The problem of the character in literature is today one of the most pressing in Marxist-Leninist esthetics. Discussions over the category "character" never cease.

This book presents interdisciplinary research on the aesthetics of perfection and imperfection. Broadening this growing field, it connects the aesthetics of imperfection with issues in areas including philosophy, music, literature, urban environment, architecture, art theory, and cultural studies. -/- The contributors to this volume argue that imperfection has value in being open and inclusive. The aesthetics of imperfection is thus typified by organic, unpolished production and the avoidance of perfect finish, instead representing living and natural change, and (...) opposing the consumerist concern with the flawless and pristine. The chapters are divided into seven thematic sections. After the first section, on imperfection across the arts and culture, the next three parts are on imperfection in the arts of music, visual and theatrical arts, and literature. The second half of this book then switches focus to categories in everyday life, and branches this further into body, self, and the person, and urban environments. Together, the chapters promote a positive ethos of imperfection that furthers individual and social engagement and supports creativity over mere passivity. -/- Imperfectionist Aesthetics in Art and Everyday Life will appeal to a broad range of scholars and advanced students working in philosophical aesthetics, literature, music, urban environment, architecture, art theory, and cultural studies. (shrink)

The concept of alienation has taken firm root in the field of esthetics. One cannot say that its content is identical in everything one reads. Nonetheless, employment of this concept is always for the purpose, so to speak, of "clarification." It is often employed on the assumption that its use permits one to make clear whatever may be incomprehensible in the form and content of a work of art. It has become customary to have recourse to the concept of alienation (...) in esthetic analysis of modern foreign works of literature and art. As an example, we may cite the international discussion around the work of Franz Kafka, many participants in which hold that Kafka is a "product of alienation," "a prisoner of alienation," and that his work either expresses "his self-alienation" or involves depiction of the "consequences of alienation.". (shrink)

In 1984 the renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson wrote that we are human in good part because of the particular way we affiliate with other organisms. They are the matrix in which the human mind originated and is permanently rooted, and they offer the challenge and freedom innately sought. To the extent that each person can feel like a naturalist, the old excitement of the untrammeled world will be regained. I offer this as a formula of reenchantment to invigorate poetry (...) and myth: mysterious and little known organisms live within walking distance of where you sit. Splendor awaits in minute proportions.1 This poetical quote nicely captures the essence of Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis. While the notion .. (shrink)

The theme of Aesthetics in Present Future concerns the new chances the arts have and the deep changes they are undergoing, due to the new media, and the digital world in which we are growingly immersed. That this world is to be understood from an aesthetic point of view, become clear if we think of how much of what we produce, and observe and study is offered through images in particular and perceptual means in general.

That form shall correspond to the content of a work is a law of realist art. Marxist-Leninist esthetics, on the basis of discovery of this law, does not prescribe an invented norm for the artist, but generalizes from the experience of art itself. Methodologically, it takes as its point of departure the dialectics of content and form. In so doing, Marxist-Leninist esthetics does not dissolve in philosophical concepts the distinctive features of content in art and the nature of form. It (...) examines the unity of content and form, and their development, in the context in which they manifest themselves specifically in art. In other words, it investigates the esthetic features of the relationship between content and form in art. (shrink)

The theme of Aesthetics in Present Future concerns the new chances the arts have and the deep changes they are undergoing, due to the new media, and the digital world in which we are growingly immersed. That this world is to be understood from an aesthetic point of view, become clear if we think of how much of what we produce, and observe and study is offered through images in particular and perceptual means in general.

This handsomely produced volume contains 22 contributions from international scholars, which were originally presented at the 2000 Conference of the International Society for Phenomenology, Fine Arts, & Aesthetics. The papers center around the theme of gardens and include a wide range of topics of interest to phenomenologists but also, perhaps, to gardeners with a philosophical bent. A sampling of topics: Leonardo's Annunciation Hortus Conclusus and its reflexive intent; hatha yoga--a phenomenological experience of nature; the Chinese attempt to miniaturize the (...) world in gardens; conflating and compressing time in commodified space and architecture; constructing the deconstructive landscape (the ruin aesthetic); and a phenomenological-anthropological aproach to Zen gardens. The volume is lightly indexed by name (mostly philosophers). Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com). (shrink)

In the modern world, in an epoch of fundamental changes in outdated social systems and the emergence of new societal relationships and develpments, an epoch of unprecedentedly rapid advances in science and technology — penetration into the depths of the atom and conquest of the cosmos — questions pertaining to art become of ever broader interest. In our rapidly changing world, art has become a powerful weapon in the struggle for the souls and minds of men. One can therefore welcome (...) the major topic of this congress, as selected by the Hegel Society: the fact that it is devoted to problems of Hegelian esthetics. (shrink)

When, in 1735, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten added a new discipline to the philosophical system, he not only founded modern aesthetics but also contributed to shaping the modern concept of art or 'fine art'. In The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment, Stefanie Buchenau offers a rich analysis and reconstruction of the origins of this new discipline in its wider context of German Enlightenment philosophy. Present-day scholars commonly regard Baumgarten's views as an imperfect prefiguration of Kantian and post-Kantian (...) aesthetics, but Buchenau argues that Baumgarten defended a consistent and original project which must be viewed in the context of the modern debate on the art of invention. Her book offers new perspectives on Kantian aesthetics and beauty in art and science. (shrink)

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, 19 essays document the April 1998 international congress held at Harvard University. They ponder on such topics as the phenomenology of the experience of enchantment, Leonardo's enchantress, the ambiguous meaning of musical enchantment in Kant's Third Critique, art and the reenchantment of sensuous human activity, the creative voice, the allure of the Naza, Henri Matisse's early critical reception in New York, Zizek's sublimicist aesthetic of enchanted fantasy, (...) and enchantment in Baroque festive court performance in France. There is no subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

The impact of aesthetics is increasing again. For today's scholars, aesthetic theories are a significant companion and contribution in studying and ana-lysing cultural phenomena and production. Today's scene of aesthetics is more global than what it is in most disciplines, as it does not just include scholars from all over the world, but also keeps on applying philosophical traditions globally.

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)

The purpose of this paper is to examine how different aspects of aesthetic theory can be utilized in education so as to contribute to a workable, coherent, and multifaceted arts integration approach in elementary education. The authors begin by presenting specific aspects of aesthetic theory as indicative of the basic theoretical and philosophical approaches to the phenomenon of art. They then refer to examples of activities designed on the basis of these different aesthetic aspects, and finally, they present the findings (...) that came out of these activities’ pilot implementations in preschool and school classrooms. Based on the methodological analysis of these implementations, the authors examine the benefits of the activities deriving from each of the different aspects of aesthetic theory; how they differ depending on the aspect from which they arise; and how the implementation of these types of activities as multi-theoretical sets can reveal a new way to design a coherent and multifaceted arts integration curriculum. What the authors attempt to do is show that the variety of approaches to the definition of art and the analysis of aesthetics can be the touchstones for organizing arts integration in elementary education. (shrink)

Thanks to his unsurpassed eye and his fearless willingness to take a stand, Clement Greenberg (1909 1994) became one of the giants of 20th century art criticism a writer who set the terms of critical discourse from the moment he burst onto the scene with his seminal essays Avant Garde and Kitsch (1939) and Towards a Newer Laocoon (1940). In this work, which gathers previously uncollected essays and a series of seminars delivered at Bennington in 1971, Greenberg provides his most (...) expansive statement of his views on taste and quality in art, arguing for an esthetic that flies in the face of current art world fashions. Greenberg insists despite the attempts from Marcel Duchamp onwards to escape the jurisdiction of taste by producing an art so disjunctive that it cannot be judged that taste is inexorable. He argues that standards of quality in art, the artist's responsibility to seek out the hardest demands of a medium, and the critic's responsibility to discriminate, are essential conditions for great art. The obsession with innovation the epidemic of newness leads, in Greenbergs view, to the boringness of so much avant garde art. He discusses the interplay of expectation and surprise in aesthetic experience, and the exalted consciousness produced by great art. Homemade Esthetics allows us particularly in the transcribed seminar sessions, never before published to watch the critics mind at work, defending (and at times reconsidering) his theories. His views, often controversial, are the record of a lifetime of looking at and thinking about art as intensely as anyone ever has. (shrink)

The question of form and content is one of the fundamental questions of esthetics and the theory of art. However, it remains unresolved in many respects. Certain of its aspects still have not been investigated, and others have been treated only very sketchily.

The author analyzes artistic symbolization as the process by which the artist creatively embodies metaphysical reality in the work of art and evokes a spiritual and emotional response in the recipient.

Opuscula Aesthetica Nostra is a pioneering publishing effort, blazing a trail which specialists in other philosophical fields should consider following. It purports to represent what is happening in aesthetics throughout English-speaking and French-speaking Canada today, and in consequence it is an intriguing exercise in Canadian bilingualism. It purports also to show, as co-editor Calvin Seerveld says in the Preface, that “aesthetics deserves its own bona fide place in the national market place of ideas”; so the editors have reprinted (...) strong previously published papers, in addition to soliciting new material on the occasion of the Tenth International Congress of Aesthetics held in Montreal in 1984. The result is a satisfying pot-pourri of ideas. (shrink)

This book introduces traditional and modern aesthetics and arts, comparing the similarities and differences between traditional and modern Chinese aesthetics. It also explores the aesthetic implications of traditional Chinese paintings, and discusses the development of aesthetics throughout history, as well as the changes and improvements in Chinese aesthetics in the context of globalization.

Wittgenstein, in his characteristic way of indirectly bringing us to see an important feature in human life, said: ‘… art shows us the miracles of nature… We say: “Just look at it opening out!” This essay discusses how works of art ‘blossom’ and thus elicit an imaginative human response. Its various parts focus on the connected theme that some sensible component is essential to the production and comprehension of art. Each part, however, investigates a different aspect of the theme and (...) could stand on its own. What will be argued about this aesthetic factor in art will also be shown to cast light on our understanding of certain narrative texts and ceremonial acts of religion. (shrink)

This volume brings together essays from distinguished scholars in a variety of disciplines - philosophy, history, literary studies, art history - to explore various ways in which aesthetics, politics and the arts interact with one another. Politics is an elastic concept, covering an oceanic breadth of mechanisms for conducting relations between empowered groups, and these essays offer a range of perspectives, including nations, classes, and gendered subjects, which examine the imbrication of politics with arts. Together they demonstrate the need (...) to counteract the reductionist view of the relationship between politics and the arts which prevails in different ways in both philosophy and critical theory, and suggest that the irreducibility of the aesthetic must prompt us to reconceive the political as it relates to human cultural activity. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper I suggest a way that an already promising view on ethical art criticism can account for the value of mediocre artworks which endorse morally commendable perspectives. In order for the view I call prescriptive ethicism to deal with such cases of critical ambivalence, it must take account of the interaction between moral content and form in art. Such interaction is seen in the way the aesthetic features of an artwork partly determine its moral value, or success (...) in providing ethical insight. I argue that if a work lacks the kind of moral value which is determined by the interaction between form and content, then we have little reason to engage with that work. When a work expresses an otherwise commendable moral attitude in a clumsy or trite manner, while it is clearly compromised aesthetically, it is also compromised ethically. For such a work forfeits the ability to reveal new aspects of ethical life. (shrink)

As early as 1916, Wittgenstein states that ethics and aesthetics are one, that only through aesthetics and art can what is truly important in human life be shown. This is the first book to clarify Wittgenstein’s ideas about ethics and aesthetics, and to illustrate how those ideas apply to art history and criticism. Tilghman shows how a study of Wittgenstein illuminates not only the relationship between ethics and aesthetics, but also the relationship between art and our (...) lives. The result is that we can better understand the human importance of abstract as well as traditional art. Chapter 1 surveys the development of the philosophy of art that has dominated aesthetics since mid-century. Chapter 2 provides a brief history of some of the ways that the relationship between ethics and aesthetics has been considered in the philosophy of art. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss Wittgenstein’s views on ethics and aesthetics at the time he wrote Tractatus, and chapter 5 examines the question of what it is to discern the humanity in a person, as reflected in Wittgenstein’s later viewpoints found in Philosophical Investigations. Chapters 6 and 7 investigate what it is to discern the art in a work of art, and what it is to discern the humanity in a work of art. These investigations, in turn, lead to some conclusions about the importance of art in people’s lives and the failure of much recent aesthetic theory to accommodate art’s human importance. (shrink)

Feminism compels us to reconceptualize aesthetic inquiries, as it erases the boundaries between the traditional realm of aesthetics-value judgments and personal pleasures-and the historical and social contexts that generate those judgments and pleasures. In the visual arts section of our annotated bibliography, we try to suggest the breadth of feminist interventions in the field of aesthetics in the past twenty years.

<I>Aesthetics in Sartre and Camus examines the ideas on aesthetics expressed in the oeuvres of the two French authors. The dispute that arose following the publication of Camus' <I>L'homme revolte and Sartre's criticism of Camus' book culminated in the break up of their friendship in 1952, thereby underlining the differences in the authors' thinking. But by observing the function and significance of art and freedom in their works, fundamental correspondences and areas of agreement are revealed in Sartre's and (...) Camus' writings and are analysed in the present study.". (shrink)

Introduction -- Matisse in slow motion -- Art and natural being -- Proust and the significant event -- Reversibility between the arts -- Concluding remarks.

The arts are one of the most complex of human endeavours, and so it is fitting that a special issue on Complex Systems in Aesthetics and Arts is being published. As the editors of this special issue, we would like to thank the reviewers of the submitted papers for their hard work in making this issue possible, as well as the authors who submitted their work and were very responsive to the comments of the reviewers and editors.

This essay shows that a sharp distinction between ethics and aesthetics is unfruitful for thinking about how to live well with technologies, and in particular for understanding and evaluating how we cope with human existential vulnerability, which is crucially mediated by the development and use of technologies such as electronic ICTs. It is argued that vulnerability coping is a matter of ethics and art: it requires developing a kind of art and techne in the sense that it always involves (...) technologies and specific styles of experiencing and dealing with vulnerability, which depend on social and cultural context. It is suggested that we try to find better, perhaps less modern styles of coping with our vulnerability, recognize limits to our attempts to “design” our new forms, and explore what kinds of technologies we need for this project. (shrink)

Comparative aesthetics is the branch of philosophy which compares the aesthetic concepts and practices of different cultures. The way in which the various cultures of the world conceive of the aesthetic dimension of life in general and art in particular is revelatory of profound attitudes and beliefs which themselves make up an important part of the culture in question. This anthology consists of entirely new essays by some of the leading, internationally recognised scholars in the field. The subjects addressed (...) include the influence of UpaniÅÿadic thought on the classic Indian tradition in aesthetics and the way in which that tradition continues to have relevance to issues discussed today; how Buddhist thought in general and Zen in particular shape aesthetic attitudes in Japanese culture; how Confucianism affected not only the morality but also the classical aesthetics of China; how different ideas of the self and of human nature affect artistic training and practice in different cultures; how feminism can draw inspiration from classic non-European lines of thought in the area of aesthetics, and how different attitudes to nature underpin a whole range of aesthetic beliefs and attitudes in western and eastern thought. These ideas reveal both deep differences and deep similarities between east and west. No-one seeking to understand the cultures discussed in these essays can ignore their aesthetic dimension, which often holds the key to understanding the deepest motives which have formed them. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the forgotten friendship between Georges Bataille and the Russian émigré poet and philosopher Boris Poplavsky. Comparing their solar metaphysics, I focus on conceptions of friendship, sacrifice and depersonalisation. First, I retrace Bataille’s relationship to early Surrealis and Russian circles in interwar Paris, with a focus on his friendship with Irina Odoevtseva. I then offer a novel reading of Poplavsky’s poetry through the lens of Bataille’s philosophy, analysing a recurring motif that I call ‘dark solarity’. Uncovering a hidden (...) intertextual dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I argue for Poplavsky’s lasting impact on Bataille’s anti-Icarian sun cult. Finally, my paper demonstrates how Poplavsky’s writings on solar sacrifice, excess and friendship left marks on Bataille’s vision of a solar community, embodied in the secret society Acéphale. The dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I finally suggest, is a missing piece in the entangled history of Russian and French philosophy, as well as an original contribution to discourses on friendship in twentieth-century continental thought. (shrink)

This paper discusses the question if there is any truth in art. Initially it poses the question whether artworks are just mere appearances or whether they have a special truth. In critical reflection on Heidegger’s conception of art as the “setting-itself-to-work of truth” this question is then elaborated and answered: The appearance character of artworks cannot be conceived as truth. What true artworks show, namely mere possibilities, is beyond truth, because it does not belong to the real world. Artworks are (...) not true; in their decentered order and their self-showing nature they are beautiful. (shrink)