This paper presents the story of an isiXhosa traditional healer, Nomzi Hlathi, as told to the first author. Nomzi was asked about how she came to be an igqirha and the narrative focuses on those aspects of her life story that she understood as relevant to that developmental process. The material was obtained from a series of semi-structured interviews with Nomzi, with some collateral from her cousin, and synthesised into a chronological narrative presented in Nomzi’s own words. The aim of (...) the study was to examine her account of her unfolding experience within three hermeneutic frames. The first is the isiXhosa traditional account of what it is to become an igqirha, a process initiated by intwaso, an illness understood to be a call from the ancestors, and guided by messages from the ancestors in dreams and other symbolic communications. The second is the perspective of Western Clinical Psychology on the cognitive, emotional and behavioural disturbances that characterise intwaso. The third is the perspective of transpersonal psychology on the nature and development of shamanic healing gifts, as understood from observations of such practices in traditional societies across the world. As the narrative of Nomzi’s story is quite long, this paper presents her narrative as well as the methodology which gave rise to it. The interpretative review of the material from each of the three perspectives is presented in a second paper. (shrink)

In chapters ranging from "The Beautiful, the Dainty, and the Dumpy" to "Skin-deep or In the Eye of the Beholder?" Nick Zangwill investigates the nature of beauty as we conceive it, and as it is in itself. The notion of beauty is currently attracting increased interest, particularly in philosophical aesthetics and in discussions of our experiences and judgments about art. In The Metaphysics of Beauty, Zangwill argues that it is essential to beauty that it depends on (...) the ordinary features of things. He uses this principle to defend the notion of the aesthetic, to call for a version of aesthetic formalism, and to reconsider the reality of beauty. The Metaphysics of Beauty brings beauty to the center of intellectual consciousness in a manner informed by contemporary metaphysics and engages with beauty as an enduring object of human thought and experience. (shrink)

This volume builds on two recent developments in philosophy on the relationship between art and science: the notion of representation and the role of values in theory choice and the development of scientific theories. Its aim is to address questions regarding scientific creativity and imagination, the status of scientific performances--such as thought experiments and visual aids--and the role of aesthetic considerations in the context of discovery and justification of scientific theories. Several contributions focus on the concept of beauty as (...) employed by practising scientists, the aesthetic factors at play in science and their role in decision making. Other essays address the question of scientific creativity and how aesthetic judgment resolves the problem of theory choice by employing aesthetic criteria and incorporating insights from both objectivism and subjectivism. The volume also features original perspectives on the role of the sublime in science and sheds light on the empirical work studying the experience of the sublime in science and its relation to the experience of understanding. The Aesthetics of Science tackles these topics from a variety of novel and thought-provoking angles. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in philosophy of science and aesthetics, as well as other subdisciplines such as epistemology and philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

An engaging account of how Shaftesbury revolutionized Western philosophy At the turn of the eighteenth century, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, developed the first comprehensive philosophy of beauty to be written in English. It revolutionized Western philosophy. In A Philosophy of Beauty, Michael Gill presents an engaging account of how Shaftesbury’s thought profoundly shaped modern ideas of nature, religion, morality, and art—and why, despite its long neglect, it remains compelling today. Before Shaftesbury’s magnum opus, Charactersticks (...) of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, it was common to see wilderness as ugly, to associate religion with fear and morality with unpleasant restriction, and to dismiss art as trivial or even corrupting. But Shaftesbury argued that nature, religion, virtue, and art can all be truly beautiful, and that cherishing and cultivating beauty is what makes life worth living. And, as Gill shows, this view had a huge impact on the development of natural religion, moral sense theory, aesthetics, and environmentalism. Combining captivating historical details and flashes of humor, A Philosophy of Beauty not only rediscovers and illuminates a fascinating philosopher but also offers an inspiring reflection about the role beauty can play in our lives. (shrink)

This paper explores the interrelated concepts of beauty, creation, and kitsch, which collectively form a comprehensive framework for understanding one’s relationship to the world and one’s place in it. The hermeneutic of the text Kohelet 3:11, which defines beauty as a characteristic feature of all being in the context of creation theology, is utilised to focus on the typical tension between beauty as an immanent feature of the real world and the human desire to fully understand and (...) capture it. In this context, beauty is posited as a spiritual value that, on the one hand, reflects God’s essence and serves as a source of inspiration for humanity, and, on the other hand, remains an unattainable reality for humanity’s ambitions. This paradox forms the basis for understanding kitsch, which is not merely an aesthetic category, but also encompasses the broader cultural and value dimensions of humanity. Within the context of a narcissistic culture, kitsch is conceptualised as a manifestation of humanity’s creative endeavour to articulate beauty, characterised by a simplification of beauty that does not edify humanity and society, but rather leads to superficiality, mediocrity, and the loss of the transcendent dimension of beauty. The exploration of these three concepts in unison underscores their interconnectedness and the potential for serving as a conduit of understanding across diverse cultures, value systems, and individuals. A theology of beauty in relation to kitsch thus offers not only the possibility of reflecting on the state of the modern world, but also an important integrating element in a polarised society that can foster a deeper understanding of interpersonal relationships and the spiritual dimension of the human person. (shrink)

According to the fear module theory, humans are evolutionarily predisposed to perceive snakes as prioritized stimuli and exhibit a fast emotional and behavioral response toward them. In Europe, highly dangerous snake species are distributed almost exclusively in the Mediterranean and Caspian areas. While the risk of a snakebite is relatively low in Central Europe, Azerbaijan, on the other hand, has a high occurrence of the deadly venomous Levant viper ( Macrovipera lebetina ). We hypothesize that co-habitation with this dangerous snake (...) has shaped the way in which humans evaluate snake species resembling it. For that purpose, we asked respondents from the Czech Republic and Azerbaijan to rank photographs depicting 36 snake species according to perceived fear and beauty. The results revealed a high cross-cultural agreement in both evaluations (fear r 2 = 0.683, p r 2 = 0.816, p. (shrink)

While the current philosophical debate surrounding Hegel’s aesthetics focuses heavily on the philosopher’s controversial ‘end of art’ thesis, its participants rarely give attention to Hegel’s ideas on the nature of beauty and its relation to art. This study seeks to remedy this oversight by placing Hegel’s views on beauty front and center. Peters asks us to rethink the common assumption that Hegelian beauty is exclusive to art and argues that for Hegel beauty, like art, is subject (...) to historical development. Her careful analysis of Hegel’s notion of beauty not only has crucial implications for our understanding of the ‘end of art’ and Hegel’s aesthetics in general, but also sheds light on other fields of Hegel’s philosophy, in particular his anthropology and aspects of his ethical thought. (shrink)

The Stoa might be not the first philosophical school that comes to mind when considering the most important ancient contributions to aesthetics, yet multiple extant fragments show that the Stoics had a non-marginal theoretical interest in aesthetic properties. Probably the most important piece of evidence for the Stoic attempts to theorize beauty is the definition of beauty as summetria of parts with each other and with the whole. In the first half of this article, I present and analyse (...) the main evidence for this definition. Then I discuss Plotinus' critique of the definition and argue that it contains some pertinent remarks that, with support of additional evidence, lead to the conclusion that the Stoics conceptualized aesthetic properties as supervening on functional composition. (shrink)

Taking hunting as an example, an account of animal beauty as animation can be developed. Our delight in many kinds of animals is crucially a matter of an aesthetic property which can be called “the animate” or “animation.” A proper response to animate animal beauty is a virtuous character trait that hunters lack. The beauty of animals calls for particular responses from observers: it brings along certain duties and requires the cultivation of certain traits of character—ones that (...) are incompatible with hunting animals. An argument against hunting animals can move from aesthetic value to ethical value relying on the aesthetic notion of disinterestedness. (shrink)

In Only a Promise of Happiness Alexander Nehamas holds that beauty is the object of love. I raise three objections to this claim when formulated in terms of personal love: love is too narrow in scope to be the attitude whose formal object is beauty; one can experience a person's beauty but have no love for her; and love is of particulars, not of attributes, however specific, such as beauty. A second kind of love, hedonic love, (...) is too broad in scope to be the attitude whose formal object is beauty. I also argue, contra Nehamas, that inner beauty exists. (shrink)

This article identifies a prevalent strand of feminist writing on beauty and aesthetic surgery and explores some of the contradictions and inconsistencies inscribed within it. In particular, we concentrate on three central feminist claims: that living in a misogynist culture produces aesthetic surgery as an issue predominantly concerning women; that pain - both physical and psychic - is a central conceptual frame through which aesthetic surgery should be viewed; and that aesthetic surgery is inherently a normalizing technology. Engaging with (...) these ‘myths’, we explore the tensions uncovered through a historical analysis of the practices of aesthetic surgery as well as the challenges to feminist claims offered by post-feminism. In particular we seek to destabilize the connection in feminist writing between beauty and passivity. We argue that through aesthetic references to denigrated black and working-class bodies, young women may mobilize aesthetic surgeries to reinscribe active sexuality on the feminine body. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present the results of a contrastive study of the ideas of male beauty among Russians and Chinese. These ideas are studied culturologically, through the restoration of the relevant fragments of national pictures of the world. For this purpose, both linguistic and comparative-historical methods are used. Russian concepts of beauty are analyzed in the corresponding concepts in the Russian language, etymology and modern meanings, Russian epics, the reign of Peter the Great, the (...) XVIII - XIX centuries, the period of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Stalinist period and the period of late socialism, modern ideas. To analyze the Chinese view of the subject under study, the corresponding hieroglyphs, lexical combinations, idioms, philosophical and aesthetic sources, and modern realities are analyzed. Such a multidimensional consideration of beauty in the Russian and Chinese pictures of the world caused the novelty of the study. Comparisons of Russian and Chinese are the main conclusion of the work: ideas about beauty are not just different, they are opposite. It is important to note that the image of the hero in Russian culture is a symbol of male beauty, and in Chinese, on the contrary, it is a symbol of a rude and unaesthetic person. The main oppositions are male/female, West/The East, rational/emotional — are characteristic of the Russian picture of the world, but they are not completely manifested in the Chinese ideas about beauty. The Chinese do not oppose, but combine what looks like an opposition in our culture. (shrink)

Darren Bradley has recently appealed to observation selection effects to argue that conditionalization presents no special problem for Everettian quantum mechanics, and to defend the ‘halfer’ answer to the puzzle of Sleeping Beauty. I assess Bradley’s arguments and conclude that while he is right about confirmation in Everettian quantum mechanics, he is wrong about Sleeping Beauty. This result is doubly good news for Everettians: they can endorse Bayesian confirmation theory without qualification, but they are not thereby compelled to (...) adopt the unpopular ‘halfer’ answer in Sleeping Beauty. These considerations suggest that objective chance is playing an important and under-appreciated role in Sleeping Beauty. (shrink)

This paper explores the neglected ‘harms-to-others’ which result from increased attention to beauty, increased engagement in beauty practices and rising minimal beauty standards. In the first half of the paper I consider the dominant discourse of beauty harms – that of ethics and policy – and argue that this discourse has over-focused on the agency of, and possible harms to, recipients of beauty practices. I introduce the feminist discourse which recognises a general harm to all (...) women and points towards an alternative understanding; although it too focuses on engaging individuals. I argue over-focusing on harms to engaging individuals is somewhat surprising especially in liberal contexts, as this harm can broadly be regarded as ‘self-harm’ (done by individuals to themselves, or by others employed by individuals to do so). The focus on engaging individuals has resulted in the neglect of significant and pressing harms-to-others in theory, policy and practice. In the second half of the paper I turn to actual and emerging harms-to-others. I focus on three particular harms-to-others as examples of the breadth and depth of beauty harms: first, direct harm to providers; second, indirect but specific harm to those who are ‘abnormal’; and third, indirect and general harm to all. I conclude that, contrary to current discourses, harms-to-others need to be taken into account to avoid biased and partial theorising and counter-productive policy-making. I advocate recasting beauty, in a parallel way to smoking, as a matter of public health rather than individual choice. (shrink)

Facelifts, tummy tucks and breast enlargements are no longer the privilege of the rich and the famous. Any woman can have all these and many more cosmetic surgical treatments, and an increasing number of women do. Are they having cosmetic surgery because they are duped by a male-dominated beauty system, or do they genuinely choose these operations themselves? Feminists give diametrically opposed answers to this question. At the heart of the controversy, or so I claim in this article, lies (...) a conceptual problem about free choice; therefore, the only thing that can settle it is a conceptual analysis of “freedom”. After having briefly outlined the views of both sides of the debate, I offer such an analysis. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the problem of changing stylistic paradigm in the Persian poetry of XVI-XVII centuries and reflection of this process in self-consciousness of outstanding authors of the period. Parallel with preserving stable norms of traditional poetics literary practice demonstrates flexibility and forms new range of popular poetic strategies. New aesthetic criteria if ideal poetic language, expressed with epithet ‘colourful’, appears alongside with criteria of previous period, expressed with epithet ‘sweet’ and step by step gets leadership. Lyric poetry (...) of three famous authors of the period of formation and golden age of Indian style served the object of analyses. The phenomena of visualization of imagery connected with perfect poetic language illustrated by examples of ‘Poet and Poetry’ motifs located in ‘frame text’ in end of the qhazal. These motifs serve one of the regular contexts of author’s name and show author’s attitude to his creation, including stylistic preferences. Refinement of poetic fantasy being declared basic condition of creating perfect poetry described visually as coiling lasso, poetry itself as flourishing garden, fountain or European house decorated with painting. Such characteristic of word creation has analogies in the works of Baroque style theorist Giambattista Marino. (shrink)

Abstract: Kant declares the judgment of beauty to be neither ‘objective’ nor ‘merely subjective’. This essay takes up the question of what this might mean and whether it can be taken seriously. It is often supposed that Kant's denials of ‘objectivity’ to the judgment of beauty express a rejection of realism about beauty. I suggest that Kant's thought is not to be understood in these terms—that it does not properly belong in the arena of debates about the (...) constituents of ‘reality’—motivating the suggestion by first considering a pair of opposing views on the question of whether Kant can be understood to develop a real alternative to realism about beauty at all. (shrink)

이 글은 아름다움이 윤리적 선의 상징이라는 칸트의 주장을, 칸트의 미학과 윤리학의 한계 안에서 그 사유의 내부 논리를 비판적으로 재음미함으로써 새롭게 이해해보려는 시도다. 미와 선은 부인할 수 없는 질적 차이에도 불구하고, 양자 모두 자기목적성에 기인한 무조건적 흡족이라는 쾌감을 동반한다는 점에서 본질적 유사성을 갖는다. 그러나 양자의 상호관계에 대한 칸트의 인식은, 기본적인 타당성에도 불구하고, 매우 본질적인 측면에서 결정적인 한계를 드러낸다. 필자가 볼 때, 이러한 한계는 무엇보다 윤리적 선의 기원과 본질에 대한 칸트적 접근의 한계에 기인한다. 이러한 진단 아래, 필자는 미의 사태가 윤리적 선의 상징으로 (...) 기능할 수 있는 근본적 이유가 무엇인지, 나아가 양자의 근친적 상호관계를 상징관계로만 규정하는 것은 과연 정당한 것인지를 미의 측면에서뿐 아니라 윤리의 측면에서 비판적으로 재검토하려 한다. 이러한 시도를 통하여 우리는 아름다움에 담긴 윤리적 함의를 좀 더 분명한 형태로 마주보게 될 뿐만 아니라, 윤리의 기원과 본질에 대해서도 더 깊은 이해를 얻게 될 것이다. (shrink)

This article attempts to find common ground between Plato and Kant on the topic of beauty and aesthetic contemplation. The Kantian notion of “liking devoid of interest” is interpreted in such a way that it can be brought into harmony with two Platonic accounts of beauty found in the Symposium and the Hippias Major. I argue that both thinkers do justice to the relationship between desire and beauty, while also both asserting that the proper appreciation of (...) class='Hi'>beauty per se—whether in an object or as an essence—requires a disinterested stance. (shrink)

"George Hagman looks anew at psychoanalytic ideas about art and beauty through the lens of current developmental psychology that recognizes the importance of attachment and affiliative motivational systems. In dialogue with theorists such as Freud, Ehrenzweig, Kris, Rank, Winnicott, Kohut, and many others, Hagman brings the psychoanalytic understanding of aesthetic experience into the 21st century. He amends and extends old concepts and offers a wealth of stimulating new ideas regarding the creative process, the ideal, beauty, ugliness, and -perhaps (...) his most original contribution-the sublime. Especially welcome is his grounding of aesthetic experience in intersubjectivity and health rather than individualism and pathology. His emphasis on form rather than the content of an individual's aesthetic experience is a stimulating new direction for psychoanalytic theory of art. With this work Hagman stands in the company of his predecessors with this deeply-learned, sensitively conceived, and provocative general theory of human aesthetic experience." Ellen Dissanayake, author of "Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began" and "Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why.". (shrink)

In the Critique of Judgment Kant argues that we may assume a certain ‘common inner sense’ on pain of skepticism. I present an interpretation of this argument, which holds that its skeptical threat involves the threat of a regress for judgment, that it argues for a principle underlying both empirical cognition and judgments of beauty, and that no ‘everything is beautiful problem’ results. This principle is essentially ‘epistemologically normative’ rather than moral, although in the end the moral raises its (...) head. Kant's account is important not only for his aesthetic theory but for his theory of empirical cognition. (shrink)

Plato's Symposium consists of six speeches on Eros with the addition of Alcibiades' praise of Socrates. Of these speeches Socrates' speech is philosophically most important. It is true that the speech is given as a report of Diotima's view on Eros, but ‘she is a double of the Platonic Socrates’, and we take her view as the theory of Socrates in this dialogue.