Cet article développe l’argument initialement présenté dans mon livre Hegel’s Aesthetics: The Art of Idealism, en prêtant plus d’attention aux termes mêmes de Hegel dans la troisième partie de ses leçons sur l’art. La troisième partie contient l’argument de Hegel selon lequel l’architecture, la sculpture, la peinture, la musique et la poésie nous permettent de contempler le statut ontologique de concepts cruciaux tels que l’espace, le temps, la personnalité et le sentiment. En particulier, j’explore comment le concept de jeu pourrait (...) être utilisé pour saisir comment Hegel comprend chacun des arts. Étant donnée la prédominance du jeu dans les philosophies esthétiques de Kant et de Schiller, le relatif oubli de ce concept chez Hegel est surprenant. Reprenant une suggestion de Georg Bertram selon laquelle les humains se mettent toujours « en jeu » dans l’expérience esthétique, je propose d’interpréter chacun des arts, de l’architecture à la poésie, nous permet de jouer en attirant notre attention sur la manière dont notre monde se forme avec ce que nous entendons, voyons ou ressentons. Je me tourne en particulier vers la différenciation hégelienne entre les différents types de poésie, en tant que plus haute manifestation de l’art, en considérant les différences entre la poésie épique, lyrique et dramatique et leurs ramifications respectives dans la formation du soi. Je conclus en analysant la capacité du drame à mettre en jeu notre idée de nous-mêmes en tant qu’agents, et soutiens que notre plaisir dans ce type de jeu explique, dans une certaine mesure, notre amour de l’art. (shrink)

Hegel attribue à l'art et à Ia philosophie une même tâche dans l'histoire de l'Esprit, celle de « réconcilier » les opposés. Nous expliquerons de quels éléments à médiatiser il s'agit, et une étude détaillée de textes de l'Introduction à l'Esthétique nous amènera à critiquer le moment de la transition vers la philosophie, celui de la poésie romantique. Nous suggérerons en particulier que l'emploi de deux critères différents pour établir la hiérarchie des arts et des formes empêche Hegel de (...) justifier réellement le dépassement de l'art par la philosophie ainsi que la supériorité de la réconciliation philosophique.Hegel assigns to art and philosophy one and the same task in the history of the Spirit, that of "reconciling" the opposites. I explain which elements are mediated, and rely on a detailed study of extracts from the Introduction to Aesthetics to criticize the moment of the transition to philosophy, viz. romantic poetry. In particular, I suggest that the use of two different criteria to establish a hierarchy of arts and forms prevents Hegel from giving a proper justification of how philosophy transcends art, and of why its reconciliation is superior. (shrink)

J’appelle « présentation esthétique » le fait, pour un artiste, de présenter certaines conditions ou certains moyens de son art dans les formes même de son art, de manière sensible (« esthétique ») et non pas discursive. Dans certaines œuvres, le musicien présente esthétiquement certains instruments de musique : l’instrument n’est plus seulement au service de la musique, il est mis en avant pour lui-même. La musique devient alors l’instrument de son instrument. J’analyse de ce point de vue (...) les Six Concerts à plusieurs instruments de Jean-Sébastien Bach et la série des seize Sequenze de Luciano Berio. Mais la distinction entre « utiliser » simplement un instrument et le « présenter » n’est pas simple. Il est difficile d’utiliser un instrument sans le présenter au moins tendanciellement, et impossible de le présenter sans l’utiliser. L’attention esthétique de l’auditeur a aussi sa part dans ce processus. (shrink)

How can a subjective experience claim universal validity? This question, posed by Kant in his Critique of Judgment, is also at the heart of Hegel's aesthetic project as I understand it. This article seeks to corroborate this proposition by analyzing how works of art transmit knowledge according to Hegel. I argue that one of the things that works of art can show according to Hegel are the apparently private subjective mental states that accompany our experience of worldly objects. Thus, art (...) has the capacity to make structures of the mind that we usually understand as internal to subjectivity and, as such, only accessible to the activity of reflection, accessible objects external to and capable of being perceived. In my view, this thesis is closely linked to the social character of Hegel's theory of mind. By making subjective mental states visible, artworks have, according to Hegel, the capacity to exert an influence on how viewers will perceive the world after encountering such works. Thus, artworks are also crucial sites for understanding how rational minds construct their perceptual world together. I first develop this interpretation abstractly, then apply it to the specific fields of poetry and architecture, before discussing the question of the poetics of architecture in the work of contemporary author Renee Gladman. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:L’esthétique de StaceA. M. KeithAnne-Marie Taisne. L’esthétique de Stace. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1994. 433 pp. Paper, 280 FF. (Collection d’Etudes Anciennes 122)Anne-Marie Taisne is the author of numerous articles concerning the literary history and artistic context that inform single poems in Statius’ Silvae and self-contained passages in his Thebaid and unfinished Achilleid, papers which lay the groundwork for her comprehensive new study of the literary (...) aesthetic on display in the extant poetic oeuvre of P. Papinius Statius. In this ambitious monograph, she undertakes to explore two facets of Statius’ technical artistry, his spatial and temporal imagery, within the theoretical framework provided by ancient literary criticism. She is particularly concerned to articulate the poet’s dynamic reuse of the weighty literary tradition to which he is heir, and accordingly proposes, in her introduction, to structure her discussion around such central ancient critical issues as imitatio (mimesis) along with its close relatives aemulatio and contaminatio, and doctrina with its associated critical vocabulary of ingenium, ratio, and ars (6–10). Throughout the volume, she explicates these techniques in detailed analysis of Statian imagines, which she defines generally in the sense of “imagery” following S. Viarre (“L’image et le symbole dans la poésie d’Ovide: Recherches sur l’imaginaire,” REL 62 [1974] 263–80), and particularly by reference to individual usages of the term as they are discussed in the article on imago in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (11).Part 1, “Correspondances dans l’espace,” examines the spatial imagery of Thebaid, Achilleid, and Silvae in three chapters which treat (1) echo and reflection (17–52), (2) metamorphosis, multiplication, and contagion (53–119), and (3) simile (120–76). Part 2, “Correspondances dans le temps,” investigates the poems’ use of time as a structural principle, again in three chapters which discuss (1) prophecies and portents (177–236), (2) digressive elements such as ecphrases and embedded narratives (237–303), and (3) leitmotifs, or repeated patterns of imagery, such as divine and human interventions and the role of nature in the poems. The material Taisne analyzes in part 1 coheres more convincingly with her overarching theme of spatial imagery than that which she discusses in part 2 under the rubric of temporal imagery. I did not understand, for example, why nature, well discussed in connection with Statius’ use of the simile in part 1 (137–62), reappears in part 2 (331–58) with no explanation of its relevance to temporal imagery.Taisne persuasively documents the wide range of literary models on which Statius draws in all his poetry, and shows that the Thebaid makes particular use of epic and tragic models (166–68, 170, 373–75), the Achilleid of tragic and lyric models (168–71, 374–78). Her discussion of the literary echoes and wider symbolic relevance of individual passages is often very interesting, and the sheer accumulation of literary parallels is extremely impressive. I was reminded of and newly alerted to significant literary resonances on almost every page, and noticed only one incomplete assemblage of literary parallels (in her discussion of Hylas [End Page 159] in Silvae 1.2.199 [27–28], there is no mention of Theocr. Id. 13, Ap. Rhod. Arg. 1.1207–72, or Nicander apud Ant. Lib. Met. 26). The service to which this material is put, however, is not as exciting as the length of the study might lead one to hope. Throughout, Taisne argues that Statius’ deployment of imagery is consistent with the overarching thematic framework of each poem, defined as furor and horror in the Thebaid (23 and passim), an ambiguous and deceptive calm in the Achilleid (353–54 and passim), and serenity and harmony in the Silvae (28 and passim), but she does not press her analysis beyond the accumulation of imagery in the service of these themes as evidence of Statian amplificatio. This is particularly disappointing in an author so well placed to discuss the material culture of the Flavian epoch and the interrelations between Statius’ poetry (especially the Silvae) and the culture of display in Domitian’s Rome. Nevertheless, scholars will be grateful to Taisne for the material she has collected... (shrink)

In this article, I highlight the following points. In 2022, the publication of the two volumes Inédits I (1946-1947) and Inédits II (1947-1949) was a great surprise. Among the many discoveries I made, I will focus here on the reading notes Merleau-Ponty had prepared on Hegel’s Aesthetics. I suggest that the motives of his reading of Hegel’s Aesthetics must be understood according to two aspects, intimately linked: they are first due to the fact that he himself was trying to formulate (...) his own theory of art and aesthetics; and second that he had in mind Sartre’s work What is Literature? I show that, indeed, in his reading of the Aesthetics, Merleau-Ponty very clearly focuses on the distinction between the different genres of art and on their historical divisions. This is a point that leads me to raise the following question: What are the distinctions between artistic genres in Merleau-Ponty? Here, for me it is above all a question of taking into account Merleau-Ponty’s reservations, exposed in his later essay “Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence,” concerning the Sartrean conception of literature which distinguishes poetry from prose. Ultimately, I defend the idea that Merleau-Ponty proposes an experience of art that is inter-genre and inter-media, which opens an indefinite horizon from the historical limitation of art. Based on his theory of language and art, he thus recognized the historicity of language and art, while considering the possibility of transforming this historicity into something open. (shrink)

Quand les diverses saveurs, cessant de s'opposer les unes aux autres, restent contenues dans la plénitude : le mérite de la fadeur est de nous faire accéder à ce fond indifférencié des choses ; sa neutralité exprime la capacité inhérente au centre. A ce stade, le réel n'est plus " bloqué " dans des manifestations partiales et trop voyantes ; le concret devient discret, il s'ouvre à la transformation. La fadeur des choses appelle au détachement intérieur. Mais elle est aussi (...) une vertu, notamment dans notre rapport à autrui, parce qu'elle est gage d'authenticité ; elle doit être aussi à la base de notre personnalité puisque, seule, elle permet de posséder également toutes les aptitudes et de faire preuve, en chaque occasion, de la faculté requise. Sur ce lieu commun de la fadeur se rencontrent et s'entendent tous les courants de la pensée chinoise : confucianisme, taoïsme, bouddhisme. Ces courants ne l'envisagent donc ni sur un mode abstrait, à finalité théorique, ni, à l'autre bord, comme un ineffable, à vocation mystique. Mais c'est lui que révèlent, par leur dépouillement et leur richesse allusive, les arts de la Chine peinture, musique ou poésie. En nous conduisant à la limite du sensible, là où celui-ci s'efface et se résorbe, la fadeur nous fait éprouver un " au-delà ". Mais ce dépassement ne débouche pas sur un autre monde, à statut métaphysique, coupé de la sensation. Il déploie seulement celui-ci - mais décanté de son opacité, redevenu virtuel, rendu disponible - sans fin - à la jouissance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cynthia Willett HEGEL, ANTIGONE, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF ECSTATIC DIALOGUE In his lectures on aesthetics, Hegel argues that drama is the highest form of art. Only drama can resolve, or sublate (auflieben), an opposition between objective and subjective poles ofaesthetic experience.1 This opposition takes its penultimate form in the difference between epic and lyric poetry. Subjective feelings expressed in lyric and the objective representation ofevents in epic are sublated (...) in classical drama as ethical character and action. In this article I will examine both what Hegel does and does not say about the structure and function ofclassical drama in order to determine its role in the education of humanity, or what Hegel calls the "phenomenology of spirit." As it turns out, drama is not only a climactic moment in the development of spirit. The structure ofdrama also traces a paradigm and an historical origin for Hegel's dialectic. The ironic reversals and discoveries that emplot tragic drama also constitute dialectic. An immediate consequence of this parallel is mat, in accordance with Aristode's definition of tragic drama, dialectic demands the catharsis, or purging, of emotion from educated spirit.2 After establishing the analogy between dialectic and cathartic drama, I turn to the exemplary role that is played by Sophocles' Antigone in the Phenomenology ofSpirit. A reinterpretation of the play suggests that Hegel fails to see that emotional engagement, or the unsublated subjective feeling relegated to die lower art of lyric, in fact orients the dramatic action of Antigone. The resemblance between drama and dialectic suggests that desire can no more be purged from dialectic than from classical tragedy. As a consequence, Hegelian dialectic should be reconceived in terms of a notion of tragedy that is not cathartic but ecstatic. Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 268-283 Cynthia Willett269 In the AesUietks, Hegel places drama after epic and lyric as the third and final moment of the highest stage of art. Drama presents actions that are ethical and thus differs from the lyrical expression of feelings as well as the adventures narrated in epic (A, pp. 1158; 474). Hegel's definition of epic in terms of narration and description suggests that the language of epic functions as representation. Representational language externalizes, or objectifies, spirit's movement in a series ofevents which are related by the epic poet. This narration functions without the mediation ofa subject, which is to say without an "agent's inner will and character" (A, pp. 1160; 476). Lyric poetry, on the other hand, concerns feelings or "the inner life alone" (A, pp. 984; 254). In accordance with its subject matter, the language oflyric is not representational but expressive. Drama presents actions before an audience, such actions occurring primarily in the mode of speech (A, pp. 1159; 475). What we can characterize as the "speech-acts" performed in drama carry out intentions of, or ends soughtby, the main character. Drama advances dialectic because, as Hegel writes, "drama does not fall apart into a lyric inner life and an external sphere as its opposite, but displays an inner life and its external realization" (A, pp. 1 160; 476). First, events which occur episodically in epic attain the unity of a single action that comprises dramatic plot. Secondly, a "cleaned-up" version ofthe "chaotic" feelings expressed in lyric poetry develops into the intention of a character to adher to a universal ethical principle. It is important to emphasize that, according to Hegel, drama should not draw any of its effect from subjective emotions. Drama sublates lyrical feeling into ethical law. Only thus does drama bring together the epic-making events and lyrical subjectivity, notby wayofa mechanical synthesis, but in a metamorphosis enabling elements initially opposed to give rise to an original whole. The proximity ofdrama to dialectical thought appears in the contrast Hegel draws between dramatic action and action which is prosaic, or philosophically insignificant (A, pp. 1159; 475). Dramatic action, Hegel explains, "is notconfined to the simple and undisturbed accomplishment ofa specific aim; on the contrary, it rests entirely on collisions ofcircumstances, passions, and characters... which in turn necessitate a resolution of the conflict and discord" (A, pp. 1159; 475). On the other hand, a prosaic, or ordinary... (shrink)

Literature plays a relevant role in Hegel’s philosophical discourse. On the one hand, literary references are often interwoven with his speculative argumentation, on the other hand, the Aesthetics regards poetry as the highest form of artistic expression, for it is able to represent the different ways of human action and to bring up their hidden ideal presuppositions. The aim of this paper is to show how the concept of action is crucial to the interpretation of literary phenomena in the Aesthetics, (...) but assumes different configurations in relation to the historical transformation of the concept of subjectivity. To verify the specifically aesthetic import of concepts such as action and recognition, which originally belong to the ethical-political sphere, I will examine Hegel’s interpretation of the chivalric literature, which is present in various areas and with different functions in the structure of the Aesthetics, as a component of his theory of subjectivity. This topic has been little studied but offers an interesting perspective on some problematic points of Hegel’s theory: the controversial relation between the structural dimension of the concept of art and historical development of artistic forms, the apparently univocal paradigm of classic beauty, and the definition of artistic modernity. (shrink)

Little attention has been paid to Hegel’s version of the sublime. I argue that the sublime plays a very marginal role in the Berlin lectures on aesthetics and on religion; in particular, Hegel ignores the “Romantic” sublime popular among his contemporaries. The sublime he locates in Persian poetry and more properly in Biblical Psalmody. After surveying his various articulations of the sublime, I turn to Hegel’s careful analysis of how the Psalms achieve their peculiar effects and note his focus on (...) the “individual.” Paradoxically, while close to Romantic “subreption”, their complex play with voice—and Hegel’s explication—both keep a safe distance, I contend. Turning finally to the question of anachronism and the sublime as a historical category, I suggest in a brief postscript how effects analogous to the Psalms’ rhetoric may nevertheless be detected in Terry Malick films. (shrink)

‘Being with oneself in the other’ is a well-known formula that Hegel uses to characterize the basic relation of subjective freedom. This phrase points to the fact that subjects can only come to themselves if they remain capable of going beyond themselves. This motif also plays a significant role in Hegel’s philosophy of art. The article further develops this motif by exploring the extent to which this polarity of selfhood and otherhood is also characteristic of states of aesthetic freedom. It (...) does not offer an exegesis of Hegel’s writings, but attempts to remain as close as possible to the spirit of Hegel’s philosophy – with some help from Kant and Adorno. The argument begins with some key terms on the general state of subjective freedom in order to distinguish it from the particular role of aesthetic freedom and then, finally, drawing again on Hegel, works out the sense in which aesthetic freedom represents an important variant of freedom. (shrink)

The playful discussion of 'horsemanship' that opens Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesie has been variously interpreted as a straightforward anecdote about the chivalric arts, or an oblique rhetorical flourish, or something in between. This essay suggests a new context for Sidney's exordium by focusing primarily on its affiliation to the genre of the 'Art of Poetry'. In Horace's Ars poetica and other classical, scholastic and Renaissance treatises, horse–men and other unnatural hybrids embody the tension between decorum and poetic liberty. (...) Three major traditions inform this trope: by the Renaissance the centaur could be an allegory of reason's struggle with the passions, an emblem of the poetic imagination, or a figure for compositional hybridity associated, especially, with Lucianic satire. Reading Sidney in the light of these traditions, finally, this essay explores aspects of the centaur's significance in the Defence and the Arcadia, and suggests that this kind of attention to metaphor might provide a bridge between critical and creative modes of Renaissance poetic thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Playing Attention":Contemporary Aesthetics and Performing Arts Audience EducationMonica Prendergast (bio)IntroductionThe spectator is an essential element of the kind of play we call aesthetic.1We all watch television. We all go to the movies. Some of us also attend live performances such as plays, concerts, operas, dance recitals, poetry or prose readings, and so on. What are the differences to be found among these experiences? The audience experience of television or (...) film is a shared one, although a more fragmented sharing in the case of television, as it is with live arts events. We are aware that we are not alone in viewing a show, that it is a collective event. But we also realize that our presence does not really matter (aside from boosting ratings or adding to box office profits) and that the performance will continue with or without us. We may exit or enter the room or auditorium at will and never offend the actors, because their presence is "mediatized" and we are not sharing the same time or space with them.2 Attending a live performance is otherwise; our presence is a key element of the event and definitely can and does make a significant difference both for ourselves and for the performers. Although the size and qualities of the event and audience may alter this assertion — a huge stadium rock concert is arguably a more mediatized live performance than a small folk club date — it still holds true that presence is one of the most important qualities of audience in live performance.If we can accept that audience presence is central to performance, then it follows that aesthetic education in the performing arts needs to pay some attention to this phenomenon. In a First World culture that is currently over-saturated with mediatized performance, the future health and vitality of live performance is endangered if educators neglect to address the challenges and processes involved in being an audience for the performing arts in arts education curricula. This essay explores how aesthetic/arts education may [End Page 36] assist young people to grow in awareness and understanding of the essential role that is played by audience in attending performance. In examining the work of four contemporary aesthetic philosophers — Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Paul Thom, and James O. Young — I focus on the areas of spectatorship, attention, interpretation, and evaluation/criticism as important qualities of audience-in-performance. I will then offer a possible curriculum framework for audience education in the performing arts that is performative in form and nature; that is, creative, experiential, emergent, and open question-driven.Both classical and contemporary aesthetic philosophy tends to ignore the performing arts in general and audience-in-performance in particular.3 Plato derides performance as anti-reason and Aristotle salvages it by focusing on the audience's experience of catharsis in tragedy, but this fascinating debate gets lost over time as philosophers get caught up in questions around the definition and nature of art. Examinations of audience in aesthetics tend to assume an audience engaged in the more reflective, contemplative, and individual activity of viewing a work of visual art, reading a poem, or appreciating beauty in general. Discussions of performing arts deal with the text of a play or the score of a musical piece as the primary aesthetic object, with performances of these texts or scores considered somehow secondary, less-definable therefore less worthy of serious philosophic consideration.4 Although a number of aesthetic philosophers have taken up performance and audience issues in more recent years, especially regarding issues around "authentic" performance of music on original instruments, the experience of audience-in-performance remains understudied.5 Others, such as Nick Zangwill, try to negate the audience altogether as being a relatively insignificant part of an aesthetic event and argue that the central focus of aesthetics should be on the artist and the creation of artworks.6Fortunately, there have been a few voices in the field that do attend more closely to performing arts in general and audience in particular, or whose work can be effectively applied to this distinct type of aesthetic event. In the next section I will describe... (shrink)

"The first of the particular arts . . . is architecture." (A 13.116/1.83)1 For Hegel, architecture stands at several beginnings. It is the art closest to raw nature. It is the beginning art in a progressive spiritualization that will culminate in poetry and music. The drive for art is spirit's drive to become fully itself by encountering itself; art makes spirit's essential reality present as an outer sensible work of its own powers.2 (A 13.453/1.351) If Hegel's narrative of the arts (...) creates a hierarchy, architecture stands lowest, yet it nonetheless plays a unique and necessary role in spirit's development. In this essay I first describe Hegel's views on the nature of architecture and its three stages (symbolic, classical, romantic). Then I indicate some problems with Hegel's narrative. Finally I raise the question whether Hegel's theories might be adapted to our present architectural situation. (shrink)

A Hermeneutics of Poetic Education: The Play of the In-Between provides an account of poetic education as an alternative to aesthetic education. Drawing on philosophical hermeneutics and philosophy of play, Homan argues that rather than the cultivation of taste, education is the cultivation of formation and a learning to listen.

Cet article examine les enjeux des théories de la Bildung chez Kant et Schiller, et leur confrontation mutuelle avec la philosophie de l’autre. On propose une voie interprétative médiane qui ne part pas de l’opposition trop réductrice entre la morale et l’esthétique, ni ne lit Schiller comme étant foncièrement opposé à Kant pour des raisons soit morales, soit éducatives, mais situe plutôt la principale contribution de Schiller dans la sphère de la moralisation. Cette approche éclaire plus adéquatement la manière (...) dont la théorie schillérienne de la Bildung répond aux questions fondamentales laissées ouvertes par les conceptions de Kant. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to focus on the concept of reading in Paul Ricœur’s Time and Narrative, through the notions of triple mimesis and refiguration, in continuity with previous investigations on the issue of hermeneutics and in phenomenology. While relying on developments in philosophical hermeneutics since Gadamer, Ricœur’s concept of reading might work as a paradigm allowing to link the layers of interpretation and reception that build out the aesthetic experience. In this way, analyses come into play that (...) make an initial philosophical framework a more complicated one and that allow to extend such paradigm to non-verbal or non-linguistic fields. This article is structured in two sections. The first section aims to specify the general framework of Ricœur’s hermeneutics, to review the critical reception of Time and Narrative, and to recall of the constant correlation between refiguration and temporality. The second section more specifically considers the fourth chapter in the second part of Time and Narrative’s third volume (French edition) wherein the articulation between reading and aesthetics is developed. However, a critical re-evaluation of this latter development must be provided not only in order to recognise some limitations to Ricœur’s approach of refiguration but also to see how the hermeneutical approach is, despite of all, what allows a mediation between the aesthetic and artistic. (shrink)

Goethe and Friedrich Schiller stand together immortalised in Ernst Rietschel's statue at the centre of Weimar. In their lifetime, Goethe and Schiller shaped the culture of German-speaking lands, not only through their poetry, plays, and novels, but also in their role as editors of journals that helped to set the intellectual tone of the period. Schiller's journalDie Horen and Goethe'sPropyläen, although short-lived, were important literary vehicles of the period and provided a forum that brought scientists, historians, philosophers, and poets into (...) conversation with one another. The late 1700s and early 1800s were years of intense intellectual development in Germanspeaking lands; the arts flourished and aesthetics developed as a serious branch of philosophy.During the ‘Age of Goethe and Schiller’, philosophy was dominated by Kant's philosophy and its post-Kantian variations. A problem with traditional philosophical histories of this period is the overwhelmingly Hegelian reading of it, a reading that subsumes all of the so-called minor figures under the shadows of the great system builder, Hegel. Richard Kroner's influentialVon Kant bis Hegelof 1921 set the tone for this reading. Silenced by such narratives are the voices of the early German Romantics, a group of thinkers whose impudence created problems for them, and whose work posed hermeneutical challenges that continue to plague a proper understanding of the movement and the worth of its contributions. As we shall see, Hegel himself began to prepare the ground for a history of philosophy that would dismiss the contributions of the early German Romantics, a dismissal that is unfair and unfortunate: unfair because it is based on false characterisations of the movement, and unfortunate because such misreadings lead us to overlook the wealth of insights offered by the early German Romantics. (shrink)

James H. Donelan describes how two poets, a philosopher, and a composer - Hölderlin, Wordsworth, Hegel, and Beethoven - developed an idea of self-consciousness based on music at the turn of the nineteenth century. This idea became an enduring cultural belief: the understanding of music as an ideal representation of the autonomous creative mind. Against a background of political and cultural upheaval, these four major figures - all born in 1770 - developed this idea in both metaphorical and actual musical (...) structures, thereby establishing both the theory and the practice of asserting self-identity in music. Beethoven still carries the image of the heroic composer today; this book describes how it originated in both his music and in how others responded to him. Bringing together the fields of philosophy, musicology, and literary criticism, Donelan shows how this development emerged from the complex changes in European cultural life taking place between 1795 and 1831. (shrink)

Is it possible to speak about the unspeakable as it is represented in music, lyric poetry, and tragedy? The answer is yes, if we adopt a purely aesthetic perspective. The answer is no, if we adopt the perspective of the transcendental subject as the metaphysical source of music, lyric poetry, and tragedy. In this paper, I conceptualize the nondiscursivity of music, lyric poetry, and Attic tragedy in the philosophical aesthetics of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. I also make a few incidental (...) remarks to Plato's Socrates and Aristotle as well as the Theban plays by Sophocles. (shrink)

Je soutiens que dans la troisième partie, ou « Partie particulière » de l’ Esthétique, les diverses réflexions de Hegel sur les dimensions matérielles des différents supports artistiques reviennent à une véritable « esthétique de la matérialité ». Je montre que Hegel se concentre sur le potentiel esthétique distinctif inhérent aux formes matérielles elles-mêmes, considérées indépendamment et avant que ces formes ne s’effacent pour permettre à une présence résolument spirituelle d’émerger d’elles. Bien qu’il soit courant de considérer (...) que l’art est, pour Hegel, exclusivement concerné par la présentation sensible de l’esprit, la présence esthétique persistante de la matérialité inhérente au support même de l’œuvre d’art n’est ni extérieure à la beauté de l’art, ni un obstacle à celle-ci, mais lui est essentielle. (shrink)

Hegel's reading of Hafez as part of his Berlin aesthetics lectures. The jargon of the prosaic world -/- This essay deals with Hegel's reading (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 - 1831) of Hafez' poetry (Moḥammad Schams ad-Din Hafez Schirazi, around 1315 - 1390) during his lectures on the Aesthetics or Philosophy of Art at the University of Berlin (1820/21; 1823; 1826; 1828/29). Hegel's writings, Lectures on Aesthetics, were published from his remains by Heinrich Gustav Hotho (1802 - 1873) in three (...) volumes (1835 - 1838) and in a second edition from 1842 onwards. The posthumously published writings of Hegel are, considering the preserved archive material and the unreliable editing work by Hotho, a thoroughly complex research topic. Therefore, this problem area also forms the starting point of the present analysis of Hegel's reading of Hafez. -/- Within the framework of this essay, Hegel's categories of historical frameworks (Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic Art), especially that of the "Symbolic Art", are examined in his lectures on Aesthetics . This will do in three steps: starting with the current state of research, problematizing of Hegelian concepts in his Lectures on Aesthetics like "oriental Pantheism" or Vorkunst, ("the threshold of art" or "praeambula": T. M. Knox' translation, 1975, part I); extending the discussion by focusing on similarities and differences between Hegel's reading of Goethe (part II) and Hegel's reading of Hafez (part III) in his Berlin Aesthetics Lectures of the 1820's. For this purpose, material from Goethe's literary remains (II), as well as a masterpiece of Dutch painters van Eyck analyzed by Hegel (Ghent Altarpiece) during his lectures (III), will be included in the analysis and explored from an interdisciplinary and intercultural perspective. In doing so, Goethe's “Space of Experience and Horizon of Expectation” (Koselleck) in imitating Arabic script and calligraphy (II) is linked to Hegel's reading of Hafez during his Berlin lectures on aesthetics (III). Thus, a dialogue of cultures unfolds between poetry and philosophy. The main questions are: How does the German philosopher Hegel interpret and receive Hafiz's poetry in the context of German idealist philosophy as a topic of his lectures on aesthetics? What epistemological aspects can be gained from Hegel's reading of Hafez for a cultural studies analysis, especially regarding the history of the ideas? In addition to analyzing the historical aspects, the aim is also to uncover new perspectives in order to look with Hafez and Rumi at Hegel's problem child of ‘history’. Of particular interest are epistemological aspects and problems of reception and translation studies in sense of interdisciplinary and intercultural research (e. g. connected/entangled histories; boundary objects). Interculturality is understood in the context of the present essay as a cross-disciplinary theoretical framework in the sense of entangled histories research work interwoven with communication, aesthetic and cultural techniques approaches or resilience studies in a historical perspective. (shrink)

Baudelaire's response to Delacroix's art and theories provides a particularly fruitful focus for a study of the new rapport between the former sister arts. There is little similarity between Delacroix's action-filled exotic subjects and Baudelaire's more intimate and private poetry; their arts must therefore be related in some domain apart from content. We are aided in deciphering this domain by Baudelaire's extensive commentary on Delacroix. Moreover, perhaps because of its subtlety, the relationship between these arts has not received the attention (...) it deserves.1 Yet no sooner is the possibility for such a study recognized than the problems it entails become apparent. Without the focus of common subjects, where does one begin? The dangers of impressionistic comparisons of study are readily apparent in the tendency of Geistesgeschichte studies to transfer stylistic terms from one art form to another, creating such bizarre transpositions as "the visible chamber music of the bent furniture" or the "Titian style of the madrigal" in Spengler's Decline of the West or Wylie Sypher's suggestion that a Shakespearean play is like a Renaissance painting because it makes use of "perspective" to create a real and believable world.2 And indeed it would be misleading to look for particular stylistic similarities between Delacroix and Baudelaire. Delacroix's dissolution of solid color masses into separate strokes of different colors, for example, would appear to be closer to Rimbaud's disjointed language than to Baudelaire's carefully interwoven sentences. Only by viewing the two art forms as interconnected systems can we determine their relationship. If the new affiliation of poetry and painting in the Romantic period derives from the expression of imaginative unity, a critical approach to their relationship must be attuned to different ways of expressing unity. The theoretical framework that accounts most completely for the kind of relationship existing between Delacroix and Baudelaire is provided by the structuralists, although, as we shall see, even this approach has limitations. · 1. There are several studies of Baudelaire's aesthetics and criticism, such as André Ferran's L'Esthétique de Baudelaire , Margaret Gilman's Baudelaire the Critic , and Jean Prévost's Baudelaire: essai sur l'inspiration et la création poétiques , which contain sections on the influence of Delacroix but do not extend their analysis into Baudelaire's poetry as a whole. More specific works, such as Lucie Horner's Baudelaire critique de Delacroix , provides a detailed study of their relationship based on their correspondence and references to one another, but no analysis of the relationship between their two art forms. Some studies of Baudelaire's poetry, such as Lloyd James Austin's L'Univers poétique de Baudelaire: symbolisme et symbolique and Martin Turnell's Baudelaire: A Study of His Poetry , point out aspects of Baudelaire's poems that appear relevant to the relationship with Delacroix, but they do not make these connections themselves. Most commentary on the relationship of Delacroix to Baudelaire's poetry is limited to those few poems that Baudelaire wrote on Delacroix's paintings.· 2. Wellek and Warren quote the comments on Spengler in Theory of Literature, p. 131. Sypher's comments are in Four Ages of Renaissance Style: Transformations in Art and Literature 1400-1700 , pp. 79-80. Elizabeth Abel is an assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. A coeditor of Critical Inquiry, she is currently writing a book on literary and psychoanalytic representation of female identity. (shrink)

L’objectif de cet article est de présenter deux axes généraux d’analyse des jeux vidéo. Le premier axe précise les différents degrés de différenciation entre le play et le game . Le second axe, la « composition actantielle », permet d’évaluer la relation nouée par le joueur avec la collectivité. La combinaison de ces deux critères révèle une forte polarisation entre deux expositions contemporaines : celle du Grand Palais à Paris , et le festival GamerZ d’Aix-En-Provence. Partant de cette observation, nous (...) ferons l’hypothèse que le jeu vidéo ne suit pas le même rythme d’évolution dans les champs médiatiques et esthétiques.This article describes two overall research directions in analyses of video games. The first specifies degrees of differentiation between play and game . The second, derived from the “actantial model”, is used to assess the relationships forged by a player with the community. Combining the two reveals a high degree of polarisation between two contemporary exhibitions: Game Story at the Grand Palais in Paris and GamerZ in Aix-En-Provence. Based on this observation, we put forward the hypothesis that video games are changing at a different pace in the media and in aesthetics. (shrink)

Introduction: The Shape and Influence of Hegel's Aesthetics / Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert -- The Contemporary Importance of Hegel's Aesthetics -- The Sources for Hegel's Aesthetics -- Hegel's Philosophy of Art as Reflected in Its Original Reception -- 'Transcripts Are of Course Opaque Sources' -- The Hotho Transcript of the 1823 Berlin Lectures -- Two Challenges to the Worthiness of Art for Philosophical Examination -- The Specific Topic: The Philosophy of Art -- Overview of the Topic and Its Treatment -- The General (...) Part -- The Beautiful as Such -- Artistic Beauty as the Ideal -- The Existence or Actualization of the Ideal -- The General Art Forms -- The Particular Part -- Architecture -- Sculpture -- Painting -- Music -- Poetry. (shrink)

Comment la création poétique s'accommode-t-elle du savoir religieux qui l'inspire ? la question sera étudiée à l'aide d'illustrations prises chez des poètes chrétiens d'avant-guerre ou d'après-guerre . On testera à cet effet une typologie qui distingue une poésie « confessionnelle », une autre « confessante », et un troisième type « indirect », selon les réminiscences verbales qu'on y trouve ou les innovations de langage ou le jeu des références à l'expérience spirituelle. Il devrait apparaître finalement que la ligne de (...) démarcation de la créativité poétique sépare moins les deux premiers types du troisième qu'elle ne passe entre le premier et les deux autres, quand ces deux derniers préservent l'ouverture de la référence à des interprétations diverses.How does poetical creation adapt to the religions knowledge that inspires it ? The question will be treated with the help of illustrations taken from pre-war Christian poets - Claudel, Reverdy – or post-war ones – La Tour du Pin, Lemaire, Mambrino –. To that effect, a typology distinguishing a « denominational » poetry, a « confessing » one, and a third, indirect type, will be tested, according to the verbal influences that are to be found, or to the language innovations, or to the interaction of the references to the spiritual experience. It should eventually be obvious that the boundary line of the poetical creativity does not separate the first two types from the third one, as much as it runs between the first one and the two others, when the latter enable various interpretation. (shrink)

With the development of society, the rapidly developing social environment has played a significant role in the particular group of college students. College students will inevitably suffer setbacks and psychological obstacles in their studies and daily life. This work aims to ameliorate college students’ various mental illnesses caused by anxiety and confusion during the critical period of status transformation. Educational psychology theory, aesthetic theory, and poetry appreciation are applied to the mental health education of college students to obtain a satisfying (...) psychological healing effect. First, this work summarizes the connotation and characteristics of college student’s mental health and defines educational psychology. Secondly, the long tradition of Chinese poetry teaching is introduced. Besides, the theoretical basis of poetry therapy and aesthetic psychology is expounded, and foreign poetry is discussed. In addition, poetry appreciation is used to promote personality shaping and psychological healing of college students based on the theory of educational psychology and poetry appreciation psychotherapy. In addition, mental health education for college students is studied from the perspectives of psychological health, mental health education, college students’ mental health education, and appreciation of ancient poetry. In addition, the principle and significance of college students’ mental health education are discussed from the perspective of poetry appreciation. Finally, an experimental study is conducted on college students and patients in a specific hospital department by issuing questionnaires to verify the practical application effect of this method in psychotherapy. The survey results indicate that the scores of college students who have completed a one-semester poetry appreciation course in different dimensions of mental disorders are lower than those of those who have not completed the course. At the same time, in the scores of 16 personality traits, the positive trait scores of the experimental group are higher than those of the control group. Comparing scores before and after class also reflects the positive effect of poetry appreciation intervention on college students’ personality shaping. It can be concluded that poetry appreciation has a strong effect on promoting college students’ mental health and personality shaping and improving college students’ psychological problems. (shrink)

Consonant with the ongoing “aesthetic turn” in legal scholarship, this article pursues a new conception of law as poetry. Gestures in this law-as-poetry direction appear in all three main schools in the philosophy of law’s history, as follows. First, natural law sees law as divinely-inspired prophetic poetry. Second, positive law sees the law as a creative human positing (from poetry’s poesis). And third, critical legal theory sees these posited laws as calcified prose prisons, vulnerable to poetic liberation. My first two (...) sections interpret two texts at the intersections among these three theories, namely Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Defense of Poetry” and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Shelley identifies a poetic rebirth in the ruins of natural law, suggesting a philosophy of law as “natural poesis.” And Tocqueville names several figurative aristocracies capable of redeploying aristocratic law against democratic despotism, suggesting a philosophy of law as “aristo-poetic counterforce.” Finally, I propose a new theory of law as poetry bridging these two theories, “natural aristo-poetic counterforce.”. (shrink)

G.W.F. Hegel's aesthetics, or philosophy of art, forms part of the extraordinarily rich German aesthetic tradition that stretches from J.J. Winckelmann's Thoughts on the Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks and G.E. Lessing's Laocoon through Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment and Friedrich Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man to Friedrich Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy and Martin Heidegger's The Origin of the Work of Art and T.W. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory. Hegel was influenced in (...) particular by Winckelmann, Kant and Schiller, and his own thesis of the “end of art” has itself been the focus of close attention by Heidegger and Adorno. Hegel's philosophy of art is a wide ranging account of beauty in art, the historical development of art, and the individual arts of architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry. It contains distinctive and influential analyses of Egyptian art, Greek sculpture, and ancient and modern tragedy, and is regarded by many as one of the greatest aesthetic theories to have been produced since Aristotle's Poetics. (shrink)

For Kant, poetry is the freest, finest art of all. Music and painting depend on sensuous charms. Poetry offers the most direct presentation of "aesthetic ideas". As Kant's critique subjects reason to reason, so too does the poet try to best language via language. However, the poet's license is not absolute. The poet must create a new sense, not nonsense, lest he slide into the intractable privacy of delirium or evil. Using Hannah Arendt's reading of the Third Critique, and excerpts (...) from one of Kant's favorite poets, Milton, I examine the extent of the free play poetry allows. (shrink)

Certaines maximes énigmatiques dÉpicure nous parlent de l'essence du plaisir en termes de concentration et d'ex-centration, de condensation et d'ex- tension, d'implosion d'explosion. Un certain épicurisme chez Kant lui fait dire la même chose, là où le sentiment vital est invoqué dans l'expérience esthé- tique. Le plaisir esthétique est mis en rapport avec la tensivité, le corps, la vie, le corps-en-vie. Toutefois, le plaisir, dans la tradition épicurienne, semble être l'inter- face de eros et aisthèsis, d'une érotétique et d'une (...) esthétique, le corps-en-vie étant un corps-désir et un corps-sensation. Lucrèce, en bon épicurien et en préfi- gurant un certain Merleau-Ponty, évoque dans sa poésie géniale la vérité des sens, celle du corps-sensation défini à partir de la " sensation globale " du corps .Some enigmatic maxims of Epicurus discuss the essence of pleasure focusing on terms like concen- tration and excentration, condensation and extension, implosion and explosion. The epicurist tendency in Kant makes him saying similar things. He mentions " vital feeling " in his determination of the aesthetic experience. Aesthetic pleasure then is related to " tensivity ", the body and life, the living body. However, pleasure, in the Epicurean tradition, seems to be the interface o/eros and aisthèsis, of a erotetic and an aesthetic, because the living body is at the same time a body-desire and a body-sensation. Lucretius, as a good Epicurean and announcing Merleau-Ponty, writes in his genial poem about the truth of the senses, the truth of body-sensation defined from the point of view of the " global sensation " of the body. (shrink)

Why have poets played such an important role for contemporary philosophers? How can poetry link philosophy and political theory? How do formal considerations intersect with philosophical approaches? These essays seek to establish a dialogue between poetry and philosophy. Each essay contributes to our understanding of the relationships between theory and lived experience while providing new insight into important poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Victor Hugo, and others. The broad range of metaphysical, phenomenological, aesthetic, and ethical approaches announce important (...) new paths for a reinvigorated study of lyric poetry in the decades to come. (shrink)

La question des rapports entre philosophie et poésie n'a cessé de solliciter la réflexion comme s'il y avait entre elles affinité et hostilité secrètes. Qu'en est-il du rapport sans séparation ni confusion entre philosophie et poésie? Penseurs et poètes peuvent-ils se rencontrer? Et quels sont les voies et moyens de leur possible conciliation? L'affinité secrète entre métaphysique et poésie est d'abord élucidée à la lumière de la philosophie de Schelling. Il est ensuite fait droit à la secrète hostilité entre poésie (...) et philosophie en se référant à la conception du poète et penseur Yves Bonnefoy. Enfin sont explorées les voies d'une conciliation par l'analyse de l'intuition créatrice dans l'art et la poésie développée par Jacques Maritain, et par la conception de la « fonction Méta » proposée par Stanislas Breton. En définitive, il se pourrait que la poésie aille plus loin que la métaphysique, ainsi que le proclama R. W. Emerson célébrant l'office de la poésie et n'hésitant pas à comparer le Poète au Créateur. Since Plato, the question of the relation between philosophy and poetry is a vexed one. The consideration of this question presupposes a knowledge on our part : what are we to expect from philosophy conceived as the theoretical activity of mind and what are we to expect from poetry conceived as a higher kind of aesthetic experience? The purpose of this paper is to determine the relation between philosophy and poetry, which are apt to be regarded as hostile to each other, by discussing some approaches to the problem held by thinkers in this respect. While a metaphysician like Schelling advocated the affinity between philosophy and poetry, a poet and a thinker like Yves Bonnefoy maintains the separation between them. But according to the views of Jacques Maritain and Stanislas Breton their separation is altogether unwarranted. It is to draw ourselves closer to the intrinsic truth and beauty of the universe that we seek the aid of poetry. Thus the poet is often found compared to the Creator and the Creator to the poet. (shrink)

Constatant que nos étudiants italiens de FLE ont contracté, au cours des années, de mauvaises habitudes de prononciation, souvent dues à un enseignement lacunaire de la connaissance correcte des sons, et que le temps d’enseignement universitaire est réduit d’année en année, notre propos est de chercher à récupérer le temps perdu en insistant, au début de l’année d’un cours de Langue et Traduction française, sur l’oralité. Partant du poème et du jeu sur les signifiants et jonglant avec les signifiés, nous (...) essayerons de motiver les étudiants, peu enclins à la lecture de la poésie et qui, en outre, négligent de se mettre quotidiennement devant un miroir durant quatre ou sept minutes, temps prescrit par les méthodes phonétiques et phonologiques, et nécessaire pour acquérir de nouvelles habitudes phonatoires. Une partie de cet article sera dédiée aux poètes pour montrer comment la force orale du poème peut devenir un atout majeur pour une bonne prononciation ; une autre, à partir d’un vers, sera une sorte de « cahier de création » phonique, sémantique voire poétique. (shrink)

Originally titled Frontières de la poésie (1935), This book by Jacques Maritain, whose philosophical writings read as interestingly as a novel, will be welcomed by all who are seeking a better understanding of the art of our time. The book delves into Maritain's thoughts on the nature and subjectivity of art and poetry. As a philosopher, Maritain attempts to define the two concepts, describing art and poetry as "virtues," and as primarily concerned with beauty. Rather than focus on aesthetic theory, (...) Maritain examines the concepts at a more tangible level, including a discussion of how they are made. The principles established with such precision and brilliance in his earlier work "Art and Scholasticism," which has had such a deep influence on contemporary artists, are successfully put to the test in illuminating the creative works of such diverse artists as Rouault, Marc Chagall, Gino Sevirini, and Arthur Lourie. Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher and political thinker. He was born in Paris in 1882, where he spent most of his life. His father was a prominent lawyer and his mother the daughter of a statesman. He attended the Sorbonne to study philosophy and natural science, and after marrying, he and his wife converted to Catholicism. It was after this he became a well-known scholar of St. Thomas Aquinas and Thomistic philosophy. He published widely on philosophical and political thought, and by the 1930s, he was an established thinker in the Catholic community. After the outbreak of WWII, Maritain relocated to the United States, where he taught at Princeton University and Columbia University. Later in life, he and his wife returned to France, where he continued to write and study Catholic scholarship until his death in 1973. (shrink)

L’article suggère qu’Augustin anticipe de manière singulière « l’esthétique ». Sa réflexion porte, en effet, non seulement sur le beau sensible et sur l’art, mais sur la plénitude de l’expérience subjective qui met en jeu le corps et l’âme, la sensibilité et la raison. Ainsi dessine-t-elle une interrogation sur la place du plaisir, de la quête qu’il engendre, de l’attention réceptive et quasi co-créative qu’il sollicite. Pour mieux le montrer, l’analyse se centre sur le De musica, en revalorisant le (...) lien nécessaire, mais trop souvent mésestimé, entre les 5 premiers livres et le dernier et en montrant l’unité du projet indissociablement anagogique et esthétique. The paper suggests that Augustine anticipates in his own way « aesthetics ». Indeed his reflection does not only deal with sensible beauty, nor with art alone, but with the whole of subjective experience involving body and soul, sensibility and reason. It sets forth an interrogation on the place of pleasure, on the quest it generates, on the attention it requires both at the receptive and the co-creative level. In order to strengthen the argument, the analysis focuses on the De musica, emphasizing anew the link — necessary but too often overlooked — between the first five books and the last one and demonstrating the unity of a project that is indissolubly anagogical and aesthetic. (shrink)

Dans le monde contemporain, la notion de progrès doit être considérée comme un « rebut », un « anachronisme », dont la réflexion sur l’histoire doit se passer. La logique des événements, à partir du XXe siècle, a exposé la faillibilité de cette loi qui, depuis les Lumières, semblait régir le cours de l’histoire humaine. Benedetto Croce a longuement réfléchi sur l’idée de progrès et en a souligné diverses limites. Dans sa réflexion la plus aboutie sur l’histoire, il distingue le (...) progrès comme « état d’esprit » du progrès comme « concept philosophique » : si l’on peut et doit apprendre à se passer du premier, parce qu’il n’a pas de fondement scientifique ni philosophique, le second doit en revanche être réinvesti dans une vision dialectique de l’histoire qui reconnaît un critère de la progression, toujours en lien avec celui de la régression, de la décadence, de la catastrophe. En un mot, seule une vision dialectique de l’histoire permet de considérer ensemble le positif et le négatif. Cet article traite des premières réflexions de Croce sur le progrès : nous examinons ses premiers écrits sur l’esthétique et montrons comment les contradictions du progrès étaient déjà visibles lorsque Croce discutait du progrès relativement à la poésie ou à l’art. Ces thèses préliminaires sur le progrès esthétique permettent d’identifier des éléments de philosophie de l’histoire dans l’esthétique de Croce, ce qui est rendu possible par le lien profond que Croce établit entre l’art et l’histoire. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive description of how writers, in particular poets in nineteenth-century France, became increasingly aware of the visual element in writing from the point of view both of content and of the formal organisation of the words in the text. This interest encouraged writers such as Baudelaire, Mallarme and Rimbaud to recreate in language some of the vivid, sensual impact of the graphic or painterly image. This was to be achieved by organising texts according to aesthetic criteria (...) so that as far as possible the form of the text as visually perceived would be closely interrelated to its content as reconstructed through the reading process. The result of this development was a radical redefinition of the scope and function of poetry, raising important general questions about the nature of the relationship between language and the visual image that are still very much of concern today. (shrink)

Inspired by the text entitled The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (2004) of Hilary Putnam, the volume focuses on the theory and practice of knowledge, but one can legitimately extend it to other fields, most especially in aesthetics. Certain observable features in the fields of aesthetics, practice and artistic creation show that old evaluation criteria may now be obsolete. This is because upon further consideration, the definition of value remains opaque : should the artwork be judged according (...) to its moral value, its market value, or its formal value ? To side with or against the concept of value in art and aesthetics does not preclude a certain number of differences concerning the very nature of what is meant by value. If traditionally the ‘fact’ was the work, taken in all its tangibility, currently the materiality of the object no longer seems to play such a major role. Art is increasingly populated by so-called ‘immaterial’ or ‘ephemeral’ works and is therefore rarely, or badly, quantifiable according to old aesthetic and economic evaluation criteria. The progressively pragmatic contextualization of works within the social space puts forward a new definition of aesthetic value, no longer eternal and ideal, but rather anchored in the sensible and the politico-economic issues of a culturally specific situation. The current changes too support the idea that the question of ‘value’ and its confrontation with the concept of ‘fact’ is urgent. What role do artistic practices and aesthetic theories play ? A role of emancipation, of liberation, escape, or transformation ? Or on the contrary, could art become another means to subject individuals to the status quo ? As can easily be noticed, the question of maintaining or rejecting the dichotomy of facts and values is at the heart of the most pressing issues. (shrink)

Resumo: O artigo aborda a interpretação da poesia tardia de Hölderlin feita por Theodor W. Adorno. Seu objetivo principal é demonstrar os passos da análise estética do discurso proferido em 1963 à Hölderlin-Gesellschaft, pontuando a presença da ideia de parataxis. Assim, o artigo divide o procedimento de Adorno em três camadas interpretativas: os conceitos de teor de coisa, lei imanente da configuração e teor de verdade. Primeiro, Adorno busca as referências filológicas e de sociologia da arte para insistir na proximidade (...) de Hölderlin com o idealismo alemão, estratégia empregada para refutar a leitura de Heidegger, então corrente na Alemanha. A seguir, Adorno analisa a configuração poética para demonstrar como Hölderlin tomava parte nos debates filosóficos do período, marcando sua posição e afastando-se da teoria do conhecimento e filosofia da história de Hegel. Por fim, o teor de verdade resgatado da análise estética sugere conceitos já empregados por Adorno em sua filosofia de juventude, como história natural, mas também prepara noções que aparecerão somente na Dialética negativa, obra que responde à crítica da razão formulada pelo próprio autor na Dialética do esclarecimento. A tese central do artigo consiste na transversalidade da ideia de parataxis. Palavras-chave: Theodor W. Adorno; Friedrich Hölderlin; teor de coisa; teor de verdade; parataxis. Verankerung in den Namen, Verharren in den Ideen. Adorno spielt Hölderlin auf. Zusammenfassung: Der Aufsatz geht um Theodor W. Adornos Interpretation von Hölderlins Spätlyrik. Das Hauptziel hier ist es, die Schritte der ästhetischen Analyse der im Jahr 1963 Rede an die Hölderlin-Gesellschaft zu demonstrieren und dabei die Präsenz der Idee von Parataxe zu betonen. So gliedert der Aufsatz Adornos Vorgehen in drei interpretative Schichten: die Begriffe Sachgehalt, immanentes Gesetz der Gestaltung und Wahrheitsgehalt. Erstens sucht Adorno nach philologischen und kunstsoziologischen Bezügen, um an die Nähe Hölderlins zum deutschen Idealismus zu erinnern. Das war eine Strategie, mit der er die damals in Deutschland gängige Heidegger-Interpretation widerlegen ward. Im Folgenden analysiert Adorno die poetische Gestaltung, um zu zeigen, wie Hölderlin an den philosophischen Debatten seinerzeit teilnahm, seine Position markierte und sich von Hegels Erkenntnistheorie und Geschichtsphilosophie entfernte. Der aus der ästhetischen Analyse gerettete Wahrheitsgehalt schlägt zuletzt Begriffe vor, die Adorno in seiner Jugendphilosophie schon verwendet hat, wie etwa den Begriff der Naturgeschichte, bereitet aber auch Begriffe vor, die erst in Negativer Dialektik erscheinen werden, einem Werk, das auf die vom Autor selbst in Dialektik der Aufklärung formulierte Vernunftkritik antwortet. Die zentrale These des Aufsatzes besteht in der Transversalität der Idee von Parataxe. Stichwörter: Theodor W. Adorno; Friedrich Hölderlin; Sachgehalt; Wahrheitsgehalt; Parataxe. Anchor in Names, Persistence in Ideas. Adorno plays Hölderlin. Abstract: This paper deals with Theodor W. Adorno’s interpretation of Hölderlin’s late poetry. It aims to demonstrate each step of the aesthetic analysis of his well-known speech delivered in 1963 to the Hölderlin-Gesellschaft, and punctuates the presence of parataxis’ idea through the essay. Thus, the paper divides Adorno’s procedure into three main concepts: thing content, immanent law of configuration and truth content. First, Adorno asks philology and sociology of art for help to insist on Hölderlin’s closeness to German Idealism, a strategy employed to rebut Heidegger’s version, then current in Germany. Next, Adorno analyses the poetic configuration as to demonstrate how Hölderlin took part in philosophical debates of his time, marking his position out and moving away from Hegel’s theory of knowledge and philosophy of history. Finally, the truth content rescued from the aesthetic analysis suggests concepts already mobilized by Adorno in his youthful philosophy, such as natural history, but also prepares some notions that will appear only in Negative Dialectics, a work known as a reply to the critique of reason formulated by the author himself in Dialectics of Enlightenment. The central thesis of this paper consists in the transversality of parataxis’ idea. Keywords: Theodor W. Adorno; Friedrich Hölderlin; thing content; truth content; parataxis. Data de registro: 01/08/2023 Data de aceite: 24/01/2024. (shrink)

Ignace Haaz endeavors to thoughtfully confront the intricate phenomenon of embellishing knowledge, which lies at the delicate boundary between aesthetic values and the ethics of knowledge, or intellectual ethics. This boundary should not be pompously perceived as the social status of some armchair academics but rather understood very practically through the noble profession of the editor. In a meticulously curated collection of essays, he addresses the third set of challenges among three sets of problems surrounding aesthetic values, ethics, and education. (...) These challenges are: -The profound nature and intricate problem of aesthetic values, including the role of grace and beauty in fostering ethical values versus art as a playful masking of some key values. -The issue of art as “showbusiness” driven by passion-based attitudes, and the consequences arising from these two initial lines of argument. -A focus on art and research integrity, aiming to find artistic responses to the unexpected problems encountered in art-based learning. Ultimately, this contribution poignantly reminds us of the perennial value of irony in addressing ethical dilemmas with others and poses the question of whether laughter, which transcends mere spiritual humor, could also function therapeutically in restoring the confidence between author and publisher in the process of addressing integrity issues. (shrink)

Ancient thought, particularly that of Plato and Aristotle, has played an important role in the development of the field of aesthetics, and the ideas of ancient thinkers are still influential and controversial today. "Ancient Aesthetics "introduces and discusses the central contributions of key ancient philosophers to this field, carefully considering their theories regarding the arts, especially poetry, but also music and visual art, as well as the theory of beauty more generally. With a focus on Plato and Aristotle, the philosophers (...) who have given us their thought about the arts at the greatest length, this volume also discusses Hellenistic aesthetics and Plotinus theory of beauty, which was to prove very influential in later thought. "Ancient Aesthetics "is a valuable contribution to its field, and will be of interest to students of philosophy and classics. ". (shrink)

German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel problematized the term “aesthetics” in his writings on art. This article attempts to capture the tension between Hegel's theory of art and philosophy of art and its impact on the subsequent theorization of art in the twentieth century as consumer or emancipatory. Music, poetry and plastic arts seem to resonate differently with philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel and Adorno. Plato considered music soothing to the soul. In Aristotle, one could trace the oblique (...) beginnings of the tension between a theory of art and a philosophy of art as he questioned the role of art in philosophy. While Kant's approach is more formal and deals with concepts such as beauty, sublime, genius, and the status of aesthetic objects, Hegel grapples with the rational and emotional aspects of works of art which determine whether art is free or under the thralldom of nature. Both Kant and Hegel distinguished artistic from natural beauty. Critical theorists such as Adorno were also influenced by Hegel. Adorno's analysis of concepts such as mimesis forms an important part of his critique of culture industry. Adorno was also emphatic that classical art could only exist as a product of an epoch. Yet in its dialectical form, art serves as a critique of ideology. Progressively, from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, what began as a crevice between a philosophy of art and a theory of art became a chasm. Thus, begins a contentious relationship between art as a pursuit in itself and art for consumption, that is, art as an integral aspect of consumer culture. The new phenomenon of AI art also poses interesting questions about the paradigmatic shift in dynamics between human element and technology. This article would also attempt to trace how art continues to defy reification, while in the process being consumed constantly, recreating and reinventing itself. (shrink)

Hegel's philosophy of literature, in the Aesthetics and other texts, gives no extended discussion of the novel. Hegel's predecessor Friedrich Schlegel had produced a philosophy of literature with a central position for the novel. Schlegel's discussion of the novel is based on a view of Irony which allows the novel to be the fusion of poetry and philosophy. Hegel retained a place for art, including poetry, below that of philosophy. The Ironic conception of the novel has themes, which also appear (...) in Hegel, of the unity of opposites. However, for Hegel Irony does not allow the unity of artistic form and does not allow art to be guided by law and science. Therefore Hegel's philosophy of literature owes much to Schlegel but needs to attack Irony and minimise the role of the novel. Irony is criticised as a purely negative position of a 'beautiful soul', which cannot act and in its absolutely subjective resistance to evil in the world becomes evil itself. Hegel gives great importance to Epic which foreshadows the emergence of philosophy in its unity, but it is a unity based on conflicting individuality and lawlessness. In the modern world Heroic lawlessness can only be approached as nostalgia, the novel cannot integrate individuality and law, only religion and philosophy above aesthetics, including the novel. (shrink)