In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS ON THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN MORAL JUDGMENT AND ACTIVITY JUDITH BARAD Indiana State University Terre Haute, Indiana MONG PHILOSOPHERS who have discussed the role of emotion in morality there is much disagreement. At one extreme there is a tradition of ethical thinkers, represented by David Hume, who juxtapose reason and emotion and hoM that the choice of ultimate va:1ues is always made by the emotional side (...) of our natul'e. Insisting that emotion, not reason, is the foundation of moral philosophy, Hume says "Reason is, and ought to he, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any office other than to serve and obey them." 1 Conv:erseily, Immanuel Kant adamantly insists that reason must be the sole determinant of morality. Since morality is stricrtly a rational endeavor, the emotions (or what he more generrully called the incJinations), whethei!.' beneficent or ma1e:fiicent, should never be alilowed to intrude into our moral judgments. Each extreme claims that a part of our nature, respectiv 'e,ly reason or emotion, is not essentirul to the moral life. Hut the be1lief that we shouM sev;er any part of our nature from swch a pervasive area of our lives leads to unfortunate consequen1ces. If we base our understanding of morality on Hume's call for the slavish submission of reason, we can justify all kinds of social exploitation and sensuous indulgence. On the other hand, if we follow Kant's ideal of suppressing our emotions, then bodi1ly desires can appear ba:d to us, and we may irrationaHy disaJfow many human needs, both to ourselv;es and to others. i David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 3, 3. 397 398.TUDITH BARAD But on this question of the role of emotion in mol'lwl judgment, Aquinas oiooupies a position intermediate between Kant and Hume. He neither dismisses reason as a guide to practical affairs nor regards emotions as mere obstacles to be overcome in form.mating a moral judgment. For Aquinas even though e&ch of the human £acmlties has a unique role to perform, an individual £unctions in his entirety in the moral sphere. This essay will focus on how our emotions can support as well as impruir our moraJ conduct. The purpose of this study is to show thrut emotion may be either 1an impediment or a usefuJ srtimu1us to obj·ectiv;e moral decision malcing, obscuring our morrul judgments or 11einfol'lcing our commitments. Obviously, Hume's argument ·that reason cannot judge or criticize the emotions is very foreign to Aquinas's thought, and no one has yet ruttemp ;!Jed 1to subsume one •ruooount under the other. Afan Donagan, however, has clwimed that Aquinas's moll"al theory " anticipates Kant's metaphysics of morals," because of what " both ~are] found to 1say about motiViation." 2 But, contrary to Donagan 's claim, this study will make clear rlihat in the area of how emotions a:ffrect our moral life ·the two g11eat thinkers pal'lt company. To understand how emotion :liun:ctions mthe moral judgment, we must fust examine what Aquinas means by "emotion." 3 He describes :emotion as a spontaneous.feeling consisting of both a phy;siofogical 1and an affective response to an object.4 He observes that emotion involves virtually ithe en2 Alan Donagan, " Teleology and Consistency in Theories of :Morality as Natural Law," in Georgetown Symposium on Ethics, edited by Rocco Porreca (Lanham, :Md.: University Press of America, 1984), p. 96. a Throughout this paper I will use the word "emotion " for the Latin passia, since " passion" has a more intense connotation in contemporary English than the term employed by Aquinas. "Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, (Westminster, :Md.: Christian Classics, 1981), I-II, q.22. In the first article of this question, Aquinas says that " Passion... is only in respect of a bodily transmutation." Quoting Damascene in the third article, he says " Passion is a movement of the sensi· tive appetite when we think of good or evil." I have combined both passages to arrive at Aquinas's description of emotion. AQUINAS ON EMOTIONS AND MORALS 399 tire human being: intd1ect, sense cognition, spontaneous volition, and bodily changes. Aquinas bases this position on his hylomorphic... (shrink)

This book, an outgrowth of the Bannerstone Division of American Lectures in Philosophy, is an attempt to form the groundwork for an empirical aesthetic that will be flexible and all-inclusive. Berleant bases his ideas on the concept of an open-ended aesthetic field in which art objects are actively experienced. This field consists of the art object, the perceiver, the artist, and the performer. It also includes conditioning factors of a biological, psychological, technological, historical, social, and cultural nature. When the (...) aesthetic field is considered experientially the result is what Berleant terms an "aesthetic transaction." Aesthetics itself must be understood on a level that does not attempt to either translate the art into other terms or to exclude those works of art which do not happen to fit into the particular theory one is espousing. Theories must fit art not the other way around. The predominant characteristics of aesthetic experience are identified as active-receptive, qualitative, sensuous, immediate, intuitive, non-cognitive, unique, intrinsic and integral. One of Berleant's main concerns is to rescue the whole field of aesthetics from its present semantic morass. He does this by shifting the art object from the position of prime importance to just one component of a multifaceted field in which perceiving and experiencing is the main objective. A number of Berleant's statements are questionable: most artists are not as audience-oriented as his theory demands they be; art objects are imbued occasionally with life and abilities which inanimate objects do not have; there is no recognition of the common situation in which only the artist ever sees a particular work so that one person only is the creator, the audience and, the critic--a fact which weakens Berleant's reasons for placing the critic outside the aesthetic field; and finally, there is total avoidance of the psychology of artists. But intelligence and imagination are at work here and the result is a provocative book.--B. T. (shrink)

“Artworks are not being but a process of becoming” —Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory In the everyday use of the concept, saying that something is grotesque rarely implies anything other than saying that something is a bit outside of the normal structure of language or meaning – that something is a peculiarity. But in its historical use the concept has often had more far reaching connotations. In different phases of history the grotesque has manifested its forms as a means of (...) subversive resistance against society’s prevailing notions of form and power. What aids this impact and distinguishes two of its basic stylistic features is the grotesque’s dissolution of form and its hyperbole. Such grotesqueries, however, soon solidify into new forms, new structures of meaning, hierarchy and practice, and in this sense the history of the grotesque is, on one hand, a continual opposition and transgression of the prevailing notions of art as well as of God and humanity, while on the other hand it offers continual resistance to its own solidifying process. As such the grotesque will not and cannot be contained in form without it losing the very thing that makes it grotesque. Even though it is somewhat easy to point out certain stylistic features of the grotesque, the sum of those features tell us very little about what is at play within it. Definitions concerned with the grotesque’s content rather than its form faces similar difficulties. Throughout history, expressions relating to the grotesque have been used in defense of a whole host of different social and cultural discourse including, for instance, Catholicism (See Erhard Schön’s Der Teufel mit der Sackpfeife , 1536), Protestantism (See Lucas Cranach’s Der Papstesel , 1523), a material folk culture (see Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his World , 1984) and an idealistic romantic structure of meaning (see Wolfgang Kayser’s The Grotesque in Art and Literature , 1957). Thus though the grotesque cannot be reduced to the expression of certain forms or meanings, in order to examine what the grotesque is about one has to try to see how it’s relationship to flow and process and how, by maintaining this relationship, it attempts to avoid solidifying into form and meaning. The process of the grotesque alluded to here revolves around a play between periphery and center, the marginalized and the dominant. Most often this is expressed as a direct negation of the center of power. In the medieval grotesque tradition of the carnival, for example, it is expressed by its emphasis on the nether regions of the body as the center of creation of meaning. Spirit does not come from above, but from the belly, buttocks and genitals, and there is, expressed in this manner, a mockery of the predominant Christian notion of truth and meaning. Such inversions of the sites of meaning most often explicitly express an increased interest in materiality instead of ideal content which comes to the fore through the play between periphery and center. Even in early grotesque Renaissance art (for example in the works of Raphael) the depiction of the mythological or ideal reveals an exploration of the possibilities of the material. The works of art thus explore their own boundaries rather than act as vessels of the divine and in this way the grotesque explores the limits of form and materiality. This in turn brings to the fore a metaphysical dimension in the workings of the grotesque: It is an immanent exploration of its own boundaries. Materiality and metaphysics are joined together, because it is through the awareness of itself as a structuring (dis)order that it places itself in opposition to the prevailing notions of form and power. This way the grotesque expresses an awareness of the division of sign and reality and a search for this reality. It implicitly expresses the awareness that meaning is not something God-given and static, but fluctuating and man-made. In modern explorations of the history of the grotesque it is commonly seen as a form of realism that manifests a shift from the ideal towards the material, freeing art from representing some hidden higher order and instead making the work of art the very site of creation and meaning. Going even further, the grotesque actively opposes the notions of the ideal by marking a shift from an ahistorical view of the world towards the historical. However, this also makes clear why the grotesque has a tendency to solidify into new static forms of meaning, for by establishing itself as a subversive counterforce there is an idea of transgression and emancipation. That is why the grotesque often historicizes and relativizes only to repeat the mistakes of that which it negates: putting itself in the king’s chair. The exploration of the material seems to create new forms and notions of the ideal. The representation of an otherness outside the prevailing notions of meaning and truth becomes a positive manifestation of this otherness as truth itself. Thus the historical “truths” of the grotesque are superseded by history itself. When the expressions of the grotesque solidify into static form and meaning, they become mere objects like anything else in the world. Instead of being this elusive thing of process and flow, it becomes tangible to the existing hierarchy of power as well as history itself. In this way the grotesque can be expunged, included or simply revealed as yet another false notion of truth, which is precisely what has happened with the grotesque throughout the course of history. If from the beginning the expression of the grotesque has not already been in the service of some structure of meaning and truth, it has quickly been included or has quickly included itself in such a structure. But by doing so it rejects its own basis: the tension between periphery and center is replaced by the attempt to create a new center, a new structure of meaning and truth. The doubleness, ambiguity and flow of the grotesque are then rejected by the grotesque itself. THE NON-FORM OF FORM In the critical thinking of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) the problem of art, caught between a reductive and prevalent notion of truth and meaning and a peripheral and alienated otherness, is reexamined and reformulated. For Adorno, the instrumental rationality of Enlightenment itself reverts into a new form of mythology which is every bit as static and exclusive as the hierarchies of religion it supersedes. All is excluded that is non-identical to the instrumental mastery of the objects of the world, "For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry." 1 As such the non-identical has been banished from the realm of thought and action, and banished specifically to the realm of art. But the realm of art is not able to provide a decent home for it because even modern art is not something entirely autonomous. While it is excluded from the notions of truth and meaning provided by instrumental rationality, it still originates from society. Just like instrumental rationality art is about mastery, structuring and exclusion. Therefore, the problem for art is that it cannot directly provide a space for the non-identical because its mode of operation is similar to that of instrumental rationality. Even worse, art has very few possibilities to free itself from this. If it becomes l’art pour l’art it is at the same time reduced to the very thing instrumental rationality claims it to be: a subjective judgment of taste.expressionism also stands as an example of this. Conversely, art cannot work within the framework of the identity-thinking of society, because any notion of freedom or emancipation would reproduce the exclusive practices of instrumental rationality. For example: Explicit socialist literature may establish itself in opposition to instrumental rationality while at the same time reproducing it. Its language may seem different, but in reality it merely provides a different set of reductive schematics for human life and experience. The problem for the art of the grotesque was, as I mentioned earlier, that far too often it was merely a symbolic manifestation of a notion of otherness—not otherness itself. Because of this the subversive character of the grotesque ends up shaping and containing otherness instead of providing a space for it. According to Adorno the only way to avoid this is to radicalize the grotesque. In order to avoid solidifying into form the work of art has to be an object which cannot be contained in thought or form—a non-form of form. The work of art has to work in a way that it strives for autonomy but without entirely leaving a discernible reality. In other words, it has to pull in two directions at once. Thus the work of art is a paradox. It is autonomous in the sense that it closes itself off from everything outside of the work of art, trying to shy away from the contaminating influence of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality. At the same time though the work of art is heteronomous in the sense that it originates from a specific historical context and is bound to be what society is not. Autonomy and heteronomy are inseparably intertwined. Unable to display otherness itself, but still trying to be a refuge for it, there is only one option for art: It has to turn against itself and destroy its own logic of form, thereby demonstrating how any representation of otherness is impossible. Art becomes a lamentation of the victims of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality and shows the traces of the otherness that is unable to appear. Adorno’s pessimistic theory of art and history stages art as a negative dialectical process where the work of art closes itself off and rejects everything outside, while the individual elements in the work of art destroys its very own logic of form from within: Artworks synthetize ununifiable, nonidentical elements that grind away at each other; they truly seek the identity of the identical and nonidentical processually because even their unity is only an element and not the magical formula of the whole […]. The resistance to them of otherness, on which they are nevertheless dependent compels them to articulate their own formal language, to leave not the smallest unformed particle as remnant. This reciprocity constitutes art’s dynamic; it is an irresolvable antithesis that is never brought to rest in the state of being. 2 Relative to a traditional understanding of the grotesque, Adorno radicalizes the tension between center and periphery, autonomy and heteronomy. In the traditional understanding of the grotesque, as we find it for example in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, the grotesque establishes the display of otherness as a new center of meaning and truth. However Adorno rejects such notions and argues instead for a modernism of the grotesque in which both center and periphery are included in a negative dialectical process and continually synthesizing and destabilizing each other’s positions. A modernism of the grotesque works on the inside of the sign or the artwork, continually outlining and questioning the boundaries between materiality and form. This moves the focus away from the relation between the sign or work of art as a conceptual manifestation on one side and the object it refers to on the other side. Instead it implicitly points to the amorphous mass from which the signs and thereby meaning have been carved, the remnants that have been left behind. Modernism of the grotesque does not imply that it is emancipatory or that it reconciles man with nature, and does not represent a new position or a new ideology. It merely remembers and insists on the double nature of man and art: to write or paint yourself or an artwork whole by inscribing meaning in life or by applying form on a canvas is at the same time both creation and destruction. The very signs we use to center meaning in our lives carry its own alienation in them. Meaning surfaces only when process and flow comes to a halt—solidifying, but at the same time excluding parts that do not fit into that particular structure of meaning. NOTHING DONE AND NOTHING UNDONE It has always been difficult for art historians to find a suitable category for the works of the Danish artist Leif Lage (b. 1933). In his paintings the sensitive figuration seems so fragile that it is on the verge of turning into abstraction. Or conversely: the figurative emerges cautiously and hesitantly out of abstraction. As an art critic once wrote, he can almost paint things away. 3 Working in some undefinable space between abstraction and figuration, the Lage’s works shy away from the realm of words, and as a result few critics have been able to write anything meaningful about his works. In fact even fewer have been able to write more than one or two pages. The Danish author and art critic Leif Hjernøe is one of those few, but even he starts off by saying how impossible it is to write about Lage, confessing that his works exist both as process and in a field of in-between which words cannot reach. He writes: Always you find yourself in a place where nothing is done and nothing left undone, and where the elements of the work of art rest in a continuous motion. Always there is the open wound, where infection rather than surgical intervention is considered as an opportunity. And the conflict between matter and antimatter makes all diagnoses uncertain and allows conditions of uncertainty to spread in a place of raw presence. 4 The art works against the diagnosis and the certainty. Words are being eaten up by what is outside the realm of words: tension, process and doubleness. An approach to an understanding of the work of Lage could be to follow his connection to Samuel Beckett (1906-89). One can note, therefore, that Lage has illustrated several of the Danish translations of Beckett’s works. Though one is an author and the other a painter both seek a place where figuration, where the word, erodes. For both this entails an attempt to question and examine and so move in behind the façade of the surface in an exploration of that something or nothing that may be behind representation. At the same time even in the vanishing point of figuration or words, the meaningless words or the disjointed lines still stand as signs of human activity—signs of movement in emptiness. With very few exceptions Lage’s artworks revolve around one motif: Man—most often “en face.” But unlike traditional portraitures Lage’s people are found within. The artworks do not sense the reality of appearances, but rather the existential dimensions within man. As a seismograph they are sensitive to the utmost subjectivity in order to display an objective, sensuous depiction of the very problem of subjectivity. Instead of a static façade of a man, Lage’s “en face” shows the process-character of man. The people in Lage’s paintings are always in process—in the midst of becoming or dissolving. I will take a closer look in the following at the ways in which Lage establishes this sense of being in constant process, of being in-between modes or categories. THE DOUBLENESS OF THE STROKE Lage’s etchings attract attention in particular for the tension conveyed there between the material and the form. The material physically opposes the violence of the needle. But instead of embracing the violence of the needle and the victory over matter—instead of making the artistic creation and figuration express a heroic mastery of the background it is made out of—Lage uses the stroke to express the very tension between stroke and material, figuration and background. In the drypoint etching Untitled from 1983, which illustrated the Danish translation of Beckett’s Ill Seen, Ill Said , the needle tears up the material in long rough lines: Together, the primarily horizontal and vertical lines form a face. Thus the force needed to etch a line in the metal-plate draws attention to itself: It is there in the absence of curves and nuances. Man emerges on the metal-plate after great exertion and in a very simplistic form. This way Lage enhances the nature of the material, as the material’s resistance is not something to overcome. On the contrary the figuration is smitten by its very resistance and as such expresses the violence of its own becoming. Even more pronounced is the fact that the lines do not just show the violence of creation—it actively erases figuration in the same process that creates it. For example the mouth consists of 8-10 horizontal strokes, of which some seem to be connected to each other as if the mouth has been quickly scratched out. The mouth speaks of the inability to speak. In the same way, the eyes are black holes due to a large amount of criss-cross cuts, which together form a dark middle. Those lines, at the same time, form the eyes of the figuration and scratch out the eyes of the figuration. The extroverted aspects of the face—connected to speech and sight—are portrayed as introverted as well. Just as the etchings down into the metal-plate makes something appear. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1983 (etching) The figuration of the etching is connected to creation. It expresses that something is wrought into existence out of nothing by sheer artistic force. However, this force is at the same time presented as a violence of creation, which makes it impossible for form to truly emerge. Herein lies one of the basic principles of Lage’s art, namely that art cannot be that nothing or something behind the realm of words or signs. Without form, art would lose its ability to express anything at all. Form is a necessity if art is to avoid becoming as devoid of expression as the reality is that we cannot reach behind the appearance of things. On the other hand, art cannot raise itself above its own material in joyous celebration of the beauty of form. This would use the material in the manner of an instrument and thus would suppress the otherness it attempts to rescue. When art becomes mere form, any traces of otherness will have dissolved. Then art would be a question of technique, in no way different from the instrumental rationality of society. Therefore art works in a particular space between form and non-form. As Hjernøe says of the works of Lage, it is in the center of the event, in the in-between where things neither are nor are not, "And everything takes place just before it changes character. As the blood just before it coagulates, as the milk just before it separates, as fried egg just before it turns white […]." 5 The precise emphasis on the in-between of Lage’s art points in particular to the work of art as both outside of and in time. The work of art is a singular point in time, but at the same time it is continually in process. In the borderland between form and non-form, between creation and destruction, it shimmers like a fata morgana . The work is done but at the same time undone. It is only there as a cry in response to the inability to come into being. Akin to the etching is the drawing, but while both, of course, use the stroke or line as their main instrument, the paper does not resist the line in the same sense as the metal-plate of the etching. As a result in Lage’s drawings the stroke frolics in a space with almost no tension at all. There is nothing there to keep the pencil stroke at bay, but at the same time this means that there is nothing there to keep it together. One of the more expressive examples of this is found in an untitled drawing from Tegninger og Text ( Drawings and Text ) from 1999. The drawing consists of one unbroken pencil stroke. It is as if the stroke is confused—it darts around on the paper making doodles on the way or gathers itself in more straight lines in the center of the paper. It is in this manner that the semblance of a body is established. A couple of small circles serve as eyes and are the reason that the rest can be read as both face and body instead of pure abstraction. In fact the unbroken stroke serves as both abstraction and figuration as on the one hand it is the stroke that seemingly outlines the shape of a figure, while on the other hand the unbroken stroke dissolves any truly recognizable figuration by continuously, without end or aim, overflowing the boundaries of the figure. Seen again here is a doubleness to the stroke and the act of creation. In the etching it was all about the tension between the resistance of the material which created the doubleness. Here it is the opposite. It is the lack of tension. The stroke is free to do anything, but has no aim: without some kind of resistance, there is nothing to hold figuration together. It threatens to dissolve into nothingness. Conversely, the drawing can also be seen as a process of becoming. Like a form of automatic writing, the pencil darts around until it finds a point of densification. But even in such an interpretation of the drawing, the figuration appears artificial—it points to itself as the result of the artistic act of creation. The stroke is primarily stroke and only secondarily figuration. With its wild movement it calls attention to itself as stroke. Thus the figuration never becomes something in its own right. It points to the basic principle of creation: Someone has drawn me, I am the result of artistic endeavors, and therefore I am not for myself but always overflowing the boundaries that contain me. It is the stroke that in the very same movement creates figuration and dissolves it. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1999 (drawing) THE LIGHTNESS OF COLOR, THE DENSITY OF PAPER Often the watercolor is used as a precursor for larger paintings, because it has an immediacy in which one can quickly paint the main lines of a composition. However, Lage’s watercolors are not temporary points in a process leading to another final painting. They are not sketches, later to be filled with details in another material. For him watercolor is an end in itself. This also implies that he doesn’t try to work against the paper’s absorption of the water color and its tendency to absorb detail. On the contrary, he examines the possibilities inherent in this blurring of the line and absorption of color. As in the previous examples, there are of course recognizable shapes in Lage’s water colors. But these shapes are rarely separable from color, line or even paper. In other words: the figurative and the abstract more or less become one. One of the reasons for this is that Lage often works on wetted paper which means that the paper hungrily absorbs color into its fabric instead of it being on top of the paper. The paper becomes line because it is the absorption of the color which, together with the brush stroke itself, separates the colors from each other. The line is also color and the color is also line, because there is no separation between the different colors other than the colors themselves. At times this results in almost complete abstraction. In such cases Lage add lines with a pencil as if he wants to hold some sort of figuration together. At other times it is the other way around: the strokes of the pencil are a being dissolved by the water color blurring out the figuration. Untitled 1 from 1999 displays various tones of green. The contour of the colors appears unusually rough. Most of all it is reminiscent of a shoreline which has found its form through the work of thousands of years between water and land. Pockets of resistance surface as islands not yet drowned in color—as paper or color not yet consumed by the dominant color. The shape of the colors does not seem created by the hand of the artist, but rather by the inner workings of the watercolor: color against color over time has resulted in this very image, as if it is all a part of a natural process of change and decay. Despite the fact that there are no strong differences in color there seems to be a struggle taking place in the watercolor. For example, inexplicable holes in the dark color, which cover most of the right side of the watercolor, appear as if the underlying color is eating away the dark color, or that the dark color is in the process of covering up the underlying color. The small pockets of resistance demonstrate a process and development that, almost as a happy accident, evokes a couple of small eyes and a large mouth. Behind the colors a few slanted lines can be discerned, but the hand of the artist has long ago disappeared behind the life of the colors. Thus the watercolor seems to be held at precisely the point in time where figuration randomly appears. The small eyes and wide mouth seemingly express the realization of the figuration’s temporality. It is just a moment in time, soon to be consumed again in the life of the colors. The nature, the background it stems from and is part of, moves on undeterred, continuing its everlasting process of creation and decay. In this sense, the watercolor provides an experience of how neither artist nor man is able to transcend the materiality they consist of. The colors of man, the materials man consists of are “becoming” and “progress” but also “decay” and “disappearance”. The artist’s pencil strokes have been eaten up long ago, and the figuration is living on borrowed time. Human or artistic activity is about creating form, transcending mere matter by shaping and applying meaning to it. But Untitled 1 shows the doubleness of such creation: the transience and fragility of human life. Should the figuration come into being, should it rise and transcend the material, which binds it to its temporal existence, it would become nothing because its very existence is conditioned by the life and work of the colors. In the same sense man cannot escape his own temporality. He too, for better or worse, must accept a life in the volatility of sensation. Leif Lage, Untitled 1 , 1999 (watercolor) In most of Lage’s watercolors there seem to be a stronger artistic control than in Untitled 1 . Most often both the arrangement of colors and the technique in which they are painted express the hand of the artist. An example of this is Untitled 2 from 1999. While figuration in Untitled 1 seemed to appear as a happy accident, the figuration is much more “created” in Untitled 2 . Here the most important parts of the figuration, the eyes, the mouth and part of the skull, are colored black and painted on top of the background’s play of colors. The background primarily consists of blue and yellow tones. Only parts of the paper are covered in color, however, which yet again stresses the act of painting: There is a surface which is being filled by color by an artist. The blue tones are concentrated in the figuration, while the yellow tones surround it. All this means that the figuration stands out more clearly in this watercolor. This is also underlined by the fact that the blue and dark tones cover part of the yellow tones as spots here and there. Thus it is not a background which is in the process of consuming figuration, but rather the emerging figuration which blots out the background. Such an understanding is even suggested by how the mouth and eyes are placed in the larger blue color field. The eyes and mouth are in the center of the watercolor, while the blue color field is placed from center out towards the left side. This gives the impression of a face turned slightly to the right and slightly upwards, which again makes the mouth appear to emerge from the paper. It also helps that the mouth cuts the center axis of the watercolor. In other words, the arrangement of the blue and black colors create some depth and perspective which gives the illusion of a figuration, seen partially in profile, emerging from the background. Seen in profile, the eyes and mouth seem extroverted—they almost seem as if they are put on top of the face. But at the same time they are painted as black holes, sucking in the gaze of the onlooker. The watercolor is even more challenging if one follows what may be the faint outline of the skull, which, on the right side of the watercolor, no longer works together with the blue color, but rather alone postulates the outline of the skull. If not the blue color field, but this line, is the outline of the skull, then all of a sudden the face is not in profile but “en face”—staring directly towards the onlooker. Outline and color seemingly work against each other and establish two different expressions. Without the slightly upward tilted expression of the profile, the eyes and mouth do not seem to emerge from the paper. On the contrary, seen “en face,” the eyes and mouth are really gaping pits of darkness. In this sense Untitled 2 is at the same time surface and depth of perspective. The line gives form but at the same time it dissolves the form created by the colors, and vice versa. Leif Lage, Untitled 2 , 1999 (watercolor) As the last example of Lage’s artistic method, I have chosen another untitled work (as indeed nearly all of Lage’s artworks are)—this time from 2000. This is perhaps one of the most figurative watercolors Lage has created, though that doesn’t tell us too much. The painting depicts a human face in blue and green tones on a yellow toned background. The colors create a clear demarcation between the figure and the background, which compensate for the watercolor’s lack of outline. Beneath the face darker tones imply the beginning of the torso, and nuances of color even hint at something which could be a collar. The hair is in even darker tones and its structure is emphasized using pencil strokes on top of the water color. One eye is marked by a brown spot with a darker spot in the middle, while the other eye is added by pencil. The mouth is a round, red dot. In Untitled from 2000 the work between abstraction and figuration is much less pronounced than in the previous examples cited here. Nonetheless the watercolor has a delicacy to it which almost makes the figuration disappear, even as it appears. This has something to do with the fact that all the individual brush strokes have dissolved. The only outlines are those created by the clash of colors. Even the red mouth seems to be more paint than mouth—unable to be formed truly as anything other than a speck of color with some small semblance to a mouth. In contrast to the other watercolors, there is no movement, no progress or decay, just a vibrating standstill. The figure is not emerging or disappearing but embedded in and as surface, and as such it makes the figure seem stuck in its condition rather than freed by the act of giving form: mouth open as a wound. Pencil strokes add detail and life to the hair as an attempt to help the figure emerge. But all this does is create two levels in the watercolor: The pencil strokes are put on top of the figuration rather than being part of it. Thus they end up highlighting the endless distance between the movement and form-giving of the pencil strokes and the static and stuck figure behind these strokes. Leif Lage, Untitled , 2000 (watercolor) MAN AND THE VIEW OF THE ONLOOKER Lage’s works seem at the same time to be an examination of tensions between form and material in art and a display of an image of man full of the same tensions. This is because the people who are emerging in Lage’s images are not just in his works, They are his works. This means that man is not something emerging from a background but is part of this background and vice versa. The art of Lage inscribes man in its surroundings and background. Man is not the ruler of nature. Man does not rise above matter; there is no truly transcendent position for man to occupy in the art of Lage. Instead man is a part of the very matter, it, at the same time, tries to distance itself from in order to distinguish itself from its surroundings. Man emerges in an attempt not to be line, stroke, color. In an attempt to free itself of matter. Should it succeed in this, however, it would turn into nothing. On the other hand, if man fully accepted itself as mere matter it would disappear in it—in instincts, urges and lack of reflection. The appearance of man is thus subject to a state of being in-between. Only in the tension between material and its negation can the outlines of man be traced. However this also means that in the art of Lage man is never something in itself but always in process—on the way to its freedom and its loss. However, Lage’s art is not just about showing the tensions inherent in man but also about showing such tension on the verge of breaking point. In the moment before everything is done, or when nothing yet has been done, the delicate tension between form and material has been stretched to its utmost in such a way that man’s character of process emerges and is contained on the paper or canvas. Therefore, Lage’s art contain traces of human life. Not only is it an autonomous unity of tensions where man is stretched out between its singularity and the surroundings it is a part of. It is also this pulsation between figuration and material which brings about the traces of human endeavor and activity. Even when man almost seems to have disappeared into the material, strokes and lines are still there as a reminder of human activity and potential creative power—as a reminder that hope is still possible and that man is still there. The view of the onlooker seeks out forms and meaning. It seeks outlines and edges. But first and foremost it is the eyes in Lage’s works of art that allow the onlooker to decode the figuration at play. This creates a distinctive relationship between the onlooker and the artwork. The onlooker tries to wrest the enigma from the artwork, tries to reduce it to solid, meaningful form. But the very same moment that hints at such a possibility sees the view of the onlooker confronted with a gaze of its own. The eyes of the figure in the work of art are most often dark pits, as if they were an illustration of the violence committed against the eyes of the onlookers and their search for meaning. Or as if they were a dark reflection of the onlooker’s failed attempts to delineate the traces of life in the artwork to a solid meaningful form. Therefore, the gaze of the figuration speaks not only of its own powerlessness but also of the powerlessness of the onlooker. When the view or sight has trouble finding solid meaningful forms, it has something to do with the fact that the precondition for sight, light, no longer stems from something transcendent. In Lage’s art there is nothing outside the works of art, nothing outside of human life, and as such nothing to shed light on the works of art or human life and reveal solid meaningful forms. All light comes from within. In a western context, light as a medium for sight is central to the understanding of meaning. People speak of the clarity of thought, while knowledge is tied together with enlightenment, and so forth. But the light no longer originates from a divine point of view. It originates from man, who has created himself in the image of God. The problem with this is that light always covers up its own base. Light illuminates something but at the same time it hides itself. 6 While it was previously God who was unknowable, now it is man. It is also problematic that sight and the medium of sight stem from the same place. Following this thought one can posit two final problems. Firstly, the immediacy and presence established by light by making forms and objects accessible to sight is fake. Light is not some independent entity which present things in a neutral manner for the onlooker. It is inextricably tied together with the gaze’s desire after meaning. In other words: Light perverts the appearance of things because it doesn’t originate from some objective entity which allows them to appear as they are. Instead light is based upon and originates from the subject and its conquering gaze, seeking out meaning and form constantly. Secondly, the joining of sight and light makes introspection within human life impossible. Everything can be illuminated by its use value for the subject but only as long as it is separated from the subject, as long as it is an object. But the subject itself cannot be illuminated. Lage’s art tears down such a dividing line between subject and matter, but it does so without reestablishing a divine position from where the light emanates. Therefore, the light in Lage’s art may not illuminate very well. It may not have the certainty presented by modern science or the religions of yesterday. But it does show what such light tries to hide, namely, the subject as it is in its material reality—inscribed in time and death, which are the basic conditions of materiality, but at the same time also full of life in its joy and will to create. For the onlooker the meeting of the gaze in Lage’s works of art is thus also a destruction of the view of the onlooker. The ability to see is challenged in a radical way. Those outlines will not solidify into static form, as if the light was too dim to see. Just as in Lage’s figurations, the view of the onlooker turns to black: turns towards the onlooker in recognition and becoming—or disappearance. NOTES Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment . (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002): 4-5. Theodor W. Adorno. Aesthetic Theory . (London & New York, 2002): 176. Carsten Bach-Nielsen. “Mere glæde end gru.” Kristeligt Dagblad . September 24, 2002. Leif Hjernøe. “Den yderliggående inderlighed.” LEIF LAGE—Retrospektiv udstilling 1983 . (Copenhagen: Brøndum, 1983): 18. Ibid. Maurice Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation . (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 162-163. (shrink)

In the dissertation I examine the split between cognition and eros in Kant's notion of objectivity, which has become paradigmatic for modern theories about knowledge. I argue that the split between cognition, on the one hand, and feelings and desires, on the other, does not capture the necessary conditions of knowledge, as Kant claims, but involves a suppression of erotic factors of existence. ;The split between pure knowledge and sensual existence in Kant's thought reflects an ascetic tradition inherited from both (...) Greek and Christian sources, which views the body, sexuality, and in particular women's sexuality as a source of pollution. According to this tradition, since thought must be divested of the pollution of sensuous existence, women's sexuality precludes them from rational activity. Consequently, the philosophical commitment to purity has justified the exclusion of women from the practice of knowledge. ;The particular form of asceticism which is evident in Kant's treatment of sensibility of objective knowledge, of morality, and of aesthetic judgement, reflects the reified nature of relations in an emerging capitalist economy. The suppression of the immediate, sensual qualities in both the subject and object of knowledge, in Kant's system, corresponds to the suppression of the immediate, qualitative features of the subject and object in the process of commodity production. Both persons and things become reduced to a formal abstract equivalence. Kant's notion of objectivity makes normative this objectification of relations between persons and things. ;Thus, the paradigm of objective knowledge is not only damaging to the thinker, who must detach himself from the emotional and sensual facets of existence. It serves as an ideology which has justified the exclusion of women from the pursuit of knowledge, and which more generally legitimates the distorted human relations generated by the world of commodity production. ;By considering Kant's commitment to pure knowledge in the context of the genealogy of the concept of purity, the themes of asceticism and fetishism emerged as mutually illuminating. Implicit in the ascetic denial of sensuality is a dialectic which leads to an objectification of persons and things. Moreover, the fetishism of commodities involves a detachment of erotic interests from persons which results in an obsessive interest in objects. (shrink)

This article examines two Buddhist explanations of how a conceptual cognition, whose object is a universal, can give rise to activity that leads to a particular. In both theories, that of Dharmottara and that of Ratnakīrti, this activity is due to a kind of error. A detailed investigation of how this error happens shows that there were big differences in the two underlying epistemological models.

This paper tries to show that Husserl’s phenomenology can be considered as a form of radical empiricism in the sense of James, since it holds—like traditionalempiricism—that sensuous experience is the foundation and the source of justifi cation of knowledge, but—in contrast with traditional empiricism—it holds that there are relations, which are given in the sensuous experience just as well contents. Reality is sensuous and the structure of reality is equally sensuous. By an analysis of the concepts (...) of the sensuous relation, of the material a priori, and of association, it is showed that Husserl—in contrast with transcendentalism—confers a normative role to the peculiarity of sensuous contents, which determines their objective connections and also the structure of the world before the intellectual activities of the subject. At the same time, it is pointed out that Husserl has never entirely gotten over the Cartesian psychologism of Brentano and of traditional empiricism, that leads him to consider only the immanent as properly present. Finally, the paper discusses Husserl’s concept of the life-world, which originates from Avenarius’ idea of the natural concept of the world, and his position regarding the relation between experience and science. (shrink)

This book proposes that aesthetics begin not with concepts of being or semblance, but with a concept of appearing. Appearing bespeaks of the reality that all aesthetic objects share, however different they may otherwise be. For Martin Seel, appearing plays its part everywhere in the aesthetic realm, in all aesthetic activity. In his book, Seel examines the existential and cultural meaning of aesthetic experience. In doing so, he brings aesthetics and philosophy of art together again, which in continental as (...) well as analytical thinking have been more and more separated in the recent decades. Within Seel’s framework, to apprehend things and events with respect to how they appear momentarily and simultaneously to our senses represents a genuine way for human beings to encounter the world. The consciousness that emerges here is an anthropologically central faculty. In perceiving the unfathomable particularity of a sensuously given we gain insight into the indeterminable of our lives. Attentiveness to what is appearing is therefore at the same time attentiveness to ourselves. This is also the case when works of art imagine past or future, probable or improbable presences. Artworks develop their transgressive energy from their presence as sense-catching forms. They bring about a special presence in which a presentation of close or distant presences comes about. (shrink)

This book proposes that aesthetics begin not with concepts of being or semblance, but with a concept of _appearing_. _Appearing_ bespeaks of the reality that all aesthetic objects share, however different they may otherwise be. For Martin Seel, _appearing_ plays its part everywhere in the aesthetic realm, in all aesthetic activity. In his book, Seel examines the existential and cultural meaning of aesthetic experience. In doing so, he brings aesthetics and philosophy of art together again, which in continental as (...) well as analytical thinking have been more and more separated in the recent decades. Within Seel's framework, to apprehend things and events with respect to how they appear momentarily and simultaneously to our senses represents a genuine way for human beings to encounter the world. The consciousness that emerges here is an anthropologically central faculty. In perceiving the unfathomable particularity of a sensuously given we gain insight into the indeterminable of our lives. Attentiveness to what is _appearing_ is therefore at the same time attentiveness to ourselves. This is also the case when works of art imagine past or future, probable or improbable presences. Artworks develop their transgressive energy from their presence as sense-catching forms. They bring about a special presence in which a presentation of close or distant presences comes about. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art and the Educated AudienceJames O. Young (bio)1. IntroductionWhen writing about art, aestheticians tend to focus on the work of art and on the artist who produces it. When they refer to audiences, they typically speak only of the effect that the artwork has on its audience. Aestheticians pay little, if any, attention to the important active role that an audience plays in the workings of a healthy art (...) world. My goal in this essay is to do something to end the neglect of the audience. I will focus on the role of the informed or, as I will call it, educated audience. I begin by subjecting the concept of an audience to some old-fashioned conceptual analysis. Once we are clearer about what an audience is and, in particular, what an educated audience is, we can begin to determine what it can do. In my view, an educated audience can play an important role in encouraging the production of artworks with high aesthetic value. Indeed, highly valuable artworks are unlikely to be produced without a broad educated audience to whom artists are responsive. Consequently, the aesthetic education of audiences is crucial to the health of an art world.2. What Is an Audience?In its original sense, the noun "audience" refers to the people within earshot of some speaker: one held forth to an audience. In connection with the arts, "audience" was first used in something very like this original sense. It referred to those who heard actors perform plays or those who heard the recitation of poetry. Soon the concept of an audience also applied to those who heard the performance of musical works. By the mid-nineteenth century, the concept of an audience had been broadened. It came to apply to the readers of a novel or other works of literature. More recently, the concept of an audience has been applied to those who view paintings, sculptures, and films. [End Page 29] Now an audience consists of people who experience artworks of any sort. Having an experience of an artwork is a necessary condition of being part of an audience. This condition is, however, far from being sufficient.Some people experience works of art but are not part of an audience. Consider, for example, ushers in a concert hall or theater and guards in art museums. An usher hears the play or the concerto but may not regard it as an aesthetic object. Similarly, a guard sees the paintings (and so in this sense experiences them) but does not, perhaps, attend to them as aesthetic objects. Or consider a person who arranges to meet a friend in a gallery. He almost certainly sees the paintings, but he will not count as part of an audience if he is completely intent on looking for his friend. It seems, then, that members of an audience do not simply experience artworks. They must experience artworks in a certain way.Audience members experience an artwork in such a way that they are able to benefit from its aesthetic value. When I speak of "aesthetic value," I mean the value an artwork possesses in virtue of its sensuous properties. I will not here take a stand on the nature of experience of aesthetic value. Some writers have suggested that the contemplation of art involves a distinctive sort of experience. Perhaps it does. (It has been suggested, for example, that audience members must have a measure of "psychical distance" from some object if they are to have an aesthetic experience of it.) I simply hold that audience members experience an artwork in whatever way makes it possible for them to benefit from its aesthetic value. If aesthetic value causes pleasure (or "aesthetic emotion," understanding, or anything else) then audience members can have pleasure caused in them by an artwork's aesthetic value. The capacity to benefit from the aesthetic value of an artwork is a necessary condition of being part of the work's audience.Notice that not just anyone can be part of the audience for a given work of art. Audience members must possess certain capacities. In the most basic sense of the word, an audience is composed... (shrink)

Andrey Tashchian | : Chez saint Augustin le numerus sert de principe ontologique de la beauté finie en révélant l’ascension métaphysique du sensible vers l’intelligible. De plus, se divisant en sphères objective et subjective, le numerus s’avère être une totalité, « l’idée ». Toutefois, comme une forme de la culture antique, ce concept n’est pas connu comme une contradiction réelle, et ainsi les numeri éternels ne sont pas postulés comme un processus où la subjectivité finie, le moi, deviendrait nécessaire pour (...) la substance infinie. Donc, dans la doctrine de saint Augustin, l’essence de la science de la musique n’a pas la valeur de l’activité humaine consciente de soi. | : In St. Augustine’s doctrine of rhythm numerus manifests the metaphysical ascent from sensuousness to rationality and is the ontological root of finite beauty. Moreover, numerus is differentiated into the objective and subjective spheres, proving to be a totality, the “idea.” Meanwhile, as a formation of antique culture, this concept is not known as a real contradiction, and thereby eternal numeri are not posited as a process in which finite subjectivity, I would be a necessity for the infinite substance. So, in St. Augustine’s doctrine the essence of the science of music has not the value of man’s self-conscious activity. (shrink)

Literature on bodily habit has often emphasised the inculcation of new bodily skills and embodied ways of being in practice. However, recent work demonstrates that skilled experts do focus on the body, its sensuous information, and engage in conscious and deliberate forms of bodily awareness during the performance of bodily skills. In this article, I present data from interviews with barbell coaches and yoga teachers in order to explore the social transmission of bodily knowledge. I analyse accounts from these (...) experts about the techniques and approaches they use to teach bodily skills, focusing on objective, subjective, and intersubjective strategies. I argue that while bodily knowledge is difficult to articulate, its fundamentally social basis means that it can be translated through coordinated activities and shaped by social processes. I thus advance literature on bodily knowledge by accounting for deliberation and reflexivity in learning bodily skills. (shrink)

In a rare book published in Trivandrum (1927), entitled Sphoṭasiddhiḥ Bharatamiśrapranītā , we find an interesting argument in defense of sphoṭa -theory, based on āgamic quotations, especially RV X, 71, 4 (the stanza where the poet describes his own activity in perceiving the essence of Speech as like a beloved woman naked). The main idea is that the numerous word sphoṭas , as an atemporal multiplicity, free from any sensuous quality, were the objects of the Ṛṣis’ primordial intuition. (...) So the internal diversity of the Veda is not a mere subjective convention in order to adapt the highest truth to limited human minds. The absolute brahman has an objective cosmogonical power of which the temporal mutiplicity is only the very last result. There is also an intermediate ideal multiplicity, which the Veda, as eternal and transcending the guru-śiṣya transmission, consists in. (shrink)

Peter John Olivi is oft characterized as having a particularly radical view, concerning the activity of the soul in cognition/appetite, where the soul’s cognitive and appetitive powers are the proper efficient causes from which even their most basic acts are produced; in contrast, external corporeal objects are insufficient to produce any direct effect on these “higher” powers. Olivi’s view can appear to be untenable, either leaving external objects completely outside of psychological explanation or requiring some novel type of cause (...) outside of the typical medieval-Aristotelian causal framework. However, in this paper, I seek to alleviate this concern by considering Olivi’s response that the object can still be considered a “broadly efficient cause”; in particular, I look at how Olivi’s same view is endorsed by Gonsalvus of Spain, one of Olivi’s students. I argue that Gonsalvus takes a more diplomatic approach, despite endorsing essentially the same view, which shows that their shared active view of cognition/appetite can safely fit into a wider medieval-Aristotelian causal framework with some further explanation. As I explain, this interpretation of Olivi, alongside Gonsalvus, helps put later active views of cognition/appetite (e.g., from John Duns Scotus), and their own qualifications, into a more complete context. (shrink)

In this paper, I will explore the concept that healing activities shape the objects of therapy and seek to construct those objects through therapeutic activities. Objects of therapy are the persons, patients, human bodies, diseases, physiological processes and personal suffering—that which clinical medicine constructs through its distinctive formative processes, practices and knowledge. The rationale for choice of philosophical sources namely, Cassirer, Foucault, the anthropological perspective of Good and the sociological account of Frank will be discussed. The claim articulated by Good (...) will be examined and its relationship to culture, illness, medical knowledge, practice, truth, and science. I then focus on Frank's concepts of the patient and the body and how medical knowledge and practices affects it. The concept that the medicalization of the illness narrative silences the patient's voice requiring an ethic of listening will be emphasized, described and further supported by Charon's (2006, Narrative medicine: Honoring the stories of illness. New York, NY: Oxford University Press) and Cassell's (2015, The nature of suffering and the goals of medicine. New York, NY: Oxford University Press) thoughts on narrative of illness in clinical medicine. My position concludes that healing activities construct the objects of therapy: as the medical culture's way of seeking truth; as medicine's way of mediating and organizing forms of reality through culture and symbolic forms; and, as medicine's way of entering the body and constructing the disease. Lastly, I suggest that in spite of the remarkable progress in the control of disease, the failure to address the interpretation of illness meanings is a fundamental flaw in the work of “doctoring.” The experience and meanings of illness are at the centre of clinical practice and is a moral, political, ethical and professional obligation. The person is a cultural construct, a complex and culturally shaped way of experiencing self and other, and cultural “work” is required to constitute the person who is the object of medical attention and it also necessitates the ethic of listening. (shrink)

This paper develops a methodology for using Activity Theory (AT) to investigate pedagogical practices in primary school mathematics classrooms by selecting object-oriented pedagogical activity as the unit of analysis. While an understanding of object-oriented activity is central to Activity Theory (AT), the notion of object is a frequently debated and often misunderstood one. The conceptual confusion surrounding the object arises both from difficulties related to translating the original Russian conceptualisation of object-oriented (...) activity into English as well as from the different interpretations of the object currently in use within two contemporary approaches in activity theory. This paper seeks to clarify understandings of the object by exploring notions of object oriented activity. To this end, the paper traces the historical development of the object through Leontiev (1978; 1981) and Engeström’s (1987; 1999) expansion of Vygotsky’s original triadic understanding of object oriented activity. Drawing on Basil Bernstein’s (1996) notion of evaluative criteria as those rules that transmit the criteria for the production of a legitimate text, the paper goes on to elaborate a methodology for using AT to analyse observational data by developing the notion of “evaluative episodes” as pedagogical moments in which the pedagogical object is made visible. Findings indicate that an evaluative episode can serve as an analytical space in which the dynamism of an activity system is momentarily frozen, enabling one to model human activity in the system under investigation and, hence, in this study, to understand pedagogy in context. (shrink)

Previous research shows that people can use the co-occurrence of words and objects in ambiguous situations (i.e., containing multiple words and objects) to learn word meanings during a brief passive training period (Yu & Smith, 2007). However, learners in the world are not completely passive but can affect how their environment is structured by moving their heads, eyes, and even objects. These actions can indicate attention to a language teacher, who may then be more likely to name the attended objects. (...) Using a novel active learning paradigm in which learners choose which four objects they would like to see named on each successive trial, this study asks whether active learning is superior to passive learning in a cross-situational word learning context. Finding that learners perform better in active learning, we investigate the strategies and discover that most learners use immediate repetition to disambiguate pairings. Unexpectedly, we find that learners who repeat only one pair per trial—an easy way to infer this pair—perform worse than those who repeat multiple pairs per trial. Using a working memory extension to an associative model of word learning with uncertainty and familiarity biases, we investigate individual differences that correlate with these assorted strategies. (shrink)

Events are things like explosions, floods, weddings or births. Both in common-sense and scientific usage, events are spatially and temporally bounded doings or happenings that involve activity and change. Philosophical theories of events have not, generally speaking, honored this feature of events. Probably the most widely discussed account, due to Jaegwon Kim, holds that events are exemplifications of properties at times. But properties are things like temperature, shape, color, solidity or fragility; they are not doings or happenings, but havings. (...) In this paper I defend an account which takes seriously the distinction between doings and havings, which I call the object-activity theory of events. I argue that an event is not an object or objects exemplifying a property or relation, but instead an object or objects engaged in an activity or interaction. (shrink)

Mental phenomena and consciousness can be located in sign and in language. Since these latter belong to the objective world of human interaction, consciousness emerges as a part of objectivity. A sign is the product of the interaction between consciousnesses. Thus, admitting the existence of the sign presumes the existence of action. Activity is a social phenomenon; thus, it is objective. It is the objectivization of human needs and desires as production and reproduction of these needs in society. Human (...) consciousness emerges as co-knowing or co-consciousness through linguistic activity. Consciousness as co-knowing emphasizes the genesis of human subjectivity not as a mere assertion but as something the existence of which is to be shown. Consciousness and selfhood, thus, appear as objective, mediating but subjective action. In this view, the self is emancipated consciousness. Therefore, the psyche emerges as the subjective image of objectivity. (shrink)

The question of whether there could be a physical object that is necessarily constantly active has a long history, and it has recently arisen again in the literature on dispositions. I examine and critique two proposals for affirming the possibility of such an object. I then advocate a third option, one which is workable if paired with natural-kind essentialism. Finally I briefly outline three possible implications of this view for wider debates concerning the ontology of dispositions and natural (...) kinds. (shrink)

I argue that an experience’s sensuous elements play an ineliminable role in our being intentionally directed upon an entity through perception. More specifically, I argue that whenever we appreciate a sensuous element in experience, we appreciate an intrinsic and irreducibly phenomenal aspect of experience that I call phenomenal presence – an aspect of experience that I show is central to its presentational character – and that the appreciation of phenomenal presence is necessary for perceptual intentionality. If an experience (...) is to possess intentionality, the experience itself must make an entity available as an object of perceptually-based singular beliefs and the experiencing subject, by virtue of undergoing the experience, must in some sense be able to appreciate that it has done so. Phenomenal presence is necessary for perceptual intentionality because it plays an ineliminable role in making an entity available to its subject in this way. (shrink)

Face perception is crucial in all social animals. Recent studies have shown that pre-stimulus oscillations of brain activity modulate the perceptual performance of face vs. non-face stimuli, specifically under challenging conditions. However, it is unclear if this effect also occurs during simple tasks, and if so in which brain regions. Here we used magnetoencephalography and a 1-back task in which participants decided if the two sequentially presented stimuli were the same or not in each trial. The aim of the (...) study was to explore the effect of pre-stimulus alpha oscillation on the perception of face and non-face stimuli. Our results showed that pre-stimulus activity in the left occipital face area modulated responses in the intra-parietal sulcus at around 170 ms after the presentation of human face stimuli. This effect was also found after participants were shown images of motorcycles. In this case, the IPS was modulated by pre-stimulus activity in the right OFA and the right fusiform face area. We conclude that pre-stimulus modulation of post-stimulus response also occurs during simple tasks and is therefore independent of behavioral responses. (shrink)

Engeström’s (1987, 1999) innovations in cultural-historical activity theory emphasise the role of contradictions in analysing and transforming learning in practice. This paper considers some of the problems and possibilities contained in his analytical understanding of contradictions, in relation to activity and to what he terms ‘expansive learning’ (Engeström, 2001, 2004, 2007). In doing so, it builds upon Engeström’s stated concern with theorising activities ‘in capitalism’. Its goal is to problematise the underlying practical definition of contradictions and the claims (...) made for his ‘contradiction-driven’ analysis of work practices as a platform for transformation. This paper suggests that the definition of contradictions that underpins Engeström’s notions of ‘expansive’ learning and his ‘developmental work research’ methodology is restrictive because it underplays the wider social contradictions and antagonisms inherent in the commodification of labour-power . As such, while Engeström’s take on activity theory offers a valuable approach to reforming configurations of labour within the bounds of capitalist efficiency, its engagement with capitalism’s internal contradictions is uneven and, therefore, its claims to produce transformative, expansive learning are heavily qualified. The framework of this argument is provided by Postone’s (1996) reading of Marx’s Capital and Grundrisse as social theories of labour within capitalism and the extensive analyses of the social reproduction of labourpower developed by Rikowski (1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2002a, 2002b), Allman et al. (2000) and Dinerstein and Neary (2002). The paper ends with a consideration of the practical research possibilities emanating from its call to ground activity theory and its concern with contradictions in a sophisticated understanding of labourpower theory. It draws upon the UK-based Learning in and for Interagency Working Project’s (2004 ‑ 2008) intervention research in multiprofessional children’s service settings. It discusses the project’s rethinking of the notion of contradictions, the need to understand the division of labour as a tool in the social production of labour-power and the sense in which historical shifts in the ways that institutions organise collective labourpower make visible the social production of labourpower as an object of activity. (shrink)

In the present article, I look into the culture-building power of Eros from Schiller’s ideas of “the aesthetic state of mind” in Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, through the Pre-Raphaelites’ eroticism to the nineteenthcentury fin de siècle aestheticized homoeroticism and beyond. I argue that eroticism is a reaction to the increasing sense of alienation brought about by bourgeois modernity. The “moments” and texts used to illustrate the thesis that eroticism shaped an alternative order are far from exhausting a (...) very large list which could add nuances to the argument. The body is one of the essential aspects tackled, since eroticism cannot be conceived in its absence. The body may be an object of desire around which imagination weaves its yarn, or a blank page to be inscribed, or a danger zone, or a hypertrophied space projected by the lover’s longing for fusion. Eroticism in Salman Rushdie’s novels is the focus of my approach after a survey of some landmarks of erotic imagination. I argue that his novels are a new stage of the imagination infused by Eros. The article probes into how two centuries of aesthetic modernity have been shaped by the reality principle proposed by Schiller and how that essentially erotic model has suffered changes in time. (shrink)

Based on theoretical considerations of Aurell (1979) and Block (1995), we argue that object recognition awareness is distinct from purely sensory awareness and that the former is mediated by neuronal activities in areas that are separate and distinct from cortical sensory areas. We propose that two of the principal functions of neuronal activities in sensory cortex, which are to provide sensory awareness and to effect the computations that are necessary for object recognition, are dissociated. We provide examples of (...) how this dissociation might be achieved and argue that the components of the neuronal activities which carry the computations do not directly enter the awareness of the subject. The results of these computations are sparse representations (i.e., vector or distributed codes) which are activated by the presentation of particular sensory objects and are essentially engrams for the recognition of objects. These final representations occur in the highest order areas of sensory cortex; in the visual analyzer, the areas include the anterior part of the inferior temporal cortex and the perirhinal cortex. We propose, based on lesion and connectional data, that the two areas in which activities provide recognition awareness are the temporopolar cortex and the medial orbitofrontal cortex. Activities in the temporopolar cortex provide the recognition awareness of objects learned in the remote past (consolidated object recognition), and those in the medial orbitofrontal cortex provide the recognition awareness of objects learned in the recent past. The activation of the sparse representation for a particular sensory object in turn activates neurons in one or both of these regions of cortex, and it is the activities of these neurons that provide the awareness of recognition of the object in question. The neural circuitry involved in the activation of these representations is discussed. (shrink)

Defenders of medical professionals’ rights to conscientious objection (CO) regarding emergency contraception (EC) draw an analogy to CO in the military. Such professionals object to EC since it has the possibility of harming zygotic life, yet if we accept this analogy and utilize jurisprudence to frame the associated public policy, those who refuse to dispense EC would not have their objection honored. Legal precedent holds that one must consistently object to all forms of the relevant activity. In (...) the case at hand, then, I argue that these professionals must also oppose morally innocuous practices that may prevent pregnancy after fertilization. These results reveal that such objectors cannot offer a plausible and consistent objection to harming zygotic life. Additionally, there are good reasons to reject the analogy itself. In either case, these findings call into question the case supporting refusals of EC based on scruples. (shrink)

In this response paper I defend an alternative position to both Jennifer McMahon’s neo-Kantian view on the aesthetics of perceptual experience, and the sense-data theory that she rightly repudiates. McMahon argues that sense perception is informed by concepts “all the way out,” and that the empiricist notion of unmediated sensuous access to entities in the world is untenable. She further claims that art is demanding inasmuch as it compels one to engage in an open-ended, cognitive interpretive process with (...) class='Hi'>sensuous phenomena, and that it is this very process that opens up a space for critique of the entrenched representational concepts by which we navigate the world. In contrast, I argue that the sensuous itself is a source of demand. Perceptual objects, in virtue of their material constitution, are inexhaustible plexuses of meaning that demand a kind of sensuous, interpretive response on the part of our bodily posture and orientation. Works of art offer opportunities for critique insofar as they reveal dimensions of sensuous reality hitherto covered over by status quo conceptual distributions. McMahon is right that sensuous objects are never simply given. But, I claim, she is wrong to suggest that it is only by way of conceptual mediation that we make contact with the world. On the contrary, the sensuous self-presentation of things is always at the same time a demand on our sensory apparatus that resists encapsulation by concepts. (shrink)

Definition of the problem: Concerning the debate on euthanasia, a widely held position is that it should be accepted in its so-called passive and indirect form, while so-called active euthanasia should be rejected. The problem, now, is that at least some of the usual arguments to defend this view are invalid. Arguments: Three kinds of failures are examinded: First, if taken seriously, some of the arguments against active euthanasia undermine the accepted passive and indirect forms, too. For example, this is (...) the case concerning the claim that the patient's decision can be manipulated. Second, the rejection of active euthanasia partly rests on empirical data unsuited for this task. Euthanasia in The Netherlands as evidence for the so-called slippery slopes is presented as an example. Third, some of the objections against active euthanasia rest on assumptions that contradict our empirical knowledge, e.g. in the field of motives of patients asking for euthanasia. Conclusion: Those who want to defend the view mentioned above have to present more conclusive arguments. (shrink)

Underwater object detection plays an important role in research and practice, as it provides condensed and informative content that represents underwater objects. However, detecting objects from underwater images is challenging because underwater environments significantly degenerate image quality and distort the contrast between the object and background. To address this problem, this paper proposes an optical prior-based underwater object detection approach that takes advantage of optical principles to identify optical collimation over underwater images, providing valuable guidance for extracting (...) object features. Unlike data-driven knowledge, the prior in our method is independent of training samples. The fundamental novelty of our approach lies in the integration of an image prior and the object detection task. This novelty is fundamental to the satisfying performance of our approach in underwater environments, which is demonstrated through comparisons with state-of-the-art object detection methods. (shrink)

The author proves that, despite the opinion prevalent among historians of psychology, the concept of “practical, sensuous activity” was present in Vygotsky’s work from the very beginning of his stu...

Open peer commentary on the article “Designing Academic Conferences as a Learning Environment: How to Stimulate Active Learning at Academic Conferences?” by Johan Verbeke. Upshot: As one of the organisers of the Sensuous Knowledge conferences I take this opportunity to supplement Verbeke’s presentation and discussion of the format of these conferences with some information about three topics: the inspiration for the distinctive format we chose; one point where we changed the format because we realized that it did not work; (...) and finally some features of the conferences that Verbeke does not mention, but that may also have contributed to what seems to be generally accepted as our success. (shrink)

: The main contribution of this paper for social studies of scientific practice is to use and further elaborate the concept of experimental system. It is expanded from mere epistemic concerns to also incorporate the built-in practicality and societal relevance of scientific research. For this, an analysis of object construction by a potato-biotechnology research group is presented. The group's object of activity is conceptualized as a dual one comprising both the epistemic and applied objectives. The application (...) class='Hi'>object points to the virus-resistant cultivated potato under construction, the epistemic object to the knowledge on the virus-resistance mechanism. Two major phases of the group's work are perceived as distinct experimental systems. The transition between them is analysed in terms of a gradual evolution characterised by network collaboration, ad hoc improvization, resistance, opportunism and informal interaction. (shrink)

What can Dungeons & Dragons teach us about the being of beings? This article argues that Dungeons & Dragons introduces us to a world composed of objects or entities, where the being of objects is defined not by their qualities, but rather by their powers, capacities or affects. Drawing on the thought of Spinoza, Deleuze and Molnar, objects are seen to be defined by what they can do or their capacities to act, such that qualities are effects of these acts. (...) Dungeons & Dragons is particularly suited to showing us this insofar as it focuses on the action of entities. (shrink)

Impossible objects are those about which the philosopher, narrowly conceived, can hardly speak: poetry, film, music, humor. Such "objects" do not rely on philosophy for interpretation and understanding; they are already independent practices and sites of sensuous meaning production. As Elvis Costello has said, "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." We don't need literary theory in order to be riveted by the poem, nor a critic's analysis to enjoy a film. How then can philosophy speak about anything (...) outside of itself, namely all of those things which actually matter to us in this world? In Impossible Objects, Simon Critchley - one of the most influential and insightful philosophers writing today - extends his philosophical investigation into non-philosophical territories, including discussions on tragedy, poetry, humor, and music. In a series of engaging and enlightening conversations, Critchley reflects on his early work on the ethics of deconstruction; the recurring themes of mortality and nihilism; his defense of neo-anarchism; and his recent investigation into secular faith, or "a faith of the faithless". Essential reading for artists, academics, and general readers alike, this book explores the relationship between the philosophical world and those complex and fascinating "impossible objects" which give life meaning. (shrink)

A central aspect of people's beliefs about the mind is that mental activities—for example, thinking, reasoning, and problem solving—are interrelated, with some activities being kinds or parts of others. In common-sense psychology, reasoning is a kind of thinking and reasoning is part of problem solving. People's conceptions of these mental kinds and parts can furnish clues to the ordinary meaning of these terms and to the differences between folk and scientific psychology. In this article, we use a new technique for (...) deriving partial orders to analyze subjects' decisions about whether one mental activity is a kind or part of another. The resulting taxonomies and partonomies differ from those of common object categories in exhibiting a converse relation in this domain: One mental activity is a part of another if the second is a kind of the first. The derived taxonomies and partonomies also allow us to predict results from further experiments that examine subjects' memory for these activities, their ratings of the activities' importance, and their judgments about whether there could be "possible minds" that possess some of the activities but not others. (shrink)