In an earlier paper written in loving memory of Asher Peres, we gave a critical analysis of the celebrated 1935 paper in which Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) challenged the completeness of quantum mechanics. There, we had pointed out logical shortcomings in the EPR paper. Now, we raise additional questions concerning their suggested program to find a theory that would “provide a complete description of the physical reality”. In particular, we investigate the extent to which the EPR argumentation could have (...) lead to the more dramatic conclusion that quantum mechanics is in fact incorrect. With this in mind, we propose a speculation, made necessary by a logical shortcoming in the EPR paper caused by the lack of a necessary condition for “elements of reality”, and surmise that an eventually complete theory would either be inconsistent with quantum mechanics, or would at least violate Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. (shrink)

Chantal Mouffe har altid sat spørgsmålet om sociale bevægelser i relation til spørgsmålet om demokratisering. Hendes ideer om agonistisk og radikalt demokrati har fået gennemslag i den europæiske samfundsmæssige debat, men i den sammenhæng glemmer man måske, at hun først og fremmest er engageret i en radikalisering af det liberale demokrati. I hendes nuancerede debatstil kan de mange begreber, nogle af hvilke hun selv er ophavet til, godt få læseren til at fokusere på enkelte træer, som for eksempel netop agonistisk (...) og radikalt demokrati. Dermed kan selve skoven, det liberale demokrati og dets udvikling, forsvinde ud af fokus. Det gør det imidlertid ikke i dette interview, der fandt sted i hendes hjem i Hampstead, Nordlondon, primo 2012, omtrent samtidig med, at hendes seneste bog Agonistics blev afsluttet. (shrink)

In Film and Phenomenology, Allan Casebier develops a theory of representation first indicated in the writings of the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and then applies it to the case of cinematic representation. This work provides one of the clearest expositions of Husserl's highly influential but often obscure thought. It also demonstrates the power of phenomenology to illuminate the experience of the art form unique to the twentieth-century cinema. Film and Phenomenology is intended as an antidote to all hitherto (...) existing theories about the nature of cinematic representation, whether issuing from classic sources such as the film theory of Andre Bazin or the post-structuralist synthesis of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Barthesian textual analysis and Metzean cine-semiotics. Casebier shows how a phenomenological account of representation will further the aims of any film theory. Developing a viable feminist film theory, legitimizing the documentary, answering the challenge of Derridean deconstruction, properly theorizing narrativity, Film and Phenomenology argues that theory of film must be Realist both with respect to epistemology and ontological issues. In this way, this work runs contrary to the whole course of contemporary film theory which has been deeply anti-Realist. (shrink)

A brief discussion of André Malraux's concept of the musée imaginaire (Imaginary Museum or Museum without Walls) and a comment on the neglect of Malraux's theory of art. (Link provided).

One might naturally suppose that philosophers of art would take a strong interest in the idea of creation in the context of art. In fact, this has often not been the case. In analytic aesthetics, the issue tends to dwell on the sidelines and in continental aesthetics a shadow has sometimes been cast over the topic by the notion of the “death of the author” and by the claim, as Roland Barthes put it, that the author is only ever able (...) to “imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original”. This paper explains the understanding of artistic creation developed by the French art theorist André Malraux in his well-known book The Voices of Silence. Malraux argues that the true artist is involved in a creative act in the full sense of the term – creation ex nihilo – despite the debt he or she often owes to other artists. The paper also comments briefly on possible reasons why traditional post-Enlightenment aesthetics has said so little about the topic in question. (shrink)

This study provides a step by step explanation of André Malraux’s theory of art. Drawing on his major works, such as "The Voices of Silence" and "The Metamorphosis of the Gods," it examines topics such as the nature of artistic creation, the psychology of our response to art, the birth of the notion of “art” itself and its transformation after Manet, the birth and death of the idea of beauty, the neglected question of the relationship between art and the (...) passage of time, the emergence of our “first universal world of art,” the contemporary role of the art museum and the musée imaginaire, and the contentious question of the relationship between art and history. -/- Rejecting negative criticisms from writers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and E. H. Gombrich, the study argues that Malraux offers us a theory of art that is fully coherent and highly illuminating. In addition, the analysis shows that he presents a radical challenge to the traditional explanations of art inherited from the Enlightenment that have dominated Western thinking for some three hundred years. In short, the study unveils a way of understanding art that is nothing short of an intellectual revolution. -/- The book is the English version of a study entitled André Malraux et l’Art: Une Révolution Intellectuelle published in French by Peter Lang in April 2021. (shrink)

Cette étude présente une explication systématique des éléments clés de la théorie de l’art d’André Malraux. Se basant sur des œuvres telles que Les Voix du silence, Le Surnaturel, L’Irréel et L’Intemporel, elle aborde des sujets cruciaux comme la nature de la création artistique, la psychologie de notre réaction à l’art, la naissance de la notion d’« art » et sa transformation après Manet, la naissance et la mort de l’idée de beauté, la question cruellement négligée de la relation (...) entre l’art et le passage du temps, l’émergence de notre « premier monde de l’art universel », le rôle contemporain du musée d’art et du Musée Imaginaire, et la question épineuse du lien entre l’art et l’histoire. Contrairement aux critiques négatives parfois émises contre la pensée de Malraux, l’étude soutient qu’il nous offre une théorie de l’art mûrement réfléchie, entièrement cohérente et très éclairante. De surcroît, et malgré des allégations occasionnelles que la pensée de Malraux manque d’originalité, l’analyse montre que sa théorie de l’art est hautement originale et constitue un défi radical aux explications traditionnelles de l’art issues des Lumières qui ont dominé la pensée occidentale pendant quelque trois cents ans. En bref, l’étude dévoile une façon de comprendre la nature de l’art qui n’est rien de moins qu’une révolution intellectuelle. Le livre va être publie également en anglais. (shrink)

An overview of Malraux's theory of art, with sub-headings: "Basic Principles","The Creative Process","The Emergence of 'Art'","Art and Time", "The Modern Universal World of Art", and "Critical Responses". Includes a brief discussion of the musée imaginaire.

Discusses the function of action in Malraux's third and most famous novel.

Very little has been written in recent decades about the temporal nature of art. The two principal explanations provided by our Western cultural tradition are that art is timeless (`eternal') or that it belongs within the world of historical change. Neither account offers a plausible explanation of the world of art as we know it today, which contains large numbers of works which are self-evidently not timeless because they have been resurrected after long periods of oblivion with significances quite different (...) from those which they originally held, and which also seem to have escaped history because, though long-forgotten, they have `come alive' again for us today. In his two key works on the theory of art, "Les Voix du silence" and "La Métamorphose des dieux", André Malraux offers an entirely new account of the temporal nature of art based on the concept of metamorphosis. Unlike the traditional explanations, Malraux's account makes sense of the world of art as we now know it. He revolutionizes our understanding of the relationship between art and time. (shrink)

Modern aesthetics is divided into two branches – the Anglo-American and the Continental. A major cause of this division is their divergent views about the place of history in aesthetics, the first tending to minimize historical considerations, while the second readily embraces them. This article explores the place of history in André Malraux's theory of art and argues that his thinking quickly resolves this long-standing disagreement. (This text is a translation of the published French version.).

Critics often situate "Les Liaisons dangereuses" within the tradition of the novel of libertinage. Many consider it to be superior to its predecessors but argue nonetheless that it is part of an established tradition, not the beginning of something new. Malraux demurs. While noting similarities with the novel of libertinage, he contends that Laclos’ novel links up much more significantly with the novel of the future, its descendants including Julien Sorel and even Raskolnikov.

Choderlos de Laclos’s novel 'Les Liaisons dangereuses', first published in 1782, is regarded as one of the outstanding works of French literature. This article concerns a well known commentary by the twentieth-century writer André Malraux which, though often mentioned by critics, has seldom been studied in detail. The article argues that, while Malraux endorses the favourable modern assessments of 'Les Liaisons dangereuses', his analysis diverges in important respects from prevailing critical opinion. In particular, he regards the work as the (...) commencement of an important new stage in the French novel rather than, as often argued, the culmination of the existing libertine tradition. (shrink)

After an initial period of popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, André Malraux’s works on the theory of art, "The Voices of Silence" and "The Metamorphosis of the Gods", lapsed into relative obscurity. A major factor in this fall from grace was the frosty reception given to these works by a number of leading art historians, including E.H. Gombrich, who accused Malraux of an irresponsible approach to art history and of "reckless inaccuracies". This essay examines a representative sample of (...) the art historians' arguments and contends that they reveal serious misreadings of Malraux’s texts and a recurring tendency to confuse matters of interpretation with matters of fact. The article suggests that the charge of irresponsibility might well be levelled at the critics themselves, and that the myth of Malraux as guilty of ‘reckless inaccuracies’ needs to be debunked. (shrink)

" Suitable for both newcomers to Malraux and more advanced students, the study also examines critical responses to these works by figures such as Maurice ...

Explains a key aspect of Malraux's theory of art – his explanation of the nature of artistic creation. The question is widely neglected in modern aesthetics.

Examines Malraux's theory of art and argues that it is neither aesthetics (philosophy of art) in the traditional sense, or history of art.

Examines Malraux's account of the creative process in art, discusses a misreading of Malraux by Merleau-Ponty, and highlights shortcomings in certain "analytic aesthetics" accounts of the creative process.

Modern critics often regard Goya's etchings and black paintings as satirical observations on the social and political conditions of his times. In a study of Goya first published in 1950, which seldom receives the attention it merits, the French author and art theorist André Malraux contends that these works have a much deeper significance. The etchings and black paintings, Malraux argues, represent a fundamental challenge to the humanist artistic tradition that began with the Renaissance - a tradition founded on (...) the pursuit of a transcendent world of nobility, harmony and beauty. Following an illness that left him deaf for life, Goya developed an art of a fundamentally different kind - an art, Malraux writes, ruled by ‘the unity of the prison house’ which replaced transcendence with a pervasive feeling of dependence and from which all trace of humanism has been erased. Foreshadowing modern art's abandonment of the Renaissance ideal, the etchings and black paintings are the first announcement of the death of beauty in Western art. (shrink)

The question of whether or not art is essentially a representation of reality has long been a bone of contention among philosophers of art – especially in the major branch of that discipline called the analytic philosophy of art, or analytic aesthetics. This paper argues that art - visual art, literature or music - is never essentially representation. The argument is based on the thinking of André Malraux in "The Voices of Silence".

Donald Preziosi, an influential modern voice in art history, argues that his discipline has proved ‘particularly effective in naturalizing and validating the very idea of art as a “universal” human phenomenon’. If this claim is true, it would mean, in my view, that art history has done a serious disservice to our modern understanding of art. For as the French art theorist, André Malraux, points out, the idea of art is definitely not a universal human phenomenon, there being ample (...) evidence that the vast majority of cultures throughout history, have not regarded their painting, sculpture, poetry, and music as ‘art’. -/- Today, of course, we willingly regard many works from non-European and early cultures as art and welcome them into art museums, but this is a recent development, barely more than a century old. This paper examines certain major issues arising from this situation, including: when and why the idea of art arose; the radical change in the word’s meaning that occurred after Manet; how this change led to the inclusion of many non-European and ancient works in our modern world of art; and the inadequate responses to these developments by modern philosophers of art and art historians. (shrink)

Donald Preziosi, an influential modern voice in art history, argues that his discipline has proved ‘particularly effective in naturalizing and validating the very idea of art as a “universal” human phenomenon’. If this claim is true, it would mean, in my view, that art history has done a serious disservice to our modern understanding of art. For as the French art theorist, André Malraux, points out, the idea of art is definitely not a universal human phenomenon, there being ample (...) evidence that the vast majority of cultures throughout history, have not regarded their painting, sculpture, poetry, and music as ‘art’. -/- Today, of course, we willingly regard many works from non-European and early cultures as art and welcome them into art museums, but this is a recent development, barely more than a century old. This paper examines certain major issues arising from this situation, including: when and why the idea of art arose; the radical change in the word’s meaning that occurred after Manet; how this change led to the inclusion of many non-European and ancient works in our modern world of art; and the inadequate responses to these developments by modern philosophers of art and art historians. -/- My apologies: I entered this item twice by mistake. PhilPapers will fix this soon. (shrink)

A well-known feature of great works of art is their power to “live on” long after the moment of their creation – to remain vital and alive long after the culture in which they were born has passed into history. This power to transcend time is common to works as various as the plays of Shakespeare, the Victory of Samothrace, and many works from early cultures such as Egypt and Buddhist India which we often encounter today in major art museums. (...) -/- What is the nature of this power and how does it operate? The Renaissance decided that works of art are timeless, “immortal” – immune from historical change – and this idea has exerted a profound influence on Western thought. But do we still believe it? Does it match our experience of art today which includes so many works from the past that spent long periods in oblivion and have clearly not been immune from historical change? -/- This book examines the seemingly miraculous power of art to transcend time – an issue widely neglected in contemporary aesthetics. Tracing the history of the question from the Renaissance onwards, and discussing thinkers as various as David Hume, Hegel, Marx, Walter Benjamin, Sartre, and Theodor Adorno, the book argues that art transcends time through a process of metamorphosis – a thesis first developed by the French art theorist, André Malraux. The implications of this idea pose major challenges for traditional thinking about the nature of art. (shrink)

One of the most remarkable contributions André Malraux makes to the theory of art is his explanation of the relationship between art and time: his argument that art transcends time through a process of metamorphosis. This proposition, which replaces the traditional belief that art resists time because it is eternal or immortal, poses a major challenge to traditional aesthetics. This article examines the notion of metamorphosis and the challenge it represents.

How does art – literature, visual art, or music – endure over time? What special power does it possess that enables it to “transcend” time – to overcome temporal distance and speak to us not just as evidence of times gone by, but as a living presence? The Renaissance, which discovered this transcendent power of art in the classical sculpture and literature it admired so strongly, concluded that great art is impervious to time – “timeless”, “immortal”, “eternal” – a belief (...) that left a profound impression on Renaissance culture and often found expression in its poetry. Subsequently the same belief exerted a powerful influence on Enlightenment aesthetics and, in various forms, it still lingers on today. The nineteenth century, however, saw a major challenge to this thinking. Hegel, Marx and Taine stressed the historical embeddedness of art and for these three thinkers, as for a series of more recent theorists such as Sartre, Benjamin, and Adorno, art belongs within the world of historical change. To locate its essential qualities in a “timeless” realm removed from the flow of history would be an idealist illusion. The conflict between these two positions has resulted in an impasse, and today we appear to lack any viable account of one of art’s key features – its capacity to transcend time. André Malraux proposes an entirely new account of this unique power of art. For Malraux, as this article explains, art is neither exempt from history (timeless) nor wholly inseparable from it. Art overcomes temporal distance – transcends time – through metamorphosis, a process of continual transformation in significance in which history plays an essential, but not exclusive, part. “La métamorphose,” Malraux writes, “est la vie même de l’œuvre d’art dans le temps, l’un de ses caractères spécifiques.” This proposition, to which contemporary aesthetics has so far paid very little attention, is a revolutionary step in our thinking about art. -/- . (shrink)

Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

Reflections on the life and works of Scotus -- The early works of Scotus -- Duns Scotus at Oxford -- A Scotistic approach to the ultimate why-question -- God's knowledge : a study in Scotistic methodology -- William of Alnwick on Scotus and divine concurrence -- Scotus on the origin of possibility -- Scotus's lectures on the Immaculate Conception -- Scotus's ethics -- Scotus's eschatology : some reflections -- Scotism -- An Oxford dialogue on language and metaphysics -- Ockham and (...) the textbooks -- Ockham's conception of matter. (shrink)

This reconsideration of Hume’s classic essay “Of Miracles” via the lens of American pragmatist ways of thinking about history and power shifts our attention from Hume’s epistemic concerns about the legitimacy of witnesses and testimony to his distaste for sacred history, his critical stance regarding the social force of revelation, and his disdain for religious authority. To view Hume’s essay both as an articulation of a critical philosophy of history and as an exercise in moral dynamism (social power or, authority, (...) is a result of epistemic transactions), is to intervene in both Hume studies and Contemporary Pragmatism. (shrink)

This book builds on recent scholarship highlighted in the edited collections, Philosophie, histoire, biologie: mélanges offerts à Jean Gayon (Merlin & Huneman, 2018) and Knowledge of Life Today (Gayon & Petit 2018/2019). While honoring the career and the thought of Jean Gayon (1949-2018), this book showcases the continued relevance of Gayon’s interdisciplinary work and illustrates his central place in the community of historians and philosophers of the life sciences. Chapters in this book address Jean Gayon’s intellectual trajectory from historical epistemology (...) to the philosophy of biology, the nature and scope of his philosophical approach to the history of science, and his unique contributions to the history and epistemology of biological concepts and theories. Drawing on published and unpublished sources, the book explores some of Gayon’s most significant contributions to the philosophy, history, and social studies of biology. (shrink)

Under the lig ht of Being and Nothingness’s the o re t ical body – Sartre’s master piece –, it is intended to discuss the essential source of human reality as “n i h i l a t i o n” and ontological lack, as well as manifestations and cons e q u e nces from this primordial human passion to be transformed to coagulated transcendence, to be transformed in Being In-itself-For-itself: to be consciousness and, at the same t i (...) me, to be a complete and finished Being, with infinite de nsity and witho u t fissures. (shrink)

As far back as we know, there have been individuals incapacitated by memories that have filled them with sadness and remorse, fright and horror, or a sense of irreparable loss. Only recently, however, have people tormented with such recollections been diagnosed as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder." Here Allan Young traces this malady, particularly as it is suffered by Vietnam veterans, to its beginnings in the emergence of ideas about the unconscious mind and to earlier manifestations of traumatic memory (...) like shell shock or traumatic hysteria. In Young's view, PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomenon newly discovered. Rather, it is a "harmony of illusions," a cultural product gradually put together by the practices, technologies, and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, and treated and by the various interests, institutions, and moral arguments mobilizing these efforts. This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in the treatment of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. To illustrate his points, Young presents a number of fascinating transcripts of the group therapy and diagnostic sessions that he observed firsthand over a period of two years. Through his comments and the transcripts themselves, the reader becomes familiar with the individual hospital personnel and clients and their struggle to make sense of life after a tragic war. One observes that everyone on the unit is heavily invested in the PTSD diagnosis: boundaries between therapist and patient are as unclear as were the distinctions between victim and victimizer in the jungles of Southeast Asia. (shrink)

An examination of David Hume's philosophy of religion that situates his conception "true religion" within the context of his overall science of human nature, his rejection of popular religion, and his Ciceronian influence"--Provided by publisher.

This is an introduction to the topical collection Microbes, Networks, Knowledge: Disease Ecology in the twentieth Century, based on a workshop held at Queen Mary, University London on July 6–7 2016. More than twenty years ago, historian of science and medicine Andrew Mendelsohn asked, “Where did the modern, ecological understanding of epidemic disease come from?” Moving beyond Mendelsohn’s answer, this collection of new essays considers the global history of disease ecology in the past century and shows how epidemics and pandemics (...) have made “microbes complex”. (shrink)

Drawing on recent findings, this study examines whether valence concordant electromyography (EMG) responses can be explained as an unconditional effect of mere stimulus processing or as somatosensory simulation driven by task-dependent processing strategies. While facial EMG over the Corrugator supercilii and the Zygomaticus major was measured, each participant performed two tasks with pictures of album covers. One task was an affective evaluation task and the other was to attribute the album covers to one of five decades. The Embodied Emotion Account (...) predicts that valence concordant EMG is more likely to occur if the task necessitates a somatosensory simulation of the evaluative meaning of stimuli. Results support this prediction with regard to Corrugator supercilii in that valence concordant EMG activity was only present in the affective evaluation task but not in the non-evaluative task. Results for the Zygomaticus major were ambiguous. Our findings are in line with the view that EMG activity is an embodied part of the evaluation process and not a mere physical outcome. (shrink)

A phenomenological hermeneutic study of the lifeworld of critical care nursing was undertaken, from which emerged the concept of ‘focusing’. Focusing is defined as empathizing concern for the critically ill person and his/her family amid the high technology of the intensive care unit. When nurses focus on the patient and the patient's family they are able to empathize with die personal dimensions of caring. The study used a phenomenological hermeneutic approach to describe die nature of the lived experience of clinical (...) nursing practice in a high technology environment. (shrink)

Fin de siecle Vienna was once memorably described by Karl Kraus as a "proving ground for the destruction of the world." In the decades leading to the World War that brought down the Austro-Hungarian empire, the city was at once an operetta dream world masking social and political problems and tension, as well as a center for the far-reaching explorations and innovations in music, art, science, and philosophy that would help to define modernity. One of the most powerful critiques of (...) the retreat into fantasy was that of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose early career in Vienna has helped frame debates about ethical and aesthetic values in culture. In Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited Allan Janik expands upon his work Wittgenstein's Vienna (co-authored with Stephen Toulmin) to amplify a number of significant points concerning the genesis of Wittgenstein's thought, the nature of Viennese culture, and criticism of contemporary culture. Although Wittgenstein is the central figure in this volume, Janik places considerable emphasis on other influential figures, both Viennese and non-Viennese, in order to break down some of the persistent stereotypes about the philosopher and his surrounding culture, especially the myths of "carefree" Vienna and Wittgenstein the positivist. The persistence of these myths, in Janik's view, stems in part from the inability of many historians to differentiate past from present in the evaluation of intellectual currents. Janik reviews a number of figures overlooked in assessing Wittgenstein: Otto Weininger, Kraus, Schoenberg, Nietzsche, Wagner, Ibsen, Offenbach, and Georg Trakl. All of these, Janik demonstrates, are absolutely necessary to understand what was at stake in the debates on aestheticism and the critique of a modern culture. Wittgenstein's efforts to recognize the limits of thought and language and thus to be fair to science, religion, and art account for his place of honor among critical modernists. These essays elucidate Wittgenstein's perspective on our culture. (shrink)

What role have experiments played, and should they play, in physics? How does one come to believe rationally in experimental results? The Neglect of Experiment attempts to provide answers to both of these questions. Professor Franklin's approach combines the detailed study of four episodes in the history of twentieth century physics with an examination of some of the philosophical issues involved. The episodes are the discovery of parity nonconservation in the 1950s; the nondiscovery of parity nonconservation in the 1930s, when (...) the results of experiments indicated, at least in retrospect, the symmetry violation, but the significance of those results was not realized; the discovery and acceptance of CP symmetry; and Millikan's oil-drop experiment. Franklin examines the various roles that experiment plays, including its role in deciding between competing theories, confirming theories, and calling fo new theories. The author argues that one can provide a philosophical justification for these roles. He contends that if experiment plays such important roles, then one must have good reason to believe in experimental results. He then deals with deveral problems concerning such reslults, including the epistemology of experiment, how one comes to believe rationally in experimental results, the question of the influence of theoretical presuppositions on results, and the problem of scientific fruad. This original and important contribution to the study of the philosophy of experimental science is an outgrowth of many years of research. Franklin brings to this work more than a decade of experience as an experimental high-energy physicist, along with his significant contributions to the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)