"[A] positive contribution to the discourse on aesthetics from a cross-cultural perspective. It should be required reading for any academic who teaches and writes on aesthetics and the philosophy of art... There is much to be inspired by, and to learn from."- The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art provides an extensive research resource to the burgeoning field of Asian aesthetics. Featuring leading international scholars and teachers whose work (...) defines the field, this unique volume reflects the very best scholarship in creative, analytic, and comparative philosophy. Beginning with a philosophical reconstruction of the classical rasa aesthetics, chapters range from the nature of art-emotions, tones of thinking, and aesthetic education to issues in film-theory and problems of the past versus present. As well as discussing indigenous versus foreign in aesthetic practices, this volume covers North and South Indian performance practices and theories, alongside recent and new themes including the Gandhian aesthetics of surrender and self-control and the aesthetics of touch in the light of the politics of untouchability. With such unparalleled and authoritative coverage, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art represents a dynamic map of comparative cross-cultural aesthetics. Bringing together original philosophical research from renowned thinkers, it makes a major contribution to both Eastern and Western contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

This article provides the original perspective on esotericism. Two author distinguishes between the two polar directions of esotericism – "transcendental" and "latent" ; as well as introduces the two postulates characteristic to the first direction that in previous research received the name of "classical". The article discusses what binds esotericism and philosophy, religion, and art; outlines the common aspects of these fields of knowledge and life activity are indicated ; examines the cases of interaction, and what caused the decline of (...) interest in esoteric teachings. The research consists of two parts. The first part explores the three cases that reveal a close link between esoteric, philosophical, scientific and literary thought, as well as the fact that esoteric ideas and concepts often enrich philosophy, science and art. The second part discusses the key reasons for the slump in esotericism: new cultural challenges that to which there is yet no esoteric answer, interception of esoteric discourse in a number of directions of contemporary art and philosophy. However, this pause is temporary, since esoteric path is one of the ways to prevail in personality culture; it can be assumed that esotericists will soon eliminate the existing gap. On the example of current interest in vampires, the author discusses certain peculiarities of the phenomenon of mysticism, which indicate that the phenomenon of vampirism is real, perhaps related to the forms of communication widely used in modern life. (shrink)

This Inspirational Guide To An Open, Critical Exchange Between India And The West Is Framed As A Tribute To Dr. Bettina Baumer, An Eminent Scholar Of Indology. Comprising 32 Essays, Segregated Into Three Sections Indian Philosophy And Spirituality, Indian Arts And Aesthetics, And Interreligious And Intercultural Dialogue.

“The contemporary” is a phrase in frequent use in artworld discourse as a placeholder term for broader, world-picturing concepts such as “the contemporary condition” or “contemporaneity”. Brief references to key texts by philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Rancière, and Peter Osborne often tend to suffice as indicating the outer limits of theoretical discussion. In an attempt to add some depth to the discourse, this paper outlines my approach to these questions, then explores in some detail what these three theorists (...) have had to say in recent years about contemporaneity in general and contemporary art in particular, and about the links between both. It also examines key essays by Jean-Luc Nancy, Néstor García Canclini, as well as the artist-theorist Jean-Phillipe Antoine, each of whom have contributed significantly to these debates. The analysis moves from Agamben’s poetic evocation of “contemporariness” as a Nietzschean experience of “untimeliness” in relation to one’s times, through Nancy’s emphasis on art’s constant recursion to its origins, Rancière’s attribution of dissensus to the current regime of art, Osborne’s insistence on contemporary art’s “post-conceptual” character, to Canclini’s preference for a “post-autonomous” art, which captures the world at the point of its coming into being. I conclude by echoing Antoine’s call for artists and others to think historically, to “knit together a specific variety of times”, a task that is especially pressing when presentist immanence strives to encompasses everything. (shrink)

Published in 1999. The articles in this collection focus on instruction - and writings arising from that instruction - in philosophy and the arts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with emphasis on Central Europe. The introduction brings together and expands upon many of the topics discussed - and conclusions reached - in the remaining seven articles. Four of these articles are devoted to examining the significance of two ancient authors (Aristotle and Cicero) and of two more recent ones (Petrus (...) Ramus and Bartholomew Keckermann). The article on Keckermann is based in part on previously unpublished biographical and bibliographical source materials. Two concepts - encyclopedia and philosophy - as utilized in the 16th and 17th centuries constitute the subject matter of separate articles. And one article focuses primarily on curriculum plans written during the 16th and early 17th centuries. These eight articles are based on a wide array of printed and manuscript source materials which are cited together with library/archive locations and call numbers and which are made more easily accessible through three indices at the conclusion of this volume. (shrink)

This volume of essays on the philosopher John Sallis assesses his wide ranging and genuinely original contribution to philosophy. Along with the response to the essays by Sallis, these essays indicate directions for the future of philosophy.

It is much more certain that the artist can help the philosopher than that the philosopher can help the artist. The purpose of this paper is to indicate the kind of questions about art which the philosopher asks, in order that those whose concern is with art, artists themselves in the first instance, and critics of art, may judge if these questions are interesting to them, and if so may co-operate with the philosophers in seeking to answer them. Now that (...) the sciences and the other occupations of man become so sharply separated from each other, philosophy has come to have a peculiar position. It deals with the questions which are left over from the sciences, and this gives it a specific and important office to perform. (shrink)

Early 20th century debates over the possibility of ‘metaphysics’ are grounded in a set of questions and answers whose central themes are already delineated in Kant’s critical philosophy. Wittgenstein and Carnap are sympathetic to Kant’s dismissal of transcendent metaphysics, but skeptical that there could be any substantive account of the fundamental conditions of our meaning-making. By contrast, Heidegger follows Fichte and the early German Romantics in seeing answers to the problems raised by metacritique not in science, but in the non-discursive (...) forms of understanding and expression exemplified in art. This Romantic turn to art is not taken arbitrarily; it is motivated by methodological considerations that emerge within Kant’s own critical system. I take up the Kantian considerations which lead to an understanding of art as a window into the fundamental conditions of meaning-making before turning to Heidegger’s development of this line of thought. Next, I examine Carnap and Wittgenstein’s skepticism concerning the meaning of Heidegger’s philosophical terminology, focusing on what is perhaps the most problematic case: Heidegger’s talk of ‘the nothing’. I argue that this skepticism is overblown. Heidegger’s talk of the nothing is meaningful in the way that talk about figure and ground is meaningful: it serves as an ostensive indication of intersubjectively accessible structural features of our encounters with things. I conclude by drawing out the existential ramifications of the decision to speak or be silent, drawing on Audre Lorde to illustrate the place of art in making it possible for us to lead authentic lives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy: Two Paths of Liberation from the Representational Mode of ThinkingRobert MagliolaZen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy: Two Paths of Liberation from the Representational Mode of Thinking. By Carl Olson. New York: State University of New York Press, 2000. 309 pp.Carl Olson's Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy compares two paths of liberation from the representational mode of thinking, namely, (...) Zen Buddhism and postmodern philosophy. Olson is to be commended for encouraging this dialogue, especially since professors of religious studies usually marginalize Gallic postmodern thought. He is also to be appreciated for the enormous effort that must have been required to describe so much material. Olson treats Bataille, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida, Guattari, Foucault, Kristeva, Lacan, Levinas, and Lyotard on the postmodern side; and Dogen, Hakuin, Nishitani, many Chinese Ch'anists, and some Indian Buddhists on the Buddhist side. His method is to arrange the chapters according to topoi such as "Language, Disruption, and Play," "Ways of Thinking," "The Body," and so on, and to treat the pertaining ideas of the individual Buddhist and postmodern authors insofar as applicable.Because Olson's book assembles between two covers the names, selected works, and—at least in a general sense—the "key" ideas of the postmodern movement and their grosso modo similarities/dissimilarities via-à-vis Zen Buddhism, I think it serves an undergraduate readership well enough. The problem is that the book too often performs like a crib sheet in the CliffsNotes manner, reducing so-called "key" ideas to misleading clichés. The book is at its best when it gives an author some length of attention, as it does with Dogen. Rather than reduce my review to a series of sound bites (print bites?) corresponding to Olson's, I shall resort to what hermeneuts call an Auerbachian decoupage, that is, a close analysis of several passages that can be taken as indicative of an author's mode in general. I'll address three interpretations from Olson's book, one of Derrida, one of a Chinese kung-an (koan), and one of Lacan.Within his comparison of Derrida/language/Buddhism, Olson cites (p. 46) a sentence from Derrida's Writing and Difference: "Speech is stolen: since it is stolen [End Page 295] from language it is, thus, stolen from itself, that is, from the thief who has always already lost speech as property and initiative." Olson glosses as follows: "Derrida claims that a speaking subject, representing an irreducible secondary status, is no longer the person who speaks because his/her origin is elusive in an already established field of speech." Because of glosses like this, Derrida is all too often subjected to the ridicule of nonspecialists, who exclaim, "Derrida denies that a person can use speech instrumentally? Aren't his lectures the instruments of his own ideas?" Actually in the section Olson quotes, Derrida is appropriating Lacanian thought and mutating it for Derridean purposes. For Derrida, all life is stretched out in time and diced-out in space in such a way that phenomenological self-identity is an illusion. Physical writing is the best metaphor for this, in that written words (even Chinese ideograms) cannot, in the scientific sense, be perceived in one absolute moment: it "takes time" and it "takes space" to recognize a word, that is, "build" a word-meaning. Derrida calls life a "text" or "writing" because life is like writing: life on the phenomenological level appears holistic (much as a word-meaning appears self-identical, i.e., arising all at once), but life is actually a time/space "drift."1In the sentence Olson quotes, what Derrida means has the following gist: Speech (spoken words) is stolen from language in that it belongs to language as writing and is really writing; and insofar as it is really writing, it is stolen from itself; speech has "always already" been lost to language in that the instrumentality of speech is always undercut by language's nature as writing. Speech is always undercut by an inevitable drift that subverts intentionality and foils our attempts to make speech our absolute "property." This does not mean most of the intention... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by:Art and Politics in Roger Scruton’s Conservative Philosophy by Ferenc HÖRCHERD. N. ByrneHÖRCHER, Ferenc. Art and Politics in Roger Scruton’s Conservative Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. vii + 404 pp. Cloth, $129.99The intellectual legacy of Sir Roger Scruton defies the conventional wisdom that conservatism is a mood or sensibility rather than a systematic body of ideas. Then, as Hörcher indicates, Scruton was never a particularly conventional thinker. Against (...) the current that equated intellectualism with political critique, Scruton espoused traditionalism, community ahead of individualism, and order against pluralism. Against the current as well, he took his reflections to the court of public opinion rather than to the halls of academe. (shrink)

Originally published in 1942, this widely read book appears now in its third edition. In a brief prefatory note, Mrs. Langer describes it as "frankly a prelude to Feeling and Form," her more recent book on aesthetics, which, she indicates, may itself eventually prove to be a prelude to a more comprehensive work which will include ethical problems in its scope.--D. R.

At a time when monuments are falling, learning processes and discourses accelerating, it seems apposite to pay attention also to artworks commissioned by established institutions in order to give form to good intentions. This essay focuses on a commissioned portrait of female professors, on art education, Dutch art policy / politics and the former colonial site that the University of Amsterdam occupies, in order to aide this institution’s desired process to become more inclusive. It proposes Art Research as a realm (...) that can contribute a differentiated and thoughtful positioning of research and universities in visual and public domains: a necessary ally. Since the essay was written in Summer 2019, much has happened: the Faculty in question has been found to be the locus of ongoing sexual harassment. The student victims did not feel that the complaints procedures were safeguarding them sufficiently. They went to the media. The university’s ombudsperson asked to investigate found no systemic deficiencies. Since George Floyd’s death, such a conclusion is no longer possible, and the Board of the university has admitted shameful and systemic failures.[1] We now know better what “systemic” means. This essay’s case study is meant to show that art and philosophy can jointly analyze systems and organizations as a basis for necessary conversations, followed by a broad range of people taking responsibility and acting accordingly. In Covid lock-down times, it became deceptively obvious how unimportant art is. Through an essay such as this, it is hopefully also evident how art can be an indicator of institutional culture: e.g. in relation to how embedded the principle to consult specialists is, even if this seems to be unimportant. And that is a matter of life and death. [1] https://www.folia.nl/actueel/138876/fred-weerman-en-geert-ten-dam-dit-is-ongehoord-beschamend. (shrink)

My first objective is to show that biblical hermeneutics inspires the contemporary art of textual interpretation, especially in the way we understand the interaction between the 'world of the text' and the 'world of the reader'. In this sense, the art of interpretation is not only the science of 'explanation' of the meaning of the text but also the 'understanding' of the impact of the text in our lives. With reference to the works of Paul Ricœur and Paul Beauchamp, I (...) will show how interpretation addresses the configuration of the plot of our lives and how it contributes to form our moral identity and our self-understanding in history and memory.Secondly, I will indicate how biblical hermeneutics and philosophical hermeneutics of the subject are deeply intertwined. There is the influence of the Christian traditions on hermeneutics, but also a complex relationship of mutual inclusion between them. (shrink)

It Studies The Historical Progression Of Aesthetics Both Indian And Western Since Ancient Times, Focussing On The Landmarks In The Course Of Its Development And Theories On Art, Beauty And Related Concepts.

In recent years, inter-medial studies have attracted increasing attention in arts theory. The notion of 'inter-mediality' presupposes that each established art - such as theatre, painting, and cinema - indicates the existence of a particular medium, which preserves its distinct features in translations from art to art and, especially, in its combinations with others in single works. Nonetheless, this field of research is presupposed already in the traditional studies of 'ekphrasis', which focus on the verbal accounts of nonverbal works of (...) art; and in Wagner's notion of Gesamtkuntswerk. This renewed interest generated new fields of research, such as (a) the likelihood of the arts reflecting common grounds; (b) the necessity of a shared metalanguage; (b) the possibility of inter-medial translation; and (d) the inter-medial coexistence within a single work of art, without hindering the reading, interpreting and experiencing abilities of receivers. In honor of Eli Rozik, Ph.D., professor emeritus, former head of the Department of Theatre Studies, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Tel Aviv University, this collection provides overviews of all these theoretical issues, and tackles the contemporary practical questions that arise from attempts to transgress the boundaries between the established disciplines of arts studies. Considering first the theoretical aspects of inter-art, inter-mediality, and nonverbal literacy, Exploring the Common Grounds of the Arts goes on to discuss by means of performance analysis; dialogues between the arts within a single work; and correspondences between visual and auditory stimuli in musical contexts. It concludes with a discussion of practical examples of inter-mediality in religious representations, official processions, and public performances. (shrink)

Originally published in 1942, this widely read book appears now in its third edition. In a brief prefatory note, Mrs. Langer describes it as "frankly a prelude to Feeling and Form," her more recent book on aesthetics, which, she indicates, may itself eventually prove to be a prelude to a more comprehensive work which will include ethical problems in its scope.--D. R.

In The Truth in Painting , Derrida insists that Heidegger's treatment of “a famous picture by Van Gogh” marks “a moment of pathetic collapse.” While we would agree, we would insist that this example does not render Heidegger's entire philosophy of art suspect. Instead, if his reading of Van Gogh's painting is “derisory and symptomatic,” it is nonetheless “significant,” if only insofar as it provides an indication of Heidegger's underestimation of the plastic arts in favor of the elevation of poetry—an (...) underestimation that may be corrected in light of what we might regard as his true philosophy of art. Our aim, then, is to see (with some help from Derrida) what Heidegger could have seen in looking at Van Gogh's Old Shoes were the work not reduced to an illustration in a presentation whose destination is poetry, not painting. What, in other words, would Van Gogh's painting look like were we to view it in light of “The Origin of the Work of Art,” assuming that the latter does not require insistence on the priority of linguistic work but on the creation of a truth that belongs to the Earth, in the case in point, as the ground of painting? (shrink)

The question about the nature of art is at the centre of the philosophy of art. The thesis seeks to replace the two dominant approaches to this question in contemporary English-speaking philosophy--essentialism and descriptivism--with an historicist approach. The historicist approach I develop and defend holds that answers to the question "What is Art?" must take the form of localized cultural-historical narratives. ;This alternative approach is applied to write the history of the development of what I call "the modern conception of (...) art" in the early eighteenth century. A changing notion of art that emerges in Britain in this period is decisive for all later philosophy of art. Its genesis must be understood in a context of social, political and cultural changes. These changes deeply affected many people's conception of themselves and of their place in society. Social status becomes uncertain, and new criteria for the presentation of the self and evaluation of others emerge. Knowledge about art and the display of taste become indicators of social distinctions and thus criteria for social evaluation, replacing older notions of birth and rank. The modern conception of art emerges as part of new ideas of the presentation of the self, as part of a new ideal of edification. ;In contemporary philosophy of art, the evaluative contents of the conception of art--its historical and contemporary connection to notions of the moral and social order--are seldom discussed. Yet, as I show, these connections exist and have existed for a long time. At the centre of contemporary philosophy of art, therefore, there is a conception of art which is ideological in the sense that it treats the normative as factual and the historically contingent as the natural. Only a historical analysis of the kind I carry out is able to bring to light this aspect of the conception of art presupposed in contemporary philosophy of art. (shrink)

Prof. Hiriyanna Was The First Among The Pioneers To Establish Meaningfully The Relationship Of Philosophy, Aesthetics And Life. The Present Volume Carries Fifteen Contributions On Topics Of Indian Aesthetics. After A Penetrating Analysis Of The Funda-Mental Concepts Envisaged From A Traditional Point Of View, Prof. Hiriyanna Interprets Them Succinctly. He Elucidates The Theory Of Rasa From The Point Of Sankhya In A Masterly Fashion; Equally Illuminating Are The Other Essays On Rasa And Dhvani, And Sanskrit Poetics.

The capacity to engage with art is a human universal present in all cultures and just about every individual human. This indicates that this capacity is evolved. In this Critical Notice of Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct, I discuss various evolutionary scenarios and their consequences. Dutton and I both reject the "spandrel" approach that originates from the work of Gould and Lewontin. Dutton proposes, following work of Geoffrey Miller, that art is sexually selected--that art-production is a sign of a fit (...) genome in males. I argue that while assortative mating may well have had a role in the evolution of "the art instinct", group selection is a better explanation. I also take issue with Dutton's "cluster concept" approach to defining art, and argue that it is a universal and essential characteristic of art that it is appreciated both for what it expresses and for the way that it expresses. It thus requires a reflexive capacity that is not operative in the appreciation of sport spectacles and pornography. (shrink)

This book presents a timely reconfiguration of the relations between art, philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics. Through connection with a range of contemporary social and philosophical issues and movements, this collection of essays highlights the imperative of sensorial aesthetics. The book focuses on the radical philosophical approach to aesthetics enabled by the works of Jean-François Lyotard and Gilles Deleuze. From these philosophers an older meaning of aesthetic has been recalled. Before it indicated primarily the theory of art and beauty, “aesthetic” referred (...) to the sensibility, the capacity to receive sensations. In summoning this “sensorial” meaning of aesthetics in their respective works, Lyotard, Deleuze, and other recent thinkers turn the philosophical theory of aesthetics away from the dominance of cognitivist and reception theories, and towards a thinking of aesthetics through considerations of the movements of matter, affect, and sensation. (shrink)

This article asserts the significance of the portrayal of the political art of statesmanship as weaving, and aims to show how this image emphasizes two main aspects of the political art of statesmanship. Firstly, the image implies a three-dimensionality, both through the process of weaving and through the thickness of the protective fabric this produces, that in turn indicates the vital aspect of corporeality in politics. Secondly, weaving as a paradigmatic example of the art of statesmanship presents a way of (...) incorporating different entities and joining diverse threads into a cohesive unity, without reducing them to a form of sameness as mere mathematical counting would. These two aspects are in turn connected to an emphasis on the importance in good statesmanship of recognizing the specificity of the occasion and the variety and difference of the innumerable qualities to be interlaced in weaving the fabric of a good society. (shrink)

The title of this paper is intended to evoke several connotations. Since it will doubtless fail to do so, let me confess them explicitly and artlessly. First, the trinitarian character of the title suggests my debt to the dialectical tradition, from Hegel and Marx to Peirce and Dewey. Second, the alliterative character of the title indicates my debt to Nelson Goodman, perpetrator of the most alarming alliterations allowed in contemporary philosophy. In fact, the text of my sermon can be found (...) in Goodman’s Languages of Art: “Talking does not make the world, or even pictures, but talking and pictures participate in making each other and the world as we know them.”. (shrink)

Daya Krishna and Twentieth-Century Indian Philosophy introduces contemporary Indian philosophy as a unique philosophical genre through the writings of one its most significant exponents, Daya Krishna (1924-2007). It surveys Daya Krishna's main intellectual projects: rereading classical Indian sources anew, his famous Samvad Project, and his ardent attempt to formulate a social and political theory that can better fit India's needs and challenges. Conceived as a dialogue with Daya Krishna and contemporaries, including his interlocutors, Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya, Badrinath Shukla, Ramchandra Gandhi and (...) Mukund Lath, this book is an engaging introduction to anyone interested in contemporary Indian philosophy and in the thought-provoking writings of Daya Krishna. (shrink)

Art as a Singular Rule "Art has nothing to do with me. Or my family. Or anybody I know" Abstract - This paper will examine an unresolved tension inherent in the question of art and argue for the idea of a singular rule as a natural resolution. In so doing, the structure of a singular rule will be fully outlined and its paradoxical constitution will be resolved. The tension I mention above unfolds both as a matter of history and as (...) a product of analysis. The concept of imitation will be our introduction to a brief overview of a historical trajectory starting with Plato. Plato is notorious for having imposed one of the most humiliating verdicts ever on the Arts: Art is imitative he argued, it is the practice of reproducing illusions and is, therefore, both an inferior source of knowledge and an ethically corrupt activity. Then, the story continues, came Aristotle, the savior of the Arts: he suggested that since essence, form, is imbedded in reality, the artist who imitates essence performs the noble task of abstracting form from substance. Art could now proudly stand alongside other highly respectable branches of human activities, such as the sciences. With the dominance of Aristotle in Western culture, abstraction came to play a key role. Leaping forward to our time, it can be argued that in Modernism the move towards abstraction was pushed to breaking point - to the point where the object was dismissed and denied relevancy to the work of art. This will bring us to a discussion of Art as representation and subsequently, to the introduction of a line of philosophical reasoning that threatens the Arts. It will seem as if we are caught between two extremes: If we assume that art is representational, we open the door for the old Platonic criticism that art is merely imitative (of its object); If we return to abstractionism, we may be led along a path that does not stop short of renouncing the object altogether, i.e. nothing is asserted as standing to the work of art as an "object" or an outer aim; this leaves us on a suspiciously skeptical note concerning the purpose and aim of art - and it indeed echoes prevailing feelings of unrest and confusion concerning the arts, precisely the sort that the quote above indicates. This seems to entrap us in a vicious circle. However, drawing upon the philosophies of Kant, Wittgenstein, Goodman and the contemporary Czech philosopher and esthetician, Tomas Kulka, I suggest a way for resolving the dilemma. This is my analysis of singular rule. (shrink)

James Elkins argues that art historians should largely abandon the concept of the sublime as a way to understand art. In making this argument, he ignores the conception of the sublime in Hegel’s Aesthetics. This essay challenges Elkins’ argument and indicates how Hegel’s conception might be relevant. After summarizing Hegel’s conception of the sublime, the essay examines its potential significance today, both for interpreting contemporary artworks and for understanding the relations among art, religion, and philosophy. Contemporary art of the sublime (...) provides an important reason why we need to reconceive these relations and reappropriate Hegel’s conception of the sublime. (shrink)

During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, physics was regularly taught as part of instruction in philosophy and the arts at Central European schools and universities. However, physics did not have a special or privileged status within that instruction. Three general indicators of this lack of special status are suggested in this article. First, teachers of physics usually were paid less than teachers of most other university-level subject-matters. Second, very few Central European academics during this period appear to have made (...) a career out of teaching physics. And third, Reformation Era schools and universities in Central Europe emphasized language instruction; such instruction not only was instrumental in promoting the confessional-i.e., Calvinist, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic-agendas of those same schools and universities, but also helped to prepare students for service in nascent but growing state governments. (shrink)

Many educators persist in opposing art to intellect. This is incompatible with modern understandings of the interdependence of cognition and feeling. It also causes neglect of the value of art as one medium for presenting and exploring ideas. Historical examples add weight to the point by showing the richness of thought that has often informed visual art. The educational waste and cultural damage consequent on neglecting this aspect of art is indicated and remedial approaches are suggested.

This paper examines the early aesthetic writings of Joseph Margolis from the late 1950s to the mid‐1960s in order to argue for the relevance of these works in understanding Margolis’s later, more well‐known views in the philosophy of art. Specifically, the paper addresses Margolis’s early essays on the definition and ontology of art and aesthetic perception. These essays not only show Margolis engaged in the most significant debates in mid‐century analytic aesthetics but also provide important indications of the limitations of (...) that approach to thinking about the arts that informs the development of Margolis’s later cultural realism. (shrink)

Returning to the Greek understanding of art to rethink its capacities, Creation and the Function of Art focuses on the relationship between techné and phusis (nature). Moving away from the theoretical Platonism which dominates contemporary understandings of art, this book instead reinvigorates Aristotelian causation. Beginning with the Greek topos and turning to insights from philosophy, pure mathematics, psychoanalysis and biology, Jason Tuckwell re-problematises techné in functional terms. This book examines the deviations at play within logical forms, the subject, and upon (...) phusis to better situate the role of the function in poiesis (art). In so doing, Tuckwell argues that art concerns a genuinely creative labour that cannot be resolved via an ontological or epistemological problem, but which instead constitutes an encounter with the problematic. As such, techné is shown to be a property of the living, of intelligence coupled to action, that not only enacts poiesis or art, but indicates a broader role for creative deviation in nature. (shrink)

ÍNDICE: Presentación. Prólogo - Una reflexión sobre el concepto del arte. - La sensibilidad. - Lo estético. - El estilo. - Arte y Utilidad. - El Dibujo. - Análisis de la línea. - La forma plana - El claroscuro y la entonación. - La textura. - La forma tridimensional. - La armonía. - La simetría - La proporción y el cuerpo humano. - El movimiento. - El peso como elemento plástico. - La composición. - El color. - El diseño. - (...) El rostro humano como significante estético. - El arte como lenguaje. Índice de nombres. (shrink)

Hidden in the cave : the Upaniṣadic self -- Dangerous truths : the Buddha on silence, secrecy and snakes -- A cloak of clever words : the deconstruction of deceit in the Mahābhārata -- Words that burn : why did the Buddha say what he did? -- Words that break : can an Upaniṣad state the truth? -- The imperfect reality of persons -- Self as performance.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Art Subjects: Making Artists in the American UniversityTheodore GracykArt Subjects: Making Artists in the American University, by Howard Singerman. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1999, 296 pp., $19.95 paper.Howard Singerman's Art Subjects is a study of the training of visual artists in American universities from 1912 to the present. More precisely, the book is an account of how two philosophies ofeducation have competed to inform (...) that training. At the outset, Singerman announces that the book explores a long-standing "struggle between vision and language" (p. 10) that culminates with a decisive privileging of language. The book mimics its putative subject in at least one interesting way. As it was for art and the training of American artists in the twentieth century (at least on Singerman's account of them), so it is with the book. Each moves from a practice grounded in objective reality to a jargon-ridden discourse that limits entry to anyone outside of its acutely self-regarding disciplinary field. Although the book's acknowledgments segment thanks one individual for demanding thatSingerman "come to a real conclusion" for the book, readers should note Singerman's subsequent admission that it may not have one. At times it even appears that Singerman goes out of his way to avoid drawing one.Art Subjects appears to have started life as Singerman's doctoral dissertation, but it only occasionally displays the dull by-the-numbers writing of such documents. The book has a clear organization and its numerous quotations are carefully documented. The overall argument is framed, beginning and end, with Singerman's autobiography of his own time as a university art student. It provides him with his framing question: if he has a M.F.A. in sculpture but never learned to sculpt, what does his professional degree signify? The answer is that it indicates that his work is no longer facile. He has progressed from the realm of the artist whose work is professional, displaying facility, to the stage where he is professional. He has progressed to the point where being an artist is theartist's true subject: "Artists are the subject of graduate school; they are both who and what is taught" (p. 3). If this progression is best indicated by an artist's lack of facility in producing works of art, that is the price of professionalism. In the post-World War II university, art training is "founded on the primacy of theory over practice" (p. 181). Yet the result is professionalism without a clear profession other than as an employee of the post-World War II university: the M.F.A. prepares artists for the university discipline of art. Citing Foucault, Singerman seems satisfied that artists have taken command of a theoretical field. Disciplinary boundaries are created and policed by its rules of professional discourse. At the same time, Singerman declares his intention to "use the concept of the discipline as it constrains and structures discourses to keep from having to judge whether or not art is a profession" (p. 201). He likewise mentions [End Page 119] but does not take any stand on the "putative decline of recent art" (p. 210). This ongoing refusal to judge deprives the book of potentially interesting conclusions. It also calls into question Singerman's repeated references to the "self-criticality" of the discipline.Singerman's neutrality might berefreshing were it not for his use of Foucault to introduce the notion that each new "proposition" within the disciplinary discourse represents progress in a "theoretical field," moving "knowledge" forward. Talking about art (and not, to be sure, talking all that much about specific works of art) and talking about being an artist may or may not represent progress. For instance, Singerman's early chaptersmake the case that the triumph of artistic modernism must be understood as a repudiation of a "female" aesthetic and even of women as artists. Singerman returns to the topic ofwomen artists only once, to note Griselda Pollock's approval of the entry of feminism into the academic discipline of art. Thus Singerman is silent on the question of whether progress is made when the number of women is... (shrink)

Collection of articles published during the last one hundred years in Prabhuddha Bharata, or, Awakened India.

Arthur C. Danto's essays not only critique bodies of work but reflect upon art's conceptual evolution as well, drawing for the reader a kind of "philosophical map" indicating how art and the criteria for judging it has changed over the twentieth century. In _Unnatural Wonders_ the renowned critic finds himself at a point when contemporary art has become wholly pluralistic, even chaotic-with one medium as good as another-and when the moment for the "next thing" has already passed. So the theorist (...) goes in search of contemporary art's most exhilarating achievements, work that bridges the gap between art and life, which, he argues, is now the definitive art of our time. Danto considers the work of such young artists as John Currin and Renee Cox and older living masters including Gerhard Richter and Sol LeWitt. He discusses artists of the New York School, like Philip Guston and Joan Mitchell, and international talents, such as the South African William Kentridge. Danto conducts a frank analysis of Matthew Barney's _The Cremaster Cycle_, Damien Hirst's skeletons and anatomical models, and Barbara Kruger's tchotchke-ready slogans; finds the ghost of Henry James in the work of Barnett Newman; and muses on recent Whitney Biennials and art influenced by 9/11. He argues that aesthetic considerations no longer play a central role in the experience and critique of art. Instead art addresses us in our humanity, as men and women who seek meaning in the "unnatural wonders" of art, a meaning that philosophy and religion are unable to provide. (shrink)

In this benchmark five-volume study, originally published between 1922 and 1955, Surendranath Dasgupta examines the principal schools of thought that define Indian philosophy. A unifying force greater than art, literature, religion, or science, Professor Dasgupta describes philosophy as the most important achievement of Indian thought, arguing that an understanding of its history is necessary to appreciate the significance and potentialities of India's complex culture. Volume I offers an examination of the Vedas and the Brahmanas, the earlier Upanisads, and the six (...) systems of Indian philosophy. (shrink)

This article arises from selected issues on interpretation raised in a session entitled ‘Danto on Margolis/margolis on Danto’ at the Eastern Division meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics, April 25, 1989, at the University of Arts, Philadelphia. In Part I, principally for dialectical purposes, I recapitulate some of Arthur Danto’s and Joseph Margolis’s points in an attempt to idealize two opposing views: constructionist and realist. It should be said at the outset that the constructionist and realist positions need not (...) be opposed, as Margolis ramifies the matter in his extensive writings. Also, as Danto expounds in numerous places, his theory of art is anti-realist. Nevertheless, as regards the practice of art history and art criticism he is realist—at least as represented in the present exchange. So the idealizations of constructionism and realism here presented should be understood to range over designated concerns and should not be read as idealizations of these authors’ more developed positions as presented elsewhere. In Part II, I adjust the initial characterizations, offer some criticisms of each of these positions, and indicate some points at which there might be some promise for reconciliation between them. In Part III, I shall make some strategic suggestions to advance the discussion. (shrink)

The thesis which I wish to recommend to you is that science is a form of art though not of fine art: that like art, it is a human invention, not less real for that, and having value, or being valuable, partly if not mainly because of that. I mean to indicate by this statement that for me at least a better insight can be got into the nature of science by considering it as a form of art, and asking (...) how it differs from and how it resembles fine art. (shrink)

Each generation invents new practices and new writings of philosophy. Ours should have been able to introduce certain mutations that would at least be equivalent with those of cubism, abstract art, and twelve-tone serialism: it has only partially done so. But after all the deconstructions, after Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Derrida, this demand takes on a different dimension: What do we do with philosophy itself? How do we globally change our relation to this thought, which keeps indicating that it is increasingly (...) conservative and repetitive? These two questions together have prompted what we call “non-philosophy.” Non-philosophy is not the negation of philosophy. It is the suspension of philosophy's claim to think the real, and it is the invention of new usages of thought and language that disrupt the rational narrative of the real, which is precisely what every philosophy is. Non-philosophy should rather be understood à la the “non-Euclidean,” namely, as a generalization of the philosophical beyond its traditional limitation by the unitary or “Heraclitean” postulate. From then on, an infinite number of philosophical decisions that are no longer mutually exclusive will correspond with any real phenomenon. Philosophy and Non-Philosophy is widely considered the first fully explicit elaboration of non-philosophy and one of its most important introductory texts. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Modern Song: curious title, a curious book. If you bought it, as I did, because you are a devoted Dylan fan, hoping to find new Dylan songs inside, or at least new Dylan prose, you will be disappointed. In the photo of three musicians on the cover, none of them is Dylan. The one on the left is Little Richard. Who are the other two? Nowhere are we told their names, nor the names of the people in (...) any of the other photos, except for the sixty-six featured artists, though we will recognize many. The photo on the back cover might or might not be of the interior of Izzy Young's “Folklore Center,” reminiscent of Dylan's early days in Greenwich Village in the Sixties, when, together with my guitarist husband, I got to hear him perform after hours at the Gaslight and knew him well enough to say Hi when passing on the street.The basis for selecting the sixty-six songs anthologized and commented on is not immediately obvious. This is not a collection of Dylan's underappreciated favorites, though the taste represented is certainly eclectic and the choices are often surprising. The title does not help the reader who has not yet got her bearings... Philosophy? As if to justify his use of the word, Dylan eventually offers a lengthy comment on Albert Camus, but how relevant is that comment to these songs? And the word modern, too, means so many things—a sudden divergence from the past in the arts and literature; up-to-date and therefore good. These songs are not that kind of modern. If anything, the book looks backward, across the years of Dylan's long life to his musical awakening. Because we are almost the same age, I recognize the hodgepodge of styles and influences assembled here as belonging mostly to the early Fifties, when, like Bob, I was entering my teens by listening to, even dancing to, songs on the radio before I fell asleep at night. Enough about me! But no more apt basis for classifying these songs is suggested. They are not arranged alphabetically or chronologically.As for the anthologized songs, each one, once named, receives a commentary, and every commentary is called a chapter, and every chapter is divided into two parts, spelled out in letters as bold as a movie marquee. We are given the title of each song, the date of its release, and the name of the songwriter. The first part of each commentary consists of a paraphrase of “events” in the song, told almost exclusively in the second-person you rather than the more conventional I or the third-person he or she. Here is a passage from Dylan's paraphrase of “Blue Suede Shoes” by Carl Perkins: You get on well with most people, and you put up with a lot, and you hardly get caught off guard, but your shoes are something else. Minor things may annoy you, but you rise above them. Having your teeth kicked in, being pounded senseless, being dumped on and discredited, but you don't put any weight on that, none of it is as real to you as your shoes. They're priceless and beyond monetary worth.The paraphrase goes on for almost six pages, and to what end? The second half of each commentary, indicated by changes in the type, takes a few steps back to consider the sociological implications of the song in the context of its time. For instance, from the second half of the commentary on “Blue Suede Shoes”: “Shoes reveal character, station, and personality.” But Dylan does not use the opportunity to talk about his own character, station, personality. His associations with Carl Perkins and “Blue Suede Shoes” morph into an anecdote about a man called “Iron Felix, trusted consort to Lenin and Stalin.”A lengthy list of all required photo credits fills the two back pages but is printed in type so small it is almost illegible. If you want more information, and more importantly if you want to experience the songs discussed, your best bet is to search for the recordings on YouTube and to follow along, reading Dylan's commentary, one song at a time, while listening. Or, I hear rumors that we will need to purchase another book, the audio version of Philosophy of Modern Song, not yet released.Every song has its commentary, but nothing about this organization is stable, and as soon as the reader/listener thinks she has discovered a rationale for the order of the works selected, she is met with an exception. Basically, these seem to be songs about which Dylan has something anecdotal to say. More usefully, perhaps, they are organized around certain themes—those that have always preoccupied him: man's inhumanity to man, injustice, self-deception, the human situation. The anonymous author of the blurb on the jacket promises a master class in songwriting, but, if it exists at all, that lecture is exhausted in one or two observations, such as: “ ‘El Paso’ is built on five stanzas, each one two verses and a bridge and then returning to the next stanza.... ”It was almost fifty pages into the book that the sense of something missing overcame me. It was not only the words of the songs and the music that were missing; it was the author, the central intelligence that I love, the singer and songwriter whose name is credited on the cover but who never appears in the book, not even in a photograph. What I missed was Dylan. He had removed himself from his book's pages, except perhaps for a single instance: “You're an eighty-year old man, being wheeled around in a home for the elderly, and the nurses are getting on your nerves.... ”Has Bob Dylan grown weary of himself and all of his creations? The commentaries are not about Bob. In the whole book, the line quoted above may be the only exception. Does he refuse the “first person singular in the hopes of transcending ego”? Maybe; but we want to hear our master's voice. As for the philosophy of song? Besides the remarks on Camus, there is only one commentary in which Dylan explicitly states anything like a philosophy, and that is the one on “Willie the Wandering Gypsy and Me,” written and performed by Joe Shaver. The song has a philosophical point of view: “Keep moving, it's better, let the train keep on rolling.”. (shrink)

This article examines a strain of contemporary art photography marked by its resemblance to earlier scientific motion studies as indicative of a wider `scientific turn' in recent photographic art. Focusing on Sarah Pickering's series Explosions , Denis Darzacq's The Fall , Ori Gersht's Blow Up and Martin Klimas' Flower Vases , it addresses the conditions that have allowed for forms and methodologies associable with earlier scientific imagery to be reshaped as contemporary art, particularly the large-scale of recent `museum photography' and (...) its self-conscious indeterminacy of meaning. Adopting a schematic approach based on the identification of similarity, I examine the implications of ambiguity and scale as inherent qualities of the work, along with the interpretations that the projects examined share. Noting a potential formalism in artists' repeated isolation of frozen motion, I anchor this interest in the medium-specific qualities of photography in two changes associated with digitization. Where digital post-production has placed pressure on traditional ontological understandings of the medium, the projects are shown to offer a nostalgic return to `purer' forms of photographic production. Drawing on Fredric Jameson's 2003 essay, `The end of temporality', I conclude by considering how the photographs may be implicated in wider transformations to the construction and experience of time under late-capitalism. (shrink)

According to the French philosopher Alain, art must regain its existence as a real and solid object to counteract deceitful imagination. In line with this view is Yves Michaud’s description of the “gaseous” state of contemporary art. Paradoxically, the wide circulation of many ‘artistic’ products, destined to be consumed and invoke emotions, does not indicate that we are in presence of an important affirmation of ethical and aesthetical values. As it were, the proliferation of aesthetic objects has destroyed the symbolic (...) value of art. The Italian philosopher Gianni Carchia has underlined how the disappearance of the axiological dimension has led art towards imposture and under the yoke of imagination, which both assist the strategies of the demonic. At this point a question arises: is it possible to eradicate the power of the demonic and evil from our existential condition? According to Jung it’s impossible. In Castelli’s view, the union between art, evil and the demonic has characterized the artistic panorama of the sixteenth century. In the twentieth-century, we owe to Hermann Broch – who brought the raising power of kitsch under philosophical scrutiny − the idea of a complicity between degraded art and evil. Not all scholars agreed that Kitsch represented evil. Many philosophers argued that the growing popularity of Kitsch among the masses posed a problem concerning the demand for art. For this reason, philosophical speculation had better not take a Manichean attitude and reject Kitsch outright, on the contrary, Kitsch should be studied with the aim of transforming the “hunger for art”, of which it is a manifestation, into a desire for ethical and artistic values. (shrink)

Recently, scholars in a variety of disciplines—including philosophy, film and media studies, and literary studies—have become interested in the aesthetics, definition, and ontology of the screenplay. To this end, this volume addresses the fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of the screenplay: What is a screenplay? Is the screenplay art—more specifically, literature? What kind of a thing is a screenplay? Nannicelli argues that the screenplay is a kind of artefact; as such, its boundaries are determined collectively by screenwriters, and its (...) ontological nature is determined collectively by both writers and readers of screenplays. Any plausible philosophical account of the screenplay must be strictly constrained by our collective creative and appreciative practices, and must recognize that those practices indicate that at least some screenplays are artworks. (shrink)

Physical activities are generally accepted as promoting important psychological benefits. However, studies examining martial arts as a form of physical activity and mental health have exhibited many methodological limitations in the past. Additionally, recent philosophical discussion has debated whether martial arts training promotes psychological wellbeing or illness. Self-efficacy has an important relationship with mental health and may be an important mechanism underpinning the potential of martial arts training to promote mental health. This study examined the effect of martial arts training (...) on the psychological construct of self-efficacy. A total of 283 secondary school students with a mean age of 12.76 (SD = 0.68) years were recruited to complete a time-limited (10-session) martial arts intervention, which was examined using a randomised controlled trial. Univariate ANOVAs found that the intervention improved the experimental group’s self-efficacy compared to the control group, which was sustained at follow-up. Regression analysis indicated that socio-educational status moderated this outcome. These findings support the martial arts-based intervention’s potential to improve self-efficacy and promote wellbeing through physical activity. Martial arts training may be an efficacious psychosocial treatment that can be used as a complementary approach to promote mental health. (shrink)

This article delves into the philosophical nuances involved in translating the Confucian concept of you yu yi 游於藝 into English. The concept, which refers to engaging in various arts or skills, poses challenges when it comes to choosing the appropriate English translation. By examining Confucian texts and philosophical interpretations, the study aims to shed light on the multifaceted nature of the concept and provide insights into the complexities of cross-cultural translation. Through a meticulous analysis of linguistic, cultural, and philosophical factors, (...) this study aims to contribute to the ongoing discourse on translation theory and the preservation of cultural concepts. (shrink)

With the continuous enrichment of material life and the increasing improvement of spiritual life, the quality of life of people in the new era has improved comprehensively. After achieving technological advancements, further improving people's living standards will become the first priority, and indicators concerning quality of life will become more important, including spiritual needs, environmental conditions and social order. In particular, the degree of spiritual and cultural satisfaction is a prominent indicator for consideration. The current research investigates how new-age art (...) is changing and how it may affect society dynamics in the future. It explores how new-age art, as a phenomenon in culture, adjusts to shifting environments, emphasizing the social roles, realization of values, and influencing elements of the art. With a focus on spiritual and cultural fulfillment, the study highlights the value of art in improving people's quality of life while taking into account elements such as social order, environmental influences, and spiritual demands. The primary goal is to comprehend the ways in which new age art raises living standards and general well-being. The results demonstrate the lasting contributions that new-age art makes to enjoyment, cultural transmission, and education, thereby reaffirming its important position in society. The paper emphasizes how crucial the socialist culture sector with Chinese characteristics will become to the future economic framework. This study found that new-age art continuously produces excellent literary and artistic works in addition to preserving traditional Chinese culture and fostering cultural self-confidence through its support for the improvement of living standards and industrial growth. This illustrates its practical importance in upholding economic supremacy and promoting cultural advancement. (shrink)

Professor Margolis indicates that the problem of the identity of a work of art is a difficult one to resolve. Shall we locate the "work of art" associated with a musical composition in the score or in a performance; and, if the latter, in which particular one? Similarly in poetry, shall we identify the work of art with the printed characters upon the page or with an oral rendition of them? If we call an etching a "work of art," are (...) we referring to the copper plate or to one or more of the prints drawn from it? Some philosophers claim that the "work of art" is none of these; that, in fact, it is not a material object at all, but an experience existing in the mind of the artist and, possibly, in the minds of those whom he has induced to share his experience. (shrink)