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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Art By Jerks, Bernard Wills, Jason Holt
Art By Jerks, Bernard Wills, Jason Holt
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Is it wrong to enjoy art created by immoral people? Some people express discomfort with listening to or reading the works of artists who have been abusive to others in their personal lives. In this paper, the authors argue that, generally speaking, moral and aesthetic judgment should be kept distinct, as authors and their works formally differ. Indeed, works by morally dubious artists may well contain crucial acts of moral imagination we should not deprive ourselves of as ethical beings. Nonetheless, the authors argue there are limits to how far the ethical and aesthetic can be divorced. Art that is …
Schiller Revisited: "Beauty Is Freedom In Appearance" Aesthetics As A Challenge To The Modern Way Of Thinking, Wolfgang Welsch
Schiller Revisited: "Beauty Is Freedom In Appearance" Aesthetics As A Challenge To The Modern Way Of Thinking, Wolfgang Welsch
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This essay re-evaluates Schiller's idea of beauty as “freedom in appearance,” as brought forward in his Kallias or On Beauty(1793), against the backdrop of early modern and modern thinking that based itself on a fundamental split between nature and freedom, world and man. Schiller's claim that natural beauty results from freedom in nature bridges this gap. His suggestion is confirmed by modern science. Schiller's view is recommended and defended as a way of escaping modern bigotry
Smell And Anosmia In The Aesthetic: Appreciation Of Gardens, Marta Tafalla
Smell And Anosmia In The Aesthetic: Appreciation Of Gardens, Marta Tafalla
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
In his Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant defined the garden as a visual art and considered that smell plays no role in its aesthetic appreciation. If the Kantian thesis were right, then a person who has no sense of smell (who suffers from anosmia) would not be impaired in his or her aesthetic appreciation of gardens. At the same time, a visually impaired person could not appreciate the beauty of gardens, although he or she could perceive them through hearing, smell, taste, and touch. In this paper I discuss the role of smell and anosmia in the aesthetic …
Flows, Vortices, And Counterflows: Artification And Aesthetization In Chiasmatic Motion On A Mobius Ring, Yrjö Sepänmaa
Flows, Vortices, And Counterflows: Artification And Aesthetization In Chiasmatic Motion On A Mobius Ring, Yrjö Sepänmaa
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
My first question is the general orientation towards the aesthetic and artistic in our culture. Secondly, I deal with intentional and sought-for aestheticization and artification, which are driven particularly by art and aesthetic education. Thirdly, I concentrate on the effects of the change on people and culture, in general, and on art, in particular. The processes of art and the aesthetic have their counter-movements that create tension and dynamics. I characterize the flow pattern as chiasmatic motion taking place on a Möbius ring. Art and the aesthetic are a pair, the parts of which are related to each other through …
Politics Of Beauty, Ken-Ichi Sasaki
Politics Of Beauty, Ken-Ichi Sasaki
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
I look back at the history of modern aesthetics to grasp its current situation and to propose its possibilities for the future. The early modern period, during which aesthetics came into being, was a great historical turning point for civilization. Our contemporary period shares this character, and it is worthwhile for us to consult its history in order to reflect on our civilization. Aesthetics began with Baumgarten’s proposal, which consisted in a triple subject: sensibility, beauty, and art. His idea was accepted because it responded to the fundamental problems of the period. Sensibility was the only form of cognition of …
Disgust And Ugliness: A Kantian Perspective, Mojca Kuplen
Disgust And Ugliness: A Kantian Perspective, Mojca Kuplen
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Contemporary discussions of the problem of ugliness in Kant’s aesthetic theory have, to my knowledge, left unexplored the relation of disgust to ugliness. At most, they have explained away disgust as merely an extreme form of ugliness or displeasure, as Guyer did in his interpretation of ugliness in Kant’s aesthetic theory,[1] and by that strayed from the phenomenological and conceptual uniqueness of disgust in comparison to ugliness, while Kant, as I argue, did not. As a matter of fact, careful investigation of the concept of disgust in Kant’s writing will reveal the distinctive and multifaceted character that he ascribed …
Aesthetic Appreciation, Ethics, And 9/11, Emmanouil Aretoulakis
Aesthetic Appreciation, Ethics, And 9/11, Emmanouil Aretoulakis
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
There have been numerous critical articles on what really happened on the otherwise beautiful morning of 11 September 2001. Beyond doubt, the bulk of the critical responses to the terrorist attacks focused on the ethical and humanitarian, or rather the unethical and inhumane implications of the atrocious act, leaving no room for any philosophical reflection on the potential assessment or reception of the event from the perspective of art and aesthetics. The few years that have gone by since 2001 have provided us with some a sense of emotional detachment from the horror of that day, a detachment that may …
The Color Of The Sublime Is White, Jeffrey Downard
The Color Of The Sublime Is White, Jeffrey Downard
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
In this paper, I examine Melville's discussion in Moby Dick of the whiteness of the whale from the perspective of a Kantian account of the sublime. My aim, in the first instance, is to see if the comparison helps to shed light on Melville's puzzling discussion of the color white and why this color serves to heighten the feeling of being overwhelmed by terror when confronted with something extremely large or powerful. In turn, I intend to use Melville's discussion of whiteness to put pressure on some of the philosophical assumptions behind a Kantian analysis of the sublime. In particular, …