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Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Water And Stone: Contemporary Chinese Art And The Spirit Resonance Of The World, Mary Bittner Wiseman

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

My claim that the new art in China operates at the level of matter and gesture, below that of discourse, is twofold. First, much of the art that is being made exemplifies principles articulated by Hsieh Ho (fifth century) and Shih Tao (seventeenth century) and refracted through the changes wrought by Mao in 1949 and Deng in 1979. Through their art, experimental Chinese artists ask what can art be in a world turned upside down, and what can it be to be artist in such a world and, in particular, to be a Chinese artist.

Second, in the course of …

Why Beauty Still Cannot Be Measured, Ossi Naukkarinen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article focuses on the question of whether the latest results achieved in sciences such as evolution studies and brain research can help us understand the nature of aesthetic judgments. It suggests that such approaches may offer interesting insights for understanding many problems in aesthetics, but for clarifying aesthetic judgments one needs a philosophical point of view. Aesthetic judgments cannot be proven right or wrong by scientific methods, and beauty or other aesthetic qualities cannot be directly measured. The “method” of both making and analyzing aesthetic judgments is discussion, and the article clarifies why this is still the case, even …

A Functional Model Of The Aesthetic Response, Daniel Conrad

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In a process of somatic evolution, the brain semi-randomly generates initially-unstable neural circuits that are selectively stabilized if they succeed in making sense out of raw sensory input. The human aesthetic response serves the function of stabilizing the circuits that successfully mediate perception and interpretation, making those faculties more agile, conferring selective advantage. It is triggered by structures in art and nature that provoke the making of sense. Art is deliberate human action aimed at triggering the aesthetic response in others; thus, if successful, it serves the same function of making perception and interpretation more agile. These few principles initiate …

The Aesthetics Of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Mri): From The Scientific Laboratory To An Artwork, Silvia Casini

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article investigates the aesthetic potential of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), a medical imaging technique, both inside the laboratory and in the arts. By combining Rancière’s understanding of aesthetics with Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodied perception, it argues that an image-generating technique conceived in the scientific field can successfully migrate into the realm of fine art, opening up new aesthetic and perceptual possibilities. Although aesthetic qualities are already present in the laboratory, they remain hidden by the necessity of reading the image-data obtained according to the interpretative framework of the medical discourse. Two paths are covered: the first goes from the …

Causation And Circularity In Dispositionalism, Daniel Jacob Flores

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

I wish to present a narrow discussion of Bird's and Mumford's basic positions on their versions of dispositionalism. I think that they are correct to point to the threat of circularity and regress but I do not believe that they have successfully argued away the problem. I begin by offering a very brief account of dispositions and three general criticisms. The goal is to show that causation is central to a satisfactory account of dispositionalism. Next, I outline Mumford's and then Bird's general positions on dispositions. What this will show is the importance of the regress/circularity objection. Both philosophers understand …

On Constructive-Engagement Strategy Of Comparative Philosophy, Bo Mou

Faculty Publications

In this journal theme introduction, first, I explain how comparative philosophy as explored in the journal Comparative Philosophy is understood and how it is intrinsically related to the constructive engagement strategy. Second, to characterize more clearly and accurately some related methodological points of the constructive-engagement strategy, and also to explain how constructive engagement is possible, I introduce some needed conceptual and explanatory resources and a meta-methodological framework and endeavor to identify adequacy conditions for methodological guiding principles in comparative studies. Third, as a case analysis, I show how the constructive-engagement reflective practice bears on recent studies of Chinese and comparative …

Law And Its Order, Daniele Manni

Master's Theses

Daniele Manni

Loyola University Chicago

LAW AND ITS ORDER: THE PRIORITY OF ETHICS OVER LEGISLATION

IN PLATO'S LAWS.

Despite the fact that the Laws are almost twenty four hundred years old, their reserve of philosophically and politically interesting points is still copious and relevant for the contemporary reader. The present work is an initial attempt to analyze the nature of law as treated in the Laws and to highlight especially the reliance of the legislative sphere on the ethical sphere.

In spite of the many, and often painfully detailed, laws posited by the Athenian in the course of books VIII-XII, …

Reorientation Through Interruption: On The Relation Of Immanuel Kant's Modes Of Egoism To His Critical Philosophy, Giancarlo Tarantino

Master's Theses

The relationship between Immanuel Kant's anthropology, and his Critical philosophy has proven to be a notoriously difficult problem, both for specifically Kantian scholarship as well as for philosophy in general. This thesis attempts to investigate this relationship by showing the importance of Kant's modes of egoism at work in his three Critiques. In doing so this thesis will highlight the phenomena of interruption, and orientation as playing crucial interpretive roles for parsing out the aforementioned relationship. I will try to show that anthropology and Critique mutually interrupt, and re-orient one another's specific contributions to the major themes of Kant's thinking.

What Makes A Belief Warranted? A Pragmatist’S Answer, Luke Herrine

Honors Papers

Philosophical theories of warrant and justification are thought to answer the question of what makes some beliefs better to belief than others. Traditionally, philosophers have tried to find general qualities that beliefs share to get at the nature of warrant. Some of the most prominent theories based on these attempts are criticized. It is then suggested that what all of these theories miss is the fact that whenever the warrant of a belief is being evaluated, characteristics of the evaluator – not just the belief or the believer – affect the epistemic status of that belief. A pragmatist account of …

Recent Publications

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Report: The Xviiith International Congress Of Aesthetics- "Diversities In Aesthetics" (Peking University, Beijing, China, 9-13 August 2010), Michael Ranta

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

A Symposium On Laurent Stern's Interpretive Realism, John Gibson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Response To Critics, Laurent Stern

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Allowing The Accidental; The Interplay Between Intentionality And Realism In Photographic Art, Katrina Mitcheson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

We experience photographs both as intentional and as prone to the accidental. The photograph is both capable of being an artwork with its own, constructed world and of drawing our attention to the reality of the objects used in creating it. In this article I employ the insights contained in the concepts of Barthes’ studium and punctum in order to explore how the artist’s intentions and the realism of photography interact aesthetically. I advance the idea that a unique aesthetics of photography can be rooted in the tension between the intentional, culturally coded message of a photograph and the emanation …

Home Life: Cultivating A Domestic Aesthetic, Jessica J. Lee

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Home Life is an exploration of environmental aesthetics as it applies to the domestic realm. I consider Kevin Melchionne’s argument that through notions of taste, grace, and performance, everyday domestic chores can become heightened artistic practices. I argue that this does not go far enough in overcoming the traditional view of art as aesthetically superior to popular or everyday artefacts and practices; rather, it encourages the limitations of traditional aesthetics values within the domestic setting. Through examples, including Pauliina Rautio’s study on laundry, I consider the possibility that domestic practices are made up of actions that are not performed with …

Nightwatch, Justin Winkler

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this essay I examine the features of night, in particular, urban night. I try to highlight the epistemological divide between day and night, light and darkness. Even as light-based experiencing, acting, and thinking, and their cultural tools colonize urban night, nocturnal elements relate dialectically to our daytime reasoning. I conclude with the question of whether a kind of half-tone thinking contained in a trialectic of light, twilight, and darkness would be capable of appreciating the peculiar qualities of night.

The reveries of the weak light guide into the innermost recesses of the familiar. It looks as if there are …

The Curatorial Muse, Michael J. Kowalski

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

An appreciation of the tension between the predicate, "to curate," and the subject, "the curator," is essential to understanding the convergence of creation, criticism, and administration in the graphic arts of our time. Curators were ideally positioned to step to the fore when the idea-versus-object dichotomy began to collapse in the work of Duchamp. The roots of activist curating can be found in Western Classical culture. The prevalence of conceptual art at the end of the twentieth century, combined with the explicit denigration of physical craft by artists, created a void into which activist curators moved. The curator's role as …

Caretakers Of The Garden Of Delight And Discontent: Adirondack Narrative, Conflict, And Environmental Virtue, Eric Richard Holmlund

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation concerns a widely recognized natural area, New York's Adirondack Park, that serves both as an international model for conservation and as a context for persistent conflict over natural resources, space, wealth and esthetics. It employs narrative inquiry as a method to examine the sources and the function of narratives or stories explaining the history and the present status of social groups in the Park. Narrative theorists maintain that we borrow from such socially circulating narratives to craft our own identities, and then repeat them until we believe them, almost without regard for the factual basis in history or …

The Chinese Classic Of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation Of The Xiaojing. By Henry Rosemont, Jr., And Roger T. Ames, Alan Kam Leung Chan

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The fruitful partnership between Henry Rosemont, Jr., and Roger T. Ames which earlier yielded The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation1 has delivered another fine translation and study of a major Confucian classic—namely, the Xiaojing 孝經, rendered here as the “Classic of Family Reverence” but perhaps more commonly known to English readers as the “Classic of Filial Piety.” The translation will be welcomed by students of Chinese literature. The study of xiao that accompanies it should provoke much discussion and debate.

Other-Centred Love: Diotima’S Lesson To Socrates, Colin A. Redmond

Theses

In this thesis I set out to determine the possible motivations in response to which Diotima agreed to teach Socrates the arts of love. In the process I develop a broader understanding of Diotima and her natural, feminine complexity. This understanding of Diotima suggests an interpretation of her teaching to show that, for all that can be said of love it is, importantly a re-orientation from self-centred interest to other-centred interest and it is this re-orientation which impacted on Socrates and by which he was persuaded.

Such an impact and its explanation offers a clear rationale for the changes which …

Space, Time And The Constitution Of Subjectivity: Comparing Elias And Foucault, Paddy Dolan

Articles

The work of Foucault and Elias has been compared before in the social sciences and humanities, but here I argue that the main distinction between their approaches to the construction of subjectivity is the relative importance of space and time in their accounts. This is not just a matter of the “history of ideas,” as providing for the temporal dimension more fully in theories of subjectivity and the habitus allows for a greater understanding of how ways of being, acting and feeling in different spaces are related but largely unintended. Here I argue that discursive practices, governmental operations and technologies …

The Thinking Hand: Book Review, Jim Roche

Articles

In this new book Juhani Pallasmaa continues his phenomenological exploration begun in ‘The Eyes of the Skin (2005)’, with the ‘Thinking Hand’ here proffered as a metaphor for his contention that all our senses, have innate imbedded crucial skills which help us perform the most basic daily tasks – and to create inspired works of art and architecture.

Human Rights Without Foundations, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

This is a good time for human rights. Not that they are respected more than in the past. The flagrant resort to kidnapping, arbitrary arrests, and torture by the United States of America (USA), and the unprecedented restriction of individual freedom in the USA, and in Great Britain (GB), cast doubt about that. It is a good time for human rights in that claims about such rights are used more widely in the conduct of world affairs than before. There are declarations of and treaties about human rights, international courts and tribunals with jurisdiction over various human right violations. They …

Manifestations As Effects, Jennifer Mckitrick

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

According to a standard characterization of dispositions, when a disposition is activated by a stimulus, a manifestation of that disposition typically occurs. For example, when flammable gasoline encounters a spark in an oxygen-rich environment, the manifestation of flammability—combustion—occurs. In the dispositions/powers literature, it is common to assume that a manifestation is an effect of a disposition being activated. (I use “disposition” and “power” interchangeably). I address two questions in this chapter: Could all manifestations be effects that involve things acquiring only dispositional properties? And, is thinking of manifestations as contributions to effects preferable to thinking of them as effects? I …

[Introduction To] Warcraft And The Fragility Of Virtue: An Essay In Aristotelian Ethics, G. Scott Davis

Bookshelf

The origins of the book make a chronicle of the unexpected. In the spring of 1985, if memory serves, I was invited by Jeffrey Stout to teach a course at Princeton focusing on war and traditions of moral reasoning. Although I had not previously explored the just war tradition, it dovetailed nicely with my interest in Aristotle and his place in contemporary moral theory.

The Third Tear In Everyday Aesthetics, Katya Mandoki

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Although totally overlooked by mainstream aesthetic theory, various paths were nevertheless left open for addressing everyday aesthetics, a natural yet surprisingly controversial topic. Why they were never taken until recently, when the theme of everyday aesthetics is now becoming fashionable, can be explained not only by the obvious fact of philosophical aesthetics’ restrictive focal point on art but, among other reasons, by a kind of fetishism that demands an object of recognized value for legitimating an aesthetic inquiry. This new popularity entails, however, certain theoretical risks such as clinging to traditional art-centric and beauty-centric categories to explain the everyday and …

Indivisibility And Linkage Arguments: A Reply To Gilabert, James W. Nickel

Articles

This reply discusses Pablo Gilabert's response to my article, "Rethinking Indivisibility." It welcomes his distinction between conceptual, normative, epistemic, and causal forms of support from one right to another. It denies, however, that "Rethinking Indivisibility" downplayed linkage arguments for human rights (although it did call for careful evaluation of such arguments), and rejects Gilabert's suggestion that we understand the indivisibility of two rights as two rights being highly useful to each other (interdependence) rather than as mutual indispensability. In the final section, I offer two new worries about the system-wide indivisibility of human rights.

A Problem For The Political Reading Of Plato's Republic, Mason Marshall

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

On one of the most common readings of the Republic, Plato means for us to agree with Socrates and his interlocutors that their aristocratic city is the just polis. For convenience, I call this the political reading. It is no wonder, of course, that this interpretation is as common as it is, since it might be one of the most natural interpretations of the Republic. I argue, though, that it faces a serious problem: Socrates and his interlocutors’ argument for the justice of the aristocratic city has certain deficits, and—more important—there is considerable evidence that Plato was aware of at …

The Effect Of Initial Entry Training On The Moral And Character Development Of Military Police Soldiers, Kenneth R. Williams

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The U.S. Army conducts extensive training on its core values beginning with initial entry training (IET), commonly referred to as basic training, in order to shape soldiers' behavior and decision making in combat and noncombat situations. This mixed methods study addressed the problem of limited empirical research on the effects of U.S. Army IET on soldiers' moral and character development. The purpose was to explore the effects of Military Police (MP) IET on soldiers in training through a mixed methods quantitative and qualitative model. The theoretical framework for this study was based on Rest's four component model (FCM) of moral …