Marginalized people have used body aesthetic practices, such as clothing and hairstyles, to communicate their worth to the mainstream. One such example is respectability politics, a set of practices developed in post-Reconstruction black communities to prevent sexual assault and convey moral standing to the white mainstream. Respectability politics is an ambivalent strategy. It requires assimilation to white bourgeois aesthetic and ethical standards, and so guides practitioners toward blandness and bodily erasure. Yet, it is an aesthetic practice that cultivates moral (...) agency and helps communities avoid violence and meet social and economic goals. I contrast respectability politics with the anti-assimilationist body aesthetics of Chike Jeffers and Janell Hobson. Because these accounts do not seek to neutralize or erase the body, they fundamentally value black people. As such, they more effectively convey personhood than assimilationist strategies do and also demonstrate the positive role that body aesthetics can play in everyday ethical projects. (shrink)

In this clearly written and well argued book, Mark Johnson presents a theory of embodied cognition and discusses the implications it has for theories of meaning, language and aesthetics. His pragmatist foundations are on show when he writes that ‘The so-called norms of logical inference are just the patterns of thinking that we have discovered as having served us well in our prior inquiries, relative to certain values, purposes, and types of situations’ (p.109). Johnson’s particular contribution to theories of (...) meaning and language is that he grounds ‘inference’ even at the most abstract level in patterns of sensorimotor experience (p.279). He rejects traditional analytic theories of language on the basis that their central concept of reference is grounded in an erroneous and unfounded distinction between transcendent universals and bodily particulars (p.89-91). (shrink)

The aesthetics of body and dress are in a continuous flux. The body, being the locus where fashion challenges the traditional norms, escapes from the narrow boundaries of the conventionally beautiful; the disgusting soma, in the realm of Negative Aesthetics, takes its place. In this paper, I attempt to define what is disgusting fashion and how can contribute to the deliberation of the body from the restricting margins of the aesthetically beautiful. The distorted imagery of (...) the feminine soma is the center of the analysis of the non-beautiful as an aesthetically pleasing phenomenon. Different examples of repulsive clothing are analyzed from a philosophical point of view, in order to understand the relation between the negative emotional responses towards disgusting fashion and its aesthetic value. -/- . (shrink)

Aesthetic evaluations of human bodies have important implications for moral recognition and for individuals’ access to social and material goods. Unfortunately, there is a widespread aesthetic disregard for non-white bodies. Aesthetic evaluations depend on the aesthetic properties we regard objects as having. And it is widely agreed that aesthetic properties are directly accessed in our experience of aesthetic objects. How, then, might we explain aesthetic evaluations that systematically favour features associated with white identity? Critical race philosophers, like Alia Al-Saji, Mariana (...) Ortega, Paul C. Taylor, and George Yancy, argue that this is because the perception of racialized bodies is affected by the social structures in which they are appreciated. The aim of this paper is to propose how social structures can affect aesthetic perception. I argue that mental imagery acquired through the interaction with aesthetic phenomena structures the perception of non-aesthetic properties of bodies, so that aesthetic properties consistent with racist stereotypes are attributed to individuals. (shrink)

The body is relevant for aesthetics from two perspectives. We experience and assess bodies aesthetically from the outside; and we have aesthetic experiences of and through our bodies from the inside. In experiences of one’s own body, these perspectives often intersect in interesting ways. From both perspectives, the body is a site where aesthetic and ethical considerations are deeply intertwined. This article includes discussion of Beauty and the Body, Aesthetic Body Practices, Body (...) class='Hi'>Aesthetics and Gender Construction, Somatic Dimensions of Aesthetic Experience, and The Body in Contemporary Art. (shrink)

The culturally pervasive tendency to identify aspects of the body as aesthetically imperfect harms individuals and scaffolds injustice related to disability, race, gender, LGBTQ+ identities, and fatness. But abandoning the notion of imperfection may not respect people’s reasonable understandings of their own bodies. I examine the prospects for a practice of aesthetic assessment grounded in a notion of the body’s function. I argue that functional aesthetic assessment, to be respectful, requires understanding the body’s functions as complex, malleable, (...) and determined by the projects and interests of the person whose body it is. Aesthetically relevant functions, on this account, are determined neither by the body’s status as organism nor by cultural assumptions about how bodies should function or be used. (shrink)

I clarify the arguments of my paper “Scratching an Itch” in response to a discussion piece by Brian Soucek. I also offer a new argument that objectivity is possible for aesthetic judgments about private phenomena such as somatic experiences.

This reference essay surveys recent work in the emerging sub-discipline of everyday aesthetics, which builds on the work of John Dewey to resist sharp distinctions between art and non-art domains and argue that aesthetic concepts are properly applied to ordinary domains of experience.

As aesthetic beings, we are receptive to and engaged with the sensuous phenomena of life while also knowing that we are targets of others’ awareness: we are both aesthetic agents and aesthetic objects. Our psychological health, our standing within our communities, and our overall wellbeing can be profoundly affected by our aesthetic surroundings and by whether and how we receive aesthetic recognition from others. When our embodied selves and our cultural products are valued, and when we have rich opportunities for (...) aesthetic experience and for the exercise of aesthetic agency, the aesthetic can foster and sustain wellbeing and help to make our lives worthwhile. But when we are subjected to aesthetic blight, restriction of our aesthetic agency, and aesthetic devaluing of our embodied selves and our communities’ cultural products, the aesthetic can do great harm: such aesthetic maneuvers play a significant role in oppression and social hierarchy related to race, gender, fatness, and disability. This essay explores the notions of aesthetic objects and aesthetic agents, their relations with each other, and the unique affordances of persons’ status as simultaneously aesthetic objects and aesthetic agents. It examines the prospects for bodily aesthetic experience to promote wellbeing and, at the end, considers how the aesthetic might play a role in establishing forms of mutual vulnerability and recognition to combat oppressive social hierarchies. (shrink)

I argue that the experiences of everyday life are replete with aesthetic character, though this fact has been largely neglected within contemporary aesthetics. As against Dewey's account of aesthetic experience, I suggest that the fact that many everyday experiences are simple, lacking in unity or closure, and characterized by limited or fragmented awareness does not disqualify them from aesthetic consideration. Aesthetic attention to the domain of everyday experience may provide for lives of greater satisfaction and contribute to our ability (...) to pursue moral aims. (shrink)

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)

All too often women are considered sexy in accordance with an externally dictated and unduly narrow conception of sexiness – one that excludes large portions of the female population from being considered sexy. In response to this, some feminists have suggested that we should give up on sexiness altogether. Since the agency, subjectivity, and autonomy of a woman being judged sexy is generally ignored, they argue, we have, in effect, an equation of sexiness with objecthood. In a recent essay entitled (...) “Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects” Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin object to this strategy because they see sexuality as a crucial element of selfhood – something that one cannot simply ‘give up on’. Instead, they propose to reclaim and redefine sexiness in such a way that makes room for women as sexy subjects desiring and pursuing authentic pleasure. In this short paper, I will investigate the merits and shortcomings of their proposal and present an alternative account. (shrink)

The ability of videos to serve as evidence of racial injustice is complex and contested. This essay argues that scrutiny of the Black body has come to play a key role in how videos of police violence are mined for evidence, following a long history of racialized surveillance and attributions of threat and superhuman powers to Black bodies. Using videos to combat injustice requires incorporating humanizing narratives and cultivating resistant modes of looking.

In this paper we track the ‘body positivity’ movement from its origins, promoting radical acceptance of marginalized bodies, to its co-optation as a push for self-love for all bodies, including those bodies belonging to socially dominant groups. We argue that the new focus on the ‘body positivity’ movement involves a single-minded emphasis on beauty and aesthetic adornment, and that this undermines the original focus of social and political equality, pandering instead to capitalism and failing to rectify unjust institutions (...) and policies. As such, we argue that the ‘body positivity’ movement ultimately marginalises further the bodies for which it initially sought justice and acceptance. (shrink)

Experiences of art involve exercise of ordinary cognitive and perceptual capacities but in unique ways. These two features of experiences of art imply the mutual importance of aesthetics and cognitive science. Cognitive science provides empirical and theoretical analysis of the relevant cognitive capacities. Aesthetics thus does well to incorporate cognitive scientific research. Aesthetics also offers philosophical analysis of the uniqueness of the experience of art. Thus, cognitive science does well to incorporate the explanations of aesthetics. This (...) paper explores this general framework of expansionism : a research strategy that suggests that the explanatory goals and resources of both aesthetics and cognitive science should expand to include those of the other. Two relations are considered. First, what is the relation between aesthetics and more traditional cognitive science? Second, what is the relation between aesthetics and new developments in cognitive science that de-emphasize mental representation and emphasize body and action? (shrink)

Many hold that aesthetic appreciation is sensitive to the authenticity or genuineness of an object. In a recent body of work, Carolyn Korsmeyer has defended the claim that genuineness itself is an aesthetic property. Korsmeyer’s aim is to explain our aesthetic appreciation of objects that afford a sense of being ‘in touch with the past’. In this paper, I argue that genuineness cannot explain our appreciation of these objects. There is no aesthetic experience of the genuine.

Gender, race, and sexuality are not just identities; they are also systems of social organization – i.e., systems of privilege and oppression. This article addresses two main ways privilege and oppression (e.g., racism, misogyny, heteronormativity) are relevant topics in and for philosophical aesthetics: (i) the role of the aesthetic in privilege and oppression, and (ii) the role of philosophical aesthetics, as a discipline and a body of texts, in constructing and naturalizing relations of privilege and oppression (i.e., (...) white heteropatriarchy). The first part addresses how systems of privilege and oppression use the aesthetic. I will discuss various ways race, gender, and sexuality, as both embodied identities and broader social institutions, work with and through “the aesthetic”. The second part addresses racism and (hetero) sexism in the discipline of aesthetics. Both in its history and its present practice aesthetics’apparent neutrality on questions of privilege and oppression is actually evidence of its investment in systems of privilege and oppression. (shrink)

The history of gender challenges faced by women in elite sports is fraught with controversy and injustice. These athletes' unique physical beauty creates what appears to be a paradox yet is, in fact, scientifically predictable. Intense training for the highest levels of competition leads to unique bodily strength and rare beauty associated with specific anatomic changes, leading top athletes to be singled out as exceptions from their gender and even excluded from competing. Authorities like the IOC and IAF, as well (...) as coaches and fellow athletes, use traditional and sometimes racialized aesthetic norms as the basis for ungrounded judgments of "gender mis-identity." Misjudging the gender identity of elite athletes exemplifies a biased cognitive framework, a form of erroneous and damaging categorical perception that we call "perceptual sexism." We argue that perceptual sexism has a long history within aesthetic and competitive realms and is still perpetuated by popular culture. Correcting this will reduce injustices created by gender identity controversies. (shrink)

One challenge faced by aesthetics is the development of an account able to trace out the continuities and discontinuities between general experience and aesthetic experiences. Regarding this issue, in this paper, I present an enactive model of some raw cognitive dynamics that might drive the progressive emergence of aesthetic experiences from the stream of general experience. The framework is based on specific aspects of John Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy and embodied aesthetic theories, while also taking into account research in ecological (...) psychology, cognitive sciences, and dynamic systems theory. The model focuses on dynamically relevant nodes at the pre-reflective and the reflective side of experience that would work as nested rhythmic constraints at different cognitive timescales with the potential to shunt experiences toward the aesthetic in everyday situations. My proposal constitutes a way to explore aesthetic experiences from an enactive perspective that regards them as transformative events in which cognitive processes entrain and are entrained by changes taking place in the environment, the brain, and the body. (shrink)

This special issue of HYPATIA: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy entitled "Women, Art, and Aesthetics" highlights the expanded range of topics at center stage in feminist philosophical inquiry to date (2003): recontextualizing women artists (essays by Patricia Locke, Eleanor Heartney, and Michelle Meagher), bodies and beauty (Ann J. Cahill, Sheila Lintott, Janell Hobson, Richard Shusterman, Joanna Frueh), art, ethics, politics, law (A. W. Eaton, Amy Mullin, L. Ryan Musgrave, Teresa Winterhalter), and review essays by Estella Lauter and Flo Leibowitz. (...) Annotated bibliography by Joshua Shaw. (shrink)

In this paper, I am predominantly interested in interpretations of emotional states portrayed in images of the face. In particular, the interpretations which have grown around the series of busts by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, as well as those which attempt to expound Bill Viola’s video works. I will refer to aspects of physiognomy, artistic practices and aesthetics, in order to show what each of these tells us about our attitude to the body and emotions and what happens to (...) the body while a person is experiencing an emotion. My aim is to demonstrate how the act of depicting the body, regarded as a cognitive process in an artistic medium accompanied by a special kind of aesthetic experience, becomes a means of communication which is capable of conveying a universal message and of allowing us to define our attitude to the body. (shrink)

Spinoza rarely refers to art. However, there are extensive resources for a Spinozist aesthetics in his discussion of health in the Ethics and of social affects in his political works. There have been recently been a few essays linking Spinoza and art, but this essay additionally fuses Spinoza’s politics to an affective aesthetics. Spinoza’s statements that art makes us healthier (Ethics 4p54Sch; Emendation section 17) form the foundation of an aesthetics. In Spinoza’s definition, “health” is caused by (...) external objects that maintain our power to act in a variety of ways. Humans need such objects because our complex bodies constantly lose or consume many parts necessary to our overall functioning. Notably, Spinoza defines humans’ bodies through this complexity (2p13Sch), so health as maintenance of complexity is a distinctly human endeavor. Further, while art is not the only healthy activity, I argue that art is a particularly potent cure, which explains Spinoza’s otherwise opaque comment that music can cure melancholy (by which he meant a near-total inability to act, akin to death). Rather than only causing frivolous pleasures, art may be as essential to human flourishing as are other human beings in general; other people are “most useful” because of the variety of actions they make possible (4p35Cor & Sch1). Art’s production of a dizzying variety of affects is likewise most useful for health. -/- Having established how art in general affects the individual, I then explain the role of artists in shaping social groups. Artists use vivid and highly charged affective techniques, as do political sovereigns and religious prophets (TTP chapters 1-2 & 15-16). However, sovereigns and prophets are concerned exclusively with “morality,” defined by Spinoza as the use of affects (primarily based on fear and hope) to produce “obedience” in the generic multitude or people at large. An artist, however, rarely causes affects in the whole nation, affecting instead only a smaller niche or “sub-genre” of people. The affects produced in this group are also not identical to those used by sovereigns, since artists do not primarily deploy sad affects of hope and fear but instead use a wide variety of joyful affects. Further, in Spinoza’s analysis of ceremonies (TTP chapter 5), we see how small groups exposed to repeated ceremonies or social practices eventually develop new strengths which they lacked before. Repeated exposure to shared aesthetic “ceremonies” (e.g., live music performances) of the same sub-genre will over time create the capacity of new powers in the sub-genre of people, which distinguishes them from the masses. Spinoza says sovereigns forge a “second nature” for the generic people through affects; we can then affirm that smaller groups exposed to a distinct sub-genre of art can acquire a new “third nature” which will contain unique powers extending beyond healthy maintenance of their existing bodies. That is, art in general is necessary to flourish and remain whole (maintaining health), but it can also occasionally expand what one is to unforeseen heights (through specific artistic sub-genres). (shrink)

In recent years, the notion of the body schema has been widely discussed, in particular in fields connecting philosophy, cognitive science, and dance studies, as it seems to have bearing across disciplines in a fruitful way. A main source in this literature is Shaun Gallagher’s distinction between the body schema – the “pre-noetic” conditions of bodily performance – and the body image – the body as intentional object –, another is Merleau-Ponty’s writings on the living (...) class='Hi'>body, that Gallagher often draws upon. In this paper, I will first discuss Gallagher’s presumed clarification of body schema–body image, and discuss a recent critique by Saint Aubert (2013), who evaluates it against the backdrop of Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts on this issue. While I believe that Saint Aubert’s criticism overshoots the mark, it is useful for a clarification of Gallagher’s analysis and points to a problematic feature, namely the alleged inscrutability of the body schema to phenomenological reflection. This is particularly interesting in relation to contemporary dance and performance practice, where working with – and against – habitual structures is a core element. Certain contemporary training techniques are explicitly aimed at raising awareness of those bodily aspects that condition movement and expression – that Gallagher sees as pertaining to the body schema – and that in ordinary activities often remain hidden. In order to clarify the role that reflection on our own body and its habitual patterns plays in contemporary dance practice, I will examine the movement language and improvisation practice “Gaga”, where this aspect is arguably fundamental. (shrink)

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of (...) others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer. (shrink)

The transformation of aesthetics after moving images became possible.

Descartes’ first book, 1618’s Compendium of Music, focuses on biomechanical reactions in the human body but also claims that the purpose of art is to arouse emotions. By the end of the 1630s, however, he had given up on precisely predicting how that arousal may occur. This article contends, though, that Descartes’ abandonment of that project is a result of using an inappropriate psychological model for such predictions. An appropriate model is developed in his last book, 1649’s The Passions (...) of the Soul. Especially by attending to generosity and desire, the probability of predicting aesthetic judgments is at least increased. In increasing it, Descartes’ abandonment need not be total. (shrink)

I explore the possibility that the feminine, like art, can be thought in terms of Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of the singular plural. In Les Muses, Nancy claims that art provides for the rethinking of a technë not ruled by instrumentality. Specifically, in rethinking aesthetics in terms of the debates laid out by Kant, Hegel and Heidegger, he resituates the ontological in terms of the specificity of the techniques of each particular artwork; each artwork establishes relations particular to its world (...) or worlds. What is at stake in the singular plural is the multiplicity of relations that are lost in the unifying gestures that arise out of radical oppositions. I rethink the singular plural through a phenomenological encounter with Barb Hunt’s artwork, Antipersonnel, a collection of hand-knitted replicas of antipersonnel landmines. (shrink)

I consider what draws us to perceiving beautiful bodies in art and athletics--repeatedly and over time--that is informed by viewers' changing perceptions derived from recent publications in fashion and sport, the philosophy of sport, feminist film theory and aesthetics under the ever-expanding umbrella of somaesthetics. This paper won the American Society for Aesthetics 2023 Somaesthetics Prize.

The author discusses the relationship between art and the body, as exemplified by the similarities and differences in the works of: two Japanese artists, Matsui Chie (b. 1960) and Higashikage Tomohiro (b. 1978); and the Polish artist, Mirosław Bałka (b. 1958). These examples are referred to in the context of a unique project recently conducted in Japan — the Tatsuno Art Project 2013. Held with the support of the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan, the project aims to present (...) contemporary art to people from across Japan and around the globe, and to capitalize on the region’s unique cultural heritage, creating opportunities for people to communicate with local residents and making Tatsuno a more dynamic and popular place to visit. This paper considers various connections between art and the body by focusing on a selection of works included in the Tatsuno Art Project 2013: Arts and Memories. Known in past centuries as the ‘little Kyoto’ of Harima Province, Tatsuno is an atmospheric old castle town. It is mild and relatively warm all year round, with the climate of the nearby Seto Inland Sea region, said to be similar to that of the Mediterranean. Thanks to the support of numerous people, the organizers were able to hold the 2013 event which represented the culmination of their efforts over the past few years, being the largest ever in terms of scale with nine invited artists, eleven other participating artists, and one contemporary musician, for a total of 21 creators contributing works. With new spaces added to create a total of 16 venues, the community‑wide project truly achieved its goal of presenting the ‘historic castle town as a museum’. The project curators were also able to strengthen Tatsuno’s international ties by inviting artists from France and Poland to take part, as well as Japanese artists residing in the UK and Spain. (shrink)

What happens to artist and to viewer when painting or sculpture emancipates itself from all physical mediums? What happens to art-world experts and to museum goers and amateurs when the piece of art turns immaterial, becoming indiscernible within its surrounding empty space and within the parergonal apparatus of the exposition site? What type of verbal depiction, of critical understanding and specific knowledge is attempted under these programmed and fabricated conditions? What kind of aesthetic experience–namely embodied and sensitive–is expected when a (...) performative utterance of the artist about his art takes the place of a real piece of artwork seen or perceived, or that may be seen or perceived? For Andy Warhol, «wasted space is any space that has art in it.» In the spring of 1958, in Paris, an artist already well-known among the neo-avantgardes and accredited by the international art-world, shows up empty-handed and presents himself as a painter without paintings in a empty space. In a singular never-wasted space, Yves Klein displays himself as a snob, with an extraordinary showbiz glamour and literally sine-nobilitate, without the traditional marks of artistic manual skills. Against the modernist issues, he writes: «Credit was given to me. The gesture alone was enough. The public had accepted the abstract intention.» What’s the matter with this powerful prestige and its influence on the critic and public? How to understand the public trust in the artist as a producer of an institutional “make-believe” without any objecthood, devoid of any individual artwork presented to the sight or to any other sense? For Modernism and Minimalism, the work of art seems to have an internal coherence, whether formal or expressive, and is thus autonomous from the surrounding world, existing with only the clear opposition to the living space and set as a specialized and situated objection to the enclosing field. Instead, now the object melts into the air and becomes undetectable, confused with the atmosphere of the theory of art and with the stylish and snobbish life of the artist. What type of interpretation is put on regarding this unclassifiable and ambiguous field, simultaneously an-aesthetic and existential, theoretical and sensitive, charismatic and motionless, at same time without a specialized position in the world made by the artist himself? And what kind of embodied experience is performed by the spectatorship? What type of phenomenology and pragmatics of aesthetic relationship is necessary to describe how the body of the beholder absorbs this vacated and boring space via a direct and immediate perception-assimilation? What kind of artistic rhetoric, what kind ontology of art? Until this day, after more than 50 years, Yves Klein’s The Void has not ceased asking these and other questions on aesthetics, philosophy and the history of art. (shrink)

In this paper, I ask whether there is a defensible philosophical view according to which everybody is beautiful. I review two purely aesthetical versions of this claim. The No Standards View claims that everybody is maximally and equally beautiful. The Multiple Standards View encourages us to widen our standards of beauty. I argue that both approaches are problematic. The former fails to be aspirational and empowering, while the latter fails to be sufficiently inclusive. I conclude by presenting a hybrid ethical–aesthetical (...) view according to which everybody is beautiful in the sense that everybody can be perceived through a loving gaze. I show that this view is inclusive, aspirational and empowering, and authentically aesthetical. (shrink)

The complexity, subtlety, interlinking, and scale of many problems faced individually and collectively in today's rapidly changing world requires an epistemology--a way of thinking about our knowing--capable of facilitating new kinds of responses that avoid recapitulation of old ways of thinking and living. Epistemology, which implicitly provides the basis for engagement with the world via the fundamental act of distinction, must therefore be included as a central facet of any practical attempts at self/world transformation. We need to change how we (...) think, not just what we think. The new epistemology needs to be of a higher order than the source of the problems we face. -/- This theoretical, transdisciplinary dissertation argues that such a new epistemology needs to be recursive and process-oriented. This means that the thoughts about thinking that it produces must explicitly follow the patterns of thinking by which those thoughts are generated. The new epistemology is therefore also phenomenological, requiring the development of a reflexivity in thinking that recursively links across two levels of order--between content and process. The result is an epistemology that is of (and for) the whole human being. It is an enacted (will-imbued) and aesthetic (feeling-permeated) epistemology (thinking-penetrated) that is sensitive to and integrative of material, soul, and spiritual aspects of ourselves and our world. I call this kind of epistemology aesthetic, because its primary characteristic is found in the phenomenological, mutually fructifying and transformative marriage between the capacity for thinking and the capacity for feeling. -/- Its foundations are brought forward through the confluence of multiple domains: cybernetic epistemology, the esoteric epistemology of anthroposophy (the spiritual science of Rudolf Steiner), and the philosophy of the implicit as developed by Eugene Gendlin. -/- The practice of aesthetic epistemology opens new phenomenal domains of experience, shedding light on relations between ontology and epistemology, mind and body, logic and thinking, as well as on the formation (and transformation) of identity, the immanence of thinking in world-processes, the existence of different types of logic, and the nature of beings, of objects, and most importantly of thinking itself and its relationship to spirit. (shrink)

Spinoza’s concepts of wonder, the imitation of affects, cheerfulness, and devotion provide the basis for a Spinozist aesthetics. Those concepts from his Ethics, when combined with his account of rituals and festivals in the Theological-Political Treatise and his Political Treatise, reveal an aesthetics of social affects. The repetition of ritualised participatory aesthetic practices over time generates a unique ingenium or way of life for a social group, a singular style which distinguishes them from the general political body. (...) Ritual and the imitation of affects explain why specific styles of art are associated with consistent styles of bodily modifications, clothing, and affects. This paper claims, not that already similar people flock to the same art, but rather, that immersion in the same art is what produces their similarity. Art (especially in the immersive, festival-like experience of live performance) can generate the affect of devotion, which intensifies in-group love, temporarily blocks affects of sadness, and focusses one intently on the aesthetic experience due to devotion’s connection to wonder. Cheerfulness shows that, through variation of aesthetic objects, art can cause pleasure without risking excess. In addition, while politics’ central affect is sad fear, aesthetically-united groups are bound by joyful affects. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to promote understanding and enjoyment of the arts. With this aim in mind, Lyas introduces the key issues of philosophical aesthetics through examples drawn from high and popular culture, and from a variety of art forms, from music and painting to literature and poetry. The book is pitched as a springboard into undergraduate courses in aesthetics and as an introduction to philosophical aesthetics for the general reader. It is refreshing to read (...) a book on aesthetics written by someone for whom problems in aesthetics are more than just grist for the academic mill. That this is the case shows not only in his choice of examples but also in the perspective he brings to them. Lyas argues, for example, that one must feel the merit of the work for oneself; rather then simply, as he puts it, assuming 'that certain things are worth studying ("in the canon" as they put it)' and then performing 'various classificatory dances round them' (p.75). The question for appreciation, he reminds us, is why those things in the canon deserve to be there. According to Lyas, teaching aesthetics is not simply a matter of imparting a body of knowledge to the student. Instead, the teacher's role is to develop capacities in the student for an appreciative experiencing (p.131). (shrink)

WHAT is art? Classificatory disputes.. Classificatory disputes about what is art Art historians and philosophers of art have long had classificatory disputes about art regarding whether a particular cultural form or piece of work should be classified as art. Disputes about what does and does not count as art continue to occur today -/- Defining art is difficult if not impossible. Aestheticians and art philosophers often engage in disputes about how to define art. By its original and broadest definition, art (...) (from the Latin ars, meaning “skill” or “craft”) is the product or process of the effective application of a body of knowledge, most often using a set of skills; this meaning is preserved in such phrases as “liberal arts” and “martial arts”. However, in the modern use of the word, which rose to prominence after 1750, “art” is commonly understood to be skill used to produce an aesthetic result (Hatcher, 1999). (shrink)

This essay is about the history of challenges that women in elite sports have faced with respect to their gender identity within a society that perpetuates misleading aesthetic norms of beauty; it is a history fraught with controversy and injustice. . . . We recommend both the acknowledgment within the realm of elite sport of perceptual sexism based on misleading aesthetic norms of beauty, and a way of correcting such erroneous categorization that allows athletes the autonomy and agency to choose (...) to compete as male or female based on a declaration of their own gender identity. (shrink)

It is possible today to determine, with some precision (according to the most recent studies in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology), the areas of the brain and the neural networks involved when an individual contemplates art, when feeling pleasure, or when judging about aesthetic experience. However, many questions remain open. First, the philosophical question about the subjective nature of this kind of judgments. Then, what happens in the mind (or should it be said, in the brain?) of the beholder when contemplating (...) art or judging in favor (or not) of the beauty of an object. And the ultimate question, if we have an aesthetic brain. Another issue that must be addressed is if bioart and especially neuroart can contribute to this analysis and if they can be effectively quantified as art. Thus, this brief essay seeks to provide some understanding about this questions but most importantly about the existence of an aesthetic brain, which may ultimately contribute to open doors to other problems of philosophy such as the hard brain-mind problem. (shrink)

Heidegger’s notion of ‘handiness’ combines two meanings, which in my view should be separated. They both refer to ways of characterizing tools in a given culture. Every culture uses tools, and they are all used so they are ‘handy’. The question is: Handy with regard to what? Two answers come to mind. The first one suggests that handiness is typical of the aims achieved in a given culture, which are linked with that culture’s system of values. Having been fulfilled, the (...) aims seem to disappear, but new ones emerge and the cultural values are all the time appreciated. The aims and values constitute a part of the vision of the world accepted by the members of a given cultural community. In such a context, we can understand the handiness of tools as their optimum quality in facilitating the achievement of the aims which maintain the current cultural values, and so the existence of a given culture. The second answer links handiness with fulfilling the requirements of the human body. When considering the body in terms of its biological categories (as an organism) we can bear in mind its universal characteristics such as limbs, height, differences in body measurements, etc. In such a context, Martin Heidegger’s handiness can be understood pragmatically, as the features of a tool when adjusting it to the human body. In this paper, I propose a thesis that contemporary design loses handiness of the first type, while concentrating on making tools more and more comfortable for the human body. The cultural aims and values traditionally recognized in a given culture lose their priority, or seem to be ignored. At the same time, every tool user is given a chance to develop handiness of the first type. Whether we use this opportunity or not is another problem. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to advocate the ideas of Wilhelm Worringer, John Dewey, and Nelson Goodman on the roles of perception, empathy, emotion, and enjoyment in aesthetic experience. I will attempt to do this by offering a novel interpretation of some of these thinkers’ insights from a biological perspective. To this end, I will consider the following questions. What is an aesthetic experience? Does such a thing exist at all? If yes, is there a correlation between the concept (...) of the aesthetic and perception? Is it possible, then, to find a biological basis for aesthetic experience? My argument is that a fresh analysis of the aesthetics of Worringer, Dewey, and Goodman, in light of some of the discoveries and theories of the cognitive neurosciences – such as the biological correlations of emotions, the “as-if-body-loop” theory, the discovery of mirror neurons, and the phenomenon of embodied simulation – may provide a contribution to longstanding philosophical problems relating to the nature of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

This paper aims at an analytical explanation of the distinctive nature of music, as it has been formulated in perhaps one of the world's very first works on the subject, namely the ‘Sangeet Ratnakar’ of Pandit Sarangadeva, a 13th century musicologist of India. He, in the first chapter of the work defines music ('sangeet' in Sanskrit and Hindi) as a composite of singing or 'Gita', instrumental music or 'vadan' and dancing or ‘nrittam’. In addition, he also holds singing to be (...) the most important component of music. These two ideas are not only unquestionably acceptable , as the analysis in the paper will show, but give to Indian music , in its difference from western music, its distinctively spiritual character, making it a path to liberation or Moksha (Muktidayakam na tu ranjakam). Sarangadeva's reason, here, is not rational but empirico-inductive. It is that mainly by virtue of its 'gitam’ (singing component), which, like the Yoga system of exercise, needing only one's body as its instrument, music too needing only one’s voice is as self-sufficient and autonomous as the ultimate Reality itself (Swayamev Rajate). In the hierarchy (a distinctively ancient Indian insistence) of arts, singing is the highest and unique because in spite of being heard by the auditory sense, it affects our 'reflective sensibility' and transports us to the virtual world of melodic and rhythmic forms. Forms, as against their particular illustrations, are abstract universals. Ultimate Reality is also a Form-all comprehensive and internally harmonious. However, pure Form, whether melodic or religious or even rational like that of triangularity, is almost impossible to concentrate on. Realizing this practical difficulty, Indian scriptures and the world's first Grammarian-linguist, Acharya Panini, framed a composite sound as the manifestation of the ultimate musical Form. This purely formal-because devoid of all meaning, sound is that of 'om', spelt, in Sanskrit as a conjunction (sandhi) of 'a'+'u'+'m'. For Indian musicologists and musicians, ‘om’ is the perfect manifestation of the Sound-God or ‘Nada-Brahman’ because, 1. Its composite nature resembles God, as a harmony of 'sat', 'chit', and 'ananda'; and 2. The composite sound is self-existent as its all three components-two vowels, i.e. ‘a’, ‘u’, and one consonant i.e. ‘m’, can be and are pronounced just as they originally are, -un-elongated and un-vitiated and therefore pure. This is the reason why every recital of Indian classical vocal music is begun with an elaborate rendering of 'om' as an invocation to Sound-God or ‘Nada-Brahman’. Scholarly and authentic, this ancient Indian approach to music, is undoubtedly the earliest and original. My observation is that its main contentions like Sharang Dev’s insistence that of the three components of music, ‘gitam’ or singing is the highest, have only been translated and never argued for. In this presentation my good intention is to provide much needed rational support for making these key statements in this unparalleled Indian text, indubitable and unquestionable. (shrink)

It is common for people to be sensitive to aesthetic qualities in one another’s speech. We allow the loveliness or unloveliness of a person’s voice to make impressions on us. What is more, it is also common to allow those aesthetic impressions to affect how we are inclined to feel about the speaker. We form attitudes of liking, trusting, disliking or distrusting partly in virtue of the aesthetic qualities of a person’s speech. In this paper I ask whether such attitudes (...) could ever be legitimate. This is a microcosm of the broader issue of whether people’s aesthetic qualities in general can justify the interpersonal valuing-attitudes that they so often cause. I draw from recent discussions of body aesthetics to articulate a pair of challenges. One challenge says that aesthetic judgements of speech are reliant on unjustifiable prejudices. The other holds that a person’s aesthetic qualities are irrelevant to whether they should be liked. Against these challenges I argue that some speech can bear aesthetic qualities which are not reliant on prejudice and which are relevant to whether the speaker should be liked. I develop this argument through an analysis of the concept of lyricism. (shrink)

The essay aims to examine possible readings of disability in the context of visual art, especially regarding bodies prosthetised in unexpected ways. To do that, I will analyse two performances, participated/created by Lisa Bu- fano and Aimee Mullins, which employ prosthetics that distance them from the mimicry of human limbs. I will briefly contextualize them in the history of prosthetics. I will observe how their peculiarity and non-human forms can serve aesthetic and destabilizing purposes regarding the contours of disability. I (...) will especially mention their potentiality regarding disabled bodies’ mobility in space and their relationship with tools. The association between a disabled body and non-human traits carries several symbolic meanings and might also produce risks. Generally, they can update the perspectives on the crafting of creative assemblages that start from impaired bodies. In conclusion, I will observe how Bufano’s art entails more promises on an ethico-political level. (shrink)

Philosophers investigating the experiences of the dancing subject (Sheets-Johnstone 1980, 2009, 2011, 2012; Parviainen 1998; Legrand 2007, 2013; Legrand & Ravn 2009; Montero 2013; Foultier & Roos 2013) unearth vast variations of embodied consciousness and cognition in performing body experts. The traditional phenomenological literature provides us with descriptions and definitions of reflective self-consciousness as well as of pre-reflective bodily absorption, but when it comes to the states of self-consciousness dance philosophers refer to as thinking in movement and a form (...) of reflective consciousness at a bodily level – as well as to dancers’ re- ported experiences of being in a trance and yet hyper-aware – we are challenged in terms of terminology and precise descriptions. After empirical research on dancers’ experiences and studies of the above-mentioned philosophies of dance, aligning this material with Husserl, Zahavi and other phenomenologists’ descriptions of reflection and embodied self-consciousness, I find it plausible to acknowledge the existence of a third form of self- consciousness: embodied reflection, a reflective process experienced through and with the embodied and/or emotional self. In this article I aspire to capture the characteristics of this transcendence of the bodily self. (shrink)

I argue that there can be appropriate aesthetic experiences even of basic somatic experiences like itches and scratches. I show, in relation to accounts of aesthetic experience offered by Carroll and Stecker, that experiences of itches and scratches can be aesthetic; I show that itches can be objects of attention in the way that normative accounts of the aesthetic often require; and I show, in relation to accounts of the aesthetic appreciation of nature offered by Carlson and Carroll, that aesthetic (...) experience of itches and scratches can be appropriate. I argue that attention to the domain of somatic experience is worthwhile, in that it offers the prospects of significant aesthetic satisfaction, and I suggest that even attention to unpleasant experiences like itches and pains may be aesthetically rewarding. (shrink)

The article explores embodied critical thinking (ECT) for engaging with the enfleshed and trans-corporeal self on an affectual and experiential level. By discussing three exemplifying affectual instances that expose the experiential level of processuality, emergence, and intercarnality, the article shows the methodological use of ECT as a fruitful approach to developing embodied ontologies and a toolkit for the experiential reflection of one's en-fleshment, as tuning into the body-environment.

Philosophers have rightly condemned lookism—that is, discrimination in favor of attractive people or against unattractive people—in education, the justice system, the workplace and elsewhere. Surprisingly, however, the almost universal preference for attractive romantic and sexual partners has rarely received serious ethical scrutiny. On its face, it’s unclear whether this is a form of discrimination we should reject or tolerate. I consider arguments for both views. On the one hand, a strong case can be made that preferring attractive partners is bad. (...) The idea is that choosing partners based on looks seems essentially similar to other objectionable forms of discrimination. (In particular, the preference for attractive partners is arguably both unfair and harmful to a significant degree.) One can try to resist this conclusion in several ways. I consider three possible replies. The first has to do with the possibility of controlling our partner preferences. The second pertains to attractiveness and “good genes”. The last attempts to link certain aspects of attractiveness to a prospective partner’s personality and values. I argue that the first two replies fail conclusively, while the third only amounts to a limited defense of a particular kind of attractiveness preference. So the idea that we should often avoid preferring attractive partners is compelling. (shrink)

We make choices about our own appearance and evaluate others' choices – every day. These choices are meaningful for us as individuals and as members of communities. But many features of personal appearance are due to luck, and many cultural beauty standards make some groups and individuals worse off (this is called “lookism”). So, how are we to square these two facets of personal appearance? And how are we to evaluate agency in the context of personal beauty? I identify three (...) ways of responding to these questions: beauty advo- cacy, beauty skepticism, and beauty revisionism. Advocates connect an honorific sense of beauty with personal charac- ter. Skeptics focus on beauty standards, and primarily offer a social critique of beauty standards. Some skeptics suggest embracing other aesthetic ideals – even ugliness. Revision- ists critique beauty standards, but retain an honorific sense of beauty. Each position offers tools to evaluate personal agency as aesthetic agency, whether first-personally or through our appreciation of others' appearance. (shrink)