Vytautas Raudeliūnas is Lithuanian law historian, expert of the history of the Great Duchy of Lithuania, pedagogue and Lithuanian patriot. He spent his youth in exile and finished his studies in Russia and in Vilnius. He worked as a fellow in Lithuanian Science Academy, in the Monument Defence Office, the Institute of Culture, Philosophy and Art. V. Raudeliūnas lectured at Vilnius Pedagogical University. He was one of the establishers and publishers of periodical publications “The monuments of (...) Lithuanian law”, “The studies of Lithuanian law history”. The article describes biography of V. Raudeliūnas, collects and disputes his bibliography and evaluates his contribution to the history of Lithuanian law. The article analyzes V.Raudeliūnas’ biography and scientific activity, as well as the main directions of his research: publications and transcriptions of Lithuanian Statutes; development of law institutes in the Great Duchy of Lithuania; peculiarities of development of Vilnius University. (shrink)

The academic History of Philosophy in Lithuania in three volumes will be published by the Institute of Culture, Philosophy and Art. The first presented volume covers the development of Lithuanian philosophy from the 16th to the 18th centuries. It includes late medieval and Renaissance philosophy, the second scholasticism and modern philosophy. The first Lithuanians to be introduced to philosophy were young members of the gentry who studied in European universities at the end of the 14th century. The recently (...) baptized Lithuania strove to adopt Western culture and to present itself as a Western state. Some graduated from the universities as bachelors or masters of philosophy and returned to their country. At the end of the 14th century, Vilnius Cathedral School was founded. The elements of logic were probably taught there. The growth of the political and economic power of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania brought about the need for higher education. That need was significantly increased by the growing activity of various religious orders. In 1507 the Dominicans started teaching philosophy and theology to their novices. They were able to teach late medieval philosophy in its thomistic interpretation. We can regard 1507 as the year Lithuania benefited form a new phenomenon, professional philosophy, and the Dominicans as its initiators. They taught not only the disciplines of late medieval philosophy but also the basics of the other sciences. The Dominicans, and later the Jesuits, Franciscans, Bernardines, Carmelites, Trinitarians and other monastic orders, enriched intellectual life in Lithuania by teaching philosophy in their schools. (shrink)

Books reviewed in this article:Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic JudgementNoël Carroll, Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical EssaysRegenia Gagnier, The Insatiability of Human Wants: Economics and Aesthetics in Market SocietyCarol Gibson–Wood, Jonathan Richardson: Art Theorist of the English EnlightenmentJonathan Gilmore, The Life of a Style: Beginnings and Endings in the Narrative History of ArtBerel Lang, Holocaust Representation: Art within the Limits of History and EthicsJanet McCracken, Taste and the Household: The Domestic Aesthetic (...) and Moral ReasoningMatthew Rampley, Nietzsche, Aesthetics, and ModernityCarl Schachter, Unfoldings: Essays in Schenkerian Theory and AnalysisMichael Tratner, Deficits and Desires: Economics and Sexuality in Twentieth–Century LiteratureNick Zangwill, The Metaphysics of BeautySemir Zeki, Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain. (shrink)

Introduction Introduction / Jan de Vries 1 Art in History / Gary Schwartz 7 History in Art / J. W. Smit 17 Pt. I Art and Reality Market Scenes As Viewed by an Art Historian / Linda Stone-Ferrier 29 Market Scenes As Viewed by a Plant Biologist / Willem A. Brandenburg 59 Marine Paintings and the History of Shipbuilding / Richard W. Unger 75 Skies and Reality in Dutch Landscape / John Walsh 95 Some Notes on Interpretation (...) / E. de Jongh 119 Are These Girls Really So Neat? On Kitchen Scenes and Method / Jochen Becker 139 Didactic and Disguised Meanings? Several Seventeenth-Century Texts on Painting and the Iconological Approach to Northern Dutch Paintings of This Period / Eric J. Sluijter 175 The Changing Face of Realism / Lyckle de Vries 209 Pt. II Art, Economy, and Society Art History / Jan de Vries 249 The Volume and Value of Paintings in Holland at the Time of the Dutch Republic / Ad van der Woude 285 Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: An Analysis of Subjects and Attributions / John Michael Montias 331 Conclusion Science, Commerce, and Art: Neglected Topics at the Junction of History and Art History / David Freedberg 377 Biographical Notes on the Authors 429 Index. (shrink)

This paper discusses Hans-Georg Gadamer’s account of what he sees as a major change in the approach to the Western philosophical and aesthetic traditions that began in the second half of the eighteenth century, and the results of this change today. According to Gadamer, these traditions ceased to be binding at this time and became objects of historical research. Instead of being seen even as potential sources of insight, traditional knowledge claims and works of art were subjected to historical and (...) aesthetic analysis. And Gadamer holds that these approaches have partially come to encompass the present as well. Thus, modern art has often downplayed cognitive and pedagogical tasks in proceeding in a purely aesthetic, playful way. And the study of history has been seen as providing insight into the contextually determined nature of presuppositions, those of the modern age included. According to Gadamer, this unduly limits the possibilities of both art and history to provide learning. (shrink)

Winckelmann’s work inhabits an ambivalent place in the history of historiography. His Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764) is often referred to as the foundational document of art history, but almost never without the obligatory mention of its rather unhistorical dimension. The aim of the following discussion is to evaluate Winckelmann’s position in the history of eighteenth-century European historiography, especially with regard to the early phase of his career as a historian, i.e. the decisive period between his (...) studies in Halle and his stay in Nöthnitz (1738–1754). During these years, Winckelmann carefully excerpted historiographical literature and dealt intensively with the model of universal history, whose structural patterns deeply influenced his reflection on art historiography. (shrink)

The Spirit of Secular Art: A History of the Sacramental Roots of Contemporary Artistic Values explains the spiritual prestige of art. Various theorists have discussed how art has an aura or indefinable magic. This book explains how, when and why it gained its spiritual properties. The idea that all art is somehow spiritual (even though not religious) is often assumed; this book, while narrating the historical trajectory of art in the most accessible language, reveals how the mysteries of religious (...) practice are abstracted and saved through all stages of secularisation in European culture. The Spirit of Secular Art presents a coherent theory defining the sacred basis of Western aesthetics. It evocatively describes the afterlife of the holy from Ancient Greece to the present, and outlines how the mysterious institution of art can be explained in material terms. Unlike other books in the genre, The Spirit of Secular Art radically deconstructs traditional art history in terms of 'prestige' and the value of the non-material. The book functions as: an alternative critical history of art, integrated with the histories of literature and belief; a philosophical essay on the fundamental values of art and religion; and a critique of the spiritual conceits of contemporary aesthetics and art appreciation. (shrink)

Relational theories of art—paradigmatically, the ‘Institutional’ theory—arose from dissatisfaction with the Wittgenstein-inspired ‘family resemblance’ account of art, and were taken not merely to be preferable in various ways to that account, but actually to falsify it. We argue that this latter thought is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the falsification-conditions of a family resemblance account; and we suggest that, once the reasons for this are appreciated, any apparent motivation to engage in relational theorizing about art evaporates.

Abstract…observations of skylfull pylotts is the onlye waye to bring it in rule; for it passeth the reach of naturall philosophy. – Michael Gabriel, 1576 (Collinson, 1867, p. 30)Abstract The tension between empirical data and formal theory pervades the entire history of geomagnetism, from the Middle Ages up to the present day. This paper explores its early-modern history (1500–1800), using a hybrid approach: it applies a methodological framework used in modern geophysics to interpret early-modern developments, exploring to what (...) extent formal conjectures shaped observation and vice versa. A range of pertinent case studies supports classification of this entire period as proto-scientific, characterised by the initial formation of theories being largely disconnected from observational constraints, and their subsequent evolution being advanced primarily by their empirical falsification, and not necessarily associated with the introduction of an alternative. The few exceptional instances of purely data-driven discovery were essentially due to an improved signal-to-noise ratio. (shrink)

The academic History of Philosophy in Lithuania in three volumes will be published by the Institute of Culture, Philosophy and Art. The first presented volume covers the development of Lithuanian philosophy from the 16th to the 18th centuries. It includes late medieval and Renaissance philosophy, the second scholasticism and modern philosophy. The first Lithuanians to be introduced to philosophy were young members of the gentry who studied in European universities at the end of the 14th century. The recently (...) baptized Lithuania strove to adopt Western culture and to present itself as a Western state. Some graduated from the universities as bachelors or masters of philosophy and returned to their country. At the end of the 14th century, Vilnius Cathedral School was founded. The elements of logic were probably taught there. The growth of the political and economic power of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania brought about the need for higher education. That need was significantly increased by the growing activity of various religious orders. In 1507 the Dominicans started teaching philosophy and theology to their novices. They were able to teach late medieval philosophy in its thomistic interpretation. We can regard 1507 as the year Lithuania benefited form a new phenomenon, professional philosophy, and the Dominicans as its initiators. They taught not only the disciplines of late medieval philosophy but also the basics of the other sciences. The Dominicans, and later the Jesuits, Franciscans, Bernardines, Carmelites, Trinitarians and other monastic orders, enriched intellectual life in Lithuania by teaching philosophy in their schools. (shrink)

With this challenging work, Joseph Margolis continues the project begun in _The Flux of History and the Flux of Science_. Tackling one of philosophy's master themes, he develops the controversial thesis that the world is a flux. Here he applies this doctrine to Western theories of history and the interpretation of cultural phenomena—offering the first sustained analysis of the logic, methodology, and metaphysics of interpretation committed to a thoroughgoing relativism and the historicized structure of cultural phenomena. Versed in (...) Anglo-American and Continental philosophy, Margolis draws on the best views of Western philosophy to investigate a topic regularly ignored in that tradition. The result is the surprising synthesis of two historically antipathetic approaches to philosophy. (shrink)

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Original Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- INTRODUCTION -- VOLTAIRE -- HUME -- ROBERTSON -- GIBBON -- INDEX.

That contemporary art is fundamentally irreducible to modernist art and aesthetics has become a commonplace of contemporary art theory and criticism. In marking this distinction, reference is often made to the obsolescence of once-dominant aesthetic categories and the need for breaking with aesthetic theories traditionally allied with artistic modernism. For many in the field of philosophical aesthetics, this means going beyond the work of Theodor W. Adorno and creating a conceptual discourse more appropriate to the current state of contemporary art. (...) The present paper reconstructs the stakes of this legitimation crisis and sets Adorno’s writings on art and aesthetics in relation to some of the most significant debates in recent art criticism. In the process, it demonstrates that many of the most pressing problems in contemporary art are integral to Adorno’s aesthetic theory and that it is precisely at those points where his thought is today regarded as most problematic that it is often most instructive. Through a sustained examination of art’s essential relation to what Adorno calls “natural-history,” the problems of contemporary art and aesthetics are then situated within the wider context of art’s relationship to a history of domination. (shrink)

In this major book, Griselda Pollock engages boldly in the culture wars over `what is the canon?` and `what difference can feminism make?` Do we simply reject the all-male line-up and satisfy our need for ideal egos with an all women litany of artistic heroines? Or is the question a chance to resist the phallocentric binary and allow the ambiguities and complexities of desire - subjectivity and sexuality - to shape the readings of art that constantly displace the present gender (...) demarcations? (shrink)

As the first President of the Royal Academy of Arts, Joshua Reynolds played a pivotal role in shaping the course of British art in the 18th century. In these discourses, Reynolds reflects on the nature of art, the role of the artist, and the importance of aesthetic education. With insightful commentary on the works of the Old Masters and a wealth of practical advice for aspiring artists, this volume is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of art (...) or art theory. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Looks at how history affects contemporary life, discusses the individual's role in history, and describes the author's efforts to popularize history.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aesthetics As First EthicsLevinas and the Alterity of Literary DiscourseHenry McDonald (bio)1Notwithstanding the considerable amount of scholarly attention paid since the 1980s to Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical philosophy of “the other,” critics and theorists have generally approached the relation between ethics and aesthetics in his work warily. Although readings of poetry and fiction inspired by Levinas’s philosophy continue to grow at a rapid rate, arguments applying that philosophy to literary (...) and aesthetic theory have been few and tentatively advanced. Some critics have contended that Levinas was something of a Platonic moralist who “disparaged” and “denounced” art and literature as failing to conform to his idea of what was “ethical.”1 If there is a critical consensus on the issue, it would seem to be that Levinas believed that art and ethics are incompatible.2Based on the aesthetic writings that Levinas produced over a four-decade period, as well as on the role literature played in the genesis and development of his ethical philosophy, such assessments seem puzzling. A Lithuanian Jew who studied with Husserl and Heidegger in 1929–30, Levinas (1906–95) came to philosophy initially through literature, especially Russian literature and Shakespeare: “the whole of philosophy,” he said, “is only a meditation of Shakespeare.”3 In the first work of his philosophical maturity, Existence and Existents (1947), discussions of aesthetics and literature introduce and develop the notion of being as il y a (there is), an account which, in giving emphasis [End Page 15] to being’s “horror” (horreur), simultaneously critiques ontology and places ethics on a tragic basis.4 The il y a, along with its temporal counterpart, the entretemps (between times), introduced just one year later in “Reality and Its Shadow” (1948), are of particular importance to his writings on aesthetics, produced during a period from the 1940s through the 70s.5 The latter provide abundant evidence of the potential for ethical meaning, indeed transcendence, he attributed to the artwork, as in “The Poet’s Vision” (1956), in which he asserts: “Literature is the unique adventure of a transcendence beyond all the horizons of the world... the authenticity of art must herald an order of justice” [“The Poet’s Vision” 134, 137]. Although Levinas never completed anything approximating a “system of aesthetics,” it is nonetheless true that in pieces ranging from developed essays on literary theory and aesthetics to brief commentaries on dozens of literary figures and works, he gave substantive indications of the ways in which his radically nonconceptual, nonontological account of ethics might alter our understanding of the status of “the literary artwork.”Most crucial among those indications is the close connection he posited between the alterity, or otherness, of the artwork and its tragic nature, which he defined in terms of his antiontological accounts of “being” and especially “time” (entretemps, “between times”). As early as “Reality and Its Shadow,” Levinas proposed the thesis, extended in his later essays, that the alterity of art and literature was located not in any ontological or conceptual “beyond”—in a spiritual dimension “which sets itself up as knowledge of the absolute” [1]—but in the “interstices” of language [3], in the “between times” (entretemps) of its modes of temporality: which can be accessed only by way of “the tragic” in art. Time in Levinas’s aesthetics is signified diachronically, from within a region of diaspora. What Levinas terms “alterity,” or otherness, points not toward a privileged, interpersonal dimension freed from the problematics of modernity, but strives to expose the complicity between the West’s concept of rationality and its history of barbarism exemplified by the Holocaust, its history, as Levinas put it, of “National Socialism, Stalinism, the camps, the gas chambers, nuclear weapons, terrorism and unemployment.”6 Art and literature demonstrate a utopian, emancipatory potential in revealing the fissures and hidden pathways that run through the hegemonic structures and totalizing frameworks of modernity.A central aspect of such an aesthetics is its privileging of music and musicality, which Levinas shares with a more recent thinker and critic, Paul Gilroy.7 Like Gilroy, Levinas deploys “musicality,” which he characterizes as “writing in its significance without signifiers” [157] not just to “refute,” as Gilroy... (shrink)

Emotion and feeling have only in the last decade become analytic concepts in the humanities, reflected in what some have called an “affective turn” in the academy at large. The study of emotion has also found a place in science studies and the history and philosophy of science, accompanied by the recognition that even the history of objectivity depends in a dialectical fashion on a history of subjectivity. This topical issue is a contribution to this larger trend (...) across the humanities and the history of science, and yet is circumscribed by attention to a particular kind of emotion or condition for feeling: one centered not in an individual body, but in the interstices between bodies and things, between selves and others – what we call empathy. (shrink)

A thorough history of the involvement of Australia's Northern Territory in World War II. Includes photos, extensive notes and bibliography.

A truism of art history is that the lifespan of artworks can exceed their original social spaces: Artworks can sometimes be successfully transplanted into completely different settings where they continue to be valued. Does their potential to outlive their original context have to do with a specific feature of artworks’ ontology? Or with how human brains are wired? Or is it a mere function of their historical and social circumstances? I argue that David Summers’s magisterial _Real Spaces: World Art (...) History and the Rise of Western Modernism_ contains elements of a different answer. This answer focuses on what in artworks’ appearance causes them to be effective under various circumstances, without subscribing to the view that art is an irreducibly and inexhaustibly complex source of meaning. In delineating the Summersian perspective, I contrast it with the position (exemplified by the recent work of the archaeologist David Wengrow and the anthropologist Philippe Descola) that treats the art object as a document of underlying structures or currents. (shrink)

A 20th anniversary edition of the art classic that celebrates the intersection of creative expression and spirituality—from one of the greatest living artists of our time Twenty years after the original publication of The Mission of Art, Alex Grey’s inspirational message affirming art’s power for personal catharsis and spiritual awakening is stronger than ever. In this special anniversary edition, Grey—visionary painter, spiritual leader, and best-selling author—combines his extensive knowledge of art history with his own experiences in creating art at (...) the boundaries of consciousness. Grey examines the roles of conscience and intention in the creative process, including practical techniques and exercises useful in exploring the spiritual dimensions of art. Challenging and thought-provoking, The Mission of Art will be appreciated by everyone who has ever contemplated the deeper purpose of creative expression. (shrink)

Modern aesthetics is divided into two branches – the Anglo-American and the Continental. A major cause of this division is their divergent views about the place of history in aesthetics, the first tending to minimize historical considerations, while the second readily embraces them. This article explores the place of history in André Malraux's theory of art and argues that his thinking quickly resolves this long-standing disagreement. (This text is a translation of the published French version.).

An abrupt break in the prevailing modes of artistic expression, for many, marks the advent of modernism in the early twentieth century, but revisionary attempts to pin down a precise moment of its emergence remain disputed. History of a Shiver proffers a different approach, tracing the first inkling of modernism instead to the nineteenth century's fascination with music.As Jed Rasula deftly shows, melomania--the passion for music--gave rise to concepts like Richard Wagner's "endless melody" and the Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work (...) of art, which in turn infused the arts of the fin de siècle with an aura of expectancy, challenging them to induce musical effects by their own means. With each art aspiring to produce the effects of another artistic medium, a synesthetic yearning ran like a shiver through the body of art that would emerge over the next half century. Rasula traces this pan-arts polyphony from German Romantic theory to early experiments in "visual music," encompassing such diverse phenomena as American fixation on Arcadia, early film theory, and the lure of the fourth dimension. All the while, he keeps focus on the paramount historical consequence in elevating music to a new universal aesthetic standard, arguing that Wagnerism was first among modern "isms."In surveying this momentous interplay among arts, History of a Shiver ranges from literature, music and painting to theatre, cinema, dance, photography, and civic pageantry. It retells the story of modernism by recovering not an idea, but a feeling--the hair-raising potential for each painting, literary text, or musical composition to herald an unprecedented domain of human enterprise. (shrink)