But while the literature of art is, in publishers' terms, booming, it has in one respect suffered a loss. During the past two hundred years there has usually been some important figure who acted as a censor and an apologist of the contemporary scene, a Diderot, a Baudelaire, a Ruskin or a Roger Frye. Who amongst our living authors plays this important role? What name springs to mind? I would suggest that no name actually springs; the last of our grandly (...) influential critics was Sir Herbert Read and since his death, whatever else modern art may or may not possess, it has no prophet. This is not to say that aesthetic prophets are necessarily desirable nor that there are not some very conscientious and extremely perceptive critics at work today; in view of the fact that I am within a fortnight exhibiting my work in a London dealer's gallery , it would be folly to deny it. But it is I believe true that for better or for worse we have no grand pundit of living art and I believe that this lack may be concerned with what I see as a certain diminution in the role of the art critic, a certain decay in this department of literature. It is a tendency which I regret and the causes of which I want to try to discuss. It arises I believe from a misunderstanding concerning the proper functions of the critic and this confusion of purpose will be my theme. First, however, I think that I should glance at two important circumstances which make the work of an art critic particularly difficult today. Quentin Bell, professor of the history and theory of art at Sussex University, has written Virginia Woolf: A Biography, Of Human Finery, Ruskin, Victorian Artists, and, Bloomsbury. His article, "Art and the Elite," appeared in the first issue of Critical Inquiry. "The Art Critic and the Art Historian" was originally delivered as the Leslie Stephen lecture at the University of Cambridge on November 26, 1973. Other contributions are "CRITICAL RESPONSE: Notes and Exchanges" , and "Bloomsbury and 'the Vulgar Passions'". (shrink)

In this paper I compare two models of expert judgment: the art critic in Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste” and the “wise man” in “Of Miracles.” The art critic is a true judge of beauty because he has made himself into a person who is optimally receptive to beauty. He possesses the virtues of taste: “Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice” (“Of the Standard of Taste,” 241). But the (...) virtues of the art critic, I argue, are also those of the “wise man,” the person who consistently “proportions his belief to the evidence” (EHU 10.4; SBN 110). Comparison of these two characters reveals that for Hume the virtues fundamental to the art critic’s critical competence are also epistemic virtues. Hume’s exposition of aesthetic excellences should thus be of interest for virtue epistemology. Because contemporary virtue epistemologists have tended to focus almost exclusively on the relationships between intellectual and moral virtues, Hume offers something new: an account of epistemic virtues based on aesthetic virtues. (shrink)

BackgroundCORE (Clarity and Openness in Reporting: E3-based) Reference (released May 2016 by the European Medical Writers Association [EMWA] and the American Medical Writers Association [AMWA]) is a complete and authoritative open-access user’s guide to support the authoring of clinical study reports (CSRs) for current industry-standard-design interventional studies. CORE Reference is a content guidance resource and is not a CSR Template.TransCelerate Biopharma Inc., an alliance of biopharmaceutical companies, released a CSR Template in November 2018 and recognised CORE Reference as one of (...) two principal sources used in its development.MethodsThe regulatory medical writing and statistical professionals who developed CORE Reference conducted a critical review of the TransCelerate CSR Template. We summarise our major findings and recommendations in this communication. We also re-examined and edited the Version 1 CORE Reference Terminology Table that we first published in 2016, and we present this as Version 2 in this communication.ResultsOur major critical review findings indicate that opportunities remain to refine the CSR Template structure and instructional text, enhance content clarity, add web links to referenced guidance documents, improve transparency to support the broad readership of CSRs, and develop supporting resources.The CORE Reference ‘Terminology Table’ Version 2 includes estimand as a defined term and an adaptation of the original ‘worked study example’ to incorporate the recently evolved concept of ‘estimands’.ConclusionsAs TransCelerate’s CSR Template represents an important milestone in authoring CSRs, we offer CSR authors advice and recommendations on its use, similarities, and differences with CORE Reference and advise them to consider shared interpretations between the two.RegistrationCORE Reference is registered with the EQUATOR Network. The TransCelerate CSR Template is not registered with any external organisation to the knowledge of the authors of this paper. (shrink)

Scheuer guides us through the moral and conceptual heart of the liberal education ideal.

In this essay, I examine how Cavell's discussion of the challenges and attendant risks faced by artworks to be genuine rather than "fraudulent" informs his discussion of the challenges and attendant risks faced by art critics to offer interpretations rather than misinterpretations of artworks. Moreover, I clarify how this relation between Cavell's philosophy of art and his philosophy of criticism is mediated by his discussion of modernism. For Cavell, modernism does not so much introduce challenges for artworks as exacerbate (...) them. In doing so, modernism also exacerbates the challenges faced by art critics. In exacerbating rather than introducing these challenges, modernism has a revelatory significance for arts criticism. Namely, it reveals that the difference between imposing meaning upon an artwork ("reading into it") and illuminating an artwork ("hearing it out") is non-criterial, such that good arts criticism necessarily resembles bad, even "fraudulent" arts criticism. With this challenge in clear view, Cavell argues the art critic must accept the hermeneutical risk of imposing meaning upon a work in order to illuminate it by embracing rather than discounting or bracketing her subjectivity. Attempting to avoid this risk denies what modernism reveals about arts criticism, and accordingly, Cavell argues, it both fails and introduces new hermeneutical risks. (shrink)

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, 19 essays document the April 1998 international congress held at Harvard University. They ponder on such topics as the phenomenology of the experience of enchantment, Leonardo's enchantress, the ambiguous meaning of musical enchantment in Kant's Third Critique, art and the reenchantment of sensuous human activity, the creative voice, the allure of the Naza, Henri Matisse's early critical reception in New York, Zizek's sublimicist aesthetic of enchanted fantasy, (...) and enchantment in Baroque festive court performance in France. There is no subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

NOT SAUSSURE: A CRITIQUE OF POST?SAUSSUREAN LITERARY THEORY by Raymond Tallis London: Macmillan, 1988. 273 pp., £33 (£10.95 paper).

Baudelaire's art criticism in a generous paperback sampling. Included are reviews of the salons of 1845, 1846 and 1869, the essay "On the Essence of Laughter," and a study of Delacroix. Many of the art works mentioned in the text are pictured in the volume's 64 pages of illustrations.--V. C. C.

라투르는 근대인들이 자연과 사회, 비인간과 인간, 과학과 정치, 객체와 주체를 분리시키는 정화 작용과 뒤섞는 매개 작용을 모두 사용했음에도 정화 작용만을 내세움으로써 기후 위기와 같은 하이브리드들을 폭발적으로 증가시켰다는 문제의식에서 출발하여 대안적 존재론을 쓰기 위한 기획으로 나아간다. 하이브리드들은 준대상, 준주체, 매개자, 집합체 혹은 연결망들로 기존의 객체와 주체라는 이분법적 존재론적 판형으로는 기술될 수 없다. 그런데 근대의 이분법을 극복하면서 객체와 사물, 사실의 문제와 관심의 문제, 그리고 정치에 있어서는 하나와 여럿을 오가는 원운동이 발생한다. 이는 라투르가 근대의 이분법을 폐기하는 것이 아니라 대안적 존재론에 포괄하기 때문이다. 원운동은 (...) 예술작품의 이행을 통한 연결망 확장에서도 나타난다. 예술 작품은 시간, 공간 그리고 행위소라는 삼중의 이행을 통해 궤적을 그리면서 확장되는데, 성공적인 이행은 작품의 존속을 공고히 하고 더 많은 이행을 가능하게 하면서 예술 작품의 가치를 강화한다. 이런 이행에 예술 작품과 관련된 사건들을 포함시킴으로써 작품을 평가하는 새로운 기준을 제시할 수 있다. 하나의 예술 작품은 단지 그 작품이 보여주는 재료와 형식 사이의 내적 조화뿐만 아니라 그 작품이 놓여있는 연결망, 특히 그 작품의 시공간적인 위치와 시간 속에서 겪게 되는 다양한 사건들이 작품을 평가하는 중요한 기준이 된다. (shrink)

Cosmos+Taxis published a special issue with a symposium discussing Robert Vinten's book Wittgenstein and the Social Sciences. The symposium was edited by Richard Eldridge and it contains contributions from Paul Roth (Distinguished Professor, UC Santa Cruz), Daniel Little (Professor, University of Michigan, Dearborn), Rafael Azize (Associate Professor, Federal University of Bahia), Richard Raatzsch (Professor, EBS Universität), and Rupert Read (Associate Professor, UEA) - with a response by Robert Vinten ('Response to Critics'). Within the issue the papers compare Wittgenstein's philosophy (...) to art, compare Wittgenstein to Brecht, and examine the nature of the social sciences. (shrink)

Those who have views about the relation between aesthetic and ethical value often also have views about the nature of art criticism. Yet no one has paid much attention to the compatibility of views in one debate with views in the other. This is worrying in light of a tension between two popular kinds of view: namely, between critical pluralism and any view in the art and ethics debate that presupposes an invariant relation between aesthetic value and ethical value. Specifically, (...) the tension with invariance arises insofar as critical pluralism accommodates the aesthetic value of interpretive richness, including the aesthetic value of ethically conflicted interpretive richness. Given this tension, a shift of focus is needed in the art and ethics debate; from specifying the criteria for the aesthetic relevance of a work's ethical qualities to defending the fundamental nature of the aesthetic-ethical value relation. (shrink)

Nicholas Dixon’s Kantian argument for why mixed martial arts (MMA) is intrinsically immoral has received several critical responses. We offer an additional critical response. Unlike previous responses, ours does not rely on an interpretation of the categorical imperative that Dixon would find tendentious. Instead, we grant that Dixon’s views about what makes other sports consistent with the categorical imperative are correct and argue from this assumption that MMA is also consistent with the categorical imperative. Our argument focuses on Dixon’s claims (...) about certain cycling tactics, which we call ‘pain-leveraging cycling tactics’. We argue that MMA is consistent with the categorical imperative for the same sort of reasons that Dixon claims make pain-leveraging cycling tactics consistent with the categorical imperative. (shrink)

An inviting alternative to traditional texts in introductory logic, The Art of Reasoning is widely acclaimed for its conversational tone and accessible exposition of rigorous logical concepts.

This book is unique in both its subject matter and its approach. It focuses on the collaboration of J. Derrida, J.-F. Lyotard, J. Hillis Miller, D. Carroll, F. Jameson and others at the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California, Irvine and on the application of critical theory for the analysis of contemporary American visual art. The critical and philosophical analysis concerns the art of Bruce Nauman, Kosuth, Burden, Christo, Wodiczko, Johns, Rauschenberg, and others. The focus of the book (...) is on irony and the sublime. The book also includes the original Prologue by G. van Den Abbeele (Dean of the School of Humanities at UC Irvine 2013-2018) on the history of Critical Theory in the United States, and at UCI, in particular. The CTI's uniqueness consisted in it being one of the best centers of the Critical Theory studies in the United States. (shrink)

The capacity to engage with art is a human universal present in all cultures and just about every individual human. This indicates that this capacity is evolved. In this Critical Notice of Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct, I discuss various evolutionary scenarios and their consequences. Dutton and I both reject the "spandrel" approach that originates from the work of Gould and Lewontin. Dutton proposes, following work of Geoffrey Miller, that art is sexually selected--that art-production is a sign of a fit (...) genome in males. I argue that while assortative mating may well have had a role in the evolution of "the art instinct", group selection is a better explanation. I also take issue with Dutton's "cluster concept" approach to defining art, and argue that it is a universal and essential characteristic of art that it is appreciated both for what it expresses and for the way that it expresses. It thus requires a reflexive capacity that is not operative in the appreciation of sport spectacles and pornography. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to determine the criticism to Mushabbiha and Mujassima on the basis of al-Faṣl fī l-milal wa-l-ahwāʾ wa-l-niḥal whose writer is Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), one of the eminent scholars of the Andalusian civilization. In this work, Ibn Ḥazm gives systematic information about the non-Islamic religions as well as the sects emerging under the Islamic roof, criticizing the views of religion and religious sects from various perspectives. In doing so, he approached the views of the (...) sects with his identity as a kalam theologian, and he made his critics in the light of classical conception of the Ahl al-Sunnah. Ibn Ḥazm pointed out that Mushbbiha and Mujassima had an anthropomorphic understanding of God, and emphasized that this understanding does not correspond with the belief in monotheism. He strongly emphasizes that God is one and nothing is equal to Him.Summary: Islamic Civilization of Andalusia was the most important representative of Islam in the West and enlightened Europe for centuries, has made important successes in science-technic, art and literature. Also made improvements on other areas such as religous and philosophical knowledge, in these eras raised important Islam scholars who made important contributions to those areas. One of those scholars undoubtedly is Ibn Ḥazm who was born in Andalusia (d. 456/1064). The aim of this paper is to analyze and determine Ibn Ḥazm’s critiques on Mushabbiha and Mujassima, based on Ibn Ḥazm’s thought found in his al-Fasl,who was one of the leading scholars of Anatolia civilization and played an important role in development of Islam thought nearly in all areas by his precious writings.Ibn Ḥazm, in his work gives systematic information on sects under Islamic thought and beliefs and religions out of Islam, their relations and differences with Islam, which he accepts as one and unchangeable, and analyzes them gives in an analytic, defensive and rejective method, puts them under critique. In other words, with his theologian identity and dialectical method, under the Sunnī classical tradition, he criticizes other sects’ thoughts. Ibn Ḥazm used a very sharp language and rough method in his critiques. This kind of attitude was symbolized by a traditional saying “Ibn Ḥazm’s language is sharper than Hajjāj’s sword”. As it very well known in the Qurʾān, oneness (tawhīd) was emphasized very much, God does not look like anything ever created, and does not have any resemblance or sameness with anything, in order to eliminate polytheist (shirk) belief. On the other hand, in some verses representations and resemblances were used that does not seem in line with oneness (tawhīd). This problem which seems to be contradiction at first sight has been subject to many debates of how that can be solved. In the center of discussion informing attributes (revealed attributes) that drive people to comparison (tajsīm) and anthropomorphism (tashbīh) that recall humanly attributes if they are understood in artificial meanings. In history of Islamic thought, in order to understand those kind of attributes, in their artificial meanings or their changed and decided meanings (ta’wīl), has been subject to discussion and to understand the attributes different methods have been used. One of these method which is the main subject of this paper is tajsīm and tashbīh method and was accepted by Mushabbiha and Mujassima. They take informing attributes artificial meanings as base and were against the changing of the meaning. As a natural conclusion of this, they resemble God to the created and asserted God has concrete parts such as hand, face, eye, leg, etc. In his work al-FaṣlIbn Ḥazm mentions ideas of Mushabbiha and Mujassima, and criticized whether it is appropriate for Sunnah or not. His critique against these sects are mostly based on the informing attributes being taken as visual attributes in nasses, where as a result the God imagination turns to be anthropormorphist imagination. According to Ibn Ḥazm, the verses “… He does not resemble anything…” (Ṣūra 42/11) and “He is not equal to anything” put forward the onlyness and soleness of God and they do not give attention to this and try to prove the attributes fall into anthropormorphism (tashbīh) and corporealisim (tajsīm). Ibn Ḥazm believes and says that their God imagination is not in line with oneness (tawhīd) understanding and puts the verses into the center. In his critiques he emphasizes God’s oneness, he does not have pair, not resemble anything, does not have equal and tried to explain how his attributes should be understood. In this respect, in qualification of God his main principle was exploitation (tanzīh) and asserts that humanly attributes (face, eye, foot) in their visual understandings cannot be attributed to God and tried to prove that names like object (jism), accident (symptoms), substance (ore) he cannot be put into qualification. Ibn Ḥazm’s consideration of nass through an exterior perspective, his criticism of Mushabbiha and Mujassima, who take visual attributes as principles, and his re-interpretation (ta’wīl) of some nass whenever necessary may be seen as a contradiction but it is consistent in his system. Because he is not definitely against re-interpretation (ta’wīl) but he rejects re-interpretation without proof, he accepts ta’wīlthat comes from nasses and rational necessity with a proof. From this perspective if there is an occasion a word’s meaning in the Qurʾān that needs understanding different from its written meaning and there is a proof for that, he sees this a requirement for re-interpretation (ta’wīl). He practically used this theory of him in informing attributes. As a result, in attributes of God, he follows the madhhab of the Salaf (predecessors), where as in informal attributes and their understanding, he uses ta’wīlmethod and takes the path of Halaf (successors). By this way, he departed from the madhhab of the Salaf and created his own method. In this context while he was criticizing anthropormorphist and corporealist methods. Also he defended that since comprehension of God is not possible without re-interpretation of these attributes, it is necessary. He explained these attributes in verses with their dictionary meanings and related verses, with appropriate Arabic grammar and God’s greatness. From that perspective Ibn Ḥazm’s Salafī and artificial understandings, we cannot say he is from Salafī which rejects rationale and explanation all together. In addition to that when necessary in informal attributes he uses ta’wīland uses reason and the function he put upon reason, shows his position against sect like Mushabbiha and Mujassima who underestimates the value of reason. (shrink)

In this paper, key concepts from the philosophy of critical realism and meta-Reality are used to develop an art education research project that can enhance the freedom of art students in their art work and, potentially, contribute to the promotion of emancipation beyond the world of art work. In the process of developing this project, the author engages in a two-way interrogation of both concepts and empirical research. The stratified model of reality, the ontological status of absence and the concepts (...) of transcendental identification, transcendental agency and the ground-state have informed decisions about data collection and contributed to the analysis of data in this study. The research results offer some empirical support for the philosophy of critical realism and meta-Reality, whilst also identifying potential inconsistencies. A further original feature of the paper is that it draws on the flow theory of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to complement Roy Bhaskar's account of the ground-state and of the nature of free-flowing activity; also using neuroscience to provide some neurological evidence for the differences between mindful and spontaneous activity. It is anticipated that the cross-analysis between cases resulting from the two-way interchange between theory and empirical evidence could help to generate a model for ‘unblocking the creative block’, experienced not only by students practising art-making, but also by the wider community. (shrink)

This text stresses that the arts are cognitive and effective essentials in human development. It includes research from psychology, philosophy, medicine, music, linguistics and visual arts to bring together theories designed to nourish the search for understanding the human mind.

In 1946, after an eight-year debate with the New Critics, Charles Morris doggedly maintained that "an education which gave due place to semiotic would destroy at its foundations the cleavage and opposition of science and the humanities."1 This insistence on the unity of disciplines—the hallmark of the logical empiricist movement and its brainchild, The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science —effectively silenced semiotics as a force in American literary studies. For the New Critics' point of departure—and one of the (...) few tenets that they held in common—was the belief that art creates a mode of knowledge different in kind from that of practical or scientific discourse and that a criticism modeled on the latter would miss the essence of its subject matter. The quarrel, which continued unresolved during the polemics of the war years, now fuels the controversy between structuralism and post-structuralism. It lies at the very heart of the question of the relevance of semiotics to the humanities. · 1. Charles Morris, Signs, Language, and Behavior, in Writings on the General Theory of Signs , p. 327. Wendy Steiner, assistant professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Exact Resemblance to Exact Resemblance: The Literary Portraiture of Gertrude Stein. She has written a book on the relations between modern painting and literature and edited the proceedings of the 1978 Ann Arbor Conference on the Semiotics of Art. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to CriticsBethany Henningplato knew that philosophy is not something we write; it is something we live. As Deweyans, we know philosophy is an ideal that emerges within experience as the highest possibility for dialogue. Insofar as a book appears as an extended monologue, it obscures the qualitative and transactive dimensions of philosophy as it is practiced. But sessions like these reveal that books are moments in a conversation, (...) "perchings" in a dialogue that is forever in media res. I am deeply grateful to Bill Myers for organizing this panel, and for the generosity of Frank Ryan, Gregory Pappas, and Jim Garrison for having taken the time to read and think about this book. Each of them has served as a model for philosophical scholarship, and I am humbled and honored to have the opportunity to engage with them directly. They have challenged me in three distinct ways and have engaged with what I have written on separate plateaus of thought, at times revealing layers of which I was not fully aware. So I will do my best to respond to their concerns and develop our shared inquiry in their light. I will also own that my reading of Dewey is selective, and it is my attempt to work through a problem that materialized, as all problems do, in the course of ordinary lived experience.At Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where I attended graduate school, we offered a course called "The American Mind." The title was a provocation, so I applied to teach it one semester. It was a fantastic challenge to try to curate a selection of texts that would serve as an encounter with an intellectual tradition that eludes me as much as it informs me—after all, prior to college, I only knew that a "philosopher" is what becomes of the loser in the board game called Life. I did not know that there was something called "American philosophy" until I applied to study at SIUC.If philosophy is the way that a culture reflects upon itself, then in this book, I have tried to invite the American mind to lie down on the couch. [End Page 95] Or, it might be more accurate to say that I have asked John Dewey, as the representative of American philosophy, how he might psychoanalyze such a mind. My hypothesis is that Dewey's theory of aesthetic experience, and the art that communicates and preserves such moments of intensified vitality, touches the deepest, but unspoken meanings that human beings encounter. This is where quality, the character of an event as a singular whole, the immediate aspect of an event that we feel rather than know, can be stabilized and communicated. If an interpretation can be made of the deep conflicts that have left philosophy at the margins of American life, I believe we would be wise to begin with our "dreams," with the creations of our imagination, the artistic products that reveal the felt dimension of our shared world.Many readers of Dewey choose to focus on his theory of inquiry, his recasting of the scientific method, and his instrumentalism as forming the core of his thought. This is an understandable approach; his work here is novel and corrects bad intellectual habits. However, for the purposes of this book, I have emphasized aesthetic experience, the role of the qualitative, and pursuit of meaning over the correction of practice in my interpretation. This is a controversial choice since it courts the irrational and the vague, but I believe that our neglect of these portions of experience prevents philosophy from reconnecting with American life.Response to Frank RyanFrank Ryan is concerned about the extent to which I have cast the organism as porous, and that I have identified aesthetic experience as unconscious. I agree with Dr. Ryan's assessment that defining aesthetic experience as wholly unconscious would be a grievous error—and I hope not to have made it. There is a misleading ambiguity in the title of the book that might predispose the reader to suspect that I am claiming an equivalence, but what I intended to argue was not that aesthetic experience itself is unconscious, but rather... (shrink)

This paper applies the Sonoma Model of Critical Thinking to visual arts in an educational setting. The analysis produces insights into the functioning of the model, insights into visual arts, and pragmaticconclusions regarding relationships among art historians, visual artists, and others. We summarize the Sonoma Model of critical thinking and apply it to thinking about art history and visual arts. We use these insights to apply the Sonoma Model to thinking critically about visual arts in an educational environment. One application (...) of the model for visual artists and art historians is in appreciating these disciplines, something that is often lacking among and between them. We find further insight in the application of the elements of the model to themselves, and close with practical affective conclusions for applications of the model by faculty and administrators. (shrink)

This article is about the power of critical thinking through embryos and embryology in bioart. In this instance, critical thinking does not promise revolution or a takedown of bioengineering, but basic empowerment through scientific knowledge. I argue that the use of embryos in Jill Scott’s Somabook (2011) and Adam Zaretsky’s DIY Embryology (2015) constitutes an instance of what Philip Galanter identifies as complexism. In turn, the complexism of embryology reveals two modes of critical thinking. First, embryology distils the awe and (...) wonder that come with basic scientific literacy. In turn, scientific literacy provides agency for individuals through a trifecta of feeling, belief and pragmatism: based on the frisson of curiosity and wonder that comes with recognizing biological complexity, it frees individuals from the bounds of superstition and metaphysics while building a path to fact-based problem solving. Second, as works of art bearing embryos they are part of the politics and history of embryology that emerged in contrast to genetics almost a century ago. Distinct from the coding of genetics as nucleus-centric, separate, homogeneous, a matter of being, and male, embryology was coded as cytoplasmic, interactive, heterogeneous, a matter of becoming, and feminist. (shrink)

Aristotle listed moderation as one of the moral virtues. He also defined virtue as the mean between extremes, implying that moderation plays a vital role in all forms of moral excellence. But moderation's protean character—its vague and ill-defined omnipresence in judgment and action—makes it exceedingly difficult to grasp theoretically. At the same time, moderation seems to be the foundation of many contemporary democratic political regimes, because the competition between parties cannot properly function without compromise and bargaining. The success of representative (...) government and its institutions depends to a great extent on the virtue of moderation, yet the latter persists in being absent from both the conceptual discourse of many political philosophers and the campaign speeches of politicians fearful of losing elections if they are perceived as moderates. Aurelian Craiutu aims to resolve this paradox. Examining the writings of prominent twentieth-century thinkers such as Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Norberto Bobbio, Michael Oakeshott, and Adam Michnik, he addresses the following questions: What does it mean to be a moderate voice in political and public life? What are the virtues and limits of moderation? Can moderation be the foundation for a successful platform or party? Though critics maintain that moderation is merely a matter of background and personal temperament, Craiutu finds several basic norms that have consistently appeared in different national and political contexts. The authors studied in this book defended pluralism, of ideas, interests, and social forces, and sought to achieve a sound balance between them through political trimming. They shared a preoccupation with political evil and human dignity, but refused to see the world in Manichaean terms that divide it neatly into the forces of light and those of darkness. Faces of Moderation argues that moderation remains crucial for today's encounters with new forms of extremism and fundamentalism across the world. (shrink)

Responding to Open Philosophy’s call ‘Does public art have to be bad art?’, in this paper we argue that this discussion should pay attention to the consequences of structural transformations that guide the production and presentation of public art in today’s increasingly private city. While entrepreneurial governance and corporate branding strategies generate new opportunities, they might also result in increased risk averseness and control over the content of public art, thus putting its critical potential at risk. That observation ushers in (...) urgent questions about control, complicity and criticality. We aim to reflect on those questions through two public art projects in Hong Kong: Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon (2015) and Our 60-second friendship begins now (2016) by Sampson Wong Yu-hin and Jason Lam Chi-fai. After drawing conclusions on the justification of public funding for co-productions, the legitimacy for artists to sometimes not ‘follow the rules’, and the problematic nature of a narrow definition of professionalism as a means to discredit artists, our analysis underlines the urgent need to develop a framework that can guide discussions on the consequences of control and complicity for the critical potential of public art. (shrink)

Anti-introduction: Paint it Black -- PART I: MESSAGES IN A BOTTLE: AESTHETIC THEORY CONTRA CRITICAL THEORY -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Critical Messages in a Bottle and Restoration -- 3. Excursus I: The Prevalence of a View: Being Uncompromisingly Critical at the Grand Hotel Abyss -- 4. Excursus II: The Prevalence of a View: 'Don't participate:' The Politics of Social Praxis -- 5. Aesthetic Messages in a Bottle and Progress -- 6. Messages in a Bottle as the Work of Art (...) -- PART II: ART ITSELF THINKS: THE POLITICS OF AESTHETIC (MIS-)EDUCATION -- 7. Introduction -- 8. The Politics of Artistic Practice: 'What artist isn't socially engaged?' -- 9. The Politics of Spectatorship: Shocking Spectators -- 10. The Politics of Aesthetic (Mis-)Education -- 11. Contemporary Art Itself Thinking: Making the Invisible Visible? -- Anti-conclusion: The Russian Ending. (shrink)

When the French edition of _Confronting Images_ appeared in 1990, it won immediate acclaim because of its far-reaching arguments about the structure of images and the histories ascribed to them by scholars and critics working in the tradition of Vasari and Panofsky. According to Didi-Huberman, visual representation has an “underside” in which seemingly intelligible forms lose their clarity and defy rational understanding. Art historians, he goes on to contend, have failed to engage this underside, where images harbor limits and (...) contradictions, because their discipline is based upon the assumption that visual representation is made up of legible signs and lends itself to rational scholarly cognition epitomized in the “science of iconology.” To escape from this cul-de-sac, Didi-Huberman suggests that art historians look to Freud’s concept of the “dreamwork,” not for a code of interpretation, but rather to begin to think of representation as a mobile process that often involves substitution and contradiction. _Confronting Images_ also offers brilliant, historically grounded readings of images ranging from the Shroud of Turin to Vermeer’s _Lacemaker_. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychology is among the various evolutionary and cognitive perspectives that have been used to account for the origins of art. It sets out to explain modern human psychology by means of the evolutionary history of the species, and by determining why and how our extant cognitive machinery evolved as adaptations to past environmental surroundings or by-products of such adaptations. In the case of art, evolutionary psychologists seek to track down its cognitive foundations and establish its evolutionary rationale, for instance (...) by determining which function artistic behaviour as a whole might have performed. However, several methodological issues and gaps currently impede evolutionary psychological research on art: empirical support is often lacking, adaptationist claims are not adequately substantiated, and the definition and scope of basic aspects of evolutionary psychology often remain underspecified. This paper reviews the central themes that evolutionary psychology currently advances to account for the emergence of visual arts, music and fiction, addresses the most relevant methodological issues, and provides some suggestions that might help to develop evolutionary research on art. (shrink)

After showing how pragmatist aesthetics and Marcuse's critical theory affirm aesthetic education as key to transforming society toward greater freedom, equality, pleasure, and fulfillment, I compare the ways these two approaches differently perceive the scope and role of aesthetics in such transformation. Whereas Marcuse identifies the aesthetic dimension with the realm of high art, pragmatism understands this dimension far more broadly to include the popular arts and somaesthetic arts of living. Because Marcuse identifies art's critical function through its oppositional transcendence (...) and autonomy from ordinary reality and practical life, he insists that aesthetics cannot directly contribute to transformative praxis in the real world but can operate only indirectly by transforming our sensibilities. Pragmatist aesthetics, particularly though somaesthetics, resolves the dilemma in Marcuse's aesthetics of liberation by bridging the alleged gap between aesthetics and praxis by reeducating our sensibilities in a more direct, practical, embodied way. The article further exemplifies the overlaps and differences between Marcuse's critical theory and pragmatist somaesthetics by focusing on erotic experience, which is essential to Marcuse's liberational program and increasingly present in somaesthetics’ concern with aesthetic reeducation of our senses and sensibilities. (shrink)