The aim of what I propose to call “existential aesthetics” is to investigate the various ways in which art and certain kinds of aesthetic practice or aesthetic experience can be of existential importance to people. Section I provides a definition of existential aesthetics, while Section II delineates this emerging field from cognate areas of research. Sections III and IV explore various subcategories and examples of existential aesthetics. Section V seeks to identify important avenues (...) for future research and Section VI presents some concluding thoughts about the potential of existential aesthetics and why philosophers should be encouraged to fulfill this potential. (shrink)

_Living Poetically_ is the first book to focus primarily on Kierkegaard's existential aesthetics as opposed to traditional aesthetic features of his writings such as the use of pseudonyms, literary techniques and figures, and literary criticism. _Living Poetically_ traces the development of the concept of the poetic in Kierkegaard's writings as that concept is worked out in an ethical-religious perspective in contrast to the aesthetics of early German romanticism and Hegelian idealism. Sylvia Walsh seeks to elucidate what it (...) means, in Kierkegaard's view, to be an authentic poet in the form of a poetic writer and to clarify his own role as a Christian poet and writer as he understood it. Walsh shows that, in spite of strong criticisms made of the poetic in some of his writings, Kierkegaard maintained a fundamentally positive understanding of the poetic as an essential ingredient in ethical and religious forms of life. Walsh thus reclaims Kierkegaard as a poetic thinker and writer from those who would interpret him as an ironic practitioner of an aestheticism devoid of and detached from the ethical-religious as well as from those who view him as rejecting the poetic and aesthetic on ethical or religious grounds. Viewing contemporary postmodern feminism and deconstruction as advocating a romantic mode of living poetically, Walsh concludes with a feminist reading of Kierkegaard that affirms both individuality and relatedness, commonalities and differences between the self and others, men and women, for the fashioning of an authentic mode of living poetically in the present age. (shrink)

Primarily because of recent studies , there has been a revaluation of Kierkegaard’s view of art and the aesthetic. This article distinguishes between the ethical aesthetics of the pseudonym B in Either/Or and Kierkegaard’s theological aesthetics. It will show that, while imagination and appropriation are core concepts in both forms of aesthetics, that Kierkegaard’s view of radical transcendence – the qualitative distinction between God and human beings – is the norm only for his theological aesthetics. As (...) a central anthropological category, imagination ensures the necessary condition that art is important regardless of the stage of life . Kierkegaard is not an iconoclast; it is not the image that is at issue but the use to which it is put . Hermeneutically, the relationship between the work of art and the public has to do with appropriation, with response. Radical transcendence is the norm for the use of the imagination and art in the Christian religion and also determines indirect communication by connecting it to Christology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Living Poetically: Kierkegaard’s Existential AestheticMerold WestphalLiving Poetically: Kierkegaard’s Existential Aesthetics, by Sylvia Walsh; xiv & 294 pp. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994, $39.50.This is a doubly important book. Substantively, its interpretation of Kierkegaard’s existential aesthetics provides a fresh and illuminating interpretation of his writings, pointing to recurring themes often quite neglected. Formally, it offers an interpretation of those writings as a (...) whole. It has a [End Page 418] distinctive focus and does not pretend to be an all encompassing interpretation, but it calls attention by example to the need to read specific texts in the context of the entire authorship. Add to this that it is gracefully written and rigorously researched (the footnotes are worth the price of admission), and you have a book that serious readers of Kierkegaard cannot afford to ignore.The title gives the central thesis. What interests Walsh is not Kierkegaard’s poetic gifts or aesthetic theories but the sustained attempt to incorporate aesthetic categories and ideals into his understanding of ethico-religious existence. The German romantics, perhaps his own most dangerous temptation, were not just interested in producing and enjoying works of life but in living poetically, in making their own lives into works of art. Kierkegaard’s critique of romanticism consists, not in repudiating this ideal, but appropriating and transforming it so as to incorporate it into a religious and eventually Christian mode of existence. Walsh’s claim that for Kierkegaard “faith itself is understood poetically as a ‘work of art’” (p. 3) rests on statements like the following, taken from The Concept of Irony, “Living poetically... means becoming clear and transparent to oneself, not in infinite and egotistical self-satisfaction but in one’s absolute and eternal validity” (quoted on p. 59).Walsh traces this ideal through three stages of Kierkegaard’s writings. The first of these culminates in the existential alternative that Judge William offers to the young romantic aesthete in Either/Or. Building on themes like the one just cited from Kierkegaard’s own earliest writings, the Judge argues at length that ethical institutions like marriage and the religious beliefs and practices in which they have traditionally been placed are the proper home of the ideals of living poetically. They only exclude the aesthetic when it seeks to make the self its own creator, free from all actualities, social or metaphysical.Walsh’s thesis could be paraphrased as the claim that Judge William is more important to Kierkegaard’s total authorship than is usually noticed. She acknowledges that after Either/Or his ideal is not thematized with anything like his single-mindedness, but claims that “the content of the concept of living poetically in an ethical-religious manner is sustained and further developed in the authorship in a number of ways” (p. 243). She traces these in detail through a second and third phase of the authorship, paying special attention to the increasingly negative statements about the poetic in the period from 1845 to 1848, her second phase. She argues that the critique of certain forms of the poetic leaves untouched Kierkegaard’s own poetic ideal—“to create external products of art that come close to reflecting actuality in an ethical-religious manner and that serve to direct us toward actuality rather than away from it in the realization of poetic ideality in our own lives” (p. 221).Walsh’s final chapter brings Kierkegaard’s existential aesthetics into conversation with contemporary postmodernism, including certain forms of French feminism. By emphasizing the tendencies that link postmodernism to romanticism she presents the former as little more than a contemporary version of the [End Page 419] latter, just what it was that Kierkegaard was seeking to overcome, both as a temptation in himself and as a disease in his culture. But this picture is one-sided. Real and important differences between Kierkegaard and contemporary postmodernism are highlighted at the expense of real and important agreements on such major themes as the critique of speculation and even the critique of romanticism as the flight from the actuality of temporal finitude. Still, in addition to being an important contribution to the discussion of Kierkegaard and postmodernism... (shrink)

우리 사회는 전례 없는 고령화 시대에 접어들었다. 지속적으로 진행되는 노화는 여러 가지 부정적인 감정을 동반한다. 우리가 살아가는 인생의 각 시기는 누구나 자신에게는 처음의 시간이다. 나이가 든다고 저절로 지혜로워지는 것은 아니다. 나이가 들면 우리는 삶의 가장 본질적인 부분을 다루는 철학에 관심을 갖게 마련이다. 반면 우리 사회에서 노년기에 대한 논의는 복지 분야에 집중되어 있기에 보다 풍성한 철학적 담론이 요청된다. 본 논문은 노년이 삶을 예술작품으로 조형함으로써 자존감을 회복하는 길을 모색하고자 한다. 리쾨르에 따르면 자기존중은 곧 자기해석이다. 자존감은 자기가 해석할 수 있는 능력을 가졌으며 선한 (...) 삶을 목표로 심사숙고한 선택을 따를 줄 아는 존재라는 것을 인정할 때 얻어진다. 이는 자신이 선한 삶을 추구하며 살아가는 윤리적 주체임을 증명하는 일이다. 자기존중은 타자를 배려해야 얻을 수 있기에 타자로 말미암아 만들어지는 자기해석이다. 자기해석과 실천이 따를 때 연륜은 성숙과 확장의 능동적인 과정이 되어 예술로서의 삶을 조형하게 될 것이다. 노년은 많은 사회적 관계들보다는 진정성이 있는 소수의 관계에 집중해야 할 때이다. 친애에 대한 해석학적 고찰은 노년담론에서 시사하는 바가 크다. 본고는 리쾨르의 자기성 형성에 있어서 자기존중과 타자배려의 과정에서 드러나는 조화와 새로움의 생성, 신뢰를 지키는 일관성의 맥락이 실존미학으로 귀결될 수 있음을 증명함으로써 노년에게 예술로서의 삶을 제시하고자 한다. (shrink)

As early as 1905, Husserl made clear that, when it comes to aesthetic consideration, our “interest” is not directed toward the existence of the object as such, but rather toward the object’s way of appearance. Husserl’s famous letter to Hofmannsthal (1907) goes as far as to suggest that any existential concerns are potentially even a menace to the purity of aesthetic experience. This position clearly echoes Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment presented in the third Critique, notably as regards the (...) notion of disinterestedness. However, this is not tantamount to claiming that aesthetic attitude implies the suspension of all interest: this paper aims to show that it would be more appropriate to discuss it in terms of a change of interest: from an existential interest to an axiological one. (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)

This essay analyzes the relation between nothingness and the work of art, where negation appears as a fundamental element of art. Starting at a discussion of the concept of nothingness in existential phenomenology, it points to the limitations of Heidegger's notion of nullity and negation, which spring from the denial of the dimension of consciousness to his Dasein. Although Sartre recovers that dimension in his portrayal of the pour-soi, now the idea of nothingness is not taken to its ultimate (...) consequence, where art would appear as a product of consciousness that is entrenched in nothingness. Only through an enlarged notion of consciousness, one that allows the perception of negative experience as intrinsically related to poiesis, will the work of art appear ontologically grounded in a form of Being that searches for its own contradiction. Such an enlarged notion of consciousness appears in the thought of Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō, where concepts such as "the place of nothingness" and "pure experience" can serve as ground to an analysis of the relation between nothingness and the work of art. (shrink)

: This essay analyzes the relation between nothingness and the work of art, where negation appears as a fundamental element of art. Starting at a discussion of the concept of nothingness in existential phenomenology, it points to the limitations of Heidegger’s notion of nullity and negation, which spring from the denial of the dimension of consciousness to his Dasein. Although Sartre recovers that dimension in his portrayal of the pour-soi, now the idea of nothingness is not taken to its (...) ultimate consequence, where art would appear as a product of consciousness that is entrenched in nothingness. Only through an enlarged notion of consciousness, one that allows the perception of negative experience as intrinsically related to poiesis, will the work of art appear ontologically grounded in a form of Being that searches for its own contradiction. Such an enlarged notion of consciousness appears in the thought of Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō , where concepts such as ‘‘the place of nothingness’’ and ‘‘pure experience’’ can serve as ground to an analysis of the relation between nothingness and the work of art. (shrink)

Everyday aesthetic experiences and concerns occupy a large part of our aesthetic life. However, because of their prevalence and mundane nature, we tend not to pay much attention to them, let alone examine their significance. Western aesthetic theories of the past few centuries also neglect everyday aesthetics because of their almost exclusive emphasis on art. In a ground-breaking new study, Yuriko Saito provides a detailed investigation into our everyday aesthetic experiences, and reveals how our everyday aesthetic tastes and judgments (...) can exert a powerful influence on the state of the world and our quality of life. By analysing a wide range of examples from our aesthetic interactions with nature, the environment, everyday objects, and Japanese culture, Saito illustrates the complex nature of seemingly simple and innocuous aesthetic responses. She discusses the inadequacy of art-centered aesthetics, the aesthetic appreciation of the distinctive characters of objects or phenomena, responses to various manifestations of transience, and the aesthetic expression of moral values; and she examines the moral, political, existential, and environmental implications of these and other issues. (shrink)

Everyday aesthetic experiences and concerns occupy a large part of our aesthetic life. However, because of their prevalence and mundane nature, we tend not to pay much attention to them, let alone examine their significance. Western aesthetic theories of the past few centuries also neglect everyday aesthetics because of their almost exclusive emphasis on art. In a ground-breaking new study, Yuriko Saito provides a detailed investigation into our everyday aesthetic experiences, and reveals how our everyday aesthetic tastes and judgments (...) can exert a powerful influence on the state of the world and our quality of life. By analysing a wide range of examples from our aesthetic interactions with nature, the environment, everyday objects, and Japanese culture, Saito illustrates the complex nature of seemingly simple and innocuous aesthetic responses. She discusses the inadequacy of art-centered aesthetics, the aesthetic appreciation of the distinctive characters of objects or phenomena, responses to various manifestations of transience, and the aesthetic expression of moral values; and she examines the moral, political, existential, and environmental implications of these and other issues. (shrink)

This book proposes that aesthetics begin not with concepts of being or semblance, but with a concept of appearing. Appearing bespeaks of the reality that all aesthetic objects share, however different they may otherwise be. For Martin Seel, appearing plays its part everywhere in the aesthetic realm, in all aesthetic activity. In his book, Seel examines the existential and cultural meaning of aesthetic experience. In doing so, he brings aesthetics and philosophy of art together again, which in (...) continental as well as analytical thinking have been more and more separated in the recent decades. Within Seel’s framework, to apprehend things and events with respect to how they appear momentarily and simultaneously to our senses represents a genuine way for human beings to encounter the world. The consciousness that emerges here is an anthropologically central faculty. In perceiving the unfathomable particularity of a sensuously given we gain insight into the indeterminable of our lives. Attentiveness to what is appearing is therefore at the same time attentiveness to ourselves. This is also the case when works of art imagine past or future, probable or improbable presences. Artworks develop their transgressive energy from their presence as sense-catching forms. They bring about a special presence in which a presentation of close or distant presences comes about. (shrink)

Emily Brady and Arto Haapala (2003) define melancholy as a complex emotion with aspects of both pain and pleasure that draw on a range of emotions — sadness, love and longing — all of which are bound with a reflective, solitary state of mind. Melancholy, they argue, does not just play a role in our encounters with artworks and the natural environment but also invites aesthetic considerations into play in more everyday situations. As such, melancholy can be considered an aesthetic (...) emotion per se. In this paper, I critically examine the various aspects of Brady and Haapala’s account, then present an alternative analysis of melancholy and its aesthetic relevance. (shrink)

This book proposes that aesthetics begin not with concepts of being or semblance, but with a concept of _appearing_. _Appearing_ bespeaks of the reality that all aesthetic objects share, however different they may otherwise be. For Martin Seel, _appearing_ plays its part everywhere in the aesthetic realm, in all aesthetic activity. In his book, Seel examines the existential and cultural meaning of aesthetic experience. In doing so, he brings aesthetics and philosophy of art together again, which in (...) continental as well as analytical thinking have been more and more separated in the recent decades. Within Seel's framework, to apprehend things and events with respect to how they appear momentarily and simultaneously to our senses represents a genuine way for human beings to encounter the world. The consciousness that emerges here is an anthropologically central faculty. In perceiving the unfathomable particularity of a sensuously given we gain insight into the indeterminable of our lives. Attentiveness to what is _appearing_ is therefore at the same time attentiveness to ourselves. This is also the case when works of art imagine past or future, probable or improbable presences. Artworks develop their transgressive energy from their presence as sense-catching forms. They bring about a special presence in which a presentation of close or distant presences comes about. (shrink)

The emergency of aesthetics -- Measurable contemplations -- Indifferent beauty -- Emergency through art -- Social paradoxes -- Urban discharges -- Environmental calls -- Historical accounts -- Emergency aesthetics -- Anarchic interpretations -- Existential interventions.

In his attack on the notion of immediate experience, Hans-Georg Gadamer argues that aesthetic experience should be absorbed into hermeneutics because alone it cannot account for the historical nature of experience ; predicated on an ontological theory of art, the unfathomable, therefore, is the sense we have of these infinite hermeneutic depths. I argue that this account is methodologically and existentially unacceptable: methodologically because it is overly speculative, and existentially because it betrays authentic existence. I critique Gadamer from the perspective (...) of William James’ Pragmatism and argue, inverting Gadamer’s main thesis, that hermeneutics should be reduced to aesthetic experience. The meaning that emerges in aesthetic experience does not ‘rise up’ from the depths but is immanent in what James calls ‘pure experience’. The unfathomable, therefore, is not a glimpse into the metaphysical abyss but a phenomenological insight into the immanent structure of experience. (shrink)

Sartre and Ricœur have never been compared in detail before, as hermeneutics and existentialism have been wrongly pitted against each other. The Aesthetics of Autonomy demonstrates that an existential hermeneutics overcomes the respective limitations of each philosopher and gives us the necessary tools of seeking autonomy in an age of uncertainty, which is the globalized world.

What happens to the form of the biennial when biennials become part of a world system of art institutions, subject to the historical temporality of a global contemporaneity? In particular, what happens when the periodic rhythms of national narratives of biennial exhibitions are overcoded by a serial sequence of international biennials – competing for contemporaneity – seemingly without end? This essay approaches these questions via a consideration of the debate about the transitional symbolic significance of the 1989 Third Havana Biennale. (...) It contrasts three historical problematics of ‘the contemporary’ as models through which to think the cultural function of biennials: the critique of anthropology, or, the coeval; socialist post- coloniality, or the avant-garde construction of traditions; the historical contemporaneity of a global capitalist modernity. (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)

The author describes his work as "an attempt to systematically re-think philosophy out of its original beginning and most fundamental perspective: the primordial phenomenon of wonder." Relying heavily upon the existential and phenomenological traditions, Boelen focusses upon wonder as the locus for the "dialectical self-manifestation of Being"; with this as his foundation, Boelen establishes the necessarily circular character of philosophical reflection, as rooted in wonder and recurring back upon its original data. The theory involved is further specified in analyses (...) of the aesthetic phenomenon, ethical existence, and existential loving. Throughout is evidenced a concern that philosophy and psychology work together in the reflective approach the primordial phenomena of human existence. Militantly anti-"scientistic." Although stylistically weak at times, Existential Thinking is nonetheless a useful and suggestive work; it is, to use one of the highest praises in Boelen's terminology, a beginning--and that in the two-fold sense of exploring the origins of philosophical reflection, and of indicating directions for fuller, more detailed reflection.--D. F. D. (shrink)

Meaning, feeling and expression - the experience of inwardness - matter most in human existence. The perspective of biopoetics shows that this experience is shared by all organisms. Being alive means to exist through relations that have existential concern, and to express these dimensions through the body and its gestures. All life takes place within one poetic space which is shared between all beings and which is accessible through subjective sensual experience. We take part in this through our empirical (...) subjectivity, which arises from the experiences and needs of living beings, and which makes them open to access and sharing in a poetic objectivity. Biopoetics breaks free from the causal-mechanic paradigm which made biology unable to account for mind and meaning. Biology becomes a science of expression, connection and subjectivity which can understand all organisms including humans as feeling agents in a shared ecology of meaningful relations, embedded in a symbolical and material metabolism of the biosphere. (shrink)

What is music? Modern society has come to view music largely as entertainment and commodity. In response, We Are Music: An Existential Journey Toward Infinity provides the reader with a holistic starting point. Music has unlimited potential to transform and enlighten, and is only impeded when bound by materialism, physicalism, and reductionism. We Are Music is an attempt to bring music back to the core of humanity as an agent of positive empowerment, self-actualization, and beyond. Embracing interconnectivity, music is (...) more deeply experienced alongside the arts, science, social sciences, math, philosophy, history, and, above all, spirituality. An endless spiral, self-perception and identity can be vastly expanded, if not questioned and transcended. Music is an infinite field and any attempt to define and describe it is problematically finite and consequently limited. Herein lies the impossibility of the book which both excites and disturbs; the paradox of being and not being. A roadmap for music lovers toward self-realization, We Are Music is for those who desire to delve deeper into the power and illusion of self through music. (shrink)

“Atsumori” is a Noh play composed by master playwright Zeami sometime before 1423, featuring characters from the Tales of the Heike. Although popular to this day, the philosophical significance of the play remains underdeveloped and underappreciated. Prima facie, it features a ghost who is liberated thanks to the sincere prayer of the priest who killed him. Simplistic reading would yield simplistic understanding of the characters and their dynamism, and would fail to appreciate, for instance, the agency of the ghost or (...) the liberation of the priest. Accordingly, some regard the play as falling short of the highest aesthetic value, insofar as its protagonist fails to attain liberation through his own effort. Some even contend that the ulterior purpose of the play is to portray ghosts as powerless and desperate so that vanquishers need not fear vengeful ghosts. While it is possible that Zeami indeed held such ulterior intention and regarded it as second rank for the protagonist’s lack of agency, I shall present a different reading that would yield a richer appreciation of the characters and their dynamism. I do so by regarding the “friendship of dharma” that occurs at the culmination of the play as “existential communion” as presented in Tanabe Hajime’s later philosophy. That is, the play need not be read as a story about a living priest saving a dead warrior—it can be read as about two lost souls saving each other, through mutual acceptance, mutual sacrifice, and collaborative mediation of the Absolute. For this purpose, the paper first delineates Tanabe’s later philosophy with a focus on the idea of existential communion. Then it introduces “Atsumori” and discusses its philosophical significance. An impasse due to the scope of the play will be identified, which I call “the problem of epistemic authority,” and to fill the gap I will introduce and discuss another spin-off story featuring Atsumori. The paper intends to offer a philosophically richer reading of the play to invite readers to think deeply and creatively about Noh. (shrink)

A well-known Hungarian philosopher, politician, literary and art theorist Georg Lukacs was a notable figure of philosophical thought in XX century. Although he was interested in many problems philosophical-aesthetical matter is the main one in all his works. The problem of human alienation from social forms is outlined in his numerous literary, philosophical, aesthetical works of pre- and post- Marxian periods. The concept of philosophical-aesthetical grounds for overcoming human alienation has been developed in his art from romantic feeling of (...) class='Hi'>existential tragedy through the utopian expectancy of “aesthetic ideal” realization to the reliance on being conscious of individual blood nature through dialectic penetration of subjectivity and objectivity in the process of aesthetical perception. Thus he has the unaltered point of view that the art is a particular opposed to alien human nature sphere of being which allows taking away the dual principle of alien forms of human being and its essence. (shrink)

Education has long been charged with the taskof forming and shaping subjectivity andidentity. However, the prevailing view ofeducation as a project of producing rationalautonomous subjects has been challenged bypostmodern and poststructuralist critiques ofsubstantial subjectivity. In a similar vein,Emmanuel Levinas inverts the traditionalconception of subjectivity, claiming that weare constituted as subjects only in respondingto the other. In other words, subjectivity isderivative of an existentially priorresponsibility to and for the other. Hisconception of ethical responsibility is thusalso a radical departure from the prevailingview (...) of what it means to be a responsible moralagent. In this paper, I use jazz improvisationas a metaphor to focus on three interrelatedaspects of ethical responsibility on Levinas'saccount: passivity, heteronomy, andinescapability. I then point toward some waysin which reframing responsibility andsubjectivity along this line might offer newpossibilities for conceiving subjectivity andmoral agency in education. (shrink)

The problem of evil is not only a logical problem about God's goodness but also an existential problem about the sense of God's presence, which the Biblical book of Job conceives as a problem of aesthetic experience. Thus, just as theism can be grounded in religious experience, atheism can be grounded in experience of evil. This phenomenon is illustrated by two contrasting literary descriptions of aesthetic experience by Jean-Paul Sartre and Annie Dillard. I illuminate both of these literary texts (...) with a discussion of the 18th Century philosopher Lord Shaftesbury's concept of ‘enthusiasm’. (shrink)

Deleuze's publications have attracted enormous attention, but scant attention has been paid to the existential relevance of Deleuze's writings. In the lineage of Nietzsche, Life Drawing develops a fully affirmative Deleuzean aesthetics of existence. For Foucault and Nehamas, the challenge of an aesthetics of existence is to make your life, in one way or another, a work of art. In contrast, Bearn argues that art is too narrow a concept to guide this kind of existential project. (...) He turns instead to the more generous notion of beauty, but he argues that the philosophical tradition has mostly misconceived beauty in terms of perfection. Heraclitus and Kant are well-known exceptions to this mistake, and Bearn suggests that because Heraclitean becoming is beyond conceptual characterization, it promises a sensualized experience akin to what Kant called free beauty. In this new aesthetics of existence, the challenge is to become beautiful by releasing a Deleuzean becoming: becoming becoming. Bearn's readings of philosophical texts--by Wittgenstein, Derrida, Plato, and others--will be of interest in their own right. (shrink)

This paper first distinguishes governance (collective, autonomous self-regulatory processes) from government (externally-imposed mandatory regulation); it proposes that the second of these is essentially incompatible with a conception of the medical humanities that involves imagination and vision on the part of medical practitioners. It next develops that conception of the medical humanities, as having three distinguishable aspects (all of them distinct from the separate phenomena popularly known as “arts-in-health”): first, an intellectual enquiry into the nature of clinical medicine; second, an important (...) dimension of medical education; third, a resource for moral and aesthetic influences upon clinical practice, supporting “humane health care” as the moral inspirations behind organised medicine. Medical humanities sustains these three aspects through paying proper attention to the existential and subjective aspects of medicine. By encouraging authentic imagination among health care practitioners, medical humanities aligns well with both humane health care and governance in the sense of self-regulation. However, it can neither be achieved mechanistically nor well-measured through proxies such as patient satisfaction. Above all, it should not be allowed to supply, through inappropriate qualitative “targets,” new forms of management tyranny. (shrink)

Times of Existential Discomfort are these, where man is still seeking for a spiritual path, between sacred and profane. What's the role of philosophy in this search, does she require some means that are in others hands? In th hands of powered people, between economic powershi and aesthetic extravaganza?

Based on a Lived Experience Description written by an experienced nurse in Denmark, this article offers an ontological and existential‐phenomenological exploration of aesthetic dimensions of excellence in nursing. In the research of Patricia Benner and colleagues, excellence in nursing is described as a matter of intuitive pattern recognition based on clinical experience and narrative understanding. In this article, and based on phenomenological reflections and philosophical inspirations from the Danish philosopher Dorthe Jørgensen and the French philosopher Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, I suggest (...) an extended understanding of excellence in nursing, and I argue that the work and research of Benner seem to overlook ontological and aesthetic aspects of excellence in nursing. This article argues that aesthetic aspects of excellence in nursing can be comprehended as moments where nurses sense a surplus of meaning and moments where the nurse and the patient share and are subjected to communal and unfolding life phenomena. Aesthetic dimensions of being in nursing can, from an ontological approach, best be described as similar to the way human beings listen to a piece of music or to how artists try to give a voice to the world: as a resonant way of being and becoming within the moment. (shrink)

In her Nobel speech in 2019, Olga Tokarczuk presented the category of tenderness as a new way of narrating the contemporary world. This article is a proposal for the analysis and interpretation of tenderness in ethical and aesthetic terms. (1) From an ethical perspective, tenderness is interpreted as an extension and complement of feminist relational ethics, i.e., the ethics of care. In the proposed approach, tenderness is a broader and more universal quality than care in the feminist understanding. This article (...) opens with a brief discussion of feminist interventions in ethics, with particular emphasis on the ethics of care. Next, the differences between care and tenderness are enumerated and described, in order to show how tenderness can serve as an extension and complement of the feminist ethic of care. These considerations are guided by the question of why tenderness is a better—more appropriate and more responsive to contemporary challenges—moral guidepost than care. (2) From the aesthetic perspective, tenderness is the negation of a contemplative, distanced, impersonal, and rational view of reality. As an aesthetic imperative, tenderness implies engaged experience of the beauty of reality in all of its manifestations. Therefore, in the last part of the article, existential tender attunement is described in aesthetic terms, as a position serving to sensitize others to the beauty and complexity of the post-anthropocentric world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to draw important parallels between the way in which configured pictorial practices of early Cubism interpreted the idea of tactile space and the phenomenological concept of existential spatiality. It is argued that in dispensing with the “illusion of perspectival space” and deconstructing geometrical perspective, several Cubist artists developed a position of multi-perspectival realism with respect to what remains ungraspable in the three-dimensional visual rendering of space. Tactile space is the main theme of (...) early Cubist painting. Tactility remains concealed by linear perspective and three-dimensional space, and existentially primordial tactile space turns out to be the ungraspable which Cubist experiments has to disclose. At the same time, these artists succeeded in avoiding any kind of a reification of space as something that statically embraces what is situated in it. The paper is also preoccupied with Cubist “geometrical experimentation”. The claim is defended that it is precisely this experimentation that most essentially anticipates Heidegger’s analyses of the spatiality of the ready-to-hand and the spatiality of being-in-the-world. Parallels are also drawn with Merleau-Ponty’s spatiality of the perceiving-tactile body which was chiefly focused on the presupposition that the visibility attained through visual perception is imbued with invisibility stemming from the immediate tactility relating the perceiving body and the perceived entities – a presupposition shared by the early Cubists and the French phenomenologist. (shrink)

Environmental anxiety is often thought of as a psychopathological condition. Our paper aims to challenge this narrow understanding by offering an existential-phenomenological interpretation of environmental anxiety that posits it as an _existential attunement_ with a transformative potential, capable of opening the anxious individual to a hopeful and meaningful outlook on the future. In the first part of the paper, we provide a conceptual analysis of environmental anxiety, drawing on current interdisciplinary taxonomies of environmental emotions as well as on (...) class='Hi'>existential-phenomenological definitions of anxiety. We then proceed to define the two key existential characteristics of environmental anxiety, firstly (i) its ability to reframe the aesthetic perception of nature, and secondly (ii) its impact on the subjective constitution of meaning. In the second part of the paper, drawing on the work of Kierkegaard and contemporary ecopsychological and ecotheological thinkers, a distinction is made between a naïve and a radical form of environmental hope. It is argued that while the former type of hope leads to inactivity, the latter is capable of motivating individuals to pro-environmental action. (shrink)

The extremely extensive philosophical legacy of Roman Witold Ingarden, a student of Edmund Husserl, including papers in the fields of ontology, epistemology, and aesthetics, has been consistently arousing the interest of researchers from around the world for several decades. The year 2020 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Ingarden’s death. The present book constitutes a unique contribution honoring the philosopher’s memory and academic legacy. An ambitious project that brings together the thoughts of many intellectuals, the book includes research problems, contemporary (...) interpretations of Ingarden’s thought, and comparative studies, placing his philosophy in a broader historical and cultural context. This approach perfectly reflects the relevance, refinement, and depth of Ingarden’s theories. Although the essays presented in the book undoubtedly constitute a due tribute to an important figure in contemporary philosophy, this collection is not exclusively retrospective, but also shows the present and future development of philosophical thought inspired by Ingarden’s works. Including a substantial introduction by the editors, the book contains eight chapters from some of the most significant scholars in the field, covering the historical and comparative approach to Ingarden’s thought, as well as from young, ambitious scholars developing new interpretations of selected aspects of Ingarden’s theories. Specifically, the reader will find chapters on existential ontology (Peter Simons, Jan Woleński), Ingarden’s theory of questions (Giuditta Corbella), music ontology (Edward Świderski), empathy and aesthetic experience (Jeff Mitscherling), the aesthetics of computer games (Matthew Gladden), aesthetic attention (Harri Mäcklin), and Ingarden’s theory and aesthetics of time (Charlene Elsby). (shrink)

and the one in the middle which judges as he enjoys and enjoys as he judges. This latter kind really reproduces the work of art anew. The division of our Symposium into three sections is justified by the fact that phenomenology, from Husserl, Heidegger, Moritz Geiger, Ingarden, in Germany and Poland, Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, E. Levinas in France, Unamuno in Spain, and Tymieniecka, in the United States, have revealed striking coincidences in trying to answer the following questions: What is the (...) philosophical vocation of literature? Does literature have any significance for our lives? Why does the lyric moment, present in all creative endeavors, in myth, dance, plastic art, ritual, poetry, lift the human life to a higher and authentically human level of the existential experience of man? Our investigations answer our fundamental inquiry: What makes a literary work a work of art? What makes a literary work a literary work, if not aesthetic enjoyment? As much as the formation of an aesthetic language culminates in artistic creation, the formation of a philosophical language lives within the orbit of creative imagination. (shrink)

From idealism to phenomenology -- Existential phenomenology: Heidegger -- From hermeneutics to post-structuralism.