On the anniversary of Lenin's work of genius, the significance of this book for Marxist philosophy as a whole and, particularly, for the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge can be understood especially clearly. Turning today to the history of Marxist-Leninist thought in the twentieth century, we comprehend fully the enormous role played both by Lenin's defense of the principal propositions of dialectical materialism against revisionists and open enemies of Marxism dabbling in philosophy and his creative development of the underlying foundations (...) of Marxist theory — those foundations that, in the final analysis, determine both the manner of posing and the method of resolving all other problems in Marxism, not just those of a theoretical nature but those of a practical political nature as well. Many questions elaborated in Lenin's work of genius acquire particular timeliness for Marxist-Leninist philosophy specifically at the present stage in the development of science and under current conditions in the ideological struggle. In the present article we shall deal with the significance of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism for the interpretation of certain pressing problems of the Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge. (shrink)

This text is a classic of Lenin - his essay explores materialism and its relation to capitalism and how Communism can get over this psychological wish for material and empirical ownership.

Hans Kleinpeter’s letters to Ernst Mach held in the Deutsches Museum Archive in Munich are of the greatest importance in order to learn some details of the working relationship between these scholars. In the three letters here entirely published for the first time Kleinpeter shows his interest for Nietzsche’s thought, and states that some of the latter’s ideas are in compliance with Mach’s epistemology.

Tra i numerosi autori attivi nel campo delle scienze naturali che Friedrich Nietzsche ebbe modo di conoscere nel corso della propria vita, Ernst Mach rappresenta certamente un caso significativo. La sua presenza all'interno degli scritti del filosofo è pressoché nulla, ma la comunanza dei temi trattati e la particolare affinità delle prospettive adottate in materia di teoria della conoscenza invitano ad avvicinare questi due autori e a ipotizzare un qualche tipo di influsso diretto tra loro. Ciononostante, fino ad oggi non (...) era mai stato svolto uno studio critico e completo che esaminasse e discutesse tale relazione. Muovendo dai contenuti di una delle principali opere di Mach, i "Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen" (1886) questo volume delinea un quadro esegetico che fa di Mach non tanto un referente diretto, quanto piuttosto il segnale di una prospettiva di ricerca che in qualche modo stimolò l'interesse di Nietzsche e che per molti aspetti egli mostra di condividere. (shrink)

A longstanding criticism of Lenin is that his epistemological contributions to the theory of scientific socialism prompted the decline of Marxism in dogmatism and despotism in the twentieth century. According to this narrative, Lenin claimed to possess the objective truth, and he therefore refused to tolerate alternative perspectives. This article subjects these claims to a textual analysis, and it argues that they are erroneous. Lenin defends a fallibilist account of science that affirms the uncertainty of knowledge in the natural, (...) philosophical and social sciences. This fallibilism pervades the text that supposedly showcases his intolerance, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Lenin’s scientific socialism opposes rigid conceptions of socialism, and it encourages an atmosphere of democratic debate. Whilst Lenin’s writings have their flaws, they are not the founding documents of Marxist dogmatism that they are often portrayed as being. Lenin is not the narrow-minded vulgariser of Marxism that he is routinely taken to be. (shrink)

This volume explores Husserl's theory of sensibility and his conceptualization of spatial and temporal constitution. The author maps the linkages between Husserl's 'transcendental aesthetic', the theory of pure experience in empirio-criticism, as well as Immanuel Kant's transcendental philosophy. The core argument in this analysis centers on the relationship between spatiality and temporality in Husserl's philosophy. The study interrogates Husserl's understanding of the relationship between spatiality and temporality in terms of stratifications, analogies and parallelisms. It incorporates a discussion of (...) the potentialities and limitations of such an understanding. It concludes that such limits can be overcome by adopting an understanding of spatiality and temporality as interwoven moments of sensible experience-a 'spatio-temporal intertwining'. This 'intertwining' is made explicit in a thorough inquiry into three central topics in the phenomenological analysis of sensible experience: spatio-temporal individuation, perspectival givenness and bodily experience. The book shows how such an inquiry can form the bedrock of a dynamic and relational understanding of experience as a whole. (shrink)

In this essay I will argue for the existence of a Bolshevik Center, which coordinated the activities of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Social Democratic Party. This Bolshevik Center was dissolved in an intra-Bolshevik factional dispute on the eve of Lenin's writing his "Materialism" and "Empirio-Criticism." The source of the conflict in the Bolshevik Center related to disagreements over Lenin's tactics following the 1905 revolution. The leader of the anti-Lenin opposition was Bogdanov. But the struggle over tactics could (...) not be contained in the political sphere; it spilled over to the philosophical. Lenin's "Materialism" and "Empirio-Criticism" was written as a refutation of Bogdanov's philosophical thought in an attempt to drive him out of the Party. This essay will trace the events which led to the dissolution of the Bolshevik Center. In order to be able to follow the tactical debates a definition of terms to be used throughout this paper would be helpful. In terms of the strategic problems facing the Bolsheviks, as well as members of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, in their attitude to the Duma, the word 'Boycott' will refer to those who argued that the Bolsheviks should not participate in the Duma in any capacity. The Boycottists maintained that the Bolsheviks should not even participate in the elections to the Duma. The word Ultimatism refers to those among the Bolsheviks who wished to participate in the Third Duma, but who favored the total obedience of the Russian Social-Democrats who might be elected to the Duma to the Central Committee of the Party. Ultimatism refers to the control and hegemony of the Central Committee over any social-democratic delegates who might win elections to the Third Duma. Otzovism means 'removing'. The Otzovists were those among the Bolsheviks, who advocated the removal of any social-democratic delegate in the Third Duma who disobeyed the directives of the Party Central Committee. 'Ultimatism' and Otzovism concerned questions of Party authority. The Otzovist recommended the expulsion of any delegate in the Duma who abrogated the authority of the Party organs. Boycottism did not deal with questions of Party authority as such, but rather was fundamentally a tactical question: participation or non-participation in the Duma, e.g. 'parliamentarism' vs revolution. (shrink)

Argument that Marx has a realist ontology and a correspondence theory of truth. His views are compared to both Hegel's and Kant's. This interpretation departs from more Hegelian, 'idealist' interpretations that often rely on misunderstanding some of the work of the early Marx. There is also a discussion and partial defence of Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

In this essay I will argue for the existence of a Bolshevik Center, which coordinated the activities of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Social Democratic Party. This Bolshevik Center was dissolved in an intra-Bolshevik factional dispute on the eve of Lenin''s writing hisMaterialism and Empirio-Criticism. The source of the conflict in the Bolshevik Center related to disagreements over Lenin''s tactics following the 1905 revolution. The leader of the anti-Lenin opposition was Bogdanov. But the struggle over tactics could not (...) be contained in the political sphere; it spilled over to the philosophical. Lenin''sMaterialism and Empirio-Criticism was written as a refutation of Bogdanov''s philosophical thought in an attempt to drive him out of the Party. This essay will trace the events which led to the dissolution of the Bolshevik Center.In order to be able to follow the tactical debates a definition of terms to be used throughout this paper would be helpful. In terms of the strategic problems facing the Bolsheviks, as well as members of the Russian Social-Democratic Party (RSDP), in their attitude to theDuma, the word Boycott will refer to those who argued that the Bolsheviks should not participate in theDuma in any capacity. TheBoycottists maintained that the Bolsheviks should not even participate in the elections to theDuma. The wordUltimatism refers to those among the Bolsheviks who wished to participate in the ThirdDuma, but who favored the total obedience of the Russian Social-Democrats who might be elected to theDuma to the Central Committee of the Party.Ultimatism refers to the control and hegemony of the Central Committee over any social-democratic delegates who might win elections to the Third Duma.Otzovism means removing. TheOtzovists were those among the Bolsheviks, who advocated the removal of any social-democratic delegate in the ThirdDuma who disobeyed the directives of the Party Central Committee. Ultimatism andOtzovism concerned questions of Party authority. The Otzovist recommended the expulsion of any delegate in the Duma who abrogated the authority of the Party organs.Boycottism did not deal with questions of Party authority as such, but rather was fundamentally a tactical question: participation or non-participation in theDuma, e.g. parliamentarism vs revolution. (shrink)

The first part of the book is an excellent historico-systematic analysis of the romantic reaction against science underlying and pervading the once popular philosophical currents within the last seventy-five years, such as, e.g., Austro-German empirio-criticism, English neo-Hegelianism, French intuitionism, and Anglo-American pragmatism. The second part studies the new theories of mathematics and physics--including non-Euclidean geometry, non-Aristotelian logic, and non-Newtonian physics--in relation to "the phenomenon of irrationalism" in contemporary thought. The book is definitely worth reading, and anyone acquainted with (...) Morris R. Cohen's Reason and Nature will readily come to realize how Aliotta anticipates remarkably the courageous position that great American classic in contemporary philosophy takes towards "the insurgence against reason" in recent times. (shrink)

The elaboration of these principles has rested on the efforts of many thinkers. In presenting the scientific aspect, few have been as lucid and as aware of fundamental issues as the British physicist, J. D. Bernal. Aside from the Soviet tradition, which derives so largely from Lenin's work of critical re-statement, Materialism and Empirio-criticism, little has been done to carry out what has been mainly a program, a series of brilliant aperçus, and a guide. In Bernal's recent writings, (...) the attempt is finally being made to apply these principles and practice their program. His political activities, his philosophical commentary, and his research have blended in his Marxist vision of a scientific way of life. (shrink)

This book is a radical reappraisal of positivism as a major movement in philosophy, science and culture. In examining positivist movement and its contemporary impact, I had the following goals. First, to provide a more precise and systematic definition of the notion of positivism. Second, to describe positivism as a trend of thought concerned not only with the theory of knowledge and philosophy of science, but also with problems of ethics, social, and political philosophy, and show that its representatives usually (...) thought that the problems of the latter cannot be solved without solving the former first. Third, to examine the development of positivism as a movement which preserves a certain tradition and hence possesses some coherence, although the forms of this movement changed in different historical circumstances: it was born in the eighteenth century during the Enlightenment, took the form of social positivism in the nineteenth century, was transformed at the turn of the twentieth century with the emergence of empirio-criticism, and became logical positivism in the twentieth century. Fourth, to reveal the external and internal factors of this evolution. Fifth, to disclose the relation of positivism to other trends of philosophy. Sixth, to determine the influence the positive mind had not only upon philosophy, but upon other cultural phenomena, such as the natural and social sciences, law, politics, arts, religion, and everyday life. (shrink)

This paper, an extract from my Marxism and Materialism: Studies in Marxist Theory of Knowledge, discusses the epistemological status of philosophical realism. I take realism to be a necessary part of what Marx meant by 'materialism'. I argue that there are no valid, non-question-begging, decuctive arguments for the truth of realism; nor does empirical science inductively 'confirm' realism, in any technical sense of 'confirmation'. I argue that the relationship between realism and science is one of methodological continuity, in a sense (...) difficult to specify exactly, since the denial of the essential independence from the mind of the material world ends in theology, at least in the tradition of absolute idealism. I then examine Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, in which I claim to find the same argument about methodological continuity, and show how this claim might be applied to the tradition of subjective idealism, with its use of counterfactuals and logically possible experiences in the 'reduction' of the physical world to experience. (shrink)

En este artículo queremos investigar la relación entre las filosofías de Edmund Husserl y Richard Avenarius. A pesar de que este tema ha sido prácticamente ignorado por los estudiosos de Husserl, es de suma importancia si uno quiere iluminar los orígenes del pensamiento fenomenológico de Husserl. Nuestra tesis es que el concepto de Husserl de actitud natural y su correlato, el mundo natural -tal y como ellos surgen en diferentes conferencias durante la década de 1910 y especialmente en Ideas I (...) con respecto a la reducción fenomenológica- se derivan de una temprana confrontación con el punto de vista del empiriocriticismo de Avenarius como fue expuesto en su libro Der menschliche Weltbegriff. Con el fin de mantener esta afirmación, discutiremos el acercamiento gradual de Husserl a las teorías del filósofo suizo-alemán así como su última crítica al mismo. Aunque, de hecho, Husserl concibió el punto de vista den Avenarius como un principio valioso, al final de sus reflexiones pone en cuestión algunas de las premisas de la filosofía empiriocriticista.In this paper I investigate the relationship between the philosophies of Edmund Husserl and Richard Avenarius. Despite this tapie has been almost disregarded by Husserlian scholars, it is of uttermost importance if one aims at illuminating the origins of Hus­serl's phenomenological thinking. My thesis is that Husserl's concept of natural attitude and its correlate, the natural world -as they emerge in various lectures during the 1910s and especially in Ideen I with respectmto the phenomenological reduction- stem from an early confrontation with Avenarius' "empiriocriticist" standpoint as laid out in his book Der menschliche Weltbegriff. In order to up­ hold this claim, I will discuss in my paper Husserl's gradual approach to the theories of the Swiss-German philosopher as well as his late critique of the same. Although Husserl in fact conceived of Avenarius' standpoint as a valuable beginning, he was decisively prompted in his late reflections to call into question sorne of the premises of the "empirio-criticist" philosophy. (shrink)

History and the philosophy of science have played a very important role in dialectical materialism; their results have been destined to support the correctness of the ideas of Marxist philosophers, especially in their application in historical materialism.From this point of view, the circumstances of the origin of the works of the Marxist classics cannot be neglected: Engels wrote hisDialectics in Nature in the period of classical physics, and Lenin published hisMaterialism and Empirio-Criticism at the beginning of the 20th (...) century when our modern physics first began: shortly before the publication of Lenin's book, Röntgen and Becquerel discovered new kinds of radiation, Balmer published his ideas concerning the regularity of the hydrogen spectrum, Plank wrote his first articles about the elementary quantum and Einstein published his three famous articles (1905). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Against Ethical CriticismRichard A. PosnerOscar Wilde famously remarked that “there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” He was echoed by Auden, who said in his poem in memory of William Butler Yeats that poetry makes nothing happen (though the poem as a whole qualifies this overstatement), by Croce, and by formalist critics such as (...) Cleanth Brooks, a doyen of the New Critics, who insisted that edification was the function of religion but not of poetry. 1 George Orwell, though himself a didactic novelist, was of this view as well, 2 and it is one that most critics adopt when the issue is censorship. I accept Wilde’s thesis—the creed of aestheticism, of art for art’s sake—if understood to mean that the moral content and consequences of a work of literature are irrelevant to its value as literature; or as the critic Helen Vendler has put it, that “treating fictions as moral pep-pills or moral emetics is repugnant to anyone who realizes the complex psychological and moral motives of a work of art.” 3 This is not to deny that reading can have consequences, including moral and political ones. Information affects people’s outlook and behavior, and reading is a source of information. Imaginative literature conveys ideas, opinions, and information, often with great power. Think of the role that novels by Turgenev (Fathers and Sons), Dostoevsky (The Possessed), Conrad (The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes), Koestler (Darkness at Noon), Orwell (Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four), and, of course, Solzhenitsyn played in exposing the horrors of anarchism and communism. Of A Passage to India it has been said that “as an account of the social conditions of British India it was powerful enough to have influenced events.” 4 Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle is thought to have incited federal regulation of food processing; and few doubt the effect of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) on the abolitionist cause. [End Page 1]At the core of the aesthetic tradition, which I shall be defending in this essay particularly against its opponents in the “law and literature” movement, are three theses. First, immersion in literature does not make us better citizens or better people. One might be able to pick out some works of literature that would have such an effect because of the information they convey or the emotional state they induce, but they would constitute a skewed sample of literary works. Second, we should not be put off by morally offensive views encountered in literature even when the author appears to share them. A work of literature is not to be considered maimed or even marred by expressing unacceptable moral views; by the same token, a mediocre work of literature is not redeemed by expressing moral views of which we approve. The proper criteria for evaluating literature are aesthetic rather than ethical. Third, authors’ moral qualities or opinions should not affect our valuations of their works.The insistence, in short, is on the separation of the moral from the aesthetic—but with two qualifications. Some literature has little interest or value apart from the didactic and for it the proper criticism is didactic. And the separation of moral from aesthetic values is not a rejection of the former. The aesthetic outlook is a moral outlook, one that stresses the values of openness, detachment, hedonism, curiosity, tolerance, the cultivation of the self, and the preservation of a private sphere—in short, the values of liberal individualism.The counter tradition in literary criticism to the aesthetic originates with Plato and insists upon the importance, in some versions to the near or even total exclusion of anything else, of the ethical or political content and effects of works of literature, and less commonly of the author’s own morality. Martha Nussbaum, for example, deems Greek tragedies and Anglo-American realistic novels a part of moral philosophy. 5 Reading novels, she argues, “develops moral capacities without which citizens will not succeed in making reality out of the normative conclusions of any moral or political theory, however excellent.” 6 Wayne Booth, disagreeing with his illustrious... (shrink)

In a dissonance case, a person sincerely and with conviction asserts that P, while his/her overall automatic behavior suggests that he/she believes that not-P. According to Schwitzgebel, this is a case of in-between believing. This article raises several concerns about Schwitzgebel's account and proposes an alternative view. I argue that the in-between approach yields incorrect results in belief self-ascriptions and does not capture the psychological conflict underlying the individual's dissonance. I advance the view that in relevant cases the dissonant individual (...) has two mutually contradictory beliefs. (shrink)

Habermas's criticizes Heidegger for insulating totalities of meaning from possible overturning by attempts to invalidate individual claims. I first state Habermas's criticism, then elaborate an example from Heideggerthat supports Habermas's attack. Then I defend Heidegger by distinguishing levels of meaning in Heidegger's "world" from Habermas's more propositional "lifeworld." I conclude by accepting Habermas's objection restated in terms of the contrast between transcendental and local conditions. If Heidegger is unwilling to pay the price of either Kantian generality or Hegelian unity, (...) he should give up the simple priority of his epochal understandings of being. (shrink)

This article explores and defends some of f r leavis's ideas about the nature of reasoning in literary criticism. In particular, It examines leavis's contention that the validity of literary criticism does not wait upon a theoretical defence of its canons of judgments of standards. It aims to show that this eschewal of theoretical thought is rationally justifiable and that the form of reasoning leavis advocates for literary criticism has respectable parallels elsewhere, Not least in philosophy itself. (...) Throughout, Reference is made to the work of wittgenstein and john wisdom for elucidation and justification of leavis's point of view. (shrink)

Psychoanalytic literary criticism has always been something of an embarrassment. One resists labeling as a “psychoanalytic critic” because the kind of criticism evoked by the term mostly deserves the bad name it largely has made for itself. Thus I have been worrying about the status of some of my own uses of psychoanalysis in the study of narrative, in my attempt to find dynamic models that might move us beyond the static formalism of structuralist and semiotic narratology. And (...) in general, I think we need to worry about the legitimacy and force that psychoanalysis may claim when imported into the study of literary texts. If versions of psychoanalytic criticism have been with us at least since 1908, when Freud published his essay on “Creative Writers and Day-dreaming,” and if the enterprise has recently been renewed in subtle ways by post-structuralist versions of reading, a malaise persists, a sense that whatever the promises of their union, literature and psychoanalysis remain mismatched bedfellows—or perhaps I should say playmates.The first problem, and the most basic, may be that psychoanalysis in literary study has over and over again mistaken the object of analysis, with the result that whatever insights it has produced tell us precious little about the structure and rhetoric of literary texts. Traditional psychoanalytic criticism tends to fall into three general categories, depending on the object of analysis: the author, the reader, or the fictive persons of the text. The first of these constituted the classical locus of psychoanalytic interest. It is now apparently the most discredited, though also perhaps the most difficult to extirpate, since if the disappearance of the author has been repeatedly announced, authorial mutants ceaselessly reappear, as, for instance, in Harold Bloom’s psychomachia of literary history. Like the author, the fictive character has been deconstructed into an effect of textual codes, a kind of thematic mirage, and the psychoanalytic study of the putative unconscious of characters in fiction has also fallen into disrepute. Here again, however, the impulse resurfaces, for instance in some of the moves of a feminist criticism that needs to show how the represented female psyche refuses and problematizes the dominant concepts of male psychological doctrine. Feminist criticism has in fact largely contributed to a new variant of the psychoanalytic study of fictive characters, a variant one might label the “situational-thematic”: studies of Oedipal triangles in fiction, their permutations and evolution, of the roles of mothers and daughters, of situations of nurture and bonding, and so forth. It is work often full of interest, but nonetheless methodologically disquieting in its use of Freudian analytic tools in a wholly thematic way, as if the identification and labeling of human relations in a psychoanalytic vocabulary were the task of criticism. The third traditional field of psychoanalytic literary study, the reader, continues to flourish in ever-renewed versions, since the role of the reader in the creation of textual meaning is very much on our minds at present, and since the psychoanalytic study of readers’ responses willingly brackets the impossible notion of author in favor of the acceptable and also verifiable notion of reader. The psychoanalytic study of the reader may concern real readers or the reader as psychological everyman . But like the other traditional psychoanalytic approaches, it displaces the object of analysis from the text to some person, some other psychodynamic structure—a displacement I wish to avoid since, as I hope to make clear as I go along, I think psychoanalytic criticism can and should be textual and rhetorical. Peter Brooks is the Tripp Professor of the Humanities at Yale University, where he is also director of the Whitney Humanities Center and chairman of the French department. His most recent book is Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative, which has recently been reissued in paperback. His work in progress concerns psychoanalysis and story-telling. (shrink)

After more than a decade teaching ancient Greek history and philosophy at University College, Oxford, British philosopher and political theorist Bernard Bosanquet resigned from his post to spend more time writing. He was particularly interested in contemporary social theory, and was involved with the Charity Organisation Society and the London Ethical Society. He wrote numerous articles before beginning this book, which was his first and was published in 1885 as a response to the Principles of Logic, published in 1883, by (...) his contemporary F. H. Bradley. Bosanquet, who was deeply influenced by the German philosopher Hegel, argues that there are 'signs of a philosophical movement in this country which may assimilate what is really great in European philosophy, without forfeiting the distinctive merits of English thought'. With this as the framework, the book examines the relationship of judgment and logic to knowledge. (shrink)

If the idea of morality is approached by way both of common sense views about morality and common philosophical accounts of it, then the meaning of the term "moral" as this is sometimes used in literary criticism must seem puzzling. the puzzle is illustrated rather than solved, but some tentative suggestions are made. for instance common notions about what morality is may be too narrow.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hypermediated Art CriticismPamela G. Taylor (bio) and B. Stephen Carpenter II (bio)Technological media catapults our perception into what Marshall McLuhan called "new transforming vision and awareness."1 As our lives become more and more immersed in such technologies as television, film, and interactive computers, we find ourselves inundated with a heightened sense of mindfulness—an aesthetic experience made possible through such computer technological characteristics as hyperlinks, hypermedia, and hyperreality. In these (...) terms, the prefix "hyper" represents various linking devices inherent to computer technology that allure and transport us between, above, below, and toward vast areas of information, places, and peoples. Hypermediacy, according to Bob Cotton and Richard Oliver, is "an entirely new kind of media experience born from the marriage of TV and computer technologies. Its raw ingredients can be brought together in any combination. It is a medium that offers random access; it has no physical beginning, middle, or end."2 In other words, there is no set or static structure inherent in technological media. It is not so much an "anything goes" apparatus as it is an "anything is possible" system. The seemingly vast possibilities inherent to technological media offer us many and alternate views of the world.Just as technological media encourage multiple means of viewing the world, no single approach to art criticism can be considered dominant, as several methods, methodologies, and approaches exist for responding to [End Page 1] works of art. We conceive of art criticism as a complex means of making meanings about works of art and communicating those meanings to other people. Following the lead of art educator Terry Barrett,3 art criticism hinges on the four activities of describing, interpreting, judging, and theorizing about art. Barrett suggests that, although all four overlap, interpretation is the most important and most likely the most complex aspect of art criticism. Although interwoven with description, analysis, and judgment, interpretation of the meanings of individual works of art is of foremost concern in contemporary art criticism. Similarly, we situate hypermediated art criticism as a synthesis of our descriptions, interpretations, judgments, and theories—both verbal and visual—with the various ways in which computer technology facilitates the simultaneous existence, representation, storage, and presentation of these and other forms of meaning making about works of art.Hypermediated art criticism is built upon our own technological abilities to both create and follow divergent paths, ideas, and beliefs according to our choices. Hypermediated art criticism is inclusive of the ways that our choices change daily depending upon our situation, role, and purpose, or simply as a result of what we witness or experience in a moment. In the hypermediated criticism process, our ways of seeing and knowing change from a linear to multilinear perspective, from single to multilayered, and from static to mutable perception. Indeed, the disparate ways of seeing and knowing made possible through technological media and hypermedia provide us with an expansive and personally reflective approach to art criticism.Personal Reflection and Art CriticismMichael Joyce, known for his poetic approach to computer hypertext theory and fictional writing, says, "We are who we are. Layered and overlaid, we make a world within our bodies."4 Possibly now more than ever that world within our bodies can be represented, re-presented, and re-invented right before our eyes through technological media. Digital ethnographer Ricki Goldman-Segall refers to this technological world as a learning constellation in which "we are each composed of many selves, all of which interact with each other as we learn.... With the use of new computer technologies, we extend not only our technological abilities, but also our various personae—the societies of our minds—in the form of new objects for others to think with."5 In the classroom, hypermediated art criticism generated through computer technology functions just this way—as new objects that we, and our students, use to help us extend the ways in which we think about works of art.Contrary to the antihumanist approach so often associated with computer technology theory,6 our discussion of hypermediated art criticism—the symbiotic relationship of art criticism and technology—begins with the [End Page 2] basic assumption that a primary purpose of... (shrink)