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Articles 541 - 570 of 577
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Are Supertasters Good Candidates For Being Human Ideal Critics?, Francis Raven
Are Supertasters Good Candidates For Being Human Ideal Critics?, Francis Raven
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This paper asks whether supertasters possess the criteria for ideal critics that David Hume outlines in his essay "Of the Standard of Taste." This might seem like a straightforward question, but there is a paradox involving supertasters: They possess more tastebuds than normal tasters, making it reasonable to assume they fulfill the requirements for Humean ideal critics with respect to taste. However, because they have more tastebuds, supertasters find certain foods bitter that normal tasters do not and thus negatively evaluate them. This might indicate that supertasters actually make poor candidates for being Humean ideal critics with respect to taste. …
Avant-Garde Or Pré-Jugé?, Sinead Murphy
Avant-Garde Or Pré-Jugé?, Sinead Murphy
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This paper receives its impetus from Gadamer's account of effective history (Wirkungsgeschichte) and his corresponding challenge to the 'problem of purity' that he locates in Kant's critique of aesthetic judgment and that derives from the attempt to establish universal founding principles for thought and action. This is a deep and wide-ranging issue, and so I focus on a very specific aspect of it: the division between intuition and understanding, between history as a given flux and enlightenment as a unifying synthesis, that motivates Kant's search for pure reflective grounds to reconcile them, and on the challenge posed to this division …
The Aesthetic Dissonance Of Industrial Wind Machines, Jon Boone
The Aesthetic Dissonance Of Industrial Wind Machines, Jon Boone
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Yuriko Saito recently published an essay in this journal, "Machines in the Ocean: The Aesthetics of Wind Farms" (Contemporary Aesthetics, 2 (2004)). The bulk of her essay is a search for the right aesthetic justification for wind plants sited in the ocean as well as for those onshore. Because wind power does not emit toxins into the air and its source of energy is recurrent, it offers the promise of a clean, renewable alternative to fossil fuels. The central problem with harnessing any form of energy is that enormous energies are wasted in the process of producing and channeling a …
Immersive Contemplation In Video Art Environments, Tiffany Sutton
Immersive Contemplation In Video Art Environments, Tiffany Sutton
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This essay examines a form of video art -- what is called a "video environment" -- that calls upon as much as it departs from familiar conventions that are bound up in museum display. I argue that the way that works in this genre are housed in museums enables them to give rise to a form of contemplation, one involving immersion, that is, if not unique to this genre, then certainly demonstrated by it. My examples of video environments make a case for the coherence of this rarely experienced immersive form of contemplation, the value of which, in turn, makes …
Carrying The Jade Tablet: A Consideration Of Confucian Artistry, Eric C. Mullis
Carrying The Jade Tablet: A Consideration Of Confucian Artistry, Eric C. Mullis
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
In this paper I discuss the aesthetic dimension of ritual action. In order to demonstrate how the rites render action aesthetically expressive, I draw on the notion of an "art of context" and further detail the Confucian understanding of artistic practice as an essential component for moral cultivation. In turn, I use John Dewey's account of aesthetic form in order to support and further demonstrate the ability of the rituals and arts to organize action and to thereby render it aesthetically significant. However, Dewey's account entails that we question either conceptual or institutional limitations of aesthetic form as such limitations …
Production Theories And Artistic Value, David E.W. Fenner
Production Theories And Artistic Value, David E.W. Fenner
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
In this paper, I want to argue that what I call "production theories" - theories that purport to account for the value of a work of art instrumentally and in terms of something experienced by audience members in attending to the work - are insufficient to account for artistic value. The production theories I will discuss include those of Monroe Beardsley, Nelson Goodman, Leo Tolstoy (for lack of a more current pure affective theory), and Alan Goldman (whose account may be seen as an amalgam of the first three). The first three of these theorists represent the most popular and …
The Eye And The Hand: Professional Sensitivity And The Idea Of An Aesthetics Of Work On The Land, Justin Winkler
The Eye And The Hand: Professional Sensitivity And The Idea Of An Aesthetics Of Work On The Land, Justin Winkler
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Academic aesthetics is guided by the visual and notions of distance. In this article I want to study how an aesthetics of work, of process and proximity, could function. I am asking why the peasant population has been always been supposed not to have an aesthetic appreciation of their land. I contend that they had some kind of appreciation, but that this was conceived expressed in terms fundamentally different from the academic and pictorial landscape aesthetics. With the term 'professional' sensitivity and examples from the Swiss Alps and Southern France, I discuss the question of how an archaeology of an …
'Man Has Always Danced': Forays Into The Origins Of An Art Largely Forgotten By Philosophers, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
'Man Has Always Danced': Forays Into The Origins Of An Art Largely Forgotten By Philosophers, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Philosophers have had comparatively little to say of the art of dance, a surprising fact given the range of people both inside and outside of dance who have claimed that 'man has always danced.' This essay attempts to substantiate this claim by an inquiry into the origins of dance, its focal attention being on the word always and any linkage to males deriving from that focal point of attention. It begins with evolutionary considerations in the form of courtship displays, behaviors finely and extensively described by Darwin, and goes on to consider displays by chimpanzees in particular. These considerations point …
Moving Pictures - Advertising, Traffic And Cityscape, Pasi Kolhonen
Moving Pictures - Advertising, Traffic And Cityscape, Pasi Kolhonen
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
There are two major factors responsible for the way contemporary cities look the way they do. One is the ever-increasing volume of traffic, and the other is the present commercial culture which manifests itself most visibly through advertising. This paper deals with the effects of advertising in a city environment; the main focus is on advertising linked to traffic. Nowadays we have become so accustomed to advertising that it sometimes is actually hard to recognize just how much is around. Spaces without some form of advertisements are becoming progressively fewer in today's Western cities. The city-dweller's field of vision is …
Machines In The Ocean: The Aesthetics Of Wind Farms, Yuriko Saito
Machines In The Ocean: The Aesthetics Of Wind Farms, Yuriko Saito
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This is an exploration of the aesthetic opposition lodged against wind power facilities. Taking the recent controversy regarding the proposal of a wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod as an example, I analyze the opponents' claim that such a construction "ruins" or "spoils" the otherwise pristine landscape. After suggesting some strategies of making the structure more aesthetically positive purely on the sensuous level, I propose that this specific issue must be discussed in the context of larger issues: civic environmentalism and the aesthetics of sustainability.
Colorization Revisited, Julie C. Van Camp
Colorization Revisited, Julie C. Van Camp
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This article is both philosophical and practical in its intent. It endeavours to bring into focus an idea with an Ancient Greek lineage, poiesis, and determine whether it may revitalize our thinking about the 'making' of art. The art-making considered in this paper will concentrate exclusively on Western art and its historical and contemporary manifestations. I suggest that poiesis - that which "pro-duces or leads (a thing) into being'" - may enable practitioners in the varying art forms, and aestheticians who reflect upon them, to come to a deeper sense of how artworks work: that they realize themselves inter-dependently …
The Heresy Of Paraphrase Revisited, Stefán Snaevarr
The Heresy Of Paraphrase Revisited, Stefán Snaevarr
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
I try to rejuvenate Cleanth Brooks' old thesis about the 'heresy of paraphrase.' This I do by analyzing a couple of well-known poems and by performing thought experiments of the "possible world" kind. They show that paradigmatic examples of poems are not paraphrasable. A prosaic text can be improved with the aid of a paraphrase, but a typical poem cannot. The deeper explanation for the non-rephrasability of poetry is that our understanding of it is basically tacit. In this way I hope to give Brooks' original thesis a more solid foundation.
Foucault, Enlightenment And The Aesthetics Of The Self, Anita Seppä
Foucault, Enlightenment And The Aesthetics Of The Self, Anita Seppä
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Mona Hatoum's video installation Corps étranger is an example of an artwork that critically comments on particular aspects of contemporary visual culture, such as the colonization of the body's interior by medical image technologies. It has indeed been interpreted in those terms by several authors from within the new academic field of Visual Culture. Here it is argued that the critical cultural impact of the installation might be more fully described when one grants art a relative autonomy within the cultural field and, moreover, draws on concepts from more traditional academic disciplines and approaches, such as aesthetics and phenomenology. Art …
How To Speak Of Nature? The Exemplary Position Of Mount Koli In Environmental Research, Yrjö Sepänmaa
How To Speak Of Nature? The Exemplary Position Of Mount Koli In Environmental Research, Yrjö Sepänmaa
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Mount Koli in Eastern Finland is a useful example for environmental aesthetics and landscape research. In case studies, an example represents a general set and the conclusion becomes a precedent. Koli provides a wealth of material: descriptions of local nature, art featuring Koli, and documents concerning the environmental debates around it. One can outline both the development of Koli into a culturally significant location and the activities and policies of the process, as well as the values and appreciations that guided them. The material we have can be used to examine an environmental institution designed to have the structure of …
Narrative Understanding And Understanding Narrative, Sarah E. Worth
Narrative Understanding And Understanding Narrative, Sarah E. Worth
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
In this paper I deal with the question of how it is that we have emotional responses to things that we do not believe in the reality of, specifically things like characters and events in literature and film (the paradox of fiction). The direction in which I wish to take this query is not the traditional philosophical approach to this question, however. There has been much written on this particular approach, and because of this I think that it is becoming, in philosophical effect, stuck. What I wish to do in what follows is to approach this question from a …
Reclaiming The Body: Francis Bacon's Fugitive Bodies And Confucian Aesthetics On Bodily Expression, Eva K. W. Man
Reclaiming The Body: Francis Bacon's Fugitive Bodies And Confucian Aesthetics On Bodily Expression, Eva K. W. Man
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Recently there has been a cry in Western academic and artistic circles for reclaiming the body and repositioning its locus and identity. Body theories and body art have become topics of attention as well as subjects of philosophical discussion. This article looks at the issue from a comparative perspective, focusing on representative cases in Chinese and Western portrait paintings. It first discusses Francis Bacon's works of human bodies and identifies their philosophical and psychological loci. It then outlines the Confucian discourses on the body, their related metaphysical grounds, and their relations to traditional Chinese portrait paintings. Representative Chinese portraits like …
Kinetic Synesthesia: Experiencing Dance In Multimedia Scenographies, Marc Boucher
Kinetic Synesthesia: Experiencing Dance In Multimedia Scenographies, Marc Boucher
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
The contrasting kinetic values between dancer and projected moving image in multimedia scenographies provide the viewer with a particular type of synaesthetic experience. It results from the interaction of kinesthesis proper to each medium, the dancing body and the moving image. The extensive use of projected moving images in performing arts is part of a cultural trend that privileges a fundamental yet little understood aspect of aesthetic experience. Kinetic synaesthesia is a transdisciplinary concept formulated in light of psychological, physiological, and phenomenological accounts of both synaesthesia and kinesthesis.
Forum: Science In Aesthetics?, Editorial Office
Forum: Science In Aesthetics?, Editorial Office
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This inaugurates a new feature of Contemporary Aesthetics, a forum in which specific issues or themes in aesthetics can be discussed, debated, and developed. The first of these, "Science in Aesthetics?," comes from an interest that emerged at the XVIth International Congress of Aesthetics held in Rio de Janeiro during July 2004.
Animal Aesthetics, Wolfgang Welsch
Animal Aesthetics, Wolfgang Welsch
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
No abstract provided.
Symposium: The Body (Continued In Vol. 3)
Symposium: The Body (Continued In Vol. 3)
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Call for submissions that discuss the aesthetic significance of the body in art.
Ethical Autonomism: The Work Of Art As A Moral Agent, Rob Van Gerwen
Ethical Autonomism: The Work Of Art As A Moral Agent, Rob Van Gerwen
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Much contemporary art seems morally out of control. Yet, philosophers seem to have trouble finding the right way to morally evaluate works of art. The debate between autonomists and moralists, I argue, has turned into a stalemate due to two mistaken assumptions. Against these assumptions, I argue that the moral nature of a work's contents does not transfer to the work and that, if we are to morally evaluate works we should try to conceive of them as moral agents. Ethical autonomism holds that art's autonomy consists in its demand that art appreciators take up an artistic attitude. A work's …
Talk To The Animals: A Short Comment On Wolfgang Welsch's "Animal Aesthetics", Stefán Snaevarr
Talk To The Animals: A Short Comment On Wolfgang Welsch's "Animal Aesthetics", Stefán Snaevarr
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
I voice some concern about Wolfgang Welsch's defense of the theory that animals can feel aesthetic pleasure. My first concern is epistemological: it is hard to see how we can find out whether they actually feel such pleasures. My second concern is conceptual: aesthetic pleasures have intentional objects and are woven into fallible judgments. It is hard to see that animals have such objects and can perform such judgments.
Ariadne At The Movies, John Dilworth
Ariadne At The Movies, John Dilworth
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Films are usually assumed to be types, with their templates or performances being tokens of those types. However, I give a counter-example in which two different films are simultaneously made by different directors, with the outcome of this process being a single template length of film which, I claim, embodies both of those films. But no two types could thus have a token in common, and hence type views of films must be incorrect. I further explain and defend the legitimacy of the example, and conclude by offering an alternative, representational view of the nature of films that can also …
Reflecting The Pacific, Wolfgang Welsch
Reflecting The Pacific, Wolfgang Welsch
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
The title of my article has a double meaning: on the one hand, I intend to reflect the Pacific Ocean in the sense of mirroring it; and on the other, of course, also to think about this mirroring, to reflect on it.
Poiesis And Art-Making: A Way Of Letting-Be, Derek H. Whitehead Ph.D.
Poiesis And Art-Making: A Way Of Letting-Be, Derek H. Whitehead Ph.D.
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This article is both philosophical and practical in its intent. It endeavors to bring into focus an idea with an Ancient Greek lineage, poiesis, and determine whether it may revitalize our thinking about the 'making' of art. The art-making considered in this paper will concentrate exclusively on Western art and its historical and contemporary manifestations. I suggest that poiesis - that which "pro-duces or leads (a thing) into being'" - may enable practitioners in the varying art forms, and aestheticians who reflect upon them, to come to a deeper sense of how artworks work: that they realize themselves inter-dependently …