The question about the nature of art is at the centre of the philosophy of art. The thesis seeks to replace the two dominant approaches to this question in contemporary English-speaking philosophy--essentialism and descriptivism--with an historicist approach. The historicist approach I develop and defend holds that answers to the question "What is Art?" must take the form of localized cultural-historical narratives. ;This alternative approach is applied to write the history of the development of what I call "the modern conception (...) of art" in the early eighteenth century. A changing notion of art that emerges in Britain in this period is decisive for all later philosophy of art. Its genesis must be understood in a context of social, political and cultural changes. These changes deeply affected many people's conception of themselves and of their place in society. Social status becomes uncertain, and new criteria for the presentation of the self and evaluation of others emerge. Knowledge about art and the display of taste become indicators of social distinctions and thus criteria for social evaluation, replacing older notions of birth and rank. The modern conception of art emerges as part of new ideas of the presentation of the self, as part of a new ideal of edification. ;In contemporary philosophy of art, the evaluative contents of the conception of art--its historical and contemporary connection to notions of the moral and social order--are seldom discussed. Yet, as I show, these connections exist and have existed for a long time. At the centre of contemporary philosophy of art, therefore, there is a conception of art which is ideological in the sense that it treats the normative as factual and the historically contingent as the natural. Only a historical analysis of the kind I carry out is able to bring to light this aspect of the conception of art presupposed in contemporary philosophy of art. (shrink)

Seeks to replace the dominant approaches to the question of the nature of art in contemporary English-speaking (analytic) philosophy with a historicist approach that emphasizes localized, cultural-historical narratives.

Numerous theories have attempted to overcome the anti-essentialist scepticism about the possibility of defining art. While significant advances have been made in this field, it seems that most modern definitions fail to successfully address the issue of the ever-changing nature of art raised by Morris Weitz, and rarely even attempt to provide an account which would be valid in more than just the modern Western context. This thesis looks at the most successful definitions currently defended, determines their strengths (...) and weaknesses, and offers a new, cultural definition which can preserve the good elements of other theories, solve or avoid their problems, and have a scope wide enough to account for art of different times and cultures. The resulting theory is a synthetic one in that it preserves the essential institutionalism of Dickie's institutional views, is inspired by the historical and functional determination of artistic phenomena present in Levinson's historicism and Beardsley's functionalism, and presents the reasons for something becoming art in a disjunctive form of Gaut's cluster account. Its strengths lie in the ability to account for the changing art-status of objects in various cultures and at various times, providing an explanation of not only what is or was art, but also how and why the concept 'art' changes historically and differs between cultures, and successfully balancing between the over-generalisations of ahistorical and universalist views, and the uninformativeness of relativism. More broadly, the cultural theory stresses the importance of treating art as a historical phenomenon embedded in particular social and cultural settings, and encourages cooperation with other disciplines such as anthropology and history of art. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Textual Status of Hegel's “Historical Deduction” The Place of the “Historical Deduction” within the Argumentative Task of the Lectures ' Introduction The Three “Common Ideas of Art” and the Emergence of the Standpoint of the “Historical Deduction” From Kant to Schiller to Schlegel: The Third Critique, the Culture of Reflectivity, and the Rise of the Concept of the Beautiful The Problem of History and the Narrative Structure of Hegel's Philosophy of Art.

Paul Oskar Kristeller famously argued that the modern ‘ system of the arts ’ did not emerge until the mid-eighteenth century, in the work of Charles Batteux. On this view, the modern conception of the fine arts had no parallel in the ancient world, the middle-ages or the modern period prior to Batteux. This paper argues that Kristeller was wrong. The ancient conception of the imitative arts completely overlaps with Batteux’s fine arts : poetry, painting, music, sculpture, (...) and dance. Writers from the sixteenth century on adopted the ancient conception of the imitative arts and anticipated the views of Batteux by 200 years. Batteux simply popularized the rubric ‘fine arts ’. (shrink)

In ‘Is Art Modern? Kristeller’s “Modern System of the Arts” Reconsidered’ (BJA, 49.1 (2009), pp. 1-24), James I. Porter sets out to discredit Kristeller’s ‘modern system of the arts’ on the curious assumption that if Kristeller is right, one is somehow prohibited from investigating the ancients’ understanding of aesthetics. Unfortunately, Porter's paper misrepresents Kristeller's central aim, misses the real shortcomings of Kristeller's essay, and often obscures substantive issues behind simplistic dichotomies. Because the unwary reader might be taken (...) in by some of Porter's exaggerations and omissions, I will identify a few of these before addressing the issue of continuity and discontinuity in the concept of art, particularly with respect to the ancient world. (shrink)

The development of the conception of U. Eco’s literary art is considered on examples of ‘Notes in the margins of the novel ’The Name of the Rose‘’, ‘The Role of the Reader‘, ‘From Internet to Gutenberg‘, and ‘Confessions of a young novelist‘. In the article, the non-classical character of literary creativity and theory of Eco is discussed that is realized through the transformation of some ideas and conclusions of semiotics, structuralism, post-structuralism, and postmodernism. In ‘Confessions‘ Eco talks about the relationship (...) between himself as an author, his creations as texts, and the audience as readers. He distinguishes two types of readers: Empirical reader and Model reader. The article indicates the basic components of Eco’s literary theory of Interpretation. Eco considers that author will be interpreted not according to his intentions, but according to a complex strategy of interactions and intertextual meanings, based on fictional realms of novels. The article pays attention to Eco’s way from writing on non-fiction to fiction and otherwise, by exploring the boundary between fiction and nonfiction. However, in the practice Eco constitutes the relationship between fictional and nonfictional parts of literary art. As a result, Eco creates a kind of hypertext - the network of ideas, meanings, senses, codes, signs, interpretations, and so on. All of this gives the opportunity to make up the conclusion that Eco created the modern type of model writer - ‘Umberto Eco - M-author‘ that helps to appear the new kind of reader, the ‘Model reader‘. (shrink)

It is difficult to make sense of the notion of postmodernity, because “modernity” is clearly a shifter, in the sense of Jespersen and Jakobson: a term dependent for its meaning on its moment of enunciation. It is true that, from the Middle Ages onwards, several meanings of modernity have received an objectified reference. But in the arts, particularly in the visual arts, this is not true. Modernity has been defined as the ever-new transgression of norms established by the period coming (...) immediately before. In another sense, modernity is connected to urbanity, as it first took place (or at least was observed) in the coffeehouses of the seventeenth century and the boulevards of the nineteenth century. This meant a close connection of individuals having nothing to do with each other from the point of view of family relationships. At the same time as this concept of modernity is overhauled by the perpetual presence of the mobile phones, it is confirmed and extended by the Internet. A third kind of modernity, perhaps closely connected to the second one ( but essentially opposed to the first kind) is that of thinking, as initiated during the Enlightenment, striving to go beyond the divergent doxa of different cultures to some kind of rational understanding. Taking into account the standing of rationality in the history of humanity, postmodern philosophy really amounts to some kind of mobbing of the poorest and most feeble members of the crowd. (shrink)

Summation. A specifically modern approach to the interpretation of art is distinguished, rooted in the insight that cognitivity in interpretation must be oriented by sensitivity to the subject-object paradigm. It is shown that specific modern theory of interpretation has become established in twentieth-century theory and practice. That theory is demonstrated to be a set of interpretative rules. The hidden dependence of those rules on specific conceptions of the nature of a work of art is revealed. Three such (...) conceptions of the work of art that are basic to modern art history are articulated and critically examined by careful attention to actual works. Interpretation is shown to exceed the strictures of each model, with the specific consequence that the meaning of the work of art in modern times is systematically narrowed. Motives for that narrowing are discussed. (shrink)

This study is meant to provide a means of understanding the change of philosophic perspective from the naive classical view that natures manifest themselves to mind to the modern view that they do so only as mediated by thought or speech. it does so by tracing the emergence of the early modern concept that philosophy must be presented as a system of propositions or laws in order to be scientific. it is argued that certain early moderns adopted the (...) term "system" from the stoic definition of art and that they clearly delineated the essential characteristics of systematicity but spoke only of systems of individual sciences. regis first applied the term to philosophy as a whole, but hobbes before him conceived of system in regis's sense. the conclusion is a more precise understanding of the origin of the modern use of the term and of the meaning of the early modern concept of philosophic system. (shrink)

In the art of radical Informel, we encounter works with emphasised non-pictoriality, non-semantics and non-referentiality, as well as a tendency towards entropy, layering and the disintegration of form through destructive processes such as deformation, perforation, incision, scratching, the accumulation of structures and masses, fragmentation, stripping and burning. In this paper, theoretical models of interpretation for the art of radical Informel are pointed out through the concepts of the aesthetics of ugliness, i.e. brutal aesthetics, such as (1) deformation, (2) disfiguration, (3) (...) formlessness and (4) entropy – using the example of the informal works of Croatian authors Ivo Gattin, Eugen Feller and Marijan Jevšovar, which result from their attitude towards art and painting. The artists have deliberately created paintings that are not “beautiful” by opposing the classical values of art and beauty through oppositional and negative approaches, nihilism, destruction, deformation and the abolition of the surface of the painting as forms of anti-aesthetics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 12-19 [Access article in PDF] The Concept of Freedom in Art Education in Japan The concept of freedom has played a very important role in art education in Japan. Needless to say, freedom has been regarded as an essential principle of education in the West. Writers from Jean Jacques Rousseau to John Dewey stressed the significance of freedom in education. Especially, in (...) the field of art education, Frantz Cizek, Viktor Lowenfeld, and Herbert Read emphasized the importance of children's free expression in relation to creativity. This article examines the concept of freedom in art education in Japan, focusing on the ideas of two major non-governmental movements in art education; the Free-Expression Movement in the 1920s and the Creative Aesthetic Education Movement in the 1950s-1960s. Although both movements have already declined, their impacts are still felt in Japanese art education. The Beginning of Art Education in Japan In the early Meiji Era (1868-1912), art education was introduced to Japan when the modern school system was imported from the West. In 1872, the first government drawing textbook; Seiga Shinan [Guide to Western Pictures] was published based on a Japanese translation of British drawing manuals. 1 In this period, the purpose of art class was to teach the basic skill of mechanical drawing for industrial development; the method consisted of merely copying model pictures in the drawing textbook. In 1910, Akira Shirahama, who spent three years in Europe and the United States surveying art education, edited Shintei Gacho [New Textbook of Drawing]. As Okazaki points out, Shirahama, who was impressed by the art curriculum in the public schools of the United States, referred to the importance of children's creative imagination; however, the new textbook did not fully reflect the idea. 2 Thus, the practice of art class was limited to copying textbooks, and children's free expression was not considered important in art class. Until this period, the issue of freedom did not correlate to art education. The Free Expression Movement in the Taisho Era After the World War I, a democratic movement prevailed during the Taisho Era (1912-1926) in Japan. This movement, called Taisho Democracy, influenced various parts of Japanese life including politics. In the field of education, many democratic ideas of education were introduced from the West and books on progressive educational thought such as John Dewey's Democracy and Education were translated into Japanese. Child-centered education also became popular among progressive teachers. During this period, Jiyuga KyouikuUndo, the Free-Drawing Education movement, was started by Kanae Yamamoto. Okazaki describes this epoch-making movement as "the remarkable movement of art education in 1919 which began to change art education philosophy." 3 It was the first time the issue of freedom was raised in art education in Japan. [End Page 13] Yamamoto's Concept of Freedom Kanae Yamamoto, born in 1882, studied Western painting at the Tokyo Fine Arts School. After graduation, he started his career as a print artist and set off for Europe in 1912. He stayed in France to study art and experienced the much freer atmosphere in Europe compared to Japan. When he returned to Japan via Russia in 1916, he encountered an exhibition of children's paintings in Moscow. The free expression of the Russian children's paintings deeply impressed him.After Yamamoto's return from Europe, he organized the first exhibition of children's free painting in Japan and established Japan Children's Free Drawing Association in 1919. The exhibition was given great attention by the public, who, influenced by the Taisho democratic movement, was becoming very interested in democratic education. Yamamoto's book; Free Drawing Education was published in 1921. In his usage, the term "freedom" is sometimes synonymous with creativity. 4 He explained the meaning of freedom in his education theory: Our education of freedom is not to educate as teachers like. It is not a worship of freedom showing the model of freedom but to teach freedom itself....In my belief, the essence of human beings will never... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 12-19 [Access article in PDF] The Concept of Freedom in Art Education in Japan The concept of freedom has played a very important role in art education in Japan. Needless to say, freedom has been regarded as an essential principle of education in the West. Writers from Jean Jacques Rousseau to John Dewey stressed the significance of freedom in education. Especially, in (...) the field of art education, Frantz Cizek, Viktor Lowenfeld, and Herbert Read emphasized the importance of children's free expression in relation to creativity. This article examines the concept of freedom in art education in Japan, focusing on the ideas of two major non-governmental movements in art education; the Free-Expression Movement in the 1920s and the Creative Aesthetic Education Movement in the 1950s-1960s. Although both movements have already declined, their impacts are still felt in Japanese art education. The Beginning of Art Education in Japan In the early Meiji Era (1868-1912), art education was introduced to Japan when the modern school system was imported from the West. In 1872, the first government drawing textbook; Seiga Shinan [Guide to Western Pictures] was published based on a Japanese translation of British drawing manuals. 1 In this period, the purpose of art class was to teach the basic skill of mechanical drawing for industrial development; the method consisted of merely copying model pictures in the drawing textbook. In 1910, Akira Shirahama, who spent three years in Europe and the United States surveying art education, edited Shintei Gacho [New Textbook of Drawing]. As Okazaki points out, Shirahama, who was impressed by the art curriculum in the public schools of the United States, referred to the importance of children's creative imagination; however, the new textbook did not fully reflect the idea. 2 Thus, the practice of art class was limited to copying textbooks, and children's free expression was not considered important in art class. Until this period, the issue of freedom did not correlate to art education. The Free Expression Movement in the Taisho Era After the World War I, a democratic movement prevailed during the Taisho Era (1912-1926) in Japan. This movement, called Taisho Democracy, influenced various parts of Japanese life including politics. In the field of education, many democratic ideas of education were introduced from the West and books on progressive educational thought such as John Dewey's Democracy and Education were translated into Japanese. Child-centered education also became popular among progressive teachers. During this period, Jiyuga KyouikuUndo, the Free-Drawing Education movement, was started by Kanae Yamamoto. Okazaki describes this epoch-making movement as "the remarkable movement of art education in 1919 which began to change art education philosophy." 3 It was the first time the issue of freedom was raised in art education in Japan. [End Page 13] Yamamoto's Concept of Freedom Kanae Yamamoto, born in 1882, studied Western painting at the Tokyo Fine Arts School. After graduation, he started his career as a print artist and set off for Europe in 1912. He stayed in France to study art and experienced the much freer atmosphere in Europe compared to Japan. When he returned to Japan via Russia in 1916, he encountered an exhibition of children's paintings in Moscow. The free expression of the Russian children's paintings deeply impressed him.After Yamamoto's return from Europe, he organized the first exhibition of children's free painting in Japan and established Japan Children's Free Drawing Association in 1919. The exhibition was given great attention by the public, who, influenced by the Taisho democratic movement, was becoming very interested in democratic education. Yamamoto's book; Free Drawing Education was published in 1921. In his usage, the term "freedom" is sometimes synonymous with creativity. 4 He explained the meaning of freedom in his education theory: Our education of freedom is not to educate as teachers like. It is not a worship of freedom showing the model of freedom but to teach freedom itself....In my belief, the essence of human beings will never... (shrink)

Ambitious in scope and innovative in concept, this book offers an overview and critique of the conventions surrounding artistic creativity and intellectual endeavour since the outset of 'the broader modernity', which the author sees as beginning with the decline of feudalism and the Church. As a work of intellectual history, it suggests that art and the conventions associated with the artistic constitute a secular institution that has supplanted pre-Reformation theology. Beginning with Luther, Calvin, and Shakespeare and culminating with the Kantian (...) notion of the artist as an 'original genius,' the author reconstructs the steps by which art and creative activity were installed as the redemptive values of a modernity. In the process, the author reads passages from Plato, Proust, Donne, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kleist, Rousseau, Melville, Wittgenstein, Benjamin, as well as the graphic works of Holbein, Dürer, Mondrian, and Rothko. (shrink)

This book, the first comprehensive study in English of Heidegger's philosophy of art, starts in the mid-1930s with Heidegger's discussion of the Greek temple and his Hegelian declaration that a great artwork gathers together an entire culture in affirmative celebration of its foundational 'truth', and that, by this criterion, art in modernity is 'dead'. His subsequent work on Hölderlin, whom he later identified as the decisive influence on his mature philosophy, led him into a passionate engagement with the art of (...) Rilke, Ce;zanne, Klee and Zen Buddhism, liberating him not only from the overly restrictive conception of art of the mid-1930s but also from the disastrous politics of the period. Drawing on material hitherto unknown in the anglophone world, Young establishes a new account of Heidegger's philosophy of art and shows that his famous essay 'The Origin of the Work of Art' is its beginning, not its end. (shrink)

This anthology is intended as a core text for courses in aesthetics or philosophy of art. It contains a wealth of readings from both classic and contemporary sources, and aims to present substantial selections from those texts rather than mere "snippets." Readings are organized historically within four broad themes so that students can see how concepts of art have evolved and been debated. Each reading is introduced by the authors, who suggest connections between the reading and others in the anthology. (...) Unlike other anthologies on the market, The Philosophy of Art is both comprehensive and affordable, making it the ideal book for course use. (shrink)

This paper intends to explain key differences between Aristotle’s understanding of the relationships between nous, epistêmê, and the art of syllogistic reasoning(both analytic and dialectical) and the corresponding modern conceptions of intuition, knowledge, and reason. By uncovering paradoxa that Aristotle’s understanding of syllogistic reasoning presents in relation to modern philosophical conceptions of logic and science, I highlight problems of a shift in modern philosophy—a shift that occurs most dramatically in the seventeenth century—toward a project of (...) construction, a pervasive desire for rational certainty, and a general insistence on the reducibility of the sciences. The major motivation of this analysis is my intention to show that modern attempts to reduce science/epistêmê to a single science/method of inquiry occlude dialectical and ethico-political dimensions of “reason” and, hence, also impoverish philosophy’s critical capacities. (shrink)

The concept ofmimēsiswas ‘shared by most authors, philosophers and educated audiences in the classical period, in antiquity as a whole, and even later’, although it has probably never been developed into a well-articulated theory. As far as we can judge from the extant evidence, the meaning of the expressions μίμησις and μιμέομαι differs from author to author and sometimes even from passage to passage. Ancient Greek views onmimēsishave often been discussed in modern scholarship, mainly within the field of history (...) of art, and it has been demonstrated repeatedly that the traditional English translation ‘imitation’ is not always appropriate for the ancient texts and that in many contexts it is rather misleading. In the following study I aim to focus on this concept as it was employed in the oldest Greek cosmological and philosophical theories. As a rule, the study of these theories is complicated by their fragmentary state of preservation and by their distortion through the specifically Platonic views that were dominant among the later doxographers. I shall suggest that the Platonizing tendency still prevalent today, which tends to translate and interpretmimēsisas ‘imitation’ or ‘copy’, should be carefully revised in the light of the Hippocratic evidence and specifically in view ofDe victu, probably the oldest authentic, non-fragmentary, and non-Platonic document attesting the concept ofmimēsis. (shrink)

The definition of art is controversial in contemporary philosophy. Whether art can be defined has also been a matter of controversy. The philosophical usefulness of a definition of art has also been debated. -/- Contemporary definitions can be classified with respect to the dimensions of art they emphasize. One distinctively modern, conventionalist, sort of definition focuses on art’s institutional features, emphasizing the way art changes over time, modern works that appear to break radically with all traditional art, the (...) relational properties of artworks that depend on works’ relations to art history, art genres, etc. – more broadly, on the undeniable heterogeneity of the class of artworks. The more traditional, less conventionalist sort of definition defended in contemporary philosophy makes use of a broader, more traditional concept of aesthetic properties that includes more than art-relational ones, and puts more emphasis on art’s pan-cultural and trans-historical characteristics – in sum, on commonalities across the class of artworks. Hybrid definitions aim to do justice to both the traditional aesthetic dimension as well as to the institutional and art-historical dimensions of art, while privileging neither. (shrink)

Traditional martial arts continue to be interesting and inspiring to many people around the globe. Some of their contemporary adaptations attract enthusiasts for whom they are especially important. In this article, the author bases his observations on his own long-term participation. The analysis takes into account the influence of the perspectives of Jigoro Kano and several other creators of modern varieties of Japanese budo. It can be concluded that regular, even daily, practice—cultivating martial arts and internalizing its values—co-creates the (...) lifestyle of instructors and advanced students. (shrink)

In aesthetics a misleading idea of autonomy prevails: art is autonomous because it does not serve any heteronomous purposes. This conviction is deeply rooted in the philosophy of art from Romanticism to Heidegger and Adorno. However, it is not convincing because art is functional in various ways. It can have a variety of very different purposes – including some that the artist does not approve. Against this background, the article focuses on a peculiarity of modern aesthetics which has not (...) been noticed so far: the development of the modern concept of art has made the category of the mistake almost disappear. Works of art are taken to be something given which is not supposed to be examined for mistakes but to be explained and made understandable by the artistic decisions they are based on. By reflecting this peculiarity, the author develops an understanding of the autonomy of art as a normative artistic competence, which is compatible with the functionality of works of art and can help to clarify the social importance of art. (shrink)

Kristeller's article ‘The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics’ is a classic statement of the view, now widely adopted but rarely examined, that aesthetics became possible only in the eighteenth-century with the emergence of the fine arts. I wish to contest this view, for three reasons. Firstly, Kristeller's historical account can be questioned; alternative and equally plausible accounts are available. Secondly, ‘the modern system of the arts’ appears to have been neither a (...) system nor an agreed upon entity, but only a historical construct of Kristeller's own making that matches up with no known historical reality. Thirdly, while the concept of the fine arts existed in the eighteenth century, the assumption that it had an impact on the rise of aesthetic theory remains unproven and unnecessary. A more satisfactory account of aesthetic thought in antiquity can be given, once the ‘fine-arts’ objection has been cleared away. (shrink)

When, in 1735, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten added a new discipline to the philosophical system, he not only founded modern aesthetics but also contributed to shaping the modern concept of art or 'fine art'. In The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment, Stefanie Buchenau offers a rich analysis and reconstruction of the origins of this new discipline in its wider context of German Enlightenment philosophy. Present-day scholars commonly regard Baumgarten's views as an imperfect prefiguration of Kantian and post-Kantian (...) aesthetics, but Buchenau argues that Baumgarten defended a consistent and original project which must be viewed in the context of the modern debate on the art of invention. Her book offers new perspectives on Kantian aesthetics and beauty in art and science. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that our ontology of art has undergone a major change in the course of modern history. While we currently think of artworks as parts arranged in a certain way, there was a time when artworks were thought of as metaphysically more akin to ordinary artefacts such as tables and chairs; that is, as wholes having replaceable parts. This change in our ontology of art is reflected in our approach to art restoration. But what explains (...) the change? I will suggest that the change took place because of a change in our conception of the function of art. More specifically, I will suggest that we have started to think of artworks as parts arranged in a certain way, because we have started to think of artworks as having, primarily, an aesthetic function. (shrink)

The article examines the influence of ancient Chinese philosophical concepts on the formation of modern piano art in China. Ancient Chinese materialistic philosophy is based on such teachings as Wu-xing and Yin-Yang, the Great Limit (Tai Chi), the eight trigrams and others. With the passage of time and the rapid development of science, these philosophical concepts not only did not lose their significance, but also had a powerful influence on the formation of modern Chinese piano creativity, deeply influenced (...) the form and cultural connotation of Chinese music, and also became the theoretical basis for the works of many modern composers. The philosophical and aesthetic Taiji system presented by composer Zhao Xiaosheng, integrated into the modern piano composition system, marked the beginning of a revolution in the field of piano art, combining the theoretical foundations of traditional Chinese philosophy and the principles of modern composition methods. The research methodology is based on philosophical and cultural analysis, musicological analysis, and semantic analysis. Of particular interest is the comparative analysis of the musical and philosophical "Tai chi composition system" by Zhao Xiaoshen, the dodecaphony of A. Schoenberg and the set theory of M. Babbitt and A. Fort, which the Chinese composer considers the sources of his creativity. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that a correlation is proposed between the key categories of ancient Chinese philosophy and modern experiments in the field of musical expression. The authors managed to demonstrate the high degree of influence of Chinese philosophy on music, to clearly show that the basic postulates of ancient Chinese philosophy have been encoded in the basis of traditional Chinese music since ancient times, and in the twentieth century they were the basis of modern Chinese theory of composition, while playing a colossal role in identifying the common foundations of modern composition of the West and East, while preservation of local features of the diverse sphere of these cultures. The emergence and formation of a philosophical and theoretical system of musical composition, based on the concepts of classical Chinese philosophy, organically refracted in the latest achievements of Western music composition, emphasizes the ontological significance of these concepts for both Eastern and Western culture. And the creation of appropriate musical works undoubtedly leads to positive trends in the development of modern Chinese music and classical Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

The history of Iraq in the twentieth century, and perhaps the Middle East more broadly, is punctuated by an intellectual shift that has, for the most part, escaped the attention of scholars. It might be characterized as a shift from a problem of representation introduced by the rise of left-wing politics, to a problem of experience created by its failure. This shift registers in the work of writers and artists, where the depiction of the social world gave way to an (...) exploration of states of being. The paradigm for that turn inward in modern art was set by the artist Kadhim Haidar, in a series of paintings exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art in Baghdad, in 1965, under the title The Epic of the Martyr [Malḥamat al-shahīd]. The paintings reconstructed imagery from the mourning processions that annually commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, al-Husayn. This paper argues that the ritual imagery contains a grammar of experience, forged in the early history of Islam, that linked justice to a state of being, and that the transposition of the imagery into painting activated that grammar in the artwork. (shrink)

Abstract…observations of skylfull pylotts is the onlye waye to bring it in rule; for it passeth the reach of naturall philosophy. – Michael Gabriel, 1576 (Collinson, 1867, p. 30)Abstract The tension between empirical data and formal theory pervades the entire history of geomagnetism, from the Middle Ages up to the present day. This paper explores its early-modern history (1500–1800), using a hybrid approach: it applies a methodological framework used in modern geophysics to interpret early-modern developments, exploring to (...) what extent formal conjectures shaped observation and vice versa. A range of pertinent case studies supports classification of this entire period as proto-scientific, characterised by the initial formation of theories being largely disconnected from observational constraints, and their subsequent evolution being advanced primarily by their empirical falsification, and not necessarily associated with the introduction of an alternative. The few exceptional instances of purely data-driven discovery were essentially due to an improved signal-to-noise ratio. (shrink)

In this paper, the concept of liquidation from the chapter on Self-consciousness in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is reconstructed and then used to deconstruct the systematic transition from sculpture to painting in the passage on the “System of the individual arts” in G.W.F. Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. The aim is to show that such a deconstructed version of Hegel’s art philosophy provides a valid conceptual framework for the analysis of modern, particularly postmodern and contemporary art, which results (...) as liquid or liquidated art. Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God is discussed as major evidence for the concomitant neo-Hegelian claim that modern art has discursive reflection as its necessary supplement. (shrink)

The article devoted to the analysis of theoretical and conceptual developments of the Russian Social Democrats in the emigrant period. The authors note that the concept of democratic socialism, which began to be formed in 1917, was considerably amended and deepened when the Mensheviks created a new party program developed in 1922-1924. The significance of this program of the RSDLP is practically not evaluated in the science literature. In the analysis of Soviet historiography, the authors of the article outlined the (...) lack of attention to the projects of the Mensheviks in emigration, as the researchers insisted on the collapse of the RSDLP in post-October period. Some of modern researchers are highly skeptical about the intellectual developments of the Russian Social Democrats after the events of October 1917. However, the authors identified a number of innovative elements in the projects of the Mensheviks in this time. The new party program is an original stage in the formation of the concept of post-revolutionary development of Russia. In the course of the inner-party discussion, the differences in assessing the degree of Russia’s readiness for socialist transformation, as well as the Bolshevik experiment with various internal political trends, were sharply denoted. The article analyzes the positions of representatives of the official Mensheviks and the right wing of the party. The authors acknowledge the significant transformation of the political attitudes of the Mensheviks, pointing to some delusional and utopian nature of a number of program theses. (shrink)

This essay builds on a review of Iain Thomson’s recent monograph, Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity, the theme of which is Heidegger’s post-Kehre thinking. Through a series of close textual exegeses, and attentive analyses of concepts, Thomson traces the philosopher’s concern to envisage a means of escaping the late-modern comprehension of being. The latter is characterized, in Thomson’s interpretation, by the ‘technological’ or Nietzschesque understanding of ontology in terms of the eternally recurring will-to-power, according to which objects are identified as (...) intrinsically meaningless, optimifically available, utilitarian resources. Thomson argues that Heidegger’s engagement with modern painting seeks to develop an alternative paradigm, characterized as a concrete, phenomenological attempt to show how modernity can be transcended from within through reflection on art. Thomson amplifies Heidegger’s conviction that modernity implicitly influences the conceptual substrate of modern aesthetics into a critique of the motivating framework that continues to normatively determine the continuing grounding assumptions of the philosophy of art. I show that Thomson’s book, by revisiting Heidegger in this form, importantly intimates a way of transcending the philosophical disenfranchisement of art, by releasing art from its alethic alienation and reversing the inured philosophical narrative that still defines the relationship between representation and truth and, in the process, leads to a potentially radical reevaluation of aesthetic value. (shrink)

An anthology of contemporary readings in analytic aesthetics, this reference reflects the relationships among the central aesthetic concerns of recent years. Providing a new perspective on the contemporary philosophy of art, this volume examines the challenge of Postmodernism and how it may or may not affect the future of analytic aesthetics... offers a case study of the progress that has been made in handling the problem of expression in the arts... reconceptualizes the concepts of the art work, its properties, and (...) our experience and evaluation of it -- to take into account an expanding cultural, sociological contextualization, i.e., art as a culturally emergent product of social institutions and conventions... features several readings organized around clusters of writers discussing each other's ideas and proposals, including: Beardsley, Dickie, and Blizek -- Wolterstorff, Levinson, and Bender -- Stolnitz and Dickie -- Beardsley, Margolis, and Novitz -- and Sibley and Dickie. Suitable for professionals in the art industry and anyone interested in the philosophy or aesthetics of art. (shrink)

Modern interpreters have often regarded Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics as a mystery, or even a bit of an embarrassment. In his treatises on natural science and ethics, Aristotle is constantly concerned to review the opinions of his predecessors and of people in general; where appropriate, he also takes note of experiential observations, some of them highly specialized. However, the traditional view of the Posterior Analytics is that it advances an almost Cartesian picture of sciences as deductive systems founded on intuitively (...) evident first premises. How are these to be reconciled? (shrink)

The art of dancing involves the motions of many body parts, particularly those that are rhythmically and musical. Modern dance is viewed as a type of nonverbal interaction that may be utilized to convey ideas, feelings, or even a narrative. Modern dances might be communal, audience-participatory, or both. Thus, following how the concept is used in the fast-expanding subject of the theory of dance, "philosophy" is understood widely here. Dance philosophy has a tone of promise, in part because (...) dance is so diverse that it may have connections to many different schools of thought. Modern dance has been practiced for a variety of goals all over civilization, including medicinal, economic, societal, cultural, and religious ones. Hence, in this paper, we review the conceptual foundations of Modern dance and how Marxist Philosophy was employed to create it. A recurrent procedures linear mixed model was developed for the study to predict a creative score and ascertain the impact of the key factors under consideration: experience and competence. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the average ratings of dance performance videos, and Pearson's correlation was used to investigate the relationships between the evaluations. (shrink)

This paper claims that Heidegger’s confrontation with poetry and with Hegel’s end of art thesis can be read as an attempt to restore the highest function of art by deconstructing the ‘modern’ conception of truth underlying Hegel’s thesis. First, I discuss Heidegger’s interpretation of art following his assessment of the failure of metaphysical language to ‘unconceal’ the truth of Being. Second, I analyse, with specific reference to his interpretation of Hölderlin, what I reckon to be the core thread of (...) Heidegger’s philosophy of art, namely his antisubjectivism. Third, I turn to Hegel’s end of art thesis, showing how for him, as well as for Heidegger, the highest function of art is necessarily connected to antisubjectivism, and hence, under the conditions of modernity, is a thing of the past. Finally, I address Heidegger’s reference to Hegel’s thesis, and claim that, while Hegel fully remains within the horizon of modernity, thus affirming the irreversible pastness of art, Heidegger envisages the possibility of abandoning the fundamental orientation of modernity, and hence of revoking the thesis of the pastness of art. (shrink)