When I began working on my dissertation on Kant’s aesthetic theory in 1971, I was able to read virtually all of the extant literature on the Critique of Judgment in English, German, andFrench going back to Hermann Cohen’s Kants Begr¨undung der A¨ sthetik of 1889, while also reading most of what I wanted to read of eighteenth-century British and German aesthetics before Kant—not because I had paid my dues to Evelyn Wood, but just because there was not all that (...) much to read.1 I pity the graduate student who sets out to write a dissertation on the third Critique now: since Donald Crawford, Francis Coleman, Jens Kulenkampff, Eva Schaper, and I published books on Kant’s aesthetics between 1974 and 1979 there has been a continuing flood of articles (this journal receives more submissions on Kant’s aesthetics annually than on any other historical topic) and books, a flood that has only accelerated since 2000. Confining myself only to monographs and anthologies on Kant’s aesthetics or the third Critique as a whole (but not those devoted exclusively to teleology) in English, German, and French on my shelves, and no doubt missing some, at least in German and French, I find twenty-eight monographs and anthologies published in the period between 1980 and 1999 and another twenty-seven just since 2000. (Indeed, two more have arrived on my desk since this article was written.)3 Someone setting out to work on the third Critique now has at least as many books from the last decade alone to read as I had in 1971 from the eight preceding decades. The present review will make only a small dent in this pile: I will discuss just five monographs and one introduction to the third Critique, all published in English in 2006 and 2007. (shrink)

Copernicus claimed that his system was preferable in part on the grounds of its superior harmony and simplicity, but left very few hints as to what was meant by these terms. Copernicus’s pupil, Rheticus, was more forthcoming. Kepler, influenced by Rheticus, articulated further the nature of the virtues of harmony and simplicity. I argue that these terms are metaphors for the structural features of the Copernican system that make it more able to effectively exploit the available data. So (...) it is a mistake to conclude that early Copernicans could only offer aesthetic or pragmatic arguments; they could and did offer evidential ones as well. Moreover, the evidential arguments they offered parallel current arguments in the philosophical literature.Keywords: Nicolaus Copernicus; Georg Joachim Rheticus; Johannes Kepler; Simplicity; Bayesianism; Hirotsugu Akaike. (shrink)

This article explores the question of literary criticism in the context of interactions between literature and philosophy. The best example of such interaction is the legacy of the early twentieth century Russian literary critic, Yuly Aykhenvald. This article gives a brief overview of his works of literary criticism and their thematic repertoire. Aykhenvald’s philosophical background, professional education, and personal connections with renowned Russian thinkers, including Vladimir Solovyov, Fyodor Stepun, and Semyon Frank, are included in an evaluation of Aykhenvald’s position on (...) one of the most discussed relationships in Russian culture—that of Russia and the West. The issue of relations between the West and Russia acquired a particular urgency after the October Revolution of 1917, when Russian culture split into two realms—Soviet and émigré. This article analyzes Aykhenvald’s position on this issue, which is present in both his philosophical responses to the Eurasianists and in his essays written on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth. Throughout the mid-1920s Aykhenvald wrote that Pushkin was the ideal of spiritual and aesthetic balance. In Pushkin’s work Aykhenvald found the embodiment of his own historiosophical aspirations—the harmonious fusion of Russia and the West. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Search of the Sense and the Senses:Aesthetic Education in Germany and the United StatesAlexandra Kertz-Welzel (bio)The dream that art is able to humanize human beings is very old. One person fascinated by this idea claimed:The creative artist educates and perfects through his work the nation's capacity for appreciation, just as conversely the general feeling for art thus developed and sustained creates the fruitful soil which is the condition (...) for the birth, the growth, and the activity of creative forces.1The author asserted that art has educational power and is able to improve appreciation as well as activate creative energy. Art is a way to transform the individual through its aesthetic power.Although these ideas sound similar to some approaches in arts education, this quotation does not represent the ideas of an art educator or a music educator. It is a quotation from one of the most powerful and most dangerous believers in the transforming power of art and music, in particular—Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). His ideology matched perfectly with the ideas of German music education in the 1930s, and therefore music education was a significant part of the school curriculum during the Third Reich. One of the most tempting ideas for music educators is the claim that music is capable of transforming human beings and their society.The idea of the educational power of music starts at least with Plato. Since the 1950s, aesthetic education has emphasized the aesthetic value and educational power of music. The German and the American concepts of aesthetic education are significantly different, but as a result of historical developments, they also share some similarities.The main intent of this paper is to analyze crucial issues of aesthetic education that exist in Germany and the United States. By comparing the two approaches, some core issues of music education will also be revealed in terms of idealistic dreams that are intent on making the world a better place [End Page 102] through music. This leads to some interesting insights concerning the significance but also the ambiguity of art for societies.The Roots: Ancient Greece, Schiller, and Holistic DreamsThe origin of the term aesthetics can be found in the Greek word aisthesis, which means perception through the senses.2 This meaning of aisthesis is originally not related to art. It concerns all kinds of sensations through seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting. In Greek philosophy, aisthesis as a way of experiencing the world through the senses is opposite to cognition in terms of an intellectual way of realization, the theoria. But given that art is something one can perceive through the various senses, aisthesis also concerns art.Most theories of aesthetic education refer to the ancient Greek idea of music, the musiké, which is a unity of music, dance, and literature. Plato emphasized the educational power of music and its effects on character development: "Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.... "3 Since music is so powerful, the correct use and the correct kind of music are important. According to Plato, art is a way to learn about truth and ideas through beauty. But art is also dangerous, because the senses "lie" and art is only an imitation of truth. For Plato, the senses are not as clear as the intellect.Plato's concerns about the ambivalence of sensorial perception are typical for the way aisthesis and aesthetics have been understood throughout the history of philosophy. The tension between a "true" intellectual approach to knowledge and an inferior approach through the senses is one aspect of the well-known mind-body dichotomy.During the eighteenth century, the era of enlightenment, Alexander Baumgarten (1714-62) introduced the term aesthesis into the philosophical discussion.4 In his book Aesthetica (published in 1750), he attempted to justify sensorial perception and emotions as a unique way of understanding the world. Baumgarten was not interested in the arts at all and tried to establish aesthetics as the science of sensuous cognition in order to improve the sensuous capacity for cognition. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Prelude to the Special Issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education on Children’s LiteratureEllen Handler Spitz, Guest Editor (bio)When Professor Pradeep A. Dhillon, editor of the Journal of Aesthetic Education, suggested to me one day that I might guest edit a special issue of the journal devoted to the topic of children’s literature, my initial reticence was toppled and my sense of resolve buoyed as I began to fantasize (...) with billowing excitement about just how this might be done. First, I dreamt up the image of guest editor as bountiful hostess—setting out delectable dishes in an elegantly appointed banquet before the readers of this journal. That metaphor faded, however, despite Maria Tatar’s eloquent reminder to us in these pages that gastronomy has frequently and salubriously been juxtaposed with reading. I could not help worrying (even though children vociferously protest the logic of this problem) that one cannot have one’s cake and eat it too. Therefore, switching to music, I began to imagine the editor as conductor of a highly select ensemble of musicians, all gifted with glorious well-seasoned voices. They might perform a concert (recorded for posterity, of course) of pieces aimed at an audience of those who care passionately about aesthetics, education, literature, and above all about children, and at those who, perhaps with tenderness, still recall their own childhood reading.But how to accomplish this in practical terms? Well, I reasoned, I would simply invite a group of distinguished senior scholars who, having achieved their reputations in related fields and having written on other subjects as well, have published highly significant works pertaining to children’s literature. Each person would contribute a composition in his or her own voice, and there would be complete freedom, carte blanche, no holds barred—the only constraint being page numbers. Would the results turn out to be harmony or cacophony? Well, I speculated, if each voice were finely tuned, resonant, and clear, whether treble or bass, forte or pianissimo, the outcome—although [End Page 1] unpredictable in terms of specifics—would, unquestionably, be musical. But that, dear reader, is ultimately for you to judge, for you have now heard precisely how this issue came into being and will, we hope, read on. Each author I asked responded to my call with alacrity and, in his or her original style and tone, made my task as conductor a perfect pleasure.We offer you a work in three parts. First, you will encounter two melodious and euphonious pieces, contributed respectively by Marina Warner (“Out of an Old Toy Chest”) and Maria Tatar (“From Bookworms to Enchanted Hunters: Why Children Read”). Here, the overarching themes of children’s play and make believe are set up, analyzed, and explored. Playing and reading are placed side by side, as well as reasons why children love to read and how they are variously exhorted, extolled, and even occasionally excoriated by adults for doing so.Our second movement consists of three apparently unrelated motifs, contributed in turn by Gareth Matthews (“Philosophical Adventures in the Lands of Oz and Ev”), Seth Lerer (“Style and the Mole: Domestic Aesthetics in The Wind in the Willows”), and myself (“Ethos in Steig’s and Sendak’s Picture Books: The Connected and the Lonely Child”). Actually, however, these essays are not unrelated, for each motif arises from a particular mode of interpretation grounded in turn in philosophy, in literary history and theory, and in psychology. The works considered are all by notable writers for children: L. Frank Baum, Kenneth Grahame, William Steig, and Maurice Sendak.For our grand finale, we offer two sonorous, seriously challenging contributions, one by Jack Zipes (“Why Fantasy Matters Too Much”) and the other by Eliza T. Dresang and Bowie Kotrla (“Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age Youth”). These works grapple with contemporary matters, with fantasy, with technology, and with “radical change” as these can be discerned in the literature, imagery, and general cultural lives of today’s and even, quite possibly, of tomorrow’s children. Gesturing toward the future even more strikingly, we conclude this work with a flourishing coda in the actual voice of a living child... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and AestheticsJoseph GrangeIn Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics. By François Jullien. Translated by Paul M. Varsano. New York: Zone Books, 2004. Pp. 1,969.A book praising "blandness"—which is the translator's English word for the French fadeur, which is the author's translation of the Chinese dan!—and a book that is at once fascinating and "repellent" (to use (...) the translator's description of his tortuous search for an equivalent of fadeur and dan), In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics by François Jullien is a "globalizing" philosophical essay bent on stopping readers in their tracks at every twist and turn of the text. Is it worth the trouble? I shall venture a response in this review.More than once while reading this book, I was reminded of Plato's Sophist, where the difficulty in locating the sophist is described in such intricate detail. First he is here, but then he is over there; on the other hand, he could be hiding near by— but wait, maybe he has disappeared. So it is also with blandness. And perhaps it should be so, because once you have located the bland, it ceases to be bland and turns into something else. To take a fix on blandness Jullien throws it against a number of traits, qualities, experiences, and events: strength, music, sounds, signs, landscapes, painting, tastes, literature, ideology, margins and centers, and, finally, the fact that "transcendence is natural." At the same time, the author weaves these contrasts and comparisons through the history of Chinese culture, especially in the evolution of its painting and poetry. [End Page 484]Foremost among the qualities associated with blandness is inner detachment. What come immediately to mind are Daoism, Chan Buddhism, and aspects of Confucian teaching. Jullien has already given us a splendid treatise in his The Propensities of Things, and in some ways this volume rings many changes on that study of Chinese culture. But there is more to blandness than causal efficacy. It also suggests openness and a mood of friendliness toward the other, the different, and all things strange. Further, blandness is similar to harmony in the sense that it does not insist on its own presence. Rather, it constantly blends together opposites through its own power.It is power and its expression that is at the heart of the author's project. He attempts over and over again to show how the seemingly weak is actually the strong, that the far away is really close to hand, that emptiness is charged with spontaneous creative energy. Thus, what lingers is not yet finished expressing itself. And the translator tells us that a gustatory sense is the primary base of fadeur, dan, and blandness. The body is the region within which the bland can have its most powerful effect. Think of Chinese medicine, where "the web that has no weaver" (the title of Ted Kaptchuk's brilliant book) is the object of the physician's art. Or consider the power of water to yield and then conquer all. Or remember the Mahāyāna Buddhist's invocation of śūnyatā as the source of healing and renewal. Or recall the many times that Confucius advises silence rather than words. All these moments are akin to what Jullien calls "blandness."One way to grasp the insight into Chinese culture that Jullien is struggling with is to express it by way of Neoplatonism and Spinoza. What is often forgotten in expositions of these formidable philosophies is the way in which they use a novel doctrine of causality to bind together different realms of beings. For Plotinus and Spinoza the cause never really leaves the effect but remains there, hidden but effective. It is through this lingering presence that transcendence and immanence, body and soul, and God and the World remain conjoined. The image of the ladder so frequently found in these texts must be understood to run in both directions—up and down. So also, blandness is a dao that opens up experience to further depths and heights.Jullien's major concern is aesthetics... (shrink)

Although there are distinctly American artists-Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Grandma Moses, Thomas Hart Benton, and Andy Warhol, for example-very little attention has been devoted to formulating any distinctively American characteristics of aesthetic judgment and practice. This volume takes a step in this direction, presenting an introductory essay on the possibility of such a distinctly American tradition, and a collection of essays exploring particular examples from a variety of angles. Some of the essays in this collection extend pragmatist and process insights (...) about the important place aesthetics has in molding and assessing experience. Other essays examine the place of American aesthetics in relation to such particular forms of art as painting, literature, music, and film. Three essays attend to the aesthetic aspects of a flourishing life. In each of the essays, American aesthetics is understood to arise out of deeply felt personal, historical, and cultural backgrounds. Consequently, not only are such relatively abstract notions as harmony, fit, elegance, proportion, and the like involved in aesthetic judgment, but also religious, political, and social factors become embroiled in aesthetic discernment. Thus the ongoing pattern of American aesthetics is shown to be distinguishable from such other varieties of aesthetic thought as analytic aesthetics, New Criticism, and postmodern approaches to aesthetics. (shrink)

Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1895. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres.As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature.Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has (...) become rare and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)

This article mainly focuses on one of the most refined movements in world aesthetics and fine art—one that spread when Chinese Renaissance ideas arose during the Song Epoch and that was called the Intellectual Movement. The ideological sources of intellectual aesthetics are discussed—as well as the distinctive nature of its fundamental theoretical views and of its creative principles in relation to a changing historical, cultural, and ideological contexts. The greatest attention is devoted to a complex analysis of the (...) attitudes toward the artistic creation of the most typical intellectuals, Su Shi and Mi Fu; the close interaction between the principles of painting, calligraphy, and poetry is emphasized; a special attention is paid to the landscape genre and to conveying the beauty of nature. This article discusses in detail the most important components of artist’s creative potential, the opportunities to employ them during the creative act, and the influence of Confucian, Daoist, and Chan aesthetic ideas. The various external and internal factors influencing the intellectual creative process are analyzed; artist’s psychological preparation before creating is discussed along with the characteristics of his entrance into the creative process. This article highlights the meditational nature of artistic creation typical of representatives of this movement, the freedom of the spontaneous creative act, and the quest for the inner harmony of the artist’s soul with expressions of beauty in the natural world. (shrink)

Early and later Confucians, known in Chinese as the “ruists” school of ancient origins, perceived the idea of “harmony” as a fundamental concept that lies at the basis of self-cultivation, society and governance. In modern times this idea still plays in one or another form a dominant note in Chinese politics and social life. The article attempts to search for causes of the significance of “harmony” by focusing on analyzing two pivotal Confucian texts compiled in the Han dynasty, (...) namely, Records of Music [Yue ji 樂記] and Divination of Music [Yue wei 樂緯]. The analysis shows that ruists belonging to Zhou dynasty’s imperial class of music officials, gradually developed the aesthetics of music into a complex idea of "harmony" that contains the highest aesthetical way—“Dao”—which guides both the whole universe as well as the evolution of human society. (shrink)

This anthology of philosophical texts by Greek and Roman authors brings together works from the late fifth century BC to the sixth century AD that comment on major aesthetic issues such as the perception of beauty and harmony in music and the visual arts, structure and style in literature, and aesthetic judgement. It includes important texts by Plato and Aristotle on the status and the role of the arts in society and in education, and Longinus' reflections on the sublime (...) in literature, in addition to less well-known writings by Philodemus, Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, Augustine and Proclus. Most of the texts have been newly translated for this volume, and some are available in English for the first time. A detailed introduction traces the development of classical aesthetics from its roots in Platonism and Aristotelianism to its ultimate form in late Antiquity. (shrink)

Pragmatist aesthetics has not yet reached its full potential. This is primarily due to the legacy of John Dewey’s aesthetics. In order to confront the shortcomings and insufficiencies of his aesthetics, pragmatist aestheticians ought to establish a dialogue with continental aesthetics. The attempt to clarify what pragmatist aesthetics can learn from Theodor W. Adorno’s materialist aesthetics is still a desideratum. This essay focuses on two aspects. First, it shows that pragmatist aestheticians can use Adorno’s (...) modern aesthetics in order to gain a deeper and more complex understanding of the social nature or register of form (of what might be termed “die Gesellschaftlichkeit der Form”). Second, the essay demonstrates that Adorno, in contrast to Dewey, is valuable for the endeavor to grasp the significance of the dialectics of harmony and dissonance or organicity and fragmentation when analyzing modern art and literature. (shrink)

"The question of complex systems is relatively new for critics today. Analyzing complex systems in Renaissance texts shows that the Christian kabbalistical concept of harmonia mundi led to an aesthetical development, reflecting the worldview of harmonious parallel worlds. Failure to perceive the esoteric text uniting apparently contradicting themes has often led Renaissance scholars to elaborate a theory of the instability of atmospheres characterizing the English Baroque. This article gives an example of a complex system in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra revealing (...) that the Christian kabbalistical Hercules unifies contradicting metaphors and intertexts of the play, and reintegrates this work in a form of semantic stability more in harmony with the aesthetics of its time. In the case of postmodern literature, contradictory intertexts appear as a device to deconstruct all values and logic previously established. With the study of a text structured by the optical questions around the refraction of light, this paper shows that in the case of Nabokov, the unifying system of apparently contradicting semantic systems is the underlying logic of scientific theory. In Nabokov's text, failing to perceive the fundamental intertext of scientific debate leads one to assimilate Nabokov's writing to a form of postmodern deconstruction. Both cases studied tend to show a continuity of a form of aesthetics through different epistemological eras.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist NarrativeRandall Everett AllsupEric Prieto, Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative ( Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002)Modernism. The Interpretation of Dreams, the assembly line, The Rite of Spring, the Panama Canal. The modernist sensibility is characterized above all by the "willful big idea"—history as text, a manifesto in conflict with itself and its past. Hopeful and revolutionary like (...) the writings of Karl Marx or progressive and corrupt like the Manhattan Project, such events-as-manifesto had a way of feeding off each other. Through collaboration, conflict, and competition, modernists from Robert Moses to Elliott Carter raced to explain and exemplify, often deliberately creating conflict as if crisis were its own rationale, its own sine qua non. One could hypothesize that this arms race of complexity collapsed—exhausted—about the same time that Communism did. Its failure to sustain its ideas (rather than outpace them one after another) may be one reason we live in an anti-dialectical world, an unmodern place of fundamentalisms and easy freedoms.Author Eric Prieto is at home in the modern world more so than the present; his heroes are French intellectuals after all, those lovers of complexity. In Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, he investigates late modernist authors who looked to music as a way to exemplify the inward nature of mind [End Page 93] and the outward nature of place. To understand this book, we must revisit some formal aesthetic theories, namely that music's value resides in its ability to name without signifying, that musical properties like intervallic distance, dynamic contrast, and the space-time component that is rhythm put us in touch with the Kantian a priori—the-thing-in-itself, the Schopenhauerian will. Music as sound-in-itself (to riff on Kant and Schopenhauer) becomes a metaphor for the noumenal world or is mimetic at the very least of the abstract and non-linear nature of thought. Prieto argues that "wherever a music model is present [among his examples] it always serves to further this inwardly directed mode of mimesis I call 'listening in,' where the primary object of representation is not the outside world but the subtly modulating interactions between consciousness and world."1Prieto's book is highly consistent. He masterfully captures the spirit of cooperation from modernist writer to musician to thinker and back. Concentrating on three authors, Robert Pinget, Michel Leiris, and Samuel Beckett, Prieto cites the influences of composers like Bach and Beethoven, as well as philosophers like Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer on their literary works. He brings in thinking from Nelson Goodman and Ferdinand de Saussure. The result is literary criticism as manifesto. Reader beware, this is a book for an elevated audience, those rare folk who are comfortable with structural linguistics, nineteenth-century music aesthetics, specialized academic scholarship, and word puzzles. To explain for example why an author like Beckett is inspired by music to create abstract or associative narratives rather than traditional stories of cause and effect, Prieto writes:In music, this progression necessarily takes place on the level of audible resemblances, but in literature, by virtue of the properties of the two-tiered linguistic sign, analogical progression may take place either on the level of the signifier (via the principle of paronomasia), on the level of the signified (via metaphorical substitutions, as in the association of ideas), or between the two levels (punning, "imitative harmony").2This density of language and concept speak well of Prieto's intellect and one is likewise impressed by his broad understanding of music and letters, yet it is the musical scholar who gets the short end of the deal. Paronomasia? "Audible resemblance" is not a musical term I have heard used. In Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, music serves as starting point, an inspiration, not as an equal partner. This holds true for Beckett and Pinget as well as for Prieto. The result can be disconcerting, even to readers like me for whom the cross-disciplinary study of music and literature is a fascinating endeavor.Difficulty, nonetheless, has its rewards and this is one lesson of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in AestheticsDabney TownsendValues of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics, by Paul Guyer; 359 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, $75.00, $27.99 paper.This volume collects thirteen essays that range over topics from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century. The earliest was published in 1986, the last in 2004, and three appear here for the first time. They are grouped topically by period—"I. (...) Mostly before Kant; II. Mostly Kant; III. Mostly After Kant"—rather than chronologically. While this order is useful, it introduces some dislocation if one approaches the book as a whole since the last essay in the book is the first chronologically, and part of the interest of the book lies in the changes in Paul Guyer's positions over time that are reflected in his careful reconsideration of topics that he has dealt with more extensively in his volumes on Kant's [End Page 422] philosophy. As one of the most important contemporary interpreters of Kant's aesthetics, those reconsiderations are well worth attending to.The focus of all of the essays is clearly on Kant's aesthetics. That perspective is clear even when Guyer is discussing the history of aesthetics prior to Kant. As he notes, "this history of the first decades of modern aesthetics has obviously been written with an eye to Kant" ("Origins of Modern Aesthetics: 1711–1735," pp. 32–33). It continues in the discussions of recent aesthetics. For example, Guyer concludes that "the effect that is intended on the revised Beardsleyan definition [of art] is in the tradition of the Kantian concept of the free play of imagination and understanding" ("From Jupiter's Eagle to Warhol's Boxes," p. 313). Danto and Mothersill are also, it is argued, in the Kantian tradition.There are, of course, some problems with this perspective, especially with regard to the pre-Kantian history of aesthetics. For example, Guyer finds Kant's distinction between pure beauty and apprehended beauty reflected in an earlier distinction between beauty of form and beauty of interest or utility. He writes: "The foundation of this theory [Hume's theory of beauty in the Treatise and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals] is the division of beauty into two classes, the first that of pleasurable sentiment caused by an immediate response—that is, a response not mediated by the intervention of imagination or judgment—to the form or other perceptual qualities of an object, and the second that of pleasurable sentiment, which arises only when the perception of the form of an object is supplemented by a concept or concepts brought to bear on it by imagination or judgment." ("The Standard of Taste and the 'Most ardent Desire of Society,'" p. 46). What Guyer identifies as a distinction between kinds of beauty is for Hume a distinction between sources of ideas, however. The second kind of beauty requires reflection and the combination of other ideas. For Hume, there are not two kinds of beauty but two ways that the ideas of beauty, which is just a form of pleasure, are sorted. Reservations about Guyer's perspective on the earlier history of aesthetics do not detract from the interest of his analysis, however, which is always careful and detailed.The central eight essays labeled "Mostly Kant" trace themes that Guyer has treated in much greater detail in his earlier books. Two central themes are especially prominent throughout these essays. First, Guyer views Kant's theory of beauty as the harmony of the imagination and the understanding: "The concept of the free yet harmonious play between the cognitive powers of imagination and understanding is the central concept in Kant's explanation of the experience of beauty and the analysis of the judgment of taste" ("The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited," p. 77). He refers back to essentially this formulation throughout the subsequent essays. Much of the interest of these essays lies in the way Guyer explicates and defends this central thesis against alternative readings of Kant and objections that it is inconsistent with the freedom from concepts and the purity of beauty that Kant claims.Second, Guyer reads Kant's aesthetics as... (shrink)

This book critically analyses the "mutual illuminations" between literature, religion, architecture, films, performative arts, paintings, woodworks, memes and masks cutting across time and space. In architecture for example, the eventual success of a project depends on the harmony between physical sciences and aesthetics, design and planning, knowledge of building material, the local climate, and awareness of cultural sensibilities. This volume affirms that aesthetics and arts are deeply linked through existential issues of who I am. The essays in (...) this volume present diverse discursive structures showcasing the in-between spaces between various art forms and mediums, such as, architecture, literature and memory, Kafka in SoHo; Kafka and Bernhard, Kirchner's woodcuts; pictorial and stage representations of E.T.A Hoffmann, Hesse's fairy tales; translations of Pañcatantra; Nietzsche, ritual arts and face masks; martyrdom in La chanson de Roland, Goethe and Hafiz, Indian thought in Martin Buber; Rhythms of the 'Third' across cultures; Dadaism and contemporary memes This book examines these sublime linkages in a comparative and interdisciplinary way. Engaging and intersectional, this volume will appeal to students and scholars of arts and aesthetics, literature, philosophy, architecture, sociology, translation studies and readers who are interested in cultural, intertextual, intermedial, and comparative studies. (shrink)

This article considers the principles of philosophical thinking in Søren Kierkegaard’s nonclassical aesthetics. Special attention is given to his radical critique of “false” and “impersonal” rationalism. This does not only mean the rejection of the traditional principles of classical metaphysics which claims “universality” and “universal meaning.” Kierkegaard also bases his philosophy on individual human life, or, in other words, personal existence with its unique inner world. His critique is more profound than that by Arthur Schopenhauer. Kierkegaard develops his own (...) philosophy of “existential crisis,” opposing subjective will and internal changes to abstract thinking and external influences. Kierkegaard’s works initiate the critical or nonclassical stage in Western aesthetics. The main place in it is occupied by the idea of the disharmony of the world: its subjective reflection is “split” consciousness that has lost contact with the traditional concepts of harmony, humanism, goodness, beauty and philosophy of art. (shrink)

The time of the landscape is not the time when people started describing landscapes in poems or representing gardens in works of art: it is the time when the landscape imposed itself as a specific object of thought. This object of thought was constituted through quarrels about how gardens were to be arranged, through accounts of travels to solitary lakes and remote mountains, or through evocations of mythological or rustic paintings. Jacques Rancière retraces these narratives and quarrels, showing how they (...) gave rise to a form of sensibility capable of modifying the existing configuration of modes of perception and objects of thought. The time of the landscape is the time when both the harmony of arranged gardens and the disharmony of wild nature contributed to a revolution in the criteria of the beautiful and the meaning of the word ‘art’. It coincided with the birth of aesthetics, understood as a regime for the perception of and thinking about art, and also with the French Revolution, understood as a revolution in the very idea of what binds a human community. The time of the landscape was the time when the conjunction of these two upheavals brought into focus, however hazily, a common horizon: that of a revolution that no longer concerns only state laws or artistic norms, but the very forms of sensible experience. This brilliant and wide-ranging book will be of interest to students and scholars in philosophy, literature, the visual arts and the humanities generally, and it will appeal to anyone interested in critical theory and philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Marcia Muelder Eaton ANTHONY POWELL AND THE AESTHETIC LIFE Anthony POWELL'S work has been looked at carefully by relatively few critical scholars, in spite of the fact that he has been called "the most elegant writer presently working in the English language." ' I am surprised at how little he is read — at least in the United States. He is a splendid writer, often entertaining, always a skilled (...) craftsman. His earlier novels {Afternoon Men, 1931; Venusberg, 1932; From a View to a Death, 1933; Agents and Patients, 1936; and What's Become of Waring, 1939) are short satiric and ironic comedies dealing mainly with London bohemia in the 1920s. His later fictional work is a twelve volume tour de force (A Question of Upbringing, 1951; A Buyer's Market, 1952; The Acceptance World, 1955; At Lady Molly's, 1957; Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, 1960; The Kindly Ones, 1962; The Valley of Bones, 1964; The Soldier's Art, 1966; The Military Philosophers, 1968; Books Do Furnish a Room, 1971; Temporary Kings, 1973; Hearing Secret Harmonies, 1975) 2 in which the narrator, NicholasJenkins, attempts, with varying degrees of success, to make sense of life as A Dance to the Music of Time. Both the early and later works are populated by many characters. Manageable in the short, independent novels, they become so numerous in the interdependent volumes of Dance that several critics are dubious about anyone's keeping them straight; had I read them as they were published — with months, sometimes years and the novels of others between appearances — I am sure it would have been impossible to keep track of the minor characters. In 1960, Time and Tide published a cast ofcharacters for "readers who find it difficult to remember from book to book details of family and other more tenuous relationships between characters who have a habit of popping up surprisingly in the most unexpected places."3 The entries provide the following kinds of information: "McReith, Lady (Gwen): friend of Babs Templer and Jimmy Stripling; goes to bed with 166 Marcia Muelder Eaton167 Peter Templer when staying in the Templer (senior) house.... Tolland, George: son of Lord Warminster: was in Coldstream for some years then went into city. Very correct." More recently Hilary Spurling has compiled a book-length guide to the plots and characters ofDance. It also includes an index of books, paintings, and places referred to.4 Even with these guides there are loose ends, and it is not always clear what functions certain minor characters serve. Nonetheless, the popping-up in unexpected places is, as I hope to show, essential to the theme of the work. Powell is by no means universally acclaimed; his novels have been described as "contrived,"5 and "pseudo-Proustian" and "blandly snobbish."6 The early novels have been said to "tell about 'twentyish emancipation, silly parties at which drunks behave stupidly, ambitious young men on the make for the daughters of fox-hunting families, all with an air of slightness and couldn't-care less." 7 And Dance has likewise been scorned: To begin with, each character is introduced as he first appears to the narrator, who immediately speculates for three or four pages on the probable nature of a character who is blond, has small ears, and wears a black overcoat. The overcoat then says a few desultory words, whereupon the narrator takes several pages of pain to modify his original opinion in the light of this additional evidence.8 Like all parodies, these have some truth in them. But it is simplistic to describe his work in these terms — it amounts to painting in colors far too crude what is an enormously subtle picture of life. Powell's "easy modulations," as John Russell has called his novels,9 capture intricacies of human behavior and interaction in a profound and original way. And Powell's focus on ritual and the attempts of people to play chosen roles, ultimately provides a genuinely metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic interpretation of life. It is hopeless to try to provide a synopsis of the twelve volumes. The novels follow Nicholas Jenkins from his school days to late middle age. Friends such as Peter Templer, Charles... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist NarrativeRandall Everett AllsupEric Prieto, Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative ( Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002)Modernism. The Interpretation of Dreams, the assembly line, The Rite of Spring, the Panama Canal. The modernist sensibility is characterized above all by the "willful big idea"—history as text, a manifesto in conflict with itself and its past. Hopeful and revolutionary like (...) the writings of Karl Marx or progressive and corrupt like the Manhattan Project, such events-as-manifesto had a way of feeding off each other. Through collaboration, conflict, and competition, modernists from Robert Moses to Elliott Carter raced to explain and exemplify, often deliberately creating conflict as if crisis were its own rationale, its own sine qua non. One could hypothesize that this arms race of complexity collapsed—exhausted—about the same time that Communism did. Its failure to sustain its ideas (rather than outpace them one after another) may be one reason we live in an anti-dialectical world, an unmodern place of fundamentalisms and easy freedoms.Author Eric Prieto is at home in the modern world more so than the present; his heroes are French intellectuals after all, those lovers of complexity. In Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, he investigates late modernist authors who looked to music as a way to exemplify the inward nature of mind [End Page 93] and the outward nature of place. To understand this book, we must revisit some formal aesthetic theories, namely that music's value resides in its ability to name without signifying, that musical properties like intervallic distance, dynamic contrast, and the space-time component that is rhythm put us in touch with the Kantian a priori—the-thing-in-itself, the Schopenhauerian will. Music as sound-in-itself (to riff on Kant and Schopenhauer) becomes a metaphor for the noumenal world or is mimetic at the very least of the abstract and non-linear nature of thought. Prieto argues that "wherever a music model is present [among his examples] it always serves to further this inwardly directed mode of mimesis I call 'listening in,' where the primary object of representation is not the outside world but the subtly modulating interactions between consciousness and world."1Prieto's book is highly consistent. He masterfully captures the spirit of cooperation from modernist writer to musician to thinker and back. Concentrating on three authors, Robert Pinget, Michel Leiris, and Samuel Beckett, Prieto cites the influences of composers like Bach and Beethoven, as well as philosophers like Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer on their literary works. He brings in thinking from Nelson Goodman and Ferdinand de Saussure. The result is literary criticism as manifesto. Reader beware, this is a book for an elevated audience, those rare folk who are comfortable with structural linguistics, nineteenth-century music aesthetics, specialized academic scholarship, and word puzzles. To explain for example why an author like Beckett is inspired by music to create abstract or associative narratives rather than traditional stories of cause and effect, Prieto writes:In music, this progression necessarily takes place on the level of audible resemblances, but in literature, by virtue of the properties of the two-tiered linguistic sign, analogical progression may take place either on the level of the signifier (via the principle of paronomasia), on the level of the signified (via metaphorical substitutions, as in the association of ideas), or between the two levels (punning, "imitative harmony").2This density of language and concept speak well of Prieto's intellect and one is likewise impressed by his broad understanding of music and letters, yet it is the musical scholar who gets the short end of the deal. Paronomasia? "Audible resemblance" is not a musical term I have heard used. In Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, music serves as starting point, an inspiration, not as an equal partner. This holds true for Beckett and Pinget as well as for Prieto. The result can be disconcerting, even to readers like me for whom the cross-disciplinary study of music and literature is a fascinating endeavor.Difficulty, nonetheless, has its rewards and this is one lesson of... (shrink)

This thesis attempts to show that Georg Lukacs' Marxist theory of realism is best understood, not as a self sufficient body of theory, but in the context of his pre- Marxist theory of literature and his,role in the Communist movement, A comparison of the theory expounded in "Die Seele and die Fonaen" and "Die Theorie des Romans" with the main positions of "Geschichte und Kiassenbewusstsein" reveals that it was remarkably easy for Lukacs to accommodate his literary theory within the newly-acquired (...) philosophy. An examination of Lukacs' career shows that his move to Marxism was motivated by a search for the practical instrument to implement the ideal which was the mainspring behind both his own life and, in his theory, all great literature, namely, the classical ideal of harmony. The resulting change in emphasis from aesthetics to political action led, in the thirties, to the attempt to synthesize both in a cultural campaign. Political pressure, combined with the genuine belief that the excesses of Stalinism were the acceptable price of resistance to the overriding threat of fascism, resulted in the employment of a rigid determinism, deplored ill others, which was incompatible with the core of his understanding of literary realism. The creation of realism was, however, for both the pre- Marxist and the Marxist Lukacs, ultimately inexplicable in materialist terms. (shrink)

This book describes various Western musical ecologies of the cosmos developed from the ancient world to the present, ecologies that seek to define the creation and preservation of the universe through musical principles. The author explores centuries of musical treatises, hymns, and Western fiction.

But the modelling of the Confucian gentleman or junzi type of human being under the music simile and the rules of propriety (li) 禮 needs to be brought within the perspective of the Confucian use of language and the ultimately harmonising role of this philosophy. Such considerations lead us back to a concept that Pound was always keen to produce in his expositions, and refers directly to the importance of precise language usage. Pound's first concern for 'le mot juste' and (...) later for zheng ming 正名 is consistent throughout his career. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive book-length introduction to the philosophy of Western music that fully integrates consideration of popular music and hybrid musical forms, especially song. Its author, Andrew Kania, begins by asking whether Bob Dylan should even have been eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature, given that he is a musician. This motivates a discussion of music as an artistic medium, and what philosophy has to contribute to our thinking about music. Chapters 2-5 investigate the most commonly defended (...) sources of musical value: its emotional power, its form, and specifically musical features (such as pitch, rhythm, and harmony). In chapters 6-9, Kania explores issues arising from different musical practices, particularly work-performance (with a focus on classical music), improvisation (with a focus on jazz), and recording (with a focus on rock and pop). Chapter 10 examines the intersection of music and morality. The book ends with a consideration of what, ultimately, music is. (shrink)

The authors consider the important problem of creative expression of a musician-teacher for modern musical pedagogy. Based on the analysis of research literature, the content and functions of creative expression in musical and performing activities are revealed. It is characterized by the aesthetic nature of creative self-expression, internal harmony of will, emotional and intellectual intents of self-expression.

This is the first English-language book on the philosophy of Ji Kang. Moreover, it offers the first systematic treatment of his philosophy, thus filling a significant gap in English-language scholarship on early medieval Chinese literature and philosophy. David Chai brings to light Ji Kang's Neo-Daoist heritage and explores the themes in his writings that were derived from classical Daoism, most notably the need for humanity to return to a more harmonious co-existence with Nature to further our own self-understanding. His analysis (...) is unique in that it balances translation and annotation with expositing the creative philosophizing of Neo-Daoism. Chai analyzes the entirety of Ji Kang's essays, exploring his philosophical reflections on music, aesthetics, ethics, self-cultivation, and fate. Reading Ji Kang/s Essays will be of interest to scholars and students of Chinese philosophy and literature. It offers the first comprehensive philosophical examination of a heretofore neglected figure in Neo-Daoism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading the Mind:From George Eliot's Fiction to James Sully's PsychologyVanessa L. RyanWhat is the function and value of fiction? Debates over these questions involve considerations that range from aesthetics to ethics, from the intrinsic values of the genre to its moral effects. Recently, largely under the influence of the cognitive sciences, the question has taken on a new cast: might science give us a new answer to these (...) long-standing issues? Studies such as Lisa Zunshine's Why We Read Fiction (2006), John Carey's What Good Are the Arts? (2005), and Alan Palmer's Fictional Minds (2004) are part of a growing area of interdisciplinary work on the relationship between art and consciousness.1 This body of work asks not just how our theories of consciousness inform our understanding of the process and function of [End Page 615] reading fiction, but also whether fiction itself might provide a key to new theories about the nature of consciousness.The nineteenth-century novel is often considered the high point in the literary representation of mind. Indeed, the terms "psychology" and "novel" are explicitly yoked in the nineteenth-century with the simultaneous emergence of both as discrete forms of intellectual and artistic activity. Not surprisingly, George Eliot has come to be identified with the term "psychological novel": in fact, Nicholas Dames argues that she was the first to couple the words psychology and novel in this way in an 1855 review where she contrasted Charles Kingsley's historical romance Westward Ho! with "those 'psychological' novels."2 While George Eliot initially used the phrase in what Dames calls "mock disdain," by the end of the nineteenth century the term "psychological novel" had gained currency as a straightforward description of a type of Victorian novel: Wilbur Cross, in his summary The Development of the English Novel, for example, describes the form as "stressing an inner sequence of thought and feeling, which is brought into harmony with an ethical formula and accounted for in an analysis of motive." Along with Elizabeth Gaskell and George Meredith, Cross also cites George Eliot as one of his central examples of the "psychological novel."3It seems natural, then, when a critic asks, "what is the special distinguishing function of the modern art of fiction?" to turn for an answer to George Eliot's novels and their close connections with psychological science. It is perhaps surprising that this still-current question was posed by the nineteenth-century psychologist James Sully (1842–1923) in an 1881 article in the journal Mind on "George Eliot's Art."4 His essay offers us a Victorian contribution to questions about the relationship of literature and psychology that are being addressed today by critics such as Sally Shuttle-worth, Athena Vrettos, Kay Young, Nicholas Dames, or Rick Rylance, especially [End Page 616] with respect to George Eliot. James Sully's essay not only provides valuable insight into how the Victorians themselves understood the role of psychology in the novel, but also helps to place contemporary debates about fiction and consciousness into sharper relief.In the wake of important studies, such as Rylance's Victorian Psychology and British Culture (2000), that have brought renewed attention to nineteenth-century British psychology, recent scholarship has shown the central role of Victorian debates about the mind in shaping the fiction of the period.5 Nineteenth-century mental science provided material and inspiration for works of literature, with imaginative writers eager to exploit and develop the narrative and thematic potential of contemporary psychological discourse and probe the problems it raised. Novelists such as Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, and Henry James turned to some of the most current work in the science of the mind, which they saw as the most sophisticated and credible approach to psychological realism available. These and other novelists rapidly absorbed the central terms of the new science as it considered problems of consciousness, identity, and memory, and brought them to life by dramatizing and questioning them in their fiction. James Sully's interest in George Eliot reflects this fruitful mid- to late-nineteenth-century cross-pollination between philosophers, scientists, and novelists who were interested in the nature of consciousness, psychology... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aestheticism and SpiritualismA Narrative Study of the Exploration of Self through the Practice of Chinese CalligraphyMing-Tak Hue (bio)IntroductionCalligraphy has been used to preserve significant writings and texts in a beautiful form and to make the different styles of writing enjoyable. It is not only the art of beautiful handwriting but also a cultural heritage and tradition that reflects the culture and history of a society, a race, a nation, (...) and a country. Hence, it has very great educational value. In China calligraphy is done with a brush, which was a common writing implement in ancient times. In addition to its utilitarian function, calligraphy is the most fundamental element in other types of art, such as painting and seal-carving, and is closely connected to many subject disciplines, such as literature, history, and philosophy. Brush calligraphy is still popular in Chinese society and is frequently used in different forms of publication, such as banners and newspapers; however, it is becoming more popular for these publications to be created mechanically or in electronic form with computers rather than by hand. In the context of schooling, a similar phenomenon can be seen. Many teachers in Hong Kong, as elsewhere, are concerned that fewer and fewer students have the chance to write with a pen and enjoy the beauty of writing, as the use of computers and different types of electronic devices for writing become more popular with the general public.The aim of this article is to examine the meaning of the practice of Chinese calligraphy from a cultural perspective and to draw school practitioners' attention to the importance of calligraphy education in the promotion of the whole-person growth of students and of multicultural education. Relevant literature on Western and Chinese calligraphy will be reviewed. Then an explanation will be given on how a narrative approach to the personal experience method and textual analysis were adopted for the data analysis. The article argues that calligraphy serves more than a utilitarian function. It [End Page 18] has also been used as an aesthetic practice and spiritual discipline. Hence, it is suggested that the calligraphy of brushwork is not only delightful to the eye but also an inspiration to the spirit. It is a practice of mindfulness for promoting self-reflection and self-cultivation, which leads calligraphy practitioners to reflect in their mind and heart, and so brings them into a harmonious relationship with others and the natural world.Literature ReviewIn Western societies for the last one hundred years, calligraphy has been rediscovered and relearned.1 Knight pointed out that the heritage and traditions of calligraphy have not been properly addressed and inherited in Western societies. Uyehara further suggested that calligraphy had been basically restudied and relearned in Europe and the United States up until the end of World War II. Edward Johnston (1872-1944) could be the most influential scholar who attempted to rediscover the art of Western calligraphy, lettering, and illuminating. In his study of ancient inscriptions and old manuscripts, three essential qualities of calligraphy were identified: "legibility," "beauty," and "character."2 When creating a piece of artwork, calligraphers have to ensure the legibility of the letter forms, the mastery of the skills of creating beautiful writing, and the readability of their works. As he explained,To make good letters and to arrange them well. To make good letters is not necessarily to "design" them—they have been designed long ago—but it is to take the best letters we can find, and to acquire them and make them our own. To arrange letters well requires no great art, but it requires a working knowledge of letter-forms and of the reasonable methods of grouping these forms to suit every circumstance.3Similarly, Knight highlighted the essential qualities of "legibility" and "beauty." Further, he stressed that the "creativity" of calligraphy should be imposed upon the tradition and cultural heritage of ancient manuscripts. As he said,[M]any of the conventions we use today in letter design and typography were established during the manuscript age. To know the classic work of this period is to know more about the ground we stand upon. If we grasp the... (shrink)

In this essay, I explore how cognitive science could illuminate the concept of beauty. Two results from the extensive literature on aesthetics guide my discussion. As the term “beauty” is overextended in general usage, I choose as my starting point the notion of “perfect form.” Aesthetic theorists are in reasonable agreement about the criteria for perfect form. What do these criteria imply for mental representations that are experienced as beautiful? Complexity theory can be used to specify constraints on mental (...) representations abstractly formulated as vectors in a high-dimensional space. A central feature of the proposed model is that perfect form depends both on features of the objects or events perceived and on the nature of the encoding strategies or model of the observer. A simple example illustrates the proposed calculations. A number of interesting implications that arise as a consequence of reformulating beauty in this way are noted. (shrink)

In this article, the potential for Artificial Intelligence (AI) to be appraised as an object of beauty is critically examined through the lens of philosophical thought. Tracing beauty’s evolution from Platonic ideals to contemporary interpretations, the analysis contends that AI’s emergence offers a unique illustration of beauty in the modern age. Confronting the challenge of assigning beauty to entities devoid of consciousness or emotional depth, the argument unfolds to suggest that the intricate design of AI’s algorithms and its technological advancements (...) constitute an emergent form of beauty, one inherently tied to human intellectual endeavor. The article proposes that with time, as with historical art forms, the aesthetic qualities of AI may gain broader acknowledgment, implying that technological advancements necessitate an ongoing revision of established beauty norms. The historical evolution of beauty has been traced in details, and an extended literature review has been provided, serving as the foundation for a comprehensive exploration into the potential for AI to be recognized as an object of beauty. The harmony, elegance, and problem-solving capabilities of AI algorithms have been meticulously evaluated, with a comparison made to classical elements of beauty in an effort to contextually situate AI within longstanding aesthetic traditions. Furthermore, the analysis has been extended to consider the emergence of artificial and digital beauty, alongside an investigation into the parallels drawn between divine and artificial intelligence. As part of a deeper inquiry, the possibility of human emotions, such as awe and love, being authentically directed towards AI has been scrutinized. In conclusion, a reflection has been presented on the transformative role of AI in reimagining the conceptual landscape of beauty, prompting readers to thoughtfully engage with an extended review and the philosophical and cultural implications emerging from AI’s evolving influence on the field of aesthetics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.1 (2004) 1-11 [Access article in PDF] The Artistic Failure of Crime and Punishment Crime and Punishment Hugh Mercer Curtler This essay begins by noting some fundamental differences between poets, in the broad sense of that term, and philosophers, or those who reflect discursively. It then moves to an examination of the epilogue to Crime and Punishment where Dostoevsky abandons poetry in order to (...) make a philosophical statement about human freedom. 1 Indeed, it can be said that much of Dostoevsky's mature writing was a battle between the man's urge to make pronouncements and the poet's need to control those urges. Fortunately, the poet nearly always won; at times he did not. This can be seen in the case of Crime and Punishment where Dostoevsky, the man, insisted on formulating an idea, specifically, the "idea of freedom." This statement marks the artistic failure of the novel, a concession on the part of the poet to the man. The tension in this novel, and indeed in many novels, is an important focalpoint in the teaching of great literature, because readers of fiction frequently forget that great novels are also great works of art. In this regard, despite the fact that he is an extremely careful reader of Dostoevsky's books, the psychologist/critic René Girard misses in his quest to find hidden messages — precisely what makes Dostoevsky a great artist who writes novels. 2 What this means to teachers of exceptional literature is that we must be attuned not only to what the author says, but also to the way in which he or she says it. In his writings about Dostoevsky, Girard is not terribly interested in what the poet has to say; he is interested in the way the man works out a particular psychological problem. Consequently, like many other critics, Girardglosses over the fundamental difference between the body of Crime and Punishment and its epilogue. Poetry and Philosophy Contrasted There is no truth in art, strictly speaking. If the term "true" has any application whatever to the world of art, it means "honest," or "true to life" [End Page 1] (which, as Kafka has shown, is not terribly important). Moreover, "true" may refer to the work's adherence to rules of craft, its internal harmony and coherence as a distinctive work of the human imagination. What one finds in poetry or linguistic art is a hodgepodge of images, thought fragments, figures, episodes, incidents, hints, and bits and pieces, and (if the poet is a good one) stunning insights. Poetry is, like all art, ineluctably ambiguous. It does not have a "message"; it has many messages. This is precisely why we need art and what makes art different from philosophy in its struggle to eliminate ambiguity. We will not find truth, in the form of knowledge or understanding, among the poet's wares, since knowledge, systematized and rendered coherent by means of the laws of thought, is the charge of the philosopher and his modern stepchildren.What this means is that those who approach novels intent upon finding a message run the risk of hammering poetry into a sheet by reducing it to philosophy. But novels, if they are any good, are not philosophical treatises, and this sort of reduction glosses over fundamental differences of scope and method.In an age that collapses distinctions lazily in order to reduce complex matters to simple terms, we must insist upon the fundamental differences between poets and philosophers. The domain of the philosopher is that of the concept or the principle, of ideas as objects of reflection. Philosophers deal in discursive thought as they seek logical coherence and conceptual clarity. The poet may employ ideas, but he uses them and embodies them imagistically: he does not try to develop them or verify them. 3 The philosopher's domain is unfriendly and unfamiliar to the poet. The law of contradiction reigns supreme there, and this law is anathema to the poet with his love of paradox.The poem presents images that must be apprehended in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.1 (2004) 1-11 [Access article in PDF] The Artistic Failure of Crime and Punishment Crime and Punishment Hugh Mercer Curtler This essay begins by noting some fundamental differences between poets, in the broad sense of that term, and philosophers, or those who reflect discursively. It then moves to an examination of the epilogue to Crime and Punishment where Dostoevsky abandons poetry in order to (...) make a philosophical statement about human freedom. 1 Indeed, it can be said that much of Dostoevsky's mature writing was a battle between the man's urge to make pronouncements and the poet's need to control those urges. Fortunately, the poet nearly always won; at times he did not. This can be seen in the case of Crime and Punishment where Dostoevsky, the man, insisted on formulating an idea, specifically, the "idea of freedom." This statement marks the artistic failure of the novel, a concession on the part of the poet to the man. The tension in this novel, and indeed in many novels, is an important focalpoint in the teaching of great literature, because readers of fiction frequently forget that great novels are also great works of art. In this regard, despite the fact that he is an extremely careful reader of Dostoevsky's books, the psychologist/critic René Girard misses in his quest to find hidden messages — precisely what makes Dostoevsky a great artist who writes novels. 2 What this means to teachers of exceptional literature is that we must be attuned not only to what the author says, but also to the way in which he or she says it. In his writings about Dostoevsky, Girard is not terribly interested in what the poet has to say; he is interested in the way the man works out a particular psychological problem. Consequently, like many other critics, Girardglosses over the fundamental difference between the body of Crime and Punishment and its epilogue. Poetry and Philosophy Contrasted There is no truth in art, strictly speaking. If the term "true" has any application whatever to the world of art, it means "honest," or "true to life" [End Page 1] (which, as Kafka has shown, is not terribly important). Moreover, "true" may refer to the work's adherence to rules of craft, its internal harmony and coherence as a distinctive work of the human imagination. What one finds in poetry or linguistic art is a hodgepodge of images, thought fragments, figures, episodes, incidents, hints, and bits and pieces, and (if the poet is a good one) stunning insights. Poetry is, like all art, ineluctably ambiguous. It does not have a "message"; it has many messages. This is precisely why we need art and what makes art different from philosophy in its struggle to eliminate ambiguity. We will not find truth, in the form of knowledge or understanding, among the poet's wares, since knowledge, systematized and rendered coherent by means of the laws of thought, is the charge of the philosopher and his modern stepchildren.What this means is that those who approach novels intent upon finding a message run the risk of hammering poetry into a sheet by reducing it to philosophy. But novels, if they are any good, are not philosophical treatises, and this sort of reduction glosses over fundamental differences of scope and method.In an age that collapses distinctions lazily in order to reduce complex matters to simple terms, we must insist upon the fundamental differences between poets and philosophers. The domain of the philosopher is that of the concept or the principle, of ideas as objects of reflection. Philosophers deal in discursive thought as they seek logical coherence and conceptual clarity. The poet may employ ideas, but he uses them and embodies them imagistically: he does not try to develop them or verify them. 3 The philosopher's domain is unfriendly and unfamiliar to the poet. The law of contradiction reigns supreme there, and this law is anathema to the poet with his love of paradox.The poem presents images that must be apprehended in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.1 (2004) 1-11 [Access article in PDF] The Artistic Failure of Crime and Punishment Crime and Punishment Hugh Mercer Curtler This essay begins by noting some fundamental differences between poets, in the broad sense of that term, and philosophers, or those who reflect discursively. It then moves to an examination of the epilogue to Crime and Punishment where Dostoevsky abandons poetry in order to (...) make a philosophical statement about human freedom. 1 Indeed, it can be said that much of Dostoevsky's mature writing was a battle between the man's urge to make pronouncements and the poet's need to control those urges. Fortunately, the poet nearly always won; at times he did not. This can be seen in the case of Crime and Punishment where Dostoevsky, the man, insisted on formulating an idea, specifically, the "idea of freedom." This statement marks the artistic failure of the novel, a concession on the part of the poet to the man. The tension in this novel, and indeed in many novels, is an important focalpoint in the teaching of great literature, because readers of fiction frequently forget that great novels are also great works of art. In this regard, despite the fact that he is an extremely careful reader of Dostoevsky's books, the psychologist/critic René Girard misses in his quest to find hidden messages — precisely what makes Dostoevsky a great artist who writes novels. 2 What this means to teachers of exceptional literature is that we must be attuned not only to what the author says, but also to the way in which he or she says it. In his writings about Dostoevsky, Girard is not terribly interested in what the poet has to say; he is interested in the way the man works out a particular psychological problem. Consequently, like many other critics, Girardglosses over the fundamental difference between the body of Crime and Punishment and its epilogue. Poetry and Philosophy Contrasted There is no truth in art, strictly speaking. If the term "true" has any application whatever to the world of art, it means "honest," or "true to life" [End Page 1] (which, as Kafka has shown, is not terribly important). Moreover, "true" may refer to the work's adherence to rules of craft, its internal harmony and coherence as a distinctive work of the human imagination. What one finds in poetry or linguistic art is a hodgepodge of images, thought fragments, figures, episodes, incidents, hints, and bits and pieces, and (if the poet is a good one) stunning insights. Poetry is, like all art, ineluctably ambiguous. It does not have a "message"; it has many messages. This is precisely why we need art and what makes art different from philosophy in its struggle to eliminate ambiguity. We will not find truth, in the form of knowledge or understanding, among the poet's wares, since knowledge, systematized and rendered coherent by means of the laws of thought, is the charge of the philosopher and his modern stepchildren.What this means is that those who approach novels intent upon finding a message run the risk of hammering poetry into a sheet by reducing it to philosophy. But novels, if they are any good, are not philosophical treatises, and this sort of reduction glosses over fundamental differences of scope and method.In an age that collapses distinctions lazily in order to reduce complex matters to simple terms, we must insist upon the fundamental differences between poets and philosophers. The domain of the philosopher is that of the concept or the principle, of ideas as objects of reflection. Philosophers deal in discursive thought as they seek logical coherence and conceptual clarity. The poet may employ ideas, but he uses them and embodies them imagistically: he does not try to develop them or verify them. 3 The philosopher's domain is unfriendly and unfamiliar to the poet. The law of contradiction reigns supreme there, and this law is anathema to the poet with his love of paradox.The poem presents images that must be apprehended in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Significance of Music for the Moral and Spiritual Cultivation of VirtueDavid CarrIs There any Virtue in Music?Given its time-honored place, along with other arts, in many if not most past and present school curricula it would seem that at least some forms of music have been widely credited with educational value. Beyond the general association of music with high culture and, notwithstanding the evident discipline involved in learning (...) to play musical instruments, however, it is less clear what sort of value this might be. Despite the considerable ethical complexity of much art and the vexed nature of any relationship between the moral and the aesthetic, one may clearly regard very many works of literature, much representational painting, and even some dances as having some moral educational significance. That said, it may be less clear how other arts or art genres—such as music or abstract painting—could be said to have much significant moral import or content (as well as being unreasonably procrustean to insist that they should). Indeed, recalling the well-known point of Richard Peters about the inherently normative character of the concept of education—that it would be hard to regard a man as educated [End Page 103] who had not in some sense been made 'better'1 —one way of posing the present question might be to ask whether, regardless of its potential for pleasure, there is much if any real virtue in music?Plato and Scruton on Music and MoralsThere is, to be sure, a long tradition of reflection on the moral implications of music, and questions about the effects of music on moral development and character are of course raised in several Platonic dialogues. Thus, in one part of the Republic, Plato explores in some detail what he takes to be the effects on character of the various Greek musical modes, arguing for the moral superiority of those that foster courage and self-discipline over those that promote sensuality and self-abandon.2 Such claims also seem mostly consistent with a general Platonic aesthetics that precludes any role for the arts beyond service to a strict morality of individual self-control and social order. There are also, however, other sections of the Republic in which Plato envisages another softer role for music (broadly construed to include also literature and poetry) as a counterbalance to an excess of physical education, which can produce "savagery and hardness."3 Still, to whatever extent Plato might here be trying to have his case and eat it, his explicit claim that only the Dorian and Phrygian modes are suitable for moral consumption are probably more consistent with the broad drift of Platonic aesthetics. Generally, Plato's view appears to be that music—in the narrower rather than broader (Greek) sense—is a kind of ordered affect-charged auditory experience, that some forms of musical order are more conducive to the harmony or balance of the soul than others, and that a healthy human soul or character should in some way reflect the harmony of appropriate or approved forms of music.Although the logical and/or psychological status of such bygone claims is far from easy to evaluate, something of the spirit of Platonic thought on music and virtue seems discernible in more recent writings on the philosophy of music. Thus, Roger Scruton's case for the musical and moral superiority of serious classical works over much latter day popular music would appear to rest mainly on considerations relating to the greater structural order, organization, and complexity of the former over the latter.4 Like Plato, Scruton would seem to regard musical form, order, and organization as directly linked to emotional discipline, so that whereas the classics may be expected to cultivate ordered passion and sensibility, the unmelodic, discordant, and rhythmically unsubtle sounds of much modern popular music can only be expected to engender crude, disorganized, and uncontrolled feelings. Scruton makes much of the decline of dance under the influence of such contemporary musical anarchy, as precisely exhibited in the abandonment of conventions governing the control, for individually and [End Page 104] socially significant purposes, of physical gesture and bodily movement. Hence, although Scruton... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Significance of Music for the Moral and Spiritual Cultivation of VirtueDavid CarrIs There any Virtue in Music?Given its time-honored place, along with other arts, in many if not most past and present school curricula it would seem that at least some forms of music have been widely credited with educational value. Beyond the general association of music with high culture and, notwithstanding the evident discipline involved in learning (...) to play musical instruments, however, it is less clear what sort of value this might be. Despite the considerable ethical complexity of much art and the vexed nature of any relationship between the moral and the aesthetic, one may clearly regard very many works of literature, much representational painting, and even some dances as having some moral educational significance. That said, it may be less clear how other arts or art genres—such as music or abstract painting—could be said to have much significant moral import or content (as well as being unreasonably procrustean to insist that they should). Indeed, recalling the well-known point of Richard Peters about the inherently normative character of the concept of education—that it would be hard to regard a man as educated [End Page 103] who had not in some sense been made 'better'1 —one way of posing the present question might be to ask whether, regardless of its potential for pleasure, there is much if any real virtue in music?Plato and Scruton on Music and MoralsThere is, to be sure, a long tradition of reflection on the moral implications of music, and questions about the effects of music on moral development and character are of course raised in several Platonic dialogues. Thus, in one part of the Republic, Plato explores in some detail what he takes to be the effects on character of the various Greek musical modes, arguing for the moral superiority of those that foster courage and self-discipline over those that promote sensuality and self-abandon.2 Such claims also seem mostly consistent with a general Platonic aesthetics that precludes any role for the arts beyond service to a strict morality of individual self-control and social order. There are also, however, other sections of the Republic in which Plato envisages another softer role for music (broadly construed to include also literature and poetry) as a counterbalance to an excess of physical education, which can produce "savagery and hardness."3 Still, to whatever extent Plato might here be trying to have his case and eat it, his explicit claim that only the Dorian and Phrygian modes are suitable for moral consumption are probably more consistent with the broad drift of Platonic aesthetics. Generally, Plato's view appears to be that music—in the narrower rather than broader (Greek) sense—is a kind of ordered affect-charged auditory experience, that some forms of musical order are more conducive to the harmony or balance of the soul than others, and that a healthy human soul or character should in some way reflect the harmony of appropriate or approved forms of music.Although the logical and/or psychological status of such bygone claims is far from easy to evaluate, something of the spirit of Platonic thought on music and virtue seems discernible in more recent writings on the philosophy of music. Thus, Roger Scruton's case for the musical and moral superiority of serious classical works over much latter day popular music would appear to rest mainly on considerations relating to the greater structural order, organization, and complexity of the former over the latter.4 Like Plato, Scruton would seem to regard musical form, order, and organization as directly linked to emotional discipline, so that whereas the classics may be expected to cultivate ordered passion and sensibility, the unmelodic, discordant, and rhythmically unsubtle sounds of much modern popular music can only be expected to engender crude, disorganized, and uncontrolled feelings. Scruton makes much of the decline of dance under the influence of such contemporary musical anarchy, as precisely exhibited in the abandonment of conventions governing the control, for individually and [End Page 104] socially significant purposes, of physical gesture and bodily movement. Hence, although Scruton... (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ezra Pound's ConfucianismChungeng ZhuTo T. S. Eliot's question "What does Mr. Pound believe?" Pound's answer is explicit and categorical: "I believe the Ta Hio" (Da Xue). Confucianism, Pound believes, offers a solution to the West that, from its political institutions to its economic system, has fallen into chaos and disorder. Ideology and aesthetics are inextricable. Pound also sees in Confucianism a way of making poetry in articulating his (...) vision of a new earthly paradise. In The Cantos, Pound covers numerous people and cultures across times and space, and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams stand out as two of Pound's preeminent Confucian heroes. Pound's view of Jefferson and Adams, of course, involves his views on politics, economics, law, and history—a host of complicated issues that cannot be all accounted for by his reading of Confucianism. Similarly, Pound's poetics is also influenced by various traditions.1 This study, however, focuses on the extent to which Pound's Confucianism has contributed to his reading of Jefferson and Adams and to his poetics. It specifically examines the relationship between Pound's Confucianism and his poetic form in presenting Jefferson and Adams—that is, how the poet brings his Confucianism to making heroes out of history, and how his poetic form serves to express his Confucian world-view.ISeveral aspects about Pound's Confucianism need to be addressed briefly, for they are essential to his evaluation of people and to his Confucian poetics. First of all, Pound considers Confucianism a totalizing philosophy rooted in the objective reality of organic nature.2 He believes that the Confucian Dao,which he refers to as the "process," not [End Page 57] only operates as an inherent unifying principle of harmonious order manifest in nature but also sets the norm to be followed in establishing culture.3 Unlike other failing metaphysical religions, Confucianism, in Pound's view, does not commit "splitting"—the separation of ideas from the phenomenal or culture from nature. Greek philosophy, he thinks, commits "splitting," for the Greek philosophers "have been served up as highbrows. We know them as ideas, each handed us as a maxim."4 He believes "Christian thought has never offered a balanced system"(GK, p. 29). The Eleusinian elements might be present in the very early church, but the ancient wisdom "seems to have disappeared when the mysteries entered the vain space of Christian theological discussion."5 In contrast, Confucianism, he believes, is totalizing in the sense that "Confucius offers a way of life, an Anschauung or disposition toward nature and man and a system for dealing with both" (GK, p. 24). Because of Confucianism, he maintains, "I fail to see that the history of China, or Chinese historic process, suffers a dichotomy or split into two opposite forces, as does that of Europe" (Prose, p. 67).Pound considers Confucianism not just a balanced system; he finds Confucianism particularly attractive because of Confucius's deep concern with man and culture, his focus on social and ethical issues, his emphasis on individual responsibility, and, above all, his strong commitment to realizing social order and harmony in this world. "The essence of religion," Pound believes, "is the present tense" (Prose, p. 70). Greek philosophy, Pound feels, ignores the question of individual responsibility and the feeling of common people, and the Greek philosophers "did not feel communal responsibilities vide infra. The sense of coordination, of the individual in a milieu is not in them" (GK, p. 38). He thinks that Greek philosophic thought "is at no point impregnated with a feeling for the whole people" (GK, p. 29). Pound is also critical of Christianity, particularly "the decline of Christian ethics" (Prose, p. 61). Christian religion, in his view, can no longer function for the West, for "Christianity has become the slogan of every oppression, of every iniquity" (Prose, p. 193).6 In comparison, Confucianism, Pound observes, advocates that knowledge is "to know men" and humanity is "to love men" (GK, p. 18). Confucius believes that "travel broadens the mind"; he has the "knowledge of local conditions" and is "interested in increasing agricultural production" (GK, p. 272). Confucius emphasizes "conduct" and "the value of personality" (Prose... (shrink)

Any attempt to outline a meteorological aesthetics centered on so-called beautiful weather has to overcome several difficulties: In everyday life, the appreciation of the weather is mostly related to practical interests or reduced to the ideal of stereotypical fine weather that is conceived according to blue-sky thinking irrespective of climate diversity. Also, an aesthetics of fine weather seems, strictly speaking, to be impossible given that such weather conditions usually allow humans to focus on aspects other than weather, which (...) contradicts the autotelic character of beauty. The unreflective equation of beautiful weather with moderately sunny weather and a cloudless sky also collides with the psychological need for variation: even living in a “paradisal” climate would be condemned to end in monotony. Finally, whereas fine weather is related in modern realistic literature to cosmic harmony and a universal natural order, contemporary literary examples show that in the age of the climate change, fine weather may be deceitful and its passive contemplation, irresponsible. This implies the necessity of a reflective aesthetic attitude on weather, as influenced by art, literature, and science, which discovers the poetics of bad weather and the wonder that underlies average weather conditions. (shrink)

The millennial interest in the fable told by Apuleius in The Golden Ass has produced periods of intense preoccupation. Of these uses of the legend none is more interesting, varied, and profound—none possesses greater implications for contemporary life and manners—than the obsessive concern of pre-Romantic and Romantic writers and artists. Hellenistic, Roman, and early Christian culture had produced at least twenty surviving statues of Psyche alone, some seven Christian sarcophagi that used the legend, and a set of mosaics on a (...) Christian ceiling in Rome from the early fourth century;1 and of course to late antiquity belongs the distinction of having produced the seminal telling of the tale by Apuleius in about A. D. 125. But what we possess from that remote time is thin and lacks the power to engage the modern spirit. The allegorizing and erotic responses made in the Renaissance, Mannerist, and Baroque culture produced monuments of painting that the later period cannot rival; but the impregnation of literature by the legend was slight, and the intellectual or moral content was often only a perfunctory and dutiful addendum. The revival of the story in the aesthetic movement of the late Victorians and early moderns has its examples of beauty, particularly in Rodin and in the lush harmonies and occasionally piercing melodies of César Franck's Psyché, a tone poem for chorus and orchestra; but the long retellings by Morris, Bridges, and John Jay Chapman oppress with luxuriant sweetness and remain of interest only as period pieces. · 1. See Elizabeth Hazelton Haight, Apuleius and His Influence , p. 164, and Maxime Collignon, "Essai sur les monuments grecs et romains . . . ," in Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d'Athène et de Rome , fasc. 2, pp. 285-446, esp. pp. 364, 436-38. Jean H. Hagstrum, John C. Shaffer Professor of English and Humanities at Northwestern University, is currently preparing a book on the theme of love in European literature and art from the mid-seventeenth century through the Romantic period. He is the author of books and articles on Blake and Samuel Johnson, and of The Sister Arts, a study of the relations of poetry and painting from antiquity through the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Science has more to offer than just knowledge of nature; it can give us understanding of nature as well. Epistemology of science is usually focused on knowledge and the criteria of justification, while paying little attention to understanding. In a reversal of this emphasis, this article is more about scientific understanding. I argue that the hallmarks of understanding are similar to an aesthetic feature associated with literature, music, and the visual arts. It is the feature described as coherence, harmony, (...) and inevitability of fit. Aesthetics thus plays an epistemic role in science as an indication of understanding. (shrink)

This article explores and critically contextualises the photographic production of heliotherapist Auguste Rollier (1874–1954), specifically the ‘patient portraits’ photographed at his Leysin sanatoria over a substantial period of four decades, c.1903–1944. It argues that these photographs, ignored in secondary literature, were particularly persuasive in communicating the natural healing powers of sunlight and through their international dissemination brought Rollier's work professional acclaim and prestige. Always presenting anonymous patients, and most often children, the images produced for Rollier's work interweave aesthetic and medical (...) interests. Whether through the aesthetics of the photograph, of the positioning and appearance of the patient's body, or of the language used to describe these, issues of beauty and harmony were significant preoccupations for Rollier and the dissemination of his heliotherapeutic practice. The article argues that these aesthetic preoccupations drove his work, that the patient's progress and final cure, and thus the therapy's efficacy, were determined by aesthetic criteria—read through the body itself and its photographic representation. This legibility, of the body and its photography, was crucial to articulating the sun's perceived natural ability to improve, heal and even ‘rebuild’ individual patients into socially and physically productive citizens. As such, the article contends, Rollier privileged image over word, conceiving the former as possessing an unequalled ‘eloquence’ to communicate the efficacy and social potential of heliotherapy. (shrink)

The notion of the ‘free harmony of the faculties’ has baffled many of Kant's readers and also attracted much criticism. In this paper I attempt to shed light on this puzzling notion. By doing so, I aim to challenge some of the criticisms that this notion has attracted, and to point to its relevance to contemporary debates in aesthetics. While most of the literature on the free harmony is characterized by what I regard as an ‘extra-aesthetic approach’, (...) I propose ‘an aesthetic approach’ to the harmony. Such an aesthetic interpretation explains why aesthetic judgement, but not cognitive judgement, is based on a free agreement of the faculties in distinctively aesthetic terms. By contrast, an extra-aesthetic approach to Kant's aesthetic theory does not explain what it is in beautiful objects as beautiful that calls for a free agreement of the faculties. I argue that this approach is limited, and suggest an alternative to it by articulating the necessary reciprocity and explanatory interdependence between the form and value of beautiful objects and the form of the mental activity that underlies judgements of taste. My proposal is not only aesthetic, but also normative in its attempt to carve up a space for a distinct form of aesthetic normativity, the one that Kant describes as ‘free lawfulness’ or ‘lawfulness without a law’. I opt for a specifically normative variant of aesthetic interpretation because I believe that Kant is committed to the view of aesthetic judgement as normatively autonomous and irreducible. (shrink)

One of the first comprehensive treatments of Deleuzian thought. There is always something schizophrenic about logic in Deleuze, which represents another distinctive characteristic: a deep perversion of the very heart of philosophy. Thus, a preliminary definition of Deleuze's philosophy emerges: an irrational logic of aberrant movements. —from Aberrant Movements In Aberrant Movements, David Lapoujade offers one of the first comprehensive treatments of Deleuzian thought. Drawing on the entirety of Deleuze's work as well as his collaborations with Félix Guattari, from the (...) “transcendental empiricism” of Difference and Repetition to the schizoanalysis and geophilosophy of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, Lapoujade explores the central problem underlying the delirious coherence of Deleuze's philosophy: aberrant movements. These are the movements that Deleuze wrests from Kantian idealism, Nietzsche's eternal return, and the nonsense of Lewis Carroll; they are the schizophrenic processes of the unconscious and the nomadic line of flight traversing history—in short, the forces that permeate life and thought. Tracing and classifying their “irrational logics” represent the quintessential tasks of Deleuzian philosophy. Rather than abstract notions, though, these logics constitute various modes of populating the earth—involving the human as much as the animal, physical, and chemical—and the affective, mental, and political populations that populate human thought. Lapoujade argues that aberrant movements become the figures in a combat against the forms of political, social, philosophical, aesthetic, and scientific organization that attempt to deny, counter, or crush their existence. In this study of a thinker whose insights, theoretical confrontations, and perverse critiques have profoundly influenced philosophy, literature, film, and art over the last fifty years, Lapoujade invites us to join in the discordant harmonies of Deleuze's work—and in the battle that constitutes the thought of philosophy, politics, and life. (shrink)

The essay is devoted to the reconstruction of the philosophy of art of Novalis, one of the prominent German Romantics, who presents it in his writings in a fragmentary way. Research of this type appears in scholarly literature for the first time; it utilizes a complex philosophical-aesthetic method of analysis of texts of the German thinker. Novalis appreciates art as one of the highest achievements of humanity, which elevates the human being from ordinary life to spiritual heights. Art is a (...) free expression of the artists' Ego. Art is simultaneously a “self-contemplating and a self-creating nature.” The creative principles of nature are transformed within the spiritual world of the artist and express themselves in art. The secrets of nature are revealed to the artist. The artists sees something great in the least significant things. The beautiful is the object of art and this creates kinship between all types of art. Artists (including painters) do not imitate the external world but they create by means of their internal world. All types of art gravitate towards mutual harmony and foreshadow a synthesis of the arts of sorts. Novalis positions poetry above all other arts. This is because according to him poetry establishes heavenly wisdom on earth, elevates the human being over everyday life, and serves as the foundation for all other arts. Philosophy is internally linked to poetry and serves as its theory. The philosopher must be a poet. The poet lives a special, contemplative life and is a wise and prophetic person. Novalis imagines the future Romantic age as fabulous, magical, poetic, ironic, alogical. “Intelligent chaos” will play a specific role in it. All earthly will be elevated to the heavenly. Novalis considers the novel as one of the principal forms of Romatic poetry and presents its chief characteristics. (shrink)

The large extent to which aesthetic terms pervade Adam Smith’s discussion of ethics would seem to suggest, in the least, that the spheres of aesthetics and ethics are interwoven in a way hardly possible to conceive in the wake of Kant. Despite this recognized closeness between the two areas, one account in the literature has claimed that Smith’s understanding of beauty anticipates Kant’s modern notion of disinterested pleasure. It is claimed that according to Smith, disinterested pleasure is aroused by (...) the harmony of our moral sentiments as well as by the beauty of “productions of art.” By analyzing the relation of beauty to utility in Smith’s aesthetics and ethics, I will be arguing against the attribution to Smith of a specifically disinterested pleasure in our judgments of the beauty of the productions of art, as well as in the beauty of moral objects, such as virtuous character and conduct. (shrink)

This paper acknowledges the fact human beings are social animals, as they tend to live in well-organized societies. However, human population expansion explodes into internal implosions that continue to wreck havoc globally on the social, economic, political, architectural, and aesthetic environments. To harness the universal territorial imperatives, of contending components harmoniously, the world requires synergy and dialogue.

Pleasure, the defining object of kāmaśāstric scholarship, is harmonious sensory experience, the product of a “good fit” between the self and the world. It comes about when one moves in a world of fitting sense objects, and one has made oneself fit to enter that world. The bulk of kāmaśāstric literature is devoted to developing, enhancing, and enacting specific bodily and sensory capabilities in order to maximize one’s ability to affect and be affected by the world. This article examines the (...) model of subjectivity implied by kāmaśāstra, tracking two sorts of changes to the self assumed by this body of texts. First, it presents and analyzes the ways in which the social actors described in this literature come into being in and through the cultivation and performance of particular bodily and social acts; the “artifactual” nature of the self is presumed. Second, it considers the changing set of acts that are described and prescribed over the course of kāmaśāstric history, noting the increasing place of physiognomy and of magico-medical alterations of the body, and the elision of the social sphere of sensual activity. Finally, this article situates the kāmaśāstric model of subjectivity in relation to the larger śāstric project, drawing out the model of empiricism that it presupposes, and speculating upon the epistemological/ontological implications of kāmaśāstra as a science. (shrink)