judgment of taste looking, say, at the Mona Lisa, what does that (...) mean exactly? What do we mean when we say that “the Mona Lisa is beautiful and an absolute masterpiece of Western art”? This statement contains a judgment of taste (Mona Lisa is beautiful) and an artistic judgment (it is a masterpiece of Western art). In what follows I will show that: i) the two judgments are different, ii) both judgments have normative nature, but the normativity of the judgment of taste refers to different elements from the artistic judgment and, finally, iii) contemporary visual arts require the formulation of an artistic judgment rather than a judgment of taste. (shrink)

In this thesis the appropriate aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes is explored. The overarching research question for this thesis is: What is an appropriate appreciation of a designed landscape as a designed landscape? This overarching research question is split into sub-questions. The first sub-question is: What is the current theoretical basis for the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes and does it provide appropriate arguments for aesthetic evaluations? Two important points about the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes were found in the (...) existing literature on environmental aesthetics and in critical evaluations of designed landscapes. Modern environmental aesthetics is focussed on natural environments as it has been shaped in response to early 20th century aesthetics, which was dominated by questions on art. The designed landscape phenomenologically related more to environments, but is ontologically closely related to artworks. Designed landscapes thus fall between two fields. The designed landscape has gone largely unacknowledged by philosophers and geographers. The lack of a specific theory for the appropriate appreciation of designed landscapes has made it easier for landscape architects and critics to miss out on the current insights of environmental aesthetics, leading to the inconsistent belief among landscape architects and landscape architecture critics that landscapes are scenic entities. Actual design criticism as offered in the Landscape Architecture Europe books is shown to be based on the inconsistent belief that aesthetic experiences of works of landscape architecture are mostly visual. To explore what an appropriate appreciation should be based in, first the ontology and phenomenology of one example, the post-war design for the landscape of Walcheren, is described and discussed. To explore its ontology, a literature research has revealed the design process and decisions. To explore the phenomenology, the descriptions of two walks on the island made by the author were analysed. The descriptions of ontology and phenomenology of Walcheren offer insights into the relevance for the aesthetic evaluation of this landscape of being designed and of the sensorial richness of this designed landscape. In both fields of ontology and phenomenology insights into aesthetic value go beyond the visible. The second and third part of the research answers the sub-questions about appropriate appreciation regarding respectively ontology and phenomenology of designed landscapes in general. The literature on topics adjacent to the field of landscape architecture, such as design and architecture aesthetics, was surveyed for aspects that might also be relevant for the aesthetic evaluation of landscape architecture. These aspects were then weighed according to a philosophical method of reasoning from first principles. Starting from a principle of appropriate appreciation, different cues were tested to see whether or not they have to be considered in such an appropriate appreciation. Following descriptions of the True Appreciation Principle (TAP) as provided by Lopes, cues were tested against the Appropriate Appreciation Principle for Designed Landscapes (AAP-DL): An appreciation of landscape L as a designed landscape is appropriate only as far as it does not depend counterfactually on any belief that is inconsistent with the truth about the nature of designed landscapes. Examples are provided where cues can influence one’s evaluation, and evaluation thus depends counterfactually on those taking those cues into account. If something might influence one’s evaluation one should consider it. The exploration has provided important cues for the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes. The findings are the base of an evaluative framework that takes into account the ontology and phenomenology of designed landscapes in order to evaluate designed landscapes according the AAP-DL. A discussion is provided on the importance of such an appropriate appreciation for different audiences. (shrink)

This paper investigates the reciprocal implications between aesthetics and technics, to show how technicity, as a cultural and symbolic attitude, is constitutively rooted in the aesthetic dimension of human experience. The analysis conducted aims to bring into focus the originarity of technicity in the development of the living body, understood in its inseparable connection with the mind, as junction between the sensible and the symbolic, the organic and the cultural, the perceptive and the expressive. I address this question through a (...) parallel analysis of Simondon’s groundbreaking reflection on technics and the less explored account of technics in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. If the latter inscribes our attitude towards technics in the motricity and symbolism inherent to the living body, the former ascribes to aesthetics a form of thinking, thus playing a fundamental role in our relationship to the technical dimension. Despite the differences in their approach to technics, I combine their theoretical perspectives to encompass their internal limits and to outline possible convergences. (shrink)

دیدگاه کریستین وُلف دربارۀ ‌‌ادراک حسی که چارچوبی لایب‌‌‌نیتسی دارد، اساس استتیک او را برمی‌‌‌سازد. او با توجه به ماهیت واضح ولی مغشوشِ ‌‌ادراک حسی در این چارچوب، مفهوم کمال و لذت را تبیین می‌‌‌کند و از همین معبر ره به تعریف زیبایی می‌‌‌برد. به این ترتیب، از نظر او، کمال همانا توافق یا هماهنگی کثرات یا انبوهی از اشیاء یا اجزای آن‌هاست؛ لذت، حاصل شهود کمال در اشیاء است؛ و زیبایی هم عبارت است از کمال شیْ‏ء از آن حیث (...) که برای ایجاد لذت در ما مناسب است. با این اوصاف، در این مقاله قصد داریم ماهیت ‌‌ادراک حسی نزد او و رابطۀ ادراک حسی، کمال و لذت را با زیبایی در استتیک او بکاویم تا مشخص شود چگونه علم استتیک به‌‌‌طور عام از دل مباحث معرفت‌‌‌شناختی و به‌‌‌طور خاص از بطن ‌‌ادراک حسی بیرون می‌‌‌آید. در نهایت‌‌، با در نظر داشتن این مهم که خود او مستقیماً داعیۀ نظریۀ مستقلی در حوزۀ استتیک نداشته، نقد و نظری بر لوازم مربوط به استتیک او خواهیم داشت تا حدود و ثغور نظریۀ عقل‌‌‌گرایانۀ مفرط او در برخورد با مسائلی چون دایرۀ شمول زیبایی، مراتب زیبایی و اختلاف‌‌‌نظرهای ذوقی مشخص شود. (shrink)

El artículo tiene como eje central la presentación del sentido original con el cual nace la Estética, como disciplina filosófica, de la mano de Alexander Baumgarten. Está dividido en tres partes: la primera con la finalidad de contextualizar históricamente el nacimiento de la Estética y su idea base es que la Ilustración es un movimiento de raíz europea con un cariz preeminentemente antropológico. La segunda parte se concentra en presentar y explicar los conceptos centrales de la Estética de Baumgarten, a (...) saber: que ella es una reflexión acerca de lo particular en tanto particular. La tercera parte vincula la reflexión estética con la dimensión humana. La idea base de esta tercera parte, aquella que le da sentido a todo el artículo, es que la Estética de Baumgarten se dirige hacia la construcción de un ser humano completo, aquella persona que sabe integrar su razón y su sensibilidad, y encuentra en ello una feliz armonía. Tal ser humano será llamado el felix aestheticus. (shrink)

This essay cross-examines both the correlation and the disjunction between art philosophy and political reason in the thinking of the French Jewish art philosopher, Kant specialist and socialist politician Victor Basch. Two interwoven lines of questioning will be in play. One considers the extent to which Basch's theory of beauty, which was primarily grounded in a psychological theory of Einfühlung, was a corollary to his political ideas and practices. The other line of inquiry raises questions about how Basch's political position, (...) namely his anti-facist defending of republican values, became influenced by his work on aesthetics. By answering both questions, this article challenges the traditional historiography of interwar aesthetics. The esaay shows how conceptual debates of aesthetics were not just sterile theoretical products, but to a large extent offered an apparatus to diagnose and orientate a rapidly changing world. Therefore this essay develops a reflection about the gaze needed to take in the complex historical situations from which aesthetic reflections grew, and which in turn they addressed. (shrink)

Christian Wolff’s view regarding sensory perception – which is formed on a Leibnizian framework – forms the base of his aesthetics. He explains the concept of perfection and pleasure according to the clear but disordered essence of sensory perception that is present in this framework and through this very path guides towards the definition of beauty. Thus, according to him, perfection is the consistency or accordance of diversity or the abundance of things or their parts; pleasure is the result of (...) the intuition of the perfection present in things; and beauty is the perfection of a thing from the aspect of it being suitable in creating pleasure in us. Therefore, in this article we intend to explore the essence of sensory perception according to him and the relation between it, perfection and pleasure with beauty in his aesthetics so that it becomes clear how aesthetics emerges from the heart of epistemological discussions in general and from the depths of sensory perception in particular. Finally, while keeping in mind the important fact that he did not directly claim to have an independent theory in the field of aesthetics, we will critique and give our views in regards to the requisites connected to his aesthetics so that the limits of his extreme rationalist views in dealing with issues such as the extent that beauty covers, the levels of beauty and the difference of views in relation to taste and liking become clear. (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate Baumgarten’s doctrine of the six perfections of knowledge (wealth, magnitude, truth, clarity, certainty, and life), which is famously one of the most characteristic and enigmatic features of his philosophy. Recent scholarship has almost unanimously stressed the rhetorical background of the categories. Instead, I argue that Baumgarten elaborates his theory in close relationship with coeval philosophy. To support this claim, I examine the position of some Thomasian philosophers, such as Johann Liborius Zimmermann, who had indicated a (...) list of criteria similar to that of Baumgarten. Moreover, I analyse the distinction between formal and material perfections, tracing it back to the Wolffian milieu. On these bases, I propose a new reconstruction of Baumgarten’s doctrine, with particular attention to its aesthetic application. Finally, I outline the reception of the six categories in the late German Enlightenment until Kant. (shrink)

This text is the introduction of the special issue “Rhythm in social interaction” edited by Chiara Bassetti and Emanuele Bottazzi in Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa, vol. 8, n. 3, December 2015. We thank Chiara Bassetti, Emanuele Bottazzi and the journal Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa for the permission to republish it. But, friend, when you grasp the number and nature of the intervals of sound, from high to low, and the boundaries of those intervals, and how many scales arise from them, (...) - Anthropologie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Philosophers after Leibniz used a technical idiom to classify and explain the nature of mental content. Substantive philosophical claims were formulated in terms of this vocabulary, including claims about the nature of mental representations, concepts, unconscious mental content, and consciousness. Despite its importance, the origin and development of this vocabulary is insufficiently well understood. More specifically, interpreters have failed to recognize the existence of two distinct and influential versions of the post-Leibnizian idiom. These competing formulations used the same technical terms (...) and taxonomic relations but assigned different connotations to those terms and employed different criteria for their application. This paper explains the two most influential versions of the post-Leibnizian idiom. (shrink)

Despite the growing sociological interest in the object, and the long-standing tradition in the humanities and social sciences concerned with the creation of art and artefacts, there is relatively little research about how people in ordinary day-to-day circumstances explore and respond to exhibits in museums and galleries. In this article, we address the conduct and interaction of visitors to museums and galleries and consider how they examine and experience objects and artefacts in collaboration with each other. In particular, we address (...) the ways in which one participant shapes, through gesture and talk, how those they are with look at and respond to exhibits. The article is based on the analysis of audio-visual recordings gathered in museums and galleries both in the UK and abroad. (shrink)

Every art-work has a different perceptual aspect that is related to some issues such as aesthetic perception and knowledge of users. The important point is how users get that and the difference between architectural perception and users that is a controversial issue in modern architecture and cause disagreement between users and designers. According to the importance of vernacular architecture and the need to adapt to its pattern with modern architecture, this paper aimed to evaluate principles of visual Gestalt and aesthetics (...) between users and designers (non-experts and experts1) in the traditional live district in Dezful city in Iran. The methodology of this research is combined with descriptive-surveying methods and field and library studies. So, a semi-structural interview by using a targeted questionnaire was distributed to the experts and non-experts to quantify the differences, and by describing and analyzing these data by SPSS statistical software, the root of the differences between these groups was identified. Due to the analysis of the data, besides searching, studying, and being in that district, two types of questionnaires between users and designers have been used. The result of this study shows that in the ancient city of Dezful, the opinions of experts and users also differ in terms of aesthetic perception so that for users, shape, and context, and experts, symmetry is the first principle. So unexpectedly, it can be argued that sensible visual Gestalt principles, such as symmetry and closure for experts, are of the highest importance, while these principles are of less importance to the user group. The findings of this study made it possible to compare the views and opinions of people and experts. It makes clear the difference between the perception criteria of those who create the landscape and the people who are confronted with and live in the environment. (shrink)

Desde la teología y la filosofía podemos comprender el concepto de belleza en el deporte ligado a la dignidad humana. Para ello, en este artículo: a) analizamos desde la antropología del cristianismo el lugar del cuerpo y el valor del deporte en la vida del ser humano; b) abordamos la estética intentando comprender la belleza ligada a la dignidad; a continuación, c) proponemos una educación estética donde la belleza ligada al deporte no está exenta del sufrimiento, las limitaciones físicas o (...) psíquicas del individuo, para que seamos capaces de ver más allá de las formas, en orden a respetar y salvaguardar la dignidad de la persona humana; finalmente, d) reflexionamos sobre el concepto de belleza que profesores y entrenadores están trasmitiendo a los alumnos y a los deportistas a través del deporte, proponiendo un modelo en el que cabe el dolor, el sufrimiento, las limitaciones e imperfecciones sin dejar por ello de ser bellos. (shrink)