The association between New York City’s all-over structure and the play that unfolds within it relative to difference and identity is very pertinent but is not specific enough, in my opinion. On the one hand, all of Mondrian’s neoplastic works are constituted by an opposition between the variable and the invariable . On the other hand, the type of identity produced in New York City relies on repetition, a principle which, we know, explicitly governs a whole range of paintings (...) predating neoplasticism. New York City differs from the “classic” neoplastic works, as well as from the 1918-19 modular paintings with which it seems to have a good deal in common. It is, in part, because he never discusses this last point that Masheck doesn’t entirely grasp the amplitude of the reversal that Mondrian effected in his New York works.In fact, as James Johnson Sweeney realized quite early, one must go back o the 1917 works, which gave rise to modular grids for the two years that followed, in order to understand what happens not only in New York City but also in the two Boogie-Woogie paintings.3Everyone is aware of the extraordinarily rapid evolution of Mondrian’s work during the years immediately preceding the foundation of neoplasticism: under the influence of Bart van der Leck, he dopted the colored plane and the black dash on a white background as elements of his composition for the two Compositions in Color, A and B . Mondrian, who had not yet found a means of perspicuously relating these diverse elements , tied both plane and dashes together by way of an optical dynamism, based largely on their superimposition. The immediate consequence was to make the background recede optically. The next step was the five Compositions , all entitled “With Colored Planes” . Here all superimposition was eliminated, as well as all “line.” In the last two of these canvases, the background itself is divided without remainder in to planes of different shades of white. The colored rectangles are on the way to alignment. In spite of this, the rectangles fluctuate and, consequently, the background is hollowed out behind them. 3. See James Johnson Sweeney, “Mondrian, the Dutch and De Stijl,” Art News 50 : 63. Meyer Schapiro made a similar remark, at about the same time, in his courses. 4. When I refer to a number accompanied by “Seuphor,” it refers to the “catalog by group” included in Michel Seuphor’s book on the artist. See Seuphor [Ferdinand Louis Berckelaers], Piet Mondrian; sa vie, son oeuvre, 2d ed. . Yve-Alain Bois is associate professor of art history at the Johns Hopkins University. He has published a number of essays on twentieth-century art, architecture, and criticism and is currently working on Mondrian’s neoplastic years and on a history of axonometric perspective. Amy Reiter-McIntosh is a lecturer at the University of Chicago. Her previous contribution to Critical Inquiry was a translation of Ernesto Laclau’s “Psychanalyse et marxisme”. (shrink)

This volume investigates the meaning of visual rhythm through Piet Mondrian's unique approach to understanding rhythm in the compositional structure of painting, drawing reference from philosophy, aesthetics, and Zen culture. Its innovation lies in its reappraisal of a forgotten definition of rhythm as 'stasis' or 'composition' which can be traced back to ancient Greek thought. This conception of rhythm, the book argues, can be demonstrated in terms of pictorial strategy, through analysis of East Asian painting and calligraphy with (...) which Greek thought on rhythm has identifiable commonalities. The book demonstrates how these ideas about rhythm draw together various threads of intellectual development in the visual arts that cross disparate aesthetic cultural practices. As an icon of early 20th Century Modernism, Mondrian's neoplasticism is a serious painterly and philosophical achievement. In his painting, Mondrian was deeply influenced by Theosophy, which took its influence from Eastern aesthetics; particularly East Asian and Indian thought. However, Mondrian's approach to visual rhythm was so idiosyncratic that his contribution to studies of visual rhythm is often under-recognized. This volume shows that a close inspection of Mondrian's own writing, thinking and painting has much to tell scholars about how to understand a long forgotten aspect of visual rhythm. Rodin's famous criticism of photography ("athlete-in-motion is forever frozen") can be applied to Muybridge's zoopraxiscope, the Futurists' rendition of stroboscopic images, and Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase." Through a comparative study between Mondrian's painting and these seminal works, this volume initiates a new convention for the cognition of the surface of painting as visual rhythm. "Mondrian's simultaneous emphasis on the static and the rhythmic is hardly fodder for a publicist. Eiichi Tosaki has taken on the challenge of elucidating Mondrian's theories of rhythm, and particularly his conception of "static" rhythm. The result is a tour de force that will forever alter the reader's encounter with the works of Mondrian." Prof. Kathleen Higgins. (shrink)

This paper considers the use of the ‘Mondrian Stimulus’, invented by Edwin H. Land of the Polaroid Corporation, in various investigations in the visual neuropsychology, the neuroaesthetics, and the social psychology of aesthetic response to works of visual art. What difference does it make—in the set-up of these investigations and in our interpretation of their putative results—that the Mondrian Stimulus might be taken to be a ‘real’ painting by the actual Dutch artist Piet Mondrian? How does (...) the existence of a set of ‘real’ Mondrians—more or less well known to many people, including those investigated in experiments by Land, Zeki, and Noll—affect the ways in which the Mondrian Stimulus is apprehended? The paper argues that the Mondrian Stimulus is ‘bound’ to the history and visual recollection of ‘real Mondrians’ at the same time as the ‘real Mondrians’—in their historical afterlives—are bound to other creations of ‘modern abstract art’. These proposals enable a revised approach to the relations between invariant visual responses on the one hand, and different visual cultures or visuality on the other; because of its own special history of ‘binding’ and ‘unbinding’, the Mondrian Stimulus works as an interface between—a binding of—both ‘bottom-up’ perceptual input and processing and ‘top-down’ direction of attention. (shrink)

Im Jahre 1800 veröffentlicht der noch junge Schelling (1175-1854) das System des transzendentalen Idealismus und mit ihm die Grundzüge seiner Ästhetik. Ob diese noch anschlussfähig an unser heutiges Kunstverständnis ist, wird in dem vorliegenden Buch diskutiert. Den Ansatzpunkt hierfür bildet die Malerei Piet Mondrians. 100 Jahre später steht Mondrian vor seiner Leinwand nämlich vor demselben Problem wie Schelling: Wie erfasse ich eine indifferente Einheit ohne sie zugleich wieder zu zerstören? Oder, wie kann ich einen Strich ziehen, ohne dadurch (...) eine Unterscheidung zu treffen? Um Mondrian mit Schelling lesen zu können, ist es jedoch ein weiter Weg. Ein Weg der unter anderem über die graphische Logik von Charles S. Peirce und die disegno-Theorie des florentiner Manierismus führt. Bleibt nur noch eine Frage: Was macht der nackte Dürer auf dem Cover? (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century, critical art history often chose to ally itself with a restrictive brand of formalism. As a result, representation- and ideology-critical analyses regularly reduced the artwork to the bare bones (Hegel) of the material signifier in its social use. By contrast, in the texts assembled here, elements of a critical materialism are combined with an effort to reevaluate the meta-physical implications of modern abstraction and art since the 1960s. Taking Gilles Deleuze s readings of Spinoza, Nietzsche, and (...) Bergson as his starting point, the author delineates a topic in which the artwork s capacity for resistance is grounded in its relationship to an immanent infinity: the Spinozian substance, Nietzsche s Becoming, Bergson s duree. Against the backdrop of a critical rereading of Heidegger, this infinite dimension is interpreted in temporal and ontological terms as the vertical past of production, which can only be grasped in broken and technically encrypted form in the present shape and materiality of the artwork. Hence the notion of an aesthetics of production does not imply a nostalgia for the artisanal or for the artwork s singularity. The concept of production developed in this book aims at a realm that lies beyond finite representation but is still understood in materialist terms, and that threatens the circulation of positive, conceptually standardized knowledge. In case studies on Piet Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Michael Asher and in framing essays on Kant and Nietzsche as well as Heidegger and Spinoza, this book articulates a concept of the artwork in the long modern era which takes account of the twentieth century s critique of metaphysics but without surrendering the truth claim of art and philosophy in favor of a culturalist and sociological relativism. ". (shrink)

Resumen: Este trabajo propone una aproximación a tres obras centrales de la poesía latinoamericana: Trilce, Altazor y En la masmédula, tomando como base la confrontación entre las limitaciones que el lenguaje necesariamente impone y la voluntad radicalmente transgresora que estos textos exhiben. En particular, el trabajo explora la tensión entre la tendencia del lenguaje a fragmentar la realidad mediante conceptos y la aspiración a la unidad -la superación de toda fragmentación- que denotan los procesos verbales desplegados en estas obras. Para (...) profundizar el análisis, se propone un diálogo entre el lenguaje poético y el pictórico, tomando como referencia los planteamientos teóricos de Piet Mondrian y su visión acerca de la relación entre lo “individual” y lo “universal”.: This article presents an approach to three masterpieces of Latin American poetry: Trilce, Altazor, and En la masmédula, based on the confrontation between the limitations that language necessarily entails and the rule-breaking attitude that these poetical works display. Specifically, this study explores the tension between the tendency to divide reality into segments inherent in language and the quest of unity -the cancellation of any kind of segmentation- that underlies verbal processes in Trilce, Altazor, and En la masmédula. In order to deepen the analysis, this work poses a significant connection between poetical and pictorial language, taking as reference Piet Mondrian’s theoretical contributions about the relationship between “individual” and “universal” forms. (shrink)

This article presents the results of a discourse analysis of press coverage on the Quantified Self (QS) movement in the German and British (online) press between 2007 and 2018. The analysis is driven by two questions: What discursive patterns can be discerned within this coverage? And, what characterizes the translation of the experimental practices and imaginaries of this pioneer community into an overall societal reflection of deep mediatization? In essence, the article shows that the QS movement becomes a ‘general signifier’ (...) for a dystopian view of deep mediatization. So, while the QS movement itself understands its practices and community as self-empowering, self-reasoning, and experimental, the constructions of the QS movement in public discourse suggest the opposite. Paradoxically, however, another basic imaginary of the pioneer community is adopted and confirmed, namely that of the (simple) mutability of society as a consequence of digital media technologies. (shrink)

After the presentation of different views on the relation between narrative and life it is argued that Paul Ricoeur's view offers a framework that allows an answer to questions that remain unanswered in the work of MacIntyre and Carr. Although Ricoeur's view has its own flaws, the concepts of triple mimesis and of narrative identity can be incorporated in a post-foundationalist view. Within this resulting frame of reference narratives in narrative research are interpreted as compositions, as the result of emplotment. (...) Thus the characteristics of a narrative apply to the participant's stories, to personal identity and to the researcher's narrative. (shrink)

This essay discusses whether an indigenous African ethic, as expressed in ubuntu, may serve as an example of how to decolonise Western knowledge. In the first part, the key claims of decolonisation of knowledge are set out. The second part analyses three strategies to construct models of ‘African’ ethics, namely transfer, translation and stating of a substantive rival model as contained in ubuntu ethics. After a critical appraisal of this substantive proposal, part three indicates the potential and limitation of the (...) decolonisation project: possibilities lie in the -contextualisation of knowledge, whereas limitations are related to constructing an alternative to what is known as ‘scientific’ knowledge. As far as the author knows, this is the first attempt to frame ethics in terms of the epistemological search for ‘decolonised’ knowledge. (shrink)

Betoog over de waarde van het zien i.t.t. het kijken. De kern van dit non-duale en onmiddellijke zien is dat je 'bent wat je ziet', een soort Schlüssel- of grenservaringen die tot een woordeloze wijsheid leiden en alle vanzelfsprekendheden laten vervagen.

While concurring with Honneth’s reconstruction of reification as a form of forgetfulness, this article questions the way in which he arrives at that conclusion as well as the conceptual status he ascribes to recognition – the instance with reference to which reification is exhibited as distortion or deformation. It argues, first, that Honneth’s dualistic mode of argumentation falls behind the left-Hegelian tradition which he himself seeks to revitalize, thus causing a serious architectonic problem; and, second, that while polemicizing strongly against (...) the cognitive approach, he at crucial points actually reverts to the very resources made available by that mode of thinking. Being the central concern of the article, this latter aspect is treated as the cognitive problem in his work, especially in his Tanner Lectures. (shrink)

The political philosopher Hannah Arendt develops several arguments regarding why truthfulness cannot be counted among the political virtues. This article shows that similar arguments apply to lying in business. Based on Hannah Arendt's theory, we distinguish five reasons why lying is a structural temptation to businessmen: business is about action to change the world and therefore businessmen need the capacity to deny current reality; commerce requires successful image-making and liars have the advantage to come up with plausible stories; business communication (...) is more often about opinions than about facts, giving leeway to ignore uncomfortable signals; business increasingly makes use of plans and models, but these techniques foster inflexibility in acknowledging the real facts; and businessmen easily fall prey to self-deception, because one needs to act as if the vision already materializes. The theory is illustrated by a case study of Landis, which grew from a relatively insignificant organization into a large one within a short period of time, but ended with outright lies and bankruptcy. (shrink)

Responding to a call for systematic contributions on the theory of society, the principle aim of this article is to recover and reconstruct the Young-Hegelian core of critical theory’s theory of the dialectical development of society and, on that basis, to project its creative research-based continuation by analysing its largely neglected key concept of possibility. The acknowledgement of the critical theory lineage’s naturalist, realist and especially idealist features leads this reconstruction to ascribe a central role to certain pivotal concepts that (...) deserve special attention – including nature, the construction of society, evolution, immanent–transcendence and the conceptual conditions or cognitive order of society. A side effect of this theoretical exposition is the exposure in the course of the argument of certain weaknesses often visible in the contemporary articulation of the theory of society in both critical theory and general social theory. Conceptual solutions to those deficiencies are simultaneously presented in a form appropriate to critical theory’s modal-based negative explanatory and positive disclosing critique. (shrink)

This article offers a perspective on the critical theory of justice by presenting a structural and processual reconstruction of Rainer Forst’s intriguing yet somewhatopaque concept of a basic structure of justification which is central to his proposed critique of justificatory relations. It shows from a cognitive-sociological perspective what a cooperative relation between a philosophical theory of justice and a social scientific approach could mean for critical theory. A basic structure of justification is revealed to be a cognitively available reflexive order (...) above the order of substantive social and political relations that allows the identifi cation, explanation and transformative critique of reflexivity deficits induced by hegemonic, ideological, repressive or obfuscating means. Far from being exclusively a theoretical and methodological tool, however, it is in principle accessible to those involved and affected on whose experience, suffering and critique critical theory vitally depends. (shrink)

Is it really true that there is an underlying unity, that we and our worlds are all part of a single web of existence, a web which allows a myriad relative differences while retaining the same absolute oneness? If not, how so — where can we find the absolute differences which preclude an underlying unity? But if it is true, what is the meaning of this oneness — and what can we do with it?

This paper seeks to show that the proposition of 'double contingency' introduced by Parsons and defended by Luhmann and Habermas is insufficient under the conditions of contemporary communication societies. In the latter context, the increasing differentiation and organization of communication processes eventuated in the recognition of the epistemic authority of the public, which in turn compels us to conceptualize a new level of contingency. A first step is therefore taken to capture the role of the public in communication societies theoretically (...) by what may be called 'triple contingency'. Since the process of the definition of reality and its outcome, to which the response of the public is central, is best seen in constructivist terms, attention is also paid to relevant methodological and epistemological questions. Key Words: cognitive turn • communication • constructivism • double contingency • Habermas • Luhmann • observation • Parsons • situationalism • the third point of view. (shrink)

Rationale At the request of a Dutch governmental organization, a multidisciplinary group of osteoporosis experts in the Netherlands published in 2002 a guideline on case finding, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of osteoporosis. These guidelines were evaluated for their validity and applicability. Methods Analysis by 5 external osteoporosis experts using the 'Appraisal of Guidelines for Research & Evaluation' ('AGREE') instrument. Results The score for the 6 domains of AGREE was 88% for the scope and purpose domain, 76% for stakeholder involvement, 81% (...) for rigour of development, 84% for clarity and presentation, 77% for applicability and 73% for editorial independence. For single components of the domains of AGREE, highest scores were found for systematic methods used to search for evidence (100%), inclusion of individuals from all the relevant professional groups (95%) and ease of identifying key recommendations (95%). Lowest scores to single components of the several domains were given for piloting among target users (44%). All experts recommended the guidelines for use in practice. Conclusions The AGREE instrument scored high for development, clarity and presentation but low for piloting among target users and implementation. Based on the guideline, algorithms from case finding to treatment were constructed that could be tested for piloting among target users and for implementation of the guideline. (shrink)

Exploring the unknown is a task that scientists and mystics alike have set themselves, although starting off in rather different directions. At first, these tasks were seen to be sufficiently different, so that they did not crowd each other. But by now scientific insight has grown to such an extent that there seems to be less and less room for mystic explorations. Simply said: there seems to be little left of an unknown to jump into, in order to find a (...) deeper grounding for our fleeting world of experience, through direct contact with reality, call it mystic, spiritual, or contemplative. Will the objective approach of science have the last word, and tell us how our experiences, from the every-day to the deeply spiritual, can seen as simple consequences of complex electrochemical phenomena in the brain? Or will further progress bring about a modification of both scientific and contemplative approaches, perhaps introducing a form of science of the subject, together with a heightened appreciation of the limits of the describable, even in a world of objects? In order to address those questions, what we need are stepping stones to connect the bodies of knowledge that have been acquired in different traditions. A systematic way to return to the phenomena themselves may provide such a stepping stone. Already familiar in science, philosophy, and personal paths of explorations, but under rather different names, such a phenomenology may help the different sides to reach each other. (shrink)

Essays over de wijze waarop filosofische problemen figureren bij schrijvers als Goethe, Broch, Kafka en Gombrowicz.

The article represents auto-ethnographical reflections about the author's journey towards reconciling diversity with the advent of democracy in South Africa. The author recounts aspects of his participation in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It focuses on aspects of Reformed theology and spirituality as instruments for reconciling diversity. Local and international theologians opposed apartheid, calling it an unjust and indefensible political system, using their Reformed conviction, often applying the very same notions and principles. The article discusses the opposition to apartheid in (...) the Reformed world, which culminated during the Ottawa meeting of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in 1982 when apartheid was denounced as a 'sin and a heresy' - a legitimate cause for a Status Confessionisin a classical Reformed manner. The article demonstrates the way in which the TRC took note of all of this and includes testimonies of Reformed theologians and leaders who opposed apartheid, often paying a costly price. (shrink)

Based on a turn to the rational human subject in Descartes, Kant and Feuerbach, this paper critically examines four efforts at shaping sustainability discourse: the definition of sustainability in Our common future; stewardship Christian theology; forms of partisan justice; and GDP as measure of economic growth. These efforts made certain advances, but because they share the underlying anthropocentric bias of Western philosophy, they fail to step out of the current sustainability paradigm. The paper closes with two suggestions of how to (...) de-centre the human subject and to build a network-view of all species. (shrink)

The die-hard viewpoint of an influential figure like President M.T. Steyn of the Republic of the Orange Free State led to the lengthening of the Anglo-Boer War by more than a year. The reasons for Steyn leading the Free State into this war, the reasons for his call not to surrender and the effect of the war on the Afrikaner, is discussed in this article. An ethical discussion of factors indicating a bitter end, is also on the cards. There was (...) a strong realisation among the representatives of the Republics of the Free State and the Transvaal in 1902 that this is the end of the war. (shrink)

Instead of speaking of conscious experience as arising in a brain, we prefer to speak of a brain as arising in conscious experience. From an epistemological standpoint, starting from direct experiences strikes us as more justified. As a first option, we reconsider the ‘hard problem’ of the relation between conscious experience and the physical world by thus turning that problem upside down. We also consider a second option: turning the hard problem sideways. Rather than starting with the third-person approach used (...) in physics, or the first- person approach of starting with individual conscious experience, we consider starting from an I-and-you basis, centered around the second-person. Finally, we present a candidate for what could be considered to underlie conscious experience: ‘sense’. We consider this to be a shot in the dark, but at least a shot in the right direction: somewhere between upside down and sideways. Our notion of sense can be seen as an alternative to panpsychism. To give an analogy, using the notions of space and time is more convenient than trying to analyse the phenomenon of motion in terms of a space-based ‘pandynamism’. Similarly, when approaching the phenomenon of consciousness, we prefer the triad of space, time and sense, over a spacetime-based form of panpsychism. (shrink)

This chapter presents ‘Spinoza philology’ the application of a specific approach to the texts written by Spinoza. In philosophy most philological efforts have traditionally been spent on the texts of ancient authors. The chapter offers a brief chronological survey of Spinoza's works, explaining the particular aspects of the way they have been transmitted. Spinoza wrote the kind of Latin that had been the standard for scholarly and academic purposes throughout Europe since the Renaissance. The Amsterdam publisher Jan Rieuwertsz brought out (...) all Spinoza's books: DPP and CM in 1663, TTP in 1670 and Opera Posthuma in 1677. The initial transmission of Spinoza's works was taken care of by a small group of dedicated friends, who copy‐edited his texts, had them translated, printed, and distributed. The results of the editorial activities of the circle around Spinoza were sufficient to meet the demand for his works for 125 years. (shrink)

This article seeks to recover a neglected chapter in the historical and theoretical background of social theory in general and critical theory in particular with a view to refining the understanding of the presuppositions of a cognitively enhanced critical social science appropriate to our troubled times. For this purpose, it offers a brief reconstruction of the mathematical-philosophical tradition from ancient to modern times by extrapolating that part of it that is marked by the ideas of infinity, infinite processes and limit (...) concepts. It gives suggestive indications not only of how these ideas relate to extant social-theoretical thought, but especially also of the two related cognitive directions – the weak-naturalistic and the socio-cultural – in which such thought is currently challenged to go. (shrink)

The rise of Big Data changes the context in which organisations producing official statistics operate. Big Data provides opportunities, but in order to make optimal use of Big Data, a number of challenges have to be addressed. This stimulates increased collaboration between National Statistical Institutes, Big Data holders, businesses and universities. In time, this may lead to a shift in the role of statistical institutes in the provision of high-quality and impartial statistical information to society. In this paper, the changes (...) in context, the opportunities, the challenges and the way to collaborate are addressed. The collaboration between the various stakeholders will involve each partner building on and contributing different strengths. For national statistical offices, traditional strengths include, on the one hand, the ability to collect data and combine data sources with statistical products and, on the other hand, their focus on quality, transparency and sound methodology. In the Big Data era of competing and multiplying data sources, they continue to have a unique knowledge of official statistical production methods. And their impartiality and respect for privacy as enshrined in law uniquely position them as a trusted third party. Based on this, they may advise on the quality and validity of information of various sources. By thus positioning themselves, they will be able to play their role as key information providers in a changing society. (shrink)