This paper discusses Hans-Georg Gadamer’s account of what he sees as a major change in the approach to the Western philosophical and aesthetic traditions that began in the second half of the eighteenth century, and the results of this change today. According to Gadamer, these traditions ceased to be binding at this time and became objects of historical research. Instead of being seen even as potential sources of insight, traditional knowledge claims and works of art were subjected to historical and (...) aesthetic analysis. And Gadamer holds that these approaches have partially come to encompass the present as well. Thus, modern art has often downplayed cognitive and pedagogical tasks in proceeding in a purely aesthetic, playful way. And the study of history has been seen as providing insight into the contextually determined nature of presuppositions, those of the modern age included. According to Gadamer, this unduly limits the possibilities of both art and history to provide learning. (shrink)

Winckelmann’s work inhabits an ambivalent place in the history of historiography. His Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764) is often referred to as the foundational document of art history, but almost never without the obligatory mention of its rather unhistorical dimension. The aim of the following discussion is to evaluate Winckelmann’s position in the history of eighteenth-century European historiography, especially with regard to the early phase of his career as a historian, i.e. the decisive period between his (...) studies in Halle and his stay in Nöthnitz (1738–1754). During these years, Winckelmann carefully excerpted historiographical literature and dealt intensively with the model of universal history, whose structural patterns deeply influenced his reflection on art historiography. (shrink)

Modern aesthetics is divided into two branches – the Anglo-American and the Continental. A major cause of this division is their divergent views about the place of history in aesthetics, the first tending to minimize historical considerations, while the second readily embraces them. This article explores the place of history in André Malraux's theory of art and argues that his thinking quickly resolves this long-standing disagreement. (This text is a translation of the published French version.).

With this challenging work, Joseph Margolis continues the project begun in _The Flux of History and the Flux of Science_. Tackling one of philosophy's master themes, he develops the controversial thesis that the world is a flux. Here he applies this doctrine to Western theories of history and the interpretation of cultural phenomena—offering the first sustained analysis of the logic, methodology, and metaphysics of interpretation committed to a thoroughgoing relativism and the historicized structure of cultural phenomena. Versed in (...) Anglo-American and Continental philosophy, Margolis draws on the best views of Western philosophy to investigate a topic regularly ignored in that tradition. The result is the surprising synthesis of two historically antipathetic approaches to philosophy. (shrink)

The paper argues that something is art only if (i) it belongs to a special kind of internal history and (ii) needs to be understood and appreciated in the light of such history. This goes against both the traditional view that art has a timeless, ahistorical essence and the historicist view that there can be no ahistorical perspective for understanding art. The paper draws on Hegel’s view that art needs to be understood through its history, but rejects (...) the idea that the history of art has an end in the double sense of a goal and an end point. It also rejects Arthur Danto’s Hegel-inspired claim that the ahistorical essence of art is revealed at the end of its history and opens the door to a natural alliance between philosophers of art and art historians. (shrink)

With this challenging work, Joseph Margolis continues the project begun in _The Flux of History and the Flux of Science_. Tackling one of philosophy's master themes, he develops the controversial thesis that the world is a flux. Here he applies this doctrine to Western theories of history and the interpretation of cultural phenomena—offering the first sustained analysis of the logic, methodology, and metaphysics of interpretation committed to a thoroughgoing relativism and the historicized structure of cultural phenomena. Versed in (...) Anglo-American and Continental philosophy, Margolis draws on the best views of Western philosophy to investigate a topic regularly ignored in that tradition. The result is the surprising synthesis of two historically antipathetic approaches to philosophy. (shrink)

Emotion and feeling have only in the last decade become analytic concepts in the humanities, reflected in what some have called an “affective turn” in the academy at large. The study of emotion has also found a place in science studies and the history and philosophy of science, accompanied by the recognition that even the history of objectivity depends in a dialectical fashion on a history of subjectivity. This topical issue is a contribution to this larger trend (...) across the humanities and the history of science, and yet is circumscribed by attention to a particular kind of emotion or condition for feeling: one centered not in an individual body, but in the interstices between bodies and things, between selves and others – what we call empathy. (shrink)

This is the very first authoritative book on the role of Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869) in the history of psychology. Carus was the initiator of the notions of development, unconscious, and archetype in psychology. The book emphasizes the interdisciplinary focus of Carus’ work as it was based on the literature and art of his time and is closely related with medicine and Naturphilosophie. The readership of the book will get access to the life course of a key figure of (...) science of the 19th century. (shrink)

This book presents a new and radical interpretation of some of Martin Heidegger’s most influential texts. The unfamiliar interpretations all seek to question and unframe hasty assessments of the concepts and constellations of thoughts surrounding Heidegger’s notion of modern technology.

Coins, Art and Chronology: Essays on the pre-Islamic History of the Indo-Iranian Borderlands. Ed. Michael Alram and Deborah E. Klimburg-Salter. Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1999, viii, 498 pp., 131 ill. ATS 1,498, DM 205.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Eric Katz’s insight about the relationship between causal history and value only generates a principled critique of de-extinction when conjoined with the diminishment claim, or the claim that human involvement in something’s causal history diminishes its value. The diminishment claim is a form of negative anthropocentrism. In addition to thinking about de-extinction as a form of ecological restoration, we could think of it as a form of environmental artwork. This reframing highlights the implausibility of the diminishment claim.

Restrictive border protection policies directed toward managing the flow of refugees coming into neoliberal democracies (and out of failing nation-states) are a defining feature of contemporary politics. In this book, Verónica Tello analyses how contemporary artists-such as Tania Bruguera, Isaac Julien, Rosemary Laing, Dinh Q. Lé, Dierk Schmidt, Hito Steyerl, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green-negotiate their diverse subject positions while addressing and taking part in the production of images associated with refugee experiences and histories. Tello argues that their practices, which (...) manifest across a range of contexts including Cuba, the United States, Australia and Europe, represent an emergent, global paradigm of contemporary art, 'counter-memorial aesthetics'. Counter-Memorial Aesthetics, Tello argues, is characterized by its conjunction of heterogeneous signifiers and voices of many times and places, generating an experimental, non-teleological approach to the construction of contemporary history, which also takes into account the complex, disorienting spatial affects of globalization. Spanning performance art, experimental 'history painting', aftermath photography and video installation, counter-memorial aesthetics bring to the fore, Tello argues, how contemporary refugee flows and related traumatic events critically challenge and conflict with many existing, tired if not also stubborn notions of national identity, borders, history and memory. Building on the writings of such thinkers as Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière, this book offers a useful concept of 'counter-memory' for the twenty-first century. It shows how counter-memorial aesthetics is not only central to the nexus of contemporary art and refugee histories but also how it can offer a way of being critically present with many other, often interrelated, global crises in the contemporary era. (shrink)

v. 1. Description of the torso in the Belvedere in Rome, Essay on the capacity for the sentiment for the beautiful in art, Reflections on the painting and sculpture of the Greeks -- v. 2. The history of ancient art (vols. I, II) -- v. 3. The history of ancient art (vols. III, IV).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 (2002) 547-548 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Kant, Art and Art History: Moments of Discipline Mark A. Cheetham. Kant, Art and Art History: Moments of Discipline. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. x + 222. Cloth, $55.00. Mark Cheetham's thorough and insightful new work investigates Kant's continuing influence on the visual arts, both in practice and as (...) defined by the academic discipline of art history. Cheetham argues that until now the art world and art history proper have suppressed the importance of Kant, treating him as an intrusive outsider. He explains that this marginalization may have come about as a consequence of tendencies within Kant's own [End Page 547] work that threaten either to abolish disciplinary boundaries or reestablish them under the protective umbrella of philosophy. His close readings of Kant, therefore, address the way the Kantian system is based on the maintenance of boundaries between the pure and the impure, and how Kant's work continues to restructure institutional boundaries for precisely these reasons. With regard to both art and art history, Cheetham writes, "Kant is a perpetual boarder and the architect of borders" (22). Cheetham builds his study on such insights, drawn from Kant's own discussion of the parergon, or the boundaries between the essential and the inessential. From beginning to end, the work is well-considered and thoughtful, not only as an exploration of disciplinary boundaries, but as a book that brings out a number of still under-researched themes in Kant's oeuvre.The work's first close readings examine Kant's reception among a circle of German-speaking artists and writers in Rome shortly after 1800, including the painter Jakob Asmus Carstens and the artist-turned-critic Carl Ludwig Fernow. This chapter calls attention to connections between abstract and specifically political freedoms in Kant's system, casting light on Napoleon's effect on Europe. Those principally interested in aesthetic questions, however, may find this part of the text to be somewhat less dynamic than its subsequent sections. The following chapter is more engaging, exploring some well-known moments in Kant's twentieth-century reception. Cheetham brings out the ways that Erwin Panofsky shared affinities with Kant insofar as one might take humanism to have been the latent driving force in their work. Cheetham's most interesting insights come from his contention that the writings of Paul Crowther attempted to preserve and protect a "pure" Kant for disciplinary reasons, and that he therefore strictly controlled Kant's influence in the area of art history. The work here points in the direction of a social-historical exploration of the University, and he could certainly have expanded this section to develop a more overarching critique of contemporary disciplinary boundaries. Cheetham's attempt to review Clement Greenberg's relationship to Kant's work is also stimulating, particularly the section in which he reads Greenberg's efforts to combat kitsch in relation to Kant's "What is Enlightenment?"In his most engaging chapter, Cheetham deals with the contemporary discourse around sublimity, analyzing the way both Derrida and Kant are obsessed with the legislation of borders. He makes a brief, though studied comparison between Kant and Derrida on the role and function of limits, and here makes it clear that he takes substantial distance from Derrida's own project. The book's high point is Cheetham's study of a landscape painting by Joseph Anton Koch. It may indeed leave some readers wishing that Cheetham had done more close readings of Romantic art. He then looks at some sublime tendencies in art today, and the means by which contemporary artists obscure both the standpoint of the observer and the boundaries surrounding art itself. In one section, he looks at the work of the collective known as General Idea and that of the artist Sheila Ayearst. This is fascinating material, although some may find his definition of the sublime to have been too broad. It is made to hold the bulk of contemporary art. Cheetham might have done... (shrink)

This is a study of the relation between the fine arts and philosophy in France, from the aftermath of the 1789 revolution to the end of the nineteenth century, when a philosophy of being called "monism" emerged and became increasingly popular among intellectuals, artists, and scientists. Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer traces the evolution and impact of this monist thought and its various permutations as a transformative force on certain aspects of French art and culture-from Romanticism to Impressionism-and as a theoretical backdrop that (...) paved the way to as yet unexplored aspects of a modernist aesthetic. Chapters concentrate on three major artists, Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) and Claude Monet (1840-1926), and their particular approach to and interpretation of this unitarian concept. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, philosophy, and cultural history. (shrink)

In the first sentence of his thematically innovative book, Mark A. Cheetham informs us that Kant, Art, and Art History “examines the far-reaching and varied reception of Immanuel Kant’s thought in art history and the practicing visual arts from the late eighteenth century to the present”. This is surely a long-overdue project in Kant scholarship, and Cheetham deserves praise for having finally put this intellectual ball into play. He then sets one of his methodological assumptions squarely on the (...) table: “there is no pure Kant and no secure border between the many areas that he has influenced”. Cheetham recognizes no secure borders between “art,” “art history,” and “philosophy,” since Kant clearly influenced all three. (shrink)