Art shows something of reality as a whole, a reality that exists above or below the directly perceptible world. There is a first reality, or empirical reality, which can be mapped and captured through sense perception and is characterized by immediacy; and then there is a second or imagined reality that unfolds beyond direct empirical and experiential observation. While the animal intellect is attracted to the surface, to mere appearances, the human intellect is drawn to what lies beyond the surface. (...) The ability to imagine is a condition of human intellect, being characterized, in Schopenhauer’s terms, by a power of “seeing in things not what nature has actually formed but what she endeavored to form, yet did not bring about”. For Schopenhauer, this capacity can be fully engaged not by the “ordinary man, that manufactured article of nature”, but by the man of genius. In contrast, John Ruskin holds that the power of art consists precisely in allowing us to regain what can be called the innocence of the eye, in other words, a kind of childlike perception which remains blind to the meaning of perceived things. This paper seeks a possible answer to the question of how art ties us to reality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology prioritises aesthetics as first philosophy, and finds increasing interest from those working across art, architecture and the humanities in general. This article tests the application of Harman’s ideas by applying them to a thorny issue related to the domain of serial art, and serially developed drawing in particular. The issue concerns the productive role of the beholder in constituting the serial artwork as a unified thing, wherein it appears manifestly deeper than the sum of its (...) physical parts. Referring to an artwork produced by contemporary artist Stefana McClure, I build upon prior propositions on serial art put forward by Christy Mag Uidhir and Nicolas de Warren to make the case for seeing serially. This uses Harman’s understanding of aesthetics to claim that imagined iterations constitute an integral element to serial drawing, brought into play when the beholder reflects upon the loose relationship between the array of qualities the artwork palpably presents and its withdrawn reality as a unified object. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to provide a philosophical discussion of Frederick Douglass's thought in relation to Christianity. I expand upon the work of Bill E. Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland—who both argue that there are Kantian features present in Douglass as it relates to his conception of the individual—by arguing that there are similarities between Douglass and Kant not only concerning the relationship between morality and Christianity, but also concerning the nature of the soul. Specifically, I try to (...) show that the moral weakness of slaveholding Christianity that Douglass attacked is found in the ecclesial formation of the slaveholding Christian church; it is a formation that begins with epistemology, but ignores ethics. I conclude, in part, that both Douglass and Kant reject a Cartesian psychological dualism in favor of a conception of the soul that is more attentive to one's moral development. (shrink)

This article advances a new analysis of stupidity as a distinctive form of cognitive failing. Section 1 outlines some problems in explicating this notion and suggests some desiderata. Section 2 sketches an existing model of stupidity, found in Kant and Flaubert, which serves as a foil for my own view. In section 3, I introduce my theory: I analyse stupidity as form of conceptual self-hampering, characterised by a specific aetiology and with a range of deleterious effects. In section 4, I (...) show how this proposal meets the desiderata and I clarify how it diverges from existing accounts. My position is close to a 'public health approach', in contrast to the virtue/vice framework employed by Engel or Mulligan. (shrink)

Unlike Aristotelian physics with its teleological notions, modern physics was developed exclusively in relation to the nonliving domain. This raised the question as to whether mechanics applies to organisms, and if so, to what extent. From the seventeenth century on, mechanistic ideas became prominent in biological and medical theory. Contemporary biology explains essential features of life on the basis of physical laws and processes. This does not prove, however, that the early mechanists were essentially right. In the eighteenth century, following (...) Cartesian notions of mind-body separation and preformation theories of organismic development, they tended to exclude major biological questions rather than answering them. It was those who insisted on the organizational features of organisms, like Stahl and Wolff, who paved the way for solutions to such crucial problems as the psychological basis of human nature and behavior and the generation of form in the course of reproduction. Though they underrated the potentials of a future, extended physics for understanding biology, their case against reductionist exclusion should not be considered outdated even today. (shrink)

Political theorists have traditionally grappled with laughter by posing a simple, normative question: ‘What role, if any, should laughter play in the polis?’ However, the outsized presence of laughter in contemporary politics has rendered this question increasingly obsolete. What good does determining laughter’s role in the polis do when the polis itself is to a large extent shaped by laughter? The present essay argues that Kant’s aesthetic investigations of laughter in the Critique of Judgment and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point (...) of View offer a much needed alternative to the normative discourse. Kant theorizes laughter as an intensely dialectical experience — at once an aesthetic judgment and an affect. Laughter in Kant enacts dissensus: it disrupts and transforms sensus communis, or the ways subjects see and hear the world in common that organize and structure a political community. The essay illustrates the advantages of a Kantian conception of the politics of laughter over the normative discourse by examining Dave Chappelle’s controversial 2019 stand-up comedy special Sticks & Stones. It concludes that the dissensus enacted by laughter, while not necessarily democratic, provides a privileged opening for democratic politics. (shrink)

In this Editor’s column I suggest a more modern aesthetics, in order to fill in some of the promise the current Special Issue on The Birth of the Discipline has in store for us. I base my suggestion more on Kant and Aristotle, though.

In this paper I examine a set of exceptional aesthetic experiences that remove us from our pragmatic everyday life and involve a specific type of unaffordability. I then extend this notion of unaffordability to experiences of awe and its relation to the sublime. My analysis is guided by considerations of the phenomenologically inspired enactivist approach that supports an affordance-based accounts of aesthetic experience. I review some recent neurophenomenological studies of the experience of awe, and I then sketch out a phenomenology (...) of awe as it approaches the sublime. (shrink)

This paper calls attention to a philosophical presupposition, coined here the continuity thesis which underlies and unites the different, often conflicting, hypotheses in the origin of life field. This presupposition, a necessary condition for any scientific investigation of the origin of life problem, has two components. First, it contends that there is no unbridgeable gap between inorganic matter and life. Second, it regards the emergence of life as a highly probable process. Examining several current origin-of-life theories. I indicate the implicit (...) or explicit role played by the continuity thesis in each of them. In addition, I identify the rivals of the thesis within the scientific community — the almost miracle camp. Though adopting the anti-vitalistic aspect of the continuity thesis, this camp regards the emergence of life as involving highly improbable events. Since it seems that the chemistry of the prebiotic stages and of molecular self-organization processes rules out the possibility that life is the result of a happy accident, I claim that the almost miracle view implies in fact, a creationist position. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a piece of natural theology, whose pro tanto conclusion is the existence of god-the-artist, that is a lower case “g” god, a creator who creates for the sake of beauty, but who is not worthy of worship, a god who can be admired but should not be loved. I then consider some only partially successful responses to this dismal conclusion. Finally, I show to reconcile the idea of a god motivated by love of beauty with (...) the religious tradition of an upper case “G” God, who is not merely to be worshiped but loves us and invites a loving response. (shrink)

Kant’s account of the freedom gained through virtue builds on the Socratic tradition. On the Socratic view, when morality is our end, nothing can hinder us from attaining satisfaction: we are self-sufficient and free since moral goodness is (as Kant says) “created by us, hence is in our power.” But when our end is the fulfillment of sensible desires, our satisfaction requires luck as well as the cooperation of others. For Kant, this means that happiness requires that we get other (...) people to work for our ends; and this requires, in turn, that we gain control over the things other people value so as to have influence over them. If this plan for happiness is not subordinated to morality, then what is most valuable to us will be precisely what others value. This is the root of the “passions” that make us evil and make us slaves whose satisfaction depends on others. But, significantly, this dependence is a moral slavery and hence does not signal a loss, or even diminishment of the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility. (shrink)

How is one to navigate between a thinking grounded in the individual and a claim for communality? In Emerson, this kind of difficulty comes into view in familiar sentences such as Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense.’ How does the relationship between the personal and the universal look and function? In this paper, it is argued that Emerson may bring us clarity regarding the difficulties we are facing when it comes to questions about how we (...) are to frame human personality, morality, and knowledge in the field of tension created by distinctions such as private/public, original/conventional, and particular/universal. A crucial thought in this line of reasoning is that that the critical philosophy Emerson pursues is also self-critical. The idea that true critique is self-criticism is then used as a tool to make clear that there’s no fundamental gap to be bridged here. The self-critical dimension makes clear the ways in which coming to share a world—learning from one’s teachers for example—is a matter of earning (shared) words. Therefore, Emersonian self-cultivation does not stand apart from the cultivation of something shared, but should be seen as a form of path towards a shared world. (shrink)

: Judgment -- Moral and ethical aspects. The application of "thick" ethical concepts is best understood as a process of reflective rather than deductive judgment. Taking the form "B is as X as A," where X is a thick ethical concept and A and B are narrative wholes unified through X (for example, "Those who hid Jews from the Nazis were as brave as Achilles"), reflective judgment opens thick ethical concepts to transformation. Though interpretive, such reflective judgment may still be (...) able to provide validity without recourse to "thin," purportedly context-neutral terms. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant and his work occupied a space at the crossroads of several important movements in philosophy. In this essay, I look at two important crossroads in aesthetics. First, the subjective turn in aesthetics, when the focus on aesthetic objects was rebalanced with the focus on the subject’s experience of such objects, the weight shifting from the objective to the subjective. Second, after many years and many theories advancing the view that universality of judgment could be achieved, at least in (...) part, through adoption of the appropriate perspective – or attitude – when considering a particular aesthetic object, Kant offers us perhaps the most sophisticated view of disinterestedness of any, and as he does so he solidifies that tradition, bringing it to its culmination, and ushers in the beginning of its end. (shrink)

This paper explores the significance of authority for Kant’s understanding of the relationship between reason and revelation. Beginning with the separation of the faculties of Theology and Philosophy in Conflict, it will be shown that Kant sees a clear distinction between the authority of reason and that of revelation. However, when one turns to Religion, it is also clear that Kant sees an important, perhaps necessary, relationship between the two. Drawing on a variety of texts, in particular those concerning the (...) public and private use of reason, this paper then explores the relationship between the authority of reason and that of revelation. From this discussion, several conclusions will be drawn regarding Kant’s understanding of the relationship between reason and revelation, namely that while distinct, the two are not necessarily in conflict and that, ultimately, the proper functioning of public reason must include some reference to revelation. (shrink)

The new mythology for which the German Romantic period called was not envisioned as antithetical to empiricism or experiential/experimental knowledge, but rather as emerging in dialogue with it to form a cultural foundation for such inquiry. Central to the mytho-scientific project were problematic theories of sexual division and generativity that established cultural baselines. This article examines the mythological investments of two influential thinkers of the period—Goethe and Schelling. It then analyzes Goethe’s unique merger of mythological approaches to sex and generation (...) with empirical observation in The Metamorphosis of Plants. It next traces Schelling’s expansion of Goethe’s theories of nature beyond their empirical justifications to develop a metaphysics of sexual differentiation. Finally, the article illuminates Goethe’s final reply to the sexual dynamics of Naturphilosophie at the end of his life, through the analysis of a single poem, “Finding Again,” in the collection God and World. Ultimately and in spite of its empirical commitments, Goethe’s more flexible view of sexual correlations would lose ground to the powerful metaphysical mythology of sexual opposition as both scientific and cultural bedrock. (shrink)

This paper examines how aesthetic ideals shaped the practice of Nazi medicine. It proposes that Nazi eugenics relied on the conflation of norms of health with norms of beauty determined and performed by Nazi cultures of action. Though theories of biological holism served as vehicles of Nazi ideology, they did so contingently. The anti-totalitarian thinking of biological holist Kurt Goldstein shows that the use of biological holism to promote Nazi ideology was not inevitable. This examination of aesthetic influences on Nazi (...) medicine shows that traditionally speaking ‘non-rational’ factors shaped the Nazi biomedical program’s aims and methods. (shrink)

This article examines Rancière’s political reading of aesthetics through a historical analysis into the two aesthetic theories of freedom at work in Rancière’s philosophy; Kant’s freedom as self-governance and Schiller’s freedom as harmony. While aesthetic experience is considered morally conducive through its association with freedom, this article argues that Rancière translates such discussions of freedom into that of equality by extracting the political dimensions of aesthetic experience. Given that art has the unique ability to empower the spectator through its aesthetic (...) experience of equality, the true political potential of art arises from its power to redistribute the sensible rather than through the overt expression of political themes. By juxtaposing Rancière’s politics of art with Kant’s beauty as the symbol of morality, this article argues that art becomes a symbol of political emancipation for Rancière in its capacity to generate the experience of equality. Inasmuch as Rancière attributes the aesthetic revolution to the eighteenth century, it becomes evident that the empowerment of the spectator has been central to art since the inauguration of the aesthetic regime. (shrink)

The article begins with a brief history of aesthetic theory. Particular attention is given to the postructuralist ‘aesthetic return’: the resurgence of interest in aesthetics as an ontological foundation for human being-in-the-world. The disordered individual-as-emergent-artist-and-artifact, who is at the centre of this ‘aesthetic return’, is then translated into the ‘dis’-organization that is the firm. The firm is thus defined in terms of its primal sensory impact on the world. It invokes a myriad of aesthetic relations between its disorganized self and (...) others: its essence resides within these relations; its power of being is determined by its ability to project a unified aesthetic ideal – a ‘mirror fantasy’. The firm thus emerges as a style: where style is defined as an organizing – a sculpting – of aesthetic chaos. In order to achieve a grand style, the firm projects itself through time as a unified aesthetic ideal; as an ongoing work of art. The article concludes with a discussion of how this aesthetic theory of the firm relates to other accepted theories of the nature and purpose of business organizations. (shrink)

The article begins with a brief history of aesthetic theory. Particular attention is given to the postructuralist ‘aesthetic return’: the resurgence of interest in aesthetics as an ontological foundation for human being-in-the-world. The disordered individual-as-emergent-artist-and-artifact, who is at the centre of this ‘aesthetic return’, is then translated into the ‘dis’-organization that is the firm. The firm is thus defined in terms of its primal sensory impact on the world. It invokes a myriad of aesthetic relations between its disorganized self and (...) others: its essence resides within these relations; its power of being is determined by its ability to project a unified aesthetic ideal – a ‘mirror fantasy’. The firm thus emerges as a style: where style is defined as an organizing – a sculpting – of aesthetic chaos. In order to achieve a grand style, the firm projects itself through time as a unified aesthetic ideal; as an ongoing work of art. The article concludes with a discussion of how this aesthetic theory of the firm relates to other accepted theories of the nature and purpose of business organizations. (shrink)

This paper engages Freud’s relation to Kant, with specific reference to each theorist’s articulation of the interconnections between ethics and religion. I argue that there is in fact a constructive approach to ethics and religion in Freud’s thought, and that this approach can be better understood by examining it in relation to Kant’s formulations on these topics. Freud’s thinking about religion and ethics participates in the Enlightenment heritage, with its emphasis on autonomy and rationality, of which Kant’s model of practical (...) reason is in many ways exemplary. At the same time, Freud advances Kantian thinking in certain important respects; his work offers a more somatically, socially, and historically grounded approach to the formation of rational and ethical capacities, and hence makes it more compatible with contemporary concerns and orientations that eschew the pitfalls of ahistorical idealist orientations. (shrink)

Crisis occupies an ambiguous place in the writings of Hannah Arendt. Not only does crisis undermine categories of judgment, but in doing so it eliminates prejudices as well, forcing us to judge without them. Although Arendt never had an opportunity to fully develop her understanding of judgment, we know that she considered it to be ‘the most political of man’s mental abilities,’ and her writings on education reflect this. In her essay, ‘The Crisis in Education’ she draws a connection between (...) judgment and crisis, linking it to the work of the classroom. It is this relationship, between crisis and judgment, that I examine. In doing so, I turn to two figures central to Arendt’s work – Immanuel Kant and Adolf Eichmann – each of whom embody opposing aspects of what it means to judge, epitomized by a conceptual tension between example and cliché. (shrink)

In hisCritique of the Power of Judgement, Kant explicates the creation of works of fine art (schöne Kunst) in terms of aesthetic ideas. His analysis of aesthetic ideas claims that they are not concepts (Begriffe) and are therefore not definable or describable in determinate language. Nevertheless, Kant claims that aesthetic ideas are communicable via spirit (Geist), a special mental ability he associates with artistic genius. This paper argues that Kant's notion ofGeistis central to his analysis of fine art's expressive power. (...) The notion ofGeistconstitutes a conceptual link between Kant's aesthetic theory and that of G. W. F. Hegel, for whose analysisGeistis the subject. (shrink)

Philosophers and artists consider the relevance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy for understanding art and aesthetic experience. This collection of essays brings together diverse but interrelated perspectives on art and perception based on the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Although Merleau-Ponty focused almost exclusively on painting in his writings on aesthetics, this collection also considers poetry, literary works, theater, and relationships between art and science. In addition to philosophers, the contributors include a painter, a photographer, a musicologist, and an architect. This widened (...) scope offers important philosophical benefits, testing and providing evidence for the empirical applicability of Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetic writings. The central argument is that for Merleau-Ponty the account of perception is also an account of art and vice versa. In the philosopher’s writings, art and perception thus intertwine necessarily rather than contingently such that they can only be distinguished by abstraction. As a result, his account of perception and his account of art are organic, interdependent, and dynamic. The contributors examine various aspects of this intertwining across different artistic media, each ingeniously revealing an original perspective on this intertwining. (shrink)

David-Ménard examines the problem of the genesis of Kant's moral philosophy. The separation between Kantian practical reason and the inclinations of sense which it regulates is shown by the author to originate in Kant's attempt to regulate his own tendency to hypochondria. Her argument links the themes from two of Kant's pre-critical works which attest to this tendency—“An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” and Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime—to the final form of the (...) critical philosophy. (shrink)

How far can consistent assessment capture all the worthwhile features of educational achievement? Are some important components of learning necessarily open to a range of potentially inconsistent judgments by different assessors? I argue for a cautiously affirmative answer to this question, drawing on analogies with aesthetic judgments and a rehearsal of the holistic characteristics of some assessment criteria. I also employ recent treatments of moral particularism and of concepts of incommensurability to oppose the drive for consistency in assessment required by (...) a high stakes accountability regime. (shrink)

What do Elliot Eisner's discussions of objectivity mean for the strength of the link between consistency and truth in educational research? Following his lead, I pursue this question by comparing aspects of qualitative educational research with appraising the arts. I argue that some departures from the highest levels of consistency in assessing the arts are compatible with truth and objectivity, and that this is at least suggestive for how consistency in qualitative educational research should be viewed. In the final part (...) of the paper I look at some problems inherent in comparing the value of works of art, and consider whether similar issues arise when we attempt to grade different kinds of educational research. (shrink)

Carolyn Korsmeyer has offered some compelling arguments for the role of disgust in aesthetic appreciation. In the course of this project, she considers and holds up for justifiable criticism the account of emotional conversion proposed by David Hume in “Of Tragedy”. I will consider variant interpretations of Humean conversion and pinpoint a proposal that may afford an explanation of the ways in which aesthetic absorption can depend on and be intensified by the emotion of disgust.

In the past decade, experimental philosophy---the attempt at making progress on philosophical problems using empirical methods---has thrived in a wide range of domains. However, only in recent years has aesthetics succeeded in drawing the attention of experimental philosophers. The present paper constitutes the first survey of these works and of the nascent field of 'experimental philosophy of aesthetics'. We present both recent experimental works by philosophers on topics such as the ontology of aesthetics, aesthetic epistemology, aesthetic concepts, and imagination, as (...) well as research from other disciplines that not only are relevant to philosophy of aesthetics but also open new avenues of research for experimental philosophy of aesthetics. Overall, we conclude that the birth of an experimental philosophy of aesthetics is good news not only for aesthetics but also for experimental philosophy itself, as it contributes to broaden the scope of experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom teaches that Thomas Huxley discredited Richard Owen in their debate over ape and human brains. This paper reexamines the dispute and uses it as a test case for evaluating the metaphysical realist, internal realist, and social constructivist theories of scientific knowledge. Since Owen worked in the Kantian tradition, his anatomical research illustrates the implications of internal realism for scientific practice. As an avowed Cartesian, Huxley offered a well developed attack on Owen''s position from a metaphysical realist perspective. Adrian (...) Desmond''s political retrospective on the dispute affords the additional opportunity to contrast internal realism with social constructivism. I argue that since Huxley ultimately based his attack on his valuing Europeans as superior to blacks, his argument illustrates the hazards of accepting the metaphysical realist promise of value free science. Desmond overlooks this racial dimension of the dispute, and his work shows how social constructivism can distract the historian and philosopher from even the social meaning of science. As internal realists like Putnam have argued, values enter science not from without, but from within the very process of science itself. (shrink)

According to Kant, the opacity of human motivation takes two distinct forms – a psychological form: man ‘can never, even by the most strenuous self-examination, get entirely behind [his] covert incentives’ – and a social form: ‘everyone in our race finds it advisable to be on his guard, and not to reveal himself completely’. In other words, first, men's ‘interior’ cannot be entirely revealed to themselves and, second, they tend not to reveal their ‘interior’ to others. A number of Kant (...) scholars have acknowledged the importance of the first form of opacity in Kant's thought and have attempted to draw out from it implications for moral deliberation and ethics in general. The aim of this paper is to examine the second, social form of opacity and draw out its anthropological implications, an issue that has been overlooked in the literature. To do so, I focus on Kant's contrast between men and beings that I would like to call ‘sincere aliens’. These sincere aliens are beings who have the opposite features of man's opacity, namely beings who cannot but reveal their ‘interior’ both to others and to themselves. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that for Kant, a combination of epigenesis and monogenesis is the condition of possibility of anthropology as he conceives of it and that moreover, this has crucial implications for the biological dimension of his account of human nature. More precisely, I begin by arguing that Kant’s conception of mankind as a natural species is based on two premises: firstly the biological unity of the human species (monogenesis of the human races); and secondly (...) the existence of ‘seeds’ which may or may not develop depending on the environment (epigenesis of human natural predispositions). I then turn to Kant’s account of man’s natural predispositions and show that far from being limited to the issue of races, it encompasses unexpected human features such as gender, temperaments and nations. These predispositions, I argue, are means to the realisation of Nature’s overall purpose for the human species. This allows me to conclude that man’s biological determinism leads to the species’ preservation, cultivation and civilisation. (shrink)

For Kant, the form of a subject's experience of an object provides the normative basis for an aesthetic judgement about it. In other words, if the subject's experience of an object has certain structural properties, then Kant thinks she can legitimately judge that the object is beautiful - and that it is beautiful for everyone. My goal in this paper is to provide a new account of how this 'subjective universalism' is supposed to work. In doing so, I appeal to (...) Kant's notions of an aesthetic idea and an aesthetic attribute, and the connection that Kant makes between an object's expression of rational and the normativity of aesthetic judgements about it. -/- . (shrink)

Trying to assess Kant's impact on contemporary aesthetics is by no means a straightforward task, for the simple reason that the subject is saturated with his influence. In all aspects of the theory and practice of art, it is possible to observe concepts and attitudes at work which are either a reflection of, or a response to, Kant's thinking. This might seem a rather overblown claim and a difficult one to substantiate but, without going into too much detail at this (...) point, one has only to consider that the central tenets of both modernism and postmodernism can be traced back to Kant's Critical thought. There is the modernist's interest in the conditions of possibility of representation – as evidenced, for example, by the push towards abstraction in the visual arts and the attempt to paint not the world but the process of painting itself – and, responding to this, the postmodernist's concern that these conditions of possibility should not become universal absolutes. (shrink)

In this paper, I contend that there are at least two essential traits that commonly define being an I: self-identity and self-consciousness. I argue that they bear quite an odd relation to each other in the sense that self-consciousness seems to jeopardize self-identity. My main concern is to elucidate this issue within the range of the transcendental philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the first section, I shall briefly consider Kant’s own rendition of the problem of the Egosplitting. (...) My reading of the Kantian texts reveals that Kant himself was aware of this phenomenon but eventually deems it an unexplainable fact. The second part of the paper tackles the same problematic from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology. What Husserl’s extensive analyses on this topic bring to light is that the phenomenon of the Ego-splitting constitutes the bedrock not only of his thought but also of every philosophy that works within the framework of transcendental thinking. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's preoccupation with a separation between the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ runs through his work and is widely thought to belong to his rejection of Hegel's idealist monism. Focusing on The Concept of Irony and Either/Or, I argue that although Kierkegaard believes in various metaphysical distinctions between inside and outside, he nonetheless understands the task of the philosopher as that of making outside and inside converge in a representation. Drawing on Hegel's philosophy of art, I show that Kierkegaard's project in (...) both of these books is the aesthetic project of revealing the inner essence of something in its outward appearance. Kierkegaard's portrait of Socrates in The Concept of Irony is a phenomenology of the spirit of irony. My interpretation adds a new dimension to our understanding of Kierkegaard's aesthetics and his relation to Hegel; it presents him as a follower of Plato, whom he is usually thought to have dismissed; and it uncovers a deep connection between Kierkegaard's first two books, which are never read in conjunction. (shrink)

The Darwinian revolution supposed and imposed a much broader and more complex concept of environment than that which, until that moment, had been considered by most as part of natural history. Until Darwin, the environment of living beings had been regarded, almost exclusively, as the inanimate surroundings. This pre-Darwinian notion of environment included physicochemical and climatic variables: the living beings themselves were scarcely considered, or they were regarded just as food to be assimilated. In contrast, with Darwin, the influence of (...) living surroundings began to be regarded as having decisive importance for understanding the distribution, configuration, and viability of living beings. The relationships established among different living beings became the main and more significant features of the biological environment. This conceptual change was an exigency derived from the formulation and justification of the theory of natural selection. The idea of struggle for existence supposed by that theory requires that the biotic environment be considered critical in determining the viability of each living being. (shrink)

Galit Wellner’s exploration of new kinds of digital technologies employing AI algorithms that simulate features and functions of the human imagination leads her to propose a conceptual analysis of the imagination as a composite of perception and memory. Wellner poses the question of whether the output of such technological applications might be regarded as not merely simulating creative activity but as truly imaginative in their own right. Wellner concludes with a qualified “no.” The use of AI algorithms in conjunction with (...) human cognitive activity, conceived in terms of a layered architecture of the faculties in question, can in fact be understood as an essential component of imaginative, and thus creative, production, but humans are still needed in the mix. To the extent that the AI-algorithm-enhanced human system is capable of imagining and creating works of art, imagination can be extended to AI algorithms. But, the algorithms sans humans are not themselves imaginers. For Wellner, AI algorithms can augment and enhance human imaginative efforts, equipping us with a richer and vastly wider array of possibilities and options for aesthetic consideration, but ultimately, the human is the essential element. However, once the door is opened to accepting algorithmically determined alternatives as capable of successfully achieving desired results within a field of possible outcomes, it seems possible that the activities of connecting, coordinating, or meaningfully linking, combining, and establishing new imaginative layers that Wellner reserves as requiring humans to enact might also be programmable, algorithmically achievable tasks that instantiate genuine aesthetic decision making. (shrink)

Argues that truth, moral right, political right, and aesthetic value may be understood as arising out of a naturalist account of humanity, if naturalism is rightly conceived.