Philosophy Commons^™

Illustrating Philosophy: Comments On Thomas Wartenberg's Thoughtful Images, Elisabeth Schellekens

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This short paper focuses on Thomas Wartenberg’s Thoughtful Images (OUP 2022) and offers a critical discussion of some of the book’s main claims. Of particular interest is the notion described by Wartenberg as “concept-based illustration” and the prospects of this kind of illustration to successfully represent a philosophical concept or theory. Among the questions raised, we find “What is required for an artwork to represent a philosophical claim?”, “Which norms should govern successful illustrations?”, and “How detailed can the content of a concept-based illustration be?”.

Wisdom Regarding Beauty. Self-Effacement And One's Right Relationship To Beauty, Alexndra Hayes

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

What does it mean to cultivate aesthetic virtue in a way that contributes to our character? Pursue beauty, not its effect. Many contemporary theories emphasize the great effects of aesthetic life—expertise, individual style, aesthetic community, and so on. Directly pursuing these effects effaces our endeavors. We should instead love beauty itself because it is worthy of love. This love cannot be measured as easily as these effects, though it is characteristically marked by a self-forgetting receptivity and childlike curiosity.

Reading Texts And Pictures, Cynthia Freeland

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Wartenberg’s book, Thoughtful Images, is an ambitious defense of the value of philosophical illustrations. Through examples from a vast historical sweep, he differentiates several ways that images help us understand or even enact philosophy. My critical response focuses on how viewers understand and make sense of visual images, by comparison with how we interpret texts of philosophical authors. I argue that the relevant processes of interpretation are more similar than what Wartenberg assumes, especially when issues arise about the role of narratives in both texts and pictures.

A Typology Of Illustration, Jeffrey Strayer

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article introduces the notions of technique-based, problem-based, and history-based illustrations as kinds of illustration relevant to art and philosophy that are intended to complement those recognized by Wartenberg. In doing so, it considers the possible illustration of different ideas within a single work, and the possibility that the complex interrelation of certain ideas may require a number of works for the success of their illustration. These different possibilities raise the issue of how illustration is related to artistic intention and understanding and to the history of art, with its settled and novel kinds of artistic production. Art as philosophy …

Further Reflections On Visual Illustrations Of Philosophy: A Response To Freeland, Schellekens, And Strayer, Thomas E. Wartenberg

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The incisive commentaries about Thoughtful Images by Cynthia Freeland, Elisabeth Schellekens, and Jeff Strayer provide the occasion for a rethinking of some of the fundamental claims about visual illustrations of philosophy that I made in the book. The essay begins with a discussion of the “logic” of the term ‘illustration’ and then discusses the relationship between illustrations and technology. A variety of different themes are then addressed, such as the possibility of musical illustrations of philosophy; differences in the processing of written texts and visual images; additions to fidelity and felicity as norms applying to successful illustrations of philosophy; and …

Experiential Time In Some Modern Poetry, Aaron Lercher

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Experiential or lived time (A-series time) can be many things. Gertrude Stein claims, in her 1935 Narration lectures, that experiential time is a plenum: all experiential time is full of vivid experience, if one is alert to perceive it. Stein, however, then poses a problem of narration that seems to obstruct poetic access to this vivid plenum. Bernadette Mayer and Lisa Jarnot take up Stein’s challenge with time-defined and time-filling poetic writing processes. Much like children, these processes can come to have their own experiential times.

Taste: A Philosophy Of Food, Sarah Worth

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This book has been such a labor of love for me; I cannot thank my commentators enough for taking this work seriously and giving such thoughtful feedback. Carolyn Korsmeyer, Deborah Knight, and Alexandra Plakias were willing not only to do an author-meets-critic session but to develop their thoughts further into these papers. I could not receive higher praise as a philosopher than serious consideration. The primary claim of my book is about the ways in which gustatory taste should be taken more seriously, especially as a form of knowledge. I approach this suggestion not from the historical sense of taste …

The Pleasure Of Knowing: Comments On Sarah Worth's Taste, Alexandra Plakias

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In Taste: A Philosophy of Food, Sarah Worth explores the aesthetics of food through the philosophy of slow food. She discusses the relationship between the pleasure we take in our food and our knowledge of what we’re eating; on Worth’s view, taste is both a source of pleasure and a source of knowledge — provided we cultivate the skill of tasting in the right way. Here, I discuss Worth’s account of gustatory knowledge and suggest some complicating factors: in particular, not everyone has access to the sorts of foods required to cultivate the skill of taste and our food …

Eat, Taste, Know – Reflections On Sarah Worth’S Taste: A Philosophy Of Food, Deborah Knight

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Sarah Worth argues that philosophy should take gustatory taste seriously. While taste has played a central role in philosophical aesthetics, “aesthetic taste” is a trope referring to our judgments about the value or merit of an object, typically a work of art. What, then, about the literal sense of taste — the perception of flavor when we have something like food or drink in our mouths? Because our wide range of gustatory experiences and the kinds of judgments we make about them are so intimately connected to the kinds of things we eat, I look at fast food versus slow …

Taste, Knowledge, And Discernment: On Sarah Worth’S Taste, Carolyn Korsmeyer

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In the course of her exposition of the sense of taste, Sarah Worth argues that taste can provide a purely sensuous, aesthetic kind of knowledge that is rooted in bodily sensation, in contrast to the information-gathering provided by the distance senses of vision and hearing. As such, taste experience is also independent of propositional knowledge. I argue that, on the contrary, taste is not only multimodal but its full operation is also dependent on certain ongoing cognitive conditions. Although Worth declares that there is no such thing as an aesthetic obligation, her defense of the importance of taste actually suggests …

V.1 Fall 2023, 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 2023 issue contains articles on bubbles, a performance at AS220 "Belated Avowal" by RISD MFA student Cat Ashley, sleeping and dreaming, interviews of RISD students, a critical review of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, movement experiments, a Jake Shore show at Providence student gallery Ladybug Providence, and George Orwell's book "Why I Write," along with creative writing on a variety of topics.

Hearing A New World, T. Michael Mcnulty Ph.D.

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Aesthetics Of/And The Universe, Reza Tavakol

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Modern cosmology has revealed a Universe that is wholly unexpected; a defining feature is that its largest constituent parts are either dark or hidden behind the cosmological horizon, making them in principle unobservable.

These discoveries raise the important question of what constitutes an aesthetic appreciation of the Universe? By considering various modes of appreciation, I argue that a fuller aesthetic appreciation of the Universe would need to augment its visual forms of appreciation with conceptual and imaginative modes of appreciation informed by scientific knowledge.

This argument can have a direct bearing on the long-standing debate concerning the role of cognitive …

Duck Tape Down, Lisa Heldke

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

An ordinary ski jacket is rendered both fashionable and immortal by the judicious application of duck tape (duct tape).

Crossing The Picture: Theories And Genealogies Of Environmental Images, Antonio Lorenzo Sartori

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Aesthetic Melancholy, Hans Maes

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Emily Brady and Arto Haapala (2003) define melancholy as a complex emotion with aspects of both pain and pleasure that draw on a range of emotions — sadness, love and longing — all of which are bound with a reflective, solitary state of mind. Melancholy, they argue, does not just play a role in our encounters with artworks and the natural environment but also invites aesthetic considerations into play in more everyday situations. As such, melancholy can be considered an aesthetic emotion per se. In this paper, I critically examine the various aspects of Brady and Haapala’s account, then present …

What In The World, John M. Carvalho

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Photographs bear witness. Minimally, they record or collect evidence. Bearing witness is not, however, reducible to showing that this was there then. Bearing witness has an affective dimension. What led a photographer to select this and not that to capture on a light sensitive medium? What was he or she feeling? How was the photographer embodied when he or she trained their lens on the scene to be photographed? How is the photographer’s embodiment culturally situated relative to that scene, and how does his or her embodiment bear on what he or she hopes to witness and for others to …

Aesthetic Engagement In Everyday Life: Reflections On Aesthetic Life And Why It Matters By Dominic Mciver Lopes, Bence Nanay, Nick Riggle, Zhou Caishu

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

New Commandments, Jacob Sussman

Masters Theses

I reach into the earth, pull out mud-encrusted objects, and recombine them to define new meanings. With every object transposed, the past breaks down; new potentials form. “New Commandments” recombines historical symbolism through an intuitive building, destroying, and merging to reimagine or re-establish meaning.

The work critiques rites of passage, masculinity, and stereotypes by deconstructing how histories, ideologies, and preconceptions form.

As a queer person raised in-between Judaism and Christianity, social preconceptions and religious expectations festered my formation. Our choice is taken away at this moment of conception. To take back autonomy, I reimagine historical, and religious symbolism and transmute …

Moving At The Speed Of Trust, Sun Ho Lee

Masters Theses

Moving at the Speed of Trust is a workbook of strategies — practices, definitions, and techniques — to nurture community-building in support of inbetweeners who live between power structures and cultures and are often left out. Inbetweeners are those individuals whose lives are in transition through recent immigration or forced translocation from Asia to America.

These strategies revolve around threads of trust: kin, giggles, vulnerability, and shared experience. With these threads, we can question power. We can preserve stories, expand the ways we connect, shift perspectives on what is “standard,” and cultivate a community rooted in understanding. To understand each …

Margins (I Nvr Needed Acceptance From All U Outsiders), Jahi Lendor

Masters Theses

A comedian said, “American pie isn’t made out of apples, it’s made out of whatever you can get your fucking hands on.”1 With that, my work seeks to provide an honest representation of the infinite value of the everydayness and behavior of blackness ranging from trauma to beauty. Various mediums explore culture, class, collective memory, identity, and erasure. While resisting institutional and systemic boundaries between disciplines my practice actively seeks fluidity between media. The work often translates to (social) poetic-bricolage visualizations that combine gestures of assemblage, sculpture, installation, and painting. The work focuses on reflecting on how I see life …

Out In Thin Air, Daiqing Zhang

Masters Theses

My work often takes form in experience-charged installations underscored by phenomenology. The whys and hows behind the work mostly remain unspoken, since I would rather my work speak for itself. This writing project offered me the opportunity to comb through and tell the stories and thoughts that informed the work.

I have built a collection of documentation about the experience of having a sensitivity to moments of wonder in everyday life. These archives recorded sensuous imprints in life composed of mundane phenomena. In the collection there are images/footage of a glimpse of light leaking through cloud crevices; a brush of …

Postindustrial Playbook++, Maxwell Fertik

Masters Theses

There is no such thing as an undisrupted ecosystem. Every inch of the planet is impacted by industrial development and its chemical legacy has mutated the soil and water. As a response, this thesis is designed to promote abundant over extractive resources and visualize a post-industrial reality. It consists of a series of objects, writing and design research on the relationship of industry and ecosystem.

In many ways it is a playbook++, laying out possible strategies or “plays’’ for making do with what exists around us amid collapse.

Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica)(ي'ڑ*), a plant that grows in the most degraded …

Thingle Things: An Exploration Of The Imperfect, Jesse G. Groom

Masters Theses

I am fascinated by the “imperfect” and ask: What are these so-called flaws? Might they just be misalignments with the plane of expectations which coat our visual processing? The relationship between object and human has grown ever more assuming since the advent of industrial production methods. I posit that the efficiency and profit driven decisions which underly this scale and mode of making have subsequently forced matter into the molds of our whims with little allowance for evidence of disobedience. During the opportunity of my own fabrication practice, however, I can discover new possibilities for the typologies of the things …

Home. Objects. Transitions., Fei Gao

Masters Theses

As migratory life challenges traditional understandings of "home," can domestic objects, materials, or substitutes transformed into portable art forms soothe migratory anxiety, navigate connections to home, and become alternatives to the ideal home?

This thesis is an investigation of the value of domestic objects as transitional markers of "home" and their ability to foster positive emotional connection among those whose lives are in flux migrating people. Based on British psychiatrist Donald W. Winnicott's research on "Transitional Objects" or "Transitional Phenomena" such objects not only represent "comfort objects" for infants but also foreshadow the many roles assigned by individuals throughout their …

Landscape De/Re-Construction Through Art, Manuel Gonzalez

Masters Theses

Contemporary landscape architecture practice and education primarily focus on ecological and technical interventions. The climate crisis we find ourselves in demands scientifically informed decisions and well-engineered execution of projects, but, more importantly, creativity and innovation.

The fine arts, which were once integral and foundational to design, are today largely unappreciated and appropriated. The spiritual power of Art, Aesthetics, and Beauty, explored at length through art history and theory, are often viewed as indulgent or secondary to execution. The gap between Art & Design has widened. As a result, designers face challenges in fostering in individuals the kind of care and …

The Meaning Of A Choice, Julie-Louise Zeitoun

Masters Theses

If you are disabled or disadvantaged, you will be dismissed and stifled. Few people will actively care for your struggles. As a person with autism, I was deeply fearful of the persecution I had faced throughout my life; it was a fear that followed me with terrifying determination. I desperately wanted to blend into society. So I designed myself to be devoid of any weakness, and productivity was the way I chose to conceal any difficulties I faced. It was a way to measure my success — a way to measure my normalcy.

Standard medical textiles are generic, cumbersome devices. …

Moretheless, Abdelghani Alnahawi

Masters Theses

material investigations becoming questions with interjections

Constructing A Good Life – Aesthetic Practices In Tiny Living, Anu Besson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

I explore how aesthetic practices, or habitual, leisurely ways of doing everyday things for aesthetic enjoyment, play an important role in a pursuit of a good life. I apply a lens of aesthetic practices on media samples portraying living in a tiny house to explore 1) how this lifestyle is presented in traditional and social media, and 2) how the tiny house movement appears to be fueled by a yearning to construct a life that supports one’s creativity and integrity of identity. This construction often takes place through or by emphasizing aesthetic practices.

In The Air 2023, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

In the Air was a community-based photography and poetry zine that was designed to reflect student experiences and build community across majors on campus. The first and only issue is divided into four chapters that contain creative writing and student artwork: To Be in Love, School(ed), Observations, and Life.