Return of the invisible tomato -- What's the use of calling Cavell a pragmatist? -- The turn to literature -- Stylists of the philosophical -- The personal and the political.

An exciting attempt to establish and elaborate in some detail a method which will achieve the proper compromise between "scientific precision" and "humanistic significance" in cultural anthropology and the history of ideas. The author begins by distinguishing theoretical from overt behavior; the former is his concern, and is defined to encompass the higher products of a given culture: poetry, painting, politics, and metaphysics are the chief examples utilized. A set of seven linear and bi-polar "axes-of-bias" are then detailed as a (...) schematic tool for arriving at the common denominator which may be said to characterize each of these cultural expressions. Sample axes are the Continuity/discreteness axis-bias, Static/dynamic axis-bias, and Order/disorder axis-bias. In addition, the claim is made that the question of whether or not the works of a given personality coincide with a previously determined syndrome can be significantly decided through a content analysis of his works, which results in a profile drawn from his placement on each of these axes. The title of the book is taken from the fact that Romanticism is the chief phenomenon by which the method is tested. The author is careful to guard himself against claiming "objective truth" for any of his analyses, let alone for any of the syndromes he has detailed; and it is this, namely his heuristic theory of theories, that the philosopher will find most interesting, and, perhaps, most debatable.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The structure of Chiodi's book is based on Vuillemin's important hermeneutical thesis that existentialism is one more step in the program of the romantics to give an absolute foundation to finite reality through the establishment of necessary relations between subjectivity and being. These relations, once revealed, would dispel the facticity and contingency in which the natural world is enshrouded. The role of Heidegger in this tradition involves one further dialectical twist, since Heidegger centers all Western Philosophy, including his own, around (...) the problem of ground in the manner proposed by the romantics. The suggested dialectical twist is then Heidegger's Kehre, a step beyond the radical contingency of Dasein in Sein und Zeit. Indeed, this contingency, once reached, shows unequivocally the failure of the romantic program. The ground cannot be ontologically connected with any object nor with the subject; it is rather the necessary history of the ground that determines all categorial differentiations in the world, including the reflective differentiation of subject-objects. Thus it becomes important to distinguish Heidegger from Hegel since, in both, history and necessity are characteristics of the ground. Chiodi gets to the bottom of this matter by pointing to the transfer of negativity from the process of history to the end of history. For Heidegger what is necessary is the repeated withdrawal of the ground so that it may never be confused with that which is known in any revelation or through all of them. This move, though clear, would still leave a fundamental ambiguity in the later philosophy of Heidegger: language, which acts as messenger from the ground to the world, must reflect the superabundance of Being from the standpoint of the ground while it only reflects possibilities of being from the standpoint of the world. This is an ambiguity that Heidegger would want to maintain. Chiodi's interpretation of Heidegger as a neo-platonist totally destroys this ambiguity and with it the very delicate balance created by Heidegger between infinite meaning and the ability of finite words to dwell upon it.--A. de L. M. (shrink)

A central idea of Romanticism in the arts is the idea that art or the aesthetic experience of nature reveals truth or insight about the human condition and relation to nature. What kind of truth could this be and how could perceptual objects reveal it?

In this article, the authors examine accounts of heterosexuality in media for children. The authors analyze all the G-rated films grossing $100 million dollars or more between 1990 and 2005 and find two main accounts of heterosexuality. First, heterosexuality is constructed through hetero-romantic love relationships as exceptional, powerful, magical, and transformative. Second, heterosexuality outside of relationships is constructed through portrayals of men gazing desirously at women's bodies. Both of these findings have implications for our understanding of heteronormativity. The first (...) is seemingly at odds with theories that claim that heterosexuality's mundane, assumed, everyday ordinariness lends heteronormativity its power. In fact, the authors suggest heterosexual exceptionalism may extend the pervasiveness of heterosexuality and serve as a means of inviting investment in it. The second offers ways to begin to think about how heteronormativity is gendered and racialized. (shrink)

First published in 1945. In this work the author seeks to correct the misinterpretation and incorrect labelling of Shelley's thought. While not neglecting Shelley as a poet, this book focuses on his contributions made to the general movement of political and philosophical thought of his era and by so doing his relevance to contemporary issues. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

Otto Neurath’s thoroughgoing anti-foundationalism is connected to the recognition that protocol sentences are not inviolable, that is they are fallible and their choice cannot be determined: ‘Poincaré, Duhem and others have adequately shown that even if we have agreed on the protocol statements, there is a not limited number of equally applicable, possible systems of hypotheses. We have extended this tenet of the uncertainty of systems of hypotheses to all statements, including protocol statements that are alterable in principle’. Later historiography (...) has called Neurath’s extension of Duhemian holism the Neurath principle. Based on a study of Neurath’s early works on the history of optics, the paper investigates a previously unnoticed influence on the development of this principle, Neurath’s reading of Goethe’s Theory of colours. The historical and polemical parts of Goethe’s tripartite book provided Neurath with ideal examples for the vertical extension of Duhem’s thesis to observation statements. Moreover, Goethe’s critique of the language of science and his views on the theory-ladenness of observation, as well as on the history of science show strong parallels to many of Neurath’s ideas. These demonstrate the existence of surprisingly direct textual links between Romantic views on science and the development of twentieth-century philosophy of science. Neurath’s usage of Goethe’s examples also indicates that the birth of the Neurath principle is more tightly connected to actual scientific practice than to theory-testing, and that by admitting the theory-ladenness of observation reports and fallibility of protocol statements Neurath does not throw empiricism overboard.Keywords: Otto Neurath; J. W. von Goethe; Holism; Theory-ladenness; Duhem-Quine thesis; Romantic science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Bibliography of the New Rhetoric ProjectDavid A. Frank and William DriscollScholars do not have access to a complete bibliography of the new rhetoric project. We have redressed this problem by compiling what we believe is the most comprehensive bibliography to date of the works of Chaïm Perelman and of those he coauthored with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. The bibliography includes all the English and French titles, as well as titles (...) that saw first publication in other languages. Translations we believe Perelman may have authorized or endorsed are included.With this bibliography, scholars can now better understand how the new rhetoric project was conceived and how it unfolded. Within the larger constellation of the project, Perelman's bibliography is the most extensive, numbering almost three hundred entries. The trajectory of Perelman's scholarship reveals the origins of the new rhetoric project and how it evolved between the time of his announcement in 1949 that he and Olbrechts-Tyteca had embarked on a program designed to rehabilitate reason and the period of his final articles in the 1980s. A review of the articles and books that came out of the Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca collaboration reveals both a phase of conceptualization and development of the project and a phase of culmination. In the first phase, commencing with Rhétorique et philosophie, the authors established the need for a rhetorically grounded philosophy. As they built toward the publication of the Traité, [End Page 449] the culmination of their ten-year effort, they wrote articles elaborating on "notions" in argumentation (1955) and on the tenets of the "new rhetoric" (1956). In 1958, the year the Traité appeared, they published articles on classical and romantic loci in argumentation and on time in argumentation. With the exception of a 1983 tribute to the theorist Pareto, they did not write together after 1958 but instead pursued separate lines of research out of their collaboration. A significant number of theses entries rehearse and embellish notions introduced between 1947 and 1958, the years of the genesis, development, and culmination of Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's new rhetoric project.AbbreviationsChALe champ de l'argumentationDMPDroit, morale, et philosophieEDEthique et droitIJPAThe Idea of Justice and the Problem of ArgumentJLAJustice, Law, and Argument: Essays on Moral and Legal ReasoningNRHThe New Rhetoric and the Humanities: Essays on Rhetoric and Its ApplicationsJJusticeJRJustice et raisonRPRhétorique et philosophie pour une théorie de l'argumentation en philosophieBibliography1931 "Esquisse d'une logistique des valeurs." Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles 36 (3–4): 486–96. Google Scholar1932 "A propos de la philosophie de M. Dupréel." Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles 37 (3): 385–99. Google Scholar1933 "De l'arbitraire dans la connaissance." Archives de la Société belge de philosophie 5 (3): 5–44. Google Scholar"Le statut social des jugements de vérité." Revue de l'Institut de sociologie 13 (1): 17–23. Google Scholar1935 "Réflexions sur l'assimilation." La tribune Juive 12:51–52. [End Page 450]Google Scholar1936 "L'antinomie de M. Gödel." Bulletins de l'Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique 22 (6): 730–36. Google Scholar"Les paradoxes de la logique." Mind 45 (178): 204–8. Google Scholar1937 "L'équivalence, la définition et la solution du paradoxe de Russell." L'enseignement mathématique 36 (5–6): 350–56. Google Scholar"Metafizyka fregego." Kwartalnik filozoficzny 12 (2): 121–42. Google Scholar"Réponse à MM. Grelling et Beth." Mind 46 (182): 278–79. Google Scholar"Une solution des paradoxes de la logique et ses conséquences pour la conception de l'infini." In Congrès Descartes: IXe Congrès international de philosophie, 6:206–10. Paris: Hermann. Google Scholar1938 "Etude sur Frege." PhD diss., Université Libre de Bruxelles.1939 "Etude sur Gottlob Frege." Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles 44 (2): 224–27. Google Scholar"De logica en het vrije onderzoek." Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles 44 (2): 209–19. Google Scholar"La morale des forts et la morale... (shrink)

This book is a transcription from tapes of a course given by Tillich in the spring quarter of 1963 at the University of Chicago Divinity School. The title is somewhat misleading as Tillich spends a very limited amount of time on the period after Nietzsche--no doubt because of lack of time in the course schedule--and also devotes an entire third of the book to developing the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophical, theological, and cultural background for nineteenth-century Protestant theology. He is especially (...) good on the Enlightenment and the way in which Hume, Rousseau, and Kant, though undeniably enlightened, prepared the way for the Romantic reaction to the superficial rationalism that had culminated in Deism and the bourgeois ideal of reasonable religion. Romanticism itself is viewed as the attempt to resolve the problem of the relation between the finite and the infinite; and Schleiermacher and Hegel are treated in detail as the ones who picked up the romantic problematic and carried it through to systematic theological and cultural synthesis. Tillich then explores the breakdown of the synthesis as it passed through the historical problem of Christianity, the anthropological problem, the proto-existential criticism of Schelling and Kierkegaard, the sociopolitical criticism of Marx, and the voluntaristic and Lebensphilosophie criticism of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. From here on Tillich appears to be racing with the school calendar. He gives a rapid review of the neo-Kantian-Ritschlian, Erlangen, and Harnackian schools of liberal theology, and concludes by touching briefly upon Bultmann, Troeltsch, Barth, and his own thought. The course was meant to be a survey, but Tillich's presentation of the material is so deft and unerring, and so gently guided in its historical and conceptual unfolding by his own favored theological and religious categories, that the overall impression is of a theological meditation on homo religiosus.--E. A. R. (shrink)

Theories of immanence and botanical analogy dominated the work of the eighteenth-century naturalists. They believed, with little factual support, that electricity was the immanent principle of the universe and that plants and animals had truly analogical functions. When a science of biology finally came into being in the nineteenth century, the romantic poets decried the positivistic approach to nature; but it was often overlooked that their poetry voiced anew the concepts of the eighteenth-century speculation. The super-abundance of quotations makes (...) for laborious reading, although the author deftly threads his narrative through them.—A. B. D. (shrink)

"From beginning to end, art is bent upon making; this book says nothing else." Fortunately, we need not take the author at his word. But if the reader sees this, maintains Gilson, he will see the errors in those philosophical approaches to art which mistake esthetics for the philosophy of art, and mistake what is a mode of being simply as production with what is a mode of being as knowledge. The foe is "noematism" and Gilson is tireless in exposing (...) its occurrence in all philosophical views of art since Plato—even in Aristotle, for whom he, otherwise, has a decided preference. Only with Nietzsche does art assert its independence of anthrôpos théôrétikos and ally itself with the Will to Power. Gilson does not approve of this extreme but he does recognize it as the inevitable result of trying to cast art in the role of the messenger of meaning, be that meaning the highest, as with the intuitionism of the Romantics, or the lowest, as in the "imitation of an imitation" notion propounded by Plato. Not that there is no meaning to be had from works of art; but concentration on the contemplation of a work of art—the province of esthetics—distracts from the recognition of the purpose of art itself, namely the activity of subordinating matter to form in the well-making of a sensible product whose being is "conceived in beauty." This latter is the proper function of the philosophy of art.—E. A. R. (shrink)

What role does the wild duck play in Ibsen's famous drama? I argue that, besides mirroring the fate of the human cast members, the duck is acting as animal subject in a quasi-experiment, conducted in a private setting. Analysed from this perspective, the play allows us to discern the epistemological and ethical dimensions of the new scientific animal practice (systematic observation of animal behaviour under artificial conditions) emerging precesely at that time. Ibsen's play stages the clash between a scientific and (...) a romantic understanding of animals that still constitutes the backdrop of most contemporary debates over animals in research. Whereas the scientific understanding reduces the animal's behaviour, as well as its environment, to discrete and modifiable elements, the romantic view regards animals as being at one with (or violently disconnected from) their natural surroundings. (shrink)

Romance novels are primarily aimed at, written about, and written for women. They have been accused of being fantasies which feature sexually objectified heroines who are passive recipients of overwhelming masculine sexual energy. After shoring up these critiques of romance novels with A.W. Eaton’s account of how art can objectify its subjects, we examine a challenge to romance novels: does the sexual content in romance novels objectify its heroines? There is strong reason to think so. However, we argue that careful (...) attention to the ways art can objectify its subject reveals that romance novels are structured to make it impossible for their heroines to be objectified. In many cases, individual signs of objectification are raised as possible outcomes and dismissed as part of the plot of a romance novel. Satisfying sex in a romance novel does not appear until it is impossible for the romantic heroine to be objectified. Understood in this way, romance novels serve as a model for one way that objectification could be avoided. The fantasy of a romance novel is not objectifying sex. It is sex free of objectification. (shrink)

Beauty is evil, a surreptitious diversion of earthly delights planted by the devil, according to the third century theologian-philosopher Tertullian. Beauty is a manifestation of the divine on earth, according to another third century philosopher, Plotinus. Could these two really be talking about the same thing? That beauty evokes an experience of pleasure is probably the only point on which all participants in the continuing debate on beauty agree. But what kinds of pleasure one considers relevant to an experience (...) of beauty, is the crux of the problem of beauty. In ancient, medieval and eighteenth century philosophy, the problem of beauty was framed by the larger concern of what constituted a good life. The question regarding the nature of beauty was answered with a view to its role in achieving the good life for those who cultivated its apprehension. In the twentieth century, philosophers framed the problem of beauty as a problem for conceptual analysis. The questions asked were: Is beauty subjective or objective? Are there properties in the object that count towards beauty in all cases; that are sufficient or necessary for an object to be judged beautiful? What kind of pleasure is the pleasure we experience of beauty? I will examine how these questions can be seen to have been answered by earlier philosophical traditions and then I will use these questions as a guide to developing an explanatory theory of beauty based on contemporary theories of perception. (shrink)

The story of Actaeon of Corinth is a slight, rationalized, romantic version of the original Boeotian myth, and as such has occasionally received a brief notice. In the Corinthian story Melissos his father had rescued Corinth from an attack by Pheidon of Argos, and was therefore held in great honour by the Corinthians. The boy Actaeon was torn to pieces not by his dogs but by bis drunken Bacchiad admirers, and after the murder Melissos, unable to get legal redress (...) from the Corinthians, cursed them publicly at the Isthmian festival and jumped over a cliff. Plutarch and Diodorus name the Bacchiad Archias as the chief culprit, and Plutarch ends with Archias' departure to found Syracuse and his eventual death there. The story has an historical not a mythical setting, and has attracted some slight attention from historians, either in the hope of light on the obscure question of Pheidon's relations with Corinth, or because of the chronological implication that Pheidon reigned a generation or more before the foundation of Syracuse. In neither aspect has its evidence been rated high, and that is not surprising, especially since attention has been concentrated mainly on Plutarch's story. I believe, however, that we can distinguish an earlier version, and that the historical implications of this original are less disreputable. (shrink)

Purpose. The purpose of the study is to show the connection of romanticism with the anthropological doctrine that goes back to Hegelianism and Kantianism, and at the same time – with the concepts of the future, structuralism and postmodernism. Theoretical basis. The man is a central figure of the Romantic literary, therefore it makes sense to single out romantic human anthropological doctrine and the image of man associated with a specific historical and cultural era called the "epoch of (...) romanticism"; to show that many romantic philosophical positions remained relevant to the basic foundations of contemporary anthropological research and coincide with it in analytical and critical thinking about a man, a person, his historical and evolutionary fate. Originality. The romantic worldview determined the specifics of anthropological discourse, both logical and illogical, remaining symbols and attaching, as for example, a real historical anecdote, a popular history, a philosophical thought, a myth, a famous literary episode and the arts multiplied by creative inspiration and imagination. This tendency determined the fragmentation of thinking and the scientific image of man as a dual being, nevertheless, presented and described in all the variety of relations with the world and with himself, that allows us to call this area of thought "the romantic human science". Conclusions. Structural analysis of numerous romantic texts allows us to draw the following conclusion: with mythopoetic imagery and anthropological thought about a man, romantic writers introduced the reader to any wisdom, to philosophical understanding of their human essence, to past and modern teachings, in a way processed antique, medieval and enlightening views, in which an important place was given to reflections on the place of man in nature, society, and history. Correlating the well-known statements about a person as a descendant of the "old Adam", "person", "personality", "soul", with the modern idea of historical and social development, about the evolution of the consciousness of a person who revealed himself as an individual in modern times, with scientific and aesthetic views, the writers of the first half of the XIX century gave romantic thought anthropological meaning and, in fact, laid the foundations of historical, social, psychological, cultural and psychoanalytic anthropology. (shrink)

This is not a true panorama, but rather a simple bibliographical sketch without commentary or criticism of the primary sources for the study of Brazilian thought. It includes the major authors of the XVI and XVII century both in the Erasmian and in the scholastic traditions, together with those of the Enlightenment and of Romantic Positivism and Idealism. The most detailed chapter deals with the transition to the XX century, from Silvio Romero who received and adapted the systematic philosophies (...) of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, to Farias Brito who commented on and synthesized all the major trends of philosophy in his day: Lange, Kuno Fischer, Gratry, Renouvier, Spencer, and even Bergson. The classification and survey of sources in the XX century is less careful and accurate. Since the work ends in 1960, much remains to be known about the expansion of the study of philosophy and the improvement of philosophical techniques in Brazil in the past ten years.--A. M. (shrink)

Theories of immanence and botanical analogy dominated the work of the eighteenth-century naturalists. They believed, with little factual support, that electricity was the immanent principle of the universe and that plants and animals had truly analogical functions. When a science of biology finally came into being in the nineteenth century, the romantic poets decried the positivistic approach to nature; but it was often overlooked that their poetry voiced anew the concepts of the eighteenth-century speculation. The super-abundance of quotations makes (...) for laborious reading, although the author deftly threads his narrative through them.—A. B. D. (shrink)

Musical elements in the structure of G. MacDonald’s Phantastes and Lilith in the context of the theory of intermediality are studied. The following musical elements are analyzed: motif of fairy world’s music, images of music of nature, musical description of characters’ voices, insertions of songs, interpretation of music as an art. These musical elements act as a characterization of topoi, landscape, characters, technique of stylistic imitation and means of rhythmic organization of narration, expression of author’s point of view. The paper (...) concludes that music in G. MacDonald’s fairy romances is represented by means of intermedial imitation and intermedial thematization used for creation of full of sound fairy world and expression of Romantic view on music essence. (shrink)

[This paper will be presented at the APA Eastern Division Conference in New York City, January 2024] -/- Can one reasonably doubt that one is voluntarily making a commitment, even when one is doing so? Given that one voluntarily makes a commitment if and only if one (personally) knows that one is doing so, the answer appears to be “No.” After all, knowing implies justifiably believing, and it seems impossible that one could (synchronically and from a single personal perspective) reasonably (...) doubt what one justifiably believes. Indeed, assuming that one reasonably doubts that P only if one has sufficient evidence to believe that not-P, traditional epistemologists may hold that such “epistemic ambivalence” entails one’s believing a contradiction, while some Bayesians should hold that it entails violating “probabilism” (the norm that credences must conform to the axioms of probability). However, I argue that in at least some cases of romantic commitment-making, such ambivalence may not only be epistemically permissible, but even required, and perhaps best dealt with pragmatically. (shrink)

Helm criticizes contemporary—largely analytic—work in philosophy of religion which closes off dispute or objection by a simple appeal to "the grammar of religious language" or to "what the believer would say." "The argument of this book is that such approaches involve an important error in philosophical method, for they rest on the mistaken assumption that the ‘religious believer’ has an unmistakable identity, and that ‘religious language’ is a distinct, homogeneous form of language". The issue is methodological because it focuses on (...) "the conceptual imperialism that has plagued accounts of religious belief". Helm believes that philosophical models will more adequately and less dogmatically reflect the pluralism and complexity of religion if we separate religion or theology from metareligion or metatheology. Thus, Part I of the book argues for this distinction and for the interpenetration of meta- and object-languages, in order to reject what are presented as straightforward appeals to an uncontroversial univocity in the logic or language of religious belief. Part II illustrates the inadequacy of such appeals by describing four prominent models of religious belief: 1) the probability model, based on empirical data or natural analogies ; 2) the self-authentication model, based on the intuitively grasped character of a document ; 3) the regulative model, based on morality ; and 4) the acquaintance model, based on immediate awareness and a free or unconstrained interpretation. Part III suggests how each of these four paradigm theories might respond to the two basic questions in Flew’s "falsificationist challenge": What would falsify p? and What reasons would induce A to change his mind as to the truth of p? The variety of the responses is intended to reinforce Helm’s contention that philosophers must give over question-begging methodologies which surreptitiously impose favored models on religious belief.—C.A.C. (shrink)

The article assesses Arthur Schopenhauer’s reinterpretation of religious myths, particularly those of Christianity, in terms of his philosophical system, and applies his ideas to the mythical cosmology of shamanistic and animistic religions. Schopenhauer, a 19th-century Romantic philosopher, although an atheist himself, took religious myths very seriously, translating them into the terms of his metaphysical system. His view was that Roman Catholicism, for him the true form of Christianity, shared the pessimism and the focus on suffering of Hinduism and Buddhism, (...) rather than the alleged optimism of Protestantism, Judaism and Islam, excepting the myth of the Fall. For Schopenhauer, this pessimism was evident in the central symbol of Christianity, the figure of the crucified Christ. Schopenhauer put forward his ethic of compassion (and asceticism), aligning him, despite his atheism, with the altruistic ethics of the major world religions. The article also explores the extent to which Schopenhauer’s philosophy as, arguably, a form of panpsychism can be applied to shamanistic and animistic religions. While Schopenhauer translated religious myths into his metaphysical terms – based ultimately on Kant’s distinction between phenomena (things as they appear) and noumena (things as they are) – his understanding of the noumenon as the universal will to life was itself an explanatory myth for an essentially unknowable reality. Therefore, the attempt of Schopenhauer’s philosophy to translate myth into metaphysics in turn contained a myth at its very core. Nonetheless, the article argues that Schopenhauer’s argument may satisfy those dissatisfied with materialism’s shortcomings yet not willing to subscribe to a supernatural order.Contribution: The article applies to shamanism and animism the neglected philosopher Schopenhauer’s method of interpreting religious myths in terms of his metaphysical system, relating this very briefly to current philosophical debates on panpsychism. (shrink)

In 1927, Walter Lippmann published The Phantom Public, denouncing the ‘mystical fallacy of democracy.’ Decrying romantic democratic models that privilege self-governance, he writes: “I have not happened to meet anybody, from a President of the United States to a professor of political science, who came anywhere near to embodying the accepted ideal of the sovereign and omnicompetent citizen.” Almost 90 years later, Lippmann’s pragmatism is as relevant as ever, and should be applied in new contexts where similar self-governance concerns (...) persist. This paper does just that, repurposing Lippmann’s argument in the context of the ongoing debate over the role of the digital citizen in Big Data management. It is argued that proposals by the Federal Trade Commission, the White House and the US Congress, championing failed notice and choice privacy policy, perpetuate a self-governance fallacy comparable to Lippmann’s, referred to here as the fallacy of data privacy self-management. Even if the digital citizen had the faculties and the system for data privacy self-management, the digital citizen has little time for data governance. We desire the freedom to pursue the ends of digital production, without being inhibited by the means. We want privacy, and safety, but cannot complete all that is required for its protection. If it is true that the fallacy of democracy is similar to the fallacy of data privacy self-management, then perhaps the pragmatic solution is representative data management: a combination of non/for-profit digital dossier management via infomediaries that can ensure the protection of personal data, while freeing individuals from what Lippmann referred to as an ‘unattainable ideal.’. (shrink)

At a time when professional art criticism is on the wane, the ancient quarrel between art and philosophy demands fresh answers. Professional art criticism provided a basis upon which to distinguish apt experiences of art from the idiosyncratic. However, currently the kind of narratives from which critics once drew are underplayed or discarded in contemporary exhibition design where the visual arts are concerned. This leaves open the possibility that art operates either as mere stimulant to private reverie or, in the (...) more contentful cases, as propaganda. The ancient quarrel between art and philosophy is that art influences surreptitiously while philosophy presents reasons that invite rational scrutiny. As such, in contrast to philosophy, art would undermine our agency. In July 2017, a group of philosophers gathered at the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW), in Sydney, Australia, in the presence of two AGNSW curators to explore the basis of their own experiences of selected artworks. Here, those commentaries are reproduced. Each reveal that objective grounds for an experience of art can be based in the community from which one draws one’s terms of reference. In our commentaries we see the expertise of the respective philosophical communities but other communities of culture or expertise might serve the same purpose and hence resolve the ancient quarrel. Before hearing these commentaries, I explain what is at stake when the ancient quarrel between art and philosophy is understood in contemporary terms. This Issue of the Curator also includes an article on the community-based art criticism that emerges from these commentaries followed by an exhibition review which reveals the incorrigible impulse (also demonstrated in the commentaries) to find the basis for the most apt experience of an artwork. A response by the AGNSW curators completes this issue. (shrink)

Young men are more distressed by a partner’s sexual infidelity, whereas young women are more distressed by a partner’s emotional infidelity. The present research investigated (a) whether the sex difference in jealousy replicates in an older sample, and (b) whether younger people differ from older people in their selection of the more distressing infidelity scenario. We presented forced-choice dilemmas to 202 older people (mean age = 67 years) and to 234 younger people (mean age = 20 years). The sex difference (...) replicated in the older sample. In addition, older women were less likely than younger women to select a partner’s emotional infidelity as more distressing than a partner’s sexual infidelity. Discussion offers directions for future work on sex differences and age differences in jealousy. (shrink)

“Community” has long been a companion of Critical Theory, but it has always pointed in two diametrically opposed directions. One path leads us to communitarian dreams of a genuine sociability and a full life. Romantic sensibility, anxious about the modern experience of cold rationality and mechanical organization, elaborates counter-models of authentic living, embedded in organic communities deemed genuine. While the Enlightenment legacy appears to abandon us to alienated isolation—no matter how much it proclaims the importance of public discourse—the (...) class='Hi'>romantic community provides an existential alternative, an opportunity to reclaim a human authenticity. Ferdinand Tönnies's famous conceptual binary named this drama:.. (shrink)

This is one of those obviously worked-over doctoral dissertations. There is one chapter which reviews all previous studies dealing with Schweitzer, with copious footnotes in many languages. In spite of Clark's underlying attitude of adulation of the Master, his analysis of Schweitzer's thought is rather helpful. He places Schweitzer in the main stream of nineteenth-century German romantic thought and examines the impact that that thought had upon the theologians of the period. But he believes that Schweitzer is foremost an (...) ethical thinker, not a theologian, and that the true sources of his thought are in the ethicists of the nineteenth-century and not the theologians. Clark insists that Schweitzer's thought is characterized by two major emphases, one that ethics must be founded on rational thought, the second that human selfhood is fundamentally good. Clark finds the origins for these two notions in Kant's Fundamental Principles of a Metaphysics of Morals. Schweitzer's relationship to such diverse thinkers as Darwin, Schopenhauer, Spencer, and Nietzsche is also traced. The term "world-affirmation" emerges in Schweitzer's thought as a fundamental ethical category: it implies "ethical self-devotion to one's fellow-creatures." Hence, it is rather easy to make the jump from one's fellow-creatures, conceived solely as human fellow-creatures, to a "reverence for life" of all creatures, human and animal. Schweitzer owes a great deal to the social gospel movement of the latter half of the nineteenth-century. He believed in the "coming Era of Peace" and he spoke of the Kingdom of God as a possibility within history. "Sooner or later," he writes, "there must dawn the true and final Renaissance which will bring peace to the world." The result of Clark's work is that Schweitzer remains the enigmatic, other-worldly patrician Renaissance-man, but we now have at least a hint as to the sources of his unique and complicated philosophy of civilization. Clark mentions in passing that Goethe may be the major influence on Schweitzer's thought.--W. A. J. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: W. G. COLLINGWOOD Letters from Iceland: introduced by Janet Gnosspelius -- GUIDO VANHEESWIJCK R. G. Collingwood, T. S. Elliot and the Romantic Tradition -- MARNIE HUGHES- History, Education and the Conversation of Mankind -- WARRINGTON --K. B. McINTYRE Collingwood, Oakeshott and the Social Contract -- LIONEL RUBINOFF The Relation Between Philosophy and History in the Thought of R G. Collingwood -- COLLINGWOOD CORNER -- BENEDETTO CROCE In Commemoration of an English Friend, a Companion in Thought (...) and Faith, R. G. Collingwood (translated -- by Lionel Rubinoff and Alan Franklin) -- BENEDETTO CROCE Review of R. G. Collingwood, Speculum Mentis (translated by Lionel Rubinoff and Alan Franklin) -- R. G. COLLINGWOOD Aesthethic and the Mind, introduced by -- James Connelly -- GRACE SIMPSON Collingwood's Philosophy of History: Observations of an Archaeologist -- REVIEWS -- Cameron Wybrow (ed.), Creation, Nature, and Political Order in the Philosophy of Michael Foster, reviewed by -- James Connelly. (shrink)

This book offers an original and challenging study of Marx's contact with the visual arts, aesthetic theories, and art policies in nineteenth-century Europe. It differs from previous discussions of Marxist aesthetic theory in looking at Marx's views from an art-historical rather than from a literary perspective, and in placing those views in the context of the art practices, theories, and policies of Marx's own time. Dr Rose begins her work by discussing Marx's planned treatise on Romantic art of 1842 (...) against the background of the philosophical debates, cultural policies, and art practices of the 1840s, and looks in particular at the patronage given to the group of German artists known as the 'Nazarenes' in those years, who are discussed in relation to both the English Pre-Raphaelites, popular in the London known to Marx, and to the Russian Social Realists of the 1860s. The author goes on to consider claims of twentieth-century Marxist art theories and practices to have represented Marx's own views on art. The book the conflicting claims made on Marx's views by the Soviet avant-garde Constructivists of the 1920s and of the Socialist Realists who followed them are considered, and are related back to the aesthetic theories and practices discussed in the earlier chapters. (shrink)