Philosophy Commons^™

The Inner Form Of Style: On Heinrich Wölfflin’S “Tactical” Formalism, Rémi Mermet

Artl@s Bulletin

In this article, I examine the enduring relevance of Heinrich Wölfflin’s approach to style, in light of the renewed interest in it among “postformalist” art historians. By delving into the theoretical foundations of the Principles of Art History, I explore Wölfflin’s Goethean interpretation of Kantian epistemology, revealing a conception of style characterized by its dynamic and symbolic “inner form” rather than mere static formalism. This analysis not only highlights affinities with Max Weber’s thought but also uncovers a previously overlooked connection to Wilhelm von Humboldt, offering valuable insights for current discussions on style.

Dans cet article, j’étudie la pertinence …

The Role Of Disgust In Films: Disgust As An Aesthetically Appreciable Emotion That Enhances The Film’S Other Emotional Effects, Yunyi Zhu

Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The goal of this paper is to address the questions: what is the role of disgust in films, or what makes people appreciate a film’s disgusting contents, given that disgust is unpleasant to experience? The films to which I am referring are audiovisual artworks, including both TV shows and movies, that arouse the emotion of disgust and typically have contents that are gory or gross, yet despite their disgusting contents, these films have as a primary goal to present a narrative or an experience rather than merely to disgust or disturb their audiences. This includes various genres of films, from …

The Land Of Fairies Of J. R. R. Tolkien: Faërie As The “Middle Earth” Between The World Of Senses And The World Of Ideas, Diego Klautau

Journal of Tolkien Research

This article delves into J. R. R. Tolkien's essay "On Fairy-Stories" with the aim of outlining a giving hermeneutics for the metaphor of "Faërie," the Elfland, in dialogue with the philosophical tradition of Ancient Greece – specially with Plato's "Republic" and Aristotle's "De Anima" and "Poetics", and also the medieval reference of Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica”. The historical context of early 20th-century England and J. R. R. Tolkien's biography assure that he belonged to a Catholic religious and philosophical tradition that claimed the so-called realistic philosophy as the foundation for understanding the world. From this theoretical-methodological approach, one finds a dual …

Grounded Aesthetics: Pedagogy For A Post-Truth Era, Becca Cragin

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

With the rise of cultural studies, positivism and formalism fell out of favor. But in recent years, altered versions of these methodologies have been suggested as solutions to the deficiencies of the ideological approach dominating the field. Where the ideological approach looks at the content of texts to determine their meaning, the aesthetic approach adopted by media scholars in recent years returns to the close textual readings of formalism (while abandoning its assertion that meaning resides in the text alone). Similarly, where the ideological approach tends to use textual analysis devoid of sociological empiricism, the use of “big data” in …

Mapping Gender And Territory: The Continent Allegories On European World Maps From The Late Middle Ages To The Renaissance Until The Early Enlightenment, Katharina Eva Oehmichen

Comparative Woman

The four-part set of female continent allegories, which originated in the early Renaissance, was born out of a European need for a new vehicle of thought that served the functions of representing imperial expansion and the superiority of Western science and civilization, while gratifying the curiosity of the readers about newly discovered lands at the same time. The shift from the Christian symbolic tradition of the representation of the continents on world maps mirrored the shift in Western perception and knowledge of the world and Europe’s position in it. Apart from geo-political and imperial agendas that might have favored a …

Coltrane’S A Love Supreme: Mediations Of Immediacy In Jazz Ritual And Recitation, James R. W. Crockford

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This paper explores the ritualized performance ethic of John Coltrane’s later career, which is charged with a determined exploration of freedom and spiritual ascendance through participative and gestural immediacy. Conceiving of this music as a spiritual and political tool for embodied transformation, this paper traces this ethic at play in Coltrane’s iconic 1965 album A Love Supreme, identifying ways the work effects a mediation of immediacy. Through focus on the album’s closing “Psalm” recitation, its parallels in Coltrane’s other works, and their analogue in traditions of ecstatic liturgical and political oratory, this paper demonstrates the consistent priority Coltrane gives …

In-Between Places: Richard Long's Walk-Works On Dartmoor And In Japan, Eriko Yamaguchi

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Contemporary British sculptor Richard Long creates sculptures for places that he encounters during walks. Each sculpture is place-specific, but rather than separating one place from another, a Long sculpture, besides connecting places, also creates a place in the in-between spaces. Long notes that his landscape sculptures “are out there in the world, somewhere.” His work engages directly with the materials that constitute those in-between places as a mark of his being on his way. His sculptures thereby encompass time, space, speed, the distance of his walk, his physical reality, and sensory experiences encountered during his walks. These will, however, soon …

Zeami's Buddhism And Noh In Kurosawa's Ikiru, Ronald S. Green

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper explores the influences of Noh drama theorist Zeami Motokiyo on Akira Kurosawa's 1952 film Ikiru. While Kurosawa's adaptations of traditional Japanese arts are well documented, this study uniquely demonstrates how specific Noh aesthetics shaped this film. It analyzes how Kurosawa's direction of actor Takashi Shimura embodies Zeami's aesthetic principles of awareness of impermanence (mujō), profound mystery (yūgen), and no-mind (mushin), which are performative expressions of Buddhist philosophies. Kurosawa employs four methods developed by Zeami: the use of masks, sparseness in settings and costumes, singing, and the application of an …

V.1 Fall 2024, Center For Arts & Language, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

v.1 is a publishing platform for the ongoing work, ideas, discussions, debates, and aspirations of students at the Rhode Island School of Design. The Fall 2024 issue contains articles on RISD Alumni Graciela Batista's Commencement speech on friendship and community, Britain's Royal Festival Hall, birds crashing into glass buildings, an Ojibwe student's reflecting on his native identity, RISD student interviews, an abandoned Bed Bath and Beyond store, Ai Weiwei's Kui Hua Zi, life in Banaras, a student's Yankee Swap experience, the 2024 RISD Grad Show, and indentations, along with student creative writing and a feature on images students saw out …

Maxine Greene And Relational Imagination: Interrelationality As Discourse In Critical Imagination., Seungho Moon

Education: School of Education Faculty Publications and Other Works

Dearest Maxine

Metaphors are your life.

We are strangers as teachers—

we play the Blue Guitar; we

challenge our taken-for-grantedness

and resist “the things as they are”

enthusiastically. I am inspired by you,

my dearest Maxine,

to imagine what might be, what should be.

The Decoloniality Of Feeling: On Sandovalian Praxis, Ceremony, And Emancipatory Politics In The Classroom And Beyond, Kristian E. Vasquez

Regeneración: A Xicanacimiento Studies Journal

"The Decoloniality of Feeling: On Sandovalian Praxis, Ceremony, and Emancipatory Politics in the Classroom and Beyond" by Kristan E. Vásquez.

The Temporality Of The Aesthetic Appreciation Of Food And Beverages, Hiroki Fxyma

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Taste and smell are gaining status in aesthetics, but theories concerning their basic appreciation are insufficient. This study aims to clarify the temporality of food and beverage appreciation. First, the temporality underlying this appreciation is classified into three categories: the time of the object, the time of the embodied cognition, and the time of the phenomenon. Next, four aspects of the time of the phenomenon are proposed: non-temporal, linear temporality, circular temporality, and point temporality. These four temporalities are not determined a priori but generated by the eater’s attention. This study provides a basis for discussing food and drink as …

Fentanyl: Social Somanaesthetic, Valery Vino

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

To Which We Return, Marianne Koleng

be Still

This work is an attempt to reconcile the vibrance of life as evidenced by the colorful collage and bismuth crystal with death, which is portrayed by a somber skull emerging from an aorta and ventricles of a human heart. Understanding the temporal nature of our existence is key to subtle references to beauty and imperfection latent in the background of this image to cue the idea of beauty in life and death to the viewer.

A Mute Pleasure: Novelistic Poetics In The Nineteenth-Century, Ryan Everitt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through special attention to the non-narrative, descriptive, lyrical, or even boring passages that interrupt the story, this dissertation explores what happens when the nineteenth-century British novel envelops experiences that were traditionally (or since Romanticism) in the domain of poetry: longings for escape, exhilarating affects of freedom, opaque moments of revelation. In most cases, I characterize the novel discourse as representing a prosaic consciousness that wrestles with its more visceral yet vital “other,” poetic consciousness. To articulate how poetry survives within novelistic discourse, this dissertation is organized around sets of opposing terms, whose unresolved tension becomes the basis of my analysis …

Black Horror Film And The Role Of Mood In Race Perception, Nicholas P. Whittaker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Contemporary discussions of black or antiracist art are often haunted by an air of pessimism. This pessimism rests on the intuition that art cannot change the political realities of antiblackness and/or our relationships with blackness. In this dissertation, I resist this hegemonic view by arguing that black horror films generate a particular, politically-valuable aesthetic experience. Specifically, they allow us to experience blackness and black people as unintelligible. This, I argue, runs counter to everyday experience of blackness; when blackness appears unintelligible, we lose the sense of satisfied comprehension that characterizes our everyday experiences of it. I argue that these films …

Black Bodies In White Spaces: Considering The Black Female Ballet Dancer In South Africa, Devon Bailey

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Considering apartheid in South Africa and the resistance that black (dancing) bodies were met with in white (ballet) spaces, there are clear, prevailing effects of the male gaze on how the bodies of black, female dancers are perceived in the arts. In this paper, I argue that the neglected and overlooked black female/oppositional gaze presents a strong challenge to the white male gaze in relation to how black, female, ballet dancing bodies are perceived, using the example of black, South African, female choreographer Dada Masilo’s interpretation of “Swan Lake.” I take Paul C. Taylor’s sarkaesthetic approach to show how Masilo …

Past-Oriented And Future-Oriented Frames Of Familiarity: Aesthetic Experience In Everyday Environments, Mami Aota

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Familiarity is an important concept that reveals aesthetic and ethical connections in everyday environments. However, it is unclear what a particular object of familiarity is in our daily lives. Identifying the object of familiarity is important for respecting residents’ perspectives in practices such as community redevelopment. This study uses two concepts, past-oriented and future-oriented framing, to clarify the process of identifying objects with which we feel familiar in our everyday environments. A past-oriented frame is invoked by a loss experienced in an everyday environment and refers to memories relating to our habits therein. A future-oriented frame is called upon by …

Aesthetic Cognitivism : Acquiring Propositional Knowledge From Fiction, Nanyun Shen

Lingnan Theses (MPhil & PhD)

This thesis focuses on aesthetic cognitivism, especially the cognitive value of fiction. I mainly discuss two topics. One is whether we can learn from art, and the other is what the learning conditions are under different circumstances. I focus on acquiring propositional knowledge from fiction. My goal is to establish that the cognitive value of fiction is to a certain extent unsafe, although there might be strategies we can take to reduce such unsafeness. Yet, we should not blindly hold an optimistic attitude towards the cognitive value of fiction until more empirical evidence gives us reasons to. I distinguish between …

How Could Anybody Ever Feel At Home? Aesthetic Familiarity, Epistemic Comfort, And Displacement, Ariane Nomikos

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Places are at once inhabited by various individuals who are themselves members of diverse communities and whose experiences of the same everyday living environment can vastly differ. Everyone lives in some place, but not everyone is fortunate enough to feel as if they belong to that place, as if that place is their home. According to José Medina (2017), those who inhabit a place they are unable to make their home experience a unique form of displacement, that of being displaced within a place. This, he claims, is a problem for everyone—not just for those experiencing displacement within …

That's Beyond My Imagination!, Kiyohiro Sen Phd

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

According to one strongly supported view, fiction is a functional kind that communicates imaginings. Combining this definitional thesis with a plausible principle concerning functional kinds leads to the following evaluative thesis: features that contribute to communicating imaginings constitute good-making features as fiction, and features that impede this constitute bad-making features as fiction. However, this thesis is at odds with the actual practice of fiction. Critics can show their admiration for complicated works of fiction by stating, “That’s beyond my imagination!” I argue that in resolving this paradox of hard-to-imagine fiction, we should not deny the observation, but rethink the definitional …

Virtue Appreciation And Sustainability In Olafur Eliasson’S Ice Watch, Nicole Hall

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper is a case study of Olafur Eliasson’s Paris installation of Ice Watch (2014-2018) that coincided with the Climate Change COP-21 conference at the United Nations in 2015, and whose message was poignantly felt as a reminder of global warming, the melting polar regions, and the current environmental crisis. In particular, I explore how and what might we learn from this installation, to consider and rethink the relationship between aesthetic value, ethical value, and the concept of sustainability. Considering that Eliasson’s work requires relational perceptual-intellectual double awareness, it is argued that virtuous appreciation, judgment, and evaluation emerge if engaged …

Feeling The Environment: Aesthetic Interestedness And Environmental Aesthetics, Roberta Dreon

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Can aesthetic disinterest represent an adequate strategy to develop a sustainable attitude? While aesthetic disinterest plays a basic role in the Kantian foundation of aesthetics, (dis)interestedness has been a puzzling topic of discussion in the debate on environmental aesthetics and is becoming an increasingly pressing one, given the current worsening of the climate crisis.

The first part of this paper will explore the different meanings of the term as it is used within the debate on environmental aesthetics, either in support of or against the adoption of a disinterested attitude toward the environment. I will suggest drawing a distinction between …

Recovering Landscape And Landscape Beauty In Environmental Aesthetics, Paolo Furia

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this article, I will pin down some elements to recover the concept of landscape in the context of environmental aesthetics. Such insertion of landscape in environmental aesthetics entails the questioning of the dualism between nature and culture that still lays at the basis of much literature in environmental aesthetics. My argument will unfold in three steps: first, I will show how the original question of environmental aesthetics, as elaborated by Ronald Hepburn in 1966, presupposes a distinction between nature and culture rooted in the moral contempt for excessive modernization and urbanization. Second, I will criticize some theories, not all …

Landscape Education, Enskilment, And Aesthetics: Complex Skills For Our Time, Alberto L. Siani

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Environmental education is undoubtedly a pressing need in our time. Landscape education may be seen as something more restricted in scope and necessity, and more disengaged. However, as I will first argue, because of the intrinsically concrete, localized, aesthetic character of landscapes in their difference from environment, landscape education in fact can also be seen as a more complex and challenging concept that can be framed in terms of enskilment. Second, to better clarify this concept and highlight the theoretical and practical difficulties related to it, this paper will then turn to some Wittgensteinian ideas about learning, especially his concept …

No Trace, No Waste? The Art Of Living In Trashscapes, Mădălina Diaconu

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Humans have always striven to overcome their finitude by leaving traces. The phenomenology and hermeneutics of the twentieth century interpreted traces as meaningful sources for reconstructing the past and disregarded their materiality. This culturalist and retrospective approach nowadays has become untenable, as it is impossible to generate significative traces without producing waste as well. Waste itself forms a special category of trace that is unintentional and partly nocuous. Moreover, a final repository appears to have perversely fulfilled the dream of leaving ineffaceable traces that would survive humanity itself. In this new context, a future-oriented approach, one that would engage collectivities …

Frugality. An Aesthetic Category For A Sustainable Art Of Living, Elisabetta Di Stefano

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Climate change has necessitated the exploration of new interpretive models and aesthetic categories to understand our relationship with the environment. In response to this, the concept of frugality emerges as a potential paradigm for a sustainable art of living. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive exploration of frugality as an aesthetic category through the lens of the history of ideas, its connection to everyday aesthetics, and its implications for an art of living. By adopting a frugal lifestyle, individuals can establish a harmonious and respectful relationship with the environment, promoting a more sustainable future. This existential model has been …

On The Significance Of Eco-Phenomenology For Theories Of Sustainability, Kira Meyer

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The Ecosystem Service Approach lays down the several ways in which nature contributes to the welfare of human beings. One important category of this approach is the cultural services that nature offers, which conform to the eudaimonic values in environmental ethics. The cultural services of nature are an important reason in choosing a concept of strong sustainability, as developed by Konrad Ott and Ralf Döring; eco-phenomenology is a method to immerse into these cultural-eudaimonic values and articulate them in nuanced ways. Our overall argument will substantiate the uncommon claim that eco-phenomenology is of focal significance to theories of sustainability.

Imaginaries, Scenarios, And Materialities: The Arts As Part Of Ecology, Peter J. Schneemann

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This contribution seeks to identify some of the methodological implications and challenges for art history as a discipline when confronted with the ecological imperative. There are clear societal expectations to ecological questions, approaches, and attitudes and a new rhetoric by artists and also scientists that anticipates the necessity of an ethical stand. The shift towards notions like sustainability was so fast and so radical, I argue, that we ought to take time to step back and reflect on its implications. I am especially interested in the intersection between the ethical dimension we now apply to artistic production (as a …

Back To Intermittence, Or Rediscovering Web-Materiality: An Artistic Quest For A Sustainable Internet Aesthetics, Diego Mantoan

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Through the digital and public artwork, Solar Protocol (2020-ongoing), artists and engineers Tega Brain, Alex Nathanson, and Benedetta Piantella kickstarted a solar-powered server network that hosts a web page demonstrating how intermittent energy levels affect its very aesthetics and usability. This small-scale participatory experiment stimulates a wider reflection on the interconnection between economic, environmental, behavioral, and aesthetic features that shape the way the internet is produced and consumed in today’s society. Far from being a mere matter of greening the internet’s power supply, rather the artwork turns a spotlight on the implicit attitudes of web producers and consumers as developed …