Les biographies de poètes et d' écrivains sont beaucoup plus nombreuses que celles de philosophes. Pour expliquer ce phénomène il se présente sûrement plusieurs raisons. Je n'en veux souligner qu'une: l'apparente objectivité du système philosophique, qui se fonderait sur la distance de l'œuvre à l'égard de son auteur et sur l'absence de marques personnelles. Pourtant on peut accepter que l'interrogation philosophique soit intemporelle ou « perennis » tout en concevant qu'elle soit liée à l'époque dans la formulation des problèmes et (...) des solutions, dans la conception de son idéal. Elle Test ainsi à travers le sujet de l'acte de philosophie: l'homme, qui participe nécessairement à son époque tout en ayant la possibilité de la dépasser. Bien plus, ses intuitions polarisatrices, ses perspectives de base correspondent souvent à une mentalité, à des aspirations et à des besoins spirituels propres à cette époque. (shrink)

It is a philosophical commonplace to juxtapose logic and imagination, reason and sensibility, the concept and intuition, philosophy itself and art. Frequently these pairs are thought of as opposites, one mediated through abstract reflection, the other a more intimate participant in the given of concrete existence. Philosophy does not always come off uncriticized in this opposition. Its reflective, analytical impulse is often thought to abstract us, remove us from the concretely real. Art, by contrast, it is said, serves to (...) keep us closer to the particularities and richness of the concrete, and so to be justified in the greater immediacy of its appeal. (shrink)

Responding to the commentaries by Corey Anton and Ian Angus, I outline anew, and so seek to further clarify, the starting points of and motivations behind my reflection about the concrete-abstract distinction and the ways in which this plays out in technology use, seen from an epistemological standpoint. My eventual purpose is to begin to develop, on the basis of the conceptual exercise, guidelines for an emancipatory ‘art of living with technology,’ that circles around the attempt to think beyond (...) the immediate concrete, into the direction of the ‘abstract conditions’ shaping that ‘concrete.’. (shrink)

From a team of renowned and innovative philosophy teachers, this volume offers accessible reflections and practical suggestions for constructing a successful philosophy course. The collection covers syllabus design, classroom management, and exercises and assessments, with each section concluding with insights from students on what they have learned from studying philosophy. An essential resource for teachers of philosophy at any stage of their career, each contribution balances reflective values with concrete practices and presents a valuable discussion about theories of philosophy (...) pedagogy. (shrink)

Although few philosophers agree about what it is for something to be art, most, if not all, agree on one thing: art must be in some sense intention dependent. Art and Art-Attempts is about what follows from taking intention dependence seriously as a substantive necessary condition for something's being art. Christy Mag Uidhir argues that from the assumption that art must be the product of intentional action, along with basic action-theoretic account of attempts (goal-oriented intention-directed activity), follows a host of (...) sweeping implications for philosophical enquiry into the nature of art and its principal relata such as authorship, art forms, and art ontology: e.g., 1) an informative distinction between art, non-art, and failed-art that any viable theory of art must capture, 2) a far more productive minimal framework for authorship not only capable of systematically addressing issues of collective authorship appropriation, etc. but also one according to which artists just are authors, 3) a coherent and structurally precise account of art forms based upon the relation between artists, artworks, and the sortal properties thereof, and 4) a unified and far less metaphysically suspect ontology of art according to which if there are such things as artworks, then artworks must be concrete things. Ultimately, Mag Uidhir aims neither to propose nor to defend any particular, precise answer to the question "What is art?" Instead, he shows the ways in which taking intention-dependence seriously as a substantive necessary condition for being art can be profoundly revelatory, and perhaps even radically revisionary, as to the scope and limits of what any particular, precise answer to such a question could viably be. -/- **Winner of The American Society for Aesthetics Outstanding Monograph Award 2013**. (shrink)

This book examines the art and writings of Wassily Kandinsky, who is widely regarded as one of the first artists to produce non-representational paintings. Crucial to an understanding of Kandinsky's intentions is _On the Spiritual in Art_, the celebrated essay he published in 1911. Where most scholars have taken its repeated references to "spirit" as signaling quasi-religious or mystical concerns, Florman argues instead that Kandinsky's primary frame of reference was G.W.F. Hegel's _Aesthetics_, in which art had similarly been presented as (...) a vehicle for the developing self-consciousness of spirit. In addition to close readings of Kandinsky's writings, the book also includes a discussion of a 1936 essay on the artist's paintings written by his own nephew, philosopher Alexandre Kojève, the foremost Hegel scholar in France at that time. It also provides detailed analyses of individual paintings by Kandinsky, demonstrating how the development of his oeuvre challenges Hegel's views on modern art, yet operates in much the same manner as does Hegel's philosophical system. Through the work of a single, crucial artist, Florman presents a radical new account of why painting turned to abstraction in the early years of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Paul Crowther argues that art can bridge the gap between philosophy's traditional striving for generality and completeness, and the concreteness and contingency of humanity's basic relation to the world. He proposes an ecological definition of art: by making sensible or imaginative material into symbolic form, it harmonizes and conserves what is unique and what is general about human experience.

Arthur Danto's work has always affirmed a deep relationship between philosophy and art. These essays explore this relationship through a number of concrete cases in which either artists are driven by philosophical agendas or their art is seen as solving philosophical problems in visual terms. The essays cover a varied terrain, with subjects including Giotto's use of olfactory data in _The Raising of Lazarus; _chairs in art and chairs as art; Mel Bochner's Wittgenstein drawings; the work of Robert Motherwell, (...) Andy Warhol, and Robert Irwin; Louis Kahn as "Archai-Tekt"; and visual truth in film. Also featured are a meditation on the battle of Gettysburg; and a celebration of the Japanese artist Shiko Munakata, an essay that is partly autobiographical. Arthur C. Danto is one of the most original and multitalented philosophers writing today, a thinker whose interests traverse the boundaries of traditional understandings of philosophy. Best known for his contributions to the philosophy of art and aesthetics, Danto is also esteemed for his work in the history of philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophical psychology, and action theory. These two volumes, each with an introduction by the author, contain essays spanning more than twenty-five years that have been selected to highlight the inseparability of philosophy and art in Danto's work. Together they present the thinking of Arthur C. Danto at his very best. (shrink)

This essay takes an epistemological perspective on the question of the ‘art of living with technology.’ Such an approach is needed as our everyday notion and understanding of technology keep being framed in the old categories of instrumentalism and essentialism—notwithstanding philosophy of technology’s substantial attempts, in recent times, to bridge the stark dichotomy between those two viewpoints. Here, the persistent dichotomous thinking still characterizing our everyday involvement with technology is traced back to the epistemological distinction between ‘concrete’ and ‘abstract.’ (...) Those terms are often contrasted, and a tendency can be found, in the literature as well as in popular discourse, to either conceptually favor one of both or let them collapse into each other. The current essay makes a plea, in an exploratory manner, and on the basis of insights hailing from among others Gregory Bateson and Alfred Korzybski, to not choose either one of those options, but to practice ourselves in navigating ladders of abstraction. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Intentions of Art Can Private Intentions Go Public? The Intention to Make a Poem Poems Are Made out of Words Blake's “London”.

This book presents a lively philosophical exchange between the philosophy of art and the core areas of philosophy. The standard way of thinking about non-repeatable (single-instance) artworks such as paintings, drawings, and non-cast sculpture is that they are concrete (i.e., material, causally efficacious, located in space and time). This volume examines how philosophical enquiry into art might itself productively inform or be productively informed by enquiry into abstracta taking place within not just metaphysics but also the philosophy of mathematics, (...) epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind and language. While the contributors chiefly focus on the relationship between philosophy of art and contemporary metaphysics with respect to the overlap issue of abstracta, they provide a methodological blueprint from which scholars working both within and beyond philosophy of art can begin building responsible, mutually informative, and productive relationships between their respective fields. (shrink)

Art and Abstract Objects presents a lively philosophical exchange between the philosophy of art and the core areas of philosophy. The standard way of thinking about non-repeatable (single-instance) artworks such as paintings, drawings, and non-cast sculpture is that they are concrete (i.e., material, causally efficacious, located in space and time). Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is currently located in Paris. Richard Serra's Tilted Arc is 73 tonnes of solid steel. Johannes Vermeer's The Concert was stolen in 1990 and remains missing. (...) Michaelangelo's David was attacked with a hammer in 1991. By contrast, the standard way of thinking about repeatable (multiple-instance) artworks such as novels, poems, plays, operas, films, symphonies is that they must be abstract (i.e., immaterial, causally inert, outside space-time): consider the current location of Melville's Moby Dick, the weight of Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium", or how one might go about stealing Puccini's La Boheme or vandalizing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9. Although novels, poems, and symphonies may appear radically unlike stock abstract objects such as numbers, sets, and propositions, most philosophers of art think that for the basic intuitions, practices, and conventions surrounding such works to be preserved, repeatable artworks must be abstracta. -/- This volume examines how philosophical enquiry into art might itself productively inform or be productively informed by enquiry into abstracta taking place within not just metaphysics but also the philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind and language. While the contributors chiefly focus on the relationship between philosophy of art and contemporary metaphysics with respect to the overlap issue of abstracta, they provide a methodological blueprint from which scholars working both within and beyond philosophy of art can begin building responsible, mutually informative, and productive relationships between their respective fields. (shrink)

A standard art-ontological position is to construe repeatable artworks as abstract objects that admit multiple concrete instances. Since photographic artworks are putatively repeatable, the ontology of photographic art is by default modelled after standard repeatable-work ontology. I argue, however, that the construal of photographic artworks as abstracta mistakenly ignores photography’s printmaking genealogy, specifically its ontological inheritance. More precisely, I claim that the products of printmaking media (prints) minimally must be construed in a manner consistent with basic print ontology, the (...) most plausible model of which looks decidedly nominalist (what I call the relevant similarity model) and that as such, photographic artworks must be likewise construed, not as abstracta but as individual and distinct concreta. That is, the correct ontological account of photographic art must be one according to which photographic artworks are individual and distinct concrete artworks. In the end, I show that the ontology of photographic art resists the standard repeatable-work model because the putative repeatability of photographic artworks is upon closer inspection nothing more than the relevant similarity relation between individual and distinct photographic prints. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Hegel's Account of Subjectivity: General Remarks The Phenomenology as the Theory of Concrete Subjectivity Conclusion References Further Reading.

Architecture has always been a magnificent and much debated platform to express the spirit of the times, world views, everyday life, and aesthetics. It is a daring materialisation of private and public visions, of applied art and the avant-garde alike.

The Art Experience: An Introduction to Philosophy and the Arts takes readers on an engaging and accessible journey that explores a series of fundamental questions about the nature of art and aesthetic value. Three of these questions serve as the major sections for the book's 12 chapters: What makes something a work of art? How should we experience art in order to get the most out of it? And once we understand art, how should we evaluate whether it is good (...) or bad? Philosophical theory is illustrated with concrete examples: the paintings of Frida Kahlo, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the masks of the Nso people, and many others. Classic questions are balanced with cutting-edge challenges, such as Linda Nochlin's work on the exclusion of women from the artistic canon. The Art Experience presupposes no prior knowledge of philosophy or art, and it will be of interest to any reader seeking an accessible and engaging introduction to this field. Along the way, readers learn how philosophical theories can affect our real-world experiences with painting, music, theater, and many more art forms. Key Features Accessible for any college student and assumes no knowledge of philosophy, art theory, or any artistic medium Organizes topics conceptually, rather than historically, allowing students to more easily grasp the core issues themselves rather than tracing their historical evolution Offers readers a large number of contemporary examples and a consistent focus on the way theory can affect people's real-world experiences with art Explores questions about bias - for example, whether the artistic canon has excluded some groups unfairly and whether definitions of art are Western-biased. (shrink)

Comparisons made between art and mathematics so often centre on the beauty of mathematics and how its forms might be seen as aesthetically pleasing. Yet the prominence of beauty as an attribute is less prevalent in contemporary art. Rather, art has a much broader scope of concern, perhaps with a greater emphasis on providing apparatus through which we might better understand who we are. This paper considers some performative aspects of contemporary art and draws parallels with some examples of mathematical (...) activity within educative contexts. It argues that the performative dimension of mathematics is underemphasised in school activity and that the social and linguistic conditioning of mathematics within performance is a crucial aspect of the discipline being addressed in school and vocational courses. In particular, proficiency with concretisations of mathematics and the social dynamics that attend these is integral to the broader proficiency of moving between concrete and abstract domains. (shrink)

The arche–arte dualism (concrete–abstract) is fundamental and basic, due to its universality and comprehensive generative function. This duality characterizes our actions in every dimension, and is thus necessarily involved in cognitive and creative acts. The “arteic” includes the categories of consciousness, consideration, calculation, ordering, knowledge, intellect, and artificiality. On the other hand, the “archeic” refers to that which is, in us, subconscious, eternal, primordial, innate, instinctive, and natural. When this basic duality is posited at the outset, it furnishes an (...) analytical‑interpretative‑synthesizing tool that can be applied to diverse facts. The omnipresence and explanatory potential of the arche‑arte dualism are illustrated through musical examples. The dual nature of sound is thereby revealed to be a structural model for the subconscious sensations that music evokes in us. (shrink)

In this article, I am using the example of the introduction of osteosynthesis into surgical routine practice to analyze the use of the notions of art and science in medical innovation. The examination of the renegotiations of power and responsibility associated with the introduction of this new technique shows that proponents and critics actively linked their arguments to more fundamental epistemological and social issues. The proponents claimed to manage the uncertainties of innovation through making surgery more scientific, drawing on the (...) ideals of control, rationality, objectivity, and predictability. The critics mobilized another discursive pattern. They considered surgery an art and emphasized the individuality, contingency, and situatedness of medical practice. I investigate the discursive function of these argumentative patterns and how they played out in the concrete example of this surgical technique. (shrink)

This article uses Hegel’s analysis of the Romantic form to elucidate the relationship between aesthetic space and subjectivity in modernist painting (Paul Klee) and cinema (Sergei Eisenstein). The movement that brings art to realization in Hegel thus includes genres and modalities of art that did not exist in his time: in cinema and modernist painting, the Idea or truth of art evolves and brings itself to completion. Plasticity, the movement of aesthetic form toward self-expression, abandons the rigid substantiality it achieves (...) in the Classical era and acquires unprecedented range, depth and resilience. In the Romantic form, the dynamism of the concept surfaces in full force and aesthetic boundaries expand. The emergence here of a new type of visual space is determined by a subjectivity that abandons the concrete, corporeal individuality associated with sculpture (most explicitly in Classical art) and imparts on sensuous form the fluidity of inner life. Music and poetry converge in the visual object which now assumes cinematic modality, a modality that also finds expression in modernist painting. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Elizabeth Hanson-Smith AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS: THE CONCRETE REFERENT The chief problem facing critics who would consider the Confessions as both a literary work and a philosophical treatise remains the connection between the first nine books, the autobiography, and the last four, the metaphysical speculations on time, eternity, epistemology, and theology. A persistent desire to justify the work as an aesthetic whole has led critics on a search for thematic (...) and structural unity; they have been more successful in the former endeavor than in the latter. The interpretation of the work's plot as a peregrinatio animae, a pilgrimage of the soul, is now generally accepted as definitive; but attempts to find structural unity within that broad outline have not progressed beyond Marrou's characterization of the work as a "musical composition."1 His analogy to music has not been anchored to any concrete structural features of the Confessions and does not illuminate the connections between its content and its form. I shall attempt to prove that a unified structural model for the development of the soul in the Confessions does indeed exist and is outlined in Augustine's earlier discursive work, the De quantitate animae.2 The seven degrees or steps (gradus) of the soul's ascent to God, as sketched in the De quantitate, are deliberately fleshed out and translated into a mimetic, narrative version in the Confessions. Placing the two works side by side gives us a unique opportunity to examine a typically medieval literary form, the educative journey, in its relationship to its philosophical premises. Such a study reveals the inner formal unity of the literary work and, further, provides us with significant evidence for a re-examination of Augustine's Neo-Platonism, his supposed dualism, and his influence on later works, both literary and philosophical. In the Confessions we see one of the earliest Christian blendings of several models: first, the educative journey, the archetypal pattern familiar from the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and even The Golden Ass of Apuleius. Augustine's version, like later medieval cosmologies, also 176 Elizabeth Hanson-Smith1 77 includes a vision of the cosmic order and its relationship to human order, elements of significance in pagan philosophical works such as the Timaeus and the Dream of Scipio. But Augustine's journey also depends upon the Judeo-Christian conception of history as a series of figurae or types of the Messiah: the protagonist of the Christian educative journey joins thefigurae of the Biblical past. Christ's incarnation as Mansoul and his life on earth are the pattern of universal history from Fall to Apocalypse; Christ's life becomes a figurative pattern for the actions of Everyman.3 The Confessions is one of the earliest Christian works to apply this pattern in a narrative context. Augustine was also preoccupied with the Hexaemeron, the six days of creation and the seventh of rest. He views the exegesis of Genesis as an explanation of all subsequent life; the Ages of Man recapitulate the days of creation, as do the sacraments and the seven steps in the ascent of the soul. Thus, to the figurative pattern of Christ's "pilgrimage" from creating Logos to Incarnate God and finally to judge at the Second Coming, Augustine applies the schematic seven-fold ascent found in the De quantitate: the soul passes through the ascending steps of animation, sense, art, religion, tranquillity, initiation, and contemplation—each of which is figured by or patterned on a stage in Christ's life, as represented by the sacraments, and each of which, further, reflects a segment of universal history. The seven steps are not simply the movement of the individual soul, but the progress of Mansoul on its journey to Apocalypse. The stylistic differences between the two works—one an exposition written as Socratic dialogue, the other a metaphorical personal narrative —will no doubt give rise to differing interpretations; but one may, I think, object to certain details I suggest while still agreeing that the De quantitate provides the structuring model. Let me first define the major areas of difference between the two works. In the De quantitate, each of the levels or steps of the soul takes on a discrete, separate... (shrink)

Neuf études sur l'art et le temps - c'est-à-dire - l'art et l'histoire. Regard historique sur l'esthétique, analyse des conceptions du Beau dans la tradition philosophique, au travers d'exemples venant de la Grèce, de la Renaissance, du Romantisme, et d'auteurs comme Burckhardt ou Hegel - ces essais sont le prétexte à une exploration des grandes questions métaphysiques sur l'art et les hommes, analyses par un auteur dont l'engagement concret contre le régime totalitaire de son pays porte la marque de son (...) souci de l'homme et de sa dignité. (shrink)

In reaction to what he defines as the modern (anti-humanistic) totalitarian frame of mind, characterized by scientism, Manicheism, and aestheticism, the French critic and historian of ideas, Tzvetan Todorov engages in an ambitious project of rethinking humanism. A (post-Romantic) view of art that retains its representational role, its intersubjective and truth-disclosive power, and that does not betray the humanism that marked the debut of modernity, plays a central role in this enterprise. I argue in this paper that, through his interpretation (...) of the works of different modern painters, Todorov reconstructs an artistic gaze, a way of looking at the world, that can nourish a humanistic sensibility in modern societies. This humanistic artistic gaze pluralizes the epresentational space of the human without failing to develop a common narrative about humanity. In tune with the values of what I call quotidian humanism, it is a gaze that can redeem the meaning and the sacred dimension of our most elemental quotidian gestures and activities. More than anything else, it is a gaze that refuses to reduce the richness and even the ambiguity of an individual’s presence and life to an idea or a doctrine and that chooses to see other human beings not with a moralizing eye, but with love, even kindness, for their complex and concrete humanity. (shrink)

Even under many formally democratic regimes, large swaths of the citizenry experience alienation from states with uneven presence throughout the national territory. Addressing a gap in scholarship that has examined why rather than how states establish new modes of engagement with subaltern groups, this article documents concrete mechanisms by which the Brazilian state built new state-society relations through a particular cultural policy. By recognizing and funding artistic initiatives in underserved communities, the program aimed to expand their access to the (...) state and validate their role in the polity. On the basis of in-depth fieldwork in three Brazilian states, the article argues that new relations actually were forged through state-society encounters around the program’s administrative procedures. The surprising twist—that paperwork, as much as art, played a transformative role—sheds new light on bureaucracy as a point of contact with the state and offers new insights into the ways that cultural politics can shift. (shrink)

In theOrigin of the work of art, Heidegger claimed that the work of art opens to us thetruth of Being, the opening of the world. Two problematics arise from this. First, his idea of “world-disclosure” evoked a sense ofeverydayness(which captures, for me, the idea of credulism in perception). Second, the senses oftruth,Being, andworldare metaphysically condensed. Hence the question: how then could the “truth of Being” or the “world” that artworks reveal be experienced? Among other ways (mimesis, imagination, perception, etc.) by (...) which artworks are experienced, I choose to examine perception since it confirms this idea ofeverydayness. The questions that confront us to this effect are: can perception lead us into, to encounter, this world opened by artworks? Does the nervous/visual system suffice to enter into that world in which the artist invites us? This is where Richir becomes important. In response to the first problem, he shows that the “perception” (experience) of artworks is beyond mereeverydaynesssince artworks open for us a world that “never was” and “never will be” (i.e., “virtuality” and not a veridical sense ofeverydaynessas captured in the perceptive act that is object-related). This is because the material stuff or object given in perception is neutralized by thephantasiato become what Richir callsSache. ThisSacheis in itself a phenomenon that is disclosed in artworks. In response to the second problem, Richir shows how artworks cannot disclose just metaphysical categories ofBeing, truth, or world. The disclosure has to be phenomenological, corporeal, and affective. He therefore proposes another mode of “perception” beyondmere perceptionin a revolutionary interpretation of the husserlian “perceptive”phantasia.With this, he shows how the aforementioned metaphysical condensations are liveable in experience. I concretize this with an illustration from the theater. Finally, I suggest participation as a phenomenological approach that can make both Heidegger’s and Richir’s intuitions meaningful. (shrink)

The connection between art therapy and specific theories of positive psychology such as Antonovsky's theory of salutogenic sense of coherence (SOC) has been less articulated in the literature. This paper draws a methodological connection between arts therapy and SOC, that is, meaning, manageability and comprehensibility, as the components of coping. This theoretical and methodological connection is then explored with a group of participants dealing with the health-stress of cancer. Method We conducted a large-scale, qualitative study that included fifty transcribed hours (...) of thematically analyzed arts processes and one hundred art works, used to explore salutogenic theory within a support group for recovering oncological patients. Results The results point to the arts as including mechanisms that enhance meaning, manageability, and comprehensibility in an embodied and synergetic way. The art makes it possible both to separate and to 'fill' these three components, while on the other hand, integrating them into a cyclical element. We outline theoretical and methodological implications of understanding art therapy as a methodology to enact and concretize positive psychology theories, as well as presenting a protocol for using arts to enhance salutogenic coping. (shrink)

According to Martin Heidegger’s The Origin of the Work of Art, the truth of Being is disclosed in artworks. With this as a starting point, one wonders if this (truth of Being) is encounterable given its metaphysical/ontological condensation. We elaborate, one way, in which artworks have been contemplated in the history of the philosophy of art – namely, mimesis. Two possibilities are opened up in this regard: the first (e. g. Aristotle) credits the reproduction of copies/likeness of the original to (...) mimesis, whereas the second (e. g. Kant) does not. Richir stands out for discrediting mimesis of artworks via copies as sufficient means to encounter the truth of Being. This insufficiency is overcome by a phenomenological path, within the context of his revolutionary interpretation of the Husserlian “perceptive” phantasy, of a non-mediated, non-specular, active, affective and bodily access – fromwithin (Mimesis) – to the truth of Being in art works. This renders Heidegger’s intuition fruitful. This article aims to concretize Richir’s position using illustrations from literary works. (shrink)

Griselda Pollock provides concrete historical analyses of key moments in the formation of modern culture to reveal the sexual politics at the heart of modernist art, exploring the writings of Elizabeth Siddall, Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot.

L’œuvre de Gaston Bachelard n’est pas toujours prise en considération dans le cadre de l’histoire de l’esthétique française. S’il est vrai que le philosophe n’a pas élaboré une théorie esthétique accomplie, ses travaux sur l’imagination et la rêverie non seulement démontrent une connaissance des débats théoriques de l’époque, mais, plus profondément, représentent une prise de position en faveur d’une « esthétique concrète » qui s’écarte des stériles disputes philosophiques d’académie pour s’appuyer directement sur la présence matérielle de l’œuvre d’art, aussi (...) poétique que visuelle, afin de réintégrer le sentir dans le penser. Il s’agit donc d’interroger cette manière de réintégrer l’ aisthesis dans le logos à travers le travail de l’imagination, en retrouvant ainsi « une unité du monde ». C’est précisément dans la rencontre avec la beauté que le sujet s’ouvre au monde de façon pré-catégoriale et, en même temps, que le monde fait l’objet d’une expérience non-objective. Cela ouvre la voie à une esthéticité transcendantale jamais théorisée explicitement, mais concrètement mise au travail dans les œuvres du philosophe. (shrink)

The remarkable growth in interest in aesthetic gardens in the late Ming period has been recognized in Chinese garden culture studies. The materialist historical approach contributes to revealing the importance of gardens’ economic functions in the shift of garden culture, but is inadequate in explaining the successive burgeoning of small plain gardens in the 17th century. This article integrates the aesthetic and materialist perspectives and situates the cultural transition in the concrete social and cultural context in the late Ming (...) period. Beginning with describing a taste change and an expansion in the number of gardens, this article focuses on the small plain garden phenomenon by exploring the unique role that the arts (e.g., poetry and painting) played. A series of artistic criteria were established in the late Ming period. The application of these aesthetic rules to gardens enabled more people to own gardens. This is process that economic requirements for owning gardens were lowered, giving way to the aesthetic appreciation and exploration of literati individuals’ artistic talents. Gardens thus became more widely accessible and provided enhanced pleasure to the middle and lower class families. The conclusion is that the ‘major shift’ in garden culture was closely associated with the change of garden owners’ aesthetic tastes, in addition to the economic conditions in the Jiangnan area. In the increased popularity of gardens, the arts played a significant role. (shrink)

In this paper I shall argue that useful correspondences can be drawn between the role of depiction in showing a view of the world and the realisation that would view God as a picture of experience in the world, since both can be seen to illustrate an art of interpretation. The perceptual insight that is gleaned in mystical-philosophical consciousness converges on the idea of a realm that is marked as divine, and by exploiting mental and linguistic imagery this mindful awareness (...) can be made concrete in the form of a written text, which can be seen to be analogous to a pictorial representation. The writer of a text purportedly sees and knows the domain of divine reality through sensible and conceptual means and then reduces this consciousness to a planar form, which is observable as an artistic rendering. The reader, who is at the same time a viewer, is invited to perceptually and imaginatively attend to the artifact as a manifestation of the experient's understanding of the functional nature of God, and in this apprehension of the divine scenario in the textual picture the interpretative motif of God-in-the-painting is revealed. (shrink)

While numerous studies have shown diverse effects of rankings, rather little is known about their production. This article contributes to a broader understanding of rankings in society, and does so by focusing on underlying worldviews. I argue that the existence of a ranking and its concrete methodology can be explained by the producer’s paradigmatic assumptions about a world-to-be-ranked. Referring to the sociology of knowledge and studies on commensuration, comparisons, quantification and valuation, I provide a general heuristic to analyze this (...) relation between underlying worldviews and observational regimes through which order is constructed systematically. Presenting empirical results on a ranking for the most famous artists in the world, I show how the review device’s initial problem and its construction of order derive from consistent assumptions about contemporary art, its symbolic structures and its social embeddedness. These findings have implications for both research on rankings and sociology of the arts. (shrink)

Feminist epistemology and feminist art theory are characterized by an opposition to modernity's separation of art, politics, and knowledge into three autonomous spheres. However, this opposition is not enough to distinguish them from other philosophies. In this paper I examine parallels between the two fields of inquiry in order to discover what makes them distinctively feminist. Feminist epistemology sees interconnections between knowledge and politics, feminist art theory sees connections between art and politics. We need to explore as well connections between (...) art and knowledge. Compared to feminist epistemology, feminist art theory has had much less exposure, and in this paper I emphasize what the former can learn from the latter. In particular, I suggest that feminist art can answer a call made by feminist theories of knowledge for a kind of transformative knowledge. If we focus on the features of activist art explored by feminist art theories, we see that feminist art is particularly suited to engage emotions as well as the intellect. It is an example of nonpropositional knowledge, and is interactive rather than striving to pass down lessons from above. Feminist art celebrates the power of art to “make strange” and to unsettle fixed identities which can transform our understanding of the world. There is a tendency in some feminist art theory to separate the more concrete work (rediscovering women artists, recognizing women's crafts as art forms, and investigating sexist imagery in art), from the theoretical project of reenvisioning the relations of art to its sociopolitical context. I conclude by arguing that without an awareness of the dialectical relationship between the concrete and the theoretical, feminist art theories run the risk of losing their feminist specificity. They would then amount to little more than abstract pronouncements of the interconnections between art, politics, and knowledge. We need to maintain the feminist specificity of feminist politics in our theories of art and knowledge, and I use examples throughout the essay, drawn particularly from feminist activist art, with this goal in mind. (shrink)

This volume explores the roles and uses of abstraction in scientific and artistic practice. Conceived as an interdisciplinary dialogue between experts across histories and philosophies of art and science, this collection of essays draws on the shared premise that abstraction is a rich and generative process, not reducible to the mere omission of details in a representation. When scientists attempt to make sense of complex natural phenomena, they often produce highly abstract models of them. In the history and philosophy of (...) art, there is a long tradition of debate on the function of abstraction, and - more recently - its relation with theories of depiction. Adopting a process-oriented perspective, the chapters in this volume explore the epistemic potential of a diversity of practices of abstracting. The systematic analysis of a wide range of historical cases, from early twentieth-century abstractionist painting to contemporary abstract photography, and from nineteenth-century physics to recent research in biology and neurosciences, invites the reader to reflect on the material lives of abstraction through concrete artefacts, experimental practices and theoretical and aesthetic achievements. Abstraction in Science and Art: Philosophical Perspectives will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in aesthetics, philosophy of science, and epistemology, as well as to historians of science and art, and to practicing artists and scientists interested in exploring foundational questions at the heart of the creative practice of abstracting. (shrink)

The experimental art and poetry of the last half of the twentieth century offers a glimpse of the emerging networked culture that electronic devices will make omnipresent. Craig J. Saper demarcates this new genre of networked art, which uses the trappings of bureaucratic systems - money, logos, corporate names, stamps - to create intimate situations among the participants. Saper explains how this genre developed from post-World War II conceptual art, including periodicals as artworks in themselves; lettrist, concrete, and process (...) poetry; Bauhaus versus COBRA; Fluxus publications, kits, and machines; mail art and on-sendings. The encyclopedic scope of the book includes discussions of artists from J. Beuys to J. S. G. Boggs, and Bauhaus's Max Bill to Anna Freud Banana. -- Publisher. (shrink)

Si les expositions de peinture font l'objet d'une large fréquentation, Hegel est bien souvent décrié, surtout dans les milieux artistiques. Cette présentation de son Esthétique voudrait montrer, en privilégiant les analyses concrètes comme celle de la peinture hollandaise du XVIIe, toute la fécondité de cette approche philosophique. Loin du dogmatisme, Hegel conçoit l'art historiquement, jugeant les œuvres, mais récusant par avance toute norme académique. L'historicité de l'art est-elle solidaire de sa fin, de son dépassement? Dans quelle mesure art et religion (...) sont-ils dissociables? Questions auxquelles nous confronte cette lecture de Hegel. (shrink)

To define abstract art, which occupies such an important place in contemporary aesthetics, merely as a plastic mode of expression that makes no attempt to seek its own forms among those already existing in reality is to give a very inadequate notion of it. The term “non-figurative art,” which is sometimes used to describe it, arbitrarily restricts its range by stressing as peculiar to it this elementary fact alone and by characterizing abstract art solely as a controversial or even as (...) a revolutionary art, as opposed to traditional aesthetics, which is itself figurative. Abstract art at times has also been called “concrete” or “non-objective” art. All these definitions have as little validity in themselves as those that are made use of in the history of art and are acceptable only at their “face value,” to use the monetary term, because they have no absolute value but merely a conventional one based on the principle of exchange (Baroque, Gothic, Rococo, Cubist). However, they are not to be ignored, since they do express the state of uncertainty, uneasiness, and indecision that afflicts most amateurs and even historians of art in regard to abstract art. At the same time, these definitions also indicate an awareness that we are dealing with a very important and complex phenomenon, enriched by extensive projections into the domain of social psychology, sociology, and probably even metaphysics. (shrink)

Purpose. The article is devoted to the analysis of corporality as an attribute of plastic art in the Ancient art, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the modernism and the postmodernism. Theoretical basis. The authors consider historical development of the art as a change of paradigms. Within each paradigm a special understanding of art is created, which is characterized both by the act of creativity itself and by the evaluation of its results. Particularly urgent is the task to identify the origins (...) of these changes, to indicate their stages, the direction of the evolution of artistic creativity. In this context, corporality as a paradigm of European plastic art is considered in the article in the concrete historical dimension from the classics to the postmodernism. Originality. Postmodern experiments stimulate blurring the borders between the traditional forms and genres of art. Review of canonical ideas about the creation and destruction, order and chaos in art illustrates conscious reorientation from the classical understanding of artistic creativity to the construction of artifacts-simulacra, which is a characteristic feature in the oeuvre of contemporary artists, ranging from the pop art to the present day. Conclusions. The ideas of postmodern philosophers found their visual embodiment in modern artistic practices. Reconstruction of the body, re-switching of its elements according to the principle of chaotic collage, the interpretation of the human body as a separate substance isolated from the individual him/herself, which is presented as a phenomenon of mass culture, became the basis of the creative method of contemporary plastic art. The ideas of postmodern philosophers have found their visual embodiment in the contemporary artistic practices. (shrink)

Summary According to Gestalt theory the impact of arts is not adequately described as a transfer of an artist’s message into a recipient’s state of mind. As a matter of fact (and effect) art represents complex fields of meaning (figurations) rooting in the specific conditions of art creation and proceeding to the concrete effects of art reception. From a psychological point of view artefacts cannot be reduced to static objects, nor are the recipients to be seen as passive spectators (...) of the scenery. Aesthetical experience is an action field from which the material of art and its reception emerge. In my contribution the relationship of subject and object in art is modelled in terms of Victor von Weizsäcker’s Gestaltkreis of perception and action. For this purpose, I will refer to the favourite subject of art coaching: the Moses of Michelangelo in Rome. (shrink)

Background The American Association of Medical Colleges has called for incorporation of the health humanities into medical education, and many medical schools now offer formal programs or content in this field. However, there is growing recognition among educators that we must expand beyond empathy and wellness and apply the health humanities to questions of social justice – that is, critical health humanities. In this paper we demonstrate how this burgeoning field offers us tools for integrating social justice into medical education, (...) utilizing the frameworks of critical consciousness and structural competency. Practice of health humanities Critical health humanities can be applied at multiple levels of learners, and in a variety of contexts. We are two physician-writers who have developed several educational programs that demonstrate this. We taught a seminar that introduced first-year and second-year undergraduates to concepts such as social determinants of health, intergenerational trauma, intersectionality, resilience, and cross-cultural care through works of fiction, poetry, film, podcasts, stand-up comedy, and more. Through creative projects and empathic reflection, students engaged with the complexities of structural forces that create and maintain health disparities. Medical students in their clinical years can engage in critical health humanities learning experiences as well. We teach several multidisciplinary electives that address social (in)justice in medicine, as well as mentor fourth-year students engaged in independent electives that foster critical awareness around health equity and ethics. Beyond the classroom, we have actively engaged in critical health humanities practices through story slams, literary journal clubs, conference presentations, and Grand Rounds. Through these activities we have included learners at GME and CME levels. These examples also demonstrate how community engagement and multidisciplinary partnerships can contribute to the practice of critical health humanities. Conclusion In this paper, we explore the growing field of critical health humanities and its potential for teaching health equity through narrative practices. We provide concrete examples of educational activities that incorporate critical consciousness and structural competency – frameworks we have found useful for conceptualizing critical health humanities as a pedagogical practice. We also discuss the strengths and challenges of this work and suggest future directions. (shrink)

In this response to Pieter Lemmens’ post-autonomist evaluation of the liberatory potential of digital network technologies, Kate Milberry finds the concept of pharmakon as a diagnostic to uncover what ails the worker in technocapitalism wanting. Through an exploration of Marxian concepts and critical theory of technology, she explores ways to augment political responses to capitalist exploitation in the digital age. Milberry concludes that it is not possible to change the sociotechnical foundation of contemporary life until we fundamentally alter the capitalist (...) social relations concretized in technology. This can only be done through adopting an ethic of care, that is to say: only through love. (shrink)

Chinese philosophy views experience as intrinsically aesthetic. This world view could be elucidated through a consideration of John Dewey's aesthetics and features of Chinese art. Dewey's philosophy of art starts with an understanding of experience as 'live processes' of living creatures interacting with their environment. Such processes are autopoietic in being self-sustaining, ever-changing, capable of increasing complexity, capable of generating novelty, direction and progress on its own. Its autopoietic character is a precondition of the aesthetic in the process of experience. (...) An aesthetic experience is rhythmic, focused, consummatory, and reaches beyond the transitory boundaries of concrete existence. The aesthetic is not confined to what is conventionally identified as art. Most important, the ethical-political, the natural and the cosmic all have an aesthetic aspect, as the paper attempts to show by examining classical Confucianism. (shrink)

This paper argues that an explanation of the role of aesthetic patterning in human action needs to be part of any “qualitative” social theory. It urges the social sciences to move beyond contextualism and to see art as visual, acoustic and other media that lead to heightened sensory perception and the coordination of feelings through symbols. The article surveys the argument that art provides a basic model of how the self learns to interact with external environments; and the complementary thesis (...) that art could be seen as integral to the emergence of systems of human knowledge, communication and economy. Ornamentation and stylization are advanced as two concrete devices through which human attention is captured and experience is ordered through aesthetic patterns. The conclusion is drawn that art offers the social sciences a meaningful account of the perceptual or “qualitative” dimensions of social interactions; and that this is much needed today. (shrink)

The Double Content view is the first comprehensive theory of art that is able to satisfactorily explain the nature of all kinds of artworks in a unified way — whether paintings, novels, or musical and theatrical performances. The basic thesis is that all such representational artworks involve two levels or kinds of representation: a first stage in which a concrete artifact represents an artwork, and a second stage in which that artwork in turn represents its subject matter. "Dilworth applies (...) his theory across the arts and to a variety of issues, demonstrating that it has far-reaching implications for our philosophical understanding of the nature of art.” - Stephen Davies, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Auckland.. (shrink)

While there have always been schools of religious and ethical thought favourable to poverty, or a simple life, the general opinion of mankind has always regarded the increasing wealth of an individual or a community as conducive to human happiness. Qualifications have commonly been attached to this judgment in recognition of a certain danger and deceitfulness of riches, especially when rapidly acquired and lavishly expended, but the presumption still stands that wealth in general conduces to well-being. The nature, degree or (...) conditions of this correspondence have, however, received singularly little attention from those thinkers who have given closest study to economic processes. Many of the founders of economic science in this and other countries were manifestly concerned for the general welfare of their fellowmen, and were active workers in many fields of social reform. But, in formulating the concepts and laws of their science, they deemed it unnecessary to give any close or continuous thought to the relations between economic wealth and human welfare. This was due, partly, no doubt to the natural desire to make the subject-matter and the treatment of a new science as definitely concrete and measurable as possible. It was this desire that made monetary valuation paramount in all economic estimates. (shrink)

The philosophy of the art of living asks the age-old question of orienting one’s own life: ‘How can I live well?’ An art of living is always called for when people do not know what to do and how to go on, when the ways of life are no longer self-evident, when traditions, conventions, rules, and norms lose their plausibility and individuals begin to worry about themselves. The art of living and of its philosophy has a practical aim: It is (...) not concerned with ethical principles, but with the concrete practice of people’s everyday life, with their individual and successful lives. Friedrich Nietzsche, as he often did, pushed the problem of the art of living to the extreme, making it palpable both in its dignity and in its force. For him, the modern uncertainty of human orientation caused by nihilism pointed to art and aesthetics, which, he supposed, makes life if not justifiable, at least bearable. The arts open up a multi-perspectival seeing and hearing, they experiment with alternative forms and techniques, and create the finest sensibilities for both – Nietzsche himself, with his rich forms of philosophical writing, is an outstanding example of this. -/- The volume we present here, entails contributions of German-speaking scholars on Nietzsche and the ways of living he proposes, especially, but not alone in Dawn. The papers are selected from a book series on the common issue “Critical Art of Living,” edited by Günter Gödde, Jörg Zirfas, and others, and translated on behalf of the Foundation for Philosophical Orientation. (shrink)

The essay distils from Badiou's writing a pedagogy based on his theories of knowledge and truth, as brought to bear on poetry and the arts. By following Badiou's implicit ontology of learning, which presupposes a dynamic and passionate engagement with a concrete situation, the essay argues that Badiou's view of modernity, in particular, contributes greatly to the educational topic, and offers an alternative teaching paradigm to the outmoded schools of criticism of the 20 th century. It also argues that (...) the concept of universalism in education, as against identitarian particularism, is further evinced from a discussion of Badiou's study of St. Paul. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger produced a comprehensive, highly original body of thought on art. He conceived of the work of art primarily as a projected place where art happens. For Heidegger, art is a largely linguistic process or an advent of truth, in the sense of a language-bound revealing of the Being of some being . Because art and language are essentially connected, the work of art is place, time and "Volk" specific. The work of art is, like its human author, linguistically (...) thrown into a particular or concrete historic World and is, thus, fundamentally bound to a specific historical people. Heidegger held that real or pure German art was superior, due to its grounding in the German language, and could help establish a new epoch of German greatness. His profoundly non-aesthetic, "volkish" and instrumentatist views on art, in general, and German art in particular, are close to Nazi "art politics" and can help make the case for establishing a philosophical basis for Heidegger's engagement with Naziism. (shrink)

The social novel ought not to be confused with didacticism in literature and ought not to be expected to provide prescriptions for the cure of social ills. Neither should it necessarily be viewed as ephemeral. After examining justifications of the social novel offered by William Dean Howells (in the 1880s) and Jonathan Franzen (in the 1990s), the author explores the way in which social novels alter perceptions and responses at levels of sensibility that are not usually susceptible to rational argument, (...) push back moral horizons, contribute to the creation of social conscience, and expose the complexity and contextuality of moral discernment. As a concrete example, Howells's 1889 novel "A Hazard of New Fortunes" is analyzed (and defended against its detractors) in terms of its sophisticated treatment of the dilemmas that arise from a recognition of personal complicity in structural sin, its disclosure of the context-indexed evolution of values, and its attention to the importance and fragility of social trust. (shrink)