This is a comprehensive, integrated account of eighteenth and early nineteenth century German figurative aesthetics. The author focuses on the theologically-minded discourse on the visual arts that unfolded in Germany, circa 1754-1828, to critique the assumption that German romanticism and idealism pursued a formalist worship of beauty and of unbridled artistic autonomy. This book foregrounds what the author terms an "Aesthetics of Figurative Theo humanism". It begins with the sculptural aesthetics of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Gottfried Herder before (...) moving on to Karl Philipp Moritz, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder and Friedrich Schelling. The reader will discover how this aesthetic tradition, after an initial obsession with classical sculpture, chose painting as the medium more suited to the modern self's exploration of transcendence. This paradigm-shift is traced in the aesthetic discourse of Friedrich Schlegel and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In this work, the widespread prejudice that such aesthetics initiated a so-called "Modern Grand Narrative of the Arts" is deconstructed. One accusation directed at 18th century aesthetics has been that it realised into "Art" what had previously been a living, rich tissue of meaning: this work shows how Figurative Theo humanism's attention to aesthetic values was never detached from deeper theological and humanistic considerations. Furthermore, it argues that this aesthetic discourse never forgot that it emerged from modern disenchantment-far from occluding the dimension of secularization, it draws poignant meaning from it. Anyone with an interest in the current debates about the scope and nature of aesthetics (philosophers of art, theology, or religion) will find this book of great interest and assistance. (shrink)

This concise overview of the perception of Islam in eight of the most important German thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries allows a new and fascinating investigation of how these thinkers, within their own bodies of work, often espoused contradicting ideas about Islam and their nearest Muslim neighbors. Exploring a variety of 'neat compartmentalizations' at work in the representations of Islam, as well as distinct vocabularies employed by these key intellectuals, Ian Almond parses these vocabularies to examine the (...) importance of Islam in the very history of German thought. Almond further demonstrates the ways in which German philosophers such as Hegel, Kant, and Marx repeatedly ignored information about the Muslim world that did not harmonize with the particular landscapes they were trying to paint – a fact which in turn makes us reflect on what it means when a society possesses 'knowledge' of a foreign culture. (shrink)

At the moment of its decline, we clearly see that painting in oils developed an original poetics, and one that was all of a piece, throughout a renascent and modern West. From its birth and during a development lasting half a millennium we see it— in Florence, Bruges, Venice, Rome, Toledo, Nuremberg, Amsterdam and Paris—attentive to the sources of signification: languages, rites, myths, theater, tools, techniques and sciences and the urban context that wove them all together. In each case, for (...) one or the other of them, it brought a new relationship to the way of life and then left them to their social order of assimilation, keeping the initial contact for those who would be interested. It studded the West with centers of production that carried the practice and knowledge of art to their limits; engaged with the collective imagination, it punctuated history with decisive works, in which the desire to paint takes action and explains it. Marked by an impatience for change, oil painting revealed itself in a rapport with creativity akin to the other works of civilization. It is at the level of the bases of invention of the imaginary—which are in any expression the most profound structures—that the unfolding of oil painting is tightly bound. The establishment of modern national languages, the orderly rise, around a syntax and because of architecture, sculpture, music, song, tragedy, the systematic construction of scientific and technical expression, arose and grew quickly in importance in Western Europe during the same centuries as painting and with reciprocal correspondence. Dürer “who was the first to publish a treatise in which is collected all knowledge having to do with the expression of forms… wrote in his native tongue and in so doing was revealed as the creator of technical and scientific German.”. (shrink)

The word “romanticism” designates in German as in other European languages a broad movement in literature that originated at the beginning of the nineteenth century and has often been characterized as an opposition to the preceding age of rationalism and Enlightenment. Situated between the classicist schools of taste of the previous century and the realistic and naturalistic trends in literature of the later nineteenth century, Romanticism or romantic literature is the product of the creative power of the imagination; it (...) appeals to the emotions, has a preference for the mysterious aspects of nature, and shows a strong predilection for the past, the Middle Ages, and mythological traditions. With its strong affinity to the novel, romantic literature departs from the classical forms and the classicist canon of literature, but when these classical forms were nevertheless used by the authors of this movement, something new was created – the romantic tale, the romantic drama, and romantic poetry. The great romantic authors in Germany were E. T. A. Hoffmann, Eichendorff, Brentano, Arnim, and Fouqué. There is both a narrower and a broader notion of Romanticism in Germany, the broader also relating to painting (Friedrich, Runge) and music (Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Bartholdy, Wagner). Romanticism had a great impact on the general view of the world and was influential in the rise of the historical consciousness, the revival of a religious spirit, and the emergence of a conservative political attitude. As far as philosophy and the sciences are concerned, Romanticism is associated with figures such as Schelling and Schopenhauer, the development of a philosophy of art, of nature, and of the subconscious. On the whole, Romanticism is one of those movements that shaped an entire age and manifested itself down to the most particular features of popular belief and scientific interest. (shrink)

The following dissertation shows how German Literature negotiates the relationship between language and the visual arts, particularly in Romantic narratives. In contrast with authors of the Enlightenment, the Romantics tend to deny specificity to visual experience and in so doing dedifferentiate visual experience from the textual. ;The initial, methodological, chapter explicates perceptual models informed by the interplay of the philosophical approaches of Kant and Wittgenstein with the psychoanalytic discourse of Freud. In Chapter Two, I turn to Lessing's Laokoon Uder (...) uber die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie , in which he divides the arts into pictoral and linguistic signs. While the boundary between the two appears quite clear in Laokoon, his play Emilia Galotti reveals Lessing's anxiety that the difference cannot be so easily maintained. ;The subsequent chapter explores the representation of the visual arts in Tieck's Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen . After a discussion of Wackenroder's Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders , 1 turn to Tieck's novel about a young student of Albrecht Durer. The novel responds to the ostensible binary between language and the visual arts by transmuting the distinction into one between readable landscape paintings and phantasmatic images that guide the protagonist. ;As another example of this Romantic viewpoint, I analyze Brentano's Godwi oder das steinerne Bild der Mutter . Here I use the distinction between symbol and allegory to point out the ways in which the text turns the difference between the arts into one between rhetorical figures. A similar manifestation of the problem occurs in Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild , discussed in Chapter Five. The novella follows the same lines as Lessing's Laokoon, thematizing the materiality of its eponymous marble statue. My final chapter concerns Kleist's model of visual perception, which is closely bound to his theology in his tales "Die heilige Cacilie" and "Der Findling" . ;Writing Images interprets the role of visuality in German Romantic literature in order to understand an unresolved problematic of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century thought for those who would too quickly either differentiate between or conflate the visual and the written. (shrink)

This book develops a philosophy of aesthetic experience through two socially significant philosophical movements: early German Romanticism and early critical theory. In examining the relationship between these two closely intertwined movements, we see that aesthetic experience is not merely a passive response to art-it is the capacity to cultivate true personal autonomy, and to critique the social and political context of our lives. Art is political for these thinkers, not only when it paints a picture of society, but even (...) more when it makes us aware of our deeply ingrained forms of experience in a transformative way. Ultimately, the book argues that we have to think of art as a form of truth that is not reducible to communicative rationality or scientific knowledge, and from which philosophy and politics can learn valuable lessons. (shrink)

It is the aim of this work to examine the pivotal role of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) as a judge of classical sculpture and as a major contributor to German art criticism. John Harry North seeks to identify the key features of his treatment of classical beauty, particularly in his famous descriptions of large-scale classical sculpture. Five case studies are offered to demonstrate the academic classicism that formed the core of his philosophy of art. North aims to establish Winckelmann's (...) place in the development of the German language. His prose contributed to a literary style that was suitable for the expression of an emotional response to visual experiences. His use of rhetoric in the assessment of classical art, however, make his judgements propagandist rather than analytical. The published works of Winckelmann, his draft essays and his collected private correspondence are advanced as criteria in the evaluation of his impact on the development of German classicism that culminated in the Weimar group of poets and writers. His Grecophile enthusiasm, however, led him to introduce stylistic categories in the development of classical marble sculpture that are no longer regarded as truly reflecting the evolution of Greco-Roman art. Thus his historicity and his classification of styles remain in doubt. Winckelmann proposed that the training of modern artists should concentrate on the observation and imitation of classical models instead of looking to nature as the source of inspiration. This plan succeeded to some extent in the generation that followed his untimely death. Throughout the succeeding century, artists and their sponsors did favour classical models and developed stylistic classicism in European freestanding sculpture, in painting and in architecture. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta lo que para la mayoría de los intérpretes de Aristóteles, que se ocupan del asunto del método en su obra, constituye el principal problema a resolver. Se trata del problema de determinar la relación existente entre la concepción aristotélica de ciencia demostrativa, consignada en los Analíticos Segundos, y la praxis investigativa de Aristóteles en sus diferentes tratados científicos, una praxis que los intérpretes dan frecuentemente en describir como dialéctica.

The paper demonstrates the necessity of introducing innovative approaches in addressing social problems of development. It proves the significance of recruiting investment in the social sphere. The author looks into the usage of social business for handling economic development problems of countries. There are factors promoting social entrepreneurship identified. Spatial social inequality in Ukraine is analyzed, the role of social entrepreneurship in its overcoming demonstrated.

El artículo muestra la influencia de los estudios homéricos de Friedrich August Wolf en la recepción romántica de Grecia y la literatura clásica. La formación filológica de los primeros autores románticos fundamenta el estrecho vínculo entre la Ciencia de la Antigüedad (Altertumswissenschaft) y la crítica literaria en el grupo de Jena. Gracias sobre todo a los estudios clásicos de Friedrich Schlegel, este vínculo resultará en una nueva concepción hermenéutica.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophizing is deeply ontological, and can be defined as a reflexive gesture of keeping silent. The silence secured by reflexing is an essential part of a philosophy. A philosopher has to use language, but things that pass over in silence must influence things he or she says. The speech manifests not only in the spoken, but also in the unspoken. How is it possible? Through understanding a reflexive speech as an action or gesture of annihilation of speech. The (...) expressed words in philosophy and expressed philosophical concepts are just means of referring to the ultimate value which should be thrown away immediately because it cannot say anything about the inexpressible. The philosophy as a gesture of keeping silent is an attempt to meaningfully keep silent through the constantly evolving reflexive annihilation of your own speech. The philosophizing which takes into account the importance of silence becomes a minimalistic gesture. (shrink)

This article is devoted to understanding the worldview expressed in Vladimir Bibikhin’s Leo Tolstoy’s Diaries. The most important feature of this worldview is its practical nature: Bibikhin focuses on changing one’s view of things instead of trying to develop a doctrine. Practical phenomenology is extremely vulnerable to criticism because of its pre-philosophical nature. Therefore, at this stage, I try to explicate some of the features of this peculiar thought while avoiding trying to find its faults. I draw a connection between (...) Bibikhin’s ontological interpretation of the phenomenon with Heidegger’s concept of detachment (Gelassenheit) as a form of behavior, and illustrate that practical phenomenology turns out to be an ontology of contact. It thematizes the philosopher’s own being and focuses on the problems of the contact made in the “change of view,” in which thought, word, and deed converge. Bibikhin’s practical phenomenology is on the outskirts of modern academic philosophy, gravitating towards understanding philosophy as a way of life, in which the contemplative attitude takes the leading place, paradoxically combining experiment with their perception of “first things,” trust in them, and the ability to describe the indescribable, the “change of view.” This makes practical phenomenology related to the experimental phenomenology of Michel Henry. (shrink)

El artículo ubica el origen del primer romanticismo alemán en el contexto receptivo de la crítica kantiana. Se centra para ello en tres de los debates suscitados por la filosofía trascendental: la posibilidad de un principio primero del conocimiento, el vínculo que une filosofía teórica y filosofía práctica y la relación entre belleza y moral. Este planteamiento permite mostrar la formación de la estética romántica como una teoría crítica que se enfrenta a su fundamentación, su procedimiento y su finalidad. De (...) este modo queda patente la aportación del Romanticismo a las futuras teoría y la crítica literarias. (shrink)

La educación consiste en hacer ver al educando que está constituido por, y es parte de, múltiples sistemas y subsistemas de índole social, ambiental y cósmico. Esta educación representa un desarrollo al mismo tiempo cognitivo, ético, emotivo y espiritual. Esta visión de la educación se opone a diversas formas de reduccionismo que no dejan ver las conexiones importantes entre los fenómenos y entre éstos y el observador. En términos éticos, este aprendizaje consiste en el reconocimiento y la producción de juegos (...) de suma positiva. Espiritualmente, consiste en un sentimiento de vínculo con la totalidad, que produce asombro, gratitud y respeto ante el milagro de la existencia. (shrink)

Si no es posible comprender el desarrollo de El Capital sin conocer la Ciencia de la lógica, se busca trazar los lineamientos generales para alcanzar dicha comprensión. En seis tesis se ponen de relieve algunos aspectos importantes del pensamiento de Marx que han sido poco tratados, y se dialoga con la tradición marxista para señalar ciertos equívocos y resaltar algunas interpretaciones. Esto permite ofrecer un nuevo cuadro para entender la actitud crítica que adopta el "último" Marx frente a la dialéctica (...) de su maestro. Because it is not possible to comprehend Capital without knowing the Science of Logic, this article aims to chart some general guidelines to reach such an understanding. In six thesis, I highlight some important aspects of Marx's thought that have been little treated and dialog with the Marxist tradition to indicate certain equivocations and highlight some interpretations. This offers a new framework to understand the critical attitude that the "mature" Marx adopted regarding his teacher's dialect. (shrink)

Aquí se pretende mostrar a la ética espinozista como particularmente útil para el pensamiento ecológico, en cuanto no comparte el antropocentrismo de gran parte de las éticas tradicionales de la filosofía. La ética de Spinoza, en lugar de preguntar ¿cuáles son mis deberes para con otros seres humanos? pregunta más bien ¿cómo debo relacionarme con mi entorno para ser más feliz? La metafísica de Spinoza también proporciona inspiración para quien busca un sistema filosófico que postule responsabilidades hacia el entorno ecológico.

This article has a twofold purpose: first, it explores how Leonardo Polo's personalist anthropology enriches and enhances neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics and second, it highlights how this specific personalist approach brings new perspectives to servant leadership. The recently revived neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics tradition finds that MacIntyre's scholarship significantly contributes to virtue ethics in business—particularly his conception of practices, institutions, and internal/external goods. However, we argue that some of his latest insights about the virtues of acknowledged dependence and human vulnerability remain underdeveloped (...) because of the underlying anthropology that neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics relies on. To overcome this limitation, we introduce Polo's transcendental anthropology as a possible foundation of a personalist approach that enriches virtue ethics. To do so, we address how transcendental anthropology can enrich two central aspects of virtue ethics, namely (1) the understanding of human beings and their flourishing and (2) the relationship of virtue to praxis and human work. Finally, to address the practical implications for business leadership and work that can derive from assuming transcendental anthropology, we address how servant leadership acquires a new perspective in light of this personalism and its logic of gift, highlighting interpersonal self-giving as a way of service. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se pretende elucidar algunos de los aportes posibles de la filosofía deleuzeana a la teoría social y política, a través de un examen de su concepción del poder. La investigación arroja como un primer resultado que dicho examen requiere una reducción metodológica de los conceptos de lo “molar” y lo “molecular” -que constituyen su concepción más general de lo social- a los términos propios de sus desarrollos ontológicos: “virtual” y “actual” o “acontecimiento y “estado de cosas”. (...) Dicha reducción permitirá identificar dos concepciones cronológicamente sucesivas del poder, la segunda de las cuales, que incluye parcialmente a la primera, permite dar con una definición del poder como agente (no subjetivo) de producción de subjetividad, lo que constituye el resultado de la investigación y su mayor aporte. (shrink)

El artículo busca clarifcar la noción de modelo involucrada en el enfoque semántico de las teorías (EST). Se muestra que en el contexto del EST el término ‘modelo’ tiene dos funciones: en un caso se presenta como una estructura que satisface una descripción y en el otro como una estructura matemática que representa aspectos de ciertos sistemas reales. Así, el término ‘modelo’ posee dos sentidos, pero la función relevante de los modelos para el EST es la de representación y no (...) la de satisfacción. Esto nos permitirá concluir, entre otras cosas, que los partidarios de la concepción estructuralista de las teorías, una de las versiones del EST, colocan el acento en forma inadecuada al concebir los modelos en el sentido de la semántica formal, en tanto que las versiones últimas de van Fraassen y Giere son más apropiadas al privilegiar los modelos como estructuras matemáticas, el primero, y como representaciones, el segundo. (shrink)

Con el fin de cuestionar la primacía del contrato sobre la lógica del don en la modernidad, se contrastan tres arquetipos de relación social a la luz de los radicales polianos, así como los tipos de reciprocidad que se derivan de cada uno de ellos. A la reciprocidad cerrada-dual moderna se opone la reciprocidad abierta-triádica, que es la que caracteriza a las relaciones de don, tanto en su versión clásica como cristiana. Se concluye que sólo el radical cristiano de la (...) persona integra la lógica del don con el sentido radical de la libertad, desde una antropología que complementa la práctica de virtudes como camino de perfección moral con la apertura a la trascendencia y la ayuda al más necesitado. (shrink)

This text, a product of an investigation supported by the Universidad de La Salle entitled “Ecocrítica y Literatura: Aproximación a María y La Vorágine”, is a reflection upon the method (or metamethod) of ecocriticism, that is, literary criticism from ecological values, which uses the work of the aforementioned investigation as an example and object of analysis. The problem is examined from the perspective of a reconciliation between the humanities and the biological sciences. Finally, some pedagogical advantages of ecocriticism are outlined.

In this paper we portray the epistemological proposals of Descartes, Spinoza and Bateson as epistemological reforms that imply deep transformations in the way human beings are and behave in the world by changing their habits. We also suggest that rejecting the theological explanation and understanding of human beings as part of a systemic whole, as proposed by Bateson and Spinoza, is required in order to face the current environmental crisis.

En este texto se busca elaborar una idea de formación en el pensamiento de Baruch de Spinoza, como alternativa a las ideas educativas que, de manera esencialista, mediante el proceso educativo pretenden hacer corresponder al educando a ciertos modelos preestablecidos. Para ello se construye una idea de auto-realización en Spinoza en la que resultan deseables diferentes caminos de auto-realización para diferentes individuos. Se propone que esta auto-realización consiste en ser capaz de obrar y ser afectado de muchas maneras, y se (...) propone que el conocimiento en Spinoza implica una cierta pasividad activa que se nutre de la diferencia y de lo otro. (shrink)

En este artículo se busca comprender la naturaleza de la escritura académica y comprender también por qué a veces fracasa. Para ello se utiliza la distinción de Lonergan entre la inteligencia del sentido común y la de la teoría, sus ideas acerca de la dinámica inmanente del conocimiento y su noción de autenticidad. Utilizando estas ideas de Lonergan, se concibe a la escritura académica bajo dos aspectos, como proceso de aprendizaje y como proceso de enseñanza. Con esta idea de la (...) escritura académica se refutan cinco falacias comunes acerca de la naturaleza del trabajo académico. (shrink)

Los metalenguajes —lenguajes que tratan de otros lenguajes— tienen algunas propiedades interesantes. En el esfuerzo de crear lenguajes de segundo orden —tales como lenguajes puente entre dos idiomas o dos disciplinas— se pone de relieve la manera particular que tiene un lenguaje de abordar el mundo, así como su materialidad e historicidad. Esta perspectiva facilita la comprensión de las dificultades que entrañan tanto la colaboración entre disciplinas científicas como la traducción literaria. Un aspecto importante del trabajo en humanidades es la (...) creación de metalenguajes, en el contexto de lo que Heidegger llama el “desocultar”; esto es, el constituir el mundo según cierta ontología —al tener esta constitución un peso ético, o sea, que impacta profundamente la forma de vida de la comunidad que desoculta de esta o esta otra manera—. Si se comprende lo que hacen las humanidades respecto a los lenguajes humanos, se comprende mejor su papel y su importancia en la educación, la forma en que facilitan el diálogo entre disciplinas y entre visiones de mundo, la forma en que empoderan a los individuos y las sociedades para articular nuevas formas de desocultar nuevas respuestas a la antiquísima pregunta filosófica: “¿cómo se debe vivir?”. (shrink)

El siguiente texto es una introducción a la ecocrítica. Se trata el tema de la pertinencia de la ecocrítica, el problema de la división entre ciencias duras y ciencias blandas, el del antropocentrismo en la cultura occidental, el de la representación de la naturaleza en la literatura, y, finalmente, se habla del haikú para ilustrar las diferentes maneras en que hombre y naturaleza se relacionan y cómo la literatura las puede reflejar.