Philosophy Commons^™

Agreeable Despair: Modernism And Melancholy, Derrick James Gentry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study considers a group of distinctly modernist philosophers for whom aesthetic and reflective practices represented a way out of the paralysis of a culture dominated by narrowly conceived philosophical values. These modernist philosophers, I argue, helped to give birth to mode of experimental writing that Robert Musil called "essayism." I begin in Chapter One with an account of Walter Benjamin's experimental concept of melancholy and its intersection with the avant-garde practices of French Surrealism. Chapter One begins to contrast Benjamin's concept of melancholy with Friedrich Nietzsche's therapeutic efforts to transform and overcome melancholy on both a personal and a …

Aesthetic Mediation And The Politics Of Technology: (Re)New(Ed) Strategies For A Critical Social Theory, Andrew J. Pierce

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

There is a rich history in early critical theory of attempting to harness the power of aesthetic imagination for the purposes of political liberation. But this approach has largely faded to the background of contemporary critical theory, eclipsed lately by attempts to reconstruct and apply norms of rationality to processes of democratic will formation a` la Habermas. This paper represents a small attempt to return the aesthetic element to its proper place within critical theory, by investigating the aesthetic aspects of certain forms of resistance to technological domination, forms of resistance that become ‘‘embodied’’ in technologies themselves. The phenomena of …

Coming Of Age During The Sixties: A Narration Of Lives Through Music And Battle, Jennifer L. Oliveri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis has been written based on my retrieved memory, as it concentrates on autobiographical memories and the lives of two politically opposing men, from the American sixties. I discuss the effect of music and the war in Vietnam as it was experienced by these men--a moderately angry veteran and a "hippie." I examine how their stories were "retold" to me, which in turn created new memories. This is a study in the memory of memories.

A Psychoanalytic Exploration Into The Memory And Aesthetics Of Everyday Life: Photographs, Recollections, And Encounters With Loss, Dimitrios Mellos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The project at hand explores some of the psychological functions of photography as both an everyday and an artistic cultural practice from a psychoanalytic perspective. It is proposed that, contrary to commonsensical opinion, photographs are not accurate depositories of memory, but rather function as a functional equivalent of screen memories, thus channeling the subject's memory in ways that are objectively distorted and distorting, but psychologically meaningful and important; moreover, they are a special kind of screen memory in that they are often created pre-emptively and are physically instantiated.

Additionally, it is suggested that, by dint of their materiality, photographs achieve …

The Literature Of Political Things And Places: Reading And Writing Design, Susan Yelavich

Articles

No abstract provided.

Parisian Sacred Space In L.-S. Mercier's Tableau De Paris, Michael Mulryan

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Robert Dodsley Eighteenth-Century Play Collector And Theater Historian, John Pruitt

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Caricaturing The Vanity Of Human Prayer In Juvenal, Dryden, And Johnson The Ups And Downs Of Poetic Imitation, John J. Burke Jr.

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

"My Apologies For This Inconvenient Abduction" Rakish Reformation In Sarah Fielding's History Of Ophelia, Mary Ann Rooks

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

The American Pioneer Farmer It Is Time To Kill The Myth, A. G. Monaco

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Sacred Space, Michael Rotenberg-Schwartz

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Stewarding Affective Landscapes In Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries Of Udolpho, Melissa Smith

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

The "New" Nature In The Language Of Travel Domingo Navarrete's And John Locke's Natural Law Rhetoric, Matthew Binney

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

John Adams And The Balance, Zebulun Q. Weeks

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

The Holy House Of Loreto Politics And Idolatry In The Long Eighteenth Century, Hilary Teynor Donatini

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Religious Exchanges Solomon's Temple, Holy Land Travel, And A Georgics Of Sacred Space In Seventeenth- And Eighteenth-Century English Writing, Michael Rotenberg-Schwartz

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Berkeley And The Value Of The Arts, Tom Jones

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

A True-Born English Sacred Space Multiple Metaphors Of Hawksmoor's Steeples In Early Eighteenth-Century London, Chris Mounsey

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Empirical Testing And Novelistic Becoming Joseph Glanvill's Evidence Concerning Witches And Their Familiars, Dawn Morgan

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Displa And Contemplation Of Clarissan Spirituality Bernardo Vittone At Santa Chiara In Turin, William Stargard

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Index

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Creatures Of Fiction, Objects Of Myth, Jeffrey C. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

Artifactualists hold that some abstracta are contingent entities, products of the intentional activities of people.  A great many artifactualists are fictional creationists, asserting that fictonal characters are abstracta of this sort, but some, notably Kripke (1973), Salmon (1998, 2002), and Braun (2005), further embrace mythical creationism.  They hold that certain entities that figure in false theories are likewise abstracta that are produced by our intentional activities.  A paradigm example would be Vulcan, the planet proposed by Le Verrier to be the cause of perturbations in the orbit of Mercury.  I here argue that one may not reasonably take the metaphysical …

On Inadvertently Created Abstracta, Fictional Storytelling, And Scientific Hypothesizing, Jeffrey C. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

In my “Creatures of Fiction, Objects of Myth” (2014), I present and defend an argument for thinking that mythical creationism – the view that mythical objects like phlogiston and Vulcan are abstract artifacts – is false.  One intriguing sort of objection to my argument has been recently put forth by Zvolenszky (2016); she claims that a crucial premise is seen to be unjustified once one considers the phenomena of inadvertently created abstracta, specifically, inadvertently created fictional characters.  I here argue that even if we admit inadvertently created abstracta into our ontology, my argument survives.  I ultimately defend a view on …

Formal Properties As The Basis For Value In Music, Thomas B. Yee

Global Tides

This paper defends the thesis that value in a piece of music is based in its formal properties rather than its non-formal properties. Two arguments are presented to support this conclusion. The first argument shows that if value in music is to be objective, then it must be grounded in a piece's formal properties rather than its non-formal properties. In the second argument, a number of alternate possibilities for grounding value in music are considered and shown to miss the mark or be inadequate. Finally, a number of possible objections against the arguments and conclusion are considered and possible responses …

Fictional Emotions: Genuineness Of Emotions In Fictions, Lorien Giles

CMC Senior Theses

The common position in philosophy calls into question the ability of our emotions that derive from fictions to be genuine. In this paper I analyze this view, its motivating examples, and some unconsidered positions. In doing this I hope to offer a good defense of why our emotions that derive from fictions are in fact genuine and why the Paradox of Fiction is too broad.

The Relationship Between Aesthetic Value And Cognitive Value, Antony Aumann

Journal Articles

Recent attention to the relationship between aesthetic value and cognitive value has focused on whether the latter can affect the former. In this article, I approach the issue from the opposite direction. I investigate whether the aesthetic value of a work can influence its cognitive value. More narrowly, I consider whether a work’s aesthetic value ever contributes to or detracts from its philosophical value, which I take to include the truth of its claims, the strength of its arguments, and its internal consistency. I argue that aesthetic value does have such an impact, at least sometimes and to some degree. …

Art As Person: Correlative Personhood In Aesthetic Representation, Michael Dufresne

UNF Undergraduate Capstone Projects and Honors Theses

In this paper, I argue that the metaphor of art as person should be implemented as a way to understand artistic interaction, such that the relationship between artworks and spectators should be understood as one between persons. I begin this argument by first juxtaposing Hans-Georg Gadamer’s notion of aesthetic representation with the values that constitute correlative person in Confucianism. This juxtaposition draws similarities between artworks and persons that make the metaphor of art as person a plausible means for understanding artistic interaction. I then appeal to Michel Foucault for two significant reasons: his subjectfication of the self solidifies the comparisons …

Numbing The Heart: Racist Jokes And The Aesthetic Affect, Tanya Rodriguez

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

People sometimes resist the idea that racist humor fails on aesthetic grounds because they find it funny. They make the case that we can enjoy its comic aspects by controlling our attention, by focusing on a joke’s rhythm or delivery rather than on its racist content. Ironic intent may reside with the joke teller and/or the audience. I discuss how arguments for the immorality of racist jokes fall short. Ironic racist jokes may be acceptable to an audience that already rejects racism but is comfortable with such ironic racist joking precisely because as individuals they feel confident in their own …