The Homeobox (Hox) genes essentially define body regions in all animals including humans – responsible for determining two arms, two legs, one nose and so on. This gene is shared by all living beings – from the snail to the elephant to humans – and it can now be manipulated into transforming certain parts of the body into others. We have observed such transformations, such as that of an amputated antenna into a limb, as far back as 1901, termed neomorphosis (...) (Morgan 1901), and it has only recently re-emerged as an area of scientific study. Spontaneous transformations and induced regenerations are fascinating research topics that are fast becoming a reality; some scientists are postulating that it may be possible that the hox gene could be central to limb regeneration in the future. This article will present the Hox Zodiac project, which attempts to introduce this subject and push the ideas further into speculation of mutation (i.e. humans and animals) into creatures that may resemble the mythical beings we know as fiction. The starting point of this wheel of life is the Chinese zodiac, consisting of twelve animals that are associated with humans. In the process of development, it became interesting to note that half of the animals on the wheel are those used in the lab – rat, pig, monkey, dog, sheep and rabbit. The ox, tiger, horse, snake and rooster are considered mythical and the dragon could easily fall into the category of a genetically modified creature that is to re-emerge in the future. Since medical and scientific testing on humans is strictly forbidden, scientists have virtually shifted to animals for all such studies. Thus, everything that is used on our bodies and minds is directly related to the animal kingdom. The pig heart and rat mind are symbols for the paradox of science that uses animals in ways that are at once disconnected while subconsciously connecting us more than ever by using research results in medical and food products we consume. Although the controversy of using animals in labs is widely known and often violently opposed, the artist in the lab questions how this research impacts our collective consciousness, especially with the growing trend of brain-computer interfaces and particularly synthetic telepathy. This relationship of the human to the metaphorical meaning of the animal kingdom brought to mind Jung’s research on metaphors, symbolism and archetypes, which became central to the Hox Zodiac. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Time and History in Alois Riegl's Theory of PerceptionMichael GubserIn an early essay, the Austrian art historian Alois Riegl (1858–1905), a pioneer of the modern discipline of art history, linked the creation of the zodiac images in calendar art to the designation of constellations in the heavens.1 Ancient calendar artists observed the motion of stars across the night sky and attempted to map them into recognizable patterns representing (...) specific temporal periods. Their efforts inscribed the cyclical temporality of the heavens into the images of the ancient calendar. This inherent temporality came to characterize all art forms in Riegl's work; his choice of calendar art as his earliest research topic heralded a career-long interest in the connection between temporality and artistic form. Art objects, he believed, were temporal as well as spatial. Just as the light from constellations reflected a deep history, artworks illuminated the passage of time by visually re-presenting the perceptual world of past eras.Riegl's work has garnered attention in recent decades among art historians and non–art historians alike. This interest is due in part to the renewed concern for disciplinary origins that art history, like other fields, has experienced in the wake of poststructuralist critiques. Scholars outside of art history have taken note of his work because of its broad scope and relevance for the study of historiography and perception; Riegl's work provides models for linking the analysis of specific artworks with a history of perception, exploring the relationship between monuments and memory, and analyzing the nature of visual modernity. Interest in Riegl also stems from his acknowledged impact on such preeminent philosophers and historical theorists as Erwin Panofsky, Paul Feyerabend, Gilles Deleuze, Fèlix Guattari, and above all Walter [End Page 451] Benjamin.2 Figures as varied as Georg Lukács, Karl Mannheim, Walter Gropius, and Mikhail Bakhtin have cited his work favorably.3 Riegl is perhaps best known for his attempts to dismantle the hierarchy of high and low art, his attack on the preeminence of classical aesthetic ideals, and his effort to construct a universal history of style. The combination of these commitments led him to consider European and non-European craft genres that fell outside conventional definitions of art. In books such as Problems of Style, Late Roman Art Industry, and The Group Portraiture of Holland, Riegl examined the high arts, decorative arts, and manufactured artifacts alike, gleaning insights into the structure of an era's perception from close descriptive analyses of its artwork.4 In Problems of Style, Riegl traced the development of ancient vegetal decorative motifs toward their fulfillment in the naturalized tendrils and acanthus leaves of Greek ornament. A single, universal development encompassed seemingly distinct motivic forms, and creative innovation was driven by an inner formal logic. Similarly, Late Roman Art Industry, the [End Page 452] epoch-making work that Walter Benjamin described as a revolution in art historical method,5 traced the gradual development of space as an object of artistic concern in the late Roman Empire. In this volume, Riegl explored his controversial notion of the Kunstwollen, or artistic will, which asserted art's autonomy on the basis of a formal creative volition internal to artworks.6 Finally, The Group Portraiture of Holland documented the emergence and decline of a "typically Hollandish painting" emphasizing space and attention.7Riegl scholars have frequently attempted to situate his art history within a variety of philosophical traditions, an effort complicated by Riegl's limited citation of sources. Several scholars have linked Riegl's historical vision with the embattled tradition of Hegelian philosophy. Riegl's teleology; his stress on the unified, internal, and purposive development of art; his notion of art as mind overcoming material; and even his emphasis on the role of the viewer in art all have a distinctly Hegelian resonance. Wolfgang Kemp fits Riegl squarely within a late-nineteenth-century Hegelian revival,8 Michael Podro incorporates him within a Hegelian critical tradition of art history that spanned the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,9 and Michael Ann Holly posits a clear trajectory, linking Kant and Hegel with Riegl and Panofsky.10Others, however, just as firmly reject this... (shrink)

Descriptivism in the ontology of art is the thesis that the correct ontological proposal for a kind of artwork cannot show the nascent ontological conception of such things embedded in our critical and appreciative practices to be substantially mistaken. Descriptivists believe that the kinds of revisionary art ontological proposals propounded by Nelson Goodman, Gregory Currie, Mark Sagoff, and me are methodologically misconceived. In this paper I examine the case that has been made for a local form of descriptivism in the (...) ontology of art: a form that does not quarrel with the possibility of revisionism in matters of ‘fundamental metaphysics’, but which argues that special features of the arts make descriptivism in this particular sphere obligatory. David Davies, Andrew Kania and Stephen Davies are local descriptivists in this sense. I argue that the burden of proof lies with the local descriptivist, but that this burden is too heavy for him to carry. Specifically, it emerges that the only way in which the local descriptivist can motivate his position is by arguing that our artistic practices determine the art ontological facts: a thesis that local descriptivists typically appeal to, but have not been able to argue for successfully. My conclusion is that the methodological debate in the ontology of art should now proceed by focussing on the case for global descriptivism: i.e. that form of descriptivism that opposes the possibility of revisionism in ontological matters across the board. (shrink)

Over the last 25 years, there has been an increasing fascination with the “dark” side of leadership. The term “destructive leadership” has been used as an overarching expression to describe various “bad” leader behaviors believed to be associated with harmful consequences for followers and organizations. Yet, there is a general consensus and appreciation in the broader leadership literature that leadership represents much more than the behaviors of those in positions of influence. It is a dynamic, cocreational process between leaders, followers, (...) and environments, the product of which contributes to group and organizational outcomes. In this paper, we argue that, despite this more holistic recognition of leadership processes within the broader leadership literature, current conceptualizations and analyses of destructive leadership continue to focus too heavily on behaviors and characteristics of “bad” leaders. In our view, to achieve a more balanced understanding of destructive leadership, it is important to adopt more integrative approaches that are based in the contemporary leadership discourse and that recognize flawed or toxic leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments as interdependent elements of a broader destructive leadership process. To this end, we offer a critique of the destructive leadership literature, propose a broader definition of destructive leadership, and highlight gaps in our understanding of leaders, followers, and environments in contributing to destructive leadership processes. Finally, we conclude by discussing strategies for examining destructive leadership in a broader, more holistic fashion. (shrink)

It seems obvious that signs in visual art and musical notation are static carriers of visual and acoustic information. Both types of sign, however, represent dynamic processes. In real space-time, there exists no static visible thing or static audible sound. The sources of visible or audible information are dynamic – i.e. complementary substantialenergetic-informational – entities extending in space-time. The same is true of an artificial or organic receiver and processor of visual or audible information. Reality and semiosis – to be, (...) to be perceived, and to be understood or to communicate – are dynamic processes. From a semiotic point of view, thus, pictures, photographic or artistic sign structures can’t be icons – in any case, if icons in a Peirceian manner are understood as signs representing objects for an interpretant by similarity . Similarity between icon and object is not a static precondition but a dynamic result of visual semiosis, i.e. of categorizing. Seeing something or hearing something is, as a consequence, not an “intuitive” or instantaneous Gestalt shift between representamen and object ongoing in an interpretant. And so, according to Fernande SaintMartin 1990: “visual semiotics … has to adopt an epistemology which is more in agreement with the dynamics of observed phenomena. It will recognize that matter is not inertness, but energy.” If the material carrier of semiosis, the representamen, already is to be understood as energy or dynamic process, all the more the whole complementary triadic sign-relation – object-representamen-interpretant – has to be understood as energetic information flow. This is being recognized in the transition from naturalistic, i.e. reproducing or mapping art, to modern, i.e. processing or interpreting/transducing art. Paul Klee 1990 for example says about the semiotic function of visual art: “Art doesn’t reproduce the visible but makes visible” . And he correlates the artistic activity of visualizing with the primordial, cosmogonic process of formation: “Reduced to the primordial process of formation, to creation, the process of cell division emerges” . Visual artistic semiosis is, thus, obviously to be understood as the process of emerging dynamic sign structures. It is the skill of the painter that makes the static results of dynamic semiosis “readable” for the viewer as signs – lines and surfaces - of the dynamic visual meaning of the picture. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of essays in appreciation, analysis and honor of Paul Ziff, one of the leading American philosophers of the post-World War II period. The essays address questions that loomed large in Ziff's own work. Essays by Zeno Vendler, Jay Rosenberg, and Tom Patton address topics in philosophy of language: understanding, misunderstanding, rules, regularities, and proper names. Michael Resnik examines the nature of numbers, Rita Nolan addresses `mutant predicates', and Peter Alexander discusses microscopes and corpuscles. Douglas C. (...) Long ruminates on Ziff's claim that machines can neither think nor feel. The essays of Dale Jamieson, Bill E. Lawson, Douglas Dempster, and Joseph Ullian address various questions in aesthetics: aesthetic appreciation and morality, expression, the scope of appreciation, and the aesthetics of sport. In the spirit of Ziff, Douglas Stalker criticizes some of the `mush' that looms large in our intellectual lives. The volume begins with a reminiscence by Paul Benacerraf, and ends with selections from an unpublished volume of plays by Paul Ziff. The volume should appeal to anyone whose work has been influenced by Ziff, or is interested in central philosophical problems concerning language, mind, and art. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The History of Ideas:Precept and Practice, 1950–2000 and BeyondAnthony GraftonIn the middle years of the twentieth century, the history of ideas rose like a new sign of the zodiac over large areas of American culture and education. In those happy days, Dwight Robbins, the president of a fashionable progressive college, kept "copies of Town and Country, the Journal of the History of Ideas, and a small magazine—a little (...) magazine—that had no name" on the table in his waiting room. True, Robbins did not exist: he was the fictional president of Randall Jarrell's equally fictional Benton, a liberal arts dystopia where "[h]alf of the college was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe."1 But Jarrell's notation of the Journal's status was accurate nonetheless.2The Journal, in the twenty years or so after its foundation, attracted attention from many quarters, some of them unexpected. And it occupied a unique position, between the technical journals of history and philology, [End Page 1] each firmly identified with a discipline, in which professional humanists normally published their results, and the quarterlies, often based not in disciplines but in liberal arts colleges and universities, which cultivated a mixed readership to which they offered fiction and poetry as well as essays. By contrast with both, the JHI fifty years ago ran on a rich mix of technical articles and wide-ranging essays that could easily have attracted the attention of a sophisticated administrator—or at least made a good impression on his coffee table. Bliss was it to be a subscriber in that happy day when the JHI glowed with something of the luster that haloed Representations in the 1980s and Critical Inquiry more recently.3The main reason for the Journal's prominence was that it represented a new field, appealingly located between disciplines as the Journal was between other sorts of periodical. In its postwar heyday, the history of ideas was not a dim subdivision of history, itself a discipline whose luster has worn off with time, but an intellectual seismic zone where the tectonic plates of disciplines converged and rubbed against one another, producing noises of all sorts. In recent years, it has sometimes seemed impossible, even to the best informed observers, that intellectual history, or the history of ideas, ever enjoyed this sort of prestige. A quarter century ago, Robert Darnton surveyed the state of intellectual and cultural history in the United States in an informative and influential essay. Using a language more resonant of the historical President Carter than the fictional President Robbins, Darnton detected "malaise" everywhere he looked. In the fifties, he noted, intellectual historians had seen "their discipline as the queen of the historical sciences. Today she seems humbled." True, desperate cries for help were not yet called for. Historians continued to write histories of ideas, and even to cast them in the technical languages of A.O. Lovejoy or Perry Miller: "one still finds 'unit-ideas' and 'mind' among the trendier terms." The just-published Dictionary of the History of Ideas, moreover, offered a vast selection of Lovejoyan formal analyses, systematically organized, to the reading public.4 [End Page 2]But for the last ten years, Darnton argued, younger scholars, especially graduate students, had been scrambling over the gunwales of the good ship History of Ideas, abandoning the effort to converse abstractly with the mighty dead, and clambering in hordes over the side of a newer vessel, Social History, which boasted a Hogarthian passenger list of heretics, misfits, and military women. At the level of the dissertations written in history departments, social history was outpacing intellectual, by a proportion of three to one. At the level of the scholarly journal, too, social history had forged ahead, though by a smaller margin. In the murkier, but no less significant, world of opinion, finally, the decline of intellectual history appeared clearest. History of ideas no longer occupied the cutting edge in young scholars' mental vision of their discipline.Social history, after all, had captured the minds of a generation—or a large percentage of it—in the 1960s, thanks both to the power of... (shrink)

The paper focuses on the complex relations between aesthetics and phenomenology as they show themselves within the core locus of their interplay—the realm of the visible and the invisible. To do so, the paper examines a specific case study, a Rembrandt painting—A Woman Bathing in a Stream (1654)—through which the discussion illuminates the interconnected and inseparable relationship between aesthetics and phenomenology in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the visible and the invisible. The reading addresses both dimensions of the visible: the (...) essential intersubjective aspect of life and its complex visual representation in art. To achieve this, the paper first explores Merleau-Ponty’s late aesthetic ontology—a phenomenology that perceives the aesthetic realm, particularly the visible domain, as originating from human corporeal existence, thereby redefining the act of seeing and the concepts of the visible and the invisible; I show the manner in which invisible elements permeate our visual experience in the Rembrandt painting and in seeing as such. The paper also reveals the unique ontological role of painting and the painter in unveiling the aesthetic world, and in guiding the philosopher toward a vision that true philosophy—phenomenology—must embrace. The paper concludes by rethinking the significance of aesthetics, and especially, the arts, to phenomenological thought, and the necessity of phenomenology to aesthetic thought. (shrink)

We discuss how analysis of contemporary artworks has shaped philosophical theories about the concept of art, the ontology of art, and artistic media. The rapid expansion, during the contemporary period, of the kinds of things that can count as artworks has prompted a shift toward procedural definitions, which focus on how artworks are selected, and away from definitions that focus exclusively on artworks’ features or effects. Some contemporary artworks challenge the traditional art–ontological dichotomy between physical particulars and repeatable entities whose (...) occurrences are physical particulars. And nontraditional techniques and materials employed in contemporary art violate the boundaries of conventional media, prompting a rethinking of what artistic medium might be. (shrink)

Tracks the sublime art movement from Kant to the 21st century and onwards to a new future Stephen Zepke tracks the sublime art movement from its beginnings in Kant to its flowering in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He shows that the idea of sublime art waxes and wanes in the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Ranciere and the recent Speculative Realism movement. With it, a visionary politics of art seeks to (...) give it the most creative power possible: the power to overcome our conditions and embrace the unknown. (shrink)

This is a systematic study of the conceptual framework used by critics and scholars in their discussions of influence in art and literature. Göran Hermerén explores the key questions raised in scholarly debate on the topic: What is meant by "influence"? What methods can be used to settle disagreements about influence? What reasons could be used to support or reject statements about artistic and literary influence? The book is based on descriptive analyses in which the author has tried to make (...) explicit what is said or implied in a number of quotations from scholarly writings on art and literature. Throughout, the emphasis is on clarifying the assumptions on which the use of the concept of influence is based, thus describing the limitations and merits of this kind of comparative research for critics and scholars. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 125-126 [Access article in PDF] Sextus Empiricus. Against the Grammarians (Adversos Mathematicos I). Introduction, Commentary, and Translation by D. L. Blank. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. lvi + 436. Cloth, $105.00. Sesto Empirico. Contro gli astrologi. Introduction, Commentary, and Translation by Emidio Spinelli. Naples: Bibliopolis, 2000. Pp. 230. Paper, L. 70.000. No historian of philosophy should be retailing the old canards (...) that the Hellenistic philosopher Sextus Empiricus was silly, wholly confused, or merely a compiler and not a philosopher in his own right. These translations and commentaries, along with the recent work of Richard Bett, James Hankinson, and others, should bury those notions forever.Against the Grammarians is the first and Against the Astrologers is the fifth volume of Sextus's six-volume Against the Teachers of the technai or professional arts and sciences (grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astrology, and music). Sextus is not against all forms of the study of these matters; in fact, one of the skeptic's "rules for living" is that he will engage in an art (techne) to make a living (Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I.24). But he is against the claims of each of them to special technical expertise. He prefers the unpretentious experience of everyday life—living by the phenomena; non-expert, practical forms of grammar, astronomy, music—to fancy theories about the nature of things.Against the Grammarians is Sextus's critique of the interpreters of poetry and prose—today's English professors and historians. Philosophers will be amused by his deconstruction of various sorts of lit crit arrogance and rashness that are still with us. Regrettably, some of us are not immune from the same critiques.Against the Astrologers is Sextus's critique of the Chaldean soothsayers. He is not against the observation of celestial phenomena for agricultural or navigational purposes. His critiques of the astrologers for lack of empirical evidence and promotion of superstition make him sound like a proto-scientist.One originality of Sextus's work was his combination of a dogmatic Epicurean critique of the grammatologists and astrologers with a skeptical aporetic critique. Precisely because he does not hesitate to make use of the arguments of others, some interpreters have decided that Sextus was unoriginal and derivative. But Blank and Spinelli both show that he recombines these arguments in ways that no one else had done. That is one of the ways of being original in philosophy. The upshot is that he is our earliest source of quite a number of critiques of grammarians and astrologers.The use of dogmatic arguments raises the problem of whether Sextus engages in so-called "negative dogmatism" in these volumes. Right at the beginning of Against the Astrologers, Sextus accuses them of violating "right reason." What right does a skeptic have to invoke such a standard? Some have felt that at this stage Sextus was a dogmatic skeptic, invoking one set of truths to tear down another. But that is not necessary. Blank and Spinelli explain this well with a combination of points. One, we can see the dogmatic and Epicurean attacks as clearing the ground for the following skeptical equipollence of arguments. Two, we can follow Jonathan Barnes in assuming that each claim that something has been demolished assumes the counterargument that it has been proven, so that the implied upshot is equipollence. Three, "right reason" can be the sort of unpretentious practical reasoning and living in accord with the appearances that the skeptics often claimed to live by.Spinelli and Blank provide many useful improvements over the previous English translations of these texts by Bury and the Italian translations by Russo. Blank rightly relies on Spinelli's 1995 translation and commentary on Sextus's Against the Ethicists and Spinelli rightly relies on Blank for a number of points. Spinelli supplies the Greek on facing pages of the translation; Blank does not. Spinelli also supplies five Greek zodiac charts and a beautiful print of a fifteenth-century zodiac.Neither Blank nor Spinelli unduly lionizes Sextus. They admit that... (shrink)

Art and Authority explores the sources, nature, and limits of artistic freedom. K. E. Gover draws upon real-world cases and controversies in contemporary visual art to offer a better understanding of artistic authorship and authority. Each chapter focuses on a case of dispute over the rights of an artist with respect to his or her artwork.

Metaphors abound in both the arts and in science. Due to the traditional division between these enterprises as one concerned with aesthetic values and the other with epistemic values there has unfortunately been very little work on the relation between metaphors in the arts and sciences. In this paper, we aim to remedy this omission by defending a continuity thesis regarding the function of metaphor across both domains, that is, metaphors fulfill any of the same functions in science as they (...) do in the arts. Importantly, this involves the claim that metaphors in arts as well as science have both epistemic and aesthetic functions. (shrink)

The Dealing in the Art Galleries: How is Affecting the Contemporary Art World. The present study focuses on the different types of artist-gallery collaborations established in the contemporary art world, trying to underline the impact that such collaborations can have on the art world in general. I shall point several effects that these types of collaborations can have in relation to the art market or even in relation to the aesthetics of contemporary art. The role of private art collectors is (...) also of some importance in this equation and I shall also focus on some relevant examples of galleries or art dealers symptomatic to some of the issues discussed. (shrink)

This article explores projects of art and biology as joyful acts of insurrection. It presents critical and creative perspectives to generate alternative structures of subjec-tivity. These alternative structures gain relevance when intersectional variables of privilege and discrimination as political tools are set in crisis by a postanthropocen-tric awareness. The thesis of this article is that in order to understand and develop postanthropocentric intersectional positions, the microbial posthuman joins thecartographies of the posthuman as a material possibility from microscopic biologicalmatter and philosophical (...) and artistic thought. This microbial posthuman also allows for a reframing in the light of microbiopolitics, a redistribution of pain, life and deathwithin a broader notion of life. (shrink)

What is it for art-critical conversation to be productively and appropriately responsive to a work of fine art? Broadly, contemporary work on the nature and purpose of aesthetic discourse tends to prioritize one of two poles: the need for agreement in judgement and/or sensibility, and the flourishing of individuality through aesthetic response. I propose that these alternatives each express the legacy of Kantian and Schillerian thought, respectively. Furthermore, I argue that a favourable approach is available if we look to Friedrich (...) Hölderlin’s way of characterizing the kind of communication that can occur between friends. This is a framework that binds together a plurality of perspectives and voices with what it is for one’s individuality to flourish in and through aesthetic response. Drawing on Hölderlin’s thought, I submit Diversity-in-Unity as a norm on art-critical conversation. In art criticism, individual perspectives need to be reciprocally shaped in new and surprising ways. (shrink)

PREFACE It became clear to me in the past few years that any human quest or endeavor — whether it is in art, religion, business, politics, science, ...

This article explores distinctively visual presentations and performances of alterity from the perspective of art theory and practice. It gives particular attention to Marcel Duchamp's notion and practice of the infra-mince. The ‘infra-thin’ is not usually related to postcolonial questions. However, numerous evocations of alterity in contemporary art, this article argues, resonate with Duchamp's infra-thin — not only in their practices but also in the ways in which they present the relationship between different cultures and views of ‘difference’. Focusing on (...) artwork responding to the ‘Arab Springs’ as a striking instance of wider aesthetics of resistance, this article shows how such art can be seen to adapt the infra-thin for the purposes of a multidirectional critique. (shrink)

© Mind Association 2018Some time ago I was at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris investigating the teaching of philosophy during Descartes’ time. Fine monographs had already been published on the various regimens and practices at Descartes’ college at La Flèche, and Jesuit institutions in general, as well as the collegiate curriculum in seventeenth-century France. But as interested as I was in the form of the teaching—how philosophy was taught, where, and when—I was more interested in its content—what was actually taught. (...) A fair number of early modern textbooks and some manuscripts of lectures and student notebooks were still available; beyond that, one could find reports of weekly or monthly disputations, condemnations of specific doctrines, various broadsheets, manifestos, and student theses and dissertations. After overcoming some administrative resistance, I found myself in a room at the Cabinet d’Estampes looking at a... (shrink)

This dissertation develops and applies, through criticism, a theory of rhetoric which addresses the Modernist achievement in literary expression within the context of the current attacks on communication. A modest conclusion about the limits of communicative efficacy in addressing personal experience is proposed and tested. This "modest proposal" represents an alternative to extreme universalist presumptions on the one hand, and radically skeptical solipsism on the other, thus contributing to current discussions emphasizing hopeful directions for communication theory. ;The study examines the (...) limits of rhetoric in approaching human experience by examining the relationship between expression and personal reference in the Modernist epiphany. Particular attention is paid to how this earlier tradition informs the postmodern loss of faith in communication. ;The study applies a dialectical method which involves locating a closely related text and theory, testing the theory against the criterion of the text, using the dialectical imbalance created out of this comparison to move to a higher synthesis of theory and practice. The study moves through three dialectical phases corresponding to the movement of the expression of epiphanel experience form literature, to film, to artistic expression generally. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Truth MattersOnce in a while stunning new ideas that energize a scholarly discipline—or even wreck it altogether—come from the outside. The most influential philosopher of science in the last generation was not a philosopher at all, but an historian and physicist, Thomas Kuhn. Ernst Gombrich, an art historian, has deeply informed the philosophy of art, as the linguist Noam Chomsky has affected the philosophy of language. And Jacques Derrida (...) continues to cast his stupefying spell over many a literature department, even if most philosophers remain unimpressed.In a minor but spectacular way (how else to describe an event first encountered on the front page of the New York Times?), Alan Sokal has barged in on this honorable tradition. As a physicist, he successfully placed a barely-coherent, factually ludicrous, jargon-ridden article in a major journal of cultural studies.When we caught up with Sokal’s hoax, our initial reaction was sympathy for the hapless editors of Social Text. They weren’t the first journal editors to be landed with a contribution that went sour (though the only other episodes we could recall were plagiarism, not parody). However, when one of these chaps, Stanley Aronowitz, reacted in the Times by calling Sokal “ill-read and half-educated” (May 18, 1996), editorial fellow-feeling began to evaporate. And when Stanley Fish, executive director of the Duke University Press, which publishes Social Text, launched a bitter counterattack on Sokal three days later, it was hard not to regard Fish’s indignation, as E. D. Hirsch described it in a subsequent letter to the Times, as “the indignation of Tartuffe on being exposed.” [End Page 299]After some tedious preliminaries, Fish accused Sokal of failing to understand that the sociology of science is an enterprise “distinct” from science, “with objects of study, criteria, and goals all its own.” Sokal knows this, naturally, as he had already made clear in his Lingua Franca article on the hoax, and as he explains again in his afterword in this issue of our journal. But Fish went on to a more sweeping generalization. Imagining Sokal believed that cultural studies threaten the stability or integrity of the sciences, Fish said not to worry: “A research project that takes the practice of science as an object of study is not a threat to that practice because, committed to its own goals and protocols, it doesn’t reach into, and therefore doesn’t pose a danger to, the goals and protocols it studies.”With this account of a well-ordered academic world, Fish inadvertently reveals what some see as a serious failing of cultural studies and postmodern theory: it poses a threat to absolutely nothing. Leave science aside for a moment, and consider a sociology of, say, astrology, or medicine, or the fashion industry. Could we envision a proper sociology of astrology which posed no danger to “the goals and protocols” in using planetary/zodiacal patterns to predict the future or retrodict the characters of subjects? Hardly; it’s the business of the sociology of any human activity to identify and question the intellectual claims and practical ambitions of that enterprise. And that is exactly what Alan Sokal did: he invented a clever test of the intellectual rigor of cultural studies in general and its version of poststructuralist sociology of science in particular. He then subjected Social Text—and implicitly in many minds the intellectual standards of the field it represents—to the test. It failed.Sokal’s methodology was not unique; it can be applied in different ways to many other disciplines. If you want to evaluate, for example, the intellectual pretensions of astrologers there is a fine way to do it; it essentially adapts the double-blind placebo procedure used in drug research, another celebrated testing methodology. Allow a group of astrologers to agree on a set of character readings based on accurate birth charts. Give these back, shuffled, with identifying information stripped off, to the subjects of the astrological readings. If the subjects can pick out their own readings from character descriptions alone (descriptions created by astrologers on the basis of birth information only, without meeting the subjects in question), then astrology must possess... (shrink)

In her new book, Mrs. Langer has boldly chosen to orient aesthetics toward a reconsideration of artistic creation and the "making of the artistic symbol." Philosophy of art is impossible, she contends, until we return to the source of art, the artist at work in his studio; and deal patiently and realistically with his problems and achievements. Only then will we be able to understand, through clarifications of the concepts involved in art creation--"expression," "creation," "import," "vitality," "organic form," "symbol"--the nature (...) of a work of art and its relation to the beholder. (shrink)

This interview was conducted on 8 October 2011 at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. It was held during a symposium that reflected on the work of Rancière and was a part of a broader engagement with the concept of autonomy and its relation to art organized by an umbrella group of universities and arts organizations under the name of ‘The Autonomy Project’. A number of the symposium’s participants – Peter Osborne, Gerald Raunig, Isabell Lorey, Ruth Sondregger, Kim Mereiene and Adrian Martin (...) – contributed questions that formed the basis of this interview. The interview took place at a time when the longer-term possibilities of the Arab Spring and Occupy/Indignados movements were under general scrutiny. It was also a moment when the Van Abbemuseum itself was compelled to reflect on its own position of political autonomy in relation to neoliberal state directives, political populism at the local level and its own critique of aesthetic autonomy. Rancière’s work on aesthetics and politics has been as much appreciated as a clearance strategy against prevailing visual prejudices as it has served as a platform for rethinking the emancipatory potential of creative practice. (shrink)

In the “Sala dei Mesi” of Palazzo Schifanoia the months and the zodiacal constellations go from right to left, while the decans (three for every sign) go in the opposite direction. This problem was not clarified by Aby Warburg in his well-known essay Italian Art and International Astrology in the Palazzo Schifanoia of Ferrara (1912). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reasons of this double direction.

Abstract In Gadamer's later writings on art, his investigation into the being of the work exploits the temporal resonance of the concept of performative enactment ( Vollzug ), which displaces the priority of play ( Spiel ) in his earlier account. Drawing upon Heidegger, Gadamer deploys the concepts of tarrying ( Verweilen ) and the while ( die Weile ) to elucidate the temporality of the work of art as an event of being. On the one hand, tarrying describes the (...) temporal structure of the performance that enables the work to come forth. On the other hand, the while characterizes the unique presence of the work that takes place in and through its enactment. Here Gadamer's understanding of art engages his thought about “empty“ and “fulfilled“ time. For, the temporal event of the artwork is such that it interrupts the ordinary experience of passing time and thereby opens up another, more authentic experience of the fullness of time. (shrink)

Introduction: Adorno and Barthes on the question of the right (di)stance -- The pathos of distances in "a world of banished people" -- George Orwell's critique of sincerity and the obligation of tactlessness -- The inferno of saviors: notes in the margin of Elias Canetti's lifework -- A socialism of distances, or on the difficulties of wise love: Iris Murdoch's secular community -- "The world in me": the distantiality of everyday life -- In search of a whole self: Benjamin's childhood (...) fragments -- Annie Ernaux's diaries of the outside -- Gunter Grass's century -- Damon Galgut on emptying oneself for sleep -- Conclusion. (shrink)

In light of new historical evidence regarding ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson’s correspondence with art historian Erwin Panofsky, this article provides an in-depth analysis of the presence of entheogenic mushroom images in Christian art within the context of the controversy between Wasson and philologist John Marco Allegro over the identification of a Garden of Eden fresco in the 12th century Chapel of Plaincourault in France. It reveals a compelling financial motive for Wasson’s refusal to acknowledge that this fresco represents Amanita muscaria, (...) as well as for Wasson’s reluctance to pursue his hypothesis regarding the entheogenic origins of religion into Christian art and artifacts. While Wasson’s view – that the presence of psychoactive mushrooms in the Near and Middle East ended around 1000 BCE – prevailed and stymied research on entheogens in Christianity for decades, a new generation of 21st century researchers has documented growing evidence of A. muscaria and psilocybin-containing mushrooms in Christian art, consistent with ethnobotanist Giorgio Samorini’s typology of mushroom trees. This article presents original photographs, taken during fieldwork at churches and cathedrals throughout Europe and the Middle East, that confirm the presence of entheogenic mushrooms in Christian art: in frescoes, illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, sculptures, and stained glass windows. Based on this iconic evidence, the article proposes a psychedelic gospels theory and addresses critiques of this theory by art historians, ardent advocates, medieval historians, and conservative Catholics. It calls for the establishment of an Interdisciplinary Committee on the Psychedelic Gospels to independently evaluate the growing body of evidence of entheogenic mushrooms in Christian art in order to resolve a controversial question regarding the possible role of entheogens in the history and origins of Christianity. (shrink)

BioShock made a big splash not only for the depth of its subject matter, but also for the way it utilized its video game medium to present its big ideas in a uniquely engaging way. The game weaves many themes into its complicated narrative, complete with shifting identities, science fiction superpowers, and survival‐horror overtones. It is clear that BioShock wants to be taken as a spiritual sequel to Rand's philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged, revealing a possible fate for John Galt's mysterious (...) hidden utopia, sought after for much of the novel but never fully revealed, as the book ends just before Galt discloses his society and its plans for the world. Rand develops her philosophy through fiction because she defines art as a selective re‐creation of reality according to an artist's perspective. That is, a work of art is an artist's take on what it is to be human. (shrink)