A brief overview of the main Croatian philosophers of the 19th century is given (regardless of whether they worked in or outside of Croatia). Special attention is paid to Šimun Čučić (logic, metaphysics, ethics) and Franjo pl. Marković (logic, aesthetics). The philosophy of other authors is briefly summarized on the ground of the existing research results.

Abstract:The purpose of this introduction is to set out the scope and content of this special issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education, which takes Aesthetic Education through Narrative Art as its subject. I begin by delineating the “aesthetic” itself and then identifying the denotation of “aesthetic education” with which the issue’s authors are concerned. This is followed by a characterization of “narrative art” that belies my preference for representation rather than art and draws attention to the multiple modes of (...) representation that constitute complex narratives. I next turn to the title of the special issue, an abridged version of Aesthetic Education through Narrative Art and its Relevance for the Humanities, which is an installation research project funded by the Croatian Science Foundation to investigate the relationship between aesthetic and artistic values on the one hand and ethical, political, and social values on the other. The project is multidisciplinary among philosophy, criminology, film studies, and cognitive science, and three of the authors are members of the project team. I conclude by introducing each of the six articles, which employ two approaches, one from philosophical aesthetics and the other from critical criminology. (shrink)

Can one have an aesthetically valuable experience of fiction that takes an immoral perspective? Some have argued that one can. However, some important objections have been raised against this idea. Two objections are: that the immorality involved is confined to fictional reality, and that the aesthetic value of immoral fiction is dictated by a pluralistic attitude that not everyone accepts. My aim is to respond to these challenges and to argue, on the basis of two examples, that even an unlimited (...) immoral perspective can enhance a widespread aesthetic value. (shrink)

In the art of radical Informel, we encounter works with emphasised non-pictoriality, non-semantics and non-referentiality, as well as a tendency towards entropy, layering and the disintegration of form through destructive processes such as deformation, perforation, incision, scratching, the accumulation of structures and masses, fragmentation, stripping and burning. In this paper, theoretical models of interpretation for the art of radical Informel are pointed out through the concepts of the aesthetics of ugliness, i.e. brutal aesthetics, such as (1) deformation, (2) disfiguration, (3) (...) formlessness and (4) entropy – using the example of the informal works of Croatian authors Ivo Gattin, Eugen Feller and Marijan Jevšovar, which result from their attitude towards art and painting. The artists have deliberately created paintings that are not “beautiful” by opposing the classical values of art and beauty through oppositional and negative approaches, nihilism, destruction, deformation and the abolition of the surface of the painting as forms of anti-aesthetics. (shrink)

In this article I propose a way of thinking about aesthetic and artistic verdicts that would keep them distinct from one another. The former are reflections of the kinds of things we prefer and take pleasure in; the latter are reflections of other judgments we make about the kinds of achievements that are made in works of art. In part to support this view of verdicts, I also propose a way of keeping distinct the description, the interpretation, and the evaluation (...) of works of art. (And along the way, I worry about whether we offer the same kinds of interpretations of the objects of our aesthetic pleasures, properly considered, that we clearly do offer with respect to works of art.) The thesis I propose—the achievement model—is not original with me. What is original, perhaps, is that it is posed as an alternative to two other views of artistic evaluation, namely the appeal to “ideal critics” and the appeal to one way of understanding our preferences with regard to works of art. I do not attempt to show that each of these alternatives meets with insuperable problems; but I do indicate what I take to be the substantive content of those problems. In the end, in order to flesh out the thesis I propose, I borrow some material from the literature on human well-being concerning how we determine what an achievement is. (shrink)

Contrary to the skepticism of some authors about the artistic potential or even the possibility of films being improvised artworks, I argue that not only is it conceptually possible for many elements of the filmmaking process to be performed in an improvisatory manner, but that a number of existing films and filmmaking practices provide examples of the realization of such possibilities. Further, I argue that these examples show that improvisation by filmmakers can enhance the aesthetic or artistic value of a (...) film. As well as its artistic potential, I consider some social and ethical implications of improvisatory approaches to filmmaking, and by extension to art in general. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to sketch a framework for perceiving the act of consumption as an aesthetic phenomenon. I shall argue that, under some circumstances, it is possible to receive aesthetic satisfaction from the act of eating food, in which the object of one’s appreciation is, for the most part, considered separately from what is actually eaten. I propose to call such a process “aesthetic eating” and argue that due to its aesthetic autonomy it might be a potential (...) factor in enjoying certain kinds of food. This phenomenon is apparent in the case of the types of food that are acquired tastes. It is plausible that distinguishing the aesthetic pleasures of food from the ones associated with the act of eating can not only enrich our aesthetic life but also deepen the aesthetics of our overall gustatory experience. (shrink)

Literature has been philosophically understood as a practice in the last thirty years, which involves “modes of utterance” and stances, not intrinsic textual properties. Thus, the place for semantics in philosophical inquiry has clearly diminished. Literary aesthetic appreciation has shifted its focus from aesthetic realism, based on the study of textual features, to ways of reading. Peter Lamarque’s concept of narrative opacity is a clear example of this shift. According to the philosophy of literature, literature, like any other art form, (...) does not compel us to engage realistically with it. Against this trend, this paper argues for the distinction between two kinds of opacity, defending textual opacity as a necessary condition for literary opacity. In this sense, examples in literary criticism properly illustrate not a peripheral role of meaning in literary appreciation, but arbitrariness in interpretation, which involves semantic concerns. So the assumed interest in the specific ways in which literature embeds meaning in fictional narrative works. (shrink)

In what sense can aesthetic experience be considered an opportunity for the development of personal identity, cognitive abilities, and emotions? Theatre proves to be an important field of investigation to approach this question. During a theatrical experience, the connection between fiction and reality can take the form of active cooperation between author, actor, and spectator. A better understanding of this point can be drawn by pointing out three kinds of spectator: we can distinguish a critical spectator, an emotional spectator, and (...) an instinctual spectator, who respectively represent: the imaginative and hermeneutic attitude; empathy and fictional emotions; the unconscious satisfaction of drives. So far, a parallel can be established between literature and theatre. However, these two aesthetic experiences are profoundly different: the type of immersion provided by the theatrical experience differs from reading, because the presence of the characters is physical and actual. The pragmatic theatrical framework is the same as that which underlies childhood games. This means that the public too is to some extent called to play, i.e. to act. To appreciate the implications of this thesis, a preliminary analysis of the performance Reality (Deflorian and Tagliarini 2012) is offered, examining how its experience contributes to the development of the spectating subject. (shrink)

Zlatko Posavac is one of the most thorough and deepest experts on Croatian cultural history, with a focus on aesthetics both as a theory and as realized in artistic practice. On the basis of his improved factography, he examines aesthetic phenomena through the model of meaningful-stylistic structures and epochal change. As one of the fundamental phenomena, he highlights the "prevention of free transmission of tradition" (silencing, falsifying, expulsion of truth). He introduces significant structural shifts in cultural-historical periodization.

Das Buch besteht aus zehn Essays, die sich mit den fur die postmoderne Wende relevanten Mechanismen auseinandersetzen. Indem die Autorin die Moderne als -mannlich-, und die Postmoderne als -weiblich- bestimmt, widmet sie sich auch modernen feminisierten Mannerfiguren und den Typen literarischen Wissens in der avantgardistischen und postmodernen Poetik. Zwei Essays handeln von den kulturellen Stereotypen moderner Nationen sowie vom sozialistischen Imaginarium des Titoistischen Jugoslawiens. Die Autorin bewegt sich souveran und zugleich spielerisch durch die europaische Kultur - von der antiken Philosophie (...) bis zu den neuesten kroatischen Prosaisten. Das essayistische Buch uberzeugt durch seine wissenschaftliche Ernsthaftigkeit, Innovativitat und argumentative Kraft.". (shrink)

Cilj je slušanja glazbe u školi oblikovati kulturno-umjetnički svjetonazor učenica i učenika te doprinijeti njihovom estetskom odgoju. U hrvatskim osnovnim školama realizira se prema tzv. standardnom modelu kojemu je težište na spoznajnoj dimenziji. Kako bi se povećali pozornost, motivacija, slušalačke navike i prihvaćanje umjetničke glazbe, predlaže se spoznajno-emocionalni pristup koji višemodalno povezuje glazbene i izvanglazbene sadržaje. Cilj istraživanja bio je usporediti utjecaje spoznajno-emocionalnog i standardnog pristupa u nastavi glazbene kulture na spoznajni i emocionalni aspekt slušanja glazbe. Sudjelovalo je 557 učenika (...) i učenica iz 30 petih razreda. Slušali su Hačaturjanovu Maskaradu, Beethovenovu Wellingtonovu pobjedu, Rimski Korsakovljevu Šeherezadu i Fauréovu Pavanu te odgovarali na pitanja vezana za spoznajni i emocionalni aspekt slušanja glazbe. Petnaest razreda imalo je nastavu po standardnom, a 15 razreda po spoznajno emocionalnom pristupu. U spoznajnom aspektu odgovori učenika i učenica uglavnom se nisu razlikovali. U emocionalnom aspektu, u Šeherezadi i Pavani nešto su intenzivnije doživljavane dominantne emocije kada je bio primijenjen spoznajno-emocionalni pristup. The purpose of music listening in school is to shape students’ world view regarding culture and arts, as well as to contribute to their aesthetic education. Croatian elementary schools use the ‘standard model’, which focuses on the cognitive dimension. In order to increase attention, motivation, listening habits, and acceptance of artistic music, a cognitive-emotional approach is suggested that connects musical and extra-musical content in multiple modalities. The goal of the research is to compare the effects of the cognitive-emotional approach versus the standard approach to music teaching on the cognitive and emotional aspects of music listening. 557 year 5 students from 30 classes participated in the research. They listened to Khachaturian’s Masquerade, Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory, Rimsky- Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and Fauré’s Pavane, as well as answering questions related to the cognitive and emotional aspects of music listening. Fifteen classrooms used the standard approach, while the other fifteen used the cognitive-emotional approach. Student responses generally did not differ in the cognitive aspect. In the emotional aspect, Scheherazade and Pavane engendered somewhat more intense dominant emotions when the cognitive-emotional approach was used. (shrink)

The purpose of music listening in school is to shape students’ world view regarding culture and arts, as well as to contribute to their aesthetic education. Croatian elementary schools use the ‘standard model’, which focuses on the cognitive dimension. In order to increase attention, motivation, listening habits, and acceptance of artistic music, a cognitive-emotional approach is suggested that connects musical and extra-musical content in multiple modalities. The goal of the research is to compare the effects of the cognitive-emotional approach (...) versus the standard approach to music teaching on the cognitive and emotional aspects of music listening. 557 year 5 students from 30 classes participated in the research. They listened to Khachaturian’s Masquerade, Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory, Rimsky- Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and Fauré’s Pavane, as well as answering questions related to the cognitive and emotional aspects of music listening. Fifteen classrooms used the standard approach, while the other fifteen used the cognitive-emotional approach. Student responses generally did not differ in the cognitive aspect. In the emotional aspect, Scheherazade and Pavane engendered somewhat more intense dominant emotions when the cognitive-emotional approach was used. (shrink)

In "Aesthetic Histories" our contributors’ shared concern is the inspiring and confounding, healthy and uncomfortable and above all inevitable relationship between history and aesthetic praxis.

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

This issue is dedicated to thinking about art and current aesthetic perspectives through Hegelianism.

Our contributors explore a rich variety of aesthetic problems that bring about the self-reflexive re-evaluation of ideas.

Is aesthetics a product of evolution? Are human aesthetic behaviors in fact evolutionary adaptations? The creation of artistic objects and experiences is an important aesthetic behavior. But so is the perception of aesthetic phenomena qua aesthetic. The question of evolutionary aesthetics is whether humans have evolved the capacity not only to make beautiful things but also to appreciate the aesthetic qualities in things. Are our near-universal love of music and cute baby animals essential to our species’ evolutionary development, which took (...) place over thousands of years? In other words, do aesthetic practice and appreciation help people to survive or reproduce? Do aesthetic behaviors help to propel natural selection? If so, what does that tell us about ourselves as human beings? What does it tell us about art, our other aesthetic practices, and aesthetic experience? (shrink)

In this special issue on animals and aesthetics, contributors explore encounters with animals in art and thought.

In this paper I argue that a norm of literary fiction is to compel the reader to form beliefs about the world as it is. It may seem wrong to suggest that the reason I believe p is because I imagined p, yet literary fiction can make this the case. I argue for an account grounded in indexed doxastic susceptibilities mapped between a fictional context and the particular properties of a reader, more specifically the susceptibilities in her beliefs, attitudes, and (...) psychological states. Works of fiction can be about different things at the same time, some of which are fictive and some of which are factual. Since belief can be weak or strong, partial or complete, tenuous or robust, opaque or clear, there are susceptibilities throughout a doxastic set out of which new beliefs are formed. Skillful works of fiction exploit these susceptibilities and create new ones. This is an aesthetic achievement of such works: they take what should be a norm-violating practice of belief-formation on the basis of imaginative engagement and they make it so. (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)

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)

This handsomely produced volume contains 22 contributions from international scholars, which were originally presented at the 2000 Conference of the International Society for Phenomenology, Fine Arts, & Aesthetics. The papers center around the theme of gardens and include a wide range of topics of interest to phenomenologists but also, perhaps, to gardeners with a philosophical bent. A sampling of topics: Leonardo's Annunciation Hortus Conclusus and its reflexive intent; hatha yoga--a phenomenological experience of nature; the Chinese attempt to miniaturize the world (...) in gardens; conflating and compressing time in commodified space and architecture; constructing the deconstructive landscape (the ruin aesthetic); and a phenomenological-anthropological aproach to Zen gardens. The volume is lightly indexed by name (mostly philosophers). Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com). (shrink)

A hijacking is a violent takeover, a misappropriation of something for a purpose other than its intended one, by parties other than those for whom the thing was meant. This issue explores the aesthetic practices and consequences of unauthorized repurposing.

In her book, Vibrant Matter, Jane Bennett thinks through what ontological, political, and ecological questions would look like if humans could admit that matter and nonhuman things are living, creative agents; the contributors to this issue of Evental Aesthetics begin to think through what aesthetic questions would look like.

In this paper I address Jerome Stolnitz’s famous article “On the cognitive triviality of art,” with the aim of defending aesthetic and literary cognitivism against the charges Stolnitz issues at it therein. My defence of literary cognitivism is grounded in contemporary epistemology, which, I argue, is more embracive of cognitive values of literature traditionally invoked by literary cognitivists. My discussion is structured against Stolnitz’s individual arguments, dedicated in particular to the problem of literary truth. After exploring what such notion might (...) amount to, I move on to address the problems of applicability and triviality of literary truths, and I end by defending literature as a cognitively valuable social practice. (shrink)

In this paper I address Jerome Stolnitz’s famous article “On the cognitive triviality of art,” with the aim of defending aesthetic and literary cognitivism against the charges Stolnitz issues at it therein. My defence of literary cognitivism is grounded in contemporary epistemology, which, I argue, is more embracive of cognitive values of literature traditionally invoked by literary cognitivists. My discussion is structured against Stolnitz’s individual arguments, dedicated in particular to the problem of literary truth. After exploring what such notion might (...) amount to, I move on to address the problems of applicability and triviality of literary truths, and I end by defending literature as a cognitively valuable social practice. (shrink)

The paper addresses issues of predicates of taste, both gustatory and aesthetic in dialogue with Michael Glanzberg. The first part briefly discusses his view of anaphora in the determination of the semantics of such predicates, and attempts a friendly generalization of his strategy. The second part discusses his contextualism about statements of taste, of the form A is Φ, and then proposes a pluralist alternative. The literature normally confronts contextualism and relativism here, but the pluralist proposal introduces further options. First, (...) it distinguishes first-level and second-level, more theoretical, approaches. At the first level it introduces the naïve view option, the naive non-dogmatist experiencer who simply claims that A is Φ and that’s it. On meta-level such an experiencer is simply agnostic about further matters. Then, there is the first-level dogmatist stance, characteristic for people who do sincerely debate the issues, who naively believe they are objectively right. The third option is the tolerant, liberal one: “A is Φ; for me, I mean. How do you find it?” On the meta-level, dogmatic disagreement goes well with value-absolutism, entailing that one of the parties is simply wrong, and with relativism. If one is not dogmatist about taste predicates, one should accept that dogmatist is simply wrong; no faultlessness is present. The liberal stance goes well with contextualism. If one is liberal there is no deep disagreement. So, the idea of faultless disagreement is a myth. But the proposal notes that language is open to all possibilities, there is no single option that is obligatory for all speakers. (shrink)

This issue profiles various attempts, both successful and fraught, to engage the divide between asceticism and opulence, between materialism and poverty.

In this issue, our contributors demonstrate how art in the city, art “about” the city, art compared to the city, can bring to attention the insidious forces underlying every city’s gleaming, wide-awake veneer.

Against the apparent casting away of poetry from contemporary philosophy of language and aesthetics which has left poetry forceless, I argue that poetry has a linguistic, philosophical, and even political force. Against the idea that literature (as novel) can teach us facts about the world, I argue that the force of literature (as poetry) resides in its capacity to change our ways of seeing. First, I contest views which consider poetry forceless by discussing Austin’s and Sartre’s views. Second, I explore (...) the concept of force in the realm of art—focusing on Nietzsche’s philosophy and Menke’s Kraft der Kunst—and the relations between linguistic, artistic, and political forces. Third, I consider how the transformative force of poetry can be considered political by turning to Kristeva’s Revolution in Poetic Language and Meschonnic’s conception of poetry according to which the poem does something to language and the subject. To illustrate this transformative force of poetry, I analyse Caroline Zekri’s poem ‘Un pur rapport grammatical’. I therefore think of poetry not only as doing something with language, but also as doing something to language. To rephrase Austin’s famous title, and thus reverse his evaluation of poetry, poetry might reveal to us not only How to Do Things with Words, but how to do things to words and, through this doing, how to transform and affect the world. (shrink)

The essay deals with the question of how works of art that evoke a sense of the sublime are to be analysed in terms of Kant’s theory. Although Kant assumes the possibility of a beautiful representation of the sublime, of a sublime “shaped by beauty”, that a work can appear sublime is not immediately clear. Contrapurposiveness plays a key role in the experience of the sublime, but art is an essentially purposive context and aims at beauty. Following readings such as (...) those by K. Pillow and R. Wicks, this paper argues that a work of art can occasion a feeling akin to that of the sublime by expressing aesthetic ideas. According to Kant, the beautiful form conveys representations of imagination that strive towards a presentation of the ideas of reason, that is, the true sublime for Kant, opening up for the mind the prospect of an immensurable field of related representations. The image itself suggests that, in confronting this multitude of representations, the mind is “animated” in a way that can be compared -- albeit with significantdifferences -- to that typical of the sublime. In the essay this possibility is further pursued with particular regard to painting. (shrink)

In their discussion of the interpretation of the literary work of fiction, Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen explain that: “Literary appreciation is the appreciation of how a work interprets and develops the general themes which the reader identifies through the application of thematic concepts. […] The thematic concepts are, by themselves, vacuous. They cannot be separated from the way they are ‘anatomized’ in literature and other cultural discourses” (Lamarque and Olsen: 399). The subtle unravelling of the work’s thematic concepts (...) relies on the context of its reception, with its idiosyncratic sensitivities and cultural sensibilities of that time and place. However, cultural sensitivity also has a dark side as it may occasionally ignite a sort of allergic reaction to a work, identifying it as a threat that must be eliminated. My paper examines the case of literary censorship in Israel. Three partially banned works of fiction reflect three aspects of the Israeli right-wing anxiety concerning the Israeli-Palestinian confl ict: The futility of sacrificing Israeli soldiers’ lives, the acknowledgement of the Palestinian perspective, and, fi nally, the possibility of deflecting the animosity between the two nations to a point of allowing for mutual love. (shrink)