Gottlob Frege criticized Kant's use of the term "representation" in a footnote in the Foundations of Arithmetics. According to Frege, Kant used the term "representation" for mental images, which are private and incommunicable, and also for objects and concepts. Kant thereby gave "a strongly subjectivistic and idealistic coloring" to his thought. The paper argues that Kant avoided the kind of subjectivism and idealism which Frege hints in his remark. For Kant, having "Vorstellungen" requires the capacity of synthesis, by virtue of (...) which the mind goes beyond its subjective states, and its modifications become presentations of an independent world. (shrink)

The other aim of the volume is to show that there is a close semantic connection between the concepts of individual, mind and body in Leibniz.

In an entry in his Notebooks 1914-1916 Wittgenstein appears to give some credit to the idea widespread in modern aesthetics that «the end of art is the beautiful »: «[…] there is certainly something» – he writes – in this conception. And he comments on: «[…] the beautiful is what makes happy » (NB 21.10.16). Maybe influenced by Tolstoy, who wrote that «people will come to understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of (...) that activity is beauty, i.e. pleasure», Wittgenstein does not adopt the idea without reservations. However, he admits that there is some validity to it. Therefore what we read in his Lectures on Aesthetics (1938) is rather intriguing: «It is remarkable that in real life, when aesthetic judgments are made, aesthetic adjectives such as ‘beautiful’, ‘fine’, etc., play hardly any role at all» (LE, I, 8). Why is this a remarkable fact? Is it because, in spite of beauty being the aim of art, when aesthetic judgments are made, the predicate ‘is beautiful’ plays a marginal role? And if this is the case, why is the supposed end of art almost neglected in art appreciation? Or is Wittgenstein simply bringing a word back from its metaphysical to its everyday use here (cf. PI, 116)? I will argue that, while in the Notebooks entry Wittgenstein tells us something important on what makes an aesthetic experience a valuable experience and/or an experience of value, in the Lectures the topic is a bit different. Wittgenstein is talking about the appreciation of objects and works of art, about the ways we aesthetically react to them. I will focus on this shift in point of view and on a distinction introduced in the Lectures between approval and appreciation. It is in the light of this distinction, that we can understand the observation about the unimportance of ‘beautiful’ in aesthetic judgment. In the final part of my talk I will argue that, contrary to this opinion, the adjective ‘beautiful’ is of significance in aesthetic judgment. (shrink)

In his writings Wittgenstein has touched upon some key aspects of aesthetic experience, of the experience of art, and of the dynamics of culture. Moreover, several lines of research in these fields have emerged and are still emerging from the roots of Wittgenstein's thought. This volume collects a number of essays on these topics by renowned international scholars (such as H.-J. Glock, J. Hyman, S. Majetschak, J. Schulte, A. Voltolini, and W. Vossenkuhl) and younger researchers. Our aim is to document (...) the presence of aesthetics across the development of Wittgenstein's thought and to present Wittgenstein's point of view, as well as new views inspired by Wittgenstein, on music, literature and poetry, the visual arts, and architecture. (shrink)

Per il primo Wittgenstein etica ed estetica erano tutt’uno. Scopo del saggio è fornire un’interpretazione di questa concezione. Esaminando il modo in cui è proposta nel Tractatus e considerando alcune annotazioni dei Quaderni 1914-1916 si evidenzia che l’unità di etica ed estetica è in un modo di vedere il mondo per cui esso non appare come fonte di limitazione. L’etica è un’estensione al mondo – alla vita – della capacità di conferire signifi cato che nell’arte si realizza nei riguardi di (...) oggetti particolari. Affermando l’unità di etica ed estetica Wittgenstein attira l’attenzione sul fatto che la radice dell’etica è in un certo modo di vedere le cose, in un atteggiamento verso la vita. Si tratta della prospettiva di un valore non connesso a come il mondo è e che è evocato dalla meraviglia per l’esistenza del mondo. (shrink)

The essay deals with the question of how works of art that evoke a sense of the sublime are to be analysed in terms of Kant’s theory. Although Kant assumes the possibility of a beautiful representation of the sublime, of a sublime “shaped by beauty”, that a work can appear sublime is not immediately clear. Contrapurposiveness plays a key role in the experience of the sublime, but art is an essentially purposive context and aims at beauty. Following readings such as (...) those by K. Pillow and R. Wicks, this paper argues that a work of art can occasion a feeling akin to that of the sublime by expressing aesthetic ideas. According to Kant, the beautiful form conveys representations of imagination that strive towards a presentation of the ideas of reason, that is, the true sublime for Kant, opening up for the mind the prospect of an immensurable field of related representations. The image itself suggests that, in confronting this multitude of representations, the mind is “animated” in a way that can be compared -- albeit with significantdifferences -- to that typical of the sublime. In the essay this possibility is further pursued with particular regard to painting. (shrink)

It is a fact that wine tasting can at times take the form of an aesthetic experience and that many wines can be regarded as proper aesthetic objects. Can we consider wines works of art, then? This is the question I explore in this essay. I have reservations towards a positive answer to the question, but I think their nature is psychological or cultural, rather than theoretical. From a theoretical point of view we probably have sufficient reasons to claim that (...) high quality wines are artworks: in this essay I try to lay out those reasons. My remarks are based on the discussion of three key points: (a) the artifactual nature of wine, (b) a version of the aesthetic theory of art, and (c) the metaphysical view Nick Zangwill calls ‘Aesthetic Functionalism’. According to this view, in order to be an artwork an object must have originated in an insight concerning the fact that certain aesthetic properties would be realized by certain non-aesthetic properties. The thesis I defend is that a certain wine is an artwork if and only if it has been produced with the intention to realize certain aesthetic properties in other, non-aesthetic properties, i.e. in the smell and taste of the wine, on the ground of an insight into the dependence of the former on the latter. (shrink)