Kant’s Critique of Judgment and Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man are generally recognized as crucial documents in the development of modern aesthetics away from rule-based conceptions of objectivity. This paper claims that they are also, in crucial ways, circular. In both Kant and Schiller, aesthetic taste turns out to be grounded in the realm of the social in a way that challenges the idealist notion that aesthetic evaluation and education would—or should—occur against the backdrop of humanity in (...) general, rather than of concrete communities. The threat of conceptual circularity, I claim, is thus directly tied to the ineradicable significance of social circles for the articulation of Kant’s and Schiller’s aesthetics. (shrink)

Kant’s Critique of Judgment and Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man are generally recognized as crucial documents in the development of modern aesthetics away from rule-based conceptions of objectivity. This paper claims that they are also, in crucial ways, circular. In both Kant and Schiller, aesthetic taste turns out to be grounded in the realm of the social in a way that challenges the idealist notion that aesthetic evaluation and education would—or should—occur against the backdrop of humanity in (...) general, rather than of concrete communities. The threat of conceptual circularity, I claim, is thus directly tied to the ineradicable significance of social circles for the articulation of Kant’s and Schiller’s aesthetics. (shrink)

Analyzing features of Wittgenstein's philosophical work and including in-depth textual analyses, this study investigates the impact of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work on contemporary German and French novelists. Drawing upon aesthetics, architectural history, philosophy of science, and photography, the book seeks to explain why references both to Wittgenstein as a person, as well as to his work are more pervasive than other equally renowned twentieth century philosophers and asks why some authors such as Händler and Roubaud, are less well-known and only partially (...) translated into English. (shrink)

Analyzing features of Wittgenstein's philosophical work and including in-depth textual analyses, this study investigates the impact of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work on contemporary German and French novelists. Drawing upon aesthetics, architectural history, philosophy of science, and photography, the book offers readings of the work of Thomas Bernhard, W.G. Sebald, Jacques Roubaud, and Ernst-Wilhelm Händler. In each case, Klebes shows Wittgenstein’s reflections on language and world to be the conduit for an exploration of the question of representation as it bridges the realms (...) of literature and philosophy. (shrink)