In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 284-303 [Access article in PDF] Accidental Art:Tolstoy's Poetics of Unintentionality Michael A. Denner I ART'S ABILITY TO INFECT another with an emotion, the concept that has come to be probably the most readily identified catchphrase in What Is Art? (though it crops up in his earlier writings on art), derives from L. N. Tolstoy's dynamic identity claim about art: we know an artist (...) has created a genuine work of art when he "hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by these feelings and also experience them." 1 "What is art?" is then a taxonomical question, and, according to Tolstoy, art is identifiable from non-art not by some set of external characteristics—the way, say, Aristotle categorized animals in his natural history—rather art is recognizable by its function, by what it does. In this sense art is like a tool: A given thing is art because it performs a certain task, much as one might claim a screwdriver is anything that sets and removes screws, regardless of its external characteristics. Tolstoy, in fact, repeatedly refers to art as "orudie," "a tool," or even "a weapon."It is worth noting from the outset that this metaphor of contagiousness is one of sublimated violence. For its passive "perceiver" (Tolstoy's characteristic term for the consumer of art), art amounts to irresistible, surreptitious emotional manipulation by an external entity. Tolstoy is ever attentive to the underlying meanings of the words he chooses, and I think he means to emphasize the latent, etymological meaning of the zarazit', to infect, the root of which is razit', to strike, a military term that likely resonated with Tolstoy, a war veteran. 2 Etymological arguments aside, Tolstoy makes explicit the psychological violation that goes hand-in-hand [End Page 284] with the experience of a work of art in a diary entry from a period of work on an earlier variant of What Is Art?: "One must hone the artistic work so that it penetrates. To hone a work means to make it perfect artistically, in which case it will pierce through the indifference...." 3 In an earlier version of the essay, Tolstoy offers "hypnotism" as a synonym for infection (p. 53).With its ability to "penetrate" through indifference and colonize, willy-nilly, the other, art accomplishes directly and immediately what no amount of rational argument could accomplish: "Art is differentiated from the activity of rational activity, which demands preparation and a certain sequence of knowledge (so that one cannot learn trigonometry before knowing geometry), by the fact that it acts on people independently of their state of development and education, that the charm of a picture, of sounds, or of forms, infects any man whatever his plane of development" (p. 178).The effect of art does not depend on some graduated, sequential process as it does for rational activity: art's infectiousness is immediate and irresistible. According to What Is Art?, the summum bonum of art's infectiousness, its best use, but notably not its only, is bringing about the Kingdom of God by effecting a change in the psychology of all the individuals who experience it. "Religious art," Tolstoy's supreme category of art, surmounts the (ultimately illusory for Tolstoy) individuality of the perceiver by inducing in him or her an emotional union with the artist and all others who have experienced the work of art, thereby inducting all perceivers into the universal collective of humankind: "In this freeing of our personality from its separation from other people, from its isolation, in this uniting of personality with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art" (p. 228). Art is a sacrament and the artist a priest of sorts.It is often said, even by those who have read the work, that Tolstoy "rejected" art in the last decades of his life, and What Is Art? is often cited as evidence. Granted, much of the book excoriates much of the art of the ages, but one must not... (shrink)

This paper explores what happens when artists fail to execute their goals. I argue that taxonomies of failure in general, and of failed-art in particular, should focus on the attempts which generate the failed-entity, and that to do this they must be sensitive to an attempt’s orientation. This account of failed-attempts delivers three important new insights into artistic practice: there can be no accidental art, only deliberate and incidental art; art’s intention-dependence entails the possibility of performative failure, but not (...) of failed-art; and art’s intention-dependence is perfectly compatible with the role that luck plays in artistic creation. (shrink)

Attempting art: an essay on intention-dependenceIt is a truism among philosophers that art is intention-dependent—that is to say, art-making is an activity that depends in some way on the maker's intentions. Not much thought has been given to just what this entails, however. For instance, most philosophers of art assume that intention-dependence entails concept-dependence—i.e. possessing a concept of art is necessary for art-making, so that what prospective artists must intend is to make art. And yet, a mounting body of anthropological (...) and art-historical evidence and philosophical argument suggests that not only is such a criterion unsatisfied by most of the art-historical canon, but it also rests on a false premise: concepts of 'art' are not shared between cultures, nor even in the same culture across time. My dissertation aims to rectify this error by first exploring what our commitment to art's intention-dependence actually entails, and then showing that, properly understood, intention-dependence sets a number of important constraints on theories of art with respect to explanatory desiderata such as the success- and failure-conditions of art-attempts, the cross-cultural identification of art, and the reference of 'art' and art-kind terms. I begin by situating art's intention-dependence in the philosophical literature on intentional action, arguing that, properly conceived, intention-dependence is a weak criterion which can be satisfied either directly or indirectly. It therefore does not necessarily entail concept-dependence. I then use this distinction to motivate a new treatment of the success- and failure-conditions for art-attempts, arguing that the extant model's emphasis on compliance with 'the manner intended' is far too restrictive to capture actual artistic practices. I go on to show that Ruth Millikan's model of linguistic conventions supplies an independently plausible explanation of art's concept-independent origins in terms of the development of a system of indirectly intention-dependent conventions called an 'artworld'. I argue that this account of artworld development supplies us with the tools we need to distinguish art-kinds from other artifactual kinds. Finally, I turn my attention to methodological issues, arguing that even though 'art' is a social kind with its roots in arbitrary and historically-contingent networks of conventions, the philosophy of art is not merely an exercise in bare conceptual analysis. In fact, there is now a great deal of evidence to show that the ways we think about 'art' are inconsistent, incomplete, imperialistic, and largely unprincipled. Yet I argue that this does not mean that the artworld data have no bearing on theories of art. Instead, I argue that our best reflective understanding of our artworld practices sets the constraints on the reference of 'art' and art-kind terms. I argue that we have no privileged epistemic access to the ontology of social kinds; our only privilege lies in our ability to determine the proper subject of our inquiries. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Michel de Montaigne: Accidental PhilosopherZahi ZallouaMichel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher, by Ann Hartle ; 303 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. $60.00.Ann Hartle's new book is arguably the clearest and most compelling interpretation of Montaigne as a genuine philosopher since Hugo Friedrich's masterful Montaigne (1949). Her study is indeed an emphatic response to Friedrich's call to read Montaigne philosophically. Hartle derives her almost oxymoronic title from (...) Montaigne's own self-description as "a new figure: an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher." Taking Montaigne's moment of self-discovery à la lettre, Hartle systematically proceeds to elucidate the full meaning of Montaigne's observation. What emerges from her reading is a radical thinker who breaks with ancient philosophy and medieval theology. Her Montaigne, however, does not disavow the past but ultimately enriches it, building upon prior models. In this respect, the essayist practices the Renaissance art of imitation—creative imitation that repeats but also alters its exemplary model in a move to rival it. While Hartle exhibits an outstanding knowledge of the history of philosophy—from Plato to Heidegger, passing through Machiavelli, Hume, and Rousseau—her book is not itself a historical study nor a work in the history of ideas: she insists that her interpretation is conceptual rather than historical.What is accidental philosophy? It is foremost a non-authoritative, thoroughly human philosophy, one which takes as a sine qua non the recognition of the world's contingency—an awareness that things might have been radically different. Accidental philosophy thus represents nothing short of a displacement and transformation of reason, a calling into question of its traditional sovereign and divine-like status. (One thinks here of Aristotle's notion of the active intellect [nous poetikos], which he considers to be divine in man in Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics.) Rejecting the belief in an autonomous reason, Montaigne renders problematic the possibility of "deliberative philosophy" (accidental philosophy's counterpart): "the exercise of reason as rule within the soul, a place and function that reason claims for itself on the basis of its superiority with the hierarchy of nature." In his critique of reason—most eloquently displayed in the "Apology for Raymond Sebond," chapter 12 of [End Page 441] Book II of the Essays—Montaigne might be seen as proto-postmodernist, occupying a similar position as Nietzsche in a history of counter-Enlightenment thought. But such an interpretation, argues Hartle, is on the whole inaccurate, given Montaigne's commitment to truth.As would be expected in a book about Montaigne's philosophy, skepticism plays a major role in Hartle's positive assessment of the essayist. Skepticism has traditionally been interpreted in Montaigne scholarship either as a stage in the evolution of the essayist's thought, or as an expression of his fideism. The evolutionary reading was first championed by Pierre Villey in Les Sources et l'évolution des "Essais" de Montaigne (1933), in which he argued that Montaigne's thought evolved through three stages: Stoicism, Skepticism, and Naturalism (or Epicureanism). This now unpopular view was nevertheless recently reaffirmed by David Quint in his well-received Montaigne and the Quality of Mercy (1998). The essayist's fideism, on the other hand, is more readily accepted in Montaigne circles. It is commonly accepted that Montaigne's skepticism functions in a way that undermines reason's authority while leaving room for faith in religious matters. Hartle's understanding of Montaigne's skepticism differs in a major way from both of these accounts. She asks: "Does skepticism provide us with a complete and adequate understanding of Montaigne's philosophical activity?" Hartle offers a seemingly definitive answer: "Montaigne is not a skeptic" (p. 15). Yet, she makes her response more nuanced in several passage of her study, arguing again not for a clean break with ancient skep-ticism but with a profound transformation of this dominant philosophical school.What we have, then, is a "skeptical moment" rather than a full-fledged skeptical suspension of judgment. And it is in this moment that an openness to the possible—such as the discovery of the strange in the familiar—is made manifest. Hartle rightly points to Montaigne's discovery of his own... (shrink)

This article is an autoethnographic account of my journey from theatre stage manager to academic stage manager. Performing arts education and training in Higher Education is a diverse field, rangin...

In two experiments (total N=693) we explored whether people are willing to consider paintings made by AI-driven robots as art, and robots as artists. Across the two experiments, we manipulated three factors: (i) agent type (AI-driven robot v. human agent), (ii) behavior type (intentional creation of a painting v. accidental creation), and (iii) object type (abstract v. representational painting). We found that people judge robot paintings and human painting as art to roughly the same extent. However, people are much (...) less willing to consider robots as artists than humans, which is partially explained by the fact that they are less disposed to attribute artistic intentions to robots. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.2 (2006) 105-117 [Access article in PDF] Art and Failure Daniel A. Siedell Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden The Genius Decision: The Extraordinary and the Postmodern Condition, by Klaus Ottmann. Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, 2004, 181 pp., $18.50 paperback. Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde, by Branden Joseph. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003, 450 pp., $34.95 hardcover. The most optimistic ethics (...) have all begun by emphasizing the element of failure involved in the condition of man; without failure, no ethics. Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity1Failure is an inescapable part of the human condition. It is also an inescapable part of extraordinary human achievement. In fact, it is because failure is woven so deeply into their fabric that makes certain endeavors, like the arts, philosophy, science, and even sports, so extraordinary, so compelling, and ultimately so meaningful. There is therefore a close—but often underexamined—connection between extraordinary achievement and failure in the history of the arts and culture in the West. Two very different books, one a work of philosophy and the other a work of art history, converge on the presence of failure in extraordinary human achievement. New York-based art critic and independent curator Klaus Ottmann offers a philosophical study of genius from a postmodern perspective entitled The Genius Decision: The Extraordinary and the Postmodern Condition. Art historian Branden Joseph, who is assistant professor at the University of California-Irvine, offers a revisionist interpretation of Robert Rauschenberg's aesthetic project in Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde. The Genius Decision offers an illuminating philosophical framework within which to read Random Order.Ottmann begins his study with the following question: "How does one account for those extraordinary and exceptional works of art and literature that set one artist apart from the others; works that most artists, however skilled, would never be able to produce; that exert great influence on others" (13). Ottmann answers this question by interpreting the work of Franz Kafka, [End Page 105] Spinoza, Søren Kierkegaard, Friederich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Martin Heidegger through a postmodernist lens provided in part by Jean-François Lyotard, Julia Kristeva, and other theorists. For example, he reads Kafka through Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari; Spinoza's Ethics through Deleuze; Kierkegaard through Adorno; Nietzsche through Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Heidegger; and Wittgenstein through P. M. S. Hacker. Foundational for Ottmann's thesis is theorist Julia Kristeva's concept of the Abject and its relationship to Jouissance—meaning "enjoyment," often connoting a sensual, even sexual pleasure—which has entered philosophical discourse via literary theorist Roland Barthes and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. For Kristeva, the Abject is the pressing of the "Unrepresentable" that requires a "sacrifice" of Jouissance; that is, a leap toward or a response to the inability to represent or give adequate form to this primordial ground of pure experiential bliss. For Ottmann, extraordinary achievement in art and philosophy consists of intentional and absolute leaps into certain failure in giving representation to what cannot be represented—despite its impossibility. This is what Ottmann calls the "Genius Decision." In contrast to passive explanations of extraordinary achievement, such as "accidental genius" and "physical genius," in which the individual can claim fortuitous circumstances or innate talent, the Genius Decision involves intentionality; it is a "decision" of some kind. But what kind of decision is it? Ottmann argues that it is an "active-passive" one. He then analyzes each of these influential thinkers as offering unique manifestations of the Genius Decision in their attempt to represent the Unrepresentable.Key to the Abject-Jouissance relationship is Ottmann's understanding of postmodernism. Rather than viewing it as a historical movement, Ottmann, following Jean-François Lyotard, regards it as a "condition," that is, as a nascent state within modernism. Ottmann characterizes the modern as recognizing and dwelling in the Abject, while the postmodern leaves the ambiguity of the Abject behind for the "certainty of failure" (49). The Genius Decision, then, comes out of a postmodern awareness of the impossibility of its... (shrink)

With the development of computer hardware and software, digital art is a new discipline. It uses computers and digital technology as tools to perform artistic expression. It can be expanded to various binary numerical codes with computers as the center and can also be refined to various categories of creation with computers. The research scope is set in the field of digital art, and all kinds of accidental factors of digital art creation based on the machine learning algorithm are (...) mined and analyzed for feature correlation. Based on the hidden association relationship of massive data, the study focuses on the implicit association mining of digital art features of data for the recommendation algorithm. The classification and continuous data feature attributes are introduced and discretized, and the binary representation of data features is extended to ensure the diversity of data feature attributes. In order to mine some correlation features in data, a heuristic feature mining method based on minimum support was studied to discover the frequency of correlation features and construct the optimal feature subset. Based on the frequent items of data features, this study observes the heuristic algorithm of digital art feature association mining based on minimum confidence and carries out feature matching based on digital art feature association mining under different situation modes. The validity of the proposed algorithm is verified by using the experimental data of health and medical situations in the machine learning library. (shrink)

En este ensayo propongo una aproximación al contenido de Del arte de la guerra de Maquiavelo desde la pregunta por el enemigo: ¿quién es el enemigo en Del arte de la guerra? ¿Quién es el adversario del ejército que Maquiavelo busca organizar en el libro? Dentro de la literatura secundaria sobre el florentino identifico tres tipos de respuesta a esta pregunta, lo que llamo aquí tres diferentes manifestaciones del enemigo. Según estas lecturas, el enemigo de la milicia maquiaveliana es a) (...) el cristianismo, el modo de vida instituido por esta religión; b) lo imprevisible, los accidentes cuya ocurrencia no se puede anticipar, es decir, la fortuna, y c) los grandes, cuyo deseo es el de dominar al pueblo. (shrink)

From the beginning, Augustine's "Confessions" presents itself as a dialogue with God. Taking a cue from Ludwig Feuerbach’s "The Essence of Christianity [Das Wesen des Christentums]," this dialogue can easily be dismissed as a projection of the self. This would imply that the divine otherness is nothing more than a mirror of one’s own fears and preferences. “Does this critique,” I asked myself in this piece, “really do justice to a position like that of Augustine?” For a long time, I (...) did not know how to approach what I had — provisionally — called Augustine’s dialogue with God. It appeared to me that Augustine, in an accidental and indirect way, had re-invented the Platonic dialogue and had turned it into a new Christian genre. “It is true,” I told myself, “that the genre of the Confessions shows family resemblances with the hagiography and the autobiography. But most certainly it cannot be reduced to these genres.” The Greek words ‘hagios’ (holy) and ‘autos’ (self) are in flagrant contradiction with the intention of the Confessions. Augustine tries to stay clear of any claim of holiness and only highlights his own ‘self’ to immediately question it. “Is the Platonic dialogue,” I asked myself, “not a far more appropriate predecessor for Augustine’s dialogue with God?” Both types of dialogues can be seen as true dia logoi in which at least two different voices emerge. However, contrary to what one would expect, it is not the dialogue form itself that frames these two voices. Instead the two voices emerge within the discourse of a single speaker, incorporating true otherness within the discourse of the self. Building on these reflections, I explore how Augustine's dialogue with God succeeds in eluding Feuerbach's charge of self-projection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gadamer On Art, Morality, and AuthorityKenneth L. BuckmanMary Devereaux claims that the problem of morality in the twentieth century and the anxiety caused by the fear of moral chaos fall into two main responses: (1) one looks to the past because the past seems to afford what the present lacks, i.e., a commonly shared and stable moral reality; and (2) one looks to the present and comes to terms (...) with the way things are, a strategy of accommodation that revises our over inflated notions of knowledge and justification, particularly moral justification. 1 She sees Gadamer’s work as an additional option that responds to this problem. Devereaux says Gadamer’s response to the collapse of traditional morality is a turn to the experience of art wherein one derives morals from an extra-moral sense. Thus, Gadamer’s aesthetic example serves as a source of moral value. Devereaux says Gadamer’s project fails, in that his account contains an optimistic and unquestioned assumption that art always operates to our benefit (p. 71). However, Gadamer is appreciative of the deficiencies and dangers inherent in the kind of view he holds and does not hold an excessively optimistic, romanticized, naive, or prescriptive view of tradition. Gadamer’s account is a descriptive explication of the manner in which societies acquire the authority to form values.Devereaux’s account is to a large extent fair and accurate. However, despite her empathy with Gadamer’s account, she has reservations about the accuracy of Gadamer’s description of art and questions the depth to which he understands the current ethical crisis. She maintains that Gadamer’s analysis indicates a preference for a certain kind of art [End Page 144] (i.e., classical), and much of twentieth-century art (Tinguely, Cage, Burden, etc.) is outside the purview of Gadamer’s analysis. Though each individual artwork, in Gadamer’s view, can serve as a metaphor for ordering in general, Burden et al. aim, “not simply to introduce new materials or new subject matter within an existing artistic framework, but to alter the frame” (p. 69). These artists reconceive the very nature of artistic activity and change the rules by substituting the accidental, the incomplete, and the self-contradictory in place of selection and craft (pp. 69–70). Recent artistic principles have deconstructed the notion of order, showing the failure of order itself. Should we even grant that certain types of traditional art function as Gadamer has indicated? Though we might hope for the desired result of moral cohesion, Devereaux says, we are still faced with the problem of availability and the extent to which a person’s contact with art generates the necessary moral education. Her most serious charge is Gadamer’s “unquestioned assumption” that art always operates to our benefit (p. 71). The reliance on shared tradition, Devereaux argues, positions Gadamer to argue that the interaction with texts serves the positive moral function of social cohesion. However, Gadamer’s willingness to assign normative authority to tradition opens him to serious charges of conservatism, most prominently from the criticism and viewpoint of feminists and black scholars, and he “does not acknowledge those for whom the authority of that tradition is deeply and unquestionably problematic. Might not a coherent tradition, if achieved, function oppressively?” (p. 71). Devereaux claims that Gadamer rejects this possibility.Devereaux’s criticisms thus fall into these five areas: (1) Gadamer privileges a certain kind of art (i.e., classical); (2) for Gadamer art serves as an ordering, but it does not fulfill that capacity; (3) Gadamer is unclear about the availability and the degree of contact members of a society must have with art in order for the artwork to function in its moral capacity; (4) Gadamer wrongly assumes that art always operates to our benefit; and (5) Gadamer’s acceptance of the normative authority of tradition is oppressive. Devereaux errs in all of these criticisms.Devereaux’s criticism of Gadamer’s aesthetic theory in general, disconnected for the moment from its supposed moral implications, is that his analysis is concerned with traditional or classical forms of art, ignoring the less integrative forms of art of the late twentieth century. Though it may... (shrink)

When we discuss the value of a work of art we are confronted immediately with two difficulties: the terms we use, and the peculiar character of art. No one, to my knowledge, has ever doubted that an artist produces a form of some kind, and that in any discussion of art as art that form must somehow be considered; but the terms we use generally have no reference to form. We miss the form in various ways We use terms that (...) are nonartistic—that is, terms that refer to something external to the work, as when we speak of the subject of a painting, of what was depicted rather than the depiction of it, though we know full well that what we respond to is not what was depicted but the depiction of it. "This is a play about Oedipus— what does that tell us of the diverse forms produced by Sophocles, Seneca, Dryden, Voltaire, Gide, Cocteau? Or again, we use terms which are analogical, for example, the "rhythm" of a painting; the difficulty with these is that they are ambiguous and also that, while they may relate to the work, they can designate it only insofar as there is similarity between it and the analogue. Again, we use terms which seem to designate a single form when in fact they refer to forms of the utmost heterogeneity, as when we speak of "the novel"; this usually arises out of the indiscriminate application of the term over some considerable span of history, so that the "historical slippage" of meaning is gradual and goes unnoticed. As the term broadens in meaning to include more and more heterogeneous forms, the essence of each is lost, and the term comes to apply only to accidental analogies between the forms. In the end very little can then be said, involving only the most abstract and general accidents of likeness. Henry James' The Art of Fiction, Percy Lubbock's The Craft of Fiction, and E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel illustrate this condition perfectly. The complaint that it is impossible to discuss tragedy because the term has been diversely employed and its proffered justification stem from this condition. The complaint and the justifications are both trivial, and the solution of the difficulty is simple. All that is necessary is to distinguish the different senses of the term by distinguishing the different things to which it is applied. Language is ambiguous, and we use it ambiguously; this in no way implies that the ambiguities cannot be cleared up. Finally, we may use terms which indeed have reference to the form of the work but place the part for the whole; that is, terms which are elements in its definition but do not constitute the complete definition. Thus we designate something, not through the form proper but through the device or method used, as in "drama," "sculpture," "etching," "collage," or through the means or medium, as in "charcoal sketch," "watercolor," "oil painting." The point is not that the object is not, say, a drama or a watercolor; of course it is. The point is rather that these terms do not as such refer to the form and refer to it completely. If in fact they stipulated form, all charcoal sketches would be alike in form, and all oil paintings, and all dramas. One consequence of speaking in such a fashion is that we are likely to confuse the method with the form and talk of, say, "the nature of drama" as though all drama were of the same "nature," whereas the dramatic method is used in a wide variety of forms; or to confuse the medium or means with the form and to assure that the work can have no properties beyond those of its medium, as though artists did not exist and all art were simply nature.Elder Olson, poet and critic, has received numerous awards for his verse . Among his many works are Tragedy and the Theory of Drama, and The Theory of Comedy. His contributions to Critical Inquiry are "The Poetic Process"" , Part 1 of a "Conspectus of Poetry", and Part 2 of a "Conspectus of Poetry". (shrink)

Can one be happy and free, and nonetheless be moral? This question occurs at the core of daily life and is, as well, a question as old as philosophy itself. In _Can Virtue Make Us Happy? The Art of Living and Morality, _Otfried Höffe, one of Europe’s most well-known philosophers, offers a far-reaching and foundational work in philosophical ethics. As long as one understands "happiness" purely as a feeling of subjective well-being, Höffe argues, there is at best only an (...) class='Hi'>accidental unity between it and morality. However, if one means by "happiness" the quality of doing well in the sense of one’s own successful existence, then one must include actions that undoubtedly have a moral character and are named virtues. He uses clear and general language to present what one understands by "happiness" and "freedom" while illuminating the blind alleys in the history of philosophy as well as the difficulties raised by the issues themselves. What has priority: good ends or right action? Is freedom always anarchy? Is it possible to think of a freedom enhanced by morality? Is "morality" only a pretty word for stupidity? Does humanity have a good or a bad character? Is there such a thing as evil? Höffe offers us enlightened philosophical reflection and foundational orientation but no simple formulas; this is precisely what is at stake because anyone who wishes to live a self-determined life rejects any and all formulas. (shrink)

Contrary to appearances, Machiavelli's Art of War is a carefully ordered whole. The order of treatment of topics in the body of the work deviates from the order initially proposed by the dialogue's main interlocutor, yet it strictly follows another order, inscribed in the text itself, which is neither accidental nor dependent on any ancient source. A clear understanding of this new order, and of the dramatic event that precipitates it, illuminates key questions, including the work's dialogic character, its (...) relation to its ancient sources, Machiavelli's apparent deprecation of cavalry as opposed to infantry, and, most importantly, Machiavelli's own long-term impresa to blaze an altogether new path in political thought. More specifically, attention to the order of the military section suggests that the dialogue's main speaker and his young interlocutors become the commanders of an army-in-speech on the march against an entire way of life whose origins are found in Christianity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rembrandt and Collections of His Art in America: An NEH Curriculum ProjectJoseph M. Piro (bio)IntroductionI have asked myself whether the short time given us would be better used in an attempt to understand the whole of the universe or to assimilate what is within our reach.—Paul CézanneThis issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education features an arts education curriculum project that was designed to use the oeuvre of Rembrandt (...) van Rijn—seventeenth-century Dutch painter, etcher, and draftsman extraordinaire—as a teaching resource. A partnership of scholars, university professors, museum educators, and classroom teachers designed the project, which uses Rembrandt as the prism through which to diversify teaching of the core content areas of social studies and visual art. Members of this team attempted to expand the boundaries of themes traditionally found in art and other humanities disciplines by linking these with the social sciences, thereby forming what might be called “humanistic social studies.” The final product is a Web site to which teachers and those interested in using this type of instructional approach in their classroom teaching will have access. Funding for this project derived from a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Curriculum Materials Development grant designed to promote the teaching of the humanities and support projects that can serve as national models.1In the eyes of many, Rembrandt is viewed primarily as a “European” artist. Although it is true that many of his major works are found in museums across Europe, he is generously represented in the holdings of collections across America. Yet for many teachers in the United States he remains an enigmatic figure; knowledge about his art is limited, and the U.S. museum collections of his work remain untapped for classroom application. To broaden the appeal and teaching potential of his work, the project team [End Page 1] mined this collection of “American” Rembrandts. Specifically, the project, targeted at secondary art and social studies teachers (grades 6 through 12), is committed to building and increasing the capacities of teachers to network knowledge of Rembrandt’s art with their classroom practice. Further, with its grounding in aesthetic education theory within a humanities framework, the project endeavors to promote instructional innovation and encourage teachers to break new ground in high-impact classroom pedagogy. The timing of the project and its ongoing development was not accidental. They converged with events held in 2006 to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Rembrandt’s birth. These events ranged from worldwide museum exhibitions to publications of books containing new insights on Rembrandt, all of this aimed at celebrating an artist whose achievements many consider to be a zenith of world culture.Why Rembrandt: The Rationale for the ProjectWhy is Rembrandt the artist at the center of this project? There are any number of good reasons, but the project’s rationale centers around three in particular. First, to borrow a term from Peter Kivy, Rembrandt is the ultimate “aesthetic symbol,”2 an indisputably blue-chip figure who produced some of the greatest masterworks of world art, many of which students find both intellectually engaging and psychologically insightful. Traditionally, teachers have striven to enrich the aesthetic lives of their students with exemplars of the human mind, and the genius of Rembrandt provides a potent opportunity to do so.3 By studying an artist of such stature teachers can develop students’ cultural intelligence and visual literacy and present opportunities to observe and decode substantive, challenging masterworks of art. In this context, Rudolf Arnheim describes a painting by Rembrandt as containing a network of “visual arrows” that communicate multiple experiences about the human condition, including love, tenderness, and desire, among others. Arnheim speaks of the additive nature of the experience, how the viewer—almost like a mathematician—needs to learn how to add up the clues and arrive at a solution. He does not intend, of course, for the viewer to have an impersonal, “clinical” experience. Rather, he writes, “art... is one of the most powerful instruments available to us for the fulfillment of life. To withhold this benefit from human beings is to deprive them indeed.”4Second, there is a cognitive complexity embedded in... (shrink)

What role does race play in the moral judgment of character? None, ideally, philosophers insist, contending that the proper assessment of an action requires that we disregard any social values associated with the body performing it. What rightly comes under evaluation, they assert, is the neutral, abstract deed irrespective of the race of the agent. Only under these conditions, presumably, can we gauge true moral worth. Reading together Immanuel Kant and Frantz Fanon on ethics and race, I propose instead that (...) embodied values such as those accorded by race do not distort the portrait of the ethical subject but rather bring that subjectivity into being. Key Words: blackness • embodiment • ethics • Frantz Fanon • Immanuel • Kant • morality • race • value. (shrink)

Business ethics courses have been launched with professors from business pulling on one oar, and professors of philosophy pulling on the other, but they lack a sense of direction. Let's begin with the basics: What is an ehtical decision? More fundamentally, why the interest in professional ethics in the first place?There are over 300 centers for the study of appIied ethics in this country-why? The events which face our society today are outside the business-oriented collection of shared beIiefs that set (...) our pubIic policy agenda. Cur beIiefs are too narrow, thus we see, understand, and control small slices of life.Business ethics should be the study of the structure and impact on us of what we call "business science," e.g., accounting, marketing, economics, law, etc., and the corresponding study of the process of what Carl Jung called individuation: learning to become one's own uniqueself in the face of these bodies of professional knowledge which have structured our lives and charted the direction for our sensibilities for too long. (shrink)

Business ethics courses have been launched with professors from business pulling on one oar, and professors of philosophy pulling on the other, but they lack a sense of direction. Let's begin with the basics: What is an ehtical decision? More fundamentally, why the interest in professional ethics in the first place?There are over 300 centers for the study of appIied ethics in this country-why? The events which face our society today are outside the business-oriented collection of shared beIiefs that set (...) our pubIic policy agenda. Cur beIiefs are too narrow, thus we see, understand, and control small slices of life.Business ethics should be the study of the structure and impact on us of what we call "business science," e.g., accounting, marketing, economics, law, etc., and the corresponding study of the process of what Carl Jung called individuation: learning to become one's own uniqueself in the face of these bodies of professional knowledge which have structured our lives and charted the direction for our sensibilities for too long. (shrink)

We explore themes in Nobel Prize–winning economist James M. Buchanan’s work and apply his Ethics and Economic Progress to problems facing individuals and firms. We focus on Buchanan’s analysis of the individual work ethic, his exhortations to “pay the preacher” of the “institutions of moral-ethical communication,” and his notion of law as “public capital.” We highlight several ways people with other-regarding preferences can contribute to social flourishing and some of the ways those who have “affected to trade for the public (...) good” might want to redirect their efforts. We show how Buchanan’s work has considerable implications for business ethics. Just as his economic analysis of politics changed how we understand government, we think his economic analysis of ethics can (and should) change how we understand business. (shrink)

Discusses about selective engagement as the most desirable strategy for contemporary America, stating that it is the one that seeks to forestall dangers, not simply to react to them; that is politically viable; at home and abroad; and that protects US interests.

Abstract…observations of skylfull pylotts is the onlye waye to bring it in rule; for it passeth the reach of naturall philosophy. – Michael Gabriel, 1576 (Collinson, 1867, p. 30)Abstract The tension between empirical data and formal theory pervades the entire history of geomagnetism, from the Middle Ages up to the present day. This paper explores its early-modern history (1500–1800), using a hybrid approach: it applies a methodological framework used in modern geophysics to interpret early-modern developments, exploring to what extent formal (...) conjectures shaped observation and vice versa. A range of pertinent case studies supports classification of this entire period as proto-scientific, characterised by the initial formation of theories being largely disconnected from observational constraints, and their subsequent evolution being advanced primarily by their empirical falsification, and not necessarily associated with the introduction of an alternative. The few exceptional instances of purely data-driven discovery were essentially due to an improved signal-to-noise ratio. (shrink)