English summary: The relationship of art to physical violence in European cultural history has always been intricate. Aestheticised violence in the fine arts, on the stage or in literature has often been discredited, but at the same time - not least because of the contiguity of violence and sexuality - it is received with pleasure. In a survey of literary examples from antiquity, the Renaissance and modernity, the author begins by elucidating the development in Europe of the troubled relationship between (...) aesthetics and violence. This relationship is then examined from a psychoanaltical angle in two exemplary studies of music. The dual perspective continues with the analyses of contemporary cultural producers (a theatre director, a photographic artist and a film director) together with those of cultural scientists (from theatre studies, art history, and film and media studies). In this way, the actual process of aesthetisizing violence, on the one hand, and theoretical reflections on it, on the other, become clear.German description: Das Verhaltnis der Kunste zur physischen Gewalt ist in der europaischen Kulturgeschichte immer schon ein intrikates gewesen. Asthetisierte Gewalt in der Kunst, auf der Buhne oder in der Literatur wurde zwar oft diskreditiert, zugleich aber - auch wegen der Nahe von Gewalt und Sexualitat - mit Genuss rezipiert. An den Beispielen der Literatur der Antike, der Renaissance und der Moderne zeigt der Band die europaische Entwicklung des ambivalenten Verhaltnisses von Asthetik und Gewalt auf. Aus psychoanalytischer, kulturwissenschaftlicher und medienwissenschaftlicher Perspektive verdeutlichen die Beitrager sowohl konkrete Verfahren des Asthetisierens von Gewalt als auch ihre theoretische Reflexion. Erganzt durch Analysen aus dem Kulturbetrieb - u.a. von Daniel Rademacher, Wilfred H.G. Neuse und Thomas Sieben - bietet der Band so einen umfassenden Einblick in die Beziehung zwischen Kunst und Gewalt. (shrink)

This article examines the antecedents and background of the antithesis between art and beauty. It also considers if this confrontation, typical in modern aesthetics, provides necessary conceptual categories to comprehend the situation of art in the communication era, characteristic of a generalised aesthetisation. Departing from the ideas posed by Yves Michaud, Mateu Cabot, Didi-Huberman and Mario Perniola, the author dismantles the false opposition between art and beauty; she proposes a strategy to avoid an antithetical position and exhorts the readers (...) to recover a different experience from beauty. (shrink)

I wish to discuss the constitutive conditions ‐ and aporias ‐ of the representations of the other in philosophy, sociology and cultural studies. In so doing, I show that crucial to the problem of ‘tolerance’ is the answer to such questions as: How do we represent the stranger and the other? How does this representation come into being? How can it ‐ in given instances ‐ be changed? I shall suggest that the arts may play a decisive role in this (...) process.In this paper I shall attempt to outline a double thesis: (a) the philosophical theory of the experience of something other requires the challenge of ethnology as the science of the stranger; and (b) conversely, however, ethnology itself requires a theory of cultural strangeness, which although always presupposed is never developed. I shall pursue this thesis in three stages. In the first section, I shall say something about the philosophical study of the other and its latent affinity with ethnology. In the second section, I shall take some key terms from the current dispute within ethnology over methodology, and attempt to show that the experience of something other (alien) requires a medium to express, or rather to describe, this experience. This problem of ethnographic depiction and description, lying between science and art; and the suggested solutions to this problem, developed particularly by postmodern American cultural‐anthropology, namely an aesthetisization without art, leads to the third section of this paper. This provokes the following question: what does art ‐ that moment which remains hidden within the contemporary ethnological discussion ‐ have to offer to our understanding of the (cultural) other? Further, we may ask, as paradoxical as it may at first sound, whether it is precisely from art, perhaps indeed only from art, that the way is to be found leading towards that which hasn't yet been problematized in all these contemporary intercultural debates: an ethic of intercultural understanding as the most important precondition for intercultural tolerance or toleration. (shrink)

The article examines how practices of inscription and structures of addressivity at a symbolic site provide implicit indexical means for establishing subjectivities and agencies. By examining a visitor book located in a national commemoration site in Jerusalem, Israel, the article first argues that inscribing practices themselves can function as implicit indexical mechanisms. In ritualized environments, inscribing assumes the function of a non-referential indexical because discourse is materially engraved unto a surround. These environments are also characterized by prescribed addressivity structures. The (...) article goes on to discern between a number of addressivity structures, evinced in visitors' aesthetisized entries. These structures serve as contextualizing cues and evince the ways visitors establish subjectivities and participation in national commemoration. Addressivity structures are shown to construct different types of social actors, and the spaces and temporalities within which they operate. Building on previous research on performance, the article shows how addressivity and inscription together supply the prerequisites for situated performances of identities and selves on inscribed and symbolic stages. (shrink)

In the first part of his magnum opus Hans Urs von Balthasarpresents his project of theological aesthetics where the experience of art becomes an entrance to a religious act and an ennobling way leading to the contemplation of God. Defining the essence of being human as a spiritual being directed towards God bears a deep ethical meaning in this consideration. H.U. von Balthasar’s reflection over the religious dimension of the essence of art is shaped within theology but at the same (...) time in the opposition to aesthetic theology which is de-scribed as ‘aesthetisation’ of the Mystery of Revelation. The art of music occupies a particular place in this reflection. For this reason Mass in B Minor BWV 232 by Johann Sebastian Bach, which is an emblematic example of the revelation of the glory of the Lord (Herrlichkeit), will be analysed not only from the perspective of philosophical or musicological aesthetics, but also theological aesthetics. This article outlines characteristic features of theological aesthetics specifically developed from traditional philosophical aesthetics whose range was extended by the human being’s relation to God. (shrink)

Today, many visual artists are giving the cold shoulder to the static, isolated concept of visual art and searching instead for novel, dynamic connections to different image strategies. Because of that, visual art and aesthetics are both forced to reconsider their current positions and their traditional apparatus of concepts. In that process, many questions surface. To mention a few: Could the characteristics of an artistic image and its specific manner of signification be determined in a world which is entirely aesthetisized? (...) What would be the consequences of a variety of image strategies for aesthetic experience? Would it be possible to develop a form of cultural criticism by means of artistic activities in a culture awash in images? In order to answer such questions, aesthetics as a philosophy of art needs to transform its field into a critical philosophy of topical visual culture. As an impetus to such a reinterpretation of the visual working area, the L & B Series organized three symposia evenings under the title “Exploding Aesthetics”, in cooperation with De Appel Center for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam. Besides the presentations and discussions from these symposia, this volume includes various arguments, positions, and statements in both articles and interviews by a variety of visual artists, designers, advertising professionals, theorists and curators. The participants are: Mieke Bal, Annette W. Balkema, Peg Brand, Experimental Jetset, Liam Gillick, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Martin Jay, KesselsKramer, Friedrich Kittler, Maria Lind, Wim Michels, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Planet Art, Joke Robaard, Annemieke Roobeek, Remko Scha, Rob Schröder, Henk Slager, Richard Shusterman, Pauline Terreehorst, Wolfgang Welsch and Marie-Lou Witmer. (shrink)

Dans notre article, nous nous proposons d’étudier la désignation de la pensée du commencement-initial par Heidegger comme “le style de I’etre-homme à venir’ dans ses Contributions à la Philosophie (1936-1938). Nous traitons le rapport du “style” à l’historialité de la pensée et en particulier à la tonalité affective fondamentale de la retenue. Par la suite, nous soulevons la question du style dans l’art en retraçant l’origine du “style de la pensée initiale” dans la critique heideggérienne de l’esthétique et de safondation (...) métaphysique. Plutôt que témoigner de l’esthetisation de sa pensée, ce thème met en lumiere son projet de “destruction” de I’esthétique telle qu’elle a lieu dans le premier cours sur Nietzsche. Nous soutenons que l’analyse du grand style nietzschéen tel qu’il a lieu dans ce cours sert de filconducteurpour sa qualification de I’autre commencement de la philosophie de “style de pensée”. Par ailleurs, la réflexion des deux penseurs sur le motif du style témoigne de leur intérêt commun à la catégorie esthétique du sublime. Les Contributions à la Philosophie poursuivent ce motif à ses conséquences ontologiques ultimes.This paper focuses on Heidegger’s designation of inceptive thought (anfängliches Denken) as the “style of the being-human that is to come” in his Contributions to Philosophy (1936-38). Its relation to historicity and the ground attunement of retention (Verhaltenheit) will be discussed. The question of style in art will then be raised by tracing back the “style” of inceptive thinking to Heidegger’s critique of Western aesthetics and its metaphysical foundation. Rather than witnessing the “aesthetisation” of the thought performing the “leap” beyond metaphysics, this motive brings forth his project of “destruction” of aesthetics as it takes place in the first lecture course on Nietzsche. This article claims that the analysis of Nietzsche’s grand style (grosse Stil) in this very course serves as the leading thread in his repeatedallusions to the “other inception” in philosophy in terms of a “style of thought”. Moreover, the reflexion on the style in both thinkers reveals an interest in the aesthetic category of the sublime. Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy leads this motive to its ultimate ontological consequences. (shrink)

Dans notre article, nous nous proposons d’étudier la désignation de la pensée du commencement-initial par Heidegger comme “le style de I’etre-homme à venir’ dans ses Contributions à la Philosophie (1936-1938). Nous traitons le rapport du “style” à l’historialité de la pensée et en particulier à la tonalité affective fondamentale de la retenue. Par la suite, nous soulevons la question du style dans l’art en retraçant l’origine du “style de la pensée initiale” dans la critique heideggérienne de l’esthétique et de safondation (...) métaphysique. Plutôt que témoigner de l’esthetisation de sa pensée, ce thème met en lumiere son projet de “destruction” de I’esthétique telle qu’elle a lieu dans le premier cours sur Nietzsche. Nous soutenons que l’analyse du grand style nietzschéen tel qu’il a lieu dans ce cours sert de filconducteurpour sa qualification de I’autre commencement de la philosophie de “style de pensée”. Par ailleurs, la réflexion des deux penseurs sur le motif du style témoigne de leur intérêt commun à la catégorie esthétique du sublime. Les Contributions à la Philosophie poursuivent ce motif à ses conséquences ontologiques ultimes.This paper focuses on Heidegger’s designation of inceptive thought (anfängliches Denken) as the “style of the being-human that is to come” in his Contributions to Philosophy (1936-38). Its relation to historicity and the ground attunement of retention (Verhaltenheit) will be discussed. The question of style in art will then be raised by tracing back the “style” of inceptive thinking to Heidegger’s critique of Western aesthetics and its metaphysical foundation. Rather than witnessing the “aesthetisation” of the thought performing the “leap” beyond metaphysics, this motive brings forth his project of “destruction” of aesthetics as it takes place in the first lecture course on Nietzsche. This article claims that the analysis of Nietzsche’s grand style (grosse Stil) in this very course serves as the leading thread in his repeatedallusions to the “other inception” in philosophy in terms of a “style of thought”. Moreover, the reflexion on the style in both thinkers reveals an interest in the aesthetic category of the sublime. Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy leads this motive to its ultimate ontological consequences. (shrink)