Although William James wrote no philosophical treatise on aesthetics, he can be seen as an important source for pragmatist aesthetics. This paper reconstructs James's aesthetic views from his diverse writings that demonstrate a keen regard for the arts and for the central, pervasive importance of the aesthetic dimension of experience, a dimension he saw as closely linked to the rational and practical. Special attention is given to his path-blazing The Principles of Psychology which precedes James's explicit pragmatist stage but contains (...) all the most essential themes of pragmatist aesthetics that Dewey would later formulate with much greater detail and argumentation in Art as Experience . This paper elucidates James's treatment of these themes, argues for his influence on Dewey's aesthetics, and suggests how the Jamesian approach exemplifies a promising convergence of aesthetics with philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Long before the multiculturalism and globalism became the well-known controversial slogans of our time, Michel Foucault in a brief and otherwise not important interview expressed a courageous idea, that the future of philosophy, finding itself in a deep crisis at present, might depend on its encounter with Asiatic thinking. In 1978 during his stay in Japan Foucault proclaimed the end of Western philosophy. According to him if any philosophy is to exist in future, it will have to come to existence (...) aside Europe or as a result of the encounter of European and Non-European thinking. One way or other, the author is deeply convinced, that it is from this encounter that the most shining future of philosophy is to expect. (shrink)