La premiere partie exposera la conception ambrosienne de la nature en general, puis de la nature humaine plus specialement. Depuis plusieurs annees, pas mal d'etudes ont ete faites sur l'anthropologie chez plusieurs Peres de l'Eglise. Peu a peu s'est dessinee une reponse a cette question: comment les Peres voient-ils l'homme? Quelle est, pour eux, sa nature, son essence? Ces etudes ont beaucoup d'importance pour tous ceux qui veulent aborder le probleme de la loi naturelle chez les Peres. La seconde partie (...) etudiera d'une maniere approfondie la loi naturelle selon l'eveque de Milan. Puisque le concept nature est polyvalent, il est clair que celui de loi naturelle le sera aussi. En traitant de la nature dans la premiere partie et de la loi naturelle dans la seconde, nous faisons une distinction explicite entre les considerations philosophiques et la conception theologique que saint Ambroise a developpees. (shrink)

Since Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, the idea of descent with modification came to dominate systematics, and so the study of morphology became subgugated to the reconstruction of phylogenies. Reinstating the organism in the theory of evolution (Ho & Saunders, 1979; Webster & Goodwin, 1982) leads to a project inrational taxonomy (Ho, 1986, 1988a), which attempts to classify biological forms on the basis of transformations on a given dynamical structure.Does rational taxonomy correspond to thenatural system that Linnaeus and (...) his contemporaries as well as all pre-Darwinian morphologists had in mind? Here, we examine how rational taxonomy and the natural system can coincide in the dynamics of processes generating forms during development, which conferexclusivity, genericity androbustness to the forms that do exist. We use the example of segmentation, especially inDrosophila, as an illustration to explore the implications of rational taxonomy for evolution and systematics, and the relationship between ontogeny and phylogeny. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.1 (2002) 1-34 [Access article in PDF] Ninagawa's Production of Euripides' Medea Mae Smethurst [Figures]The Japanese theater director Yukio Ninagawa, known for expressing his opposition to repressive politics in his productions during the 1960s, claimed that he staged the Medea because he wanted Japanese women to know that they could be as strong, as straightforward, as the character Medea. Japan, which has been the largest (...) consumer of his Medea, was and still is a male-dominated society. According to Ninagawa, it is a country in which for a woman to be demure and weak is considered a virtue. 1 And yet, if you look closely at Euripides' Medea you might conclude that Medea, although strong, is not an ideal role model for women. 2 (This was the view of Leda Geh of the Singapore Sunday Star, who reviewed Ninagawa's production in 1992.)Ninagawa's Medea was enormously successful. It ran for more than 250 performances in Japan, in other parts of Asia, and in the West, even though all the performances were in the Japanese language. Between the first productions of the Medea in 1978 and the latest in 1999, Ninagawa played to oversold, sold-out, or virtually sold-out houses in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, as well as in smaller cities throughout Japan. 3 The 1993 [End Page 1] production in Tokyo had a three-night run, in a theater with a capacity of eight hundred seats, which was on average 84 percent filled. 4 During a second tour to Athens in 1984, over a two-night run at the Herodes Atticus Theater (which has a capacity of six thousand people), fourteen thousand attended the performances. According to the producer Tadao Nakane (whom I interviewed in Tokyo on 15 March 1999), the audiences, including those sitting on the sides of the Acropolis, applauded so long and hard that tears came to his eyes. 5 In London, in 1978, Tokusaburo Arashi's performance of Medea brought him a nomination for an Olivier award 6 and, in the fall of 1999, Ninagawa served as the first non-English-speaking foreign director of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of King Lear. Given these and other successes, it is clear that Ninagawa was able to bridge the gap between the West and East, on the one hand, by appealing to Western audiences with his Japanese productions and, on the other, by bringing a Western play to Japanese and other audiences.In this article I will consider how Ninagawa was able to take this ancient Greek tragedy and make it popular, not only with other Asian or non-Japanese audiences but also with those in Japan. He based his Medea on the poet Mutsuo Takahashi's 7 line-by-line adaptation of Euripides' [End Page 2] Medea. Not all of Takahashi's lines are used in each production; however, Ninagawa's productions of Medea, like his production of Oedipus the King, do adhere to the words of the text much more closely and fully than do Tadashi Suzuki's Bacchae or Trojan Women. Ninagawa infused his productions of the Medea with a very strong Japanese presence, consisting of elements drawn from Japan past and present. And it is these elements that I believe have helped ensure his success with Japanese audiences who (like us) bring their own cultural baggage to the theater.To demonstrate the Japanese content of the productions, I draw on a live performance of the Medea that I saw in Tokyo in 1993 and on my translations from the Japanese of both Takahashi's adaptation of Euripides' text and Tange Kazuhiko's translation from the ancient Greek. 8 I also draw on programs, playbills, the published notes of Ninagawa, and videotapes of productions. I hope to show how Ninagawa infused the Greek tragedy with a Japanese presence in the Tokyo production of 1993 and to note how that production differed from the version of his Medea performed in Athens in 1984. I place the Tokyo performance within its cultural context by pointing out the Japanese elements... (shrink)

En France, l'épistémologie de la médecine est facilement réduite à l'étude du magistral essai de Canguilhem, Le normal et le pathologique. Toutefois, ce livre publié il y a plus de soixante-dix ans ne reflète plus l'état des sciences médicales contemporaines, ni celui des débats poursuivis par les philosophes des sciences depuis. Le présent livre, premier du genre en langue française, a pour ambition d'introduire le lecteur à la philosophie des sciences médicales. Ses dix chapitres initieront le lecteur aux débats qui (...) l'agitent, sans que soient requises des connaissances philosophiques ou médicales préalables. Il répond à la fois à la demande de médecins en quête d'une philosophie qui leur parle de leur discipline et de leurs pratiques, et de philosophes à la recherche d'un guide dans ce champ morcelé et dominé par la philosophie d'expression anglaise. [Payot]. (shrink)

Jerrold Levinson conveniently summarizes the main argument of his essay "Erotic Art and Pornographic Pictures" in the following way:Erotic art consists of images centrally aimed at a certain sort of reception R1.Pornography consists of images centrally aimed at a certain sort of reception R2.R1 essentially involves attention to form/vehicle/medium/manner, and so entails treating images as in part opaque.R2 essentially excludes attention to form/vehicle/medium/manner, and so entails treating images as wholly transparent.R1 and R2 are incompatible.Hence, nothing can be both erotic art (...) and pornography; or at the least, nothing can be coherently projected as both erotic art and pornography.1I have argued elsewhere .. (shrink)

The aim of what I propose to call “existential aesthetics” is to investigate the various ways in which art and certain kinds of aesthetic practice or aesthetic experience can be of existential importance to people. Section I provides a definition of existential aesthetics, while Section II delineates this emerging field from cognate areas of research. Sections III and IV explore various subcategories and examples of existential aesthetics. Section V seeks to identify important avenues for future research and Section VI presents (...) some concluding thoughts about the potential of existential aesthetics and why philosophers should be encouraged to fulfill this potential. (shrink)

What I will aim for in answering the title question is extensional adequacy, that is, I will try to formulate an account that captures as much of the extension as possible of what we ordinarily think counts as a portrait. Two philosophers have recently and independently from one another embarked on the same project. Cynthia Freeland’s theory of portraiture, as it is developed in her book, Portraits and Persons, is discussed in Sections 1 and 2 of this paper. Sections 3 (...) and 4 offer a critical exploration of Paolo Spinicci’s phenomenological study of portraiture. Finally, in Sections 5 and 6, I present an alternative account of portraiture, one that will hopefully address all the objections raised against the two competing theories. (shrink)

This paper provides an in-depth review of Jerrold Levinson’s most recent work in aesthetics, focusing especially on his account of the incompatibility of art and pornography. The author argues that this account does not fit well with Levinson’s own intentional-historical definition of art and his Wollheimian account of depiction.

Numerous philosophers have tried to define modesty, but none of them succeeds in articulating the necessary and sufficient conditions for this virtue. Moreover, all existing accounts ignore the striking self-other asymmetry that is at the heart of modesty. Drawing on the analogy with the practice of giving presents, I clarify and further investigate this self-other asymmetry. In the process, I show why Bernard Williams is right in pointing out the notorious truth that a modest person does not act under the (...) title of modesty and why Alan Bennett is wrong in supposing that all modesty is false modesty. (shrink)

By looking at 15th/16th realistic noh and Greek tragedies through the lens of Aristotle and of each other, this comparison reveals a previously unnoticed relationship between the structure of the tragedies and their performance, that is, the involvement of the third actor at the climactic moments of the plot in both and the actor stepping out of character in noh. This observation helps to account for Aristotle’s view that tragedy be limited to three actors.

Wanneer ben je sexy, en wie bepaalt dat eigenlijk? Gelden dezelfde normen voor mannen en vrouwen? En hoe moeten we als maatschappij omgaan met de toenemende druk om er hot uit te zien? In dit boek zoekt filosoof Hans Maes een antwoord op deze vragen. Onderweg reflecteert hij over sekssymbolen, over de erotiserende werking van macht en rijkdom, en over de rol van kunst. Hij buigt zich over de notie van seksuele authenticiteit en lanceert ten slotte ook een oproep (...) voor betere pornografie. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to show that there is a particular kind of bullshit that is not dealt with in Harry Frankfurt’s and G.A. Cohen’s critiques of bullshit. We also point out the evaluative complexity of bullshit. Frankfurt and Cohen both stress its negative and possibly destructive aspects, but one might wonder whether bullshit need always and necessarily be reprehensible. We will argue that there are positive or at least neutral aspects to some kinds of bullshit.

The role of the artist's intention in the interpretation of art has been the topic of a lively and ongoing discussion in analytic aesthetics. First, I sketch the current state of this debate, focusing especially on two competing views: actual and hypothetical intentionalism. Secondly, I discuss the search for a suitable test case, that is, a work of art that is interpreted differently by actual and hypothetical intentionalists, with only one of these interpretations being plausible. Many examples from many different (...) art forms have been considered in this respect, but none of these test cases has proved convincing. Thirdly, I introduce two new test cases taken from contemporary visual art. I explain why these examples are better suited as test cases and how they lend support to the actual intentionalist position. (shrink)

What is art? What counts as an aesthetic experience? Does art have to beautiful? Can one reasonably dispute about taste? What is the relation between aesthetic and moral evaluations? How to interpret a work of art? Can we learn anything from literature, film or opera? What is sentimentality? What is irony? How to think philosophically about architecture, dance, or sculpture? What makes something a great portrait? Is music representational or abstract? Why do we feel terrified when we watch a horror (...) movie even though we know it to be fictional? -/- In Conversations on Art and Aesthetics, Hans Maes discusses these and other key questions in aesthetics with ten world-leading philosophers of art: Noël Carroll, Gregory Currie, Arthur Danto, Cynthia Freeland, Paul Guyer, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Jerrold Levinson, Jenefer Robinson, Roger Scruton, and Kendall Walton. -/- The exchanges are direct, open, and sharp, and give a clear account of these thinkers' core ideas and intellectual development. They also offer new insights into, and a deeper understanding of, contemporary issues in the philosophy of art. (shrink)

Paisley Livingston claims that an artist’s intentions are successfully realized and hence determinate of the meaning of a work if and only if they are compatible and “mesh” with the linguistic and conventional meanings of the text or artefact taken in its target or intended context. I argue that this specific standard of success is not without its difficulties. First, I show how an artist’s intention can sometimes be constitutive of a work’s meaning even if there is no significant meshing (...) between the artist’s intention and his work. Second, I argue against the claim that the artist’s intentions need to be compatible with the linguistic and conventional meanings of a text. Third, I discuss a case that creates a particular puzzle for Livingston since the intentions of the artist concerned are clearly not successfully realized, though they are compatible and mesh with all the relevant data. I conclude my paper by suggesting a solution to this puzzle. (shrink)

Art and Pornography presents a series of essays which investigate the artistic status and aesthetic dimension of pornographic pictures, films, and literature, and explores the distinction, if there is any, between pornography and erotic art. Is there any overlap between art and pornography, or are the two mutually exclusive? If they are, why is that? If they are not, how might we characterize pornographic art or artistic pornography, and how might pornographic art be distinguished, if at all, from erotic art? (...) Can there be aesthetic experience of pornography? What are some of the psychological, social, and political consequences of the creation and appreciation of erotic art or artistic pornography? This book will contribute to a more accurate and subtle understanding of the many representations that incorporate explicit sexual imagery and themes. It is sure to stir debate, and healthy controversy. (shrink)

According to Bergson , the traditional problem of free will is misconceived and arises from a mismatch between the quality of authentic, subjective experience and its description in language, in particular, the language of the mechanistic science of psychology. Contemporary western scientific concepts of the organism, on the other hand, are leading us beyond conventional thermodynamics as well as quantum theory and offering rigorous insights which reaffirm and extend our intuitive, poetic, and even romantic notions of spontaneity and free will. (...) I shall describe some new views of the organism arising from new findings in biology, in order to show how, in freeing itself from the ‘laws’ of physics, from mechanical determinism and mechanistic control, the organism becomes a sentient, coherent being that is free, from moment to moment, to explore and create its possible futures. (shrink)

Judging works of art is one thing. Loving a work of art is something else. When you visit a museum like the Louvre you make hundreds of judgements in the space of just a couple of hours. But you may grow to love only one or a handful of works over the course of your entire life. Depending on the art form you are most aligned with, this can be a painting, a novel, a poem, a song, a work of (...) architecture, or some other art object or performance. As it happens, however, we have fallen in love with a series of films: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. But what does it mean to love a film? What’s the difference between liking a film, loving a film, and being a film lover? How rational or irrational is it to fall in love with a film? What are the constitutive elements of such a love? These are the questions we seek to address in this paper. -/- . (shrink)

The scope of this extraordinary selection of essays, distilled from nearly a thousand works that the author has written, is literally the entire universe and universe of knowledge. It charts the author's quest for the meaning of life faced with a dominant knowledge system she regards as incoherent, meaningless, and often acting against people and planet. She shows how contemporary scientific findings across all disciplines already provide an authentic knowledge system that's coherent with life and the universe. The aim is (...) to transform science thoroughly from inspiration to research to applications that work for people and planet. This book is simply unique in its scope and content. There is no equivalent. The author surveys and explains contemporary science in depth ranging over philosophy, anthropology, quantum physics and chemistry, neurobiology, psychology, genetics and epigenetics, cosmology, art, humanities, and mathematics. It presents a truly holistic view of nature, with profound implications for life in the social, political, and personal realm. (shrink)

Art and pornography are often thought to be mutually exclusive. The present article argues that this popular view is without adequate support. Section 1 looks at some of the classic ways of drawing the distinction between these two domains of representation. In Section 2, it is argued that the classic dichotomies may help to illuminate the differences between certain prototypical instances of pornography and art, but will not serve to justify the claim that pornography and art are fundamentally incompatible. Section (...) 3 considers those definitions of pornography that make an a priori distinction between pornographic and artistic representations. The difference between the ‘merely’ erotic and the pornographic is also discussed in this context. Section 4 provides a critical assessment of the most recent and elaborate arguments against the compatibility of pornography and art. Finally, in Section 5, a case is made for the existence of pornographic art, as a subcategory of erotic art. (shrink)

"Richard Linklater's trilogy of critically-acclaimed 'Before' films - Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight - depict the ongoing relationship and romantic destiny of two characters played by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. This collection of specially commissioned chapters explores the many philosophical issues raised in the films, including: the nature of love, romanticism and marriage the meaning of life the passage and experience of time the narrative self gender death. Including an introduction by the editors summarising the trilogy, and (...) an interview with Julie Delpy in which she discusses the key themes of the films and the importance of studying philosophy, The Philosophy of Richard Linklater's Before Trilogy is essential reading for students of philosophy, aesthetics and film studies, and also of interest to those in closely related subjects such as literature and gender studies"--. (shrink)

(1993). Evolutionary theory and World Future. World Futures: Vol. 38, Theoretical Achievements and Practical Applications of General Evolutionary Theory, pp. 97-106.

A sustainable system has all the essential characteristics of an organism?an irreducible whole that develops, maintains and reproduces, or renews, itself by mobilizing material and energy captured from the environment. What is the nature of the material and energy mobilization that makes an organism? I begin with a brief description of a tentative theory of the organism?developed in detail elsewhere (Ho, 1993; 1994a; 1995a,b; 1996b,c)?as a dynamically and energetically closed domain of cyclic non?dissipative processes coupled to irreversible dissipative processes, which (...) effectively frees the organism from thermodynamic constraints so that it is poised for rapid, specific intercommunication, enabling it to function as a coherent whole. I shall then show how this novel theoretical framework may begin to provide normative criteria for sustainable economic systems, thereby also exposing some of the inadequacies of current models and assumptions. (shrink)

In a chapter that hones in on certain Renaissance portraits by Hans Holbein, Giorgione, and Jan van Scorel, Hans Maes examines how it is that we can be deeply moved by such portraits, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that we don’t know anything about their sitters. Standard explanations in terms of the revelation of an inner self or the recreation of a physical presence prove to be insuffi cient. Instead, Maes provides a more rounded account of (...) what makes said portraits moving and memorable, thereby relying on Barthes’ notion of ‘punctum,’ James Elkins’ account of why people cry in front of paintings, and a phenomenological exploration of the parallel between portraiture and the tradition of the Vanitas painting. (shrink)

Caffeine makes you sexy! This absurd slogan can be seen in the shop windows of a popular Brussels coffee chain – its bold pink lettering indicating how they are mainly targeting female customers. It is one of the silliest examples of something that is both very common and very worrisome nowadays, namely, the constant call on women to look ‘hot’ and conform to the standards of sexiness as they are projected in the media, entertainment industry, and advertising. But what exactly (...) is wrong with this state of affairs and what can be done about it? In a recent essay Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin take up this issue and make an elaborate case for what they call a ‘feminist reclamation’ of sexiness. This chapter investigates the merits and shortcomings of their proposal, presents an alternative account, and considers how pornography may be part of the problem but also part of the solution in this matter. (shrink)

Art or Porn? The popular media will often choose this heading when reviewing the latest sexually explicit novel, film, or art exhibition. The underlying assumption seems to be that the work under discussion has to be one or the other, and cannot be both. But is this not a false dilemma? Can one really draw a sharp line between the pornographic and the artistic? Isn't it time to make room for pornographic art and for an aesthetic investigation of pornography? In (...) answering these questions this book will draw on insights from many different disciplines, including philosophy, feminist theory, aesthetics, art history, film studies, theatre studies, as well as on the experience of people who are actually operating in the art world and porn industry. By offering a variety of theoretical approaches and examples taken from a wide range of art forms and historical periods, the reader will gain a fuller and deeper comprehension of the relations and frictions between art and pornography. (shrink)

According to Stephen Davies, there is no such thing as free beauty. Using actual and imaginary examples, he tries to show that our aesthetic evaluations of objects inevitably pay heed to the kinds to which they belong or in which we judge them to belong. His examples are not as compelling as he thinks, however. Furthermore, nature looked at through a microscope (or a telescope) provides us with a particular class of counter-examples which have not been dealt with by Davies (...) and which put considerable pressure on his account. (shrink)

Section 1 proposes a new philosophical account of melancholy. Section 2 examines the reasons why one might think that pornography and melancholy are incompatible. Section 3 discusses some successful examples of melancholic pornography and makes the case that feminist pornographers are particularly well-placed to produce such material.

This article identifies the structural and conceptual aspects of a visual construction often used in advertisements to establish a metaphoric or associative relation, that is, symmetric object alignment (SOA). It offers an account of the formal ingredients of SOA, which fall into two groups: object-constitutive factors (like size, shape, and color) and object-depictment factors (like perspective, orientation, and distance from viewing point). Both factors allow us to treat SOA as a visual rhetorical scheme. We also discuss how SOA relates to (...) conceptual structure, metaphoric or otherwise. Four types of relations are distinguished, based on the way in which perceptual and conceptual characteristics interact. Finally, we discuss the way in which these characteristics relate to the processing of such visual messages. One depictment factor will be focused on in particular: one-to-one versus one-to-many alignments. An attempt is made to connect these 2 patterns to the much-discussed topic in verbal metaphor theory, object comparison versus categorization. (shrink)

La thermodynamique est fondée sur le premier et le second principe, c’est à dire, la conservation de l’énergie et l’ augmentation de l’entropie. Ces lois imposent de fortes contraintes à tout modèle de l’univers. En plus, certaines propriétés de l'espace et du temps sont émergentes dans un sens thermodynamique. Ces notions ne devraient par conséquent pas être considerées comme structures de base des interactions fondamentales. Dans ce sens l’espace-temps est thermodynamique. En outre, si on consent à incorporer des arguments statistiques, (...) il faut se demander si les forces de l’univers sont peut-être thermodynamiques. Notre univers serait ainsi régi par des forces entropiques plutôt que par des forces absolues. (shrink)

All too often women are considered sexy in accordance with an externally dictated and unduly narrow conception of sexiness – one that excludes large portions of the female population from being considered sexy. In response to this, some feminists have suggested that we should give up on sexiness altogether. Since the agency, subjectivity, and autonomy of a woman being judged sexy is generally ignored, they argue, we have, in effect, an equation of sexiness with objecthood. In a recent essay entitled (...) “Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects” Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin object to this strategy because they see sexuality as a crucial element of selfhood – something that one cannot simply ‘give up on’. Instead, they propose to reclaim and redefine sexiness in such a way that makes room for women as sexy subjects desiring and pursuing authentic pleasure. In this short paper, I will investigate the merits and shortcomings of their proposal and present an alternative account. (shrink)