Aesthetics Commons^™

Babette Babich: A Nietzschean Scholar On The “Physiology Of Aesthetics”, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In pursuing the invitation to muse upon Babette Babich's scholarship on Nietzsche, I begin with a philological observation about the terms "scholar" and "scholarship." These take their origin from Greek scholé (close cousin, the Latin otium) - which designate leisure. So far as they have to do with study, research, writing, and their communication through letters, lectures, and publication, this is because, as the literate Greeks and Romans understood it, these are among the activities — along with the other artes liberales — that a person with the freedom of leisure would want to pursue. At the highest level, Aristotle …

Sargent's Women: Four Lives Behind The Canvas, By Donna M. Lucey, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017 (Book Review), Anne-Taylor Cahill

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review: 'Embodied Philosophy In Dance: Gaga And Ohad Naharin’S Movement Research', Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This book is an original and complex philosophy of dance that Katan (now Katan-Schmid) has extrapolated from a close examination of and studio-based engagement with Gaga, Ohad Naharin’s style of contemporary dance movement. It is culled from Katan’s first-hand experience as a participant in the training and as a researcher in conversation with Naharin and Gaga-engaged dancers. Gaga is both practiced alone as somatic movement research (one which studies internal, bodily perception and experience) and exhibited in dances that are choreographed by Naharin and other collaborators for the Batsheva Dance Company of Tel-Aviv, Israel. The philosophy provided here is organic …

To Paint A Queen, Anne-Taylor Cahill

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Earth’S Garden-Happiness: Nietzsche’S Geoaesthetics Of The Anthropocene, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This essay proposes a reading of the concept and metaphor of the garden in Nietzsche’s philosophy as a contribution to exploring his aesthetics of the human earth and, accordingly, of his idea of the Sinn der Erde. Following Zarathustra’s agreement with his animals’ repeated declaration that „the world awaits you as a garden,” after his ordeal in struggling with the thought of eternal recurrence, the essay draws on Z and other writings to explore the senses of cultivation, design, and perspective which the garden embodies. Nietzsche recognizes and endorses another dimension of the garden in his discussions of Epicurus’ …

The Pragmatic Picturesque: The Philosophy Of Central Park, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

New York's Central Park is one of the world's iconic works of landscape architecture. The park has achieved global recognition through its representations in film and photography, it is visited by millions every year and every sunny day sees a procession of engaged or newly married couples having their official photographs taken against the background of its picturesque scenery and monumental structures.

In the twenty-first century it may sound slightly odd to consider Central Park as a form of gardening, but the eighteenth-century founders of modern aesthetics and the philosophy of art would have called it a garden or park. …

Aesthetics And The Philosophy Of Art, 1840-1900, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The question can be raised whether the category or discipline of philosophical aesthetics existed before the eighteenth century. Unlike "logic:' "ethics:' and "physics:' a traditional Stoic division of philosophy with great staying power, "aesthetics" is clearly a product of modernity. As Paul O. Kristeller demonstrated in "The Modern System of the Arts:' it was in the eighteenth century that the idea of the aesthetic as a distinctive human capacity and the parallel consolidation of the notion of the fine arts crystallized in the writings of (mostly) French, German, and English philosophers and critics. The modern concepts of art and aesthetics …

Nietzsche And Visuality, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Those who take Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts about the arts and related matters seriously have usually stressed his significance as a critic and theorist of literature, rhetoric, or music. From a biographical point of view, Nietzsche's notoriously poor eyesight would seem to make him a bad candidate to play a similar role with regard to the visual. His optical disability can also be turned into an asset by those who have been critical of the alleged ocularcentrism of Western thought. From that perspective, the philosophical tradition has been dominated by the model of what Plato called "the noblest of the senses," …

Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered: Reflections On Art, Fundamentalism, And Democracy, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This philosophical lecture explores the tension between art and morality, beginning with the opposing viewpoints—aestheticism and moralism—that one should trump the other. As exemplary case studies, several controversial art exhibits—works that fueled the culture wars of the 1980’s are examined to identify the concerns of advocates and critics. This leads to deeper reflections on the artistic assumptions of religious fundamentalism, the role of art in a democracy, and the possibility that artistic exploration can be a form of moral action.

L'Abîme De La Vision, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Revenant a l'œuvre monumentale de Mikel Dufrenne sur la Phénomenologie de l'experience esthétique pour la considérer sous l'angle de l'évolution de notre compréhension de la phénoménologie depuis 1953, force est de constaterque Dufrenne se distançait déjà quelque peu d'une phénoménologie et d'une esthétique de la présence. Forts de la lecture des derniers essais de Heidegger et de notre confrontation à la poursuite par Derrida de cette interrogation sur l'onto-théologie, peut-être avons-nous de notre côté trop facilement présumé que la tradition phénoménologique opérait presque impulsivement sous le signe de la présence, ce qui a fait de nous des experts peut-être …

Deaths Of Art: David Carrier's Metahistory Of Artwriting, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This essay is a critical examination of David Carrier's Artwriting (1987), which offered a philosophical account of the implicit strategies of narrative and presentation deployed by a wide range of art historians and critics. Here, this author raises some questions concerning Carrier's attempt to describe or define a genre of 'art-writing' distinct from philosophical aesthetics; he also discusses Carrier's views in the context of those writers whom Carrier examines in Artwriting.

Hegel On The Meanings Of Poetry, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Since Socrates' attack on poetry, philosophers and critics have been faced with the problem of reconciling two convictions which seem equally pressing. While poetry (or imaginative literature) is and has been valued as a source of insight and knowledge, it also seems clear that poetic meaning is of a rather different sort than that found in science, ordinary language, or (to introduce the classical contrast) prose. Philosophical theories of poetry, then, take one of two forms: either they deny one of these two beliefs, implying perhaps that poetry has only nonsensical or literal meaning, or they provide a cognitive analysis …

Intention And Interpretation In Art: A Semiotic Analysis, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Kant was perhaps the first philosopher to note the distinctive puzzle, verging on paradox, which marks our dealings with art. Works of art seem to place us under an obligation to interpret them and yet we are convinced that our interpretations will never be exhaustive. Kant attempts to account for this peculiar phenomenon by talking of "purposiveness without purpose" or of the aesthetic idea as "a representation of the imagination to which no concept is adequate." We are constrained to see some pattern or organization in a work of art and this is typically understood as a teleological or purposive …