Martial arts and philosophy have always gone hand in hand, as well as fist in throat. Philosophical argument is closely paralleled with hand-to-hand combat. And all of today’s Asian martial arts were developed to embody and apply philosophical ideas. In his interview with Bodidharma, Graham Priest brings out aspects of Buddhist philosophy behind Shaolin Kung-Fu — how fighting monks are seeking Buddhahood, not brawls. But as Scott Farrell’s chapter reveals, Eastern martial arts have no monopoly on philosophical traditions: Western chivalry (...) is an education in and living revival of Aristotelian ethical theories. Several chapters look at ethical problems raised by the fighting arts. How can the sweaty and brutal be exquisitely beautiful? Every chapter is easily understandable by readers new to martial arts or new to philosophy. (shrink)

In The Entanglement, philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, and argues that we have radically underestimated the significance of this long recognized but underappreciated reality, what he refers to as the "entanglement." The core of The Entanglement is the idea that human existence is inextricably aesthetic and philosophical. In the first half of the book, Noë offers a detailed examination of pictures and seeing, writing and speech, and choreography and dancing, which serve as case studies (...) and the base in which the phenomenon of entanglement is set. In later chapters, Noë deepens this analysis by exploring the nature of the aesthetic itself, and its place in our lives, examining what the entanglement can teach us about science, and, in particular, the project of applying science in the domain of the human. In these later chapters he covers a range of topics, including sex, gender, and the body, psychology and AI, the problem of style, and the nature of 'nature.' Drawing on his work in perception, consciousness, and the philosophy of art, Noë offers a new model for thinking about the nature of the human, the limits to what a natural science of the human can do on its own, and the irreplaceable importance of art and philosophy for the larger project of studying and understanding ourselves. (shrink)

Information: 2d ed. Includes bibliographies.

At a time when professional art criticism is on the wane, the ancient quarrel between art and philosophy demands fresh answers. Professional art criticism provided a basis upon which to distinguish apt experiences of art from the idiosyncratic. However, currently the kind of narratives from which critics once drew are underplayed or discarded in contemporary exhibition design where the visual arts are concerned. This leaves open the possibility that art operates either as mere stimulant to private reverie or, in the (...) more contentful cases, as propaganda. The ancient quarrel between art and philosophy is that art influences surreptitiously while philosophy presents reasons that invite rational scrutiny. As such, in contrast to philosophy, art would undermine our agency. In July 2017, a group of philosophers gathered at the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW), in Sydney, Australia, in the presence of two AGNSW curators to explore the basis of their own experiences of selected artworks. Here, those commentaries are reproduced. Each reveal that objective grounds for an experience of art can be based in the community from which one draws one’s terms of reference. In our commentaries we see the expertise of the respective philosophical communities but other communities of culture or expertise might serve the same purpose and hence resolve the ancient quarrel. Before hearing these commentaries, I explain what is at stake when the ancient quarrel between art and philosophy is understood in contemporary terms. This Issue of the Curator also includes an article on the community-based art criticism that emerges from these commentaries followed by an exhibition review which reveals the incorrigible impulse (also demonstrated in the commentaries) to find the basis for the most apt experience of an artwork. A response by the AGNSW curators completes this issue. (shrink)

This volume of specially-commissioned essays provides accessible introductions to all aspects of George Eliot's writing by some of the most distinguished new and established scholars and critics of Victorian literature. The essays are comprehensive, scholarly and lucidly written, and at the same time offer original insights into the work of one of the most important Victorian novelists, and into her complex and often scandalous career. Discussions of her life, the social, political, and intellectual grounding of her work, and her relation (...) to Victorian feminism provide valuable criticism of everything from her early journalism to her poetry. Each essay contributes to a new understanding of the great fiction, from Adam Bede and The mill on the floss to Daniel Deronda. With its supplementary material, including a chronology and a guide to further reading, this Companion is an invaluable tool for scholars and students alike. (shrink)

The problem of the relationship between art and philosophy is deeply rooted in the philosophical tradition. When Plato excluded artists from the philosophers’ mythical republic, he seemed to be assuming a strict opposition between art and philosophy. Artists do not know what they are saying. Because their creation is grounded in the madness of inspiration, they would be unable to give accounts for their doctrines even if doctrines could be gleaned from their works. Philosophers, on the other hand, must be (...) able to provide such accounts. They commit themselves to providing reasons for their conclusions. (shrink)

Ever since the time of Hegel, there has been a growing philosophization of art in which artists increasingly make works where visual/formal concerns are supplanted by philosophical questions concerning the definition of art itself. At the same time, however, an equally vociferous defence of art against its subsumption by philosophy has been made by theorists such as Nietzsche, Sontag and Barthes who have sought to rescue the sensuous immediacy of art from the abstractness of philosophical thought by advocating a more (...) spontaneous and less rationalistic response to works of art. While it may seem paradoxical that two such diametrically opposing conceptualizations of the relation between art and philosophy should coexist, it is argued that they are in fact two sides of the one coin and reflect the fundamentally contradictory nature of the project of art in modernity. Furthermore, both conceptualizations are one-sided insofar as they fail to grasp the essentially antinomous nature of the relationship between the two in which art is inescapably dependent upon philosophy at the same time as it is irreducible to it. (shrink)

Ever since the time of Hegel, there has been a growing philosophization of art in which artists increasingly make works where visual/formal concerns are supplanted by philosophical questions concerning the definition of art itself. At the same time, however, an equally vociferous defence of art against its subsumption by philosophy has been made by theorists such as Nietzsche, Sontag and Barthes who have sought to rescue the sensuous immediacy of art from the abstractness of philosophical thought by advocating a more (...) spontaneous and less rationalistic response to works of art. While it may seem paradoxical that two such diametrically opposing conceptualizations of the relation between art and philosophy should coexist, it is argued that they are in fact two sides of the one coin and reflect the fundamentally contradictory nature of the project of art in modernity. Furthermore, both conceptualizations are one-sided insofar as they fail to grasp the essentially antinomous nature of the relationship between the two in which art is inescapably dependent upon philosophy at the same time as it is irreducible to it. (shrink)

My thesis addresses a puzzle concerning Hegel's notion of the value of beauty. On the one hand, the contemplation of beauty, in particular artistic beauty, has the same status for Hegel as philosophical knowledge, since through both, we come to grasp the absolute truth: the unity of spirit and nature, or of the human individual and the world it lives in. On the other hand, Hegel thinks that the aesthetic unity of spirit and nature is in some way deficient, when (...) compared to the unity we come to grasp through philosophical knowledge. Thus Hegel claims that philosophy and art have the same content, while philosophy is higher than art. I suggest that this puzzle can be dissolved if we consider that beautiful art, for Hegel, is associated with a form of life, in which the aesthetic unity of spirit and nature becomes social and political reality: the ancient Greek polis. Since the social and political structure of the polis inevitably leads to tragic collisions, Hegel concludes that the value of beauty provides no ground for establishing an ultimate unity of the human individual and the world it lives in. In Hegel's view, it is only philosophical reflection, and the social and political institutions which emerge from such reflection, which can provide an adequate ground for ultimate reconciliation. Nevertheless, I argue, the contemplation of beauty remains a perfectly adequate way of grasping, if not establishing, this unity. Hence according to the interpretation I propose, philosophy is higher than art in a twofold sense for Hegel. On the one hand, it serves a critical function with respect to the value of beauty: it points out the limits of beauty, in particular the fact that beauty is incapable of making the unity of spirit and nature concrete and real, by turning it into social and political reality. On the other hand, philosophy redeems the promise which is left unfulfilled by beauty: to establish an ultimate unity of spirit and nature, of human individual and the world it lives in. (shrink)

As an introduction to the plenary session “Metaphysics and Aesthetics” in my article I try to describe the state of philosophy of art today and give an outlook to its future development. In the last century analytical philosophy of art has been occupied with the following four questions: What is the essence of art? What is the ontological status of works of art? What are aesthetic qualities and how do we come to know them? Have aesthetic value judgments objective validity? (...) In the first step I explain why analytical philosophy of art failed to answer these questions and what this failure has to do with the end of art. In the second step I attempt to give a definition of art myself which allows to show that this failure and the end of art were inevitable. Finally I try—as a consequence—to define the general features of the art of the future. (shrink)

In "Off Track" art and philosophy are the inspiration to look differently at daily life and organizations. The book is a plea to approach the complexity of the current world with new metaphors. The author calls this "hinking around". She sees that in "square worlds" there is a need for tools to approach entrenched patterns and systems differently and to get thought processes moving. Sarai van de Boel challenges the reader to look at one's own systems from the inside with (...) a philosophical approach. In eight chapters there are eight "tracks" to follow, but it is also possible to go off the rails. More than fifty works of art by well-known and lesser-known artists and designers play a role in these traces. The author questions the essence of their works and asks philosophical questions about phenomena they evoke. With Marlene Dumas, Marinus Boezem, L.A. Raeven, Ed Atkins, Wong Ping, Kazumasa Nagai, Remy Jungerman, Otto Piene, Eiko Ishioka, Campana brothers, Ann Demeulemeester and Kara Walker. The book ends with the Art & Philosophy Strategy, a theoretical framework for the use of art and philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the development of cubism by Picasso and Braque at the beginning of the twentieth century can be illuminated by consideration of long-running philosophical debates concerning perceptual realism, in particular by Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary properties, and Kant’s empirical realism. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Picasso’s dealer and early authority on cubism, interpreted Picasso and Braque as Kantian in their approach. I reject his influential interpretation, but propose a more plausible, Kantian reading of cubism.

This is a study of the relation between the fine arts and philosophy in France, from the aftermath of the 1789 revolution to the end of the nineteenth century, when a philosophy of being called "monism" emerged and became increasingly popular among intellectuals, artists, and scientists. Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer traces the evolution and impact of this monist thought and its various permutations as a transformative force on certain aspects of French art and culture-from Romanticism to Impressionism-and as a theoretical backdrop that (...) paved the way to as yet unexplored aspects of a modernist aesthetic. Chapters concentrate on three major artists, Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) and Claude Monet (1840-1926), and their particular approach to and interpretation of this unitarian concept. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, philosophy, and cultural history. (shrink)

From his earliest writings as a student in the Evangelical Stift in Tübingen to the last years of his life as a professor in Berlin, art played a major role in Hegel’s various philosophical formulations. It is important to note, however, that although Hegel remained convinced of the general importance of art for his own philosophical endeavors, the particular details of his interpretation of its significance changed quite markedly over the years as he developed his own unique philosophical position and (...) as his firsthand experience of works of art increased. In this paper I will concentrate on some of Hegel’s earliest efforts toward developing his own philosophical system, and will show how this development is reflected in a fundamental transformation of his interpretation of the significance of art. More specifically, I will establish in what follows that one major consequence of Hegel’s evolving systematic philosophy is an “impoverishment” of the artistic in the sense that art comes to lose a certain fertility which it had had in his earlier views. This impoverishment is in effect the price exacted if art is to assume a place within Hegel’s system, precisely because the role and significance of art now come to be defined by and expressed in terms of its place in that system. Although this paper will be concerned with only the first stages in a process of development which continues all the way up to his Berlin lectures on beautiful art, it will nonetheless become apparent that Hegel’s early understanding of art has to have been radically altered for such a development even to begin. (shrink)

"The texts published here reproduce, with some variation, those of five lectures held at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture between October 2012 and April 2013.".

This chapter contains sections titled: Ralph Waldo Emerson: Art as the Commonplace George Santayana: Beauty as the Objectification of Pleasure John Dewey: The Centrality of Aesthetic Experience Defining Art: Monroe C. Beardsley and George Dickie Nelson Goodman on Reference and Arthur C. Danto on Interpretation Justus Buchler: Art as Exhibitive Judgment.

Religious art within postmodernism is discussed. Postmodern art, I argue, projects the myth of a miraculously generating chaos which cannot be maintained as absolute and therefore postmodern art cannot be genuinely religious. The myth is adopted for ideological, not philosophical reasons and calls for alternatives to make religious art possible.

This book covers the field of and points to the intersections between politics, art and philosophy. Its hero, the late Sir Roger Scruton had a longstanding interest in all fields, acquiring professional knowledge in both the practice and theory of politics, art and philosophy. The claim of the book is, therefore, that contrary to a superficial prejudice, it is possible to address the philosophical issues of art and politics in the same oeuvre, as the example of this Cambridge-educated analytical philosopher (...) proves. Accordingly, the book has a bold thesis on the general, theoretical level, mapping the connections between politics, art and philosophy. However, it also has a pioneering commitment on the level of the particular, offering the first full-length study into the philosophical legacy of Roger Scruton, probably the most important British conservative philosopher of the late 20th and the first decades of the 21st century. It also allows reader to look into the philosopher’s fascination with Central European art and culture. Finally, it also provides a daring analysis of the late Scruton’s metaphysical inspirations, connecting the arts, and especially music, with religion and the bonds of love. (shrink)

This volume is by no means out of place for a reader in the twenty first century as resemblances between the age of the machine and our own digital age are surprisingly numerous, particularly with reference to the patterns of intellectual response to unprecedented stimuli. The worrisome parallelisms and analogues are purposefully kept off stage for the imaginative audience to complement the plot of the real drama of the Industrial Revolution as it was witnessed by such imaginative medievalist 'knights' as (...) Carlyle, Cobbett, Southey, Pugin, Ruskin and Morris, intelligent thinkers who performed the universal 'type' rather than the subjective or egocentric in so far as their intellectual responses to the discrepancy between two dissimilar epochs was concerned. The reader is, therefore, expected to be engaged with the arguments of the 'neo-feudal', the 'moral-aesthetic' and the utopian 'social-aesthetic' arguments at the core of the book both imaginatively and intellectually. On the first level, he is requested to shuttle between two centuries separated by the length of a different century. On the second, however, he is expected not only to appreciate the artistically excellent literary works of prominent belletrists, but also to examine the clever polemics they developed as methods of treatment and persuasion aiming at a solution of the social and psychological problems that arose from the incongruity between the present and the past, with specific references to such significant concepts as those of time, history, progress and authority which are examined against the superheated touchstones of democratization, liberty, laissez-faire ethics, mechanization, poverty and social protest in the industrial city. (shrink)

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 90, Issue 4, Page 820, December 2012.

[Vol. 1.] Text volume -- [Vol. 2.] Illustrated volume.

This is a clear and lucid account of Nietzsche's philosophy of art, combining exegesis, interpretation and criticism in a judicious balance. Julian Young argues that Nietzsche's thought about art can only be understood in the context of his wider philosophy. In particular, he discusses the dramatic changes in Nietzschean aesthetics against the background of the celebrated themes of the death of God, eternal recurrence, and the idea of the Übermensch. Young then divides Nietzsche's career and his philosophy of art into (...) four distinct phases, but suggests that these phases describe a circle. An attempt at world-affirmation is made in the central phases, but Nietzsche is predominantly influenced at the beginning and end of his career by a Schopenhauerian pessimism. At the beginning and end art is important because it 'redeems' us from life. (shrink)