Philosophy Commons^™

A People Of The Law: Review Of Kevin Butterfield’S "The Making Of Tocqueville’S Democracy In America: Law And Association In The Early United States", Christine Dunn Henderson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy: Law and Association in the Early United States, Kevin Butterfield, assistant professor of classics and letters at the University of Oklahoma, focuses on the proliferation of associations in the formative years of the American republic. Butterfield’s concern, however, is slightly different from Tocqueville’s, in that Butterfield is less intrigued by the question of why associations proliferated and how they preserve freedom in a democratic age, and more focused upon how these associations were constituted and functioned in the early American context.

Bourgeois Dignity: Making The Self-Made Man, Christine Dunn Henderson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Somewhere near the beginning of the eighteenth century a new concept of “dignity” was emerging alongside the rise of a new socioeconomic class, the bourgeoisie. This chapter explores the development of this distinctive new concept of dignity, investigating first the key elements of the so-called bourgeois virtues that provided content to this new ethos of dignity. Next, it probes the economic, political, and social conditions that facilitated the emergence and diffusion of bourgeois dignity during the eighteenth century. Finally, it discusses how this new understanding of dignity was diffused throughout society by one of the most influential literary endeavors of …

The Question Of Fiction – Nonexistent Objects, A Possible World Response From Paul Ricoeur, Noel Fitzpatrick

Articles

The question of fiction is omnipresent within the work of Paul Ricoeur throughout his prolific career. However, Ricoeur raises the questions of fiction in relation to other issues such the symbol, metaphor and narrative. This article sets out to foreground a traditional problem of fiction and logic, which is termed the existence of non-existent objects, in relation to the Paul Ricoeur’s work on narrative. Ricoeur’s understanding of fiction takes place within his overall philosophical anthropology where the fictions and histories make up the very nature of identity both personal and collective. The existence of non-existent objects demonstrates a dichotomy between …

Ultimate Concern And Finitude: Schelling’S Philosophy Of Religion And Paul Tillich’S Systematic Theology, Michael Vater

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

This paper explores Paul Tillich’s use of the Friedrich Schelling’s philosophy in his explorations of the relevance of historical forms of Christian belief to contemporary culture, where human experience is marked by anxiety and guilt, and where the search for ultimate meanings seems to dead-end in meaninglessness. For Tillich as for Schelling, religion points to metaphysics. The only literal or nonsymbolic truth about God is that God is the affirmation of being over against the possibility of nonbeing, a divine Yes that is an overcoming of a prior No or self-inclusion. The ambiguity of existence as current human beings experience …

Luck, Justice And Systemic Financial Risk, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

Systemic financial risk is one of the most significant collective action problems facing societies. The Great Recession brought attention to a tragedy of the commons in capital markets, in which market participants, from first-time homebuyers to Wall Street financiers, acted in ways beneficial to themselves individually, but which together caused substantial collective harm. Two kinds of risk are at play in complex chains of transactions in financial markets: ordinary market risk and systemic risk. Two moral questions are relevant in such cases. First, from the standpoint of interactional morality, does a person have a moral duty to avoid risk of …

Justified True Belief: Plato, Gettier, And Turing, Rohit Parikh, Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

We examine the relationship between the justified true belief (JTB) account of knowledge and Plato’s theory about it as expounded in the Theaetetus. Considering Socrates’ remarks in the Theaetetus brings us to some concerns raised by Turing and to Wittgenstein’s famous comment explanations come to an end somewhere. We present two simple technical results which bear on the question. Finally, we look at the pragmatic aspects of knowledge attributions. In an Appendix we say a few words about Indian epistemology and Gettier problems.

Notices, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Away With Green Aesthetics!, Mateusz Salwa

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Material Blue, Justin Winkler

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In the 1780s, de Saussure invented the cyanometer that was subsequently used by Humboldt on his research travels. It served to determine the blueness of the sky at various altitudes. This article examines the research context in which this device was used and seeks to trace an underlying aisthesis materialis (Barck). I raise the question whether this recourse to a supposed pre–art theory and aesthetic practice can help establish a better concept of the everyday aesthetics to come.

Editorial, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Recent Publications, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Terrorist Aesthetics As Ideal Types: From Spectacle To "Vicious Lottery", Marshall Battani, Michaelyn Mankel

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This essay builds on Arnold Berleant’s concept of the negative sublime and his less-appreciated image of the vicious lottery to engage the ongoing discussion about the importance of aesthetic analysis for understanding terrorism. Sociological definitions of aesthetics and terrorism are presented as potential tools to aid in the analyses of terrorist aesthetics. Three aesthetic types of terrorism are developed in the tradition of Weberian sociological ideal typification. The article discusses the appropriateness and applicability of that typology for enriching our understanding of terrorism and counterterrorism.

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 …

Building A Paradise? On The Quest For The Optimal Human Habitat, Anu Besson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Do humans have a natural habitat? If yes, is it the original habitat of early hominids or the most optimal environment for today’s humans? Are these two the same thing and, if not, what does ‘optimal habitat’ mean? I examine the concept of the optimal habitat from four viewpoints: 1) paradise; 2) urban design based on environmental psychology; 3) favorite places; and 4) environment as an invitation for action. I conclude that an optimal habitat is not a collection of more or less fixed elements but an environment that can be experienced as a beneficial feedback loop based on and …

Experience, Knowledge, And Appreciation In The Implicit Aesthetics Of Weather Lore, Mădălina Diaconu

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

[1] Weather sayings are empirical rules for the prediction of weather and have been studied, so far, only by paremiologists and meteorologists. The author argues that they also present interest for environmental aesthetics, and that their aesthetic dimension is not confined to their stylistic qualities and versified form but is mainly based on the experience that underlies them. The analyses of weather lore in English, French, and German emphasize that this pre-modern, expert knowledge produced and still can bring enjoyment and, conversely, that the sources of this aesthetic enjoyment are to a large extent cognitive, even if not scientific by …

On The Front: Aesthetics Vs. Popular Arts And Mass Culture - I, Ken-Ichi Sasaki

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The popular arts and mass culture represent our environment. The flood of their products reduces high art to minority status. This situation leads us to reconsider the privileged status of high art and the role of aesthetics as its theory, which is my main focus here. I take up three different cultural eras: early modern times, when the notions of art and aesthetics as a philosophical discipline were founded; our own day as the time of mass culture; and, lastly, the popular culture in the Edo period in Japan, the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, which reflected different choices.

In …

On The Front: Aesthetics Vs. Popular Arts And Mass Culture - Ii, Ken-Ichi Sasaki

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The popular arts and mass culture represent our environment. The flood of their products reduces high art to minority status. This situation leads us to reconsider the privileged status of high art and the role of aesthetics as its theory, which is my main focus here. I take up three different cultural eras: early modern times, when the notions of art and aesthetics as a philosophical discipline were founded; our own day as the time of mass culture; and, lastly, the popular culture in the Edo period in Japan, the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, which reflected different choices.

In …

Everyday Aesthetics And Everyday Behavior, Ossi Naukkarinen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article addresses everyday aesthetics from the point of view of everyday behavior. I suggest that the ordinary daily interaction of people with each other is one of the most important areas of everyday aesthetics. I present an interpretation of the concepts of both the everyday and aesthetics, and argue that in the context of everyday social relationships, it is wise to understand everyday aesthetics in a way that emphasizes the very everydayness of aesthetics, not its opposite, namely non-everyday or extraordinary aesthetics. This does not mean that extraordinary aesthetics would not have its place in other contexts, but it …

Aesthetic Value Of Minimalist Architecture In Gaza, Salem Al Qudwa

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper aims to visually study the simple objects that exist around us and the buildings people live in, in order to account for how a simple architectural language can help in the current situation in the Gaza Strip. A descriptive analytical method was adopted as the main methodological tool in order to gather information about existing minimalist objects and ordinary architecture in Gaza. Field investigations were conducted in order to photograph different areas in the Strip’s communities: Gaza city, rural-to-urban areas, and marginalized areas were compared to well-known minimalist artworks. Minimalist architecture in Gaza is not an alternative paradigm …

The Role Of Imperfection In Everyday Aesthetics, Yuriko Saito

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The notions of perfection and imperfection do not have the same prominent presence they once occupied in earlier aesthetics discourse. However, they still play an important role as criteria for aesthetic judgments today in our everyday life. The wide-spread and easily accepted aesthetic appeal of objects with perfection tends to overshadow the potential aesthetic value of imperfect objects that are considered to be defective or deficient. This not only impoverishes our aesthetic lives but also leads to some serious environmental and social consequences. I first argue for the need to cultivate an aesthetic sensibility to appreciate imperfection in our everyday …