In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 39.4 (2005) 119-131 [Access article in PDF] New Stages: Challenges for Teaching the Aesthetics of Drama Online Michael Anderson Introduction The history of drama education can be read as a series of arguments over dichotomies: process and product, theatre and classroom, artist and teacher, and so forth.1 One of the more recent discussions has focused on technology versus live classroom drama.2 At the (...) heart of these discussions is an attempt to define the aesthetic dimensions of the subject. In one sense, these are fruitful discussions to have as they reflect the dynamism of a live art form in schools. There seems, however, to be a tendency for these debates to entrench themselves into ideological positions. In this paper, I would like to promote the idea that we do not have to develop oppositions or dichotomies before finding that the middle ground provides the richest experiences for drama students. I would like to propose that we see these emerging technologies as providing yet other (albeit different) stages upon which the drama aesthetic can be played.3 Aesthetics and Drama Education Drama education has had an uneasy and often contentious relationship with discussions around aesthetics. Often the drama education community has split along two lines—those who value process and those who value product.4 Work by drama educators such as Judith McLean has demonstrated the centrality of the understanding of the aesthetic and the importance of putting an aesthetic understanding at the center of teaching and learning in drama.5 Her development of an Aesthetic Framework provides teachers with an approach for understanding the position of aesthetics within drama teaching and learning that bypasses the fruitless dichotomies [End Page 119] of process versus product. As most now agree, the drama classroom has a place for both process and product.6 In both, we can find important aesthetic features of drama education. The Challenge of Emerging Technologies and Drama Education Having weathered the dichotomies of the past, there are now fresh challenges to the understanding of drama and aesthetics. The prevalence of and pressure for integration of new technologies in the drama classroom are also challenging drama educators to incorporate technology within the drama aesthetic. The ubiquity of technology that relates to drama education is facing teachers with serious challenges to engage with a dramatic aesthetic in classrooms. Perhaps the most stunning challenge is the exposure and experience twenty-first-century children have to rapidly changing technologies. As Morris explains, students are exposed to more drama in settings other than classrooms and theatres: For most Australian children, experience of drama is less likely to be through live performance than through screen-based media such as television, film, videos, video games, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and interactive web-based games. And their experience of live performance is most likely to be shaped by the use of technology for design elements such as set, lighting and sound.7This is a compelling and imminent challenge. If drama educators cannot or will not find ways to work with technology, students will find other places to express their creativity outside the drama classroom. Added to the pressure from students who have grown up with these technologies, there is increasing pressure from curriculum developers and school systems to integrate technology into teaching. Aesthetics, Technology, and Curriculum: An Evolving Relationship All authorities and educational policy bodies in Australia are mandating integration of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) into drama curriculum. Recently, the New South Wales (NSW) Board of Studies mandated ICT as an area of "cross curriculum content," necessitating its inclusion in all Years 7-10 syllabi (which include all of the arts).8 For instance, the Year 7-10 drama syllabus states "... teachers should allow students the opportunity to explore different information communication technologies in their class work."9Recent studies have demonstrated mixed rates of participation and enthusiasm for the introduction of ICT in Australia and internationally. In the Australian study, half the respondents surveyed were not using ICT of any kind in their drama education.10 A... (shrink)

What is suspense, and why do we feel it? These questions are at the heart of the first part of this study. It develops and defends the ‘imminence theory of suspense’ – the view that suspense arises in situations that are structurally defined by something essential being imminent. Next, the study utilizes this theory as an interpretative key to Søren Kierkegaard’s seminal work ‘Frygt og Bæven’. FB is an exploration of what it means to take the story of Abraham (...) and Isaac as a paradigmatic example of faith. The study argues that a core aspect of how Kierkegaard conceptualizes faith through the figure of Abraham is suspense. The argument is built upon the observation that to have faith is to be a hero. To be hero means to belong to a story. Stories manifests different conceptualizations of time. Abraham’s story, as FB frames it, is radically geared towards something imminent – it is characterized by an essential relation of suspense. The study then explores how suspense not only forms part of the conceptualization of faith, but is also part of how this conceptualization is communicated. Thus, the study argues that there exists a symmetry of suspense between the rhetorical and the conceptual levels of the text. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Complexities of Aesthetic Experience:Response to JohnstonRichard J. ShustermanI am grateful for this opportunity to clarify my views on aesthetic experience and somaesthetics that Scott Johnston discusses. Combining two very vague and contested ideas ("experience" and "the aesthetic"), the concept of aesthetic experience is an extremely ambiguous notion some of whose principal different conceptions I have carefully tried to outline.1 It is therefore rash for Johnston to presume that what (...) I mean by aesthetic experience is simply "the [Deweyan] sort of experience that connotes an immediate, qualitative whole" that is "consummatory." Though I deeply appreciate John Dewey's view, I have also criticized it on several counts. I insist, for example, on the existence and value of aesthetic experiences of fragmentation and rupture that have neither the unity of coherence nor that of completion that Dewey demands. In fact, as I have often pointed out, part of my interest in rap music was connected to its aesthetic of fragmentation.2Dewey and I both affirm (in sometimes different ways) some sort of primacy of the immediate in aesthetic experience. But primacy and immediacy are polysemic notions whose meaning is very context-dependent and shifting. Insufficient attention to these multiple meanings and contexts seems to confuse some of Johnston's discussion and leads to his puzzlement about how I can emphasize both immediacy and reflection and whether I consistently accord primacy to the former. The first step toward clarifying matters is to note that affirming immediacy in aesthetic experience is not to deny two important dimensions in which aesthetic experience is importantly mediated. First, aesthetic experiences are rarely, if ever, immediate in the sense of being instantaneous; they require some time of processing. Even with allegedly nontemporal arts such as painting (and even with paintings that do not demand complex decoding), there is, in aesthetic experience, a process of focusing on the work, of reacting to it, and of deepening appreciation or absorption. Second, at least in the arts, an aesthetic experience should be mediated by some prior (typically extensive) training in what is necessary to understand and appreciate such art. My aesthetic experience of French poetry required a sustained training in French language, literature, and culture, a training that required reflective thinking.However, despite these crucial mediations, aesthetic experience is usefully characterized as distinctively immediate in that its meanings and values are perceived and savored directly in our experience of the work rather than being only revealed, understood, or appreciated at a later time. I appreciate [End Page 109] the poetry of Baudelaire as I hear or read it, and not only after it is explained to me or after I subsequently reflect on or recollect this poetic experience. Aesthetic experience is immediate in the sense of being immediately enjoyed and valued rather than being an experience in which gratification and appreciation is deferred to a later time. An aesthetic experience of climbing a mountain (which obviously takes time and requires some training) means enjoying the climb while one is climbing, not when one's enjoyment is postponed till one has reached the summit and enjoys its view. When I emphasize the immediacy of aesthetic experience, I am celebrating this character of direct, undeferred, imminent appreciation or sense of value, which is what makes such experience enjoyed or valued for its own sake.3 Such immediate enjoyment is all that is usefully meant by saying that aesthetic experience is appreciated intrinsically or as an end in itself rather than a mere means to some further end, even though there are obviously many good ends to which aesthetic experience can usefully serve as means.This sense of immediacy — of direct, undeferred appreciation of meaning, enjoyment, and value — does not deny a role for reflection. Not only can prior reflection prepare the way for immediate enjoyment but reflection itself offers its own aesthetic pleasures of immediacy. We can enjoy the process of reasoning, speculating, interpreting in a direct or immediate way without postponing our satisfaction to a subsequent appreciation of the results of our reflective process, that is, when we (meta-)reflect, at a later time, on what that initial reflective experience has engendered. Moreover, subsequent reflection on an... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:470 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of fundamental notions (e.g.,"creator" and "demiurge") are omnipresent. Sometimes even a confusion happens of Anaxagoras with Democritus when the "atom" is ascribed to Anaxagoras (p. 48). And the author does not seem to feel the fatal inadequacy of merely second-hand knowledge. While he in longura et latum argues with Aristotelian presentations and misrepresentations of Anaxagorean tenets, there is good reason for the suspicion that he (...) might never have read even one authentic sentence written by Anaxagoras himself. For those interested in general cultural history, this book, the religious diatribe of a modem Zoroastrian believer, is very worthwhile reading. For the historian of philosophy, itis of rather modest value. P-~LIX M. CLEVE New School for Social Research New York City The Esthetics of the Middle Ages. By Edgar De Bruyne. Trans. Eileen B. Hennessy. (New York: Frederick Uugar, 1969. Pp. viii+232. $6.50) This book has a very complex character. It is the English translation of a French work, L'Esth~tique du moyen dge,I which, in turn, is a one-volume abridged version by Edgar De Bruyne of his own original three-volume work, I~tudes d'Esth~tique M~di~vale.2 Thus, one may evaluate this book either as a translation or, presupposing the faithfulness and correctness of the translation itself,as a relatively short work by E. De Bruyne, or else in its relation to or as compared with the original three-volume work. I will confine myself here to the lattertwo considerations.3 First, considering this book in comparison with the three-volume original work, one of the principal writings of De Bruyne and one of the most significant contemporary contributions to the history of medieval aesthetics, we can find both quantitative and qualitative differences between the original work and its abridged version. The quantitative difference is considerable. While the abridged work, at least in its English translation, is less than a quarter of a thousand pages in length, the original work includes altogether 1,224 pages 4 and is thus more than five times longer than thc translated abridged version of it. The qualitative or methodological difference is at least equally great. In the original work, each of the three volumes deals primarily with the various medieval authors of aesthetic works and doctrines in a chronological order.5 In contrast, the contents of the translated abridged version follow a topical arrangement with chronology playing only a subordinate role, if any at all, within Louvain. L'InstitutSupdrieur de Philosophic, 1947. Brugge: De Tempel, 1946. s I have had no access to the abridged French original. 9 Vol. I, xiv+370; II, x-{-420; III,x-F400. 9 VoL I: Boethius to Erigena; II. "L'l~poque Romane," from the Carolingian period to the schools of Chartres and St. Victor; and Ill:the thirteenthcentury, from St. Bernard to Duns Scotus. BOOK REVIEWS 471 each topic. The six chapters are entitled, "'The Sources," "The Fundamental Principles," "Various Esthetic Systems," "The Esthetic Experience," "Art," and "The Fine Arts." To this may be added a third difference that is the result of the first two differences. There is virtually neither any direct quotation from any author on any topic, nor a~y direct reference to texts in the works of medieval authors mentioned or discussed. While the quantitative difference in itself is understandable, since only a scholar specializing in this field would read over 1,200 pages on medieval aesthetics, and while the qualitative difference is perfectly justified in terms of an intelligent summary, the absence especially of direct references to discussed texts is, as will be shown below, deeply regxettable. So much for the relative consideration of this translated abridged work. Let us next consider the abridged work in itself in the form of a positive and a negative evaluation. Second, despite the relative brevity of the work, one finds this book extremely valuable both in terms of the quantity and the quality of the data it contains. As to quantity, De Bruyne manages to compress an enormous amount of information about medieval aesthetic thought into this book. The significance of this, to confine ourselves at this point only... (shrink)

This book is an introduction to the esthetics of music. Aesthetics, which were of prime importance in thinking about music in the nineteenth century, are today sometimes suspected of being idle speculation. Yet judgments about music and every sort of musical activity are based on aesthetic presuppositions. Carl Dahlhaus gives an account of developments in the aesthetics of music from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. He combines a historical and systematic approach. Central themes in music are grouped together to (...) illustrate both the historical course of events and a systematic unity of the essential elements in the aesthetics of music. For this edition, the late Carl Dahlhaus provided an annotated bibliography. William Austin has added books for the English-speaking reader, and has also supplied notes to the text to help the student. (shrink)

We live in a period of scientific and technological progress, when science is becoming a direct productive force; and in recent decades, the number of workers in the sciences has shown an extraordinary growth, in both absolute and relative terms. These truths are undeniable. Simply to state them does not, however, provide answers to questions about the essence of science and its role in modern society. These questions are important and timely precisely by virtue of these truths.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:470 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of fundamental notions (e.g.,"creator" and "demiurge") are omnipresent. Sometimes even a confusion happens of Anaxagoras with Democritus when the "atom" is ascribed to Anaxagoras (p. 48). And the author does not seem to feel the fatal inadequacy of merely second-hand knowledge. While he in longura et latum argues with Aristotelian presentations and misrepresentations of Anaxagorean tenets, there is good reason for the suspicion that he (...) might never have read even one authentic sentence written by Anaxagoras himself. For those interested in general cultural history, this book, the religious diatribe of a modem Zoroastrian believer, is very worthwhile reading. For the historian of philosophy, itis of rather modest value. P-~LIX M. CLEVE New School for Social Research New York City The Esthetics of the Middle Ages. By Edgar De Bruyne. Trans. Eileen B. Hennessy. (New York: Frederick Uugar, 1969. Pp. viii+232. $6.50) This book has a very complex character. It is the English translation of a French work, L'Esth~tique du moyen dge,I which, in turn, is a one-volume abridged version by Edgar De Bruyne of his own original three-volume work, I~tudes d'Esth~tique M~di~vale.2 Thus, one may evaluate this book either as a translation or, presupposing the faithfulness and correctness of the translation itself,as a relatively short work by E. De Bruyne, or else in its relation to or as compared with the original three-volume work. I will confine myself here to the lattertwo considerations.3 First, considering this book in comparison with the three-volume original work, one of the principal writings of De Bruyne and one of the most significant contemporary contributions to the history of medieval aesthetics, we can find both quantitative and qualitative differences between the original work and its abridged version. The quantitative difference is considerable. While the abridged work, at least in its English translation, is less than a quarter of a thousand pages in length, the original work includes altogether 1,224 pages 4 and is thus more than five times longer than thc translated abridged version of it. The qualitative or methodological difference is at least equally great. In the original work, each of the three volumes deals primarily with the various medieval authors of aesthetic works and doctrines in a chronological order.5 In contrast, the contents of the translated abridged version follow a topical arrangement with chronology playing only a subordinate role, if any at all, within Louvain. L'InstitutSupdrieur de Philosophic, 1947. Brugge: De Tempel, 1946. s I have had no access to the abridged French original. 9 Vol. I, xiv+370; II, x-{-420; III,x-F400. 9 VoL I: Boethius to Erigena; II. "L'l~poque Romane," from the Carolingian period to the schools of Chartres and St. Victor; and Ill:the thirteenthcentury, from St. Bernard to Duns Scotus. BOOK REVIEWS 471 each topic. The six chapters are entitled, "'The Sources," "The Fundamental Principles," "Various Esthetic Systems," "The Esthetic Experience," "Art," and "The Fine Arts." To this may be added a third difference that is the result of the first two differences. There is virtually neither any direct quotation from any author on any topic, nor a~y direct reference to texts in the works of medieval authors mentioned or discussed. While the quantitative difference in itself is understandable, since only a scholar specializing in this field would read over 1,200 pages on medieval aesthetics, and while the qualitative difference is perfectly justified in terms of an intelligent summary, the absence especially of direct references to discussed texts is, as will be shown below, deeply regxettable. So much for the relative consideration of this translated abridged work. Let us next consider the abridged work in itself in the form of a positive and a negative evaluation. Second, despite the relative brevity of the work, one finds this book extremely valuable both in terms of the quantity and the quality of the data it contains. As to quantity, De Bruyne manages to compress an enormous amount of information about medieval aesthetic thought into this book. The significance of this, to confine ourselves at this point only... (shrink)

The theory of beauty has always rested on the representation of the infinite, understood in its finite expression and perceptible through the senses. The relationship of beauty to truth, of art to science, is inevitably modified with the new way of treating the infinite in the modern conception of the world. Non-classical science works with the notions of “infinitely large” and “infinitely small,” modifying their meanings in terms of experimental observations. We put these words in quotation marks because the Whole (...) may be considered as finite or infinite according to the angle from which it is viewed: the “infinitely small” only becomes so in determined circumstances, for example, when we consider the extended and discrete elements of space and time in a macroscopic approximation, as infinitely small elements of perpetual motion. Modern science studies these two poles of being—the Whole and its parts—in their interaction, admitting the dependence of macroscopic and even cosmic processes with regard to the processes being created in infinitely small spheres (or, according to another interpretation, finite but extremely small). However, as characteristic of our time as these concepts are—most often hypothetical—they nonetheless express a very old historical tradition that contemporary retrospection, turned toward classical science and the past of science in general, allows us to discern very clearly. All the culture of the past was dominated by the principle of the authority of the Whole over its parts. In peripatetic cosmology and physics, individual processes depended on the cosmic harmony of the center and frontiers of the universe, on the spheres and places toward which bodies tend. This authority of the general law, of universal harmony, of the system hinging on individual processes, is confirmed in Aristotle's Physics, but not only there: we find it in almost all the thinkers of antiquity. On the plane of general logic, it received expression in the Hegelian concept of the true infinite, a concept constituting to a high degree the philosophical equivalent of classical science. In Hegel's time, this last was already drawing away somewhat from the idea of an absolute and strict subordination of elementary processes to integrating systems and general laws, laws being realized through the probability of microprocesses, thus statistical laws, and whose exact application ignored individual acts, for example, the mechanism of molecules in thermodynamics. The statistical theory of heat has rendered continual a discrete microcosm—for the movement of individual molecules it substituted the average speed of the molecules—and continual laws became supreme points determining macroscopic processes. These laws had a differential nature. In other words, they prescribed the defined relationships between the infinitely small increases in size. Also, the schema of the classic law consisted in defining infinitely small processes by an infinitely large integral legality because of the number of processes. The infinitely true of Hegel is the actual infinite being realized in each of its finite elements; it is the subjection of the finite element to the infinite. (shrink)

En este artículo se hace una reflexión sobre el arte latinoamericano como contribución al conocimiento de la cultura continental, más un breve recuento de cara al Bicentenario sobre los enigmas vacíos de las nuevas expresiones y el fenómeno de la postproducción vinculado al planteamiento de Néstor García Canclini sobre La sociedad sin relato, antropología y estética de la inminencia. En las artes y en las expresiones literarias se plasman identidades y constituyen un complemento fundamental de la historia ¿El arte actual (...) es el resultado de una sociedad sin relato? (shrink)

The relationship between smell and politics could appear obscure; and yet, when it comes to smell, questions about freedom and constriction, social and ontological mingling or distinctions, clearly arise. In this paper, I will especially focus on the domain of food as a clear example for describing some of the political ambivalences characterizing the sense of smell. The aim is to pave the way for a more detailed ‘sociopolitical aesthetics of smell’ to come. I will stress epistemological and social (...) features of odors in order to highlight their ambivalence in knowledge and community life. Perceivers and odors will emerge as mingled bodies, highlighting an ongoing process of material as well as emotional affection. Moreover, I will present some relevant examples of smell as social status symbols in relation to the aesthetic values linked to class hierarchy. Consumerism and scented goods will be lastly discussed in order to shade light on contemporary perceptual phenomena and their role in the socioeconomic dimension. (shrink)

Dostoevsky's legacy today calls forth tremendous interest all over the world. And that is understandable: Dostoevsky presented in his work, with utmost vividness and explicitness, many of the social, philosophical, and psychological problems that continue to this day to be central in the mind of humanity.

This is the first book to present an aesthetics of virtual reality media. It situates virtual reality media in terms of the philosophy of the arts, comparing them to more familiar media such as painting, film and photography. When philosophers have approached virtual reality, they have almost always done so through the lens of metaphysics, asking questions about the reality of virtual items and worlds, about the value of such things, and indeed, about how they may reshape our understanding (...) of the "real" world. Grant Tavinor finds that approach to be fundamentally mistaken, and that to really account for virtual reality, we must focus on the medium and its uses, and not the hypothetical and speculative instances that are typically the focus of earlier works. He also argues that much of the cultural and metaphysical hype around virtual reality is undeserved. But this does not mean that virtual reality is illusory or uninteresting; on the contrary, it is significant for the altogether different reason that it overturns much of our understanding of how representational media can function and what we can use them to achieve. The Aesthetics of Virtual Reality will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in aesthetics, philosophy of art, philosophy of technology, metaphysics, and game studies. (shrink)

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, 19 essays document the April 1998 international congress held at Harvard University. They ponder on such topics as the phenomenology of the experience of enchantment, Leonardo's enchantress, the ambiguous meaning of musical enchantment in Kant's Third Critique, art and the reenchantment of sensuous human activity, the creative voice, the allure of the Naza, Henri Matisse's early critical reception in New York, Zizek's sublimicist aesthetic of enchanted fantasy, (...) and enchantment in Baroque festive court performance in France. There is no subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

According to Peirce, the value of the idea of freedom arises only to oppose the idea of necessity. Freedom emerges as a working value, a primary esthetic principle, in response to that which is perceived as fixed, determined, necessary, absolute. The idea of Freedom materializes, assumes a million appearances, wears its ten million masks......Freedom as the Freedom-to-Focus is a Peircean esthetic process that becomes realized through the three stages of Fragment/Fractal, Fact, Form. This triadic process corresponds to the semiotic functions (...) of Icon, Index, Symbol. Freedom's course is nonlineal, self-corrective, dynamic, open: Freedom is the occasion for Chaos, and Chaos is the locus of Form. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is threefold: to offer a vision of human flourishing in the academy premised upon ‘living in truth’, embracing lived experience and being in relation; to explore counterfactual thinking across the life-course, from the period of compulsory schooling to the end of life, with the emphasis on the latter; and to critique the practice of drawing upon philosophy to provide an interpretative framework through which to address the arts, drawing upon the work of Cora Diamond. The (...) movement towards death is explored through three vignettes, focusing on the lived experience of three ‘characters’ facing the prospect of their imminent demise: the philosopher Richard Rorty, the English television dramatist and screenwriter Dennis Potter and a consultant physician (the father of one of the authors). Drawing upon the work of the historian Timothy Snyder, the relevance of the claim made by Vaclav Havel that ‘essence precedes existence’ is explored in relation to the climate of the contemporary education system. The primacy of essence over existence is also a key feature of the vignettes of the lives of the three players that form the centrepiece of the article. These enable us to ‘think without thinking’, which is perhaps a counterfactual claim par excellence. (shrink)

"This collection of essays on aesthetics is the first set of Dufrenne's shorter pieces to appear in English. It is arranged thematically and includes works from as early as 1948 to as late as 1974.... In these essays Dufrenne covers a lot of ground and draws into his discussion of aesthetics a whole range of thinkers, including Barthes, Foucault, Lyotard, Metz, Freud and Derrida.... These essays are well worth reading both for the quality of the writing and for (...) the continual insights which come to the surface along the way. The text has been devotedly translated and a helpful introduction has been added." -- David Pollard, British Journal of Aesthetics. (shrink)

Feminism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and Marxism, among other critical approaches, have undermined traditional notions of aesthetics in recent decades. But questions of aesthetic judgment and pleasure persist, and many critics now seek a "return to aesthetics" or a "return to beauty." Janet Wolff advances a "postcritical" aesthetics grounded in shared values that are negotiated in the context of community. She relates this approach to contemporary debates about a committed politics similarly founded on the abandonment of certainty. Neither universalist (...) nor relativist, the "aesthetics of uncertainty" provides a discourse on beauty that contemporary critics can engage with and offers a basis for judgment that is committed to assigning value to works of art. Wolff explores her position through a range of topics: the question of beauty in relation to feminist critique; the problematic status of twentieth-century English art, visual representations of the Holocaust, Jewish identity as portrayed by the artist R. B. Kitaj, refugee artists and modernism in 1940s Britain, and the nature and appeal of imagistic thinking in sociology. She addresses the desire for certainty and the timeliness of doubt and concludes with a meditation on the intersection of aesthetics and ethics, arguing that ethical issues are very much implicated in aesthetic discourse. (shrink)

By decision of the World Council of Peace, progressive mankind marked, on October 5, 1963, the 250th anniversary of the birth of an outstanding representative of the French Enlightenment, Denis Diderot. Diderot occupies an honored place in the history of world thought on esthetics, as one of the greatest theoreticians of realist art. The esthetic theory founded by Diderot, calling for the representation of nature, was directed against the feudal, theological world view and against the aristocratic art of the court. (...) Diderot's esthetics, like his philosophy, served the cause of ideological preparation for the bourgeois revolution at the end of the 18th century in France. "Each age has its distinctive spirit," said Diderot. "The spirit of our age is the spirit of freedom.". (shrink)

Feminism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and Marxism, among other critical approaches, have undermined traditional notions of aesthetics in recent decades. But questions of aesthetic judgment and pleasure persist, and many critics now seek a "return to aesthetics" or a "return to beauty." Janet Wolff advances a "postcritical" aesthetics grounded in shared values that are negotiated in the context of community. She relates this approach to contemporary debates about a committed politics similarly founded on the abandonment of certainty. Neither universalist (...) nor relativist, the "aesthetics of uncertainty" provides a discourse on beauty that contemporary critics can engage with and offers a basis for judgment that is committed to assigning value to works of art. Wolff explores her position through a range of topics: the question of beauty in relation to feminist critique; the problematic status of twentieth-century English art, visual representations of the Holocaust, Jewish identity as portrayed by the artist R. B. Kitaj, refugee artists and modernism in 1940s Britain, and the nature and appeal of imagistic thinking in sociology. She addresses the desire for certainty and the timeliness of doubt and concludes with a meditation on the intersection of aesthetics and ethics, arguing that ethical issues are very much implicated in aesthetic discourse. (shrink)

The paper explores Gernot Böhme’s attempt to transform the concept of atmosphere into an aesthetical concept of the natural environment and follows his effort to outline a phenomenology of the weather based on this aesthetics. Böhme’s original project, prompted by a growing environmental concern, was to develop new forms of knowledge of nature to counter what he considered detrimental consequences of a one-sided rationalistic-scientific view of nature. Inspired by Hermann Schmitz’s phenomenology of the body and emotional atmospheres, Böhme developed (...) his aesthetics to be a general theory of sensation and a phenomenology of the environment. His weather phenomenology is yet only a sketch, but, in light of imminent climatic changes, it might prove a sketch worth considering. (shrink)

What is suspense and how is it created? An answer to this question constitutes a theory of suspense. I propose that any theory of suspense needs to be able to account for three curious features: (1) Suspense is seldom felt in our daily lives, but frequently felt in response to works of fiction and other narrative artworks. [Narrative Imbalance] (2) It is widely thought that suspense requires uncertainty, but we often feel suspense in response to narratives when we have knowledge (...) of the outcome. [Paradox of Suspense] (3) The amount of suspense felt in response to a narrative typically diminishes on repeated encounters. [Diminishing Returns] I offer a theory of suspense that can explain these three features. I argue for a theory called the Desire-Frustration Theory of Suspense, which holds that suspense results when our desire to effect the outcome of an imminent event is frustrated. (shrink)

This book symposium on Jason Holt’s Kinetic Beauty: The Philosophical Aesthetics of Sport includes commentaries from Stephen Mumford, John E. MacKinnon and Andrew Edgar with replies from Holt.

The Aesthetics of Design offers the first full treatment of design in the field of philosophical aesthetics, challenging the discipline to broaden its scope to include the quotidian objects and experiences of our everyday lives and concerns ...

This essay shows that a sharp distinction between ethics and aesthetics is unfruitful for thinking about how to live well with technologies, and in particular for understanding and evaluating how we cope with human existential vulnerability, which is crucially mediated by the development and use of technologies such as electronic ICTs. It is argued that vulnerability coping is a matter of ethics and art: it requires developing a kind of art and techne in the sense that it always involves (...) technologies and specific styles of experiencing and dealing with vulnerability, which depend on social and cultural context. It is suggested that we try to find better, perhaps less modern styles of coping with our vulnerability, recognize limits to our attempts to “design” our new forms, and explore what kinds of technologies we need for this project. (shrink)

Through the concept of enjoyment in Levinas, this paper examines the phenomenological and ontological dimension of everyday aesthetics. Enjoyment, in Levinas, forms an essential element in the constitution of the subjectivity of the human being and is no longer to be seen as a moment of ‘inauthenticity’ or ‘alienation’. The experience of the objects of everyday experience is not related to that of objects of representation or of tools, but rather to that of a system of nourishment into which (...) the subject is integrated, as in an ‘element’ or ‘atmosphere’. This constitutive closeness of enjoyment indicates the fundamental difference between what we understand as everyday aesthetics and other aesthetics characterised by contemplation or disinterest. (shrink)

Through the concept of enjoyment in Levinas, this paper examines the phenomenological and ontological dimension of everyday aesthetics. Enjoyment, in Levinas, forms an essential element in the constitution of the subjectivity of the human being and is no longer to be seen as a moment of ‘inauthenticity’ or ‘alienation’. The experience of the objects of everyday experience is not related to that of objects of representation or of tools, but rather to that of a system of nourishment into which (...) the subject is integrated, as in an ‘element’ or ‘atmosphere’. This constitutive closeness of enjoyment indicates the fundamental difference between what we understand as everyday aesthetics and other aesthetics characterised by contemplation or disinterest. (shrink)

"Like Hanslick, Professor Payzant is both musician and philosopher; and he has brought the knowledge and insights of both disciplines to this large undertaking." --Gordon Epperson, _Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism_.

EVENTAL AESTHETICS RETROSPECTIVE 1. LOOKING BACK AT 10 ISSUES OF EVENTAL AESTHETICS.

In a recent paper, Allen Carlson moves away from a purely scientific–cognitive framework for environmental aesthetics towards a ‘combination position’ based on the ecoaesthetics theorised by Xiangzhan Cheng. Carlson argues that only an aesthetics informed by ecological knowledge can offer the correct foundations for the continued relevance of environmental aesthetics to environmental ethics. However, closer analysis of Cheng's theory of ecoaesthetics reveals a number of problems related to questions of anthropocentrism and in particular, the issue of an (...) ethic based on love. In this paper, I offer an alternative approach for the future of environmental aesthetics in the form of an intergenerational aesthetics based on Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK). (shrink)

Against a remarkable hardware oblivion in discussions of algorithmic intelligence, this article insists that algorithmic thought, or abstract computation, cannot be separated from its technological implementation. It requires a material medium for an abstract mechanism to become a procedural event. Temporality is both the condition and the limiting (and irritating) factor in the computational function. ‘Radical’ media archaeology is proposed as a method for such an analysis, and the neologism of techno lógos to describe some aspects of algorithmic reason which (...) only unfold in the moment of its techno-processual coming-into-being. Some core operations, such as the time-discrete rhythm of actual computing algorithms, are discussed, where the ‘tempoReal’ flashes up in computing. In a wider sense, the time-discreteness of digital computing is related to an aesthetics of existence which acknowledges the machine element within human reasoning itself, while at the same time re-actualizing previous cultural techniques of non-narrative chronology. Turing the ‘man’ himself, in the sense of the Turing machine, can be addressed ‘itself’, in its archival sense as a sequence of expressions by symbols. (shrink)

The paradoxical logic of transparency and mediation Transparency is the metaphor of our time. Whether in government or corporate governance, finance, technology, health or the media – it is ubiquitous today, and there is hardly a current debate that does not call for more transparency. But what does this word actually stand for and what are the consequences for the life of individuals? Can knowledge from the arts, and its play of visibility and invisibility, tell us something about the paradoxical (...) logics of transparency and mediation? This Obscure Thing Called Transparency gathers contributions by international experts who critically assess the promises and perils of transparency today. (shrink)

I. History. Mainwaring's Handel : its relation to British aesthetics -- Herbert Spencer and a musical dispute -- II. Opera and film. Handel's operas : the form of feeling and the problem of appreciation -- Anti-semitism in Meistersinger? -- Speech, song, and the transparency of medium : on operatic metaphysics -- III. Performance. On the historically informed performance -- Ars perfecta : toward perfection in musical performance? -- IV. Interpretation. Another go at the meaning of music : Koopman, Davies, (...) and the meaning of "meaning" -- Another go at musical profundity : Stephen Davies and the game of chess -- From ideology to music : Leonard Meyer's theory of style change -- Sibley's last paper -- In defense of musical representation : music, representation, and the hybrid arts -- Music, language, and cognition : which doesn't belong? (shrink)

The emergency of aesthetics -- Measurable contemplations -- Indifferent beauty -- Emergency through art -- Social paradoxes -- Urban discharges -- Environmental calls -- Historical accounts -- Emergency aesthetics -- Anarchic interpretations -- Existential interventions.

Images abound of women throughout the ages engaging in various activities. But why are there so few representations of childbirth in visual art? Feminist artist Judy Chicago once suggested that depictions of women giving birth do not commonly occur in Western culture but can be found in other contexts such as pre-Columbian art or societies previously considered "primitive." Chicago's own exploration of the theme resulted in the creation of The Birth Project (1980-85): an unprecedented series of eighty handcrafted works of (...) art created in a variety of needlework techniques by more than 130 artisans that celebrate the experience of birth and a woman's transformation into motherhood. But why is The Birth Project an aberration from today's norm? What are the reasons that childbirth remains a taboo subject in our visual culture? Why is the birthing experience--so pervasive for women--so infrequently celebrated, even by female artists? (shrink)

In both politics and art in recent decades, there has been a dramatic shift in emphasis on representation of identity. Liberal ideals of universality and individuality have given way to a concern with the visibility and recognition of underrepresented groups. Modernist and postmodernist celebrations of disruption and subversion have been challenged by the view that representation is integral to social change. Despite this convergence, neither political nor aesthetic theory has given much attention to the increasingly central role of art in (...) debates and struggles over cultural identity in the public sphere. -/- Connecting Hegelian aesthetics with contemporary cultural politics, Jason Miller argues that both the aesthetic and political value of art are found in the reflexive self-awareness that artistic representation enables. The significance of art in modern life is that it shows us both the particular element in humanity as well as the human element in particularity. Just as Hegel asks us to acknowledge how different historical and cultural contexts produce radically different experiences of art, identity-based art calls on its audiences to situate themselves in relation to perspectives and experiences potentially quite remote—or even inaccessible—from their own. Miller offers a timely response to questions such as: How does contemporary art’s politics of perception contest liberal notions of deliberative politics? How does the cultural identity of the artist relate to the representations of cultural identity in their work? How do we understand and evaluate identity-based art aesthetically? -/- Discussing a wide range of works of art and popular culture—from Antigone to Do the Right Thing and The Wire—this book develops a new conceptual framework for understanding the representation of cultural identity that affirms art’s capacity to effect social change. (shrink)

Recent decades have witnessed an explosion in neuroscientific and related research treating aesthetic response. This book integrates this research with insights from philosophical aesthetics to propose new answers to longstanding questions about beauty and sublimity. Hogan begins by distinguishing what we respond to as beautiful from what we count socially as beautiful. He goes on to examine the former in terms of information processing and emotional involvement. In the course of the book, Hogan examines such issues as how universal (...) principles of aesthetic response may be reconciled with individual idiosyncrasy, how it is possible to argue rationally over aesthetic response, and what role personal beauty and sublimity might play in the definition of art. To treat these issues, the book considers works by Woolf, Wharton, Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Beethoven, Matisse, and Kiran Rao, among others. (shrink)

This essay presents a methodological framework for assessing the adequacy of philosophical accounts of the aesthetic appreciation of nature. The framework involves five requirements, each of which is labeled after a philosopher who has defended it. They are called Ziff's Anything Viewed Doctrine, Budd's As Nature Constraint, Berleant's Unified Aesthetics Requirement, Hepburn's Serious Beauty Intuition, and Thompson's Objectivity Desideratum. The conclusion of the essay is that most contemporary treatments of the aesthetics of nature fail to comply with one (...) or more of these requirements and that only Scientific Cognitivism satisfies the framework consisting of all five. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Biting the Bullet:The Ethics and Aesthetics of ViolenceJonathan AllenThe Bullet's Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia, by William Pfaff. New York. Simon & Schuster, 2004, 368 pp.Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sontag. New York, Picador, 2003, 131 pp.In the nineteenth century a broadly influential branch of Romantic philosophy insisted that goodness and beauty were intimately related. The goals of ethical and aesthetic education were taken to be (...) one and the same—the cultivation of the kalokagathos or "noble-and-beautiful" individual.1 This robust view of the relation between ethical and aesthetic education is now rarely defended; it was dealt a mortal wound by the inconvenient fact that highly cultured or Gebildete individuals have been implicated in the twentieth century's worst political crimes.This does not mean, however, that connections between ethical and aesthetic projects are no longer made. One such attempt to relate ethics and aesthetic—a bleak, somber, and deeply chastened attempt—is presented in the late Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others. In this small but dense book, Sontag assesses the hope that the reproduction of images, especially photographic images, of violence and atrocity might help to abolish war, or at least to play a role in combating genocide or the commission of gross violations of the laws of war. While she evidently wishes to find "an antidote to the perennial seductiveness of war," Sontag is doubtful that photography is equal to this moral burden.2Sontag's work concentrates on the aesthetic and ethical challenges that confront any attempt to convey the horrors of war to uninvolved observers. Her focus is thus trained on an attempt to exorcise what she refers to as the "seductiveness of war"; she is not primarily concerned to identify the source of war's allure (though she does have some interesting observations to make on the issue).3 William Pfaff, by contrast, is both repelled and fascinated by the modern embrace of violence. The Bullet's Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia offers an enthralling account of the intellectual and aesthetic forces that provoked the feverish modern love affair with violence and war. Pfaff is at least as doubtful as Sontag, however, that that love affair [End Page 100] is over and that we are in a position to forge a more pacific sensibility. Nevertheless, he insists that if we are to have the slightest hope of avoiding a full-scale repetition of the twentieth-century's "carnival of inhumanity," we need to understand the nature of its romance with violence.So how did that romance come about? The central theme of The Bullet's Song is the consequences of the loss of "chivalry." This, according to Pfaff, was a code that "held that what an individual or society could licitly do to another was limited by a morality linked to the essential values of Western civilization."4 Within this framework, it was expected that states would sometimes go to war with one another, but war was seen merely as an extreme means of settling disputes, not of eliminating entire societies or remaking the world. For individuals, war was presented as "a test of valor, rewarded by 'honor'"—in other words, it was seen as an occasion to test oneself in the light of a set of ideals of conduct that operated as constraints on permissible behavior in war.5 All of this came to a sticky end in the trenches of World War I, replaced by a morally nihilistic idea of total war. Pfaff claims that this moral vacuum proved intolerable to many individuals. They reacted in several different ways. Some attempted to construct "codes of individual transcendence" and "collective will," while others gave themselves over to "utopias based on historical fictions."6This is a very large story, and it is in fact too bulky for the confines of this book. First, it must be said that Pfaff fails to present his central claims clearly. He is unclear, for example, as to exactly what was lost with the destruction of the chivalric code, as well as what caused its destruction. At times, he seems to be suggesting that the rise of... (shrink)