Cirocco, Josie My mini thesis of 'Finding God in Art: Karl Rahner on the Nature of Religious Art' was part of my master's project with the Flinders University, South Australia, completed in December 2014. With my research topic, 'Finding God in Art', in mind, I was seeking to go beyond the classical idea of sacred art to explore the way other art may genuinely be religious even though it is not overtly about a religious subject. To do this I adopted (...) some of the insights of Karl Rahner's theology. The immense success of Rahner's work is a tribute to his ability to speak profoundly about the everyday life of ordinary men and women. I explored Rahner's thought about art, both verbal and non-verbal, within a Christian context. (shrink)

Amajor shift in critical attitudes toward the arts took place in the eighteenth century. The fine arts were now looked upon as a group, divorced from the sciences and governed by their own rules. The century abounded with treatises that sought to establish the overriding principles that differentiate art from other walks of life as well as the principles that differentiate them from each other. This burst of scholarly activity resulted in the incorporation of aesthetics among the classic branches of (...) philosophy, heralding the cognitive turn in epistemology. Among the writings that initiated this turn, none were more important than the British contribution. The Arts in Mind brings together an annotated selection of these key texts. A companion volume to the editors' Tuning the Mind, which analyzed this major shift in world view and its historical context, The Arts in Mind is the first representative sampling of what constitutes an important school of British thought. The texts are neither obscure nor forgotten, although most histories of eighteenth-century thought treat them in a partial or incomplete way. Here they are made available complete or through representative extracts together with an editor's introduction to each selection providing essential biographical and intellectual background. The treatises included are representative of the changed climate of opinion which entailed new issues such as those of perception, symbolic function, and the role of history and culture in shaping the world. Contents include: Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, "Characteristics"; Francis Hutcheson, "Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Harmony and Design"; Hildebrand Jacob, "Of the Sister Arts: An Essay"; James Harris, "On Music, Painting and Poetry"; Charles Avison, "An Essay on Musical Expression"; James Beattie, "Essay on Poetry and Music as They Affect the Mind"; Daniel Webb, "Observations on the Correspondence between Poetry and Music"; Thomas Twining, "On Poetry Considered as an Imitative Art," "On the Different Senses of the Word Imitative as Applied to Music by the Ancients and by the Moderns"; Adam Smith, "Of the Nature of that Imitation which Takes Place in What are Called the Imaginative Arts." Ruth Katz is Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is co-editor with Carl Dahlhaus of Contemplating Music, a four-volume study of the philosophy of music. Ruth HaCohen is Clarica and Fred Davidson Senior Lecturer of Musicology at the Hebrew University. (shrink)

Almost all countries and fertility clinics impose age limits on women who want to become pregnant through Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART). Age limits for aspiring fathers, however, are much less common and remain a topic of debate. This article departs from the principle of reproductive autonomy and a conditional positive right to receive ART, and asks whether there are convincing arguments to also impose age limits on aspiring fathers. After considering three consequentialist approaches to justifying age limits for aspiring fathers, (...) we take in a concrete normative stance by concluding that those are not strong enough to justify such cut-offs. We reinforce our position by drawing a comparison between the case of a 39-year-old woman who wants to become a single mother via a sperm donor on the one hand, and on the other hand the same woman who wants to have a child with a 64-year-old man who she loves and who is willing to care for the child as long as he is able to. We conclude that, as long as appropriate precautions are taken to protect the welfare of the future child, couples who want to receive fertility treatment should never be limited on the basis of the age of the (male) partner. An absence of age limits for men would respect the reproductive autonomy of both the man and the woman. (shrink)

:Visual culture – art, film, entertainment, advertising – are saturated with images of normative heterosexual masculinity. They form visual narratives that project a largely coherent kind of masculinity where heterosexual men are shown to be creative and powerful; they initiate heroic action, take the moral high ground and preserve traditional roles and the status quo. This widely extensive visual field, peopled with normative images of masculinity, also affects and infiltrates the domain of art exemplified by Jackson Pollock and abstract expressionism (...) which, to the present day, continues to project masculinity as the originator and pioneer of aesthetic value. This essay reviews feminist and queer artists’ image making that appropriates the myth of homogeneous masculinity and turns it into a medium for a variety of creative and hybrid explorations. I argue that Deleuzoguattarian concepts such as becoming-woman and becoming-imperceptible help us to understand this molecularisation of masculinity. And importantly in the other direction, these feminist and queer image makers allow us to understand and explore more fully these concepts. (shrink)

This paper explores the mystical structure of education as Bildung in medieval theologian and Dominican friar Meister Eckhart’s work and the 2010 French film Of Gods and Men (Des Hommes et Des Dieux). I start this paper with a short introductory sketch of the Bildung tradition, in order to situate my discussion of Eckhart within the more well-known humanist tradition. Here, I claim that Bildung (as we understand it today through the classic Bildung philosophers) points back to its theological heritage (...) and horizon of meaning, when it is claimed as the general tekhnê (art, craft) of making oneself at home in the world with and through others. In my first step, I then explore the intellectual heritage of this mystical structure of Bildung. Drawing on a range of Meister Eckhart’s writings (esp. his German sermons), I elaborate three features pivotal to his concept of Bildung (as image-ing) of the imago Dei (image of God) in the human soul/action: (1) divine grace, (2) human cultivation and (3) the harmonisation of both in (what I shall call) ‘careful gestures'. In my concluding second step, I illustrate this mystical structure of Eckhartian Bildung—with a particular focus on the emergence of careful gestures—through the motion picture Des Hommes et Des Dieux. (shrink)

This chapter explores Pop Art's significance for Arthur Danto's philosophy of art. It looks at the views of British curator Lawrence Alloway, Danto's immediate predecessor at the Nation. In 1974, Alloway defined the core of Pop Art as “essentially, an art about [emphasis mine] signs and sign‐systems”. Danto characterized artworks as the kinds of things that prompt philosophizing, a point that proves especially helpful when attempting to discern art‐cars, art‐cheese, art‐billboards, and art‐photographs from mere things. By 1973, Danto was already (...) grappling with issues inspired by Pop Art's many conundrums. The more artists adopted imagery and formats familiar to commercial art, the more philosophers needed models to discern, for example, James Rosenquist's billboard‐size paintings publicizing pasta, lipstick, cars, and the like, from his actual roadside billboards, hand‐painted between 1957 and 1960. (shrink)

In this article, it is often pointed out to a more specific area by using the term Ṣūfi art on the basis of the aforementioned understanding. Thus, an analytic approach is adopted along with the usage of deductive method, and a layer of meaning is tried to be established through criticism and analysis. Firstly, a basic framework was constructed by mentioning the origins of Ṣūfi art. Then the attention was drawn to the sacredness included in Ṣūfi art in terms of (...) its historical frame and ontological structure. It is asserted that Ṣūfi art is based on four basic arguments: beauty, creativity, transcendence, and imagination. Ṣūfis considered art as an activity of beauty and the expressive power of it. Relying on the basic motive that Allah is the Greatest Artist, the Ṣūfis believe that the beauty of their art is a manifestation of Divine Names. They saw art as an expression of manifestation and unveiling. The Ṣūfis, who deemed the world in terms of Divine Beauty (Jamāl), witnessed the manifestations of the Divine Attribute of Beauty in all things; as a result of this witnessing, the masterpieces of Islamic art came into existence. It is the sapiental and the gnostic outlook that underlies this success of the Ṣūfi orders (tariqa) in Islamic history. In Ṣūfism, the perfection (kamāl) presupposes the beauty (jamāl); and each beauty presupposes also the perfection. Therefore, it is not possible to distinguish beauty from perfection in the Ṣūfi art. The sense of loving the beauty is so strong for them that they have tried to reflect the perfect beauty they witness in their works of art, to give an external presence to the phenomenon of beauty and to make the spiritual reality visible that is innate within their beings. Ṣūfism is in a sense an effort to seek beauty. It has been an endless longing to seek, search and witness The All Beauty, that is God Himself. The effort to search for Divine Beauty is sometimes revealed by tune, and sometimes by harmonious words or by a single line. Then, they turn into music, poetry, calligraphy and illumination. According to the maxim stating “There is a path from heart to heart”, these works were transmitted from one generation to another, ensuring the continuity of this Divine tune. Despite the fact that Ṣūfi works make no pretensions to be art as such, they were widely accepted, influenced the masses and gained appreciation in that they were created by people with a sincere heart, intimate sentiments and a deep world of contemplation. The second stage of the gnostic dimension in Islamic arts has been tried to be expounded through the ultimate goal of Ṣūfi art. In Ṣūfi tradition, the aesthetics and sensitivity of art attract attention at every opportunity, but the Ṣūfis did not consider art as their main aim. For them, art denotes only a means. Ṣūfis, who appeal to the eyes, ears and mind with the artistic forms, endeavoured to permeate to the hearts with the spiritual atmosphere provided. With their performances, exuberance and success in different branches of fine arts, they mobilized the aesthetic sentiments in each person's nature and ensured that the human pleasure become accorded with the divine pleasure. Focusing on the sapiential and gnostic dimension of Islamic arts, the basic principles of Ṣūfi art are emphasized as the third stage. It is also suggested that these principles also have a religious content are marked with religious style, have a strong sense of sacredness, possess generality and the peculiarity, have symbolic and representative aspects, are based on symbolism and have traditional characteristics, their style of expression is based on revelation, and are not intended to provoke carnal desires. As to the fourth remarkable factor within the sapiential and gnostic dimension of Islamic art, the Ṣūfi worldview behind the mentioned artistic works is given. As to the fifth remarkable factor in the gnostic dimension of Islamic arts, the thought behind the world of art sustained in the dervish lodges (tekke) is discussed. These dervish lodges were emphasized as the most important places where the beautiful word, beautiful sound and beautiful line converge and these lodges were evaluated as the kitchen where the fine arts were prepared and as the boiler where the arts are cooked. It is due to these features that each of the dervish lodges in Ottoman Empire became a kind of education and fine arts centre. In these lodges, many musicians, composers, poets, illuminators, bookbinders, carvers, engravers and marbling masters were trained. While the dervishes in the dervish lodges exhibited their own unique works of art, they also carried out the requirements of their spiritual trainings (sayru sulūk). (shrink)

In Book 3 of his Politics, and again in Book 7, Aristotle makes explicit his disdain for the banausos (often translated ‘mechanic’) as an occupation qualified for full civic life. Where modern admirers of Aristotle, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, have taken him at face value concerning this topic and thus felt a need to distance themselves from him, I claim that the grounds that Aristotle offers for the exclusion of banausoi from citizenship are not consistent with other important teachings (found (...) in the eighth book of the Politics as well as in several of his other writings) about the nature of poesis (‘productive science’, which is the form of knowledge characteristic of the so-called ‘mechanical arts’). I further support this claim with reference to the role played by the mechanical arts within the Aristotelian framework of knowledge that one encounters in medieval European thought between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries, with particular reference to Hugh of St. Victor, John of Salisbury, and Marsiglio of Padua. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno’s criticism of human beings’ domination of nature is a familiar topic to Adorno scholars. Its connection to the central relationship between art and nature in his aesthetics has, however, been less analysed. In the following paper, I claim that Adorno’s discussion of art’s truth content (Wahrheitsgehalt) is to be understood as art’s ability to give voice to nature (both human and non-human) since it has been subjugated by the growth of civilization. I focus on repressed non-human nature (...) and examine Adorno’s interpretation of Eduard Mörike’s poem ‘Mausfallen-Sprüchlein’ (Mousetrap rhyme). By giving voice to the repressed animal, Mörike’s poem manages to point towards the possibility of a changed relationship between mice and men, between nature and humanity, which is necessary in order to achieve reconciliation amongst humans as well. (shrink)

While presenting this manuscript to art practitioners and art theorists, we noticed that there is great discomfort confronting this topic. Some questions raised were why is such research conducted, what is it good for, and does it impose preconceptions on men and women. Since Bourdieu and Darbel,1 it is widely assumed that sociodemographic factors such as education or profession have an impact on art reception. However, questions of basal sociodemographic factors like sex and age and their influence on art reception (...) are seldom discussed. John Falk, a specialist on museum visitor studies, even states, “Quantitative measures such as demographics provide too little information about visitors in relation to museums to.. (shrink)

Mixing methods is a well-known innovative meth- odologic proposal for research in the second half of the 20th century social sciences. Reading literature about it, I observed the aspect that justifies this paper: Authors of theoretical contributions on mixing methods recognized that this was known to be a practice already in use many centuries ago. Some of them even have re-examined the whole history of the scientific method to search precedents. They are however individual and theoretical precedents. I add in (...) this paper the practical projection of these and other methodological theories on people’s training from Greek classical times. My hypothesis is that liberal arts was the basic syllabus in Western -and westernized- educaion for more than a millennium in such a way that results of their training precisely involved to mixing methods. In return, to understand the liberal arts in the light of mixing methods shows new aspects of their historical interest. I study the theoretical basis of this syllabus from Cicero to Alcuin. More important for future research, I conclude that Alcuin’s thesis about the correspondence between the gifts of the Holy Spiritu and the seven liberal arts can be extended to the Aristotelian dianoethics habits and to Dilthey’s 20th-century sciences of mind. (shrink)

During the intellectual and cultural flowering of Scotland in the 18th century few subjects attracted as much interest among men of letters as aesthetics - the study of art from the subjective perspective of human experience. All of the great philosophers of the age - Hutcheson, Hume, Smith and Reid - addressed themselves to aesthetic questions. Their inquiries revolved around a cluster of issues - the nature of taste, beauty and the sublime, how qualitative differences operate upon the mind through (...) the faculty of taste, and how aesthetic sensibility can be improved through education. This volume brings together and provides contextual introductions to the most significant 18th century writing on the philosophy of art. From the pioneering study of beauty by Francis Hutcheson, through Hume's seminal essays on the standard of taste and tragedy, to the end of the tradition in Dugald Stewart, we are swept up in the debate about art and its value that fascinated the philosophers of enlightenment Scotland - and continues to do so to this day. Jonathan Friday is Senior Lecturer in History and Theory of Art at the University of Kent. He has published on the philosophy of art and aesthetics, the history of philosophy and moral philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Men Becoming Gods in "Style"Gioia and Girard on Divinized DesireJoshua Hren (bio)In our secular age we hear seekers of the sacred and religious devotees alike decry the soul-deadening, spirit-dumbing consequences of materialism. René Girard contends that—on the contrary—in the "leveled," horizontal world of a purportedly materialistic modernity this transcendent authority is deviated and distorted but it does not disappear. In his first major work, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, (...) he argues that "the passion that drives men to seize or gain more possessions is not materialistic; it is the triumph of the mediator, the god with the human face."1 In a materialistic age, the gods are "pulled down from the heaven, the sacred flows over the earth" and men become "gods for each other."2Dana Gioia, former businessman and chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, is no stranger to the economy of divinized desire. The stakes of our passions—whether we are wrecked by dubious wants or able to shed our infernal imitations—pierce his poetry. Gioia cites Girard as a significant influence alongside St. Augustine and Kierkegaard, though he does not indicate whether his own poetic investigations of mimesis are a direct yield of [End Page 149] his encounter with Girard or the independent discovery of attentive artistic intuition.3The refuge of lies so central to Girard is particularly palpable in Gioia's long narrative poem "Style."4 Charlie, the self-deprecating narrator, divinizes his college friend Tom, a business mogul who "prospered like one chosen by the gods."5 Tom uses his easy money to purchase gaudy metamorphoses, hosting magnificent events with his "flawless" wife Eden. An antihero of the unremarkable variety, Charlie attends all Tom's parties until he stops receiving invitations. When he discovers his deity's disappearance is tied to a terminal illness, he descends into the infernal "slums" of Tom's new hideout, and he finds his former hero hell-bent, ready to commit an arson that will erase his own existence in style. Charlie is confronted with a difficult decision that any coward would waver before. He has the chance to become an atheist—at least with respect to his dying god. After painting a portrait of man-made gods, the poem probes the question of whether and how we can cut short our penchant for great deceits.Charlie opens this narrative poem with an invective directed against himself.Just look at me. Isn't it obvious?I have no style. I'm just a human blur.On me expensive clothes look second-hand.They droop or sag. The color's never right.I wear the wrong apparel to the party.I pick the dullest item on the menu.Each haircut brings some new humiliation.6Crucially, we never receive an audit of this dour self-consciousness. By poem's end, no one has corrected or confirmed Charlie's condemnations. He may be right; his might be the antinomy of Midas's modus operandi. His hyperbolic portrait of Tom's greatness suggests that he is less than just to himself. His preoccupation with something as small as a menu item betrays a brutal obsessiveness. He employs the ascetical word "humiliation" in conjunction with a "haircut"—further revealing his unforgiving inner harshness. Charlie "always loved to visit Tom" precisely because he himself is Pathetic, Inc.7Were René Girard Charlie's older brother, he might sit the sad sap down on a comfortable couch and spell out the difficult truth as follows: The anti-hero "dreams of absorbing and assimilating his mediator's being."8 This highfalutin description of "the Other implies an insuperable revulsion for one's own substance."9 We ought not to take seriously the excuses these types give for their [End Page 150] failings and their fawning, for they "hate themselves on a more essential level than that of 'qualities.'"10 When Charlie disparages his badly cut bangs or his mismatched outfits, he's really incriminating his very being."The desire," Girard argues, "is aimed at the mediator's being."11 Charlie evinces this dynamic when he insists that Tom's "success was existential: / It wasn't what... (shrink)

“That is no country for old men” is the famous first line of Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium,” which reflects upon aging, art, and immortality. Yeats sug­gests in his poem that the aged ought to move from the sensual, physical world of their youth to a world of intellect and timeless beauty. We em­ploy this poem and that line to explore the aging male protagonists in two recent novels: Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men, and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. We suggest (...) that though both of the novel’s pro­tagonists have aspirations to ’sail to Byzantium’, various factors ranging from their characters to the problematic realities of contemporary south­west America and South Africa make such a wholesale, successful journey impossible even though some progress is made. (shrink)

The Marxist history of science has played an enormous role in the development of the history of science. Whether through the appreciation of its insights or the construction of a political fortress to prevent infusion, its presence is felt. From 1931 the work of Marxists played an integral part in the international development of the history of science, though rarely have the connections between them or their own biographies been explored. These networks convey a distinct history, alongside political, methodological and (...) personal implications, impressing on us a greater understanding of the possibilities that were present and were lost in the most turbulent of decades. Two of the most notable were Boris Hessen, a founder of Marxist history of science, and J. G. Crowther, one of its most prolific exponents. My examination explores aspects of the dialogue between these controversial figures, starting with brief biographical sketches. Their lives became briefly entwined following the Second International Congress of the History of Science and Technology in 1931, demonstrated with reference to the meeting and the correspondence between them until Hessen's death. In doing so, some new facts and old controversies surface, though most importantly the nature of the correspondence carries implications for the Marxist history of science and for the wider movement of which it is part. The Russian delegation to the congress declared that science was at a crossroads. The history of science was at a similar crossroads in the 1930s. (shrink)

In a society which traditionally valued the moral and expressive forces of art, landscape painting became one of the most esteemed art forms. In China, "landscape" has always meant what its Chinese name—shan shui —implies: paintings dominated by peaks and streams supplemented by trees, rocks, mists, and plunging waterfalls. Despite major changes in style, landscape painting in China between the eighth and eighteenth centuries was remarkably stable in subject matter. Chinese artists painted the natural settings which surrounded them in their (...) home provinces or those which they discovered in their travels; and such settings were dominated by mountains and rivers. Moreover mountains and water were imbued with symbolic value. Traditionally the mountain has been considered the symbol of the emperor—the son of Heaven—and of virtue and masculine energy. The ridges and folds of the mountains display the veins of energy that course through the earth and the continuous process of change which characterizes the Universe. Water represents the origin of life, the female principle, vitality itself. Trees, stones, bamboo, and many flowers were similarly endowed with cosmogonic and moral significance. Given the symbolic value with which elements of nature were traditionally endowed, Chinese landscape painting is properly considered the normative form through which artists reasserted correct social relationships, moral order among men, and moral order in nature. Esther Jacobson-Leong, associate professor of art history at the University of Oregon, is currently working on problems in the significance in Steppe art and related traditions. (shrink)

Large language models (LLMs) reflect societal norms and biases, especially about gender. While societal biases and stereotypes have been extensively researched in various NLP applications, there is a surprising gap for emotion analysis. However, emotion and gender are closely linked in societal discourse. E.g., women are often thought of as more empathetic, while men's anger is more socially accepted. To fill this gap, we present the first comprehensive study of gendered emotion attribution in five state-of-the-art LLMs (open- and closed-source). We (...) investigate whether emotions are gendered, and whether these variations are based on societal stereotypes. We prompt the models to adopt a gendered persona and attribute emotions to an event like 'When I had a serious argument with a dear person'. We then analyze the emotions generated by the models in relation to the gender-event pairs. We find that all models consistently exhibit gendered emotions, influenced by gender stereotypes. These findings are in line with established research in psychology and gender studies. Our study sheds light on the complex societal interplay between language, gender, and emotion. The reproduction of emotion stereotypes in LLMs allows us to use those models to study the topic in detail, but raises questions about the predictive use of those same LLMs for emotion applications. (shrink)

In this paper I compare two models of expert judgment: the art critic in Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste” and the “wise man” in “Of Miracles.” The art critic is a true judge of beauty because he has made himself into a person who is optimally receptive to beauty. He possesses the virtues of taste: “Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice” (“Of the Standard of Taste,” 241). But the (...) virtues of the art critic, I argue, are also those of the “wise man,” the person who consistently “proportions his belief to the evidence” (EHU 10.4; SBN 110). Comparison of these two characters reveals that for Hume the virtues fundamental to the art critic’s critical competence are also epistemic virtues. Hume’s exposition of aesthetic excellences should thus be of interest for virtue epistemology. Because contemporary virtue epistemologists have tended to focus almost exclusively on the relationships between intellectual and moral virtues, Hume offers something new: an account of epistemic virtues based on aesthetic virtues. (shrink)

This beautiful introduction to art and language features some of the world's most beloved masterpieces as it entices children to discover art, language, objects, and colors. First pictures, first words--this familiar and time-proven book concept for young children is incorporated brilliantly in this multi-lingual art book. The works of Renoir, Kandinsky, Dürer, Rousseau, Franz Marc, and others are featured in beautiful full-page reproductions. Opposite each image is a word that helps describe the painting--for instance "play," "bunny," "horse," "train." The words (...) are presented in twelve different languages, each with their phonetic pronunciation. Organized thematically, the book touches on a child's everyday experience through simple and comforting images that will invite further investigation: What are the men playing with? What does the bunny's fur feel like? How many teddy bears do you see? Together adults and children can explore great works, planting the seeds for an appreciation of the world's masterpieces and the words to describe them."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

My object here is to try to make the idea of moral criticism, and its foundation, moral art, sound at least a trifle less outrageous than it does at present. I'd like to explain why moral criticism is necessary and, in a democracy, essential; how it came about that the idea of moral criticism is generally hoo-hooed or spat upon by people who in other respects seem moderately intelligent and civil human beings; and that the right kind of moral criticism (...) is, or should be. Partly this involves explaining why sophisticated modern free society tends to be embarrassed by the whole idea of morality and by all its antique, Platonic- or scholastic-sounding manifestations: Beauty, Goodness, Truth. In other words, it involves, partly, explaining how perverse and false philosophers, and educated but sequacious mind, obscuring truths once widely acknowledged; and partly it involves sketching out a way of thinking that might supplant the cowardly Laodicean habits into which American intellectuals have in recent times fallen. John Gardner, novelist, poet, and essayist, has received the National Book Critics Circle Award for his latest novel, October Light. His other popular works of fiction include Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, and the book-length poem, Jason and Medeia. He has, as well, prepared modern versions of the Gawain poems, an alliterative Morte Arthure and five other Middle English poems and written The Construction of the Wakefield Cycle, The Poetry of Chaucer, and the biography, The Life and Times of Chaucer. "Death by Art" is the first chapter of a book concerned with morality in literature. (shrink)

As the title suggests, we are here addressing the most fundamental questions: Who is man? What is art? What is the bond that unites man, nature and art? The argument at the heart of this book is that what should be common to all men and women-a natural affinity with the sacred that holds out the promise of spiritual experience in everyday life- is in fact made all but impossible by the very nature of modern society. For what the modern (...) world has set in place is nothing other than a pattern of life that prevents us from being what we truly are. The destruction of man that is part and parcel of the scientific, industrial view of our destiny cannot do otherwise than in turn destroy those values and meanings that have always been the bedrock of normal human existence. At a time when the inadequacy of modernism has become apparent, the author returns to the challenge of the English radical tradition of thought (Blake, Cobbett, Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris, Gill and others), with its critique of the industrial-now post-industrial-way of life. Through a series of highly original studies of several major English artists and craftsman, and by addressing key themes that relate to the spiritual, cultural and environmental crisis that now confronts us, the author offers a positive development of the radical perspective. Can modern man survive the process of self-mutilation he has embarked upon? In this unique study of our present predicament, the author suggests we cannot do so by turning our back on the perennial wisdom that has always informed the wisest philosophies of life, with their intuition of the sacred nature of reality. (shrink)

Enduring disparities in choice of college major constitute one of the most significant forms of gender inequality among undergraduate students. The existing literature generally equates major choice with career choice and overlooks possible variation across student populations. This is a significant limitation because gender differences in major choice among liberal arts students, who attend college less for specific career training and more for broader learning objectives, are just as great as among those choosing pre-professional majors. This study addresses this gap (...) by examining how privileged men and women at an elite, liberal arts university select their fields of study. Drawing on in-depth interviews, findings contradict the prevailing assumption of a unitary model of major choice as career choice by revealing a plurality of gendered meanings around choosing a field of study. Majors may play an important part in the construction of an intellectual identity as much as a means of career preparation. How students approach the choice relates to both gender and social background. For privileged students, traditional gendered associations with bodies of knowledge hold salience in their decision making as well as expectations of reproducing future elite family roles. This research also illuminates how gendered processes of choosing fields of study take place in relationship to particular institutional contexts. (shrink)

Pictures in historical chapters of textbooks convey information about the values and assumptions of the authors’professions and the larger culture. We scrutinized 15 recent abnormal psychology textbooks for reproductions of art created before 1900. Thirteen works appeared in three or more textbooks. Overall, these pictures support a “Whiggish” account of history that celebrates the present and gives a distorted, incomplete rendering of the past. The 13 pictures tended to depict the mentally ill as an underclass who are released from their (...) literal and metaphorical shackles by men who are “ahead of their time” in their struggles against prevailing ignorance. The pictures also emphasized the difference of the mentally ill by presenting a catalogue of stereotypic visual elements attributed to insanity throughout Western history. We argue for the inclusion in textbooks of “history for the sake of the past” as a way of genuinely engaging different ideologies and thereby stimulating interest in our own implicit values and biases. (shrink)

SummaryHistorians have explored the continuities between science and the arts in the Industrial Revolution, with much recent historiography emphasizing the hybrid nature of the activities of men of science around 1800. Chemistry in particular displayed this sort of hybridity between the philosophical and practical because the materials under investigation were important across the research spectrum. Inflammable gases were an example of such hybrid objects: pneumatic chemists through the eighteenth century investigated them, and in the process created knowledge, processes and instruments (...) essential for the creation of a new gaslight industry from 1800. Once this industry began to expand and mature, the interests and experiments of the gas industry stimulated new research work which in turn had relevance for theoretical debates.This paper explores how the emergence of the gas industry from 1800 provided an impetus for new work in theoretical chemistry. Boulton & Watt, important pioneers of the gas industry, explored the compositions of inflammable gases for practical purposes: the composition of these gases had an important effect on the luminosity of gaslights, and hence the economics of the new technology compared to older forms of lighting. As they explored these questions in their engineering work, they stimulated their friend William Henry to explore the nature of these gases further, and he carried out a series of experiments to determine their composition more exactly than Boulton & Watt had done. Henry published a series of paper between 1805 and 1820 where he made arguments about the compositions of inflammable airs, and further related these to contemporary debates about the laws of multiple and definite proportions, as well as John Dalton's atomism. Henry's research was also a hybrid of the theoretical and practical in that he tried to develop results useful for the fledgling gas industry. Specifically, he suggested the best kind of coal to use, and showed how gas quality varied with distillation time and temperature. (shrink)

In the cubist expression of the early twentieth century, thought begins to play a fundamental role in the creative process. The reason lies in the fact that it is a revolution of thought, even before an aesthetic revolution. It is the basic concept that changes, thanks to the reflection that, unknowingly or not, it takes its moves from the thought of men of the past, including Augustine, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, but also Husserl, Hildebrand, Bergson. This is because every human expression (...) is the result of concepts studied and observed, deepened and challenged. The sculpture was, however, part of the great revolution in art history just as much as painting, due to the work of some artists including Picasso, Boccioni, Brancusi, Archipenko, Gaudier-Brzeska, Lipchitz, Nadelman and Duchamp-Villon.In the particular case of the cubist sculptors, the expressive solutions they adopt are consequent to a new way of implying the world and the intellectualistic phenomena that accompany its evolution. Keywords: Cubism; Phenomenology of Cubism; Cubist painting; Cubist sculpture. (shrink)

The National Institute of Science and the Arts, founded in 1795, consists of parallel academies, concerned with science, literature, the visual arts and so on. In the nineteenth century it represented a unique government-sponsored intellectual authority and a supreme court judgement, a power which came to be resented by innovators of all kinds. The Académie des sciences held a virtual monopoly in representing French science but soon this came to be challenged. In the period of the Second Empire we find (...) a group of men carving out a new career for themselves as professional popularizers of science, commissioned to write regular articles in newspapers and journals. Although they had begun by simply reporting the meetings of the Académie des sciences, they soon widened their scope and even began criticizing the august Académie. Thus they represented the alternative voice of science, distinct from ‘official science’. These independent writers had their counterpart in painting and literature, both of which were developing radical new approaches in mid-century. When the very traditional Fine Art Academy refused to consider their paintings, painters like Cézanne and Manet found an alternative outlet. Writers too asserted their independence from the Académie française. There were not only many parallels between the independent practitioners in science, painting and literature but also new schools of ‘naturalism’ in painting and literature which looked to science as a model. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art and SelectionBrian BoydArt Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, by Denis Dutton; 279 pp. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009, $25.00. Oxford: Oxford University Press, £16.99.In the interests of full disclosure: Denis Dutton, the author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, not only edits this journal but has also published here a number of my essays. We share enthusiasms and aversions, but we also now and (...) again disagree. And we both enjoy spirited discussion, which is why I asked him if I might review his book for this journal. Now can we begin?Ellen Dissanayake, the first to take a modern evolutionary approach to art, in her What Is Art For? (1988), doubts that sexual selection can explain much about art. After all, she notes, men can compete about anything, even about who can pee the highest.1 Denis Dutton, the first philosopher to take a sustained evolutionary approach to the arts, suggests that much in art arises from sexual selection—and he spends a good deal of time discussing and dismissing the kind of philosophy of art that orients itself around the urinal that Marcel Duchamp christened Fountain.Dutton begins by reporting recent research into the universality of human landscape preferences. Although these preferences explain little about art in the round, they vividly demonstrate the link between human emotions and preferences across cultures now and human survival [End Page 204] needs thousands of generations ago. In chapter 2, Dutton shows that although recent philosophers of art have not sought to ground art in human nature, that has been an aim of their predecessors from Aristotle to Hume and Kant.But Dutton really starts with the intuitions that art seems a fundamentally similar pursuit around the world, and that artworks like Duchamp's Fountain or Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes should not be central to our thinking about art, even if they have been central for prominent philosophers of art like George Dickie and Arthur Danto. Dutton stresses that we can appreciate art across cultures. He did so himself when he lived in India while in the Peace Corps, and, an accomplished pianist, learned the sitar from a student of Ravi Shankar, or later, when he lived by the Sepik River in northern Papua New Guinea to ascertain whether "local criteria for beautiful art agree with what Western aficionados and connoisseurs of Sepik art call beautiful. My conclusion was unequivocal: Sepik standards of beauty closely match the opinions of Western experts, including curators and collectors who enjoy a wide experience with Sepik museum collections but who have never set foot in the country" (p. 11).As this passage makes clear, Dutton is not your average armchair academic analytical aesthetician—thank goodness. Unlike the typical professional philosopher of art, he does not hide behind the porcupine quills of philosophese, good for defense and a certain kind of bristly display but utterly rebarbative. Like that other maverick philosopher, Daniel Dennett, he instead engages with work, the world, and readers outside his discipline.Dutton argues convincingly for the need to focus first on indisputable examples of art rather than on problematic cases, just as discussions of murder should not begin with assisted suicide, abortion or capital punishment (p. 50). One of his best chapters offers a cluster concept of art, a dozen features shared by the most unequivocal art. Doubtful cases will satisfy fewer than the full checklist, but there is no fixed threshold, no necessary and sufficient number of criteria. And no criterion by itself distinguishes art from non-art. Indeed one of the most fascinating aspects of his cluster concept is that, for each criterion, he parenthetically notes examples elsewhere in human life that would satisfy that criterion but that nobody would consider art. Skill and virtuosity, for instance, he insists on as features of the indisputably artful, but he adds also: "High skill is a source of pleasure and admiration in every area of human activity beyond art, perhaps most notably today in sports. [End Page 205] Almost every regularized human activity can be turned competitive in order to emphasize the development and admiration of its technical, skill aspect. Guinness World Records... (shrink)

The Warring States period was without doubt a time when reason thrived. The Confucians, Mohists, and Daoists, respectively, displayed three of its intellectual inclinations. One was reason with an exceptionally prominent moral flavor, and the cultivation of human character as its object. It calls on men to uphold the dignity, tranquillity, and loftiness of their inner selves. One was reason with a very strong practical flavor, and the realization of beneficent profit as its object. It leads men to address ways (...) of maintaining the stability of society, material wealth to support men's livelihoods, and individual survival. Apart from these two, there was reason that has spiritual transcendence and human immortality as its object, and which was manifested as a tendency toward anti-intellectualism. It tries to protect individual survival and freedom of the spirit, despite social pressures. As for those mystical ideas and techniques that seemed absurd, they gradually regressed into simplistic ceremonies, fables, and symbols among the cultural workers who pursued reason. The psychological attitude of "sacrificing to spirits as if they were present" led many cultural aristocrats to distance themselves from mystical ideas and techniques. Mysticism gradually disappeared from among men of culture, especially once it became increasingly difficult for those divination methods and technical arts, used merely to satisfy concrete needs, to avoid the scrutiny of reason. Some late Warring States period texts can help us understand the direction this way of thinking took. "Xian xue" in the Hanfeizi says,When the shaman priests pray for someone, they say, "May you live a thousand autumns and ten thousand years!" But the "thousand autumns and ten thousand years" are only a noise dinning on the ear: No one has ever proven [zheng] that such prayers add so much as a day to anyone"s life. For this reason people despise the shaman priests.". (shrink)

Research in the field of evolutionary psychology underlines the importance of masculine display in the mate-selection process. Men seek opportunities to exhibit qualities women find desirable; hence they invite inspection of their resources and status, their physical and mental prowess. They also advertise specialized skills and abilities, including artistic performance and creativity. Men seeking to impress potential mates hope to benefit not only from displaying survival-oriented skills as toolmakers or hunters but also from publishing adeptness in less utilitarian realms such (...) as storytelling, drumming, or carving.1 Exhibition of aesthetic achievement is relevant, therefore, to current inquiries into the... (shrink)

This article seeks to understand the social and cultural factors that led to the introduction of music and art education in public schools, a process that began in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Based on archival material, including institutional catalogues, school board reports, magazine articles, and tracts, I demonstrate that music and art held varied meanings in this period, one of the most important of which was denominational competition. One major element in a nationwide promotion of the arts (...) in the mid-nineteenth century was the revitalized Protestant contest for religious adherents in the wake of Catholic immigration. A second important, and often overlooked, aspect of music and art education was its vocational implications. Although some historians have relegated women's study of music and art to the reproduction of elite status, a significant aspect of these studies was vocational. In a world in which limited occupations were open to women, skill in music and art expanded women's options and, for some, made financial independence possible. In addition, although many of the factors involved in the rise of music and art education?such as nationalism, refinement, and health?were nongendered and applied to both women and men, the repercussions of these programs were quite gendered and may add to our understanding of the process by which the teaching force was feminized. (shrink)

Excerpt from American Men of Science: A Biographical Directory West, Dr. Clarence J(ay), A. D. Little, Inc, Cam bridge, N'i'ass. Biological chemistry. Brighton. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, (...) such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

In his very convincing and lucid treatise on the fundamental principles of art, John W. Beatty gives us a most absorbing theme to follow-the relation of art to nature, as expressed in their own words by artists themselves, of different times and creeds; with, too, the opinions of philosophers and men of letters.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Zen and the Art of DeathMaja Milcinski*When reflecting on immortality, longevity, death, and suicide, or taking into consideration some of the central concepts of the Sino-Japanese philosophical tradition, such as impermanence (Chinese: wuchang; Japanese: mujo), we see that the philosophical methods developed in the Graeco-Judeo-Christian tradition might not be very suitable. On the other hand it is instructive to contrast them with the similar themes developed in the Graeco-Judeo-Christian (...) tradition, since these problems present a challenge for a redefinition of philosophy, which has traditionally regarded itself as a European (and in an even less acceptable variation as a Western) phenomenon. As such the very borders of philosophical discourse known in European history as philosophia are today being reconsidered. Although the notion of philosophy (love of wisdom) is distinctly Greek in origin, this does not mean that Asia failed to cultivate activities similar to that. The absence of this notion in China and Japan does not necessarily imply a lack of the cultivation of wisdom within their traditions. Could this mean that, paradoxically, the “philo-“ limits this complex activity primarily to rationally mastered undertakings?By rethinking the history of philosophy as a single narrative, one might come closer to the movements related to the levels of consciousness that were activated in philosophical undertakings in various Asian philosophical schools. In this regard Japanese and Chinese Buddhist philosophical traditions might be instructive since, through the various stages of their development, they have attempted to put the inexpressible into words. The awareness of the insufficiency of words resulted in many original solutions. In the Song dynasty, for instance, China produced a variety of diagrams (tu), by which philosophers and practitioners represented their theories. These formulations, often arose on the basis of meditation techniques and could not therefore be fully transmitted by means of language alone. The illustration of the nine-step process (known in [End Page 385] Japan as kuso) is one such representation, and it is taken here as a point of departure for approaching the concept of impermanence and death in the Japanese philosophical context.One possible means of approaching the discussed topic is to contrast it with the ways in which impermanence, particularly with the phenomenon of death as one of its aspects, has been perceived in the European tradition. It would be naive to generalize and stress the impression that fear of death is much more central and influential in the Euro-American life style than in the Asian one, since it is rooted in human biological and subconscious mechanisms. This paper, however, tries to point at the subtle difference which exists in the spiritual realm.Europe and ImpermanenceThe European Middle Ages developed the so-called ars moriendi, the art of dying. It was this tradition which produced sayings such as “My Lord, it is a great art to die well, and one to be learned by men in health” 1 and the many variations of the dance of death (danse macabre). This awareness of human mortality was also spread by texts, of which the following inspired thought is characteristic: “The one who has not learned how to die, will die against his will. Learn how to die and you will know how to live, since nobody will learn how to live, who has not learned how to die. He shall be y-cleped a wretch that cannot live and dare not die.” 2 These undertakings, however, did not succeed in building any kind of permanent discipline in Europeans connected with the idea of impermanence and death. Rather, it left them caught up in the dizziness of everyday life. The ars moriendi vanished from their consciousness and only became manifest when actual circumstances provoked it, if indeed at all, since often at the moment of impending death people are completely terrified in the light of the prospect of losing their Ego. Although in Christianity there is a tradition of seeing death as a new beginning, some Christians remain skeptical of this “new beginning.” Beginning of what? Is it an illusion of “heaven,” a reflection of this world without suffering and frustrations? In this respect the ars moriendi was cultivating something else: impermanence... (shrink)

ABSTRACT Before “applied science” and “technology” became keywords, the concept of art was central to discourse about material culture and its connections to natural knowledge. By the late nineteenth century, a new discourse of applied science had replaced the older discourse of art. This older discourse of art, especially as presented in Enlightenment encyclopedias, addressed the relationship between art and science in depth. But during the nineteenth century the concept of fine art gradually displaced the broader meanings of “art,” thus (...) undermining the utility of the term for discourse on the relationship between knowledge and practice. This narrowed meaning of “art” obscured key aspects of the industrial world. In effect, middle-class agents of industrialism, including “men of science,” used the rhetoric of “applied science” and, later, “technology” to cement the exclusion of artisanal knowledge from the discourse of industrial modernity. (shrink)

British art historian Charles Harrison presumes the existence of a patriarchal world with power in the hands of men who dominate the representation of women and femininity. He applauds the ground-breaking work of feminist theorists who have questioned this imbalance of power since the 1970s. He stops short, however, of accepting their claims that all women have been represented by male artists as images of “utter passivity” (p. 4), routinely reduced by the male gaze to the status of exploited sexual (...) objects, or that women’s subjectivity is eroded by the visual treatment they receive at the hands of male artists such as Manet and Picasso. He wants to show that what is depicted in the picture plane by the (typically male) artist and enjoyed by the (typically male) spectator is more nuanced than just a simple privileged understanding between two men. He adds a third (and possibly fourth or more) party to the mix when he significantly redefines and expands our concept of the gaze: “A gaze may also be conceived of as a function of a painting’s represented content” (p. 9). In other words, a gaze may be “addressed outward by a represented figure,” and regardless of who and where, “the assumption conveyed by the term [‘gaze’] is that some differential and usually asymmetrical relation will be at stake in any exchange between one who directs the gaze and another at whom it is directed. In fact, it is just this difference—in age, in sex, in class, in interest, in power —that the operation of the gaze tends to mark” (p. 9). Referring to a woman depicted within the picture plane, he asks us to consider, “What does it feel like to look like this?” (p. 21) in order to entertain our many emotional responses and interpretations. When he adds, “What does it feel like to whom?” the sexual difference of the spectator also clearly comes into play. (shrink)

In many countries, life expectancy has increased considerably in past years, and the importance of finding ways to ensure good levels of wellbeing through aging has become more important than ever. Arts based interventions are promising in this respect, and the literature suggests that musical activities can reduce isolation and anxiety and foster feelings of achievement and self-confidence. The present study examined the effects of group music making programs on the health and wellbeing of nursing home residents in Southern Switzerland. (...) A team of professional and student musicians delivered 10 weekly music sessions in four nursing homes, focusing on singing, rhythm-based activities with percussion instruments, and listening to short, live performances. 22 participants (16 women and 6 men, aged 72-95 years, mean 83.6, SD ± 6.9) were recruited to take part in the study and were interviewed after the last music session. The data were analyzed with thematic analysis to investigate how residents experienced group music making and its effects. The findings show that the music programs were beneficial for residents’ wellbeing. Music plays an important role in their lives, both in their pasts and presently, and being involved in musical activities offers engagement and novelty in daily life, providing learning opportunities and facilitating interpersonal relationships. Moreover, these results were due to interactions with the musicians involved. Residents particularly appreciated the opportunity to listen to live performances as part of the sessions. This study suggests that nursing home residents value music and that music based interventions play an important and direct role in enhancing their wellbeing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) 243-258 [Access article in PDF] Poaching on Men's Philosophies of Rhetoric: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Rhetorical Theory by Women Jane Donawerth Although their discussions have often been ignored in histories of rhetoric, women did participate in the development of philosophies of rhetoric in the eighteenth century and nineteenth century. 1 Most, like Hannah More, left to men preaching, politics, and law (the traditional genres of (...) European rhetoric) and took as their territory conversation and letter writing (more domestic rhetorical forms). 2 But some "poached" on men's territory. In this essay, I examine the tactics that Maria Edgeworth, Eliza Farrar, and Frances Willard used to appropriate and respond to a tradition of rhetoric that by fiat excluded women from rhetorical education, public speaking, and persuasive writing. In order to analyze their poaching on men's territory, I borrow from Michel de Certeau's theory of everyday practices of consumption.In The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), de Certeau suggests that we should study the ways that culture is constituted not only by dominant ideology, but also by "the dominated element in society (a status that does not mean that they are either passive or docile)" (xi-xii). Culture, for de Certeau, is not simply consumed; rather, in everyday life, it is invented "by poaching in countless ways on the property of others" (xii). One must study not just consumers, but also how they consume, what they do and make with the cultural artifacts and constructs offered to them, how they manipulate ideology. For the weak, those lacking political power, de Certeau, like recent feminists, 3 claims sophistic rhetoric, since the Sophists privileged the art of making "the weak position seem the stronger" (xx). How do "users reappropriate the space organized by techniques of sociocultural production?" asks de Certeau (xvii). For the weak, as for the Sophist, "[a] tactic insinuates itself into the other's place, fragmentarily, without taking it over in its entirety, without being able to keep it at a distance" (xix). With these issues in play, de Certeau studies everyday practices--shopping, cooking, moving about, and, most important for our purposes, reading. [End Page 243]Although seemingly passive, reading, de Certeau points out, is an "activity" of "silent production" (xxi). The reader does not absorb what he or she reads, but, instead, reinvents it--misunderstands it, adapts it to his or her own interests and concerns, remembers pieces of it, but pieces mutated. "This mutation makes the text habitable" (xxi), argues de Certeau. Thus, the dominant in culture may offer a set of rules, but it is only a basis for improvisation for the multitude of others in society. Consumption is not the imposition of an ideology on a society; a group does not absorb what it consumes. Instead, the group makes what it consumes its own. "'Assimilating' does not mean 'becoming similar to,'" according to de Certeau; rather, it means "'making something similar'" (166). A reader is not, then, a passive consumer. A reader "wander[s] through an imposed system," modifying and inventing a meaning (169). De Certeau thus focuses on the reading practices of the many "others" of society, "the silent, transgressive, ironic or poetic activity of readers... in private" (172). Readers do not absorb what they read. They are "travelers" who move across and "poach" from the "fields" of others' writings (174).With this essay, I examine the ways in which three women poach on men's rhetorical theory. Maria Edgeworth uses parody, comically enlarging key words in Enlightenment rhetoric to make a place for women in it. She reinvents the demonic shrew as a clever sophistic rhetorician. Eliza Farrar uses performance: she places women in the role of disciple, admiring the great men who thought up rhetoric, but then taking over the role of rhetorician with the pretense of laudatory imitation. Frances Willard uses collage: she cuts and pastes her own and other women's ideas about women preaching in with those of the famous men of her society. She creates a republican, presbyterian... (shrink)

Plato and Aristotle both consider the arts to be forms of mimesis , but their meanings of mimesis do not entirely overlap. Plato employs the term mimesis with several meanings, which include reproducing the speeches, tones, and gestures of another person; the making of accurate copies or likeness of real objects; impersonating another person; and representing men in action. But his emphasis was on mimesis as the production of accurate copies of real objects , and the reproduction of speeches and (...) gestures of another person , and this has led him to conclude that artists are making redundant reproductions that contribute nothing to knowledge. Worse, these artists sometimes even mislead or deceive their spectators. He claims that painters deceive foolish men and children into believing that what they painted were real objects, and poets deceive by making false claims about the gods and heroes from legend . Hence, artists have no place in Plato’s ideal republic; and they must be expelled if they choose to stay. Although agreeing with Plato’s definition of mimesis, Aristotle defended the arts by emphasizing artistic mimesis as the representation of human action. As representations of human action, art goes beyond the production of accurate copies of the original because it has its own rules of unification and integration of parts, which enables the spectators to view artworks as coherent and intelligible wholes. Unlike the historian, the poet or dramatist describes events to satisfy the conditions of artistic unity, and it is never his intention to claim that the events he describes really took place . Plato never reached this conclusion that artworks are actually not merecopies but are entities existing in their own right, with their own rules of internal structuring that enable them to be presented as unified wholes, which means they can be intelligible to the audience without reference to originals existing in the real world. And this is because Plato did not emphasize art as representations of human action, and he chose instead to see them as mere copies or reproductions of originals existing in this world. My chief contributions would be, firstly, to show how Aristotle’s notion of mimesis distinguishes claims made in works of art from similar assertions made in the social sciences; and secondly, to support certain interpretations of artistic unity and coherence through my employment of textual analysis of the Poetics. (shrink)

The female body whether it be child or woman has in the past and in the present struggled for human equality on multiple levels. There have of course been changes but the socio-political boundaries still shift this way and that under the weight of unequal power relations between genders within the ever unfolding fields of patriarchy. Sometimes it seems there are moments of clarity of achieved equality but more often than not the reality is hidden under a pseudo agenda of (...) token offerings. This is a battle that continues within the fields of economics, politics and the language that defines the status quo of the feminine. Feminist liberation theologies as we know begin with the experience of women and as women expand their experience and education through the worlds of politics, economics in academia, the church and other institutions so does the awareness of their subjugation to heteronormative values both past and present. Art has a way of expressing something that the word cannot, this is the language of feeling and emotion. Emotions and feelings have been historically allocated materially to women as a chaotic assemblage that does not fit into the rational world of men. I argue that feminist art describes powerfully the effect patriarchal power has had over female bodies through both personal and collective experiences and that is without doubt a political matter. (shrink)

In this inspirational discourse, scholar Sarah Wider and Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda celebrate the great spiritual and literary figures, East and West, who have inspired their own work as educators, poets, and peace builders, including both the men and the women of the American Renaissance. They reserve their highest praise, though, for the lesser-known influences, especially teachers and mothers, whose humble, compassionate actions provide the truest foundation for the realization of ever-greater peace. Ultimately, the book is a tribute to the (...) bonds that give life meaning. These bonds are the ones built between friends and family; those who teach and those we might learn from; with the great thinkers of the past who live on in books, poetry, and art; with nature; and most of all with the best version of ourselves. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:R. D. Ackerman BELIEVING IN A FICTION: WALLACE STEVENS AT THE LIMITS OF PHENOMENOLOGY The "ring of men" of "Sunday Morning" will chant their "devotion to the sun, / Not as a god, but as a god might be, / Naked among them, like a savage source" (CP, pp. 69-70).' Solar nakedness is deferred even as it is named. The problem for belief is the question of appearance and (...) representation. Things appear as and like.... The phenomenological return to things is also a turn to fiction, as Husserl understood: "If anyone loves a paradox, he can really say... that the element which makes up the life of phenomenology... is fiction. ' " The sun is divine, and it is not; it is both naked and clothed, savage and civilized, source (or end) and means. But such paradox is ultimately unsatisfying, and as we will see with Stevens, the need for belief—for an image or idea of totality—forces the issue of fiction and reality. The Stevens we will have in view is not the Stevens—as if there were such a creature. Our Stevens is the one most persuaded by promises such as those of phenomenology, the one most concerned with decreation (reduction) and fresh beginnings, with discovery and recognition, with imagination, the body, and the earth. This is the Stevens for whom the barrier of language presages at last not absence and difference but fictive recovery of presence and identity, the one for whom poetry represents a way of belief beyond mysticism even as it bodes mythic proximity. Finally, this is the Stevens who predominates throughout the prose (as well as in much of the poetry), who tries mightily to secure a belief while disencumbering himself of metaphysics—but alas, I think, with small success. Although Stevens's association of the problem of belief with the idea of fiction occurs in early poems such as "A High-Toned Old Christian 79 80Philosophy and Literature Woman" and "To the One of Fictive Music," his most intensive involvement with fiction as belief dates from the early 1940s and spans the period of his major essays and his last four volumes of poems. He recounts, for instance, a 1942 conversation with a student: "I said that I thought that we had reached a point at which we could no longer really believe in anything unless we recognized that it was a fiction. The student said that that was an impossibility, that there was no such thing as believing in something that one knew was not true. It is obvious, however, that we are doing that all the time" (L, p. 430). What does it mean to believe in a fiction? That is my main subject here, as we seek out the limits of the phenomenological Stevens. His letters of this period are preoccupied with the problem of fictive belief: "If one no longer believes in God (as truth), it is not possible merely to disbelieve; it becomes necessary to believe in something else.... A good deal of my poetry recently has concerned an identity for that thing.... In one of the short poems that I have just sent to the harvard advocate, I say that one's final belief must be in a fiction. I think that the history of belief will show that it has always been in a fiction" (L, p. 370). The poem referred to, "Asides on the Oboe," begins: The prologues are over. It is a question now, Of final belief. So, say that final belief Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose. (CP, p. 250) Acknowledging that "in the long run, poetry would be the supreme fiction" (L, pp. 430-31), Stevens nonetheless singles out the nominative function of poetry as the essence of its claim to supremacy: "Poetry means not the language of poetry but the thing itself.... The subject matter is what comes to mind when one says of the month of August... 'Thou art not August, unless I make thee so'" (L, p. 377). The quoted line (also from "Asides") underscores the paradox that for Stevens the essence of fiction (the nontrue) is its capacity to nominate the true or the real. This... (shrink)

English Abstract In Art as Experience, John Dewey decried the estrangement of art from lived human experience, both by artificial conceptual walls and the physical walls that secluded art within museums. Instead he argued that making and enjoying art are crucial organic functions that sustain communities and integrate individuals within their environments. In the 1920’s Diego Rivera became one of the luminaries of the Mexican muralist movement by creating frescoes that were rooted in Mexican life, both in their subject matter (...) and public location. Rivera and the other artists working within the government cultural program guided by José Vasconcelos created murals that boldly expressed the new values of democracy, peaceful revolution, racial equality and cultural pride. This essay explores the deep resonance between Rivera’s most prominent murals from this period and Dewey’s argument that art is a refined and integral feature of human experience. In particular, this essay will examine the great extent to which these men independently came to the common understanding that for people to thrive and grow they need to create and experience art that grows out of and remains rooted in their culture. Without claiming that either thinker influenced the other, this essay argues that their works mutually inform and enrich each other. Both men sought to free art from the museum, but where Dewey urged us tear down the walls that separated art from lived experience, Rivera transformed walls themselves into murals that unified and educated the people of Mexico and restored their culture. (shrink)

In 120 exquisitely reproduced black-and-white images, Minnesota in Our Time: A Photographic Portrait showcases the work of twelve talented photographers who sought to capture the essence of the state and its people at the threshold of the new millennium. Like the Farm Security Administration photographers of the Depression era, these men and women document the details of life in this time and the transformations now taking place in this state. This work is a product of the MINNESOTA 2000 Photo Documentation (...) Project, a three-year effort that has also produced an archival collection of 360 images and a museum exhibition. The project's wealth of images provides a multifaceted look at lives and landscapes in Minnesota, focusing on common experiences and themes among a diverse population of individuals. Edited by photography historian George Slade, the book features a selection of the photographs, a lucid interpretive essay by Slade and art historian Robert Silberman, a preface by exhibition curator Bonnie G. Wilson, and brief introductions to and commentaries about each photographer's work. Minnesota in Our Time features photographs by Joe Allen, Tom Arndt, Stephen Dahl, Chris Faust, George Byron Griffiths, Terry Gydesen, David Heberlein, Wing Young Huie, Mark Jensen, Peter Latner, David Parker, and Keri Pickett. (shrink)

"œCiencia y arte" Para el autor el hombre moderno, aun en medio de su "cientificidad", se descubre perdido en muchos laberintos y obsesionado con fetiches de ascendencia simbólica y ritual. Los í­dolos de Bacon siguen dominando el escenario; el homo homini lupus de Hobbes parece todaví­a un paisaje natural; la ley se sigue ofreciendo a los hombres corno señor de Ios señores. Las preguntas de la ciencia acompañan a las preguntas de la filosofí­a y a las expresiones del arte: son (...) las eternas preguntas de la condición humana. Si la filosofí­a y la ciencia intentan apagar la inquietud intelectual principal-mente, el arte y la religión lo harán en el campo del sentimiento, de la intuición y de la representación. "œScience and Art" The author declares that modern man, although involved in scientificity, is lost inside labyrinths and obsessed with symbolic fetishes. Bacons idols are in the scene; Hobbes is homo homini lupus still works like a natural landscape; law is still offered to men as master of masters. Scientific questions, philosophical questions and art expressions walk hand to hand, as they are the eternal questions of human condition. While Philosophy and Science try to extinguish the intelectual worries, Art and Religion will do the same in the fields of feelings, intuition and representation. (shrink)

This article problematizes claims of women’s empowerment in “masculine” sports through an exploration of women’s participation in mixed martial arts —a combat sport colloquially referred to as “cage fighting.” MMA, perhaps more than any other sport, allows women athletes to challenge patriarchal beliefs about gender by demonstrating women’s capacity for physical violence and domination. But whereas investigations into MMA have produced important findings for studies of men and masculinities, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to women’s participation in this (...) hypermasculine world. This article begins to fill this gap through an ethnographic account of this growing sport. Drawing from more than four years of ethnographic fieldwork and 40 semi-structured interviews with professional women’s MMA athletes, I show how the neoliberal–postfeminist culture of MMA undermines its empowerment potential by shaping gendered subjecthood in ways that are conducive to the maintenance of gender inequality. I conclude by discussing the implications of my findings for women’s empowerment in sport. (shrink)