Presentation No 68 (Esthetics and critical Theory).

Ayn Rand was both an artist and an esthetic theorist. The essence of Rand's view of art is that an artwork presents a philosophy, that is, a basic view of life. To identify what an artwork concretizes, Rand introduces her concept of metaphysical value‐judgments. Rand's esthetic theory, being reached inductively rather than being deductively imposed on phenomena, allows for special cases which differ in certain respects, such that the same general principles apply in a somewhat different way. Architecture and music (...) are such cases. Rand's championing of Romanticism is one more case in which she applies the principle that underlies her entire esthetics. Art serves a fundamental need of man's consciousness by bringing his concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allowing him to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts, thereby unifying man's consciousness and offering him a coherent view of existence. (shrink)

Thanks to his unsurpassed eye and his fearless willingness to take a stand, Clement Greenberg (1909 1994) became one of the giants of 20th century art criticism a writer who set the terms of critical discourse from the moment he burst onto the scene with his seminal essays Avant Garde and Kitsch (1939) and Towards a Newer Laocoon (1940). In this work, which gathers previously uncollected essays and a series of seminars delivered at Bennington in 1971, Greenberg provides his most (...) expansive statement of his views on taste and quality in art, arguing for an esthetic that flies in the face of current art world fashions. Greenberg insists despite the attempts from Marcel Duchamp onwards to escape the jurisdiction of taste by producing an art so disjunctive that it cannot be judged that taste is inexorable. He argues that standards of quality in art, the artist's responsibility to seek out the hardest demands of a medium, and the critic's responsibility to discriminate, are essential conditions for great art. The obsession with innovation the epidemic of newness leads, in Greenbergs view, to the boringness of so much avant garde art. He discusses the interplay of expectation and surprise in aesthetic experience, and the exalted consciousness produced by great art. Homemade Esthetics allows us particularly in the transcribed seminar sessions, never before published to watch the critics mind at work, defending (and at times reconsidering) his theories. His views, often controversial, are the record of a lifetime of looking at and thinking about art as intensely as anyone ever has. (shrink)

How are we to understand, define, and critically evaluate the function, origin, and types of art and establish criteria for describing a work as "superior?" While such esthetic questions are unchanging, the answers vary markedly from decade to decade and even year to year, depending upon the prevailing opinion of critics, artists, and the public. Esthetics Contemporary has been revised and updated to include fourteen new selections from many of the most respected authorities on literature, dance, the visual arts, (...) theatre, music, cinema, and architecture. Kostelanetz captures the rich diversity of our changing views of art while at the same time discloses its variegated influence on the contemporary art scene. Esthetics withers if compelled to remain within the stultifying confines of rigid theories. The experiential dimension of esthetic requires that it change if trends and breakthroughs in the arts are to be appreciated fully. Esthetics can ill afford to ignore the fluid reality of creative forces - that intimate and interpenetrating relationship between the esthetic theory of a particular period and the arts that dominate. Featured in this volume are discussions of the future of music, minimalist tendencies in dance, conceptual art, theatre esthetics, de-architecturalization, art as internal technology, the esthetics of the avant-garde, modernism and postmodernism, photography and esthetics, video art, radio drama, affirmation of space-time forces, criticism of imaginative writing, a structural-informational approach to cinema, phenomenal art, and much more. The first edition of Esthetics Contemporary distinguished itself as a pioneering volume that gave new meaning and clearer understanding to the often misunderstood world of contemporary art. This revised edition with its many new selections will continue that fine tradition into the next decade and beyond. (shrink)

: Is Peirce's esthetic relevant for the philosophy of art—what is usually referred to today as aesthetics? At first glance Peirce's idiosyncratic esthetic seems quite unconcerned with issues of art. Yet a careful examination reveals that this is not the case. Thus, rather than attempt to "apply" Peirce's views to some aspect of the practice or the theory of art (e.g., creativity, historiography of art, style, genre), or even to a particular work of art, my intention is to examine how (...) art fits into Peirce's own conception of his esthetic theory. The argument is divided into two parts. In the first section I present Peirce's conception of esthetics in the context of the normative sciences. I argue that esthetics connects with various strands of Peirce's philosophy, most notably his cosmology, his agapasm and with the way that important aspects of them hang together around the principle of abduction and the corresponding notion insight. In the second section, I consider in what way art may be said to be admirable, to contribute to the summum bonum. I try to show that Peirce's esthetic suggests that what attracts us towards art is first and foremost a semeiotic quality qua quality of mind or quality of Thirdness. (shrink)

By decision of the World Council of Peace, progressive mankind marked, on October 5, 1963, the 250th anniversary of the birth of an outstanding representative of the French Enlightenment, Denis Diderot. Diderot occupies an honored place in the history of world thought on esthetics, as one of the greatest theoreticians of realist art. The esthetic theory founded by Diderot, calling for the representation of nature, was directed against the feudal, theological world view and against the aristocratic art of the (...) court. Diderot's esthetics, like his philosophy, served the cause of ideological preparation for the bourgeois revolution at the end of the 18th century in France. "Each age has its distinctive spirit," said Diderot. "The spirit of our age is the spirit of freedom.". (shrink)

Bourdieu’s thought is disturbing. Provocative. Scandalous even, at least for those who do not easily tolerate the unmitigated truth about the social. Nonetheless his ideas, among the most important and innovative of our time, are here to stay. This thought has taken form in the course of a career and through works on diverse subjects that have constructed a far-reaching analytical model of social life, which the author calls more readily an anthropology rather than a sociology. In their totality, they (...) constitute today an original and powerful proposal to explain human practices. In the face of criticisms commonly leveled at Bourdieu’s thought (notably the charge that it reduces everything to a single schematic model), it is important to identify the spirit of his enterprise. Early on, it is true, his thought drew on a few fundamental concepts—the trilogy habitus, field (champ), practice (pratique)—to which it constantly returned, and followed a clearly defined trajectory. At the same time, however, he continually reformulated, adapted, and refined his analytical model, depending on the operations to which he subjected new objects of inquiry. The regenerative and transformative force of his thought was supported by two convictions. First, that there being nothing more vain than theory for theory’s sake, it is preferable that theoretical production originate in the study of concrete and occasionally very specific cases. Second, that in order to escape stereotypical classifications, boundaries separating disciplines are best transgressed, thereby favoring new constructions of the object of inquiry. (shrink)

This book develops a theory of aesthetics that criticizes scientific and philosophical reductionism that denies the importance of culture in art and taste, but its theory accepts some fundamental aspects of Neo-Darwinist theory of culture by addressing points of convergence among the notions of meme, simulacrum, and symbol.

Last year's meetings of the leaders of the party and government with groups of creative artists caused a stir in the field of esthetics, placed in the foreground discussion of questions concerning the theory of the realistic image, and led to an examination of the experience accumulated in the party's struggle for socialist realism. In recent years, as a consequence of the spread of mathematical methods of research into the social sciences and even into creative work, old doubts with (...) respect to the specific significance of the creative image in art have again arisen. For several years now, efforts have been made in esthetics to emphasize, as distinctive features of art, other factors in artistic creativity, more accessible to study by the techniques of the natural sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy—Aesthetics—Education:Reflections on DanceTyson Lewis (bio)To create is to lighten, to unburden life, to invent new possibilities of life. The creator is legislator—dancer.—Gilles Deleuze, Pure ImmanenceThe Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is perhaps best known for his ongoing interest in the problem of "biopower." Taking up where Michel Foucault ended, Agamben argues that the principle political and philosophical questions of the moment concern the connections between life and power. In this (...) sense, he stands in diametric opposition to one of the leading French intellectuals of our times: Alain Badiou. For Badiou, the key question of the present is not so much power and the body as it is the ethics of truth. According to Agamben, Badiou's project has abandoned thinking about the biopolitics of life and as such is both philosophically and politically suspect. But does Agamben's critique prematurely dismiss Badiou? In other words, does his critique prevent us from recognizing the precise location of biopolitics in Badiou's work? It is my contention that we must read Badiou not against but from within a biopolitical framework in order to realize both the validity of Agamben's criticism and its limitations. In fact, it is through the critical lens of biopolitical theory that we can begin to see the unique links in Badiou's thinking between aesthetics, the body, and education. In conclusion, I argue that Agamben provides insights missed by Badiou's reduction of the animal body to the disavowed grounds for the grace and beauty of truth, while at the same time Badiou provides Agamben's own theory of biopolitics with a unique educative practice: the practice of dance.Here I would like to justify this philosophical inquiry for educational theorists. With the fate of art-based educational programs uncertain in the [End Page 53] face of standardization, it is perhaps time to reassess legitimating claims for retaining arts education programs. By reading Badiou through Agamben, I hope to provide a new reason for advocating the centrality of dance in educational programs and assert the inherently educative qualities of movement-based curricula. Second, I hope to suggest in my conclusion that dance is an important form of educational practice antithetical to current forms of capitalist "bioproduction." As such, I will link together my own theory of dance education with the critical pedagogical tradition in order to anchor the "utopian imagination" in a practice of the body. This is an attempt to fill in a rather vague sphere of critical pedagogical research and theory: aesthetic practice. Overall, this article will bring together two important philosophical traditions—Agamben's biopolitical theory and Badiou's theory of truth—in order to examine their relation to education and, in turn, how education is a central concept for thinking through contemporary continental philosophical traditions.Biopower and Event: Situating the Subject in Relation to TruthMichel Foucault first coined the theoretical concept "biopower" in his work on the history of sexuality.1 In order to understand Foucault's meaning we must first separate biopower from sovereign power, which is characterized by the "right to decide life and death."2 The sovereign—which for Foucault is not simply a form of territorial rule but is a principle of power relations—decides who lives and who dies. Power here is the power of the sword that marks the body directly through overt forms of public torture and violence. But in the classical age and with the rise of capitalist social relations, the form and function of power switched. Famously, Foucault wrote that the highest function of power "was perhaps no longer to kill, but to invest life through and through."3 This new form of power—whose concern was no longer death but the maintenance and regulation of life—operates on two interconnected levels. First, biopower conceives of the body as a machine, which must be disciplined in order to be made more efficient. Here, power acts as microphysics, training the individual body in order to reach a high level of social efficiency. Second, on the macro level, biopower transforms the populous into a population that has to be carefully regulated in terms of propagation rates, health levels... (shrink)

_Natural Beauty_ was selected for the _Choice_ _Outstanding Academic Title_ list for 2008! _Natural Beauty_ presents a bold new philosophical account of the principles involved in making aesthetic judgments about natural objects. It surveys historical and modern accounts of natural beauty and weaves elements derived from those accounts into a “syncretic theory” that centers on key features of aesthetic experience—specifically, features that sustain and reward attention. In this way, Moore’s theory sets itself apart from both the purely cognitive and the (...) purely emotive approaches that have dominated natural aesthetics until now. _Natural Beauty_ shows why aesthetic appreciation of works of art and aesthetic appreciation of nature can be mutually reinforcing; that is, how they are cooperative rather than rival enterprises. Moore also makes a compelling case for how and why the experience of natural beauty can contribute to the larger project of living a good life. (shrink)

The submitted study presents a philosophical assessment of the Kant's Theory of Aesthetics, which is mainly exposed in his "Critique of Judgment". In the author's view Kant's Theory represents one of the most important interpretations of the fundamental philosophical problem of aesthetic Being in the modern history of philosophy, and is, at the same time, one of the best examples of Cartesian account of the metaphysical foundations of aesthetics. Upon reflection this fact turns out to be a very important one (...) for our understanding of philosophical origins of modern aesthetics. (edited). (shrink)

Art plays a significant role in Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy, a major part of which may be interpreted as a proposal for the revision of religious belief. In this paper, I identify within Murdoch’s philosophical writings five distinct but related ways in which great art can assist moral/religious belief and practice: art can reveal to us “the world as we were never able so clearly to see it before”; this revelatory capacity provides us with evidence for the existence of the (...) Good, a metaphor for a transcendent reality of which God was also a symbol; art is a “hall of reflection” in which “everything under the sun can be examined and considered”; art provides us with an analogue for the way in which we should try to perceive our world; and art enables us to transcend our selfish concerns. I consider three possible objections: that Murdoch’s theory is not applicable to all forms of art; that the meaning of works of art is often ambiguous; and that there is disagreement about what constitutes a great work of art. I argue that none of these objections are decisive, and that all forms of art have at least the potential to furnish us with important tools for developing the insight required to live a moral/religious life. (shrink)

Comparative political theory is at best an embryonic and marginalized endeavor. As practiced in most Western universities, the study of political theory generally involves a rehearsal of the canon of Western political thought from Plato to Marx. Only rarely are practitioners of political thought willing (and professionally encouraged) to transgress the canon and thereby the cultural boundaries of North America and Europe in the direction of genuine comparative investigation. Border Crossings presents an effort to remedy this situation, fully launching a (...) new era in political theory. Thirteen scholars from around the world examine the various political traditions of West, South, and East Asia and engage in a reflective cross-cultural discussion that belies the assumptions of an Asian "essence" and of an unbridgeable gulf between West and non-West. The denial of essential differences does not, however, amount to an endorsement of essential sameness. As viewed and as practiced by contributors to this ground-breaking volume, comparative political theorizing must steer a course between uniformity and radical separation--this is the path of "border crossings.". (shrink)

In his published lectures on aesthetics, and in his Encyclopedia, Hegel goes into a systematic and relatively unambiguous exposition of his philosophy of aesthetics. In the latter part of the Phenomenology, however, Hegel’s exposition of aesthetics is complicated by and somewhat obscured by the following factors: a) the investigation of aesthetics is simultaneous with the investigation of religion; b) the prime concern of the Phenomenology is neither aesthetics nor religion, but aesthetics and religious experience; c) the aforesaid experience is not (...) considered in-itself, but from the vantage point of the “experience of experience,” which is the general vantage point of the Phenomenology; d) this “experience of experience” is presented as derived or deduced from a whole host of historical and cultural antecedents presented in Part II of the Phenomenology; e) the cultural and social context of Part II is itself derived or deduced from the dialectic of progressions in individual experience presented in Part I. (shrink)

From the earliest times art has been integral to human culture. Both fascinated and perplexed by the arts, people have tried, since the age of classical Greece, to understand how they work and what they mean. Philosophers wondered at first about the nature of art: what it is and how it relates to the cosmos. They puzzled over how art objects are created, and extolled human skills that seem at times godlike in their powers. But perhaps the central question for (...) such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle concerned our involvement with art: the response we have to beautiful things, the moral and salubrious powers of art, and perhaps most of all, the power of art to transform and transcend, leading us into a condition of enhanced perception that may be wondrous, dangerous, and at times overwhelming. The classical age displayed a richness of discussion that centered on art as an activity: an activity that is at once cosmic, social, and individual; an activity that brings understanding of a sort; an activity that may be salutary and even exalting, as in Aristotle's celebrated discussion of tragedy and its cathartic effects. Since the eighteenth century, however, this has changed. Questions about art have shifted to the idea of experience, paralleling the great change in the focus of philosophy from matters of ontology to those of epistemology. In place of starting from an examination of the nature of the universe and moving to the human position in the order of things, we have come to realize, since Descartes and Kant, that all inquiry has its inception in a human locus. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, we have finally recognized that the human factor in every kind of awareness and knowledge is structurally unavoidable. Art has become both a symptom of this change and a standard for grasping it. (shrink)

As the editors of the series, New Literary Theory, proclaim in the preface of the book, the purpose of the series is to make more room in literary theory for playful and accessible approaches to li...

This paper has a twofold structure: both parts concern philosophy's understanding of its data—in the area of aesthetics. The first part considers aesthetics as philosophy of art: the second part considers aesthetics as concerned also with the appreciation of nature.

Philosophy in China has undergone a difficult course of development since 1949. During the first period of the existence of the Chinese People's Republic , there was a process of dissemination of the Marxist world-view among Chinese philosophers. A beginning was made in the treatment of current problems in the theory of the building of socialism. Studies in various areas of philosophical knowledge - dialectical and historical materialism, logic, ethics, esthetics, the history of philosophy - got under way. The (...) discussions that occurred in the mid-'50s reflected the fact that Chinese scholars in the realm of philosophy had attained a higher level of achievement. (shrink)

The Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science was held at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 27 August to 2 September 1975. The Congress was held under the auspices of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, and was sponsored by the National Research Council of Canada and the University of Western Ontario. As those associated closely with the work of the Division over the years (...) know well, the work undertaken by its members varies greatly and spans a number of fields not always obviously related. In addition, the volume of work done by first rate scholars and scientists in the various fields of the Division has risen enormously. For these and related reasons it seemed to the editors chosen by the Divisional officers that the usual format of publishing the proceedings of the Congress be abandoned in favour of a somewhat more flexible, and hopefully acceptable, method of pre sentation. Accordingly, the work of the invited participants to the Congress has been divided into four volumes appearing in the University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science. The volumes are entitled, Logic, Foundations of Mathematics and Computability Theory, Foun dational Problems in the Special Sciences, Basic Problems in Methodol ogy and Linguistics, and Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

This essay considers the recuperation of beauty as a productive critical strategy in discussions of African American dance. I argue that black performance in general, and African American concert dance in particular, seeks to create aesthetic sites that allow black Americans to participate in discourses of recognition and appreciation to include concepts of beauty. In this, I suggest that beauty may indeed produce social change for its attendant audiences. I also propose that interrogating the notion of beauty may allow for (...) social change among audiences that include dance theorists and philosophers. Through a case-study consideration of work by three African American choreographers, Donald Byrd (b. 1949), Ulysses Dove (1947 – 1996), and Abdel Salaam (b. 1949), I ultimately hope to suggest critical possibilities aligning dance performance with particular aesthetic theory relevant to its documentation and interpretation. (shrink)

Retributivism is currently a keenly debated theory of punishment. In this volume, the contributors explore its various dimensions including its implications for sentencing and evaluate it against utilitarian options. Content: Jean Hampton: An Expressive Theory of Retribution u Brian Slattery: The Myth of Retributive Justice u Tim Dare: Retributivism, Punishment and Public Values u Anthony Duff: Alternatives to Punishment - or Alternative Punishments u Jerome Bickenbach: Duff on Non-Custodial Punishment u Sandra Marshall: Harm and Punishment in the Community. (Franz Steiner (...) 1992). (shrink)

This paper presents a study of Rāmacandra–Guṇacandra’s theory of aesthetics in light of the Kashmiri rasa ideology and demonstrates that the Jain authors offer a new and original conceptualization of aesthetic experience, in which the spectator remains cognitively active in the course of watching the drama. In their model, the relationship between rasa and pleasure is mediated by a cognitive error, and the feeling of pleasure does not coincide with the savoring of rasa but emerges after the savoring of rasa (...) ceases. This paper argues that Rāmacandra and Guṇacandra demystify the Kashmiri theory of aesthetics by identifying affinities between the lived world and the fictive world of drama and by rendering the regular means of knowledge, such as inference and memory, as instrumental for the experience of rasa. It further suggests that this new conceptualization, in which pleasure is contingent upon the dissolution of illusion, may have facilitated the development of playwrighting among Jain monks from the twelfth century on. (shrink)

Art, Beauty and Imitation in Plato's Philosophy -- Art and Imitation in Aristotle -- Horace, Pseudo-Longinus and the Aesthetics of Literature in Hellenism -- Plotinus, Neo-Platonic and Christian Conception of Beauty -- The Middle Ages and Dante Alighieri -- The Heritage of Kantian Philosophy in Romanticism -- Moritz: Beyond the Concept of Imitation -- Theory of Poetry of Early German Romanticism -- Hegel: Art as a Form of the Absolute Spirit -- Schopenhauer: Art as Disinterestedness and Knowledge of Reality -- (...) Nietzsche: Knowledge and Art -- Symbolism and Aestheticism -- Benedetto Croce: Art and intuition -- Linguistics and Criticism -- Antonio Gramsci: The Role of Intellectuals in Culture -- Structuralism -- Martin Heidegger: The Work of Art and Truth -- Hans-Georg Gadamer: Poetry and Interpretation -- Critical Theory: A New Attitude towards Art and Society -- Perspectives of Post-Structuralism -- The Practice of Deconstruction -- Contemporary Schools and Traditions in Literary and Critical Theory -- Postmodern and the New Character of the Literary Work. (shrink)

English summary: Heinz Ludeking belonged to the German philosophical movement that explored analytical esthetics. Ludekings analytical approach to art brought new light to the definition and concept of art. In particular, he created a connection between logical reflection and esthetic investigation. French description: Heinz Ludeking appartient a ce courant de la philosophie allemande qui a pris pour objet l'esthetique analytique, et qui est encore largement meconnu en France en depit de sa productivite conceptuelle. Dans cet ouvrage, l'auteur s'est efforce (...) d'etablir un bilan critique de la premiere philosophie analytique de l'art - celle des annees 50-60 -, c'est-a-dire des travaux qui ont precede les theories de Goodman et de Danto. L'approche analytique de Ludeking, volontiers caustique, peut etre devastatrice. Elle apporte neanmoins une lumiere nouvelle sur un probleme central, jamais veritablement resolu, celui de la definition de l'art et du concept d'art. L'une des qualites dominantes de cette analyse est d'etre parvenue a realiser une jonction exceptionnellement rigoureuse entre la reflexion logique et l'investigation proprement esthetique. (shrink)

This volume provides the first ever extensive translation of the notes and fragments that survived Kant's death in 1804. These include marginalia, lecture notes, and sketches and drafts for his published works. They are important as an indispensable resource for understanding Kant's intellectual development and published works, casting new light on Kant's conception of his own philosophical methods and his relations to his predecessors, as well as on central doctrines of his work such as the theory of space, time and (...) categories, the refutations of skepticism and metaphysical dogmatism, the theory of the value of freedom and the possibility of free will, the conception of God, the theory of beauty, and much more. (shrink)

Examining afresh the 16th-century style of mannerism, Sjoerd van Tuinen synthesises philosophy and aesthetics to demonstrate not only the contemporary relevance of mannerism but its broader significance as a form of modal thinking. Beyond a style of art that spurned the balance and proportion of earlier Renaissance painting in favour of compositional instability and tension, this book looks a-historically at mannerism to investigate what it can tell us about continental modal metaphysics, focusing in particular on its artificial and what Van (...) Tuinen calls 'secondary' nature. In three main parts, Van Tuinen first explores the ontology, aesthetics and ethics of mannerism. He then develops this through an extended study of Leibniz as a modal and indeed mannerist philosopher, before outlining in the final part a (neo)-mannerist aesthetics that incorporates diagrammatics, alchemy and contemporary technologies of speculative design. Drawing on Bergson, Simondon, Deleuze, Stengers and Agamben, together with artworks from Lomazzo to Arcimboldo, The Philosophy of Mannerism uncovers the rich new pathways created by the combination of philosophy, art history and contemporary theory. (shrink)

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC, has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

Since the beginning of the 20th Century to the present day, it has rarely been doubted that whenever formal aesthetic methods meet their iconological counterparts, the two approaches appear to be mutually exclusive. In reality, though, an ahistorical concept is challenging a historical analysis of art. It is especially Susanne K. Langer´s long-overlooked system of analogies between perceptions of the world and of artistic creations that are dependent on feelings which today allows a rapprochement of these positions. Krois’s insistence on (...) a similar point supports this analysis. - I - Unbestritten bis heute gilt, formwissenschaftliche und ikonologische Methoden scheinen sich grundsätzlich auszuschließen, da die ersteren auf ahistorischen und die letzteren auf historischen Grundlagen aufbauen. Dem entgegen soll mit diesem Beitrag gezeigt werden, wie insbesondere die Forschungen Susanne K. Langers und ergänzend diejenigen von John M. Krois eine Annäherung beider Positionen ermöglichen. (shrink)

Between 1910 and 1917, Walter Benjamin composed a range of philosophical works and fragmented texts all of which touch upon the concept of youth and its intersection with issues of modernity and theology, faith and political action, religion and secularization, God, and the world. Yet, while scholars have rather extensively discussed Benjamin’s early works on language, literature, and esthetics, less attention has been given to his work on youth. This paper focuses on Benjamin’s writings on youth from these early (...) years. Its aim is to demonstrate how these writings were intended as contributions to the composition of a comprehensive theory of youth, which itself was to combine philosophical discussion with theological imagination. More concretely, by using the example of Meister Eckhart, who is rarely discussed in connection to Benjamin’s thought, the paper shows how Benjamin draws on Christian mystical notions of time, transcendence, and divinity, albeit in a secularized and therefore transformed guise, and how Benjamin’s intellectual endeavor can hence be labeled a modern-mystical theory of youth. (shrink)

Philosophers of science discuss whether theory selection depends on aesthetic judgments or criteria, and whether these putatively aesthetic features are genuinely extra-epistemic. As examples, judgments involving criteria such as simplicity and symmetry are often cited. However, other theory selection criteria, such as fecundity, coherence, internal consistency, and fertility, more closely match those criteria used in art contexts and by scholars working in aesthetics. Paying closer attention to the way these criteria are used in art contexts allows us to understand some (...) evaluative and developmental practices in scientific theory selection as genuinely aesthetic, enlarging the scope of the goals of science. (shrink)

Aesthetics: Music and ideas. Formalism. Perception, meaning, and the subject matter of art. The technical factor in art. The aesthetic function of language. The problem of belief. On defining metaphor.--Criticism: Cordelia absent. A poem by Frost and some principles of criticism. Critical communication. "Pretentious" as an aesthetic predicate. Superlatives. Some problems of interpretation.--Ethics and moral psychology: Natural pride and natural shame. Deontology and the ethics of lying. Ethical and aesthetic criticism.--Appendices.--A. Analytical philosophy and the study of art.--B. Notebooks and letters.