Aesthetics and Culture

Despite the attention that the affective sphere has reached in the last decades, affectivity has generally been supposed to be a consequence of historical processes, not changing their direction. This article argues instead that affectivity can be a driving force in historical change, and it establishes the concept of “patheme” in relation to Michel Foucault’s “episteme”, Martin Heidegger’s “history of being” and the notion of regime in William Reddy, Jacques Rancière and Peter de Bolla. What is described as a pathemic (...) change took place in the thoroughgoing affective transformation of European culture during the 18th century, a cultural change that in Sweden was condensed into much more compressed shifts during the Gustav III’s reign (1772–92). This latter period is bestowed an investigation grounded in an understanding of historical processes that considers the interplay between layers such as power relations, social conditions and modes of scientific thought along with affectivity. The interplay is described in terms of polyphony. (shrink)

Vivian Maier’s street photography shows us a sudden transfiguration of reality, by which persons, scenes and things become faerical (neologism that also receives one of the senses of the French féerie , a play where supernatural, or, in this case, also infranatural creatures appear). We propose that this transfiguration is an apparition – a faerical epiphany (always earthy and fleshy) that follows two ways, one sunny and luminous, the other obscure and subterranean. We will examine Maier’s body, reflected in her (...) self-portraits in order to propose that her sight (therefore her photography) is a daemonic one, an intermediary between our and other worlds. -/- La fotografía callejera de Vivian Maier nos hace ver una súbita transfiguración de la realidad por la cual las personas, las escenas y las cosas devienen féricas , neologismo que nos permitimos para recoger del inglés el universo de las faeries y traducir a la vez uno de los sentidos del francés féerie , pieza de teatro en la que aparecen seres sobrenaturales (o, en este caso, infranaturales). Esa transfiguración, proponemos, es en rigor una verdadera aparición: una epifanía feérica (siempre carnal) que se despliega en dos direcciones, solar y subterránea. Nos detendremos en el cuerpo de Maier, reflejado en sus autorretratos, para proponer, finalmente, que su mirada es un daimon, intermediaria entre éste y otros mundos. (shrink)

It has been over two decades since Miranda Fricker labeled epistemic injustice, in which an agent is wronged in their capacity as a knower. The philosophical literature has proliferated with variants and related concepts. By considering cases in popular music, we argue that it is worth distinguishing a parallel phenomenon of art-interpretive injustice, in which an agent is wronged in their creative capacity as a possible artist. In section 1, we consider the prosecutorial use of rap lyrics in court as (...) a central case of this injustice. In section 2, we distinguish art-interpretive injustice from other categories already discussed in recent literature. In section 3, we discuss the relationship between genre discourse and identity prejudice. The case for recognizing the category of art-interpretive injustice is that it allows one to recognize a class of harms as being importantly related in ways that one would otherwise overlook. (shrink)

Why are cities looking more and more alike? Why do hipster coffee shops and clothing boutiques all share that same vibe? One answer is that gentrification represents an invasive force that forcibly re-models cities, from the top-down, to meet the monotone eye of the gentrifier. Gentrification brings in external developers and designers, who create new businesses which all meet that one monotonous aesthetic mold. But I suggest, using work from Quill Kukla and Jane Jacobs, that this top-down model of gentrification (...) is incomplete. Gentrification also incentivizes local residents to remake their own businesses and properties to meet that monotone eye. Gentrification is a pressure which pushes cities to meet a universalized and therefore homogenized taste, rather than letting diverse tastes flourish. (This piece originally published as part of a symposium on Quill Kukla's City Living.). (shrink)

The article considers the challenge Church poses by presenting a black man and a white woman together alone outdoors in a natural setting in the ante-bellum South. Comparisons with two earlier painters, Thomas Cole and Edward Hicks, lead to an identification of the imaginative landscape of Eden in Church’s painting of the Natural Bridge. This application of the story of Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden to the painting of the “Natural Bridge” suggests Church’s interest in the view of (...) the United States as a new Eden inhabited by the American Adam and Eve. The article suggests that Church wants the identity of the black man in the painting to be ambiguous but to include the possibility that it is a representation of Frederick Douglass giving a speech to a willing and interested female audience. Douglass made a famous speech to the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 and strongly supported the vote for the Declaration of Sentiments. Setting a declamation in front of the Natural Bridge in Virginia, which was owned by Thomas Jefferson and which became a very famous national landmark, suggests that the philosophical, theological, and political background to the painting is the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Sentiments. Church thus proposes that the United States will realize its potential when black men and women and white women have the same rights as white men. Church also relies on the general public’s interest in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and in particular on Hammatt Billings’ illustration of ”Little Eva reading the Bible to Uncle Tom in the arbor.” -/- The article puts this painting in the context of Church’s religious background and considers briefly the relationship between this painting and his earlier painting (1846) “Hooker and Company Journeying Westward through the Wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford in 1636.” A suggestion is made that Church both in this painting and in the “Natural Bridge” portrays right political action as having a religious foundation particularly in the Hebrew Bible. (shrink)

Las tesis que aquí se presentan han sido elaboradas a partir del análisis del ensayo de Jan Mukarovsky: “Función, norma y valor estético como hechos sociales”. (Cfr. Jan Mukarovsky. Escritos de estética y semiótica del arte, pp. 44-121). Las mismas han sido enriquecidas como resultado del debate que, generación tras generación, sobre ellas hemos sostenido con los estudiantes —la mayoría de ellos hoy egresados del posgrado en Estética y Arte de la BUAP—. Es un trabajo que lleva su huella y (...) ningún marco mejor para incluirlo que el de este libro de la serie Academia y Egresados de la Colección La Fuente. Sirva su publicación, entonces, como reconocimiento a la participación activa y creativa de todos ellos en esos siempre gratificantes cursos de Estética y Teoría del Arte III. (shrink)

Este es el cuarto volumen de La Fuente enmarcado en la serie Academia y Egresados. Los tres anteriores llevaron por título La estética y el arte más allá de la Academia (2012), La estética y el arte de regreso a laAcademia (2014) y La estética y el arte de la Academia a la Academia (2016).Cada uno de los cuatro libros de la serie ha sido, en buena medida, el producto de alguno de los encuentros de egresados que la Maestría en (...) Estética y Arte (MEyA) organiza periódicamente desde 2010, como parte de la labor de seguimiento de sus exalumnos. (shrink)

In this paper, we support a continuistic reading of Joseph Margolis' philosophy, defending the claim that in the 1970s, Margolis tackled the issues suggested by the analytic philosophy of art from an original theoretical perspective and through conceptual tools exceeding the analytical framework. Later that perspective turned out to be a radically pragmatist one, in which explicitly tolerant realistic claims and non-reductive naturalism converged with radical historicism and contextualism. We will endorse this thesis by focusing on two important concepts appearing (...) in Margolis' aesthetics essays from the late 1950s to the 1970s: the type-token pair and the notion of cultural emergence. On the one hand, we will emphasise Margolis' indebtedness to Peirce's first formulation of the type-token distinction, involving a strong interdependence between the two elements of the pair, as well as an anti-essentialistic, historicised, and contextualised notion of type. On the other hand, we will delve into Margolis' exploration of the concept of emergence and cultural emergence, involving a genuinely pluralistic view of ontology, as well as a non-reductive, continuistic form of naturalism. Finally, we will connect the criticism of the so-called closure of the physical world with Margolis' anti-autonomistic stance in defining artworks. (shrink)

Some major figures of early (1977-1984) Post-Punk, such as Joy Divison’s Ian Curtis or The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, were strongly influenced by existentialist themes they encountered in the writings of philosophers such as Camus or Nietzsche. Central among these themes is the modern struggle with nihilism. Nietzsche (at times) felt hopeful that some of us still possess the strength to see our modern disorientation as a creative opportunity and to (eventually) overcome the threat of nihilism: in this vein he (...) declares that when "we hear the news that ‘the old god is dead’” it is “as if a new dawn shone on us." By contrast, I argue that foundational Post-Punk artists express a post-Nietzschean, 20th century stance of succumbing to nihilism, an overwhelming experience of defeat and self-disgust. They write and sing from a profound sense that the modern degeneration diagnosed by Nietzsche has now reached unprecedented lows so that our “disgust at life”, our “exhaustion and… wish for the ‘end’…for being otherwise, being elsewhere” has become wholly inescapable. Nietzsche's new dawn has faded. (shrink)

Somaesthetics and Sport (ed. Andrew Edgar, Brill, 2022) is a multifaceted collection of essays: Richard Shusterman’s theoretical framework is robust enough to lend unity to the volume, but it mostly functions as a springboard for the individual papers, never suffocating their theoretical explorations or making the book repetitive or a boring read. The ten essays also communicate with one another through certain recurring notions such as agency, somatic awareness, the Suitsian account of games or the interdisciplinary intertwining of philosophical arguments (...) with the results of sport psychology and physiology. Displaying the various ways Shusterman’s somaesthetics can be used to further the philosophical analysis of the aesthetic experience of watching and doing sports, the volume fills a gap in the scholarship of the aesthetics of sport as well as in the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics. (shrink)

The paper explores Burke’s twofold solution to the paradox of negative emotions. His Philosophical Enquiry (1757/59) employs two models that stand on different anthropological principles: the Exercise Argument borrowed from authors like the Abbé Du Bos, guided by the principle of self-preservation, and the Sympathy Argument, propageted by notable men of lettres such as Lord Kames, ruled by the principle of sociability. Burke interlocks these two arguments through a teleologically-ordered physiology, in which the natural laws of the human body and (...) mind, secretly working in the depth of the nerve fibres, ensure both self-preservation and sociability. Utilizing both efficient and final causes throughout his Enquiry, Burke argues that the experiences of pain and terror – under certain conditions – are made agreeable (delight) by providence,so that the physiological mechanisms underlying these experiences could ensure the health and strenuousness of the nerve fibres amidst the corrupting pleasures of commercial society (Exercise Argument). Furthermore, due to the ambiguous character of this delight annexed to such experiences, they also function as exercises for our social passions (Sympathy Argument). Te 'egoistic' anthropological drive to remove the visceral uneasiness that dominates these experiences facilitates moral action when it is needed the most: when others in pain need our help. In accordance with the anthropocentric providentialism of the moderate Enlightenment, it is the design of the human frame that ensures the activities essential to our health (self-preservation) and moral conduct (sociability), a design that not only guarantees that pleasure, if exclusive and excessive, is 'inconvenient', and pain, if mitigated and harmless, is aesthetically agreeable, but also that our 'egoistic' drive to self-preservation ultimately improves sociability. (shrink)

In her new book Hooked, Rita Felski continues a project of criticizing literary criticism that she began in The Limits of Critique (2015).

L’inhabitable—the uninhabitable—was the bass note sounding through all of the work of Georges Perec, less a category than what categories failed to insure against: the depersonalizing, devitalizing, dark matter of modern histories and geographies, as scandalous as it was ubiquitous. At the end of Espèces d’espaces, Perec would parse “the uninhabitable” into a litany of alienating spaces produced by the very processes of industrial advancement and urban growth:L’inhabitable: la mer dépotoir, les côtes hérissées de fils de fer barbelés, la terre (...) pelée, la terre charnier, les monceaux de carcasses, les fleuves bourbiers, les villes nauséabondes […]L’inhabitable: l’étriqué... (shrink)

L’estiu de 1947, tres joves amics, Yves Klein, Claude Pascal i Armand Fernandez, s’asseuen a la platja de Niça. Encara no són artistes, no fan res i perden el temps omplint-lo de projectes i paraules. Prenen el sol, miren el mar i el cel de la Mediterrània, fan declaracions entusiastes sobre el Gran Art del futur i comparteixen la natura, com uns nens que es divideixen un regne imaginari. Klein pren el blau del cel que abasta amb la mirada, com (...) el color absolut i ideal de la pintura. -/- Yves le Monochrome dirà diverses vegades que, aquell matí d’estiu, va fer un viatge fantàstic, com si fos un astronauta conquerint l’espai, i va signar, com si es tractés d’un llenç pintat de blau, l’altre costat d’aquest bell cel sense núvols: la més bella i la més gran de les seves obres. Aquest cel blau pintat de blau és una obra immaterial i impossible, no feta per les mans de l’artista, amb colors, pinzells i teles, sinó explicada amb les seves paraules, mites i llegendes. (shrink)

I examine skeptical arguments about the constitutive nature of agency, with special attention to those of Elijah Millgram. I suggest that these arguments lead us not to the conclusion that agency has no such nature, but that it is an essentially contested kind in the same way that art is. I argue that this undermines traditional forms of constitutivism in metaethics but opens the door to a different way of pursuing the same program. Finally, I take issue with Millgram’s solution (...) to the problem of “logical aliens” and suggest an alternative based my analogy with art. (shrink)

The set of symbols of success is a set of cultural determinants of activity and their functioning is connected with the fundamental functions of culture as a system of historically developing supra-biological programs of life. The relevance of considering the symbolization of success in modern cinema is due to several factors. First, according to the majority of art historians and film theorists, cinema remains the leading, most widespread form of art throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. If we understand art (...) as a figurative comprehension of reality, its process and result, which is expressed in works, then the symbolization of success in cinema can be considered one of the most common practices for representing the determinants of activity through a figurative comprehension of reality. An analysis of this process in modern cinematography reveals the mechanisms of functioning of one of the elements of the totality of joint life programs as a segment of modern culture, limited by the boundaries of film communication. Secondly, the development of cinematography largely determines the fundamental changes in the culture of the 20th century. and there is no reason to believe that its influence is diminishing in recent times. Consequently, modern cinema remains one of the most important areas of cultural life, the study of which allows expanding scientific understanding of the patterns of changes taking place in culture. Thirdly, the development of information and communication technologies at the end of the 20th century. led to the fact that the value complexes of traditional cultures of different peoples of the world and expansive global neoplasms of a supranational nature (mass, elite, corporate, fandom, etc.) are simultaneously transmitted into the space of personal culture. Cinema in the new conditions only strengthened its position as the leading relay of value complexes. The special socio-forming qualities of cinema were noted both by its pioneers (L. Delluk, A. Dovzhenko, Ch. Chaplin, S. Eisenstein, etc.), scientists (B. Balash, V. A. Gottwald, E. M. Samuylenko, etc.) , and the ideologists of cultural revolutions at the beginning of the 20th century. G. Turner, in particular, drew attention to the fact that “to achieve control over the everyday representation of the world for a nation means to acquire strong power over the representation of individuals about themselves and about each other”, referring to the threat to the integrity and coherence of an individual’s understanding of the world under the pressure of foreign cultural domination over film communication. In this regard, the search for ways to relevantly measure the trends in the development of modern culture by marking in cinema the cultural determinants of activity, which are the symbols of success, seems to be an urgent theoretical and scientific-practical task, the solution of which expands the predictive potential of culture and its projective possibilities. (shrink)

This essay looks at the use of vernacular web culture by the new right. Specifically it focuses on how, in recent years, the new right appropriated a genre of web aesthetics known as ‘vapourwave’ to create the sub-genre of ‘fashwave’. Like vapourwave before it, fashwave taps into web cultural imaginary that is nostalgic for an imagined ‘cyberpunk’ past future — but while the former has been the subject of a monograph, very little has yet been written on the latter. Largely (...) ignored within mainstream popular culture, these ‘—wave’ aesthetics flourish on the ‘deep vernacular web’ of imageboards and web fora. As trivial as many fashwave memes may appear, this paper argues that they can be understood as the aesthetic manifestations of a contemporary renaissance in esoteric “traditionalism” — a discourse that posits an alternative theory of western culture, and which was influential on 20th century ideologues. The essay argues that fashwave transposes traditionalism’s fantasy of imagined past glories into an imagined future — one that is informed by the vapourwave’s distinctly vernacular nostalgia for masculine cyberpunk aesthetics. (shrink)

Abigail Lang’s La conversation transatlantique: Les échanges franco-américains en poésie depuis 1968 [Transatlantic Conversation: Franco-American Exchanges in Poetry Since 1968] is a book that needed to be written. Anyone reading and studying French and/or American poetry of the mid- to late twentieth century was keenly aware of the fruitfulness of the exchanges between French and American poets. This book archives, records, and documents the challenging theoretical, national, and literary questions that both French and American poetries of this period address. Lang’s (...) book is composed of an approximately thirty-page introduction, followed by chapters dedicated to Objectivist poetry, the “community of poets,” and... (shrink)

This paper introduces the reconciliation as well as an analysis of the divide between contemporary and classical aesthetics in architecture. The analysis outlines the segmentation as one of the standards rather than of aesthetic appeal, concluding with a proposal for the reconciliation by means of integrating modern and contemporary art into today’s architecture. This reconciliation would not only serve as an artistic take on architecture but also raise awareness of the subjectivity of beauty in architecture. In the conclusion of this (...) paper, there are highlighted illustrations demonstrating the picturesque outcome of using this proposed method of integration. (shrink)

3500 word interview with Tom Cochrane discussing his philosophical background, the nature of aesthetic value, the benefits of art, and aestheticism.

This paper sketches some elements that define the pedagogical significance of play for the construction and the conservation of a democratic community. Starting from the main principles of Dewey's pedagogy, the discourse focuses on play, intended as the philosophic category of the ludic, first, in connection to doing and experience, two fundamental notions of Dewey’s thought and his philosophy of education; then, it moves towards the relationship between play and work to come, finally, to play in connection to the social (...) and political sphere. Along this path, it will be highlighted the central place occupied by the aesthetic side and affective element, concentrated especially in the definition of emotion given by Dewey, in order to show the link that connects play and democracy. (shrink)

This is an exciting, but difficult, season for the practice of medicine. The effects of corporate transformation on the practice are part of a larger cultural crisis. The arena of medicine is a proving ground for our responses to this crisis, because it is so intimately and immediately related to our bodies. Our answers to contemporary challenges in the practice of medicine will depend on, and probably shape, our answers to philosophical questions at the core of our existence: How do (...) we inhabit our unpredictable and limited lives in a way that allows us to flourish, and how can the deep practice of medicine help? -/- Time is the condition for all human experience, but for mortals like us, time is limited. This limit gives our lives the arc of a story, with a beginning, middle, and end. Unfortunately, many of us in the modern world avoid thinking about limits in our lives—especially the limit on our time called death. The practice of medicine serves people who are facing limits in their lives brought on by the threats of disease and death. Because good doctoring is so intimately related to the complex impact these threats have on our limited lives, this book argues that the significance and meaning of the practice of medicine is inextricably bound to existence in time. (shrink)

We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic (...) porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized. (shrink)

Este artículo examina el papel del grupo de artistas abstractos Forma 1 en relación con la política cultural del Partido Comunista Italiano durante la posguerra, como ejemplo de los intentos de superar la dicotomía establecida en Italia entre arte abstracto y realismo socialista y producir una alternativa a la confrontación entre ambos discursos estéticos. Mientras los artistas realistas socialistas subrayaban la necesidad de expresar contenidos políticos explícitos con un estilo que asegurase su máxima legibilidad para una audiencia de masas, los (...) artistas de Forma 1 argumentaban que la abstracción significaba una crítica de la representación pictórica que podía contribuir a la crítica de la ideología burguesa, armonizando de este modo el marxismo con los desarrollos artísticos más avanzados. El PCI, por su parte, basaba su política artística en amplias alianzas de artistas e intelectuales antifascistas, que cada vez eran más difíciles de mantener en el clima de creciente confrontación política y cultural que siguió a la II Guerra Mundial. (shrink)

Memorialization in the form of the architectural statue can suggest that our stance towards the past is concrete while memorials in the form of repeated social activity represent reconciliation with the past as a continual process. Enacted memorials suggest that reconciliation with the past is not itself a thing of the past. Each generation must grapple with its inherited memories, guilt, and grief and self-consciously take its own stance towards that which came before it. This article considers Dominik Smole’s post (...) World War II rewrite of Antigona as an enacted memorial within the context of socialist Yugoslavia. The practice of restaging Antigona in Slovenia may be seen as the practice of meta-memorialization, which routinely returns to the past while openly weighing the dangers of awakening the unburied dead against the dangers of letting the unaddressed conflicts of the past sleep. (shrink)

While the Vienna Circle had virtually no impact on the Czech-speaking philosophical community during the 1930s, one can find a curious meeting point in the field of theory of architecture. There is now a growing literature on Otto Neurath as a theorist of architecture and urbanism, who emphasized the social aspects of modern building and approached architecture from his idiosyncratic viewpoint of Marxism interpreted as a physicalistic social science. It is less well known that a young Czech architecture critic and (...) theorist, Karel Teige, cultivated strikingly similar views during the same period—from 1920s to 1930s—albeit without any knowledge of Neurath’s thought in particular, or for that matter the Vienna Circle in general. The chapter reveals similarities as well as differences between Neurath and Teige on Marxism, science and architecture, and the Bauhaus, as well as a discussion of the relations of both to the contemporaries, most importantly Adolf Loos, Josef Frank and Hannes Meyer. (shrink)

In Hold It Against Me, Jennifer Doyle explores the relationship between difficulty and emotion in contemporary art, treating emotion as an artist's medium. She encourages readers to examine the ways in which works of art challenge how we experience not only the artist's feelings, but our own. Discussing performance art, painting, and photography, Doyle provides new perspectives on artists including Ron Athey, Aliza Shvarts, Thomas Eakins, James Luna, Carrie Mae Weems, and David Wojnarowicz. Confronting the challenge of writing about difficult (...) works of art, she shows how these artists work with feelings as a means to question our assumptions about identity, intimacy, and expression. They deploy the complexity of emotion to measure the weight of history, and to deepen our sense of where and how politics happens in contemporary art. Doyle explores ideologies of emotion and how emotion circulates in and around art. Throughout, she gives readers welcoming points of entry into artworks that they may at first find off-putting or confrontational. Doyle offers new insight into how the discourse of controversy serves to shut down discussion about this side of contemporary art practice, and counters with a critical language that allows the reader to accept emotional intensity in order to learn from it. (shrink)

An important new perspective on the ways outsiders negotiate mainstream culture. -/- There is more to identity than identifying with one’s culture or standing solidly against it. José Esteban Muñoz looks at how those outside the racial and sexual mainstream negotiate majority culture—not by aligning themselves with or against exclusionary works but rather by transforming these works for their own cultural purposes. Muñoz calls this process “disidentification,” and through a study of its workings, he develops a new perspective on minority (...) performance, survival, and activism. (shrink)

In this essay I take the opportunity to recast some insights from my extensive study over the last decade of Wittgenstein’s remarks on music into a coherent and concise portrayal of Wittgenstein’s philosophical underpinning and upshots pertaining to his perception of the modern music scene in interwar Austria. The gist of the present essay is to show that, for better or for worse, Wittgenstein’s personal taste in music was powered by philosophical reasoning, which was organic to his philosophical development, and (...) that ultimately his philosophical attitude to the music scene of interwar Austria manifests a deeply probing gradation. I are argue that we can distinguish between four varieties of the absurd in the music of interwar Austria, according to Wittgenstein. First is the nonsensical absurd of the incapability of seeing that the nonsensicality of the form of progress is incomprehensible. This category pertains to music which straightforwardly tries to emulate the various maxims and formulations derived from the form of progress. Such nonsensically absurd music typifies progressive Romantic composers such as Richard Strauss, Max Reger, and the early Arnold Schoenberg. Second is the vacuous absurd of the incapability of seeing what the form of progress renders incomprehensible. This category pertains to music which denounces the predominantly nonsensical maxims and formulations of modernity, thus destining itself to keeping on groping for something which it cannot express. Such vacuously absurd music is best exemplified, in Wittgenstein’s mind, by Josef Labor. Third is the philosophical absurd of rendering what is incomprehensible (from the perspective of a cultured person) comprehensible within the same purview. For Wittgenstein, Mahler’s music betokens such incommensurability, evoking a relativist philosophical puzzle: whether cultural progress is real, and it is us who have been left behind, or whether culture has really been vanquished, and we are the only ones left to notice it. The very thought of an artwork of “a totally different sort” remains invariably hypothetical. Fourth is the praxeological absurd of giving rise to an auxiliary, praxeologically dislodged musical language, replacing the transparency of human gesture with exact rules of comprehensibility. From Wittgenstein’s perspective, the shunning of the expanse of lived experience in a musical language fit for the meaning-blind would be the inglorious spot assigned to Arnold Schoenberg’s vision of the music of the future. (shrink)

It has been insufficiently remarked that Murdoch deems “Kant’s ethical theory” to be “one of the most beautiful and exciting things in the whole of philosophy” in her 1959 essay “The Sublime and the Good”. Murdoch specifically has in mind the connection between Kant’s ethics and his theory of the sublime, which runs via the moral feeling of respect (Achtung). The chapter examines Murdoch’s interest in Kant on this point as a way to tease out the range of issues that (...) complicate Kant’s significance for the development of Murdoch’s distinctive conception of ethics as it is articulated in _The Sovereignty of Good_ and earlier essays. It focuses on her particular concerns about the moral dangers of consolation, and why this led her to propose reworking the Kantian theory of the sublime as a theory of art, and specifically of tragedy. (shrink)

Bolivian writer Victor Hugo Viscarra is a constant figure on whom a good number of readers have focused their attention. Review after review of his work has been appearing in the Bolivian press and, in that sense, readers have taken his writings with a blind acceptance omitting in such a way a position that goes beyond the literary frontier. The existence of any work on Viscarra’s role as a thinker, his views on politics, the customs of society itself or the (...) imaginaries and identities in Bolivian territory is doubtful. This work aims, on the one hand, to take a critical tour of his thought from a philosophical view (particularly inspired by Nietzsche) and, on the other hand, to try to place the figure of Viscarra next to the virtues of genius and as a “critic of society”. What do Víctor Hugo Viscarra’s ideas express? Is it possible to find in your writings a critique of the way of thinking, living and acting of Bolivian society, in particular to today’s society? In short, does Viscarra’s thinking diagnose the malaise of society at that time? Answering these questions is the intention of this work. (shrink)

Starting with a few simple questions about living well and where movement originates from this essay turns into a vast map of intricate relations revolving around the notion of grace. By developing the argument from a historical perspective it quickly becomes clear that grace relies on the specific qualities of figuration and how the figure appears in what is termed “the gap between habit and inhabitation.” This article is a shorter version of the introductory chapter to my “Grace and Gravity: (...) Architectures of the Figure” (Bloomsbury, 2020). (shrink)

El presente libro recopila algunas de las mejores investigaciones presentadas en el “IX Coloquio Internacional de Estética y Arte” en La Habana en diciembre del 2015, redactadas ahora a modo de artículos. La estética y el arte a debate II está compuesto por 27 artículos y se encuentra dividido en cinco bloques que, de alguna manera, reflejan las temáticas centrales alrededor de las cuales giró el encuentro del 2015. Los bloques temáticos son: 1 Arte, estética y política, 2 Cine y (...) medios audiovisuales, 3 Nuevas prácticas artísticas, 4 Arte y cuerpo y 5 Miradas clásicas. (shrink)

Los materiales que integran este libro provienen del II Encuentro de Egresados realizado en el verano de 2012 por la Maestría en Estética y Arte de la BUAP. Regresaban a su academia los que alguna vez fueron sus estudiantes. Venían con el propósito de reencontrarse con los avances investigativos de sus profesores y a traer ellos mismos los resultados de la continuidad de su trabajo de investigación. Algunos dejaron también en el encuentro una muestra de su arte. El ciclo de (...) conferencias impartido por profesores de la planta académica y por varios invitados encuentra su plasmación en la primera parte del libro intitulada “Desde la academia”. “De regreso a la academia”, la segunda parte, incluye trabajos que los egresados de la MEyA presentaron con sus avances investigativos posteriores a su egreso del programa. La tercera parte muestra el Catálogo de las obras que seis de los egresados-artistas presentaron en la exposición de artes plásticas “En las pupilas del que regresa”. (shrink)

El artículo busca acercarse a la comprensión de los rasgos particulares de los valores estéticos, fundamentalmente en las obras de arte. Para ello parte de la premisa de que el valor estético no es en sí mismo un atributo del objeto artístico, ni el resultado exclusivo de la plasmación en él de cierto ideal estético. Para que un objeto sea portador de valor estético ha de funcionar precisamente como tal, lo cual presupone la presencia y participación de otros sujetos que (...) así lo perciban y un contexto social que favorezca esa percepción. Asociar el valor estético a la función social del objeto, particularmente a su capacidad de enriquecer espiritualmente a su público receptor, permite comprenderlo dinámicamente y resolver muchas dificultades generadas por diferentes concepciones unilaterales del valor artístico. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the different understandings of “harmony”, which are rooted in ancient Greek and Chinese thought, can be recapitulated in the name of “dialectic harmony” and “ambiguous harmony” regarding the representation of the beautiful. The different understandings of the concept of harmony lead to at least two kinds of aesthetic value as well as ideality – harmony in conciliation and harmony in diversity. Through an explication of the original meaning and relation between the concept of harmony (...) and beauty, we can learn more about the cosmo-metaphysical origins in Western and Eastern aesthetics, with which we may gain insights for future aesthetics discourse. (shrink)

The idea of a new aestheticism is now explicit in both philosophical aesthetics and cultural theory with the publication of Gary Iseminger's The Aesthetic Function of Art and an anthology of essays edited by John Joughin and Simon Malpas critiquing the anti-aestheticism of literary theory. Both are significant in marking a wider trend reacting to, broadly speaking, intellectualised and historicised accounts of art, refocusing on the idea of appreciation itself, and working away from the emphasis on ideology and disregard for (...) the particularity of works in, especially, literary theory. This broader context also includes renewed debates running within philosophical aesthetics about non-perceptual aesthetic properties and the aesthetic experience of conceptual artworks, and about beauty in art, considerations that have engaged two philosophers normally identified by their commitment to art theoretical and historical (and by extension, non-aesthetic) accounts of artistic making and viewing, namely Noël Carroll and Arthur Danto. So Carroll acknowledges that what's at stake is an aesthetic theory of art that is potentially 'back in business', while Danto's 'surprising' theoretic re-engagement with the concept of beauty has been noted by Diarmuid Costello. (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)

The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition touches on all areas of artistic activity, including poetry, painting, calligraphy, architecture, and the "art of living." Right government, the ideal human being, and the path to spiritual transcendence all come under the provenance of aesthetic thought. According to Li this was the case from early Confucian explanations of poetry as that which gives expression to intent, through Zhuangzi’s artistic depictions of the ideal personality who discerns the natural way of things and lives according to it, (...) to Chan Buddhist-inspired notions that nature and words can come together to yield insight and enlightenment. In this enduring and stimulating work, Li demonstrates conclusively the fundamental role of aesthetics in the development of the cultural and psychological structures in Chinese culture that define "humanity.". (shrink)

This book discusses how China’s transformations in the last century have shaped its arts and its philosophical aesthetics. For instance, how have political, economic and cultural changes shaped its aesthetic developments? Further, how have its long-standing beliefs and traditions clashed with modernizing desires and forces, and how have these changes materialized in artistic manifestations? In addition to answering these questions, this book also brings Chinese philosophical concepts on aesthetics into dialogue with those of the West, making an important contribution to (...) the fields of art, comparative aesthetics and philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT -/- One increasingly reads about different aspects of the death of philosophy. One reason or cause being its institutionalization, as just another academic discipline, while research universities demand their tenured professionals to produve endless streams of really irrelevant publications, resulting in dealing with more detailed, microscopic issues and fabricated ‘problems’. The professionalization of philosophers created other problems of this socio-cultural practice. The dying out of philosophy is not only cased by external social and cultural factors, but also by internal (...) factors such as its methods and those concerning its subject-matter. I have explored the above in the context of meta-philosophy. In the process I also investigated the nature, the subject-matter and theories of philosophy of art, aesthetics and theory of art. It is mostly about these explorations of art that the contents of this piece is concerned with. All this is an exercise with words as the verbal means are the traditional instruments of doing philosophy. These tools not only enable the doing of philosophy but also creates limitations and limits to philosophizing. This will remain the case until the discourse develops other (for example visual, auditory, computational, etc) means to develop its many levelled and multi-dimensional practice - and in the process questions and overcomes its anthropo-centered bias. (shrink)

Explores the failure of analytic aesthetics to examine the question of the capacity of art to transcend time, and its own commitment – seldom explicitly acknowledged – to the assumption that this capacity functions through the traditional, but no longer viable, notion of timelessness inherited from Enlightenment aesthetics.

Art is universal across cultures. Yet, it is biologically expensive because of the energy expended and reduced vigilance. Why do humans make and contemplate it? This paper advances a thesis about the psychological origins of perceptual art. First, it delineates the aspects of art that need explaining: not just why it is attractive, but why fine execution and form—which have to do with how the attraction is achieved—matter over and above attractiveness. Second, it states certain constraints: we need to explain (...) pleasure in contemplation, not value extracted from the object by activities other than contemplation. The theory is that aesthetic pleasure is a motivation for learning skills. Two forms of pleasure are postulated. The first accompanies the spontaneous activity necessary for learning a more or less universal basic level of skill. The second accompanies highly skilled activity. This second kind of pleasure is specific to art as such. (shrink)