Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Book Review: The William Desmond Reader, Renee Köhler Ryan

Renée Köhler-Ryan

This is a book review of The William Desmond Reader, edited by Christopher Ben Simpson. The review focuses on the ethical implications of Desmond's work, but places these in the broader context of his philosophy of the between, or metaxu.

The Routledge Companion To Philosophy And Music, Theodore Gracyk, Andrew Kania

Andrew Kania

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics, subjects, thinkers and debates in philosophy and music. Over fifty entries by an international team of contributors are organised into six clear sections:

• general issues
• emotion
• history
• figures
• kinds of music
• music, philosophy and related disciplines

Silent Music, Andrew Kania

Andrew Kania

Most discussions of the nature of music begin with the vague notion that it is the art of sound. The next step is usually to argue that though sounds may be necessary for music, they are not sufficient, since there are sonic arts other than music, most notably linguistic performance arts, such as poetry and drama. However, at some point the issue of silence inevitably comes up. Most theorists want to allow the possibility of musical silence, that is, silence that is part of a musical work or performance, though this seems to require rejecting the necessity of sounds for …

Platonism Vs. Nominalism In Contemporary Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania

Andrew Kania

Ontological theories of musical works fall into two broad classes, according to whether or not they take musical works to be abstract objects of some sort. I shall use the terms 'Platonism' and 'nominalism' to refer to these two kinds of theory. In this chapter I first outline contemporary Platonism about musical works—the theory that musical works are abstract objects. I then consider reasons to be suspicious of such a view, motivating a consideration of nominalist theories of musical works. I argue for two conclusions: first, that there are no compelling reasons to be a nominalist about musical works in …

Piece For The End Of Time: In Defence Of Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania

Andrew Kania

Aaron Ridley has recently attacked the study of musical ontology—an apparently fertile area in the philosophy of music. I argue here that Ridley’s arguments are unsound. There are genuinely puzzling ontological questions about music, many of which are closely related to questions of musical value. While it is true that musical ontology must be descriptive of pre-existing musical practices and that some debates, such as that over the creatability of musical works, have little consequence for questions of musical value, none of this implies that these debates themselves are without value.

The Politics Of Representation: The Role Of The Gaze In Pornography, Jennifer Jeffers

Jennifer M. Jeffers

An accessible reader/text for beginning students of philosophy, this volume offers a broad scope of diverse classic and contemporary selections – with a narrative and format that presents difficult issues and readings in a simplified but not condescending manner. The readings are grouped around major philosophic themes: logic, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of religion, philosophy of art, and social and political philosophy. It also offers a selection of readings from Eastern philosophy.

Paradox And Metaphor: An Integrity Of The Arts, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

Art is movement, movement is life. Surprisingly, the spareness of paradox in art promotes a fullness of life. We must first speak as simply as possible about art as a fundamental human activity. Only then can we hope to say something of consequence about the so-called “fine arts” — which may be misleading as a description. In substance, the reference “fine art” simply means useless art: “fine” as being free from utility. Art is imaginatively productive, it makes something, whether painting, poem, or partita. But this making has no independent utility, and its character as a work of art is …

A Sense Of Life In Language Love And Literature, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

The fundamental human activity of telling stories, extended into the cultural tradition of literature, leads to the creation of alternative worlds in which we find resonance with the whole range of human thought and emotion from different and often conflicting perspectives. Fiction has no obligation to the ordinary strictures that bind our public lives, so the mind is free, engaging in literature, to become for the moment whatever imagination can conceive. So we become, in fictive reality, madman and poet, sinner and saint, embrace and embody sorrow and joy, hope and despair and all the rag tag feelings that flesh …

Migrations, Curtis Carter

Curtis Carter

No abstract provided.

Aesthetics Into The Twenty-First Century, Curtis Carter

Curtis Carter

The new concerns facing aestheticians in the twenty-first century require serious attention if the discipline is to maintain continued viability as an intellectual discipline. Just as art changes as cultures develop, so must aesthetics. In support of this view is a personal account of evolving engagement with aesthetics and the factors that led to embracing change and a plurality of practices as essential to the health of aesthetic today. A brief examination of the state of aesthetics as it has evolved in the American Society for Aesthetics since its inception in the 1940s will follow. These two lines of development, …

Holmes And Dissent, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

Holmes saw the dissent as a mechanism to advance and preserve arguments and as a pageant for wordplay. Dissents, for Holmes, occupied an interstitial space between law and non-law. The thought and theory of pragmatism allowed him to recreate the dissent as a stage for performative text, a place where signs and syntax could mimic the environment of the particular time and place and in so doing become, or strive to become, law. Holmes’s dissents were sites of aesthetic adaptation. The language of his dissents was acrobatic. It acted and reacted and called attention to itself. The more provocative and …

Sculpture, Curtis Carter

Curtis Carter

No abstract provided.

The Humanities And Dance: The Contemporary Choreographers' Response In The Arts To Aesthetic And Moral Values, Curtis Carter

Curtis Carter

No abstract provided.

Sculpture, Curtis Carter

Curtis Carter

No abstract provided.

The Humanities And Dance: The Contemporary Choreographers' Response In The Arts To Aesthetic And Moral Values, Curtis Carter

Curtis Carter

No abstract provided.