In this astonishingly rich volume, experts in ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, political theory, aesthetics, history, critical theory, and hermeneutics bring to light the best philosophical scholarship on what is arguably Nietzsche's most rewarding but most challenging text. Including essays that were commissioned specifically for the volume as well as essays revised and edited by their authors, this collection showcases definitive works that have shaped Nietzsche studies alongside new works of interest to students and experts alike. A lengthy introduction, annotated (...) bibliography, and index make this an extremely useful guide for the classroom and advanced research. (shrink)

Integrating Kant's ideas on aesthetics and morality, Dr. Kemal explains how Kant's theories emphasize that art is critical to the development of culture and community goals. He clarifies Kant's often obscure efforts to justify artistic judgements and demonstrates Kant's claim that they have their own necessity. Containing explanations of many difficult terms present in Kant's Critique of Judgment, this study is a valuable guide to understanding Kant's association of beauty and morality.

This book brings together a distinguished group of scholars from music, drama, poetry, performance art, religion, classics and philosophy to investigate the complex and developing interaction between performance and authenticity in the arts. The volume begins with a perspective on traditional understandings of that relation, examining the crucial role of performance in the Poetics, the marriage of art with religion, the experiences of religious and aesthetic authenticity, and modernist conceptions of authenticity. Several essays then consider music as a performative art. (...) The final essays discuss the link of authenticity to sincerity and truth in poetry, explain how performance, as an authentic feature of poetry, embodies a collective effort, and culminate in a discussion of the dark side of performance - its constant susceptibility to inauthenticity. Together the essays suggest how issues of performance and authenticity enter into consideration of a wide range of the arts. (shrink)

This book examines the studies of Aristotle's Poetics and its related texts in which three Medieval philosophers - Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes - proposed a conception of poetic validity, and a just relation between subjects in a community. The work considers the relation of the Poetics to other Aristotelian texts, the transmission of these works to the commentators' context, and the motivations driving the commentators' reception of the texts. The book focuses on issues central to the classical relation of beauty (...) to truth and goodness. (shrink)

The paper concerns the Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics written by Avicenna. The paper is divided into two parts, the first of which examines Avicenna's account of poetic imagination and the use he makes of this concept in justifying a 'poetic syllogism' that accounts for aesthetic validity. The second part develops this account of the poetic syllogism to show that the completeness of the syllogistic requires us to consider the kind of commurlty and moral validity sustained by poetic validity. To explain (...) the first claim - for poetic syllogisms - the paper examines Avicenna's writings on logic and parts of his commentaries on the Prior and Posterior Analytics, linking these to issues in his commentary on the Poetics. To explain the relation of poetry to community, the paper develops issues from the commentary on the Poetics, especially Avicenna's use of the concept of 'themes'. (shrink)

Salim Kemal clarifies the nature of aesthetic judgements and their epistemological status, and examines the scope of Kant's justification of their validity.

Recently criticism and theory have maintained that Kant's aesthetic theory is central to modernism, and have used Foucault's archaeology to interrogate that modernism. This paper suggests that archaeology ultimately cannot escape Kant's hold because it depends on Kantian theses. The first section will consider how a recent exponent of an 'archaeological' viewpoint characterizes Kant's theory and will set out the critical role Kant ascribes to art. The second section compares Kant and Foucault to argue that despite appearances their projects turn (...) out to be substantially coterminal. My interest in comparing these critics is not only to be provocative but also to show that post-modernist thinking, at least in the guise of Foucault, needs and uses standards that Kant proposes. (shrink)

The first volume in the series Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and the Arts offers a range of responses by distinguished philosophers and art historians to some crucial issues generated by the relationship between the art object and language in art history. Each of the chapters in this volume is a searching response to theoretical and practical questions in terms accessible to readers of all human science disciplines. The editors, one a philosopher and one an art historian, provide an introductory chapter (...) which outlines the themes of the volume and explicates the terms in which they are discussed. The contributors open new avenues of enquiry involving concepts of 'presence', 'projective properties', visual conventions and syntax, and the appropriateness of figurative language in accounting for visual art. The issues they discuss will challenge the boundaries to thought that some contemporary theorising sustains. (shrink)

One usual understanding of Kant's moral theory identifies agents as solitary individuals who reflect on the moral quality of actions ‘in the loneliness of their souls’. Their reflection is autonomous, independent and ‘monological’, with the result that ‘by presupposing autonomy’ Kant ‘expels moral action from the very domain of morality itself’. Instead of an ‘interplay of an intersubjectivity’ in which moral issues arise and are resolved, the autonomous solitary individual seems to derive rules for action from a categorical imperative. Yet (...) this imperative itself is only a statement of the formal character of reason independent of particular contexts, and so cannot clearly guide actual actions and choices. From another direction, Iris Murdoch has maintained that, ‘confronted even with Christ’, the Kantian moral agent ‘turns away to consider the judgment of his own conscience and to hear the voice of his own reason’. He insists on being ‘free, independent, lonely, powerful, rational, responsible, brave, [and] heroic'; and, Murdoch contends, the proper name of this individual ‘is Milton's Lucifer’. This moral agent is individualistic to the point of being damnably isolated. (shrink)

Critics deny that Kant's moral theory has the resources it needs to guide our actual actions. They reject the power of reason to establish moral rules and they propose alternative notions of person and project. This paper first develops aspects of Kant's moral theory, setting out briefly his notions of personality and the primacy of moral reason. Second it considers an alternative account that has been influential in recent Anglo-American philosophy to show that its understanding of persons and projects fails (...) to blunt the need for moral reasoning identified by Kant. (shrink)

Explanation and Value in the Arts offers penetrating studies by art historians, literary theorists and philosophers, of issues central to explaining works of literature and painting. The first chapters look at the sources of interest in the fine arts and point to the intimate relation between aesthetic and other values. The following contributions develop the interaction between value and explanation by examining the construction of value in the study of the arts, including considerations of the nature of creativity and the (...) principles for the explanations of works. A final section takes up questions of the role of ideology and the determining role of power. (shrink)

In Landscape, Natural Beauty, and the Arts, a distinguished group of scholars probes the complex structure of aesthetic responses to nature. Each of the chapters refines and expands the terms of discussion, and together they enrich the debate with insights from art history, literary criticism, geography and philosophy. To explore the interrelation between our conceptions of nature, beauty and art, the contributors consider the social construction of nature, the determination of our appreciation by artistic media, and the duality of nature's (...) determining in gardening. Showing that natural beauty is impregnated with concepts derived from the arts and from particular accounts of nature, the volume occasions questions of the distinction and relation between art and nature generally, and culminates in a set of philosophical studies of the role of scientific understanding, engagement, and emotion in the aesthetic appreciation of nature. (shrink)

Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts offers probing studies of the complex structure of aesthetic responses to nature. Each chapter refines and expands the terms of discussion, and together they enrich the debate with insights from art history, literary criticism, geography and philosophy. To explore the interrelation between our conceptions of nature, beauty and art, the contributors consider the social construction of nature, the determination of our appreciation by artistic media, and the duality of nature's determining in gardening. Showing that (...) natural beauty is impregnated with concepts derived from the arts and from particular accounts of nature, the volume occasions questions of the distinction and relation between art and nature generally, and culminates in a set of philosophical studies of the role of scientific understanding, engagement and emotion in the aesthetic appreciation of nature. (shrink)

Nietzsche's writings have shaped much contemporary reflection on the relation between philosophy and art. This book brings together a number of distinguished contributors to examine his aesthetic account of the origins and ends of philosophy. They discuss the transformative power which Nietzsche ascribes to aesthetic activity, including his aesthetic justification of existence and its fusion of social and personal existence, and they investigate his experiments with an 'aesthetic politics' and a politicisation of aesthetics. Together their essays set out the ground (...) for future debate about the inter-relation between art, philosophy, and value. (shrink)

Nietzsche's writings have shaped much contemporary reflection on the relation between philosophy and art. This book brings together a number of distinguished contributors to examine his aesthetic account of the origins and ends of philosophy. They discuss the transformative power which Nietzsche ascribes to aesthetic activity, including his aesthetic justification of existence and its fusion of social and personal existence, and they investigate his experiments with an 'aesthetic politics' and a politicisation of aesthetics. Together their essays set out the ground (...) for future debate about the inter-relation between art, philosophy, and value. (shrink)