he first institutional theory of art is outlined in a 1964 essay by Arthur Danto, “The Artworld,” which ruminates on the paradox that Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes is art though any of its perceptually indistinguishable twins—any stack of Brillo boxes in a grocery store—is not. Danto’s offers this solution to the paradox: “To see something as art requires something the eye cannot descry—an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.” Ultimately, (...) though, it is “art theory” that makes Warhol’s stack of silk screened plywood boxes into art. (shrink)

Arthur Danto’s analytic theory of art relies on a form of artistic interpretation that requires access to the art theoretical concepts of the artworld, ‘an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld’. Art, in what Danto refers to as post-history, has become theoretical, yet it is here contended that his explanation of the artist’s creative style lacks a theoretical dimension. This article examines Danto’s account of style in light of (...) the role the artistic metaphor plays in the interpretation of the artwork, arguing that it is unable to account for the metaphorical power he claims is embedded within the work of art. An artist’s style issues from a unique perspective, the way an artist inhabits a specific spot in history. Though each person has such a perspective, when applied aesthetically, it is the key to the articulation of a unique historical meaning in the work of art. At the same time, artists’ knowledge of their contribution remains cut off from this perspective, for they are unaware of their self-manifestation of the historical concept of style. This article makes the case that Danto’s notion of style, based on Sartre’s notion of being-for-itself, cannot fulfil the role he allots it in his theory because, at some level, artists must apprehend their style to create a work of art capable of functioning critically as a countertext. It is only through the apprehension of their style, and dialogical activity that takes place between the artist and the beholders, that the unseen body of artworld theory is formed. Without this, when oriented to the aesthetic, style provides no concept or theory for the mind to behold. This article presents an alternative approach to style that recognizes the role of theory in the creation of metaphor, which would circumvent this problem. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the relationship of sport to art. I do not intend to argue that sport is one of the arts. I will rather argue that sport and art have a commonality, in that both are alienated philosophy. This is to propose – in an argument that has its roots in Hegel's aesthetics – that sport and art may both be interpreted as a way of reflecting upon metaphysical and normative issues, albeit in media that are alien (...) to philosophy's conceptual language. The medium of art is the manipulation of sensuous materials, such as stone, paint, or sound. The medium of sport is the pursuit of a physical challenge, at which the athlete may fail. I will develop this argument by borrowing from the philosophy of art of Arthur C. Danto. In particular, I will suggest that a parallel to his concept of ‘artworld’ can be seen in a ‘sportworld’. As the artworld is an ‘atmosphere of theory’ and a ‘knowledge of history’ through which an event is interpreted and thereby constituted as art, so a sportworld is the atmosphere of theory through which an event is constituted as sport. I will argue that much of the existing discussion of the relationship between sport and art is grounded in an ill-conceived aesthetics. In order to be appreciated and appropriately interpreted, sport must be understood within a modernist aesthetics and hermeneutics. As such, the core issue of an aesthetics of sport is not that of beauty, but rather of the meaning of the sport, and what I shall call the capacity of sport to ‘speak as a world’ – to bring to consciousness through play the taken-for-granted cultural conditions through which our social lives are constituted, and within which metaphysical and normative problems are articulated. I will propose that the hermeneutics of music provides a useful model for the interpretation of sport. (shrink)

Until fairly recently, most of the attention of art historians and others in these debates has been paid to differences among the partisans of various disciplinary methodologies, or to the differential benefits of one or another school of thought or theoretical perspective in other areas of the humanities and social sciences as these might arguably apply to questions of art historical practice.1 Yet there has also come about among art historians a renewed interest in the historical origins of the academic (...) discipline itself, and in the relationships of its institutionalization in various countries to the professionalizing of other historical and critical disciplines in the latter part of the nineteenth century. These interests have led increasingly to wider discussion by art historians of the particular nature of disciplinary knowledge, the circumstances and protocols of academic practice, and the relations between the various branches of modern discourse on the visual arts: academic art history, art criticism, aesthetic philosophy, the art market, exhibitions, and musicology.2 What follows does not aim to summarize or characterize these developments but is more simply an attempt to delineate some of the principal characteristics of the discipline as an evidentiary institution in the light of the material conditions of academic practice that arose in the latter half of the nineteenth century in relation to the history of mueological display. In brief, this essay is concerned with the circumstances of art history’s foundations as a systematic and “scientific” practice, and its focus is limited to a single, albeit paradigmatic, American example. 1. An extended discussion of these issues may be found in Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science , pp. 80-121. See also The New Art History, ed. A. L. Rees and Frances Borzello .2. One important sign off these discussions has been a series of “Views and Overviews” of the discipline appearing in The Art Bulletin in recent years, of which the most recent has been perhaps the most extensive and comprehensive: Mieke Bal and Norman Byrson, ”Semiotics and Art History,” The Art Bulletin 73 : 174-208. Donald Preziosi is professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and, beginning in 1992, at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author of Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science and is currently completing a book on the history of museums entitled Framing Modernity. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe paper argues for the restricted viability of the concept of style in the history of science. Since historians of science borrow this term from art history or the sociology of knowledge, the paper outlines its emergence and function in these disciplines, in order to show that the need for ever subtler stylistic distinctions in historical description inevitably leads to the dissolution of the concept of style itself.“Style” will be defined in predominantly cognitive or technical terms (...) when imputed to an individual; in social or moral terms when thought to be carried by some collective entity. Both descriptions are given normative interpretations. A good individual style, then, is regarded as the pledge for valid knowledge or insights of a “higher order,” while a collective style, understood as the vehicle of successful intra group communication, involves the acceptance of certain rhetorical norms and/or socially shared values that are supposed to structure that style. “National styles” belong to the latter category; the emergence of this dubious notion can best be explained in sociological terms.If historians of science insist on adopting the concept of style, they will have to agree on its meaning. The paper concludes, therefore, with a rough typology of its most frequent meanings and uses. (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)

As the first President of the Royal Academy of Arts, Joshua Reynolds played a pivotal role in shaping the course of British art in the 18th century. In these discourses, Reynolds reflects on the nature of art, the role of the artist, and the importance of aesthetic education. With insightful commentary on the works of the Old Masters and a wealth of practical advice for aspiring artists, this volume is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of art (...) or art theory. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The paper uses two historical examples, public health (1840-1880) and town planning (1945-1975) in Britain, to analyse the challenges faced by goal-driven research, an increasingly important trend in science policy, as exemplified by the prominence of calls for addressing Grand Challenges. Two key points are argued. (1) Given that the aim of research addressing social or global problems is to contribute to improving things, this research should include all the steps necessary to bring science and technology to fruition. This need (...) is captured by the idea of practical integration, which brings this type of research under the umbrella of collective practical reason rather than under the aegis of science. Achieving practical integration is difficult for many reasons: the complexity of social needs, the plurality of values at stake, the limitation of our knowledge, the elusive nature of the skills needed to deal with uncertainty, incomplete information and asymmetries of power. Nevertheless, drawing from the lessons of the case studies, it is argued that (2) practical integration needs a proper balance between values, institutions and knowledge: i.e. a combination of mutual support and mutual limitation. Pursuing such a balance provides a flexible strategy for approximating practical integration. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On the Way to Ethical CultureThe Meaning of Art as Oscillating between the Other, Il y a, and the ThirdRossitsa Varadinova Borkowski (bio)Who can suppose that a poet capable of effectively introducing into his scenes rhetoricians, generals and various other characters, each displaying some peculiar excellence, was nothing more than a droll or juggler, capable only of cheating or flattering his hearer, and not of instructing him?Are we all (...) agreed that the chief merit of a poet consists in his accurate representation of the affairs of life? Can this be done by a mere driveller, unacquainted with the world?The excellence of a poet is not to be measured by the same standard as that of a mechanic or a blacksmith, where honor and virtue have nothing to do with our estimate. But the poet and the individual are connected, and he only can become a good poet who is in the first instance a worthy man.— Strabo, The Geography of StraboAfter Emmanuel Levinas showed the need for radically positing the Ethical as the original structure of human inwardness and as art is a fundamental aspect of being human, a reexamination of the meaning of the Artistic and its relation with the Ethical is necessary.1 Throughout [End Page 195] the history of Western thought and culture, the meaning of art has been regarded either as imitation of the world and nature (Plato and Aristotle), objective self-expression of the Absolute Spirit (Hegel) or Being (Heidegger), a subjective “free play of imagination” and judgment (Kant and the Romanticists), or as inevitable engagement with social issues and political position (the Marxists and Sartre). In spite of the variety of theories and views about the essence and value of art, it is unquestionable that the Artistic has transformational power over humans, which points to art’s connection with ethics. Therefore, following Levinas, instead of asking the general ontological questions about the gist of art “What is art?” or “Why is there art instead of something else?” we should seek an answer to the ethical question about the meaning of art: “How can the existence of art be justified?”The answers could be sought in two directions. The first already quite well beaten path explores Levinas’s own vision on art, which most critics find hesitant or even ambiguous.2 The impression of this hesitation is significant on the background of Levinas’s rigorous clarity about the Ethical. Overlooking this impression would lead to conclusions that would deviate our attention from the main question about how the existence of art can be justified. A possible explanation would be that Levinas’s seemingly fragmentary thoughts about art are woven into the fabric of his ultimate meta-ethical project — that is, his approach to art is instrumental, subjected to the Ethical. For example, commentators agree that Levinas’s early article “Reality and Its Shadow” (1948) is the only one exclusively focused on art and use it as a starting point to assemble the fragments of his aesthetic views into an aesthetic theory. Although this move might be justified methodologically, Levinas is clear that the discussion of art in this article is subordinated to the more general (and more serious) question about the nontruth of being (LR 132). Positing art as mythological and mystical, thus incapable of transmitting a meaningful message if separated from philosophical criticism (142), Levinas puts “in brackets” the discussion about the artistic and focuses on the reason qua knowledge (philosophy) and its relation with the Other. The impression of his hesitation about art’s [End Page 196] independent capability to dephase the instant, to breach the ontological gravity, and to expose the human spirit to the Ethical comes from those texts where Levinas applies his own vision about the integrative role of philosophical criticism — i.e., texts that work as philosophical criticism of art: “Transcendence through poetry — is this serious?”3 (PN 175n12), “if poetry can contain teachings” (165; emphasis added). Therefore, on one hand, Levinas exhaustively scrutinizes all possibilities of ethics of philosophy and comes to the clear position that in order for reason to function humanly it should be dethroned by the Other. He is... (shrink)

Art and philosophy are the two major elements of the human world. The existence of art and philosophy can expand the spiritual world of human beings to a greater extent and enrich their spiritual life, thus supporting the construction of the material world. And music, as an aural art, has also been given a philosophical meaning in the evolution of history because of its birth and development. Therefore, when studying music, one should first study the history of music. (...) The philosophy of music history education is not only profound and contains world culture and philosophy, but also carries history and economy. Music history education is also a vivid art form of philosophy, where teachers create an artistic beauty to attract students and achieve the purpose of imparting knowledge by optimizing their educational philosophy. To develop the philosophy of education to its fullest extent, teachers must adhere to the concepts associated with the philosophy of art. To explain this process in greater depth, this paper provides a brief review of the aesthetic philosophy and historical evolution of Chinese. (shrink)

The Ikhwan al-Safa' (Brethren of Purity), the anonymous adepts of a tenth-century esoteric fraternity based in Basra and Baghdad, hold an eminent position in the history of science and philosophy in Islam due to the wide reception and assimilation of their monumental encyclopaedia, the Rasa 'il Ikhwan al-Safa' (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). This compendium contains fifty-two epistles offering synoptic accounts of the classical sciences and philosophies of the age; divided into four classificatory parts, it treats themes in (...) mathematics, logic, natural philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, and theology, in addition to didactic fables. Epistles 6 to 8 are from the first division of the Epistles, on the propaedeutical and mathematical sciences. Epistle 6 develops ideas concerning natural numbers and their arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic ratios, marked by the influence of Nicomachus of Gerasa and of Euclid. The Brethren here emphasize practical applications of proportionality in music, medicine, and alchemy. Epistle 7 addresses theoretical scientific knowledge as directed towards the spiritual realities of souls, the goal of which is to actualize human potential; this epistle also presents a remarkable classification of sciences. Epistle 8 surveys material cultures in the Islamic mediaeval milieu, embellished by a consideration of the effects of the heavenly bodies on the predisposition of individuals to follow specific trades. These three epistles are, of course, underpinned by the Brethren's perennial tropes of the microcosm/macrocosm analogy and the emanative hierarchy of existents. (shrink)

Picturing Knowledge is a collection of papers on scientific illustration written by historians and philosophers of science. While the philosophers of science tend to focus on the question whether illustrations are more than helpful aids to symbolic proofs and linguistic explications, the historians are interested in the presuppositions attaching to particular modes of representation—the decision what to depict and how to depict it. David Knight discusses the conventions determined what were appropriate and relevant illustrations for textbooks of chemistry. He (...) calls attention to their increasing depersonalization, as pictures of the alchemical laboratory with its furnace and flasks, and then of elegantly clad, unmussed aristocrats gave way to pictures of molecules. Robert J. O’Hara shows how metaphysical assumptions about the organization of nature, in particular the assumption that there existed a system of visible analogies and correspondences across groups of plants and animals, persisted from Linnaeus’s time even into post-Darwinian biology. Stephanie Moser argues that artists’ depictions of australopithecine hominids in semi-popular illustrated magazines of the 1940s and 1950s first reflected, but then entrenched, a view of their mode of life featuring nuclear families, wooden clubs, and homey caves, subsequently rejected as improbable. Other historians investigate the history and problems of scientific representation itself. Bert Hall provides a brief survey of botanical, anatomical, and mechanical illustration, and considers the competing demands of elegance and informativeness. Martin Kemp considers the very different requirements of anatomical and astronomical depictions. Anatomical illustration lends itself to what he calls a “rhetoric of reality” aimed at convincing the viewer that the illustration is what he would see inside an actual human body, while astronomical illustration is unconcerned with the appearances of the heavens, and is a translation of measurements into a scheme representing what cannot literally be seen. (shrink)

Art museums frequently remove old paintings from their original settings. In the process, the context of these works of art changes dramatically. Do museums then preserve works of art? To answer this question, I consider an imaginary painting, The Travels and Tribulations of Piero's Baptism of Christ, depicting the history of display of Piero della Francesca's Baptism of Christ. This example suggests that how Piero's painting is seen does depend upon its setting. According to the Intentionalist, such changes in (...) context have no real influence upon the meaning of Piero's painting, and consequently museums can be said to preserve works of art. According to the Skeptic, if such changes are drastic enough, we can no longer identify the picture's original meaning, and museums thus fail to pre- serve works of art. Skepticism deserves attention, for such varied influential commenta- tors as Theodore Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Maurice Blanchot, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Heidegger, Hans Sedlmayr, and Paul Valery hold this pessimistic view of muse- ums. I develop the debate between the Intentionalist and the Skeptic. Ultimately skepti- cism is indefensible, I argue, because it fails to take account of the continuities in the his- tory of art's display. But Intentionalism is also deficient because it is ahistorical. In pre- senting the history of Piero's painting, The Travels and Tribulations of Piero 's Baptism of Christ shows that we can re-identify the original significance of Piero's work and the rec- ognizable continuities that obtain through its changes. It thus makes sense to claim that at least in certain circumstances art museums can preserve works of art. (shrink)

How did the human brain evolve so that consciousness of art could develop? In The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain, Robert Solso describes how a consciousness that evolved for other purposes perceives and creates art.Drawing on his earlier book Cognition and the Visual Arts and ten years of new findings in cognitive research, Solso shows that consciousness developed gradually, with distinct components that evolved over time. One of these components is an adaptive consciousness that includes (...) the ability to imagine objects that are not present--an ability that allows us to create visual art.Solso describes the neurological, perceptual, and cognitive sequence that occurs when we view art, and the often inexpressible effect that a work of art has on us. He shows that there are two aspects to viewing art: nativistic perception--the synchronicity of eye and brain that transforms electromagnetic energy into neuro-chemical codes--which is "hard-wired" into the sensory-cognitive system; and directed perception, which incorporates personal history and knowledge--the entire set of our expectations and past experiences. Both forms of perception are part of the appreciation of art, and both are products of the evolution of the conscious brain over hundreds of thousands of years.Solso also investigates the related issues of neurological and artistic perception of the human face, the effects of visual illusions, and the use of perspective. The many works of art used as examples are drawn from a wide range of artistic traditions, from ancient Egypt to Africa and India and the European Renaissance. (shrink)

An ongoing collaborative project between art and science, Taming the Forest (2022) was implemented by a team of students, artists and researchers charting an interdisciplinary project among bioeconomics, environmental history, policy and artistic practice. In this article, the project acts as a case study for researching the conflicting narratives of history and economics about biodiversity in general, and specifically about forests. It shows how different blends of methodologies in artistic-cum-scientific research can become relevant for both realms, opening new (...) creative pathways and pedagogical registers while repeatedly returning to a specific forest’s microhistory. Moreover, the article stresses the need for a new sensibility and complex knowledge, moving beyond an objective study and becoming attentive to different dimensions of research and its outputs that emerge through the introduction of artistic thinking and methodologies. This kind of transdisciplinary approach becomes necessary in order to tackle the manifold large-scale problems such as the climate and biodiversity crises, which call for both acting decisively and transforming radically, above all with regard to how humans perceive, relate to and manage nature. (shrink)

Arthur Danto’s recent book, Andy Warhol, leads the reader through the story of the iconic American’s artistic life highlighted by a philosophical commentary, a commentary that merges Danto’s aesthetic theory with the artist himself. Inspired by Warhol’s Brillo Box installation, art that in Danto’s eyes was indiscernible from the everyday boxes it represented, Danto developed a theory that is able to differentiate art from non-art by employing the body of conceptual art theory manifest in what he termed the ‘artworld’. (...) The strength of Danto’s theory is found in its ability to explain the art of the post-modern era. His body of work weaves philosophy, art history and art criticism together, merging his aesthetic philosophy with his extensive knowledge of the world of art. Danto’s essentialist theory of embodied meaning provides him with a critical tool that succeeds in explaining the currents of contemporary art, a task that many great thinkers of art history were unable to do. If Warhol inspired Danto to create a philosophy of art, it is appropriate that Danto write a tribute to Warhol that traces how Warhol brought philosophy into art. Danto’s account of ‘Warhol as philosopher’ positions him as a pivotal figure in the history of twentieth-century art, effecting a sea change in how art was made and viewed. Warhol achieved this by conceiving of works that embodied the answers to a series of philosophical puzzles surrounding the nature of art. Warhol, as Danto describes him, manifests himself in his art because he had transformed himself, in a way, into an icon of the times. This pragmatist notion that art should undermine the dichotomies that exist between art and life would, by some accounts, position Warhol to be the philosopher that Danto claims him to be, for he dissolved the philosophical questions posted by late modern aesthetic thinkers by creating art that imploded the accepted notions of art at the time. One of Danto’s greatest contributions to aesthetics is his theory’s ability to distinguish art from non-art, recognizing that it is the artist’s intention that levels the sublimity of art into the commonplace, thereby transfiguring the everyday. However, acknowledging this achievement, I argue that Warhol’s philosophical contribution actually manifests itself in a manner different from that proposed by Danto. Danto maintains that the internal drive of art leads to the unfolding of art theoretical concepts that ineluctably shift the terrain of world of art. I would agree with Danto that Warhol, almost as Hegel viewed Napoleon as Geist on a horse, pushed forward the boundaries of art through the actualization of art’s internal drive. But I would disagree that the conceptual nature of art is one that unfolds merely as a relation of concepts that artists trace through a connection to the meaning of history they forge using their unmediated grasp of style. Rather, I would argue that the artist’s style is not bound so narrowly to the meanings they express. Through their aesthetic articulations, artists initiate a process of social interaction. This process employs the philosophical logic which Danto attributes to Warhol indirectly, and through it, it is able to transfigure the vocabulary of art—the concepts of the artworld—by superseding the language of modernism. Warhol’s philosophical contribution is seen in his mastery of both the medium of art and the underlying logic of the medium’s expression and reception. (shrink)

In the article, questions from the field of philosophy of mathematics are studied. The author is driven by the need to achieve a balance between the philosophy of science and the history of science in formation of concepts of the science development. In this regard, the author justifies the reliance on the methodology of implicit knowledge, combined with the epistemology principle of criticism in studying the development of mathematics as the most expedient and effective. The author expresses the (...) necessity of criticizing the methodology of counterexamples typical for mathematical empiricism declared by I. Lakatos. In the article, an explanation of the concept of implicit knowledge, as well as the examples from mathematics are given. The author believes that application of the concept of implicit knowledge in philosophical and mathematical terms allows us to reveal the unique specificity of mathematical science deeper. The author concludes that it is necessary to recognize the fundamental importance of the methodology of implicit knowledge for the epistemology, as well as for the development of philosophy and methodology of science in general. (shrink)

The question about the nature of art is at the centre of the philosophy of art. The thesis seeks to replace the two dominant approaches to this question in contemporary English-speaking philosophy--essentialism and descriptivism--with an historicist approach. The historicist approach I develop and defend holds that answers to the question "What is Art?" must take the form of localized cultural-historical narratives. ;This alternative approach is applied to write the history of the development of what I call "the modern conception (...) of art" in the early eighteenth century. A changing notion of art that emerges in Britain in this period is decisive for all later philosophy of art. Its genesis must be understood in a context of social, political and cultural changes. These changes deeply affected many people's conception of themselves and of their place in society. Social status becomes uncertain, and new criteria for the presentation of the self and evaluation of others emerge. Knowledge about art and the display of taste become indicators of social distinctions and thus criteria for social evaluation, replacing older notions of birth and rank. The modern conception of art emerges as part of new ideas of the presentation of the self, as part of a new ideal of edification. ;In contemporary philosophy of art, the evaluative contents of the conception of art--its historical and contemporary connection to notions of the moral and social order--are seldom discussed. Yet, as I show, these connections exist and have existed for a long time. At the centre of contemporary philosophy of art, therefore, there is a conception of art which is ideological in the sense that it treats the normative as factual and the historically contingent as the natural. Only a historical analysis of the kind I carry out is able to bring to light this aspect of the conception of art presupposed in contemporary philosophy of art. (shrink)

Problems of the history of philosophy, no matter what aspect of that science they deal with, are always very important. Today, when idealist philosophy seeks to give an exaggerated picture of the importance of the major spiritual values created by the peoples of the West, these problems are acquiring particular significance. In the postwar period, the number of works published abroad on the history of philosophy has increased sharply. The most popular of the older works are being revised (...) and reissued. A great number of writings on methodology have appeared. The influence of philosophy is spreading to other fields of knowledge and to their history. Specifically, historians of culture, science, technology and art are striving, influenced by the materialist concept of history, to shed the light of philosophy upon the problems that inevitably arise in these fields when their history is studied, but which cannot be resolved by the cognitive resources of the special sciences. This circumstance renders problems of the methodology of the history of philosophy particularly important and places greater responsibility upon researchers in this field. (shrink)

Proposal Information: In this paper it is argued that although Spinoza, unlike other great philosophers of the Enlightenment era, never actually wrote a philosophy of education as such, he did – in his Ethics – write a philosophy of self-improvement that is deeply educational at heart. When looked at against the background of his overall metaphysical system, the educational account that emerges is one that is highly curious and may even, to some extent at least, come across as counter-intuitive in (...) a contemporary setting. This is so because it grounds the greater social and political endeavors of humanity in the individual’s striving for an ever-increasing power of acting. Hence, education, for Spinoza, is a decidedly individualistic affair, but then again, so is the making of society. Since, for Spinoza, every instance of knowledge bears the unique mark of the individual body that expresses it, one might conclude that at the foundation of every social structure is an encounter between concrete bodies; each expressing a particular perspective from where to grasp the world. I would argue, based on this, that one of Spinoza’s main contributions to educational theory is his grounding of larger social endeavors in the striving of the individual. Hinged on the striving to be more rational, as dictated by the doctrine of the conatus, education appears to offer a way of grounding the structure of the human social world in the same principles as those guiding the individual. Spinoza’s doctrine of the imitation of affects thereby offers a way of linking the egoistic striving for power on behalf of the individual with the educational goal of building a sustainable society. It does so as it conditions self-improvement by the human characteristic to imitate what others desire. By being surrounded with people who desire to be more rational, one can utilize this desire for the good and become strengthened in one’s own striving for increasing one’s degree of existence. Consequently, the teaching situation is geared for guiding students towards a more rational life, at the same time as it is geared for the self-improvement of the teacher. This aspect of self-improvement is, ultimately, what will motivate the teacher in striving to enhance the lives of his or her students in the first place. Being unable to self-improve in isolation, the doctrine of the imitation of affects dictates that the rational person will be moved toward a life of generosity, not primarily for altruistic reasons, but out of a desire to become more rational and thus to gain in his or her own power of acting. The question that follows from this, of course, is how does one go about when inculcating a desire to be more rational in one’s students?Education, from a Spinozistic point of view, is ultimately about the cultivation of the potential that lies dormant in each individual, so that a person may live a happier life as a result of understanding, more adequately, their place in the natural world. The challenge, then, becomes one of overcoming the many obstacles that prevent a person from developing their potential. Pedagogy, from this point of view, may be understood in terms of the art of offering the right amount of resistance. This notion is based on the assumption that if a student encounters no resistance – or too much resistance – his or her potential remains just that – a potential. In order to develop this potential the student needs to overcome certain barriers. With regards to this, the role of the teacher may be conceived in terms of the one balancing the amount of resistance so that the student is properly challenged but at the same time not overwhelmed. Methodology or Methods/ Research Instruments or Sources Used: The paper makes for an attempt to outline a Spinozistic philosophy of education based on readings of Spinoza’s texts – primarily the Ethics – and some of the relevant secondary literature such as Della Rocca’s influential reading of Spinoza. As such it is a philosophical inquiry seeking to interconnect some key aspects of Spinoza’s philosophy with some of the major issues of education. Methodologically, this paper argues, in line with Melamed, that rather than turning to the history of philosophy in order to identify ‘precursors to [our] own views’, so as to validate what we already believe we know, it is more fruitful to turn to past philosophers in order to ‘challenge our most basic beliefs and intuitions by studying texts that are both well-argued and strongly opposed to our commonsense’. Accordingly, turning to Spinoza marks an attempt to revisit and reconceptualize some key aspects of educational thought. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings: A conclusion of this paper is that a Spinozistic philosophy of education would need to focus on resolving the tension between Spinoza’s egoism and education as a social project. To this end it identifies Spinoza’s doctrine of the imitation of affects as a possible link between the individual’s striving for power and the collective agenda of improving human well-being at large. It is also suggested that, in aspiring to inculcate a desire to be more rational in his or her students, the challenge for the Spinozistic teacher is to prompt the students to aspire to reach beyond the temporary satisfactions of the passions so as to acquire a more enduring sense of satisfaction and so that their well-being is more fully under their own command rather than under the command of various external influences. This, in turn, is connected with the notion of resistance in the sense that in experiencing the volatility of fortune – and thereby understanding the instability of relying on one’s passions – a person would appear to be more inclined to strive for a more enduring sense of happiness, even if this would mean giving up on some of the temporary pleasures that one has grown accustomed to. The resistance, then, may be conceived in terms of the overcoming of temporary pleasures that stand in the way of the developing of one’s potential. In this scenario the role of the teacher may be understood in terms of someone offering a well-balanced amount of resistance. This means that to accommodate one’s students – in the sense that one approaches them in terms of prospective customers, aspiring to satisfy their demands – is inimical to education insofar as the wants and desires of students are, generally speaking, caused by passive affects rather than their rational wills. References: Aloni, N.. Spinoza as Educator: From Eudaimonistic Ethics to an Empowering and Liberating Pedagogy. Educational Philosophy and Theory 40, pp. 531–544.Della Rocca, M.. Spinoza. New York: Routledge.Della Rocca, M.. Rationalism, Idealism, Monism, and Beyond. In: E. Förster & Y. Y. Melamed Spinoza and German Idealism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 7–26.Derry, J.. The Unity of Intellect and Will: Vygotsky and Spinoza. Educational Review, 56, pp. 113–120.Lloyd, G.. Spinoza and Educating the Imagination. In: A. O. Rorty Philosophers on Education: Historical Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 157–172.Melamed, Y. Y.. Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Nadler, S.. Eternity and Immortality in Spinoza’s Ethics. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 26, pp. 224–244.Poulimatka, T.. Spinoza’s Theory of Teaching and Indoctrination. Educational Philosophy and Theory 33, pp. 397–410.Spinoza, B.. The Ethics. In: E. Curley A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Princeton: Princeton Unive. (shrink)

Each contributor to this volume, collected in conjunction with St. Louis University's sesquicentennial celebrations, addresses himself to the title topic in terms of his own field. The first part of the book contains essays grouped loosely under the theme "The Environment of Learning." This section is introduced by Ong with a thumbnail portrait of the knowledge explosion, its history, its technological apparatus, its social implications, and its undergirding presupposition: a faith in the intelligibility of the universe. Other essays (...) in the section cover university education, education in Africa, international politics, urban problems, and architecture. In his essay, McLuhan moves from a discussion of architecture to an explanation of a certain art form which integrates separate environmental fragments into a gestalt fusion of artist, art form, and art work. This art form, this "happening," for post-mechanical man is the environment itself plus the programmed structuring of its elements. John Macquarrie builds a doctrine of human responsibility using the creation myth and a little Heidegger to portray man not as the sovereign over creation but as its steward and guardian. The second section deals with specific areas of knowledge. J. R. Zacharias leads off with a superficial account of how scientific training, with its emphasis on objectivity, can lead to moral sureness and of how scientists make moral decisions. This ethical emphasis is maintained as other contributors in biology, law, and business discuss the impact of technology in their area and the "way out" possibilities of the future. The final three essays are moderate by comparison. J. D. Collins, speaking for philosophy, points out that philosophers are characteristically more concerned with their past than with their future, that they delay in order to reflect when others barge ahead, and that consequently for them the knowledge explosion has also been a knowledge implosion. However, he does manage a discussion of philosophy's new "developing patterns," the most significant for him being the convergence of phenomenology and language analysis. M. Eliade gives a short account of the history of religions, and Karl Rahner ends the book with a crisp essay relating Christian eschatology to secular ideologies of the future.--S. O. H. (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)

This article investigates a tension that arises in Hegel’s aesthetic theory between theoretical and practical forms of reason. This tension, I argue, stems from Hegel’s appropriation of an Aristotelian framework for a historically unfolding social teleology which puts practical reason to work for the aims of theoretical reason. Recognizing that this aspect of Hegel’s dialectic is essential in overcoming problems left in Kant’s transcendental idealism, the appearance of incongruence does not lessen. Grouped together with absolute spirit, Hegel positions art as (...) a transitory mode of mind, a vehicle, which aims to raise spirit to the higher cognition of philosophy. When the unfolding absolute concept becomes too complex for articulation in the material, art must end, as spirit’s message can be expressed only through the non-material form of philosophy. This study focuses on the ambivalence found in Hegel’s writings regarding his account of historical completion. Though Hegel sees in the Absolute a metaphysical solution to the unity of subject and object, the practical aspects of the unity appear to falter when philosophy becomes the dominant mode of expression at the close of a historical cycle. In Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel links his notion of the Absolute, albeit with modification, to Aristotle’s nous. As described in De Anima, this entails a progression in which active and possible intellect rise to the level of the eternal, while passive intellect, the imaginative element, passes on with the body. Because the architecture of Aristotle’s nous, which is not in line with his defense of poetry, is integrated into the blueprint of Hegel’s absolute, an unresolved tension emerges in the spirit of art. A divergence of aims is forced to the surface through Hegel’s application of a template for achievement of theoretical knowledge, with an end in the universal, to a form of practical knowing which has an end in the particular. (shrink)

This article offers an insight into Yoḥanan Alemanno’s study of the ‘art of thinking’ through his notes from Averroes’s commentaries on Posterior Analytics, De anima and Parva naturalia. This case study represents an important example of the 15th-century Jewish learning based on the Arabic-Hebrew philosophical tradition and shows the continuity between the Provençal world and the Italian Renaissance. The textual appendix included at the end of the article aims at showing how Alemanno selected portions of Averroes’s commentaries on logic and (...) psychology that define the role of the faculty of imagination and the processes through which we acquire true knowledge. (shrink)

Is art only art insofar as it refuses to be useful? How do people understand art's ability to know the world, to develop ethics, to express sense of historical belonging and to be, in different ways to different people, useful? Starting with the premise that art is best understood in dialogue with the social sphere, publication examines how the exchange between art, knowledge and use has historically been set up and played out. Theorists and artists included in this volume (...) seek an answer to the question: how can art know, and change, the world? (shrink)

The third and fourth parts sketch aspects and difficulties of such a philosophy. Part III is concerned with the overcoming of the metaphysical negativity inherent in the conception of phenomena as appearances. Nietzsche's use of the Dionysian "mask" in his later thought is examined with respect to precisely such an overcoming. The affirmative relation of mask and masked and the problem of philosophical unmasking as affirmation arise as elements unique to the latest phase of Nietzsche's thought and are discussed in (...) analyses of several of the Dionysus Dithyrambs as well as texts from Beyond Good and Evil and Twilight of the Idols. Part IV explores the philosophical affirmation contained within the exhibition of the mask as mask through unmasking. ;The appendices contain extended discussions of particular textual problems as well as translations of selected fragments--hitherto untranslated or only partially translated--from Nietzsche's notebooks in the last productive decade of his life. ;The following study is an attempt to arrive at an understanding of Nietzsche's thought in terms that are internal to that thought itself. The concept of "affirmation" was chosen as an appropriate one because of its central place in Nietzsche's description of his own thought in opposition to the nihilistic movement of previous philosophy. ;The first part of the dissertation is a detailed discussion of Schopenhauer's philosophy, a philosophy which culminates in the question of the "affirmation or negation of the will to life." In our exposition we are able to see not merely the connection of Schopenhauerian pessimism and philosophical nihilism, as understood by Nietzsche, but, as significantly, the way in which the philosophical tradition is positively present in this philosophy. The constructive nature of knowledge, the negative source of activity, the "identity" of art all lead to the final truth of the "nothing." The relation of Schopenhauer's apparently willful and arbitrary conceptions to the history of philosophy is emphasized throughout this first part which, despite this historical interest, attempts to arrive at an immanent understanding of this philosophy. ;The second part concerns itself with the Birth of Tragedy, but is as much an elaboration, extension and application of certain aspects of this book to other elements of Nietzsche's thought as it is an analysis of the book. The Birth of Tragedy's ambiguous connection with Schopenhauer is first discussed, particularly as concerns the central theme of "tragic affirmation" as affirmation of the totality. The ontological obscurities of the divine pair Apollo-Dionysus are discussed, and the "spirit of music" that generates tragedy, the Dionysian spirit of affirmation, is contrasted with the Platonic daimon of Eros. The problem of Dionysos mousikos as Dionysos philosophos emerges in this part. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the logic of the aesthetic argument used in the eighteenth century as a conceptual tool for formulating the modern concept of “(fine) art(s).” The essay also examines the main developments in the history of the art of modernity which were initiated from the way the “nature” of art was conceived in early modern aesthetics. The author claims that the formulation of the “aesthetic nature” of art led to the process of the gradual disappearance of all (...) of the formal elements that had previously characterized the visual arts; the result was “emptiness” or “nothingness” as art. The author refers to this process in terms of “vanishing acts” that allow for the formulation of an aesthetics of absence in connection to twentieth-century art (complementing the Ästhetik der Absenz, formulated in German art theory). The author also briefly addresses the consequences that these processes have for the way contemporary art, and art world operate. (shrink)

This volume of essays is an important introduction to the thought of one of the twentieth century's most significant yet underappreciated philosophers, Richard McKeon. The originator of philosophical pluralism, McKeon made extraordinary contributions to philosophy, to international relations, and to theory-formation in the communication arts, aesthetics, the organization of knowledge, and the practical sciences. This collection, which includes a philosophical autobiography as well as the out-of-print title essay "Freedom and History" and a previously unpublished essay on "Philosophic Semantics (...) and Philosophic Inquiry," is a testimony to the range and systematic power of McKeon's thinking for the social sciences and the humanities. (shrink)

When one defines "order" as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology in The Order of Things, possibly one of the most significant, yet most overlooked, works of the twentieth century. Eclipsed by his later work on power and discourse, nonetheless it was The Order of Things that established Foucault's reputation as (...) an intellectual giant. Pirouetting around the outer edge of language, Foucault unsettles the surface of literary writing. In describing the limitations of our usual taxonomies, he opens the door onto a whole new system of thought, one ripe with what he calls "exotic charm". Intellectual pyrotechnics from the master of critical thinking, this book is crucial reading for those who wish to gain insight into that odd beast called Postmodernism, and a must for any fan of Foucault. (shrink)

Containing 609 encyclopedic articles written by more than 200 prominent scholars, The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science presents an unparalleled history of the field invaluable to anyone with an interest in the technology, ideas, discoveries, and learned institutions that have shaped our world over the past five centuries. Focusing on the period from the Renaissance to the early twenty-first century, the articles cover all disciplines, historical periods, concepts, and methodologies and philosophies. Coverage is international, tracing (...) the spread of science from its traditional centers and explaining how the prevailing knowledge of non-Western societies has modified or contributed to the dominant global science as it is currently understood. Revealing the interplay between science and the wider culture, the Companion includes entries on topics such as minority groups, art, religion, and science's practical applications. One hundred biographies of the most iconic historic figures, chosen for their contributions to science and the interest of their lives, are also included. Above all The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science is a companion to world history: modern in coverage, generous in breadth, and cosmopolitan in scope. The volume's utility is enhanced by a thematic outline of the entire contents, a thorough system of cross-referencing, and a detailed index that enables the reader to follow a specific line of inquiry along various threads from multiple starting points. Each essay has numerous suggestions for further reading, all of which favor literature that is accessible to the general reader, and a bibliographical essay provides a general overview of the scholarship in the field. Lastly, as a contribution to the visual appeal of the Companion, over 100 black-and-white illustrations and an eight-page color section capture the eye and spark the imagination. (shrink)

At the moment of its decline, we clearly see that painting in oils developed an original poetics, and one that was all of a piece, throughout a renascent and modern West. From its birth and during a development lasting half a millennium we see it— in Florence, Bruges, Venice, Rome, Toledo, Nuremberg, Amsterdam and Paris—attentive to the sources of signification: languages, rites, myths, theater, tools, techniques and sciences and the urban context that wove them all together. In each case, for (...) one or the other of them, it brought a new relationship to the way of life and then left them to their social order of assimilation, keeping the initial contact for those who would be interested. It studded the West with centers of production that carried the practice and knowledge of art to their limits; engaged with the collective imagination, it punctuated history with decisive works, in which the desire to paint takes action and explains it. Marked by an impatience for change, oil painting revealed itself in a rapport with creativity akin to the other works of civilization. It is at the level of the bases of invention of the imaginary—which are in any expression the most profound structures—that the unfolding of oil painting is tightly bound. The establishment of modern national languages, the orderly rise, around a syntax and because of architecture, sculpture, music, song, tragedy, the systematic construction of scientific and technical expression, arose and grew quickly in importance in Western Europe during the same centuries as painting and with reciprocal correspondence. Dürer “who was the first to publish a treatise in which is collected all knowledge having to do with the expression of forms… wrote in his native tongue and in so doing was revealed as the creator of technical and scientific German.”. (shrink)

Here is the essential guide to philosophy. Philosophy: An Illustrated History of Thought is an authoritative yet fun reference book and timeline on the compilation of human knowledge. Both art and science attempt answers to the big questions -- what is truth, how to be good, and where did we come from? -- but philosophy is the interpreter we use to verify it all. We need it to make sense of the simplest math and the most esoteric poetry, (...) and it has even created a science of information itself. We begin our journey at the boundary of myth and reason, and along the way we visit the thoughts of the most high-flying of minds who could see that nothing, not ever-changing words, limitless numbers, or mystical visions, were beyond examination. Philosophy contains 100 chronological articles that recount the inspirations of great thinkers including Epicurus, St. Anselm, David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, David Chalmers, and Nick Bostrom. Far from being the work of dead geniuses, Philosophy is today at the heart of our battle to make sense of the quantum Universe. Philosophy embraces the paradox, and we present the most mind-boggling conundrums the last 3,000 years has to offer: Includes summaries of the fields of philosophy, setting out the basics in jargon-busting and lighthearted text. The life stories behind the great philosophers give further insight to their work. Philosophy also contains a 12-page Timeline History of Philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay argues that historians of science who seek to embody our oxymoronic self-description must confront both contradictory terms that define our common enterprise—that is, both “history” and “science.” On the history/methods side, it suggests that we embrace the heterogeneity of our institutional arrangements and repudiate the homogeneous disciplinary model sometimes advocated by Thomas Kuhn and followed by art history. This implies that rather than treating the history of science as an end in itself, we (...) consider it a means to a variety of historical ends, think of ourselves as a tool-making community, and jettison moralistic assertions of scientific exceptionalism. To do so, this essay argues—on the science/subject side—that we rebrand the subject of our historical inquiry as “episcience,” a neologism that stands in relation to “science” as the new field of epigenetics does to the old genetics. Episcience encompasses both the material activities of the relevant sciences and their “surround” (environment, milieu, Umgebung) to reframe knowledge making to include the material processes that put science “in play” and make its findings matter beyond science. The essay concludes that “the history of science” is an oxymoron that makes sense to the extent that its practitioners acknowledge that the history of science is important not just because science is important, but because its history is. (shrink)

This contribution to part 4 of the Common Knowledge symposium “Fuzzy Studies: On the Consequence of Blur” shows how the reputedly radical position that history is not about eternal truths but about the creative construction of a convincing narrative of past events is not an argument of recent vintage. In the days when postmodernism was a technical term used mainly by scholars of art and architecture—and indeed, decades before then—professional historians were grappling with the incapacity of facts to (...) write themselves into a universally satisfying, single version of history. Successive presidents of the American Historical Association such as Andrew Dickson White, Carl Becker, Charles Beard, and William McNeill admitted that writing history is a desperate attempt at pattern recognition in a fuzzy discipline. Pattern recognition is a tool, valuable as a stage in historical thinking, but destined ultimately to come undone. What remains, then, is fuzzy thinking. It can be a good thing, the article concludes, to let our thinking about history remain a blur or, at least, to bear in mind that any patterns we recognize in the past are liable to dissolve under a different light. (shrink)

_The Philosophy of Art _is a highly accessible introduction to current key issues and debates in aesthetics and philosophy of art. Chapters on standard topics are balanced by topics of interest to today's students, including creativity, authenticity, cultural appropriation, and the distinction between popular and fine art. Other topics include emotive expression, pictorial representation, definitional strategies, and artistic value. Presupposing no prior knowledge of philosophy, Theodore Gracyk draws on three decades of teaching experience to provide a balanced and engaging (...) overview, clear explanations, and many thought-provoking examples. All chapters have a strong focus on current debates in the field, yet historical figures are not neglected. Major current theories are set beside key ideas from Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Marx, and Hegel. Chapters conclude with advice on further readings, and there are recommendations of films that will serve as a basis for further reflection and discussion. Key ideas are immediately accompanied by exercises that will test students' reactions and understanding. Many chapters call attention to ideology, prejudices, and common clichés that interfere with clear thinking. Beautifully written and thoroughly comprehensive, _The Philosophy of Art _is the ideal resource for anyone who wants to explore recent developments in philosophical thinking about the arts. It is also provides the perfect starting point for anyone who wants to reflect on, and challenge, their own assumptions about the nature and value of art. (shrink)

_Forms of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge _addresses a philosophical subject—the nature of truth and knowledge—but treats it in a way that draws on insights beyond the usual confines of modern philosophy. This ambitious collection includes contributions from established scholars in philosophy, theology, mathematics, chemistry, biology, psychology, literary criticism, history, and architecture. It represents an attempt to integrate the insights of these disciplines and to help them probe their own basic presuppositions and methods. The essays in (...) _Forms of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge_ are collected into five parts, the first dealing with division of knowledge into multiple disciplines in Western intellectual history; the second with the foundational disciplines of epistemology, logic, and mathematics; the third with explanation in the natural sciences; the fourth with truth and understanding in disciplines of the humanities; and the fifth with art and theology. (shrink)

What if Immanuel Kant floated down from his transcendental heights, straight through Alice’s rabbit hole, and into the fabulous world of Lewis Carroll? For Ben-Ami Scharfstein this is a wonderfully instructive scenario and the perfect way to begin this wide-ranging collection of decades of startlingly synthesized thought. Combining a deep knowledge of psychology, cultural anthropology, art history, and the history of religions—not to mention philosophy—he demonstrates again and again the unpredictability of writing and thought and how they (...) can teach us about our experiences. Scharfstein begins with essays on the nature of philosophy itself, moving from an autobiographical account of the trials of being a comparativist to philosophy’s function in the outside world to the fear of death in Kant and Hume. From there he explores an impressive array of art: from China and Japan to India and the West; from an essay on sadistic and masochistic body art to one on the epistemology of the deaf and the blind. He then returns to philosophy, writing on Machiavelli and political ruthlessness, then on the ineffable, and closes with a review of Walter Kaufmann’s multivolume look at the essence of humanity, _Discovering the Mind_. Altogether, these essays are a testament to adventurous thought, the kind that leaps to the furthest reaches of the possible. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to (...) be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Abraham, Planter of Mathematics":Histories of Mathematics and Astrology in Early Modern EuropeNicholas PopperFrancis Bacon's 1605 Advancement of Learning proposed to dedicatee James I a massive reorganization of the institutions, goals, and methods of generating and transmitting knowledge. The numerous defects crippling the contemporary educational regime, Bacon claimed, should be addressed by strengthening emphasis on philosophy and natural knowledge. To that end, university positions were to be created (...) devoted to "Artes and Sciences at large," rather than to the professions. High salaries would render lecturers "able and sufficient," undistracted from their task. Most famously, he argued that teaching of the "operatiue studie of many Scyences" should involve sophisticated technical education. The study of natural philosophy demanded not only books, but globes, astrolabes, and other "instrumentals." Most significantly, yielding reliable and meaningful knowledge from experiential gleanings required a rigorous system of deductive reasoning.The legacy of this colossal proposal has earned Bacon honored status as devisor of the scientific method.1 But Bacon's educational reform extended [End Page 87] beyond the methods of producing and transmitting knowledge. To facilitate more efficient "vse and administration" of the knowledge produced by his system, he also demanded a searching examination of the history of learning. This history would provide a mirror enabling his contemporaries to deploy the fruits of his method, by considering how learning in the past had been used successfully or ill-advisedly. Producing this history was the ambition of the Advancement, for he explained: "no man hath propounded to himselfe the generall state of learning to bee described and represented from age to age, as many have done the works of Nature, & the State civile and Ecclesiastical." He continued:And yet I am not ignorant that in divers particular sciences, as of the Iurisconsults, the Mathematicians, the Rhetoricians, the Philosophers, there are set down some smal memorials of the Schooles, Authors, and Bookes: and so likewise some barren relations touching the Invention of Arts, or usages. But a iust story of learning, containing the Antiquities and Originalls of Knowledges, & their Sects; their Inventions, their Traditions; their diverse Administrations and Managings; their Flourishings, their Oppositions, Decayes, Depressions, Oblivions, Removes, with the causes, and occasions of them, and all other events concerning learning, throughout the ages of the world; I may truly affirme to be wanting.2Bacon thus positioned himself not only as a Father of Modern Science, but also a Father of the History of Science.Following Bacon's suggestion, I will examine the "small memorials" of the history of mathematics—and particularly the mathematical art of astrology—in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. My conclusion, however, will not bear out Bacon's claims. Despite his frustration, Bacon was only one of many early modern scholars appraising the role of mathematics within history. And he devoted less energy than others to mapping its origins and tracing its transmissions between communities. In fact, Bacon's 1605 proposal for a history of mathematics was already out-of-date. Discussions [End Page 88] of the history of mathematics had been rife on the continent and in England throughout the previous century.3The evidence that Renaissance scholars inherited was sprawling and inconclusive. Several genealogies for mathematics could be found within classical Greek, Latin, and patristic references. One lineage claimed mathematics began in ancient Assyria, where the priestly caste, the Chaldeans, practiced a form of mathematics that seemed a corrupt admixture of philosophy, medicine, and religion, and relied heavily on observation of the heavens. Other scholars traced the origins to Egypt, claiming that the field developed to survey lands frequently flooded by the Nile. The real problem for ancient, late antique, and medieval scholars had not been the origins of mathematics, but what exactly mathematics were. For some, the term strictly referred to the quadrivium: geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. But for others, mathematics' origins amongst the Egyptians or Chaldeans inextricably linked it to forms of astrological divination, augury, and necromancy that were unsavory to both Latin and Christian traditions. Mathematici were included alongside ghastly lists of Magi, Brahmins, Aruspices, Genethliaci, and other diabolic practitioners of idolatrous magic. These might or might not be distinguished from mathematici such as Pythagoras... (shrink)

A notion of "good work," derived from William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement but also part of a wider tradition in philosophy (associated with pragmatism and Everyday Aesthetics) understanding the global significance of, and opportunities for, aesthetic experience, grounds both art making and appreciation in the organization of labor generally. Only good work, which can be characterized as "authentic" or as unalienated conditions of production and reception, allows the arts to thrive. While Arts and Crafts sometimes promotes a (...) limited aesthetic (both theoretically and stylistically) around handicraft, a good-work aesthetic theory encompasses a broader range of working methods and materials without compromising the core Arts and Crafts "authenticity" principles of control over production and creative autonomy. Moreover, it gives weight to the equally important role of spectators by linking their aesthetic education to good work in their working lives and, in turn, to the success of artworks. The theory delivers insights into the nature of works as collaborative projects and the developmental courses, participatory and esoteric, open to the arts generally; and it is a robust counter to anti-aestheticism and intellectualism in the theory and practice of the arts. William Morris and the artist-craftsmen and -women of the Arts and Crafts Movement have a theory of art and the aesthetic that has an importance beyond their own artistic work and its achievements. Morris delivered lectures on the arts in many British towns and cities in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s; these were published as Hopes and Fears for Art and later as a volume of his collected works.1 The movement codified and publicized its practices through various societies and organizations like the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society and Charles Ashbee's Guild and School of Handicraft, each producing its own literature, which ranged from practical handbooks to political exhortations. Later, William Lethaby's lectures, often to organizations that were part of the movement, were published as Form in Civilisation.2 To that extent, then, a Morrisian or Arts and Crafts aesthetic theory has to be constructed from sources that were necessarily rhetorical, as well as being practical and theoretic. Morris and Lethaby were explicitly aiming to influence current artistic practice through their lectures to audiences usually composed of artists, architects, civic leaders, and so on (and this no doubt at least partly accounts for their neglect in philosophical aesthetics). Still, I will argue that this reconstructed theory is sufficiently coherent and sophisticated to be worth investigating for its relevance to contemporary debates in analytic aesthetics, particularly against those arguing for art as a nonaesthetic activity (of which the seminal text remains Arthur Danto's "The Artworld"), and for its arguments for art's connections (as an activity of both making and experiencing artworks) with other life experiences.3 In these respects, then, in the history of aesthetics it is a forerunner of, or at least has intellectual associations with, pragmatist aesthetics (yet it is often unacknowledged within that paradigm, so neither Dewey's Art as Experience nor the more recent pragmatist works by Richard Shusterman cite Morris) and shares ground associated with the Everyday Aesthetics movement.4In arguing for the theoretic and historic significance of a Morrisian aesthetic, I take encouragement and a lead from Paul Guyer's recent acknowledgement of the neglect of Morris in accounts of the history of philosophical aesthetics. Guyer names Morris, along with Schiller, Ruskin, and Dewey, as properly understanding the full significance of the distinctive character of aesthetic experience. As Guyer writes, they understood that aesthetic experience is distinctive in its freedom from our most immediate obsessions with purpose and utility, but that the freedom it thereby allows us is not a freedom for the simple contemplation of beauty with no further concerns or implications, but rather a freedom to develop our imaginative and cognitive capacities, to gain knowledge of ourselves and others, and to imagine new ways of life, a freedom that is valued not simply for its own sake but also because of the benefits the developments of these capacities can bring to the rest of our lives. (shrink)

The article analyses the history of the Einfühlung concept. Theories of ‘feeling into’ Nature, works of art or feelings and behaviours of other persons by German philosophers of the second half of the nineteenth century Robert and Friedrich Vischer and Theodor Lipps are evoked, as well as similar theory of understanding (Verstehen) by Wilhelm Dilthey and Friedrich Schleiermacher, to which Dilthey refers. The meaning of the term Einfühlung within Edith Stein’s thought is also analysed. Both Einfühlung and Verstehen were (...) criticized as non-objective and naive methods consisting only in the identification of the subject with the object or the projection of feelings onto the object. The article refers to criticism by Georg Gadamer and Bertolt Brecht and proposes ways to restitute the concept of Einfühlung after this criticism, recalling the theory of empathy by Dominick Lacapra, in terms of its advantages for the historical enquiry, or the myth of Narcissus analyzed in the spirit of psychoanalysis by Julia Kristeva. The article proposes a reformulation of the concept of mimesis, connected to the Einfühlung, understood as the identification, analogy, imitation of feelings (as it was described by Lipss and Vischer). Mimesis does not necessarily mean a passive repetition and reconstruction of the feelings of the object, but serves only as a starting point for the interest of the subject for the outside world or for experiences of historical protagonists. Then there is no identification or projection of feelings, but the creative, active and critical reformulation of knowledge. It is stated that empathy is not a passive, uncritical process, but that it deals with the critical choice of the object of empathy and with an active approach to the perceived feelings and appearances. In addition to this cognitive aspect, empathy may also contribute to the analytical and valuable introspection. Furthermore empathy allows us to connect the analysis of the facts with a personal narrative and understanding of individual identity in historical knowledge. (shrink)

Mr. Danto argues that recent developments in the artworld, in particular the production of works of art that cannot be told from ordinary things, make urgent the need for a new theory of art and make plain the factors such a theory can and cannot involve. In the course of constructing such a theory, he seeks to demonstrate the relationship between philosophy and art, as well as the connections that hold between art and social institutions and art history. (...) The book distinguishes what belongs to artistic theory from what has traditionally been confused with it, namely aesthetic theory and offers as well a systematic account of metaphor, expression, and style, together with an original account 0f artistic representation. A wealth of examples, drawn especially from recent and contemporary art, illuminate the argument. (shrink)

This text is organized around the distinction between finite and infinite. It includes a brief overview of what different philosophers have said about infinity, and looks at some of the arguments to the effect that one should adopt a pro-infinity attitude. Other chapters contain an exposition of the ontological schools; interactions among these schools and various theories of truth; the relationship between mathematics and values; a history of mathematics; an analysis of mathematical knowledge; the role of mathematics in (...) eduction; the implications of religion for the philosophy of mathematics; and referenc eto mathematical objects. (shrink)

The role of personal background knowledge—in particular knowledge about the context of production of an artwork—has been only marginally taken into account in cognitive approaches to art. Addressing this issue is crucial to enhancing these approaches’ explanatory power and framing their collaboration with the humanities (Bullot and Reber 2012). This paper sketches a model of the experience of artworks based on the mechanisms of intention attribution, and shows how this model makes it possible to address the issue of (...) personal background knowledge empirically. I claim that the role of intention attribution in art experience has been incorrectly accounted in the literature because of an overly narrow definition of “intention.” I suggest that the observer can recover not only the artist’s abstract projects, but any kind of mental states that have played a causal role during the production of the work. In addition, I suggest that this recovery occurs in large part unconsciously and/or implicitly. I provide support for these claims by distinguishing three families of psychological mechanisms of intention attribution that are activated by artworks: one involved in the cognition of artifacts, one devoted to communication, and one involved in action perception. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.4 (2006) 51-64 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Art as Symbolic Form: Cassirer on the Educational Value of ArtThora Ilin BayerIntroductionAmong the papers that Ernst Cassirer left at his death in 1945 is a fully written out lecture labeled "Seminar of Education, March 10th, 1943," which also bears the title "The Educational Value of Art." It may have been prepared for a session of Cassirer's (...) seminar at Yale for that spring on Aesthetics: Symbolic Forms, the second half of a yearlong course. 1 The text begins with discussion of the Platonic quarrel with the poets and moves through views of various thinkers, especially Croce and Collingwood. Cassirer had planned to have a volume on art included in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, in addition to those on Language,Mythical Thought, and The Phenomenology of Knowledge. 2 In these three volumes he often mentions the triad of language, myth, and art, but he says little of art as such.In May 1942 in a letter to Paul Schilpp, the American philosopher and editor of the volume of critical essays on Cassirer's work in the Library of Living Philosophers series, Cassirer wrote that he had intended to produce a volume on art but the disfavor (Ungunst) of the times caused him to put it off again and again. 3 The principal sources of Cassirer's aesthetics are his chapter on art in An Essay on Man 4 and two lectures on the educational value of art called "Language and Art I & II," 5 which parallel his earlier small study, Language and Myth. 6 Cassirer's conception of art as a symbolic form is derived from his conception of human culture as a systematic structure of symbolic forms that has as its main components myth and religion, language, art, history, and science (the chapter titles of the second part of An Essay on Man). In addition to these forms of culture there is a "metaphysics of symbolic forms," the subject of a fourth volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, left in manuscript at his death. 7 [End Page 51]I wish to raise two questions: (1) How does Cassirer conceive of art as a symbolic form? and (2) What are the implications of his conception for a conception of the ideals of aesthetic education? My aim in pursuing these questions is not to argue for the correctness of Cassirer's views but to attempt to establish what his views in fact are. Little has been written directly on Cassirer's conception of art relative to the frequency with which his name is mentioned in general discussions of aesthetics. 8 Cassirer's conception of education is a nearly unexamined subject. 9The Platonic Quarrel: MimesisCassirer says: "Of all the problems that we have to study in a philosophy of education, the problem of the educational value of art is one of the most difficult ones." 10 He claims that this problem goes back to the beginning of philosophy itself and that at present we are still very far from a generally accepted solution. Plato's famous quarrel with the poets in the tenth book of the Republic is important not simply for an understanding of ancient aesthetics but also for philosophy's conception of itself.The basic tenets of this quarrel are well known. I wish to review them here toward the goal of suggesting an original view of it that is derivable from Cassirer's approach. The issue is whether poetry or philosophy is the means to truth. The works of Homer had scriptural status for the Greeks and were thought to contain all that was necessary for civil wisdom. Poiein is to make and compose poetry. The ancient poet is a maker of truth claims through language. The quarrel rests on the fact that the philosopher is also a maker of truth claims formulated in words. Is the relatively new figure in Plato's time of the philosophos, the friend or lover... (shrink)

Contrary to conventional accounts, critical knowledge of the cultural differences of Amerindian peoples was not absent in the early Conquest of the Americas. It was indeed a constitutive element of that process. The knowledge, strategies, and institutions of early Conquest relied on, and reproduced, Amerindian difference within the Spanish Empire as an essential element of that empire’s continued claims to legitimate authority. I demonstrate this through a focus on three parallel and sometimes overlapping texts: Ramón Pané’s Indian Antiquities; (...) Peter Martyr d’Anghierra’s First Decade; and the first systematic attempt to govern colonized populations in the Americas, the Laws of Burgos. Not only did each text furnish the necessary material upon which the claims to intellectual, and so civilizational, superiority that were central to the justification of empire could be sustained. What is more, they transformed Amerindian difference from an object of knowledge into a subject of governance. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1975, is an examination of the theoretical foundation of the sociology of art and literature and an in-depth study in the sociology of knowledge. In discussing and clarifying some of the important philosophical issues in this field, the constant underlying reference is to the creative and artistic-expressive areas of knowledge ¿ so that the better understanding of the social nature and genesis of all knowledge may point the way towards a similar comprehension (...) of art and society. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to (...) be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

I define serendipity as the art of making an unsought finding. And I propose an overview of my collection of serendipities, the largest yet assembled, chiefly in science and technology, but also in art, by giving a list of ‘serendipity patterns’. Although my list of ‘patterns’ is just a list and not a classification, it serves to introduce a new and possibly stimulating perspective on the old subject of serendipity. Knowledge of these ‘serendipity patterns’ might help in expecting also (...) the unexpected and in finding also the unsought. * I acknowledge A. D. de Groot, R. C. M. Noordam, B. P. van Heusden, T. Pinkster, C. J. van den Berg, T. A. F. Kuipers, A. Wegener Sleeswijk and my referee for their suggestions and I dedicate this article to T. A. van Kooten. Cases and studies of serendipidy are welcome. À propos: a travelling serendipity exhibition is available, also for ‘new democracies’: ‘Freedom of opportunity as developed by democracy is the best human reaction to divergent phenomena. We may, in fact, define ‘freedom’ as ‘the opportunity to profit from the unexpected.’ (Langmuir [1956]). (shrink)