In the present paper, the author looks at the political dimension of some trends in the visual arts within twentieth-century avant-garde groups through George Santayana’s idea of vital liberty. Santayana accused the avant-gardists of social and political escapism, and of becoming unintentionally involved in secondary issues. In his view, the emphasis they placed on the medium and on treating it as an aim in itself, not, as it should be, as a transmitter through which a stimulating relationship with the environment (...) can be had, was accompanied by a focus on fragments of life and on parts of existence, and, on the other hand, by a de facto rejection of ontology and cosmology as being crucial to understanding life and the place of human beings in the universe. The avant-gardists became involved in political life by responding excessively to the events of the time, instead of to the everlasting problems that are the human lot. (shrink)

Between 1940 and 1945, while still a student of theoretical physics and without any contact with the history of science, Thomas S. Kuhn developed a general outline of a theory of the role of belief in science. This theory was well rooted in the philosophical tradition of Emerson Hall, Harvard, and particularly in H. M. Sheffer’s and C. I. Lewis’s logico-philosophical works—Kuhn was, actually, a graduate student of the former in 1945. In this paper I reconstruct the development of that (...) general outline after Kuhn’s first years at Harvard. I examine his works on moral and aesthetic issues—where he displayed an already ‘anti-Whig’ stance concerning historiography—as well as his first ‘Humean’ approach to science and realism, where his earliest concern with belief is evident. Then I scrutinise his graduate work to show how his first account of the role of belief was developed. The main aim of this paper is to show that the history of science illustrated for Kuhn the epistemic role and effects of belief he had already been theorising about since around 1941.Keywords: Intension; Belief; Causality; Thomas Kuhn; Clarence Irving Lewis; Henry Sheffer. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 3, Page 676-695, May 2022.

The paper reveals view point of G. Santayana on avant-garde, which has been created at the same time as his philosophical and aesthetic conceptions came into existence. Although he was poet and many papers devoted to studying of poetry he has been interested in all kinds of art. When creating his own philosophical-aesthetic conception he paid attention to Ancient art – especially Greek art. However, he was able to make contribution to contemporary art as well. His opinion was interesting as (...) usually, full of unanswered questions, but at the same time he offered answers, which has an impact on contemporary art, aesthetics, and theory of art. He tried to apply the theory of poetic of work of art on a visual work of art, especially works of avant-garde. He made anattempt to explain the avant-garde works of art according to language of poetry. At the same time he offered opinion on avant-garde as a movement. (shrink)