This article addresses two controversial open questions in philosophical aesthetics: the nature and value of the aesthetic and of aesthetic experience when approached from the standpoint of ‘aesthetics of everyday life’ (AEL). Contrasting ‘strong’ AEL accounts that consider them radically different from those in the sphere of art, I claim that extending the realm and scope of aesthetics towards everyday life does not necessarily dispense with the concepts of the aesthetic and aesthetic experience as shaped in relation to the arts. (...) Drawing on ‘weak’ formulations of AEL and on theories that call attention to concepts of art different from modern ones, I defend a normative but open model of the aesthetic and aesthetic experience pertaining to both art and everyday life. This more integrative theoretical framework needs to include clear and consistent views of the aesthetic as well as of the self, intersubjectivity, and everyday life. (shrink)

This article discusses the “aesthetics of existence” developed by Foucault in the late “ethical” stage of his work, aiming to clarify its complex significance through its relationships with ethics, critique, and, in particular, art as a model of self-invention. The main claims are that aesthetics of existence is a new type of self-formation molded by technologies inspired not only by the ancient ethical self-formation but also by modern art understood as creative self-production; thus, aesthetics of existence is an active form (...) of aesthetic education, in the particular sense of an ontological self-formation. To argue these claims, the author advances a line of analysis alternative to typical readings, which see it as related exclusively to the ancient “art of living” or its modern revival in the Nietzschean project of self-fashioning. The focus is instead on the Baudelairean and Kantian roots of Foucault’s work—modernity as a critical attitude and the transgressive art of the self of the dandy—as keys to understand the reframing by him of the art of living into a modern aesthetics of existence. This appears as a critical-transgressive invention of the self, which could contribute to constituting new subjectivities and alternative norms for the entire social body. (shrink)

This article explores recent developments in the sociology of the arts, namely the new theoretical framework set up by the French sociologist Pierre-Michel Menger in order to approach the artistic activity. It aims to show how he has shaped new tools of understanding and modelling for exploring the arts, as a particular world of action. Laying down the foundation of a conception of action related to symbolic interactionism and drawing on the economic analysis of risk and uncertainty, Menger move towards (...) a model where uncertainty, not determinism, is the default category. Uncertainty is thus the principle unifying the analysis and understanding of the particularities of the arts, and the main argument in integrating sociological and economic studies on artistic activities. Correlatively, artistic creation is qualified as an act of work, the creative work being defined as a system of action in uncertain horizon. Within this model, the artists are seen less like “rational fools” and more like Bayesian actors, adopting strategies for managing risk and uncertainty. (shrink)

This article explores recent developments in the sociology of the arts, namely the new theoretical framework set up by the French sociologist Pierre-Michel Menger in order to approach the artistic activity. It aims to show how he has shaped new tools of understanding and modelling for exploring the arts, as a particular world of action. Laying down the foundation of a conception of action related to symbolic interactionism and drawing on the economic analysis of risk and uncertainty, Menger move towards (...) a model where uncertainty, not determinism, is the default category. Uncertainty is thus the principle unifying the analysis and understanding of the particularities of the arts, and the main argument in integrating sociological and economic studies on artistic activities. Correlatively, artistic creation is qualified as an act of work, the creative work being defined as a system of action in uncertain horizon. Within this model, the artists are seen less like “rational fools” and more like Bayesian actors, adopting strategies for managing risk and uncertainty. (shrink)

This article explores recent developments in the sociology of the arts, namely the new theoretical framework set up by the French sociologist Pierre-Michel Menger in order to approach the artistic activity. It aims to show how he has shaped new tools of understanding and modelling for exploring the arts, as a particular world of action. Laying down the foundation of a conception of action related to symbolic interactionism and drawing on the economic analysis of risk and uncertainty, Menger move towards (...) a model where uncertainty, not determinism, is the default category. Uncertainty is thus the principle unifying the analysis and understanding of the particularities of the arts, and the main argument in integrating sociological and economic studies on artistic activities. Correlatively, artistic creation is qualified as an act of work, the creative work being defined as a system of action in uncertain horizon. Within this model, the artists are seen less like “rational fools” and more like Bayesian actors, adopting strategies for managing risk and uncertainty. (shrink)

This paper addresses the relations between art and everyday life in the city from the vantage points of urban aesthetics and sociology, where the “city” refers as well to a normative world. The aim is to show how art/artistic life contributed to the normative change and new urban lifestyles. First, I focus on Baudelaire’s theory of beauty and life in modern metropolis or the city as “poetic object” and dandyism as an art of the self, seen as a crucial normative (...) change: the emergence of new norms of excellence and art of living, such as creativity and self-fashioning. Second, I discuss a recent yet related normative change, described by Boltanski and Chiapello as a passage to the “project-oriented city”, seen as a new way of working and living that fuses cultures of creativity and uncertainty. Third, I tackle the “creative city” hailed by Florida, where the creative lifestyle of “creative people” is the new mainstream setting the norms for society: individuality, diversity and openness, but also impermanent relationships and loose ties. I will argue that extending the hyper-mobile and flexible creative lifestyle from the extraordinary figure of the artist to ordinary people, as everyday urban life, triggers both benefits and risks. (shrink)

This paper addresses the relations between art and everyday life in the city from the vantage points of urban aesthetics and sociology, where the “city” refers as well to a normative world. The aim is to show how art/artistic life contributed to the normative change and new urban lifestyles. First, I focus on Baudelaire’s theory of beauty and life in modern metropolis or the city as “poetic object” and dandyism as an art of the self, seen as a crucial normative (...) change: the emergence of new norms of excellence and art of living, such as creativity and self-fashioning. Second, I discuss a recent yet related normative change, described by Boltanski and Chiapello as a passage to the “project-oriented city”, seen as a new way of working and living that fuses cultures of creativity and uncertainty. Third, I tackle the “creative city” hailed by Florida, where the creative lifestyle of “creative people” is the new mainstream setting the norms for society: individuality, diversity and openness, but also impermanent relationships and loose ties. I will argue that extending the hyper-mobile and flexible creative lifestyle from the extraordinary figure of the artist to ordinary people, as everyday urban life, triggers both benefits and risks. (shrink)

This study proposes a philosophical analysis of the public discourse that accompanies the cultural policy in Romania: justifications and finalities of State intervention in the cultural field, as well as representations of the roles that the public authorities attribute to culture/art. The objective is to bring into light the philosophical, political and aesthetical values that found and legitimise the cultural policies and shape the relationship between State and artists/art. It is basically about understanding the nature of representations on culture and (...) art that underlie the State intervention in the cultural field and, consequently, to determinate the ethos of the cultural policy in post-communist Romania and to expose the constraints that are still limiting its exercise. (shrink)

This study analyzes the relevance in the art world of an ethical and juridical category as the responsibility, as well as its content and limits. The acceptance of the idea of responsibility of the artists depends on the manner in which the “art world” and its frontiers are comprehended - as an autonomous and closed realm or, on the contrary, as a space open to the public control. If the modernist logic of the autonomy had led to the emergence of (...) an artist who claims to an immunity/ impunity based on the absolute artistic freedom, the other model of the art world implies legitimately ethical and juridical questions, as well as an active relation between the public and the forms of the contemporary art. Still, the idea of responsi- bility is tighten to the mode of evaluating the powers of art. As soon as the social and political utility of the art is invoked, it ceased to be not only beyond the good or evil, but also beyond desirable and undesirable, and the responsibility of the artists belongs not only to the aesthetic realm but also to the political one. (shrink)

A review of Thomas Hilgers’s Aesthetic Disinterestedness: Art, Experience, and the Self.

The analysis focuses on the manner in which public authorities in Romania have carried out their role of supporting artistic creation, as well as on the institutional and financial instruments put into practice for this purpose. First, it is about exposing the contradictory logics that grounds the public action in supporting arts and artists and understanding the character of the State intervention in the cultural field, pointing up its oscillations between mediator and cultural agent roles, neutral and valorizing instance, artistic (...) and social rationales. Secondly, a comparative analysis points out to what extent the State intervention, especially using as instrument the direct subsidy, responds to the assumed role of supporting artistic creation and if it has contributed and is able to contribute to the development of the artistic sector and, implicitly, to the improvement of the artists’ social and professional status, in the actual context of an internationalized art and a free and global art market. (shrink)

Le philosophe Frane Petriċ a consacré, surtout dans ses æuvres principales Discussiones peripateticae et Nova de universis philosophia une grande partie de ses recherches sur l`ontologie et la cosmologie à une étude originale de la lumière et du temps, deux concepts ayant un rôle important dans l`ouvrage d`Einstein « Electrodynamique des corps en mouvement ». La confrontation de ces concepts des deux penseurs fait apparaître leur affinité dans chacun des systèmes. Pour Patricius, de même que pour Einstein, la lumière est (...) une fonction unique, constante dans l`univers. Dans son analyse du temps et des concepts relevant du temps comme la durée, Patricius a développé une structure conceptuelle suffisamment dynamique pour que soit révélée sa consistance avec l`analyse du temps et de la simultanéité d`Einstein. (shrink)

Introduction.--Deux conceptions de la beauté.--Du style et du style moderne.--Éléments nouveaux de beauté. Beautés nouvelles.--La métamorphose des instincts.--Comment nous vivons aujourd'hui.--La vie et l'art éternels dans la vie actuelle.

Comment s'inscrire dans la modernité sans perdre son identité ni sa culture ? Plus particulièrement dans les pays du Sud, comment réconcilier le passé colonial et le présent mondialisé, pour construire l'avenir dans une nouvelle émergence ? Les artistes malgaches nous orientent vers une piste intéressante qu'il conviendrait d'approfondir.How to become part of the modern world without losing one's identity or culture? More particularly, how should the countries of the South reconcile their colonial past with the modern global present to (...) build a future in the emerging world order? The artists of Madagascar direct us to an interesting path that it is useful to investigate. (shrink)

Ce compte rendu a déjà paru dans la Revue d'histoire de la pharmacie, 1934, vol. 22, n° 85, p. 316-317. - Biologie – Nouvel article.

Contrairement à trop d'idées reçues ou de préjugés insidieux, Hegel n'est pas plus le père de l'Etat fasciste qu'il n'est à l'origine du totalitarisme communiste : ce qu'il s'est efforcé de développer dans ses Fondements de la philosophie du droit, c'est une philosophie politique et non pas une politique expérimentale, voire une utopie. Eugène Fleischmann, qui a également analysé la Logique du maître de léna, donne ici un commentaire, paragraphe par paragraphe, des Fondements de la philosophie du droit, en montrant (...) que Hegel s'est employé à comprendre la vie politique à partir de la philosophie et nom de justifier une politique effective par une idéologie empruntant les termes de la tradition philosophique. (shrink)

This book, written by four internationally renowned bioethicists and first published in 2000, was the first systematic treatment of the fundamental ethical issues underlying the application of genetic technologies to human beings. Probing the implications of the remarkable advances in genetics, the authors ask how should these affect our understanding of distributive justice, equality of opportunity, the rights and obligations as parents, the meaning of disability, and the role of the concept of human nature in ethical theory and practice. The (...) book offers a historical context to contemporary debate over the use of these technologies by examining the eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The questions raised in this book will be of interest to any reflective reader concerned about science and society and the rapid development of biotechnology, as well as to professionals in such areas as philosophy, bioethics, medical ethics, health management, law, and political science. (shrink)

This book, written by four internationally renowned bioethicists and first published in 2000, was the first systematic treatment of the fundamental ethical issues underlying the application of genetic technologies to human beings. Probing the implications of the remarkable advances in genetics, the authors ask how should these affect our understanding of distributive justice, equality of opportunity, the rights and obligations as parents, the meaning of disability, and the role of the concept of human nature in ethical theory and practice. The (...) book offers a historical context to contemporary debate over the use of these technologies by examining the eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The questions raised in this book will be of interest to any reflective reader concerned about science and society and the rapid development of biotechnology, as well as to professionals in such areas as philosophy, bioethics, medical ethics, health management, law, and political science. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to analyze the way in which Edmund Husserl deals with the problem of the constitution of image in his writings. The difference between a common thing and a work of art lies in the fact that the ‘thing’ is submitted as an object to perception, while the work of art is the product of the human capacity called imagination or fantasy (Phantasie). Therefore, the difference between perception (which is an objectifying act) and imagination (which (...) refers to a mental representation) is the fundamental difference Husserl operates with in his analysis of the phenomenological problem of the image building. I also want to show that Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of the image is fundamental in the understanding of the work of art (aesthetic phenomena including) and of its difference from a common thing. From the point of view of the History of Philosophy, the Husserlian analysis presupposes the overcoming of the classical opposition between subject and object, and the aesthetic experience is one of the (privileged) ways through which this overcoming can be achieved. (shrink)

Dans ce travail, je me propose d'examiner, en réfléchissant sur l'apophatisme, les modalités par lesquelles la philosophie entre ou peut entrer en dialogue avec la théologie. L'ouverture vers la pensée théologique est fondée sur le fait que l'apophatisme philosophique peut être compris comme une étape préparatoire à l'apophatisme théologique: le dernier niveau auquel le philosophe peut arriver dans sa méditation peut correspondre à la première étape de la pensée apophatique à un niveau theologique.

We are living in an unprecedented era of biomedical revolution. Medicine is remaking humans, and controversy surrounds such topics as abortion, artificial organs, brain circuitry, eugenics, euthanasia, and gene therapy. At the same time, medical advances are posing complex ethical problems for both patients and professionals. The most comprehensive and up-to-date collection of its kind, Case Studies in Biomedical Ethics: Decision-Making, Principles, and Cases explores fundamental ethical questions arising from real situations faced by health professionals, patients, and others. Featuring a (...) wide range of more than 100 case studies drawn from current events, court cases, and physicians' experiences, the book is divided into three parts. Part I presents a basic framework for ethical decision-making in healthcare, covering such issues as separating evaluative questions from questions of fact; distinguishing between ethical and nonethical evaluations; and identifying the source of ethical judgments. Expanding upon this framework, Part II explains the ethical principles: beneficence and nonmaleficence, justice, respect for autonomy, veracity, fidelity, and avoidance of killing. Parts I and II provide students with the background to analyze the ethical dilemmas presented in Part III, which features cases on a broad spectrum of issues including abortion, genetics, mental health, confidentiality, health insurance, experimentation on humans, the right to refuse treatment, and death and dying. Each case is accompanied by the authors' commentary, which guides students in considering the issues. Ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in biomedical ethics, bioethics, and medical ethics, Case Studies in Biomedical Ethics incorporates opening text boxes in each chapter that cross-reference relevant cases in other chapters. It also includes an appendix of important ethical codes and a glossary of key terms. (shrink)