First published in 1954, The Contemplative Activity analyses our knowledge of aesthetic experience, making the basic assumption that the existence of such experience is a hard core of fact which can only be described. Haezrahi's approach to the problem of aesthetic judgment is analytical, concerned with clarifying its preconditions, determining its categories and tracing its implications. Her analysis reveals it consists a particular mode of perception and a particular attitude adopted towards what is so perceived. The various philosophies of (...) art and beauty, though they represent attitudes different from the purely aesthetic one, are carefully examined too since the contemplative spectator is indebted to them for the achievement of adequate aesthetic responses to specific works of art. Haezrahi also discusses methods of objective evaluation of the aesthetic experience as well as possible means to reduce the margin of error involved in the particular responses of critics and theorists. This book will be particularly important for students of philosophy and of art. (shrink)

Originally published in 1961, this book defines the specific traits and describes the concrete qualities of moral action. It denotes the boundaries and discusses the conflicts which arise between the aims of moral goodness and those of pure religiosity, personal and historic grandeur and creative excellence. The theories of theologians like Barth and Brunner among others, and the maximalist theories of Nietzsche and his disciples and certain existentialists are contrasted with Kant's essay on pure ethics.

Since the advent and standardization of the theatrical feature length film, the audio-visual short has been more or less marginalized in the discussions on cinematic experience. Historically stretching from the ‘early cinema’ of the vaudeville, to the now obsolete ‘little films’ of YouTube and beyond, the audio-visual short traverses a wide variety of media platforms, practices and technologies, including animation, video installation art, video clips and TV commercials, as well as animated GIFs, machinima and DIY movies, made to measure for (...) handheld devices. The widespread usage of the format suggests that short audio-visual artefacts are not an anomaly or rarity on the periphery of cinema, but rather should be put at the centre of our discussions when rethinking cinematic experience and the moving image today. Such is the request we have made to the contributors to this volume: to write a short essay on short film experience. (shrink)

The market relationships are being contested. This can be seen in the increasing number of alternative social experiments in the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ which propose to think out the present market relationships in a different way, in particular in establishing exchange value and in facilitating access to trade. These practical alternatives are supported by trends in academic circles that over the past three decades have opposed neoliberal capitalism and individualism in today's commercialised society. Calling for greater solidarity and social (...) justice in economic relationships, in particular, partisans of social and solidarity economics, identifying with these trends, demand new forms of exchange. The objective of this article is to re-examine these demands. What exactly do the SSE mean by ‘solidarity’ and ‘solidarity-based economy'? We would like to trace the contours of this theoretical and political project and to assess the practicability of the proposed alternative to neoliberal capitalism. (shrink)

Pocos creadores, en el más amplio espectro de la palabra, pueden presumir de haber transformado al pasivo espectador de cine en efervescente legión de acólitos seguidores alrededor de una filmografía...

The general topic of this book is the theory of categories, its sources, meaning and development. The inquiry can be seen to proceed on two levels. On one, the history of the theory is traced from its alleged genesis in Aristotle, through its main subsequent stages of Kant and Hegel, up to a kind of consummation in two of its prominent twentieth century adherents, Alfred North White head and Nicolai Hartmann. Special attention has been paid to that aspect of the (...) Hegelian conception of the categorial analysis from which the principle of coherence emerged. On the second, deeper level, however, everything starts with Whitehead's metaphysical system, the central part of which con sists of a fascinating, though highly intricate, web of categorial notions and propositions. The historical perspective becomes a means for untangling that web. I am indebted to a number of people for advice, comment and criticism of various parts of this book. My greatest thanks go to my teachers and colleagues Nathan Rotenstreich, Nathan Spiegel, Yaakov Fleischman, as well as to the late Shmuel Hugo Bergman and Pepita Haezrachi. of this book was published in 1967 by An earlier, Hebrew version the Bialik Institute of Jerusalem. I am grateful to Mr Yehoshua Perel, Mr Arnold Schwartz and to my wife Varda for their cooperation in rendering the extensively revised text of the book into readable English. I also owe great appreciation to Miss Liat Dawe for an accurate and painstaking word-processing of the text. (shrink)