By comparison with other parts of his philosophy, Hegel'sAestheticshas been slighted by Anglo-American philosophers. All the more welcome then are two recent essays by Robert Pippin, which promise to go well beyond received notions. WithHegel's Idealism, Pippin published what is by any measure one of the most original of recent treatments. Shortly thereafter came a penetrating study of the idea of the modern, which allotted a central role to artistic modernism, and since then he has published various essays actively engaging (...) our post-Kantian legacy. Readers will therefore have heightened expectations of Pippin's turn to Hegel's aesthetics, or rather, as he himself signals, the philosophy of art — unlike some he clearly approves of the shift from Kantian questions of aesthetic taste to Romantic speculations on art, indeed on Art as cultural absolute.They will hardly be disappointed. Yet in the event they will find themselves negotiating texts that are at once dense and elliptical, much of the argument being conducted via footnotes, its implications—what it commits the author to in theory and in practice — not evident straightaway. If Hegel's position is complex, Pippin's turns out to be no less so. While I can hardly do justice to its intricacies, I do consider it both important and controversial, whether as interpretation of Hegel or as an approach to modernist abstraction. (shrink)

In recent continental philosophy of religion there has been significant attention paid to the Abrahamic doctrines of creation ex nihilo and divine omnipotence, especially by deconstructive thinkers such as Derrida, Caputo, and Keller. For these thinkers, the doctrine represents a form of agency that does violence to various forms of alterity. While broadly supportive of their fundamental philosophical and ethico-political views, especially about the primordiality of alterity, I differ from them in that I argue that creation ex nihilo articulates the (...) very structure of the alterity they are concerned with. The essay proceeds through a reading of Derrida’s representation of the doctrine and a “deconstruction” of his view by means of a reading of Augustine and Anselm. (shrink)

This thesis examines the ways in which contemporary cinema from a range of different countries, incorporating a variety of styles and genres, explores the relationship to the past of people living in the present who are affected by traumatic national histories. These films, which I’ve grouped under the term ‘temporal gateway’, focus on the ways in which characters’ experiences of temporality are fragmented, and cause and effect relationships are loosened as a result of their situations. Rather than a recreation of (...) historical events, these films are concerned with questions of how to remember the past without being defined and trapped by it: often exploring past events at a remove through techniques of flashback and mise-en-abyme. This thesis argues that a fuller understanding of how relationships to the past are represented in what have traditionally been seen as different ‘national’ cinemas is enabled by the hybridity and indeterminacy of the temporal gateway films, which don’t fit neatly into existing categories discussed and defined in memory studies. This thesis employs an interdisciplinary approach in order to draw out the features of the temporal gateway film, demonstrating how the central protagonist, the character whose life is in limbo, personifies the experience of living through the past in the present. This experience relates to the specifics of a post-trauma society but also to a wider encounter with disrupted temporality as a feature of contemporary life. I demonstrate how these films construct a new way of transmitting the experience of living with the past, through detailed analysis of approximately fourteen films from Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, including a detailed study of Lucrecia Martel’s work. This formal analysis is developed through the perspective of the historical, political and institutional to show how the films transcend a variety of existing definitions in films studies, to blur boundaries of categorisation. (shrink)

This paper reads Simone de Beauvoir's travel journal America Day by Day for its philosophical content. I argue that this work provides a unique approach to feminist, embodied philosophy, one that has been overlooked by the categorization of her writing into philosophical works and feminist ones. Such an approach, I contend, is enacted here through her use of Heidegger's concept of the everyday to inform her own treatment of understanding and experience.

This paper reads Simone de Beauvoir's travel journal "America Day by Day" for its philosophical content. I argue that this work provides a unique approach to feminist, embodied philosophy, one that has been overlooked by the categorization of her writing into philosophical works and feminist ones. Such an approach, I contend, is enacted here through her use of Heidegger's concept of the everyday to inform her own treatment of understanding and experience.