Michael Psellos has long been known as a key figure in the history of Byzantine literary and intellectual culture, but his theoretical and critical reflections on literature and art are little known outside of a small circle of specialists. Most famous for his Chronographia, a history of eleventh-century Byzantine emperors and their reigns, Psellos also excelled in describing as well as prescribing practices and rules for literary discourse and visual culture. The ambition of Michael Psellos on Literature and Art is (...) to illustrate an important chapter in the history of Greek literary and art criticism and introduce precisely this aspect of Psellian writing to a wider public. The editors of this volume present thirty Psellian texts, all of which have been translated - some in part, most in their entirety - into English. In the majority of cases, the works are translated for the first time in any modern language, and several are discussed at length here for the first time. They are grouped into two separate sections, which roughly translate to two areas of theoretical reflection associated with the modern terms 'literature' and 'art.'0. (shrink)

A well illustrated study of Byzantine art, which analyses the elements of architecture and painting in terms of the aesthetic categories, "sublime" and "beautiful." The final section of the book argues that though these two categories are distinct, they are also interdependent because their source is the same, viz., "the aesthetic joy which includes every potential aesthetic emotion".--A. R.

The quintessence of Byzantine faith is the twofold identification of the God-Man. Yet, the image of God Jesus Christ and the transcendent Trinity is a one-God concept. Inevitability, I argue Byzantine aesthetics had to recognize God as both anthropomorphous and divine. Since, omission of God’s divinity would verify God as divisible. In line with apophatic theology, Byzantine aesthetics used non-categorizations and non-identifications, what I denominate meta-images, to teach about God’s divinity and that God is. Since 'holy' equals right manner and (...) right teaching about God , anything else would have been heresy. The desired effect of salvation would come to naught if the image did not concur with 'right opinion' . Contemplation and imitation as well as communion with God depend on aesthetics 'of right belief' . God is Beauty and God is Truth, and vice versa. In context of aesthetics, the idea of beauty refers to potential impetus to restore the natural image in the believer. Beauty identifies in deification , spiritual knowledge of the supreme beauty of God. Beauty does not refer to the perishable, but to the imperishable, not to physical strength and vigor, but to spiritual strength, yearning, and purity. Aesthetic approaches that help believers go beyond physical law to divine law, beyond the corporeal mundane to spiritual knowledge are good and beautiful. Interaction of narration, flattened corporeality, inverted perspectives, and meta-images such as light, brilliance, and patterned borders identifies the twofold reality of God and the historical event within and beyond time and space. This interaction of Incarnation and Grace refers to the Beauty of God, the prerequisite for salvation of humankind. (shrink)

Byzantium and Modernism -- The Slash (/) as Method -- CODA.

Moving from the problem of defining how medieval speculation conceived the aesthetic dimension of art, this essay purposes an insight into the aspects that describe the peculiarity of the Byzantine conception of beauty and art. Surpassing the noetic perspective established by Platonic thought – shared also by Western medieval philosophy – according to which beauty is an intelligible model subsisting in itself as an autonomous entity, the Byzantine proper vision conceives beauty as a divine energy. The implications of this perspective (...) lead us to investigate its connection with some of the most original achievements of Byzantine speculation, such as hypostatic ontology, theology of deification, eikonic thinking, and especially sophianic gnoseology, which permit us to overcome the dichotomy of the intelligible and the sensible domains of reality. (shrink)

Man is a "homo theologicus." The dominion of the cyberculture is determining the oblivion of the Sacred in a new fashion, creating fictional transcendences that replace traditional reality with cyberconstructions. We aim to show how man is essentially a theologal being and how the Byzantine notion of ϑέωσις (deification) as expressed in sacred arts can be a way of preserving human essence from its alienation in the fictional transcendences of cyberbeing. We approach cyberculture as a process of ontological desubstantiation via (...) artificial "intelligence" and virtual reproductions. We explain the dual phenomenon of the implanting of a decentered, networked techno-hedonism and the spread of the "avatar syndrome" as a cyber-disease that inhibits in man his responsibility to be real. By contrast, we underscore the importance of the fact that in cyberbeing the "enchantment before beings" as anticipation of radical freedom is especially safeguarded. While the modern aesthetic is mostly deprived of mystic origin and transcendental telos and proves useless against cyberbeing's desubstantiating power, Byzantine aesthetic as an ontological healing way can contribute to the de-oblivion of human essence. This implies that sacred Byzantine arts as aesthetic therapy open the horizon in which man experiences his essence as perpetual bliss in the meaning of Being. (shrink)

We are going to present a panorama of Byzantine Philosophy. As starting point should be considered the Patristic Thought, which preceded the Byzantine Philosophy and was established in the first centuries A.D. into the Greek-Roman world. It was based on the Old and New Testament, the apostolic teachings, as well as on Judaism and Greek Philosophy. Also, the Ancient Oriental Religions – especially those of the Greek-Roman period, i.e. the Gnosticism- exerted an influence on it. The Patristic Thought and the (...) Ancient Greek Philosophy were the two main pedestals of Byzantine Philosophy. But, we cannot separate completely Patristic thought from the Byzantine Philosophy, first because the Byzantine Philosophy used all the corpus of the preceded texts of the Church Fathers and second because the Patristic Thought was continued to the end of Byzantium in interaction with Byzantine Philosophy. When we use he term Byzantine Philosophy we refer to the ideological currents that flourished from the 9th century till the 15th in the geographical area of the Greek East. Its main task was the quest for truth from the metaphysical point of view. In this era we have not only commentaries and scholastic works, but also an assimilation of the previous philosophical and scientific developments in purpose of an interior evolution. The opposition to, and the use of, the Western scholasticism were also another two special characteristics of Byzantine Thought. The use of the logical works of Aristotle and the metaphysics of Plato made up its main theoretical body, always in relation to the Christian dogmas. The logical, metaphysical, cosmological, ethical, aesthetical and anthropological subjects were closely connected with the fixed Christian view of the World, God and Man. But despite the influence of the Christian religion and the Aristotelic, Platonic, Stoic, Neoplatonic etc. teachings, today we can arrive at the conclusion that from the ninth through the fifteen century a relative autonomy of Philosophy in Byzantium was emerged. Also, the Philosophical thought in Byzantium gave some new solutions to the old problems and dared sometimes to proceed in new rational, mystical or even empirical elaborations of original philosophical questions. (shrink)

The article seeks to present an overview of the history of Byzantine philosophy. It takes its point of departure in the most important factors that influenced and shaped the Patristic thought. Subsequently, the paper considers the relative autonomy of Byzantine philosophy and offers a brief profile of major philosophers that contributed to the stream in the period from 9th to 15th century. From the numerous subjects that were taken into account by the most prominent Byzantine philosophers, the article discusses such (...) issues as: the view of God, the problem of ‘conceptual realism’, the relationship between such ‘disci plines’ as logic, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and philosophical anthro pology. Furthermore, such questions as the place of man in the world, the scope of their freedom and the problem of evil are also touched upon here. The paper concludes with some remarks on the develop ment of Byzantine philosophy after the fall of Byzantium. (shrink)

This essay is devoted to the analysis of the scholarly achievements of Victor V. Bychkov, a renowned Russian expert in aesthetics. It demonstrates that he has analyzed systematically and in detail the history of implicit aesthetics of the countries of the Eastern Orthodox region and has subdivided it into four principal stages: Patristic aesthetics, Byzantine aesthetics, Old Russian aesthetics, and Russian theourgic aesthetics. He has devoted special monographs to each of the four areas. Bychkov has created a present-day version of (...) theoretical aesthetics—post-nonclassic aesthetics—which he subdivided into three principal sections: classic, aesthetics; nonclassics ; and aesthetic virtualistics. Based on his analysis of twentieth-century art, Bychkov has suggested the hypothesis "Culture-post-culture," has brought to light the metaphysical meaning of contemporary, art and has provided contemporary definitions of the subject of aesthetics, of principal aesthetic categories, and of the main principles of art. (shrink)

The category of the Ethico-Aesthetics, introduced by Søren Kierkegaard, was applied to the study of Byzantine Philosophy by the Greek philoso­pher and theologian Nikolaos Matsoukas. Matsoukas vehe­mently rejected the identification of Byzantine philosophy with a strict Christian moralism. Rather, he viewed it as an ethos which did not lead the ascetics to display Manichean contempt for the body. It was thus a kind of ‘mild asceticism’. This ethical acceptance of the body turns against Neoplatonic speculation and cultivates the habitus that (...) leads to artistic creativity. Byzantine philosophy is thus situated at the midpoint between nominalism and realism, but standing against the realism of the archetypal ideas. The paper concludes with some considerations on the pragmatics of Byzantine philosophy in a Christian world. (shrink)

In this paper the author examines the ontology of Byzantine music in its self, its aesthetical ground, the philosophical and cultural principles of creation, its episteme, the epistemological field that produced its forms from the 12th till the 14th century, and why that musical ontology hasn’t change through the centuries. The paper discusses in partucular Ernst Bloch’s view that the only evolutionary expression of the Absolute spirit as far as music is concerned, is Western classical music. The author claims that (...) the Western and the Byzantine music stand for two totally distinct and diverse ontologies of the musical being, something that Bloch seems to overlook; this, according to the author, is mostly due to the different systems of representation that have been used, and especially the representational ideas of the time-space relation. The author supports the view that while Western music is spatially-modeled, Byzantine music is time-modeled. (shrink)

This paper presents an integrated framework applied towards the design and evaluation of a virtual museum of Byzantine art that combines the theorized fields of semiotics, virtual heritage, and Byzantine art. A devised semiotic model, the case study semiosphere, synthesizes important principles from the theoretical background justifying the overall design and evaluation methodology. The approach presented has theoretical extensions to the understanding of the role technology plays in promoting a consummatory aesthetic experience for Byzantine art in virtual environments, complementing the (...) experience received from traditional Byzantine art media. Part A of the work presents the development of the semiotic foundation of the study prior to presenting the applied potential of the approach in design and evaluation of VH for Byzantine art, which appears in Part B. The final task of the proposed approach aims to support a meaningful interpretation, assisting in the promotion of the significance of the virtual museum to potential interpreters/visitors. (shrink)

This paper presents an integrated framework applied towards the design and evaluation of a virtual museum of Byzantine art that combines the theorized fields of semiotics, virtual heritage (VH), and Byzantine art. A devised semiotic model, the case study semiosphere, synthesizes important principles from the theoretical background justifying the overall design and evaluation methodology. The approach presented has theoretical extensions to the understanding of the role technology plays in promoting a consummatory aesthetic experience for Byzantine art in virtual environments, complementing (...) the experience received from traditional Byzantine art media. Part A of the work presents the development of the semiotic foundation of the study prior to presenting the applied potential of the approach in design and evaluation of VH for Byzantine art, which appears in Part B. The final task of the proposed approach aims to support a meaningful interpretation, assisting in the promotion of the significance (value) of the virtual museum to potential interpreters/visitors. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:110 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY History of Aesthetics, Vol. I. Ancient Aesthetics. By Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz. Ed. J. Harrell. Trans. Adam and Ann Czerniawski. (The Hague-Paris: Mouton and Warszawa: PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers, 1970. Pp. vii-352.) History of Aesthetics, Vol. II. Medieval Aesthetics. By WladySlaw Tatarkiewicz. Ed. C. Barrett. Trans. R. M. Montgomery. (The Hague-Paris: Mouton and Warszawa: PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers, 1970. Pp. vii-315.) These two volumes of Tatarkiewicz' monumental history of (...) aesthetics, the third volume (to 1700) of which is now being prepared for press, have been reviewed already in the major aesthetic journals in Europe and America following their publication in Polish. Since Polish is not one of my languages, I can say nothing about the adequacy of the (rather obscured) translators and their work. The editors of both volumes have done their difficult work thoroughly, though the usual inconsistencies of spelling and such creep in. British spellings of judgement, centre, and colour, for example, appear in one part of a volume, while center, color, and judgment appear in another part. These are rare and not at all irksome details. On p. 220 of volume I, Aristotle has become a Stagiryte (sic). If the editors and translators actually re-checked all of those Greek, Polish and English texts--to say nothing of the Latin--they have earned a very large debt indeed. Again, my selective ignorance eliminates me from assessment. Tatarkiewicz' historical writing is surgical and Lacon-like. His major achievement lies in refraining from philosophical animadversions and for sticking strictly to his topic, no matter how tempting the theoretic distractions. Actually one expects a history of aesthetics to find the locus of aesthetic theory in the usual systematic frameworks of outstanding philosophers, but again Tatarkiewicz knows better than to try to provide these settings. His device is to stay exactly with the texts of authors, and to provide as much evidence for his statements as a printed work will allow. His scholarship is truly prodigious, and the work will live as reference for a long time to come. But it is more than a reference. There are some remarkable novelties included that bear mention. First of all, Tatarkiewicz' opening analysis of what must be included in a history of aesthetics is penetrating and convincing. In addition to the major "dualities" of aesthetics (beauty-art, subjective-objective aesthetics, psychological-sociological aesthetics, descriptive-prescriptive aesthetics, etc.) he simply accepts the necessity to find evidence of aesthetic history among statements by artists, among the inexplicit and inarticulate art works, in the vox populi and cultural actions of people. Thus the "evidence" he adduces will often displease the theoretical purist. Next, one is impressed by the great antiquity of some key issues that are being avidly pursued today. What is impressive is not that they are being repeated now, but that modern writers so rarely recognize (or acknowledge) their historical sources---or seem to care to. A careful study of this history might do much to reduce the growing volume in aesthetics----or at least to change the direction of emphasis significantly. One is surprised to note which figures emerge as of first rate importance in the history of aesthetics, important for different reasons. These figures stand out: Democritus, Plotinus, Aristotle, Vitruvius, the Pseudo-Dionysius, Johannes Scotus Erigena, to select only a few. The first Polish philosopher, Vitelo, anticipates much modern psychologizing in advancing the work of Alhazen. Ockham, not so surprising, contributes major advances, as do Augustine and Aquinas. BOOK REVIEWS 111 One fascinating item is the author's extensive account of the most violent and extended controversy in the history of aesthetics---the veneration of images and the disputes between the Iconoclasts and the Iconophiles. This sometimes physical battle raged for over 100 years! The Byzantine society, obviously, took art seriously. Tatarkiewicz' great labor is an object lesson in historiography and bibliographic technique. At one and the same time it demonstrates how much of value remains to be discovered by careful adherence to the detail of scholarship, while it also displays how much fruitful scholarship depends upon a brilliant and profoundly informed mind. Such a work, in short, could only have descended from a fully mature... (shrink)

Continuing from Part A (2016), in which we discuss the semiotic foundation for designing a virtual museum of Byzantine art, Part B presents an applied methodology for the representation of cultural artifacts through virtual technologies and semiotic techniques. We discuss how our semiotic model, case study semiosphere, contributes to design and evaluation research of such unique art-form representation and why the approach contributes as a whole to the field of Virtual Heritage (VH). Theorizing further the design implications integrating the overall (...) approach including the evaluation experiment of three VH applications with the participation of young users and its semiotic analysis, we formulate design guidelines that can be applied also to other types of cultural heritage and art. (shrink)

Continuing from Part A, in which we discuss the semiotic foundation for designing a virtual museum of Byzantine art, Part B presents an applied methodology for the representation of cultural artifacts through virtual technologies and semiotic techniques. We discuss how our semiotic model, case study semiosphere, contributes to design and evaluation research of such unique art-form representation and why the approach contributes as a whole to the field of Virtual Heritage. Theorizing further the design implications integrating the overall approach including (...) the evaluation experiment of three VH applications with the participation of young users and its semiotic analysis, we formulate design guidelines that can be applied also to other types of cultural heritage and art. (shrink)

A very special kind of feast belongs to the Christian Orthodox tradition: there is a specific liturgical celebration of the Images in the so-called Sunday of Orthodoxy. While in many cultures images are employed in order to celebrate an historic event, this is the only feast in which, on the contrary, images are celebrated for themselves. Nonetheless, the role of images in Orthodoxy is not univocally and positively accepted. In fact, the title’s expression.the wolf as a shepherd. belongs to a (...) Desert Father and refers to the role of images in our mental life. This is not reported by a heretical iconoclastic document, but by the well-known Philokalia, a kind of handbook of Orthodox Aesthetics. This paper aims to present these two aspects in their paradoxical partnership. First, I will present some historical, symbolic and liturgical aspects of this feast. Thus, we should be able to understand better why many contemporary authors claimed that the origins of our visual culture can be traced in this Feast. However, if we comprehend the philosophical value of Byzantine icons, we realise that they have little to do with our contemporary images, no matter whether we mean artistic, religious or media images. We often talk about the.power of images., but just to blame them -as if they were autonomous entities- or to praise them, in a generalized aestheticization of contemporary life. Iconophobia and iconodoulia, I claim, are emerging as ontologically impoverished versions of the former Byzantine theoretical models. What falls into oblivion is the paradoxical status of the image as.appearance of the essence of Being. that demands as a condition of its own existence its self-sublation. These dialectics, conceptually inspired by the Hegelian logic, are fully present in Byzantine Aesthetics, where the feast is considered as a precarious image, held in memory of a future image-loss event known as eschaton. (shrink)

"Ruskin was the most important aesthetic authority of the 19th century. In his dozens of books and lectures he wrote about the qualities of art. the key figure, the history that connected one to another. In The Stones of Venice, Modern Painters, Seven Lamps of Architecture he developed rules and standards that are amazingly contemporary in their range of sympathies. However, Ruskin wrote thousands of pages of criticism; for the modern reader his thought needs always to be rediscovered. This anthology (...) by Robert Herbert contains the essential thought of Ruskin on theory and practice (creativity, color, compositio, exhibiting workd of art), ("the nature of gothic," Venetian Renaissance, iron and glass as new materials for building), and sculpture and ornament (Greek, Byzantine, Medieval, and Renaissance). Herbert devotes his section on painting to Ruskin's remarks on Giotto, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Michelangelo, the Venetians, Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, and many others. Ruskin was full of contradictions and quirks, but he is the one 19th-century critic who gave the 20th century many of its most progressive thoughts on architecture, painting, and relationship of art to a social and moral context."--BOOK COVER. (shrink)

Henri Maldiney’s aesthetics can be seen as an attempt to push traditional phenomenological descriptions of the image, such as can be found in the works of Husserl and Sartre, to their theoretical limits. In this paper, I examine how Maldiney’s phenomenological approach to visual works of art leads him to disclose a non-intentional dimension of the image which is that of “form.” At this level, the image is not primarily a structure or modification of consciousness, but a mode of presence (...) to the world. Next, in turning towards what Maldiney considers to be non-objective forms of pictorial representation, exemplified by Byzantine mosaics and the works of Paul Cézanne, I show how this presence is articulated rhythmically in a tension which embraces both image and viewer. Finally, I explore the meaning of Maldiney’s claim that the image is not an imitation of reality, but synonymous with reality itself. (shrink)

The article discusses the aesthetic aspects of the symbolology introduced by the Byzantine author of the Corpus Areopagiticum that was signed in the name of the pupil of the Apostle Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite. The symbolology is understood to mean knowledge of both symbols and symbolic type of consciousness and worldview, which is implicitly present in Dionysius's works. Based on the analysis of the Corpus texts, it is shown that all levels of symbol theory developed by Dionysius—like likenesses, unlike likenesses, (...) apophatic naming, and sacral-liturgical symbolism—have an aesthetic coloration. The symbolology of the Areopagitica gave a powerful impetus to the development of European theological aesthetics and the artistic practice of the Christian culture for many centuries, in Western Europe as well as in the Byzantine Empire and medieval Russia. (shrink)

Wilhelm Worringer's landmark study in the interpretation of modern art, first published in 1908, has seldom been out of print. Its profound impact not only on art historians and theorists but also for generations of creative writers and intellectuals is almost unprecedented. Starting from the notion that beauty derives from our sense of being able to identify with an object, Worringer argues that representational art produces satisfaction from our "objectified delight in the self," reflecting a confidence in the world as (...) it is--as in Renaissance art. By contrast, the urge to abstraction, as exemplified by Egyptian, Byzantine, primitive, or modern expressionist art, articulates a totally different response to the world: it expresses man's insecurity. Thus in historical periods of anxiety and uncertainty, man seeks to abstract objects from their unpredictable state and transform them into absolute, transcendental forms. Abstraction and Empathy also has a sociological dimension, in that the urge to create fixed, abstract, and geometric forms is a response to the modern experience of industrialization and the sense that individual identity is threatened by a hostile mass society. Hilton Kramer's introduction considers the influence of Worringer's thesis and places his book in historical context. (shrink)

Аналізуючи специфіку візантійської естетики аскетизму як, зокрема, джерела релігійно-естетичної традиції Київської Русі, автор статті доводить важливість ретельного дослідження онтологічного виміру християнського естетичного вчення – виміру, пов’язаного з осмисленням проблеми буття прекрасного в дійсності. Ознайомлення з естетичними ідеями видатних мислителів-аскетів Візантії (свв. Василія Великого, Григорія Богослова, Іоанна Златоуста, Григорія Нісського, Єфрема Сиріна та ін.) дає підставу визначати естетику аскетизму як теоцентричну онтологію прекрасного, наріжним постулатом якої виступає визнання Бога Найвищою Красою. Відповідно, шлях духовного подвигу в межах аскетикоестетичної традиції визнається шляхом до (...) насолоди Абсолютно Прекрасним, прагнення до Якого властиве кожній людині. (shrink)

The study of perception and the role of the senses have recently risen to prominence in philosophy and are now a major area of study and research. However, the philosophical history of the senses remains a relatively neglected subject. Moving beyond the current philosophical canon, this outstanding collection offers a wide-ranging and diverse philosophical exploration of the senses, from the classical period to the present day. Written by a team of international contributors, it is divided into six parts: -/- Perception (...) from Non-Western Perspectives Perception in the Ancient Period Perception in the Medieval Latin/Arabic Period Perception in the Early Modern Period Perception in the Post-Kantian Period Perception in the Contemporary Period. The volume challenges conventional philosophical study of perception by covering a wide range of significant, as well as hitherto overlooked, topics, such as perceptual judgment, temporal and motion illusions, mirror and picture perception, animal senses and cross-modal integration. By investigating the history of the senses in thinkers such as Plotinus, Auriol, Berkeley and Cavendish; and considering the history of the senses in diverse philosophical traditions, including Chinese, Indian, Byzantine, Greek and Latin it brings a fresh approach to studying the history of philosophy itself. -/- Including a thorough introduction as well as introductions to each section by the editors, The Senses and the History of Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, perception, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, aesthetics and eastern and non-western philosophy. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, sociology, intellectual history and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

While philosophy and psychoanalysis privilege language and conceptual distinctions and mistrust the image, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva recognizes the power of art and the imagination to unblock important sources of meaning. She also appreciates the process through which creative acts counteract and transform feelings of violence and depression. Reviewing Kristeva's corpus, Elaine P. Miller considers the intellectual's "aesthetic idea" and "thought specular" in their capacity to reshape depressive thought on both the individual and cultural level. She revisits Kristeva's (...) reading of Walter Benjamin with reference to melancholic art and the imagination's allegorical structure; her analysis of Byzantine iconoclasm in relation to Freud's psychoanalytic theory of negation and Hegel's dialectical negativity; her understanding of Proust as an exemplary practitioner of sublimation; her rereading of Kant and Arendt in terms of art as an intentional lingering with foreignness; and her argument that forgiveness is both a philosophical and psychoanalytic method of transcending a "stuck" existence. Focusing on specific artworks that illustrate Kristeva's ideas, from ancient Greek tragedy to early photography, contemporary installation art, and film, Miller positions creative acts as a form of "spiritual inoculation" against the violence of our society and its discouragement of thought and reflection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.4 (2000) 303-318 [Access article in PDF] The Threshold of the Self Bradford Vivian The subject has a history. Classical Greek sculpture expressed a fascination with the formal beauty of one's self. Ever gazing outward or upward, the marble figures symbolized the Greek preoccupation with a boldness of being, a constant focus on the ideals of the body and mind, which, through their pursuit, might allow (...) one a foretaste of heaven. Centuries later, as the pagan symbols of the ancient world were replaced with those of the growing Byzantine Empire, blocks of the same marble were fashioned into very different expressions. The ideals of form made manifest in the smooth, taught lines and surfaces of classical Greek sculpture were supplanted by Byzantine art's attention to the less perfect details of the individual: distinctive and common faces, beards, clothing, and less glorified bodies. The gazes of the Byzantine statues were cast down, contemplative, reflecting Byzantium's early Christian emphasis upon the modesty of human existence, the pious appraisal of one's time on Earth. Each of these sculptural styles is a material way of thinking and expressing one's being in the world. In this context, each is also symptomatic of the conditions in which such being was possible.The subject must not be conceived as a transcendent entity. Quite to the contrary, there is a historicity to our being and its expression, to our subjectivity and its elaboration. Within a more sweeping perspective, our epochal narratives of the subject--as well as the modes of thought and speech by which we make sense of ourselves--change with each passing age.At the forefront of the current era is a manifold effort to rethink and elaborate anew the concept of the subject. Feminist scholars have initiated political critique and transformation by arguing that the very notion of a subject in Western discourse has functioned as a trope of masculine privilege cloaked in the language of equality and secular humanism. 1 Postmodernists, of course, define contemporary subjectivity as de-centered and fragmented by nature (e.g., Baudrillard 1994; Latour 1993; Lyotard 1984). And [End Page 303] a variety of interdisciplinary studies illuminate the role of modern science and technology in not only sustaining our being, but actually constituting the human; in short, our daily interdependence and union with artificial body parts, synthetic products, life-support machines, test-tube reproduction, computers, and more, characterizes the arrival of what has been called "the posthuman." 2 Like ancient marble from a quarry, however, all of these materials are sculpted in historically specific ways to simultaneously think and express our subjectivity.What role might rhetoric play in this re-imagining of subjectivity? Modern Western thought has defined the subject according to content--that is, by the nature of the essence or being the subject is said to possess. Drawn around this content, the subject comes to appear enclosed, perhaps autonomous, and identical to itself. In this essay, however, I argue that the self may be conceived as a form--a rhetorical form--that exists only in its continual aesthetic creation, in its indefinite becoming. The self is, by this account, isomorphic with the threshold out of which it is composed. Such a formulation makes the self open to difference, to continual movement and transformation, instead of identical to itself.I aim in this essay to explore the abstract rhetorical forms and functions out of which the self is composed. The distinction here amounts to no longer asking, "What is a subject?" but, "What conditions and forces enable the ongoing production of the self?" Commensurate with such a proposal, it will be essential to ask how this movement--this continual becoming--of the self is brought about. The answer to this question ultimately will amplify the role of rhetoric in, not simply expressing, but actually producing conditions of being. In what follows, I begin by reviewing the very general aspects of subjectivity that I wish to call into question. Thereafter, I explore how the subject might be conceived differently. Finally, I discuss the manner in which rhetoric may... (shrink)

In the current American iconoclash, certain monuments are subject to vandalism and municipal removal from their pedestals. Phrases such as “the erasure of history” and “damnatio memoriae” point to concerns that iconoclasm is an attempt to censor history or even remove certain individuals from public memory altogether. Because these phrases beckon the past, this wave of iconoclasm calls for a close examination of previous image-breaking to establish motives. Drawing first from art history, we analyze Byzantine iconoclasm and anxieties over the (...) nature of icons’ power, before contextualizing these findings within image destruction from the Paleolithic to the present day. Each comparison is suggestive of an enduring aesthetic principle: that what appears inanimate is not always inert. Next, drawing from cultural anthropology, we argue that principles of sympathetic magic are at the heart of contemporary iconoclasms, but not in the way media outlets often suggest. Instead, the fear of history’s erasure betrays a deeply rooted equivalence between the representation and the represented. In perceiving their fates as shared, sympathetic magic is seen to persist in the way humans create, interpret, and desecrate images. We conclude with the speculative realist proposition that iconoclasm can produce new, original artworks, which carries implications for the autonomy of art and its distribution between artist and artwork. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore general features of the “architecture” (relations of white space, diagram, and text on the page) of medieval manuscripts and early printed editions of Euclidean geometry. My focus is primarily on diagrams in the Arabic transmission, although I use some examples from both Byzantine Greek and medieval Latin manuscripts as a foil to throw light on distinctive features of the Arabic transmission. My investigations suggest that the “architecture” often takes shape against the backdrop of an educational (...) landscape. The constraints of the economic marketplace and cultural aesthetic ideals also appear to play a role in determining the “architecture” of both manuscripts and early printed editions. (shrink)

Although equal in power to other facets of the rich cultural ferment of modern Russia that have profoundly influenced Western civilization—such as painting, literature, drama, and politics—the authentic legacy of twentieth-century Russian philosophy has until recently been eclipsed by Soviet ideological dominance. Of the important philosophers drawing upon the characteristically Russian synthesis of Ancient Neoplatonism, German Idealism, and Byzantine spirituality, Sergei Bulgakov is outstanding, and his work has important implications for our contemporary thinking about the relationship between humanity and nature (...) in an age of environmental crisis. Overcoming the objectivist stance toward nature consolidated by Descartes and ensconced by Kant, Bulgakov anticipates not only many existential and phenomenological thinkers in the West—especially Heidegger—but also current ecological sensibilities, by showing the ontological status of humanity and nature as profoundly interconnected, especially through his understanding of nature as “household.” Beyond this, he elucidates a normative, “thoesophianic” character of nature corresponding to Plato’s “world soul,” the Renaissance natura naturans, and Heidegger’s “divinely beautiful nature” which is best revealed not by science and technology, but by the aesthetic and contemplative energies of a humanity whose essential interconnection with nature is shown most profoundly by means of this mode of revealing itself. (shrink)

Rooted in a tradition of thought and spirituality akin to, yet other than, the onto-theology of the Latin West, the aesthetico-theological experience of the Byzantine icon can help articulate aesthetic and numinous elements of our relation to nature that environmental philosophy should no longer ignore. In contrast to the technical mastery of the natural in Western art inaugurated by the Renaissance, itself related to the emerged technological mastery of nature in the late Middle Ages, the iconic sensibility characteristic of the (...) Byzantine East exhibits an experience of materiality common to non-Western humanity, seeing nature as a visible window to the invinsible, a lintel of the holy. A series of correlations between features of iconic seeing and exemplary encounters with the natural environment by prominent naturalists elaborates this thesis, along with examples from the later writings of Dostoevsky, who looked to divine beauty to save the earth. (shrink)

With the advancement of digital technology in contemporary art, new hybrid forms of interaction emerge that invite viewers to make images present in physical space as events that claim a life of their own. In breaking away from representational and performance art theories that have dominated the critique of new media artwork since the 1980s, this article analyses an iconic vision of mobile touchscreens based on the medieval Byzantine chorographic inscription of the sacred in profane spaces. As defined in recent (...) art historical studies on Byzantine icons, chorography builds on a multisensory spatial interaction between the beholders of icons that results in feeling the presence of a divine, invisible image. In light of postmodern critique of digital images’ capacity to manipulate notions of reality, new media aesthetic theory hardly addresses this Byzantine iconic vision that is fundamental to western visual culture. Jeffrey Shaw’s installation, The Golden Calf, is discussed to offer an alternative in understanding how digital and physical spaces function together to evoke something essentially real. (shrink)

The article expounds the concept of substance as a unified system in which all of its properties cannot be determined by its components parts alone. Instead the system as a whole verifies the notion of existence. Everything that exists, noetic and aesthetic, animate or inanimate, is governed by the fundamental status of substance. Hence, none of the parts (humans, angels, rocks, bacteria) can claim for absoluteness against the other. This idea goes back to Ancient Greek scholars, such as Aristotle, while (...) it reaches its climax throughout the Byzantine Philosophy with John of Damascus theories. Accordingly and as the image is concerned, one can encounter this kind of ontology in various artworks, from the frescoes of Lascaux caves, to early Renaissance. Beyond the substance there is the un-substance, which is often confused with western philosophical duality course such as those of the matter and the idea, of the sensible and the intelligible, of the body and the soul and finally of the born and the unborn. Nevertheless, and as for the Byzantine philosophy, these entities are lodged into the unity of the substance irrespective of their tangibility because they all contain some kind of materiality at variance to the immateriality of the un-substance. The most representative version of this theory appears in archaic and late antiquity imagery, a type of imagery that has been scattering into early motion pictures and into late Technoetic practices. (shrink)

This paper is about the specific character of the aesthetic experience of icons. I am arguing for the idea that the aesthetic experience of icons is a necessary condition of their role and function in Christian worship, and, moreover, that this particular aesthetic experience is of an apophatic kind. My arguments will be developed on the background of the Byzantine iconoclastic debate and the apophatic theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Also, they should present the very debate from the perspective of (...) aesthetics, often overlooked in favour of more theological or ontological issues related to it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Hypothesis Concerning the Character of Islamic ArtAsli GocerWhy Islamic art has the distinctive features it has continues to generate clashing explanations. The Islamic visual treasury has no figural images, for instance, and three-dimensional sculpture or large scale oil painting, but instead contains miniatures, vegetal ornaments, arabesque surface patterns, and complex geometrical designs. To account for the phenomena the following radically opposing theories have been offered: the influence of (...) Judaism, the Quranic prohibition against making images, 1 Islamic resentment of the glory of Byzantine icons, 2 logocentricism of classical Islam, 3 the spiritual dimension of Islam, 4 tacit Islamic assertion of “otherness,” 5 and contingency of history. 6 The merits of these theories have been roundly discussed in the literature, and so I will not repeat the task here. I will insist that none of these theories offer a coherent explanation for all arts, but my presumption is that such an explanation is possible. In nonvisual arts the Muslim prefers simple tunes over that of the symphony, for instance, whirling dervishes over the ballet, and lyric poetry over dramatic literature. In my view what explains the common characteristic of all these arts is a certain kind of Islamic attitude informed by a certain philosophical outlook. Although it would be hasty to suggest the existence of a monolithic [End Page 683] Islamic art, it would be equally rash to deny some striking commonalities among its diverse examples. 7The following observation by a Muslim scholar is notable in this regard: “Whether in the great courtyard of the Delhi Mosque or the Qarawiyyin in Fez, one feels oneself within the same artistic and spiritual universe despite all the local variations in material, structural techniques, and the like.” 8 Some cite geometry as what mediates that feeling to the observer despite the cultural divergences in style. 9 Even those who have given up the search for the universal or the spiritual in Islamic art cannot help but see in it the classical ideal of beauty. 10 It is this classical heritage that in fact holds one of the important keys to the puzzle at hand. In particular I shall claim that Islamic art is the living image of what Plato has in mind for art in a theocratic state. Clearly, to refer to Plato and art in the same breath invites trouble. As is well enough known, giving a general interpretation of Plato’s views on the nature of art is a very complex endeavor. 11 Even in the face of grave difficulties in textual exegesis, however, there is sufficient evidence that Plato has some settled views on art. Those pertinent to our discussion here involve two claims, that beauty and goodness are divine and that all human endeavor (including artistic creation) must imitate the divine. 12 Although Platonic strain in Islam has been noted in other areas, its persistent legacy has been overlooked in art. 13 I shall argue that the Platonic influence on Islamic thought can be traced not only to political philosophy 14 and geometry, 15 as it has been commonly accepted, but also aesthetics. 16 A philosophical explanation of the Islamic attitude toward art may therefore be derivable from the Platonic axiom that god is the paradigm of beauty, which is the cosmological principle of [End Page 684] order and harmony; and as all created things, art, too, must reflect the divine paradigm.Before defending this ahistorical hypothesis on the character of Islamic art so reviled in recent literature, a few caveats are in order. “Islamic art” contains redundant terms. Strictly speaking all art in Islam is “Islamic,” because for the Muslim art is a crucial point of contact with the divine. That art should direct the mind to the divine is also Plato’s view. 17 Second, the categories that have traditionally been used to describe Islamic art such as “aniconic” and “nonrepresentational” are unhelpful for the problem at hand. 18 When it comes to the issue of iconography in Islamic arts, there is no consensus, for Islamicists are notably divided on the semiotic dimension of the Islamic visual language. The question of whether the geometric surface pattern is essentially iconography, for instance, is yet... (shrink)

The 13th and 14th centuries represented the most productive and influential period in the history of philosophy and theology in the West. A parallel and less influential (for the West) proliferation of arguments and theories took place in the East, at the same time, as a result of the defence of the Hesychastic movement offered by St Gregory Palamas and his followers. The papers brought together in this volume discuss the importance of Palamite ideas for the understanding of God in (...) terms of divine energies, and for contemporary approaches to solving perennial problems in science, metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics. Some of the contributors take a more reserved evaluation of the Palamite corpus, preferring to highlight similarities and differences between Palamas and the chief representatives of Medieval Scholasticism, such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Ockham. Other essays offer a radical re-evaluation of the Western history of philosophy and theology, preferring to bring out the reasons for Western philosophical and theological shortcomings and providing a wider critique on Western culture. Contributors to this volume include some of the top scholars on Palamite studies from the fields of philosophy, theology, aesthetics, cultural criticism, and art theory. As such, it represents a particularly useful resource for advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers in Christian theology and philosophy, Byzantine cultural studies and aesthetics. (shrink)