One of the most influential ideas of twentieth-century art history and aesthetics is that vision has a history and it is the task of art history to trace how vision has changed. This claim has recently been attacked for both empirical and conceptual reasons. My aim is to argue for a new version of the history of vision claim: if visual attention has a history, then vision also has a history. And we have (...) some reason to think that at least in certain contexts, visual attention does have a history. (shrink)

This bibliographical guide gives a comprehensive overview of the historiography of philosophy and thought in the Japanese language through an extensive and thematically organized collection of relevant literature. Comprising over one thousand entries, the bibliography shows not only how extensive and complex the Japanese tradition of philosophical and intellectual historiography is, but also how it might be structured and analyzed to make it accessible to a comparative and intercultural approach to the historiography of philosophy worldwide. The literature is categorized and (...) organized according to thematic focus areas such as geographical regions and continents, nations or peoples, religious traditions and philosophical teachings such as Buddhism, Islam, Shintō, and Confucianism, as well as disciplines such as ethics, aesthetics, and political thought. The bibliography is accompanied by an introduction outlining the research method as well as quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyzing the material, followed by a chronological overview of the historiography of philosophy and thought in the Japanese language and of the Japanese tradition of writing “world histories of philosophy.” As a first step towards a “history of the historiography of philosophy” in non-European languages, we hope that this guide will provide a useful tool for interculturally oriented scholarship aimed at a non-Eurocentric and diversified historiography of philosophy in a global perspective. (Open access, see link below.). (shrink)

The article highlights the problem of studying historical time in terms of aesthetics and social ethics. The essence of history, according to the author, is not so much in retrospection or reflection, but in the gap between feeling and awareness. Guided by the apophatic method, the author analyzes the historiosophical views of domestic and foreign scholars and comes to the conclusion that the Soviet paradigm is true, where the only vector of human development is the liberation of labor (...) in the name of creating a bright future for the sake of all people and for everyone -/- . (shrink)

From ancient conceptions of becoming a philosopher to modern discussions of psychedelic drugs, the concept of transformation plays a fascinating part in the history of philosophy. However, until now there has been no sustained exploration of the full extent of its role. Transformation and the History of Philosophy is an outstanding survey of the history, nature, and development of the idea of transformation, from the ancient period to the twentieth century. Comprising twenty-two specially commissioned chapters by an (...) international team of contributors, the volume is divided into four clear parts: -/- - Philosophy as Transformative: Ancient China, Greece, India, and Rome - Transformation Between the Human and the Divine: Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy - Transformation After the Copernican Revolution: Post-Kantian Philosophy - Treatises, Pregnancies, Psychedelics, and Epiphanies: Twentieth-Century Philosophy. -/- Each of these sections begins with an introduction by the editors. Transformation and the History of Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of western and non-western philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, and aesthetics. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as religion, sociology, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Is aesthetics, as has recently been claimed, now able to meet the accusations often levelled against it? This essay examines counters to three of the most common: that aesthetics is based around overly narrow conceptions of "art" and "the aesthetic"; that aesthetics is politically disengaged; and that aesthetics fails to engage with actual art objects and their histories.

If artworks and their aesthetic properties stand in constitutive relationships to historical context and circumstances, so that some understanding of relevant facts is involved in responding to a work, what becomes of the intuitive view that we see artworks and at least some of their aesthetic properties? This question is raised by arguments in both aesthetics and art history for the historical nature of works of art. The paper argues that the answer needs to take philosophy of perception (...) into account. The principal development that has shaped philosophy of perception in the last thirty years—explaining perceptual experience in terms of contents that represent that such-and-such is the case—is directly relevant to key arguments for the historical nature of art because contents can represent complex kinds and properties. Conceptual realism is especially well-suited for explaining perception of artworks and aesthetic properties because it emphasizes that forms of understanding—in the sense of capacities, abilities and techniques—are involved in perceptual engagement with individual objects and instances of properties. To make this case, the paper examines influential arguments for the historical nature of art and aesthetic properties by Arthur C. Danto and Kendall L. Walton; and examines art-historical discussions by Michael Baxandall, Linda Nochlin and T. J. Clark. The paper argues that the aesthetic properties of an artwork depend on human intentional uses of properties, colours and contours among them, and such uses may themselves be aesthetic. The Wittgensteinian notion of use is contextual and historical, and uses are perceptible. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the logic of the aesthetic argument used in the eighteenth century as a conceptual tool for formulating the modern concept of “(fine) art(s).” The essay also examines the main developments in the history of the art of modernity which were initiated from the way the “nature” of art was conceived in early modern aesthetics. The author claims that the formulation of the “aesthetic nature” of art led to the process of the gradual disappearance of (...) all of the formal elements that had previously characterized the visual arts; the result was “emptiness” or “nothingness” as art. The author refers to this process in terms of “vanishing acts” that allow for the formulation of an aesthetics of absence in connection to twentieth-century art (complementing the Ästhetik der Absenz, formulated in German art theory). The author also briefly addresses the consequences that these processes have for the way contemporary art, and art world operate. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume are written by scholars from a wide range of disciplines (anthropology, archaeology, art history, philosophy and psychology). The papers ostensibly address how to evaluate rock art, but can also be read in the context of offering support for the affirmative in the debate regarding whether aesthetics is a cross-cultural discipline. Two alternative conceptions of the aesthetic provide the underlying antithesis and thesis respectively to all papers. The antithesis holds that the aesthetic pertains (...) to a conception of art that is an historical artefact of eighteenth century Europe. Most of the writers refer to this idea of art in terms of the object of a disinterested gaze (a second-hand reading of Kant), or as ‘art-for-art’s-sake’. The thesis of all papers, be it explicit or implicit, is that the aesthetic is a certain human predisposition or capacity to imbue physical properties with meaning and value; to link the sensuous with the semantic; to find meaning in form (Lamarque pp.27-8, Morphy pp.54, 59.). Some authors extend this beyond the artefact to the perception of nature (see the papers of Heyd, Ogawa, Stone). (shrink)

This essay aims to address a lack of recognition on the part of aestheticians, feminist scholars in the visual arts, as well as Simone de Beauvoir scholars by studying Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity (1948) for what it has to offer on the topic of art and aesthetics: (1) the important role of the visual arts in society and the political legacy artists can contribute to the world; (2) the traditionally revered philosophical concept of the aesthetic attitude; and (30 (...) the use of the aesthetic attitude to improperly justify controversial works of art. It will also point out that Beauvoir's Ethics is distinct in the history of aesthetics for its atypical (proto-feminist) stand against the popular notion of the aesthetic attitude. Her promotion of political (feminist) art presages the feminist art movement of the 1970s. Ahead of her time, Beauvoir recognized the vital interplay between art and ethics. (shrink)

[from the publisher's website] Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De Cruz and Johan De (...) Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition. -/- De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality. (shrink)

The experienced quality of urban environments has not traditionally been at the forefront of understanding how cities evolve through time. Within the humanistic tradition, the temporal dimension of cities has been dealt with through tracing urban or architectural histories or interpreting science-fiction scenarios, for example. However, attempts at understanding the relation between currently existing components of cities and planning based on them, towards the future, has not captured the experience of the temporal layers of cities to a satisfying degree. Contemporary (...) urban environments comprise both lasting and fairly stable elements as well as those that change continuously: change is an inevitable part of urban life. Different aspects of city life evolve with a different tempo: urban nature has its cycles, inhabitants their rhythms, and building materials and styles different lifespans, for example. Recognizing them becomes an especially important issue when future imaginaries are projected onto existing urban structures and when decisions about the details of urban futures are made. This paper aims at bringing environmental and urban aesthetics into the discussion about the possible directions of urban futures. The focus is on introducing the notion of aesthetic sustainability as a tool to better understand how urban futures unfold experientially and how aesthetic values of urban environments develop with time. This concept has some background in the field of design theory, more specifically in sustainable usage and product design, but it has not so far been used in order to study large scale living environments. The concept can prove to be a valuable supporting tool in urban sustainability transformations based on how it captures the experiential side of the physical and temporal dimensions of cities. (shrink)

It is often assumed that the concept of 'alētheia', or ‘truth’, in Gorgias of Leontini belongs to the art of rhetoric. Along these lines, it is usually understood as an aesthetic concept or even a mere ‘adornment’ of speech. In this paper, it is argued, by contrast, that Gorgianic alētheia is a definable criterion of speech figuring in the practice of moral educa­tion. While the ‘truth’ of a logos indeed has to be assessed on aesthetic grounds, the underlying concept of (...) alētheia is predominantly ethical. For Gorgias, speech is ‘true’ when it promotes virtue (aretē) by being expressive of virtue. The principle stated in the opening passage of the Encomium of Helen, that a speaker has ‘to praise what is praiseworthy and to blame what is blameworthy’, explains precisely this understand­ing of alētheia. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that norms of artistic and aesthetic authenticity that prioritize material origins foreclose on broader opportunities for aesthetic experience: particularly, for the aesthetic experience of history. I focus on Carolyn Korsmeyer’s recent articles in defense of the aesthetic value of genuineness and argue that her rejection of the aesthetic significance of historical value is mistaken. Rather, I argue that recognizing the aesthetic significance of historical value points the way towards rethinking the dominance of the very (...) norms of authenticity that Korsmeyer endeavors to defend and explain. (shrink)

The protracted history of consuming carbon-based energy sources in Iran culminated in 1908 with the momentous discovery of the inaugural oil field in Masjed Soleyman. This newfound carbon-based source not only brought a lot of revenues to Iran but also, brought forth a multitude of materialities like pipelines, roads, bridges, refinery factories, tankers, and rigs into Iran. This new materiality exerted a profound influence on the perception and imagination of Iranians, particularly Iranian artists. Consequently, carbon permeated diverse manifestations within (...) Iranian artworks assuming various artistic approaches; in other words, carbon was inevitably introduced into aesthetics. Serendipitously, the ascension of Reza Shah Pahlavi to power in Iran almost coincided with the discovery of oil. Reza Shah and his successor, Mohammadreza Shah, sought to position themselves as a novel international force governing a "developed" nation for which they needed to lubricate the production-consumption cycle in Iran. To achieve this objective, they championed extensive governmental propagandas that celebrated carbon-based consumerism, and with that, they introduced aesthetics into carbon. Drawing inspiration from Walter Benjamin's notions “politicizing aesthetic” and “aestheticizing politics” and insisting that in Iran, oil/carbon is politics, this paper aims to historicize the process of carbonization of aesthetics in Iranian art realm on the one hand, and aestheticization of carbon in governmental propaganda on the other hand. This paper focuses on visual ideologies in visual artworks, including architecture, painting, and sculpture in the artwork realm and postal stamps, postcards, and paper moneys, on the other hand. (shrink)

This long essay was published in Vital Beauty, a collection including Wendy Steiner and Tim Ingold, which investigates the possibility of new ways toward beauty. This is my first encounter with Hartshorne’s Diagram of Aesthetic Values, a mandala-like structure explaining the relations between aesthetic experiences. The essay looks into the awkward history of the diagram in Hartshorne’s philosophy, its connection to Max Dessoir’s work, to Whitehead’s chapter on beauty in Adventures of Ideas and the notion of creativity in Schelling.

In a recent article in this journal, Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley argue that relational theories of art are rooted in a misunderstanding of what it would take to falsify the family resemblance theories they are meant to supplant, and are incapable of meeting all the requirements a successful theory of art must meet. Hence, they are doomed to failure. We show that the arguments Neill and Ridley offer are rooted in misunderstandings about relational theories and the requirements for a (...) successful theory of art. If relational theories must fail, it will not be for the reasons identified by Neill and Ridley. (shrink)

The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) publishedCritical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role (and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contempo-rary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto. This is one of the sixteen (...) selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assump-tions and arguments of the manifesto. (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)

Classical authors were generally artistic realists. The predominant aesthetic theory was mimesis, which saw the truth of art as its successful representation of reality. High modernists rejected this aesthetic theory as lifeless, seeing the truth of art as its subjective expression. This impasse has serious consequences for both the Church and the public square. Moving forward requires both, first, an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of the high modernist critique of classical mimetic theory, and, second, a theory of truth (...) which makes adequate reference to both subject and object. This paper argues that Lonergan offers just such an account of truth, and so cashes out the high modernist rejection of classical mimesis in Lonergan’s terms, thereby creating the opportunity for a synthesis of the two views. (shrink)

György Alajos Szerdahely, the first professor of aesthetics in Pest, publishes his Aesthetica in 1778, a work, written in Latin, that not only engages with the eclectic university aesthetics of late-18th-century Germany and Central Europe, but also marks the beginning of the Hungarian aesthetic tradition. Szerdahely proposes aesthetics as the doctrine of taste, a philosophical discipline that can polish our manners and social conduct through a sensual-affective Bildung offered by art experiences. Highlighting his sources in both British (...) criticism and German aesthetics, the paper traces the development of Szerdahely's concept of beauty from beauty as form (uniformity amidst variety) to beauty in motion (sensibility). Initially, Szerdahely argues for unity and variety as the two main constituents of a beautiful object, evoking disinterested contemplation, but he then turns to sensibility as the third necessary condition of beauty: an object becomes aesthetically beautiful only if it has the power to strike the senses (Lux) and stir the affections (Vivacitas), enlivening the whole embodied person. The paper argues that this third principle of sensibility proves to be more emphatic than the first two, leading to (1) the aesthetic conception of beauty as an experiential quality; but more interestingly to (2) the incorporation of the element of self-preservation and self-love into aesthetic experience. The reason for the latter development lies in Szerdahely’s anthropological argument, which traces back every affection to the instantaneous apprehension of good or evil concerning ourselves, implying desire (Adpetitus) or aversion (Auersi) in our reactions. (shrink)

In the last few years, a remarkable convergence of interests and results has emerged between scholars interested in the arts and aesthetics from a variety of perspectives and cognitive scientists studying the mind and brain within the predictive processing (PP) framework. This convergence has so far proven fruitful for both sides: while PP is increasingly adopted as a framework for understanding aesthetic phenomena, the arts and aesthetics, examined under the lens of PP, are starting to be seen as (...) important windows into our mental functioning. The result is a vast and fast-growing research programme that promises to deliver important insights into our aesthetic encounters as well as a wide range of psychological phenomena of general interest. Here, we present this developing research programme, describing its grounds and highlighting its prospects. We start by clarifying how the study of the arts and aesthetics encounters the PP picture of mental functioning (§1). We then go on to outline the prospects of this encounter for the fields involved: philosophy and history of art (§2), psychology of aesthetics and neuroaesthetics (§3) and psychology and neuroscience more generally (§4). The upshot is an ambitious but well-defined framework within which aesthetics and cognitive science can partner up to illuminate crucial aspects of the human mind. -/- This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives’. -/- . (shrink)

In this article the possibilities of expanding the boundaries of the knowledge and tradition of art philosophy in Turkey through the works of names outside the discipline of philosophy are investigated. For this purpose the production of architectural historian Doğan Kuban is discussed. Kuban’s works are evaluated from a philosophical perspective and it is tried to justify that they should be included in the philosophy of art literature. It has been accepted by the researchers that aesthetics/philosophy of art in (...) Turkey started with the effect of westernization after the Tanzimat. The main problems of the few studies that follow the development of aesthetics are that they examine aesthetics, which developed mainly through literary figures and philosophers who had less space than them, until the establishment of the Republic, only through the works of professional philosophers since the Republic, and they exclude the idea of tradition by not establishing a connection between the local thinkers they have examined and ending their development line with İsmail Tunalı. Common problems in research create the impression that the acceptance of aesthetics or philosophy of art as an activity that only the philosopher can do is accepted as a prejudice. However, philosophy of art is not a field specific to philosophers and limiting the development and accumulation of philosophy of art in Turkey to the work of philosophers narrows the scope of discussion. When a philosophical approach to the subject is sought other than philosophers, the opportunity to meet important names in different disciplines and to read them with a new eye increases. When approached from this perspective, Doğan Kuban’s (1926-2021) works deserve to be questioned in terms of art philosophy. It is noteworthy that Kuban’s production which started in the 1950s and lasted for about 70 years presents a wide field of data and interpretation and that he often attempts theory by reminding the absence of criticism and philosophy in our culture. There are also thinkers who refer to Kuban’s interest in philosophy, aesthetics and philosophy of art. However, Kuban’s relevance to philosophy and aesthetics/art philosophy has not been studied extensively. In the article firstly answers will be sought to the questions of what philosophy and philosophy of art are, and then Kuban’s philosophy of art will be revealed according to the criteria to be determined here. Kuban’s philosophy of art will be examined in three stages. His own theoretical approach will be analyzed by reviewing his objections to the tradition of philosophy of art. In the next step, his views on the philosophy of architecture and the philosophy of Turkish art, which he pursued throughout his production as a quest, will be examined. Finally the problems in Kuban’s philosophy of art will be pointed out and its possibilities will be emphasized. Philosophy is the ability to redefine the concepts starting from the most basic/original problems in any field where one doubts the answers, to determine the principles of the field, to answer the sub-questions with principles in line with consistency and validity, and to construct his own explanation model for the structure of the field by associating these answers. In order to make philosophy of art and philosophy of architecture it is necessary to answer the basic questions of the relevant field, to reach conceptual and principled goals, and to present a model of explanation of the structure of the field within a certain method. In the context of the criteria of art philosophy determined here, Kuban’s thoughts can be questioned in terms of philosophy of art. The philosophy of art, the philosophy of architecture and the philosophy of Turkish art, which became evident by the bringing together of different pieces in Kuban’s works, is a continuous and mutually determined effort. The thinker who criticizes the thinking styles and provisions of Western aesthetics, has created his own concept map with redefinitions and conceptualizations. Kuban redefined the concepts in the field of study, based on these he constructed his understanding of art, the philosophy of architecture and tried to create a model of explanation of Turkish art in which he revealed its history, evolution and basic features. Criticizing the views of C. E. Arseven, J. Strzygowski, E. Diez and O. Aslanapa, Kuban tried to define Turkish art in his own way and tried to explain the basic principles of Turkish art through monumental and civil architecture. Even though this model of explanation has deficiencies it offers new research opportunities to history of art and philosophy researchers with the questions it asks, the concepts it highlights and its unresolved aspects. With his philosophical awareness, criticisms of the philosophy of art, the philosophy of architecture and the attempt to construct the theory of Turkish art, Kuban should be included in the subject area of the philosophy of art studies in Turkey. Evaluation of Kuban’s thoughts by including them in the accumulation of art philosophy in our history of thought will both broaden and diversify the horizon of the field of art philosophy and will enable the philosophy of art to be considered in the context of new relationships between individuals and disciplines by following the traces of thinkers from such different fields. (shrink)

The history of philosophy is replete with attempts at invoking rationality as a means of directing and even subduing human desire and emotion. Understood as that which moves human beings to action, desire and emotion come to be associated with human freedom and rationality as a means of curbing that freedom. Plato, for instance, takes for granted a separation between thought and action that drives a wedge between our rational ability to exercise self-discipline and the free expression of desire (...) and emotion. Hobbes, on the other hand, replaces our internal ability for rational self-control with the external authority of the political State. So long as freedom and control are pitted against one another, human beings are incapable of attaining a symbiosis of these two elements of human action so essential to realizing true democracy. Unlike Plato, John Dewey sees in democracy the greatest potential for individual and social life. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate how the educational philosophy of Dewey, which culminates in an educational aesthetic, appeals to and makes the most of the symbiosis of freedom and self-control, emotion and reason. Dewey’s educational aesthetic not only offers an alternative to traditional methods of education, but also demonstrates how the goal of a democratic way of life is made feasible by means of intelligently guided self-discipline—a form of self-control guided by intelligence that is not a constraint upon freedom, but instead embodies greater opportunity for freedom. I trace the basis for this synthesis, in the social-political and pedagogical principles of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Both Locke and Rousseau offer educational theories that begin turning our attention toward the essential partnership required of rationality and emotion. Dewey's educational aesthetic is then considered as a response to alienating forms of education that continue to pit control and freedom against one another, and which thwart the intellectual and emotional development necessary for autonomy and democratic forms of social organization. (shrink)

Kant’s dualism in anthropology and morality is said to be bridged only by means of a teleology that seems to betray the historical constitution of its subjectivity. And yet the Kantianarticulation of problems of theoretical and practical reason can be explored only insofar as they help us understand the correlated issues of the unity of reason, the relation of aesthetics and ethics in the light of the three Critiques, and the teleological conception of history. In this paper, I (...) argue for a teleological reading of the systematic architectonic so as to make sense of the concept of purposiveness as the a priori principle of judgment in its logical, aesthetic, and teleological reflection and of the unifying, a priori principles of each faculty–namely, conformity to law, final purpose, and conformity to purpose or purposiveness – respectively dealt with in the three Critiques. (shrink)

The notion of beauty has endured a troublesome history over the last few decades. While for centuries beauty has been considered one of the central values of art, there have also been times when it seemed old-fashioned to even mention the term. The present volume aims to explore the nature of beauty and to shed light its place in contemporary philosphy and art practice.

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)

The paper highlights analytic aesthetics’ unacknowledged assumption that art is timeless, a view it inherited from Enlightenment thinkers such as Hume and Kant, who in turn inherited it from the Renaissance. This view, I contend, is no longer tenable because it is at odds with our experience of the art of the past. Analytic aesthetics bypasses this dilemma because it confines its attention to topics such as the nature of aesthetic pleasure, whether the appreciation of art should be (...) disinterested and so on, which it partitions off from historical change and encases in a world where time stands still and where, by consequence, the temporal nature of art, including art’s capacity to transcend time, can be ignored. (shrink)

Thailand has a rich history of using aesthetics as a means of communication. This is seen not only in the communication of basic ideas, but aesthetics are also used to communicate the cultural values of the nation. Aesthetical images in Thailand have the tendency to dwell both in the realm of the mundane and the supernatural, in the daily and the esoteric. Historically, many faith traditions have used aesthetics as an effective form of communication, including Buddhism, (...) Brahmanism, as well as other local expressions of deities across the country. Art plays a large role in the daily communication of religious values and concepts. -/- While Christianity has a rather long history in Thailand, the large-scale impact that Christianity, and specifically Protestantism, has had is rather minimal. There can be a myriad of reasons for this, but one potential possibility is Christianity’s lack of an aesthetical engagement upon and within Thai culture. This potentially is not an issue of only the Protestant church in Thailand but also stems from some of the western Christian roots throughout its faith tradition. One finds a chasm between aesthetical practices and faith from the Heidelberg Confession, in which Christians became so worried about the ramifications of idol worship, that they threw out the proverbial ‘baby with the bathwater’ and basically condemned the use of icons and other forms of art in western Protestantism. -/- Therefore, this paper will examine the relationship between Thai culture and Christianity, trying to remove the western biases in Christianity and will attempt to suggest new ways that the Thai Christian Church may develop organic, indigenous Thai art, that can be used as a more effective means of communication. If Christianity wants to effectively convey its concepts into Thai culture, it must value aesthetics as a means of communication. Is it possible that Christianity could not only communicate a more effective message in Thailand, but also that Christianity could experience a more robust self-analyzation of its core concepts through Thai aesthetics? Therefore, one needs to explore the ways that Christianity may be able to better understand itself through current Thai aesthetical practices. These concepts will be explored to develop a more robust and organic way of communicating the Christian concepts through a Thai paradigm. (shrink)

The primary objective of this book is to open space for rethinking the relationship between art and politics. It seeks to combat one of the fundamental assumptions that has plagued many of the previous debates on this issue: that art and politics are distinct entities definable in terms of common properties, and that they have privileged points of intersection, which can be determined once and for all in terms of an established formula. This common sense assumption is rooted in a (...) transcendent illusion according to which there are more or less fixed characteristics that unify our terms, concepts, and practices in such a way as to guarantee their meaning. Against this substantialist approach, Radical History & the Politics of Art argues for a praxeological account that begins the other way around by analyzing specific cultural practices without presupposing a conceptual unity behind them. Such an orientation is radically historicist in the sense that it recognizes that all of our practices—be they linguistic, theoretical, aesthetic or political—are historically constituted and that they are necessarily part of a temporal dynamic. Hence the contingent nature of the labels used to classify various practices or even identify ‘practice’ as such. Radical history thereby proposes a significant departure from the extant debates on art and politics by maintaining that there is no ‘art’ or ‘politics’ in general, nor a singular relation between them. There are only historically constituted practices in various conjunctures, some of which have been labeled, through practical acts of denomination, as ‘artistic’ or ‘political.’ Instead of proposing one more response to the oft-repeated question ‘what is the relationship between Art and Politics?’ this book seeks to overcome the presuppositions that plague such a question. It thereby changes the very nature of the investigation by asking: ‘how do the diverse aspects of practices identified as ‘aesthetic’ and ‘political’ overlap, intertwine and sometimes merge in precise socio-historical force fields of action? (shrink)

In The Life of a Style, Jonathan Gilmore claims that such narrative developments inhere in the history of art itself.By exploring such topics as the discovery ...

Aesthetics is not an area to which the Stoics are normally understood to have contributed. I adopt a broad description of the purview of Aesthetics according to which Aesthetics pertains to the study of those preferences and values that ground what is considered worthy of attention. According to this approach, we find that the Stoics exhibit an Aesthetic that reveals a direct line of development between Plato, the Stoics, Thomas Aquinas and the eighteenth century, specifically Kant’s (...) class='Hi'>aesthetics. I will reveal an interpretation of the aesthetic of the Stoics which has more explanatory power for the history of aesthetic theory than a history of aesthetic theory which leaves out the Stoics. (shrink)

Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics takes a fresh look at the history of aesthetics and at current debates within the philosophy of art by exploring the ways in which gender informs notions of art and creativity, evaluation and interpretation, and concepts of aesthetic value. Multiple intellectual traditions have formed this field, and the discussions herein range from consideration of eighteenth century legacies of ideas about taste, beauty, and sublimity to debates about the relevance of postmodern analyses for (...) feminist aesthetics. Forward by Arthur C. Danto, 20 authors include Paul Mattick, Jr., Caroline Korsmeyer, Timothy Gould, Christine Battersby, Mary Devereaux, bell hooks, REnee Lorraine, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Elizabeth Ann Dobie, Adrian Piper, Anita Silvers, Susan Feagin, Mary D. Garrard, Ellen Handler Spitz, Noel Carroll, Joanne Waugh, Joseph Margolis, Rita Felski, and Hilde Hein, as well as Peg Brand's essay, "Revising the Aesthetic-Nonaesthetic Distinction: The Aesthetic Value of Activist Art.". (shrink)

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)

Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory is a vast labyrinth that anyone interested in modern aesthetic theory must at some time enter. Because of his immense difficulty of the same order as Derrida - Adorno's reception has been slowed by the lack of a comprehensive and comprehensible account of the intentions of his aesthetics. This is the first book to put Aesthetic Theory into context and outline the main ideas and relevant debates, offering readers a valuable guide through this huge, difficult, (...) but revelatory work. Its extended argument is that, despite Adorno's assumptions of autonomism, cognitivism, and aesthetic modernism, his idea of artistic truth content offers crucial insights for contemporary philosophical aesthetics.The eleven chapters are divided into three parts: Context, Content, and Critique. The first part offers a brief biography, describes Adorno's debates with Benjamin, Brecht, and Lukács, and outlines his philosophical program. The second part is an interpretation of Adorno's aesthetics, examining how he situates art in society, production, politics, and history and uncovering the social, political, and historical dimensions of his idea of artistic truth. The third part evaluates Adorno's contribution by confronting it with the critiques of Peter Bürger, Frederic Jameson, and Albrecht Wellmer.Lambert Zuidervaart is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College. (shrink)

The article presents Hanslick’s aesthetic formalism as the starting point of the contemporary aesthetics of music. His book, written in the 19th century, is considered contemporary because it still proves to be influential and fruitful in the contemporary theoretical circles, especially in the modern analytic aesthetics of music, where it is widely cited and discussed. The article positions Hanslick’s book in relation to his nearest predecessors Kant and Herbart, and to the neighbouring area where the formalistic view appeared, (...) namely in Fidler’s visual formalism in fine arts. It is shown that by being the first piece of writing to attempt to systematically and comprehensively determine the essence and the content of music, and the criteria for evaluation of musical worth, Hanslick’s book sets the foundation for a rigorous examination of the aesthetics of music, and also breaks off with the widely ingrained preconceptions of music, which were in themselves an obstacle to establishing the aesthetics of music as a scientific discipline. (shrink)

This essay reads Oakeshott’s views on practice, politics, and aesthetics in the manner of the ‘hypothetical history’ of civilization in Rousseau’s Second Discourse. Under conditions of progress in the arts and sciences the future-oriented world of practice suffers under the law of ruin and practical selves become more inept at acting practically over time. This degeneration has a direct impact on the two tasks of civil association: progress favors the accumulation of power with its future-oriented temporality while it (...) undermines the cultivation of authority which is past-orientation. But only authority is the distinct concern of civil association. Consequently, civil association requires from its ruling offices to be increasingly artful in managing the imbalance between the two. Aesthetics with its temporality of presentness may come to their aid as it restores the present world from the oblivion of progressive practice by detaching its components from practical use. The political art thus requires the protection of the voice of poetry from the tendency of practice to overgrow its own boundaries. This dependence of politics on aesthetics is symbolized by the poets who ‘rule’ solely through authority and without any concern for power. In this hypothetical history the survival of civil association hinges not on the refusal to accumulate more power, but on its ever more demanding virtuous use for the sake of poetry. (shrink)

This essay explores the complex relationship between gender and aesthetics, namely through the lens of the transgender movement. After a brief study of the challenges related to the history of gender variance and normativity, the essay will follow the trajectory of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, focusing primarily on the conception of the sublime, and move to explore connections with the work of gender theorist and public health advocate Benjamin T. Singer, whose work develops a rhizomatic model of the (...) transgender sublime. Utilising this framework, the discussion will then examine connections and parallels with the work of Rancière and later Gianni Vattimo. The final section will then explore the concept of aesthetic emergencies from Santiago Zabala, Vattimo’s pupil, who associates both Rancière and Vattimo with this concept while at the same time drawing from Heidegger’s writings. Through a re-examination of the sublime and the work of these theorists, this paper will illuminate potential new connections, pathways, and possibilities for the transgender movement, aesthetic theory, and political engagement. (shrink)

Following C. S. Peirce’s claim that aesthetics precedes ethics and logic, I argue for reconceiving aesthetics as a normative science. The deteriorated relations between these links in the ‘modern mythology’ is associated with art’s decline and apparent indistinguishability from the ‘general aesthetic’ (aided by ‘aesthetics as theory’). ‘Naturalizing’ art, according to F. W. Schelling’s system, is proposed to ameliorate this. Bringing together Peircian semiotics with Schelling’s ‘process metaphysics’ suggests how to restore the historicized split between Art ‘as (...) principle’ and the Person (two ‘perfect signs’) by attending to the ‘ethical phenomenology’ of artworks. An argument is then made for how modern ethics and ‘morals’ may be reconnected. (shrink)

There is fast-growing awareness of the role atmospheres play in architecture. Of equal interest to contemporary architectural practice as it is to aesthetic theory, this 'atmospheric turn' owes much to the work of the German philosopher Gernot Böhme. Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces brings together Böhme's most seminal writings on the subject, through chapters selected from his classic books and articles, many of which have hitherto only been available in German. This is the only translated version authorised (...) by Böhme himself, and is the first coherent collection deploying a consistent terminology. It is a work which will provide rich references and a theoretical framework for ongoing discussions about atmospheres and their relations to architectural and urban spaces. Combining philosophy with architecture, design, landscape design, scenography, music, art criticism, and visual arts, the essays together provide a key to the concepts that motivate the work of some of the best contemporary architects, artists, and theorists: from Peter Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron and Juhani Pallasmaa to Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell. With a foreword by Professor Mark Dorrian and an afterword by Professor David Leatherbarrow,, the volume also includes a general introduction to the topic, including coverage of it history, development, areas of application and conceptual apparatus. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Aesthetic disinterestedness is one of the central concepts in aesthetics, and Jerome Stolnitz, the most prominent theorist of disinterestedness in the 20th century, has claimed that (i) ancient thinkers engagement with this notion was cursory and undeveloped, and consequently, (ii) the emergence of disinterestedness in the 18th century marks the birth of aesthetics as a discipline. In this paper, I use the extant works of Epicurus to show that the ancient philosopher not only had similar concepts, but (...) also motivated them in careful and complex ways. I argue that, in the Epicurean theoretical framework, arts belong to the category of ‘merely natural’ desires, and this classification, combined with what we know of Epicurus’ rejection of art criticism, shows he had carefully worked out reasons supporting the idea that art ought to be approached terminally, rather than instrumentally. Finally, I compare the notion of aesthetic disinterestedness with Epicurus’ views on arts and argue that in many ways the latter are not inferior to the former, and therefore ought to belong to the history of aesthetics. (shrink)

Davies presents the reader with a sterling review of the literature--the recent history of the interest in defining "art" through the writings of Anglo-American philosophers that follow Morris Weitz' well-known 1956 essay, "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics"--and a stimulating discussion of the role of conventions in the making and appreciating of contemporary art. His emphasis on the social nature of art leads one to wonder how other recent inquiries into the multilayered contextually of the artistic enterprise might (...) fare under his perusal, for example, feminist critiques of traditional definitions of "art," challenges to the elitist makeup of the Artworld, . . . and opposition to his very choice of paradigms: in addition to Duchamp, the "hard cases" include works by John Cage, Andy Warhol, Olivier Messiaen, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gerald Hoffnung. Definitions of Art is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of aesthetics and as it informs the current dialectic on art. (shrink)

The paper is meant to introduce a symposium on aesthetics in Hungary today. Through a brief survey of the Hungarian aesthetic tradition, which goes back to the eclectic “university aesthetics” of the late 18 th century and produced a number of prominent figures such as Georg Lukács and his disciples in the “Budapest School” in the 20th century, the paper seeks to point out some key characteristics of this tradition and to reflect on the intellectual landscape of contemporary (...) aesthetics in Hungary, diversified by many fields of study, methods and subdisciplines. (shrink)

Hegel's reading of Hafez as part of his Berlin aesthetics lectures. The jargon of the prosaic world -/- This essay deals with Hegel's reading (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 - 1831) of Hafez' poetry (Moḥammad Schams ad-Din Hafez Schirazi, around 1315 - 1390) during his lectures on the Aesthetics or Philosophy of Art at the University of Berlin (1820/21; 1823; 1826; 1828/29). Hegel's writings, Lectures on Aesthetics, were published from his remains by Heinrich Gustav Hotho (1802 - (...) 1873) in three volumes (1835 - 1838) and in a second edition from 1842 onwards. The posthumously published writings of Hegel are, considering the preserved archive material and the unreliable editing work by Hotho, a thoroughly complex research topic. Therefore, this problem area also forms the starting point of the present analysis of Hegel's reading of Hafez. -/- Within the framework of this essay, Hegel's categories of historical frameworks (Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic Art), especially that of the "Symbolic Art", are examined in his lectures on Aesthetics . This will do in three steps: starting with the current state of research, problematizing of Hegelian concepts in his Lectures on Aesthetics like "oriental Pantheism" or Vorkunst, ("the threshold of art" or "praeambula": T. M. Knox' translation, 1975, part I); extending the discussion by focusing on similarities and differences between Hegel's reading of Goethe (part II) and Hegel's reading of Hafez (part III) in his Berlin Aesthetics Lectures of the 1820's. For this purpose, material from Goethe's literary remains (II), as well as a masterpiece of Dutch painters van Eyck analyzed by Hegel (Ghent Altarpiece) during his lectures (III), will be included in the analysis and explored from an interdisciplinary and intercultural perspective. In doing so, Goethe's “Space of Experience and Horizon of Expectation” (Koselleck) in imitating Arabic script and calligraphy (II) is linked to Hegel's reading of Hafez during his Berlin lectures on aesthetics (III). Thus, a dialogue of cultures unfolds between poetry and philosophy. The main questions are: How does the German philosopher Hegel interpret and receive Hafiz's poetry in the context of German idealist philosophy as a topic of his lectures on aesthetics? What epistemological aspects can be gained from Hegel's reading of Hafez for a cultural studies analysis, especially regarding the history of the ideas? In addition to analyzing the historical aspects, the aim is also to uncover new perspectives in order to look with Hafez and Rumi at Hegel's problem child of ‘history’. Of particular interest are epistemological aspects and problems of reception and translation studies in sense of interdisciplinary and intercultural research (e. g. connected/entangled histories; boundary objects). Interculturality is understood in the context of the present essay as a cross-disciplinary theoretical framework in the sense of entangled histories research work interwoven with communication, aesthetic and cultural techniques approaches or resilience studies in a historical perspective. (shrink)

I analyze Deleuze’s concept of temporality in terms of its ontology and axiological (political and aesthetic) aspects. For Deleuze, the concept of temporality is non-monolithic, in the senses that it is modified throughout his works — the monographs, lectures, and those works that were co-authored with Félix Guattari — and that it is developed through reference to a dizzying array of concepts, thinkers, artistic works, and social phenomena. -/- I observe that Deleuze’s concept of temporality involves a complex ontology of (...) difference, which I elaborate through reference to Deleuze’s analyses of Ancient Greek and Stoic conceptualizations of time. From Plato through to Chrysippus, temporality gradually comes to be identified as a form that comprehends the variation of particulars. Deleuze modifies the ancients’ concept of time to suggest that time obtains as a form of ceaseless ontological variation. Through reference to Deleuze’s reading of Gilbert Simondon, I further suggest that Deleuze tends to conceive of temporality as an ontogenetic force which participates in the complex process of individuation. -/- A standout feature of this dissertation involves an analysis of how Deleuze’s concept of temporality is modified in his works on cinema. In Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image, temporality comes to be characterized as something other than the measure of the movement of existents. In his detailed analyses of Bergson — in Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, and Bergsonism — Deleuze suggests that time involves an actualization of aspects of a virtual past as contemporaneous with the lived present. While not an outright denial of the relation of temporal succession, Deleuze’s claim implies a diminishment of this relation’s significance in an adequate elaboration of the nature of temporality. -/- Further, I observe —through reference to Deleuze’s readings of Marx, Kierkegaard, and Spinoza — that (the explicitly temporal) change of societal forms of economic organization is non-reducible to that suggested by linear evolution. The claim is that putatively discrete modes of economic organization do not enjoy temporal displacement with respect to one another. This suggests that linear evolutionary models of societal development are inadequate. This further implies that temporality is non-reducible to the relation of temporal succession. In concrete terms, societal change is characterized as immanent temporal variation. -/- Taken together, these analyses yield the conclusion that Deleuze tends to conceive of the nature of temporality as involving the ongoing realization of multiple — non-identical, sometimes contrary — aspects of a stochastic process of creation that is expressed in ontogenetic circumstances, social evolution, literary works, and filmic works. (shrink)

This article presents a new reading of Fichte’s aesthetics that differs from a primarily functionalist interpretation of the imagination and art. It demonstrates that the “hovering” (Schweben) of the creative imagination should be viewed as the first principle of Fichte’s aesthetics, in which the latter consists of a triad of the pleasant, the beautiful and the sublime. Moreover, it argues that in the text Ueber Geist und Buchstab in der Philosophie (1795/1800) Fichte created a real and original monogram (...) of the hovering creative imagination, a monogram whose theoretical basis stems from Kant’s concept of the monogram in the 1st Critique as a “wavering sketch”. It contends that this overlooked but key artistic and practical example of a monogram opens up new perspectives for Fichtean aesthetics, further confirming that its first principle should be explicitly identified with the theory of the hovering imagination in the Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre of 1794/95. (shrink)

Feminist aesthetics can be characterized as a critical conceptual framework for analyzing the gender assumptions Western aesthetics, philosophy of the arts and the arts have had and their implications in the categories they have historically employed. It emerged as a result the influence feminism had in the study of gender bias in the artistic production and its reception. Works like Linda Nochlin’s Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (1971) and Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (...) (1975) were fundamental for recognizing the exclusion of women from the history of the great visual artists and how the male gaze is a predominant kind of depiction that satisfies and is designed from a masculine and heterosexual point of view. -/- During the 1970s and 1980s it started the analysis of the male gaze in literature, film and visual arts, but also the women’s artistic production demanding its recognition. However, it was not until the 1990s that philosophical feminist aesthetics was first addressed as an important and necessary area of study with the special issues Feminism and aesthetics (Hein, Korsmeyer 1990) in “Hypatia: a journal of Feminist Philosophy”, and Feminism and traditional aesthetics (Brand, Korsmeyer 1990) in “The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism”. And the first introductory book on the field, Gender and aesthetics: an introduction by Carolyn Korsmeyer (2004) was published during the first decade of the 2000s. -/- Although feminist aesthetics came later than feminist political philosophy, it appeared almost at the same time as feminist perspectives of other philosophical fields, such as epistemology and philosophy of science. Like other feminist approaches to different philosophical domains, there is not a unitary feminist perspective on aesthetics, however, despite the variety of approaches, all implicitly or explicitly demand the recognition of women in its sphere of influence, that is, philosophy and the arts. Nevertheless, contrary to other fields it does not only take contributions from analytic and continental feminism, but also from cultural theory, art history, comparative literature, film theory, psychoanalysis, just to name a few disciplines and theories. Feminist aesthetics’ literature covers a broad range of topics, but the most important are the feminist critique of philosophical aesthetics and the feminist philosophy and theory of the arts. (shrink)

Largely neglected today, the work of Karl Philipp Moritz was a highly influential source for Early German Romanticism. Moritz considered the form of myth as essential to the absolute nature of the divine subject. This defence was based upon his aesthetic theory, which held that beautiful art was “disinterested”, or complete in itself. For Moritz, Myth, like art, constitutes a totality providing an idiom free from restriction in the imitation of the divine. This examination offers a consideration of Moritz’s (...) class='Hi'>aesthetics and mythography, before turning briefly to consider his influence on the authors of Early German Romanticism. An understanding of the role of Moritz’s thought supports a number of recent claims that challenge the conventional reading of Romanticism. At the same time it allows us to see Romanticism’s unconventional realist theological programme, permitting us to overcome the problematic secularising readings of the movement. I would like to thank Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, as well as Fredrick Beiser and Lars Fischer for their help with this project. (shrink)

British writers of the eighteenth century such as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson are widely thought to have used the notion of disinterestedness to distinguish an aesthetic mode of perception from all other kinds. This historical view originates in the work of Jerome Stolnitz. Through a re-examination of the texts cited by Stolnitz, I argue that none of the writers in question possessed the notion of disinterestedness that has been used in later aesthetic theory, but only the ordinary, non-technical concept, and that (...) they did not use this notion to define a specifically aesthetic mode of perception or a specifically aesthetic mode of anything else. The nearest thing that they had to the Stolnitzian conception of “the aesthetic” was their conception of taste, which differs from the former in some essential respects. (shrink)

Although artistic activity has been a major social phenomenon in the western world, aesthetics has not always reflected the changes in techniques, processes, themes and uses through which the arts have developed and had their effect. Theory most often comes after the fact, and properly so. Yet aesthetics in its history has not only displayed an unfitting hubris, with thinkers attempting to legislate about style, suitability and materials to the artist; aesthetics has also lagged far behind (...) the living edge of artistic activity and discussed it in anachronistic terms. (shrink)

The aesthetic skeptic maintains that it is futile to dispute about taste. One and the same work of art might appear beautiful to one person but repellent to another, and we have no reason to prefer one or another of these conflicting verdicts. Hume argues that the skeptic, however, moves too quickly. The crucial question is whether qualified critics will agree on their evaluations. And the skeptic fails to provide sufficient evidence that their verdicts will diverge. We have reason to (...) expect that a consensus will emerge over time, moreover, since aesthetic values are grounded on universal principles of human nature. Skeptics might doubt that there is a natural basis for a standard of taste, but this proposal is supported by recent work in experimental aesthetics and cognitive science. (shrink)