Philosophy: aesthetics Books

Book SynopsisDismembering and remembering the sensual and spiritual body of Lady Justice in this wholly novel interpretation of the optical allegory of Iustitia.

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Book SynopsisIn this rich, highly illustrated book, Mieke Bal takes us on a journey through the range of her work, using the concept of image-thinking as a point of connection between cultural analysis and artistic practice. Bal teaches us how to think with images, but also how to write and think as artists and writers about our own creative work.

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Book SynopsisThe lamented death of art following the rise of modern art theory and the reframing brought about by the appreciation of non-Western culture leads to the budding philosophy of everyday aesthetics. Traditional fine arts are often regarded as rarefied, something accessed by the uniquely talented and displayed in impressive museums or on lavish stages in front of large audiences. Art thusly conceived is something that most people never practice in their lives. Yet in day-to-day life we all experience a creative satisfaction through interaction with the physical and social environment which is a form of artistic practice. This book explores how we gain by understanding ways to live imaginative lives and considers the increasingly important collaborative role of computers and interaction with nature.

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Book SynopsisThe lamented death of art following the rise of modern art theory and the reframing brought about by the appreciation of non-Western culture leads to the budding philosophy of everyday aesthetics. Traditional fine arts are often regarded as rarefied, something accessed by the uniquely talented and displayed in impressive museums or on lavish stages in front of large audiences. Art thusly conceived is something that most people never practice in their lives. Yet in day-to-day life we all experience a creative satisfaction through interaction with the physical and social environment which is a form of artistic practice. This book explores how we gain by understanding ways to live imaginative lives and considers the increasingly important collaborative role of computers and interaction with nature.

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Book Synopsis Zombies, werewolves and chainsaw-wielding maniacs are tried-and-true staples of horror films. But none can match the visceral dread evoked by a child with an innocent face and a diabolical stare. Cinema''s evil children attack our cherished ideas of innocence and our innocent bystander status as the audience. A good horror film is a scary ride--a devil child movie is a guilt trip. This book examines 24 international films--with discussions of another 100--that in effect indict viewers for crimes of child abuse and abandonment, greed, social and ecological negligence, and political and war crimes, and for persistent denial of responsibility for them all. For 75 years evil children have ritually rebuked audiences and, in playing on our guilt, established a horror subgenre that might be described as a blood-spattered rampage on an ethical mission.

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Book SynopsisAt first sight, tattoos, nudity, and veils do not seem to have much in common except for the fact that all three have become more frequent, more visible, and more dominant in connection with aesthetic presentations of women over the past thirty years. No longer restricted to biker and sailor culture, tattoos have been sanctioned by the mainstream of liberal societies. Nudity has become more visible than ever on European beaches or on the internet. The increased use of the veil by women in Muslim and non-Muslim countries has developed in parallel with the aforementioned phenomena and is just as striking. Through the means of conceptual analysis, Veils, Nudity, and Tattoos: The New Feminine Aesthetics reveals that these three phenomena can be both private and public, humiliating and empowering, and backward and progressive. This unorthodox approach is traced by the three's similar social and psychological patterns, and by doing so, Veils, Nudity, and Tattoos hopes to sketch the image of Trade ReviewA unique and seminal work of extraordinary scholarship.... [V]ery highly recommended for both community and academic library Feminist Studies and Islamic Culture collections. * Midwest Book Review *

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Book SynopsisWeiss, Propen, and Reid gather a diverse group of scholars to analyze the growing obsolescence of the human-object dichotomy in today's world. In doing so, Radical Interface brings together diverse disciplines to foster a dialog on significant technological issues pertinent to philosophy, rhetoric, aesthetics, and science.Trade ReviewAnytime one mixes new technologies with the posthuman, one can expect a wild ride. Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman does not disappoint. From iPads and Phones, GPS and Internet on to LEGO and Siri, then to Steampunk Corsets, Elephantman and Final Fantasy VII, the role of posthuman and technologies undergoes a stimulating analysis. -- Don Ihde, Stony Brook UniversityDesign, Mediation, and the Posthuman provides an innovative set of interdisciplinary articles examining the intersections of the human, the technical, and the natural world. It offers both solid theoretical reflections on and interesting applications of ideas from major theoreticians working on these issues, from Bruno Latour to Peter-Paul Verbeek, Jane Bennett, and N. Katherine Hayles. -- Darrell Arnold, St. Thomas UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: MIND versus THING and Other ‘Central Events’ of the Twenty-First Century Part One: Interface Introduction Chapter One: Posthuman Topologies: Thinking Through the Hoard, Anthony Miccoli Chapter Two: The Rhetorical Work of the GPS: Geographic Knowledge-Making and the Technologically-Mediated Body, Amy D. Propen Chapter Three: Neo-Baroque Computing: Interface and the Subject-Object Divide, Elise Takehana Chapter Four: Techno-Geographic Interfaces: Layers of Text and Agency in Mobile Augmented Reality, John Tinnell Part Two: Artifact Introduction Chapter Five: The Plastic Art of LEGO: An Essay into Material Culture, Jonathan Rey Lee Chapter Six: The iPhone Erfahrung: Siri, the Auditory Unconscious, and Walter Benjamin’s “Aura”, Emily McArthur Chapter Seven: Victorian Cybernetics: Networking Technology, Disability and Interior Design, Colbey Emmerson Reid Chapter Eight: Extending “Extension”: A Reappraisal of the Technology-as-Extension Idea through the Case of Self-Tracking Technologies, Yoni Van Den Eede Part Three: Users Introduction Chapter Nine: Mobility Regimes and the Constitution of the Nineteenth-Century Posthuman Body, Kristie Fleckenstein and Josh Mehler Chapter Ten: Living Deliberately, Less or More: Affirmative Cynicism and Radical Design, Matthew A. Levy Chapter Eleven: Seduced by the Machine: Human-Technology Relations and Sociable Robots, Dennis M. Weiss Chapter Twelve: “You really are you, right?”: Cybernetic Memory and the Construction of the Posthuman Self in Videogame Play, Brendan Keogh Chapter Thirteen: Mediating Anthropocene Planetary Attachments: Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, Nicole Merola

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Book SynopsisSarah A. Mattice explores contemporary philosophical activity and the way in which one aspect of languagemetaphorgives shape and boundary to the landscape of the discipline. The book examines metaphors of combat, play, and aesthetic experience and emphasizes how the choices we make in philosophical language are deeply intertwined with what we think philosophy is and how it should be practiced. Drawing on a broad range of resources, from cognitive linguistics and hermeneutics to aesthetics and Chinese philosophy, Mattice''s argument provides insight into the evolution and future of philosophy itself.Trade ReviewMetaphor and Metaphilosophy makes a timely contribution to the field of comparative philosophy and provides a thoughtful critique of the current culture of philosophy. Mattice adeptly guides us in a constructive reflection on the subject of metaphilosophy. I recommend the book highly to all who are interested in engaging philosophical activity in a more open, respectful, and inclusive manner. * Philosophy East and West *Readers of Mattice's book will learn much and will be left with much to think about. * Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy *Sarah Mattice is able to draw on a remarkably wide range of material, including a particularly strong grounding in western and Chinese philosophy, to enrich her critical examination of the key metaphors in philosophy. She makes a convincing argument for how our conception of thinking and how we engage in philosophical discourse have profound consequences for the nature of social relationships in a multifocal world. This is an extraordinary book, and all philosophers and students of philosophy would benefit by reading it. -- Eliot Deutsch, University of HawaiiMetaphor and Metaphilosophy is a novel articulation of different models of philosophical activity. Mattice adeptly and fruitfully engages these models to plumb Chinese and western sources. The result is an enriched understanding of the aims and methods of philosophy and its place in contemporary life. -- Karyn Lai, University of New South WalesBravo! If every philosopher attended to the contents of this book in cross-cultural context, the discipline would almost certainly regain the stature it once had and deserves. -- Henry Rosemont, Jr., Brown UniversityThis book presents a hopeful new vision of philosophy and philosophical practice, informed throughout by a new sense of the power of metaphor. It is at once scholarly and eminently accessible, effectively modelling the new practice it persuasively presents. -- Thomas E. Jackson, University of Hawai'iTable of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: Metaphor and Metaphilosophy Chapter Two: Philosophical Activity as Combat Chapter Three: Philosophical Activity as Play Chapter Four: Philosophical Activity as Aesthetic Experience Epilogue

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Book SynopsisThe Philosophical Contexts of Sartre's The Wall and Other Stories: Stories of Bad Faith presents a philosophical analysis of all five stories in Sartre's short-story collection. Kevin W. Sweeney argues that each of the five stories has its own philosophical idea or problem that serves as the context for the narrative. Sartre constructs each story as a reply to the philosophical issue in the context and as support for his position on that issue. In the opening story, The Wall, Sartre uses the Constant-Kant debate to support his view that the story's protagonist is responsible for his ally's death. The Room presents in narrative form Sartre's criticism that the Freudian Censor is acting in bad faith. In Erostratus, Sartre opposes Descartes's claim in his hats and coats example that we recognize the humanity of others by using our reason. In Intimacy, Sartre again opposes a Cartesian position, this time the view that our feelings reveal our emotions. Sartre counters that Cartesian view byTable of ContentsChapter One: Philosophical Ideas in The Wall and Other Stories Resistance to Finding Philosophical Contexts in Sartre’s Stories Strategy for Interpreting the Five Stories Bad Faith and its Philosophical Foundations Emotions and Feelings The Four Examples of Bad Faith in Being and Nothingness Conclusion Chapter Two: Bad Faith and Responsibility in “The Wall” Constant and Kant in “The Wall” The Prisoners’ Trials The Night in the Cell Pablo’s Disengagement and Husserl’s Epoché Pablo Considers the Falangistas’ Offer Pablo Faces a Kant Situation The Significance of Pablo’s Laugh/Cry Chapter Three: Eve in Sartre’s “The Room”: The Freudian Censor in Bad Faith Freud’s Topographical Theory of the Psyche Sartre’s Critique of Freud’s Topographical Theory Charles Darbédat Visits His Daughter Eve and Her Husband Pierre Between Father and Husband: Eve’s Role As Censor Is Eve in Bad Faith? Conclusion Chapter Four: “Erostratus” and Descartes’s Example of Hats and Coats The Downward Perspective Descartes’s Example of Hats and Coats The Significance of Hilbert’s Fainting Hilbert’s Revolver and His Gloves The Significance of the Laugh/Cry Erostratus and His Plan The Letter and Hilbert’s Hatred of Humanity Playing the Role of the Violent Killer Trying to Kill on the Street The Victim and His Look The Plan Goes Awry Conclusion Chapter Five: Knowledge of One’s Emotions in “Intimacy” Lulu’s Stream of Consciousness and Her Ambivalence Purity and Lulu’s Aversion to Bodies Rirette Waits for Lulu at the Dôme Lulu Arrives and Tells Rirette Her Tale The Scene with Henri on the Sidewalk Lulu Alone in Her Hotel Room Henri and Lulu Are Miserable Lulu’s Letter and Rirette’s Bitter Regret Conclusion Chapter Six: The Existential Childhood of a Leader Lucien’s Infancy Lucien and His Body Lucien in Paris Lucien’s Friendship with Berliac and Bergère Lucien Goes Back to Férolles Lucien Meets Lemordant Lucien Becomes a Camelot Conclusion Chapter Seven: Bad Faith in The Wall and Other Stories Bibliography

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Book SynopsisNature's Sublime uses a radical new form of phenomenology to probe into the deepest traits of the human process in its individual, social, religious, and aesthetic dimensions. Starting with the selving process the essay describes the role of signs and symbols in intra and interpersonal communication. At the heart of the human use of signs is a creative tension between religions symbols and the novel symbols created in the various arts. A contrast is made between natural communities, which flatten out and reject novel forms of semiosis, and communities of interpretation, which welcomes creative and enriched signs and symbols. The normative claim is made that religious sign/symbol systems have a tendency toward tribalism and violence, while the various spheres of the aesthetic are comparatively non-tribal, or even deliberatively anti-tribal. The concept/experience of beauty and the sublime is meant to replace that of religious revelation. The sublime is not merely an internal mode of attTrade ReviewIn order to deliver its central thesis, this book traverses a wide scope of intellectual history—from continental philosophy to classical American to the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Reich, Kohut, Jung, Rank, and Kristeva. Corrington contrasts communities that actively suppress and reject novel forms of semiosis and artistic creation with those communities of interpretation that welcome creative and enriched signs and symbols. ... the book makes particularly cogent contributions on the topic of religion and violence. * Religious Studies Review *"The regions of self, community, religion, and nature...are present. But each of these themes are radically recast within an aesthetic approach in mind. The aesthetics that Corrington is interpreting here is one which takes the sublime as its key motif. The sublime, we are told, reveals what is most essential about natura naturans ('nature naturing') and its relationship to 'the human process,' a Buchlerian term designating a 'self' as creative agent in process. The split between nature naturing and nature natured is then taken up with the sublime in mind, and how the human being (or 'human process') relates psychoanalytically and semiotically to the sublime. This is the culminating theme of the book. Overall, those interested in American philosophy and theology, continental philosophy of religion, German idealism and romanticist aesthetics will appreciate this book because it takes on a very unique approach to thinking about religion through art. * Analecta Hermeneutica *[I]n Nature’s Sublime, Corrington has crafted ordinal metaphysics, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis with aesthetics into a four-legged stool – remove one leg, and it may wobble but may still support an inquiry into the possibilities of grace in our time…. Moral in its imperative, aesthetic in its ultimacy, Nature’s Sublime offers prescriptions for an Art of Life that may redeem our often mundane times. * The Pluralist *Robert Corrington continues to refine, develop, and clarify his vision of religious—or what he now prefers to call aesthetic—naturalism. The book’s broad scope includes, among other things, presentation of an ordinal phenomenological metaphysics that contrasts with the phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger; analysis of closed and open types of semiotic communities and their respective stultifying and beneficent social effects; description of intrusions of the spirit that supplement the results of biological evolution and stem from the unconscious of nature upwelling into the human unconscious; and defense of the bold thesis that religion can become deeply ethical only when it surpasses itself and becomes sublated into the domain of aesthetic experience, creation, and life—especially to the extent that the aesthetic opens the way to the awesomely disturbing but also healing powers of the sublime. The richly innovative, provocative, and debatable character of Corrington’s claims and arguments in relation to these and other topics will stimulate lively thought and discussion. -- Donald A. Crosby, Colorado State UniversityRobert S. Corrington's tenth book, Nature's Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism, marks a major shift in Corringtonian thought to a new, third phase. The major claim of this book is that religion, given its ordinal complexity, is prone to tribalization, moreso than the aesthetic which is its foundation. Expanding upon the Schellingean thesis that art is to crown theology, Corrington links "god-ing" with aesthetic fulfillment, to a sublime that "lives on the other side of all religious revelations with their limiting and limited tribal content." Thus the encounter with art and the sublime is the culminating point of any individuating process - whether personal or communal. This is not to say that religion or theology no longer has any place for Corrington. Instead, within art, Corrington claims, lives the supernatural, understood as the “deeply natural.” -- Leon Niemoczynski, Immaculata UniversityRobert Corrington has sifted his earlier philosophical work of ecstatic naturalism through a new aesthetic sieve with the help of Kant, Reich and Sri Aurobindo among other diverse thinkers. For readers new to Corrington´s work the first chapters of the book will serve as a helpful induction to his unique perspective. Those already familiar with his work will find new and exciting angles from which to ponder his complex system of semiotics, psychoanalysis, naturalism, aesthetics and religious experience from the standpoint of ordinal phenomenology. Nature´s Sublime is a rare treat indeed, an important landmark in Corrington´s intellectual journey. -- Sigridur Gudmarsdottir, University of IcelandTable of ContentsPreface Introduction Chapter 1: Selving Chapter 2: Communal Variations Chapter 3: God-ing and Involution Chapter 4: Genius, Art, and the Sublime

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Book SynopsisThe Negritude Movement provides readers with not only an intellectual history of the Negritude Movement but also its prehistory (W.E.B. Du Bois, the New Negro Movement, and the Harlem Renaissance) and its posthistory (Frantz Fanon and the evolution of Fanonism).Trade ReviewThis book joins the respected tomes on critical Africana social thought that Rabaka edits for the publisher's 'Critical Africana Studies' series. His book proves, if ever proof is needed, that there are kindred links between the Africana intellectual traditions in Africa and in the African diaspora. He traces that intellectual lineage to the 'central intellectual antecedent' of 'Du Boisian Negritude' that is detected in the Pan-Africanism of Du Bois and in his influential text The Souls of Black Folk. Rabaka organically links Du Bois to the New Negro Movement of the Harlem Renaissance and to the tendencies Rabaka identifies as Damasian, Cesairean, Senghorian, and, contentiously, Fanonian, negritudes. Rabaka argues that negritude intellectual activists centered their social thought on Africa and must therefore be reinterpreted with the Afrocentric theories of Du Bois rather than depend on paradigms from Eurocentrism, against which most of those intellectuals rebelled. Using the ideological differences between Du Bois and Booker T. Washington as a model, Rabaka suggests that there were conservative and radical tendencies in the Harlem Renaissance and in the negritude movement as well . . . Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. * CHOICE *In this thought-provoking study, Reiland Rabaka locates the roots of the Negritude movement in the diaspora by examining what he calls in chapter I the ‘Prelude to Negritude’ – that is, the seeds of the Negritude idea found in the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, and the early evolution of Negritude as an ‘insurgent’ idea…. [T]his study presents a compelling argument that Negritude as an ‘insurgent idea’ was and continues to be central to our understanding of African peoples’ struggle against racial capitalism and colonial domination. * Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International *Without a doubt this is a significant and profound analysis of 'Negritude' by one of the most insightful analysts in the field of Africana Studies. -- Gerald Horne, University of Houston, author of 'The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America'Both impassioned and erudite, Rabaka’s new book is a welcome reminder that a movement so complex as Negritude not only merits but demands further scholarly attention. -- Richard Serrano, Rutgers UniversityWorking critically across the New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance to the major thinkers of Negritude, this book brilliantly reexamines the legacies of the Negritude Movement. Its thoughtful detailed analysis clarifies the trajectories between intellectual and political traditions of Africa and its diaspora. The Negritude Movement is an essential contribution to the twenty-first century, one that reinvigorates our interests in reading with new light W.E.B. Du Bois, Damas, Césaire, Senghor and Fanon. -- Frieda Ekotto, University of MichiganRabaka offers us, at long last, a genuinely critical and Africana-centered account of Negritude as simultaneously a poetic AND political movement — as a truly “insurgent idea.” As impressively researched as it is eminently readable, Rabaka’s work also makes a compelling case for the ongoing relevance of Negritude thought in the current climate of neocolonialism and the politics of race. -- Georges Van Den Abbeele, Dean of Humanities, University of California IrvineReiland Rabaka offers cogent and insightful analyses of the discursive representations of the consequences of blacks’ racial colonization and the ways in which the color-line has divided society and, as he states, ‘even more, black souls and black selves’. This volume adds to Rabaka’s impressive oeuvre which traverses the works of the Negritude poets, African and Caribbean authors, and the African American thinkers who have contributed, through cross-cultural and dynamic exchanges, to understanding the ‘humanhood’ of our common history. -- Valérie K. Orlando, University of MarylandTable of ContentsIntroduction: Du Boisian Negritude: W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, and the Origins of the Negritude Notion 1. Prelude to Negritude: The New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Early Evolution of the Negritude Notion 2. Damasian Negritude: Leon Damas 3. Cesairean Negritude: Aime Cesaire 4. Senghorian Negritude: Leopold Senghor 5. Fanonian Negritude: Frantz Fanon

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Book SynopsisThe Negritude Movement provides readers with not only an intellectual history of the Negritude Movement but also its prehistory (W.E.B. Du Bois, the New Negro Movement, and the Harlem Renaissance) and its posthistory (Frantz Fanon and the evolution of Fanonism). By viewing Negritude as an insurgent idea (to invoke this book's intentionally incendiary subtitle), as opposed to merely a form of poetics and aesthetics, The Negritude Movement explores Negritude as a traveling theory (à la Edward Said's concept) that consistently crisscrossed the Atlantic Ocean in the twentieth century: from Harlem to Haiti, Haiti to Paris, Paris to Martinique, Martinique to Senegal, and on and on ad infinitum. The Negritude Movement maps the movements of proto-Negritude concepts from Du Bois's discourse in The Souls of Black Folk through to post-Negritude concepts in Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. Utilizing Negritude as a conceptual framework to, on the one hand, explore the Trade ReviewThis book joins the respected tomes on critical Africana social thought that Rabaka edits for the publisher's 'Critical Africana Studies' series. His book proves, if ever proof is needed, that there are kindred links between the Africana intellectual traditions in Africa and in the African diaspora. He traces that intellectual lineage to the 'central intellectual antecedent' of 'Du Boisian Negritude' that is detected in the Pan-Africanism of Du Bois and in his influential text The Souls of Black Folk. Rabaka organically links Du Bois to the New Negro Movement of the Harlem Renaissance and to the tendencies Rabaka identifies as Damasian, Cesairean, Senghorian, and, contentiously, Fanonian, negritudes. Rabaka argues that negritude intellectual activists centered their social thought on Africa and must therefore be reinterpreted with the Afrocentric theories of Du Bois rather than depend on paradigms from Eurocentrism, against which most of those intellectuals rebelled. Using the ideological differences between Du Bois and Booker T. Washington as a model, Rabaka suggests that there were conservative and radical tendencies in the Harlem Renaissance and in the negritude movement as well . . . Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. * CHOICE *In this thought-provoking study, Reiland Rabaka locates the roots of the Negritude movement in the diaspora by examining what he calls in chapter I the ‘Prelude to Negritude’ – that is, the seeds of the Negritude idea found in the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, and the early evolution of Negritude as an ‘insurgent’ idea…. [T]his study presents a compelling argument that Negritude as an ‘insurgent idea’ was and continues to be central to our understanding of African peoples’ struggle against racial capitalism and colonial domination. * Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International *Without a doubt this is a significant and profound analysis of 'Negritude' by one of the most insightful analysts in the field of Africana Studies. -- Gerald Horne, University of Houston, author of 'The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America'Both impassioned and erudite, Rabaka’s new book is a welcome reminder that a movement so complex as Negritude not only merits but demands further scholarly attention. -- Richard Serrano, Rutgers UniversityWorking critically across the New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance to the major thinkers of Negritude, this book brilliantly reexamines the legacies of the Negritude Movement. Its thoughtful detailed analysis clarifies the trajectories between intellectual and political traditions of Africa and its diaspora. The Negritude Movement is an essential contribution to the twenty-first century, one that reinvigorates our interests in reading with new light W.E.B. Du Bois, Damas, Césaire, Senghor and Fanon. -- Frieda Ekotto, University of MichiganRabaka offers us, at long last, a genuinely critical and Africana-centered account of Negritude as simultaneously a poetic AND political movement — as a truly “insurgent idea.” As impressively researched as it is eminently readable, Rabaka’s work also makes a compelling case for the ongoing relevance of Negritude thought in the current climate of neocolonialism and the politics of race. -- Georges Van Den Abbeele, Dean of Humanities, University of California IrvineReiland Rabaka offers cogent and insightful analyses of the discursive representations of the consequences of blacks’ racial colonization and the ways in which the color-line has divided society and, as he states, ‘even more, black souls and black selves’. This volume adds to Rabaka’s impressive oeuvre which traverses the works of the Negritude poets, African and Caribbean authors, and the African American thinkers who have contributed, through cross-cultural and dynamic exchanges, to understanding the ‘humanhood’ of our common history. -- Valérie K. Orlando, University of MarylandTable of ContentsIntroduction: Du Boisian Negritude: W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, and the Origins of the Negritude Notion 1. Prelude to Negritude: The New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Early Evolution of the Negritude Notion 2. Damasian Negritude: Leon Damas 3. Cesairean Negritude: Aime Cesaire 4. Senghorian Negritude: Leopold Senghor 5. Fanonian Negritude: Frantz Fanon

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWhat do Alien and Gladiator have to do with Aristotle and German Philosophers? Not only will you find them talked about in this book, but you'll also see the breadth and depth of Ridley Scott's own philosophical thinking as highlighted by the various authors in their easily readable and engaging chapters. -- Robert Arp, independent researcher and editor of 1001 Ideas That Changed the Way We Think"The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott is an enthralling series of essays written from a variety of perspectives on the work of a much underrated filmmaker, focusing not only on his most well-known films such as Alien and Blade Runner, but surveying lesser-known works such as Legend and Someone to Watch over Me. The editors deserve to be congratulated on their efforts in providing a book that tells us as much about the realities of contemporary film directing as about Scott himself." -- Laurence Raw, author of The Ridley Scott EncyclopediaTable of ContentsI. Responsibility, Remembering, Revision 1.“Good Badmen”: Reading Race in Black Rain, American Gangster, and Body of Lies Nancy Kang 2.A Double-Edged Sword: Honor in The Duellists James Edwin Mahon 3.The Trans-Religious Ethics of Kingdom of Heaven Michael Garcia 4.Levinasian Responsibility in Someone to Watch Over Me, Black Rain, and White Squall Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns 5. Re-Membering Vietnam in Somalia: Black Hawk Down and Ethical Militarism in American Historical Memory David Zietsma 6.1492 and the Ethics of Remembering Silvio Torres-Saillant II. Real Lives, Alienated Lives, Ideal Lives 7.What’s Wrong with Building Replicants? Artificial Intelligence in Blade Runner, Alien, and Prometheus Greg Littmann 8. A Villainous Appetite: Erôs, Madness, and the Food Analogy in Hannibal and Legend Antonio Sanna 9.Detecting Puzzles and Patterns in Numb3rs: No One Escapes “Scott Free” Janice Shaw 10.Celebrating Historical Accuracy in The Duellists Carl Sobocinski 11.Conceptions of Happiness in Matchstick Men and A Good Year Basileios Kroustallis 12.Techno-Totalitarianism in Alien Dan Dinello III. Gender, Identity, Selfhood 13.Through Space, Over a Cliff, and Into a Trench: The Shifting Feminist Ideologies of Alien, Thelma & Louise, and G.I. Jane Aviva Dove-Viebahn 14.Why Doesn’t Hannibal Kill Clarice? The Philosophy of a Monstrous Romantic in Hannibal Matthew Freeman 15.In the Guise of Character: Costumes, Narrative, and the Reality of Artifice in Thelma & Louise Lorna Piatti-Farnell 16.Becoming Authentic in Matchstick Men Through the Ultimate Con Elizabeth Abele 17.Virginity in Alien: The Essence of Ripley’s Survival Sydney Palmer 18.Gladiator, Gender, and Marriage in Heaven: A Christian Exploration Adam Barkman Index Contributors

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Book SynopsisForbidden Aesthetics, Ethical Justice, and Terror in Modern Western Culture explores the potential links between terror and aesthetics in modern Western society, specifically the affinity between terrorism and the possibility of an aesthetic appreciation of terrorist phenomena or events. But can we actually have an aesthetic appreciation of terror or terrorism? And if we can, is it ethical or legitimate? Emmanouil Aretoulakis proposes that Western spectators and subjects from the eighteenth century onwards have always felt, unconsciously or not, a certain kind of fascination or even exhilaration before scenes of tragedy and natural or manmade disaster. Owing to their immorality, such forbidden feelings go unacknowledged. It would definitely be callous as well as politically incorrect to acknowledge the existence of aesthetics in witnessing or representing human misery. Still, as Aretoulakis insists, our aesthetic faculties or even our appreciation of the beautiful are already inherentTrade ReviewEmmanouil Aretoulakis embraces controversy and conflict with courage by delving into the forbidden aesthetics of the images of terrorism, unraveling the ethical and a-moral implications of the Kantian feeling of pleasure that trumps the impotency of the awe and terror of the sublime. He proposes that along with empathy and humor, aesthetic judgement empowers the viewer or reader who survives as witness to horrific events rather than cowering in fear to their devastation. If scholars of terrorism wish to reflect on its spectacular images in a meaningful way, this book's developing thesis will guide them through the multidisciplinary labyrinth of philosophy, semiotics, media studies, psychology, and sociology -- Julia Keefer, New York UniversityIn this scholarly study, Aretoulakis makes a compelling case for recognizing the beauty in cataclysmic events that evoke terror, whether they be caused by humans or occur naturally. Guided primarily by a Kantian aesthetic of disinterestedness, he disavows ascriptions of the sublime and argues instead for recognizing a forbidden aesthetics of beauty in the experience of terror. He finds this fascination inexplicably present in the three terror-evoking events he analyzes: the suicide attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Widely informed and rich with unexpected insights, this book widens the scope and relevance of aesthetics. -- Arnold Berleant, author of Aesthetics beyond the ArtsTable of ContentsIntroduction Chapter I: Does Beauty Think? Chapter II: A Glimpse into the Forbidden: Aesthetic Appreciation, Kant, and 9/11 Chapter III: The Nuclear Image and the Forbidden Aesthetics of Beauty Chapter IV: The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: Fascination and the Terrorism of Nature Conclusions

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewTragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics embodies the best in comparative philosophy. Both Whitehead and various Japanese thinkers (Dogen, Nishida, etc.) are mutually illuminated in this clear and insightful study. Further, readers who are interested in the crucial issue of tragic beauty will be edified by the author’s treatment of this topic even if they are not experts in Whitehead or Japanese thought. Highly recommended! -- Daniel A. Dombrowski, Seattle UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Abbreviations About the Cover I. Primacy of Aesthetics 1. Primacy of Aesthetics in Japanese Culture 2. Whitehead’s Aesthetics: Early Works 3. Whitehead’s Aesthetics: Process and Reality 4. Whitehead’s Aesthetics: Later Works 5. Whitehead’s Retrieval of Beauty 6. The Problem of Aestheticism (i) Whitehead’s Aestheticism (ii) Japanese Aestheticism II. Beauty as Aesthetic Quality 7. Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Aesthetic Quality 8. Aesthetic Quality in East-West Perspective (i) S. C. Pepper, (ii) F.S.C Northrop, (iii) R. M. Pirsig, (iv) H. N. Wieman, (v) S. K. Langer 9. Whitehead’s Doctrine of Aesthetic Qualities as Eternal Objects 10. Beauty as Synaesthesia in Whitehead, Hartshorne & Japanese Aesthetics III. A Whiteheadian Perspective on Yūgen & Aware in Japanese Aesthetics A. Penumbral Beauty 11. Penumbral Beauty of Darkness in Whitehead’s Process Aesthetics 12. Yūgen as the Beauty of Darkness in Japanese Aesthetics 13. A Whiteheadian Perspective on Yūgen in Japanese Aesthetics B. Tragic Beauty 14. Time as Discontinuous Continuity in Whitehead, Dōgen & Nishida 15. Tragic Beauty in Whitehead's Process Aesthetics 16. Aware in Japanese Aesthetics 17. A Whiteheadian Perspective on Aware in Japanese Aesthetics 18. Tragic Beauty and Peace in Whitehead & Japanese Aesthetics Endnotes Bibliography Glossary

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Book SynopsisThe present volume endeavors to make a contribution to contemporary Whitehead studies by clarifying his axiological process metaphysics, including his theory of values, concept of aesthetic experience, and doctrine of beauty, along with his philosophy of art, literature and poetry. Moreover, it establishes an east-west dialogue focusing on how Alfred North Whitehead's process aesthetics can be clarified by the traditional Japanese Buddhist sense of evanescent beauty. As this east-west dialogue unfolds it is shown that there are many striking points of convergence between Whitehead's process aesthetics and the traditional Japanese sense of beauty. However, the work especially focuses on two of Whitehead's aesthetic categories, including the penumbral beauty of darkness and the tragic beauty of perishability, while further demonstrating parallels with the two Japanese aesthetic categories of yûgen and aware. It is clarified how both Whitehead and the Japanese tradition have articulated Trade ReviewTragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics embodies the best in comparative philosophy. Both Whitehead and various Japanese thinkers (Dogen, Nishida, etc.) are mutually illuminated in this clear and insightful study. Further, readers who are interested in the crucial issue of tragic beauty will be edified by the author’s treatment of this topic even if they are not experts in Whitehead or Japanese thought. Highly recommended! -- Daniel A. Dombrowski, Seattle UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Abbreviations About the Cover I. Primacy of Aesthetics 1. Primacy of Aesthetics in Japanese Culture 2. Whitehead’s Aesthetics: Early Works 3. Whitehead’s Aesthetics: Process and Reality 4. Whitehead’s Aesthetics: Later Works 5. Whitehead’s Retrieval of Beauty 6. The Problem of Aestheticism (i) Whitehead’s Aestheticism (ii) Japanese Aestheticism II. Beauty as Aesthetic Quality 7. Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Aesthetic Quality 8. Aesthetic Quality in East-West Perspective (i) S. C. Pepper, (ii) F.S.C Northrop, (iii) R. M. Pirsig, (iv) H. N. Wieman, (v) S. K. Langer 9. Whitehead’s Doctrine of Aesthetic Qualities as Eternal Objects 10. Beauty as Synaesthesia in Whitehead, Hartshorne & Japanese Aesthetics III. A Whiteheadian Perspective on Yūgen & Aware in Japanese Aesthetics A. Penumbral Beauty 11. Penumbral Beauty of Darkness in Whitehead’s Process Aesthetics 12. Yūgen as the Beauty of Darkness in Japanese Aesthetics 13. A Whiteheadian Perspective on Yūgen in Japanese Aesthetics B. Tragic Beauty 14. Time as Discontinuous Continuity in Whitehead, Dōgen & Nishida 15. Tragic Beauty in Whitehead's Process Aesthetics 16. Aware in Japanese Aesthetics 17. A Whiteheadian Perspective on Aware in Japanese Aesthetics 18. Tragic Beauty and Peace in Whitehead & Japanese Aesthetics Endnotes Bibliography Glossary

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Book SynopsisAesthetic Transcendentalism is a philosophy endorsing the qualitative and creative aspects of nature. Theoretically it argues for a metaphysical dimension of nature that is aesthetically real, pluralistic, and prolific. It directs our attention to the rich complexity of immediate experience, the possibility of discovering new aesthetic features about the world, and the transformative potential of art as an organic expression. This book presents the philosophy in its relationship to its historical roots in the philosophic and artistic traditions of nineteenth-century North America. In this multidisciplinary study, Nicholas L. Guardiano brings together a philosophic and literary figure in Ralph Waldo Emerson, the scientifically minded philosopher Charles S. Peirce, and the plastic arts in the form of American landscape painting. Guardiano evaluates this constellation of philosophers and artists in global perspective as it relates to other historical theories of metaphysics and aestheticsTrade ReviewIn Aesthetic Transcendentalism in Emerson, Peirce, and Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Painting, Nicholas Guardiano makes a case for aesthetic transcendentalism employing the work of Peirce, Emerson, and the Hudson School painters. Guardiano employs the inherent affinities in the pragmatic and transcendentalist traditions, affinities that are often overlooked, to make an argument concerning the aesthetic importance of nature—an importance that is both ontologically inherent and instrumentally useful for human culture. There are some wonderful old ideas here put to work to create new philosophical possibilities for the twenty-first century. -- Douglas R. Anderson, University of North TexasAesthetic Transcendentalism constitutes a truly original understanding of the complex connections between philosophy, literature and the arts, in America's 19th century. New roads are opened in an intertwining of logic and aesthetics, pointing to all forms of knowledge, and profiting from inverted perspectives: exactitude in poetry and elasticity in science. The study of the Hudson School in landscape painting, through the lenses of some of 19th century Masters (Peirce, Emerson), proves to be a unique contribution to the understanding of the richness of American imagination and thought. -- Fernando Zalamea, Universidad Nacional de ColombiaTable of ContentsChapter 1: Poetic Sights/Sites of Nature Chapter 2: The Trichotomic Logic of the Universe Chapter 3: The Aesthetic Consequences of Cosmology Chapter 4: The Philosophy of Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Painting Chapter 5: Conclusion: Transcendentalist Vistas

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Book SynopsisThe Intertwining of Aesthetics and Ethics: Exceeding of Expectations, Ecstasy, Sublimity analyzes the common experiential ground for both aesthetics and ethics by considering experiential environment (both nature and art), the precedents to desire, the notion of experience incorporating a break, and the reverberations of surprise leading to the intertwining of aesthetics and ethics. Jadranka Skorin-Kapov discusses different philosophical positions on the relationship between nature and art, in conversation with Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Gadamer, and Adorno. She argues that Kantian sublimity can carry over from nature to art. As part of the discussions of expectations and authenticity, the author interprets Husserl's view on expectations, Heidegger's view on death and authenticity, Blanchot's view on death, and Arendt's view on natality. As for understanding the aesthetic experience as the paradigmatic experience, Skorin-Kapov is informed by Dewey's work on art as experience, Gadamer's workTrade ReviewIn this beautiful book, Jadranka Skorin-Kapov brings us to the edge of the impossible. She gives a rich and compelling philosophical account of the aesthetic encounter: how it surprises us, affects us, and takes us beyond ourselves. -- Steven Shaviro, Wayne State UniversityIn this brilliant tour de force through modern and contemporary aesthetic and ethical theories Skorin-Kapov aims at probing their suitability for supporting two fundamental claims: first, that the aesthetic and the ethical experience are always already weaved together on account of their common root in the experience of the sublime; second, that the aesthetic encounter is in the end primary and all-encompassing. Beginning from contemporary theories propounding to blend aesthetic and ethical feeling and thought, this wide-ranging work argues for the importance of uncovering the historical-philosophical origins of their merger. Readers will find here breathtakingly rich resources for probing deeper into modern and contemporary notions of aesthetic feeling and judgment, from Kantian theory, through nineteenth century European idealism and romanticism, to critical theory, existentialism, phenomenology and hermeneutics. Skorin-Kapov shows how genuine aesthetic experience paradoxically implies a negation of experience, if experience is meant to involve various degrees of objectivity and contextuality, including social standards and cultural norms that may be irrelevant to, even incompatible with, the nonobjective, ecstatic dimension of the aesthetic encounter: pure desire, unadulterated expectation of an unspecifiable ‘more,’ rupture and, finally, authentic surprise in the experience of the artwork. It is from this sublime experience, the Author argues, that both the aesthetic and the moral world are born. This book’s bold theses are sustained by learning as well as imaginative insight. These make for a rare combination of instructive and exciting reading on the fundamental re-thinking of ethics and aesthetics in contemporary continental philosophy. -- Allegra de Laurentiis, State University of New York at Stony BrookTable of ContentsPreface Introduction: Experience versus Non-Experience Chapter 1. Nature versus Art and the Aesthetic Chapter 2. Expectations and Authenticity Chapter 3. Experience and Art Chapter 4. The Intertwining of Aesthetics and Ethics Chapter 5. Laughter: A Two-Way Street between Art and Morality Conclusion: Art, Morality, Society Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThis volume brings Continental philosophical interpretations of Van Gogh into dialogue with one another to explore how for Van Gogh, art places human beings in their world, and yet in other ways displaces them, not allowing them to belong to that world.Trade ReviewOnce the veneer of global commodification has been scraped away, Van Gogh reemerges in his startling innovation and brilliance. His philosophical reception perspicaciously attests to this, from Jasper’s groundbreaking philosophical and psychiatric case study to Bataille’s short essays to the scattered but striking comments by Foucault and Merleau-Ponty to short studies by Artaud and Altizer. It most famously plays out in the epic battle between Heidegger and Derrida over the ownership of a pair of shoes. This underreported history animates this exceptional and welcome collection of essays. -- Jason Wirth, Professor of Philosophy, Seattle UniversityThis volume provides us with valuable insights about Van Gogh by way of his most interesting interpreters—Jaspers, Bataille, Heidegger, Foucault, and others. It will be a touchstone for future studies about the possibilities of painting. -- Matthias Bormuth, University of OldenburgThis fine collection on Van Gogh and philosophy, superbly edited by David Nichols, is a welcome and timely contribution to issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, which will be of interest to a broad range of scholars. Beyond the diversity and originality of the chapters, the overall quality is exemplary. The result is a collection that is not only philosophically edifying but also a pleasure to engage with. -- Dylan James Trigg, University of ViennaVan Gogh among the Philosophers is an outstanding study of the influence of Van Gogh on some of the most prominent creative thinkers of the 20th century, especially Jaspers and Heidegger. Jaspers and Heidegger rather embodied Isaiah Berlin’s comments on the Fox and the Hedgehog, the former, Jaspers, who knew a little about a lot, and the latter, Heidegger, who knew a lot about a little. -- Alan M. Olson, Boston UniversityVery well edited and informative, Van Gogh among the Philosophers is deeply respectful of Van Gogh's work. It is, at the same time, a beautiful contribution to the philosophy of art as well as to philosophical readings of Van Gogh. -- Frédéric Seyler, DePaul UniversityTable of ContentsAfter the Cypress: An Introduction David P. Nichols Jaspers’ Pathographic Analysis of Van Gogh: A Critique and Appreciation Gregory J. Walters Painting from the Outside: Foucault and Van Gogh Joseph J. Tanke The Problem of Agency in Heidegger's Interpretation of Van Gogh Ingvild Torsen Sensuality, Materiality, Painting: What is Wrong with Jaspers' and Heidegger's Van Gogh Interpretations? Christian Lotz Mal Pointure or If the Shoe Doesn't Fit… K. Malcolm Richards Van Gogh, Heidegger, and the Attuned Life Stephen A. Erickson Immanent Transcendence in the Work of Art: Jaspers and Heidegger on Van Gogh Rebecca Longtin Hansen Merleau-Ponty's Thinking of Perception and the Art of Van Gogh: On “Going Further” and “Going Beyond” Galen A. Johnson Van Gogh in Tragic Portraiture: Jaspers, Bataille, Heidegger David P. Nichols Prometheus Dismembered: Bataille on Van Gogh or The Window in the Bataille Restaurant James Luchte Van Gogh’s Dark Illuminations: The End of Art or The Art of the End Alina N. Feld Van Gogh and the Absence of the Work: Remnants of a Hermeneutic Itinerary Stephen H. Watson About the Contributors

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Book SynopsisThis volume brings Continental philosophical interpretations of Van Gogh into dialogue with one another to explore how for Van Gogh, art places human beings in their world, and yet in other ways displaces them, not allowing them to belong to that world.Trade ReviewOnce the veneer of global commodification has been scraped away, Van Gogh reemerges in his startling innovation and brilliance. His philosophical reception perspicaciously attests to this, from Jasper’s groundbreaking philosophical and psychiatric case study to Bataille’s short essays to the scattered but striking comments by Foucault and Merleau-Ponty to short studies by Artaud and Altizer. It most famously plays out in the epic battle between Heidegger and Derrida over the ownership of a pair of shoes. This underreported history animates this exceptional and welcome collection of essays. -- Jason Wirth, Professor of Philosophy, Seattle UniversityThis volume provides us with valuable insights about Van Gogh by way of his most interesting interpreters—Jaspers, Bataille, Heidegger, Foucault, and others. It will be a touchstone for future studies about the possibilities of painting. -- Matthias Bormuth, University of OldenburgThis fine collection on Van Gogh and philosophy, superbly edited by David Nichols, is a welcome and timely contribution to issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, which will be of interest to a broad range of scholars. Beyond the diversity and originality of the chapters, the overall quality is exemplary. The result is a collection that is not only philosophically edifying but also a pleasure to engage with. -- Dylan James Trigg, University of ViennaVan Gogh among the Philosophers is an outstanding study of the influence of Van Gogh on some of the most prominent creative thinkers of the 20th century, especially Jaspers and Heidegger. Jaspers and Heidegger rather embodied Isaiah Berlin’s comments on the Fox and the Hedgehog, the former, Jaspers, who knew a little about a lot, and the latter, Heidegger, who knew a lot about a little. -- Alan M. Olson, Boston UniversityVery well edited and informative, Van Gogh among the Philosophers is deeply respectful of Van Gogh's work. It is, at the same time, a beautiful contribution to the philosophy of art as well as to philosophical readings of Van Gogh. -- Frédéric Seyler, DePaul UniversityTable of ContentsAfter the Cypress: An Introduction David P. Nichols Jaspers’ Pathographic Analysis of Van Gogh: A Critique and Appreciation Gregory J. Walters Painting from the Outside: Foucault and Van Gogh Joseph J. Tanke The Problem of Agency in Heidegger's Interpretation of Van Gogh Ingvild Torsen Sensuality, Materiality, Painting: What is Wrong with Jaspers' and Heidegger's Van Gogh Interpretations? Christian Lotz Mal Pointure or If the Shoe Doesn't Fit… K. Malcolm Richards Van Gogh, Heidegger, and the Attuned Life Stephen A. Erickson Immanent Transcendence in the Work of Art: Jaspers and Heidegger on Van Gogh Rebecca Longtin Hansen Merleau-Ponty's Thinking of Perception and the Art of Van Gogh: On “Going Further” and “Going Beyond” Galen A. Johnson Van Gogh in Tragic Portraiture: Jaspers, Bataille, Heidegger David P. Nichols Prometheus Dismembered: Bataille on Van Gogh or The Window in the Bataille Restaurant James Luchte Van Gogh’s Dark Illuminations: The End of Art or The Art of the End Alina N. Feld Van Gogh and the Absence of the Work: Remnants of a Hermeneutic Itinerary Stephen H. Watson About the Contributors

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Book SynopsisThe Sound of Ontology: Music as a Model for Metaphysics explores connections between Western art music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the ideas that dominated philosophy leading up to and during that period. In the process of establishing John Cage as Richard Wagner's heir via Arnold Schoenberg, the author discovers that the old metaphysics of representation is still in charge of how we think about music and about experience in general. Instead of settling for the positivist definition of music as mere sound framed by time, LaFave provides a phenomenology of music that reveals pitch as the ontological counterpart to frequency, and music as a vehicle for understanding how, as Heidegger observed, the Being of things of value are invariably grounded in the Being of things of nature. Numerous musical examples and a poem by Wallace Stevens illustrate LaFave's case that hierarchy is intrinsic to this understanding. Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy is brought to beaTable of ContentsPrelude Chapter I: Wagner in the Role of Kant Chapter II: Schoenberg’s Fatal Step Chapter III: Interlude: Sic Et Non Chapter IV: It’s Only Sound: Or, How Nietzsche Foresaw John Cage Chapter V: Serialism as Event? Or Simulacrum? Chapter VI: Hearing Tonality Anew (Or Not) Chapter VII: Blooming, Buzzing Cohesion Chapter VIII: The Undeniable Subject Chapter IX: Locating the Thing-In-Itself Chapter X: The Copernican Revolution (Or Not) Chapter XI: Intentionality as Value Chapter XII: The Return of the Thing-In-Itself Chapter XIII: Finite, Definite, Infinite Chapter XIV: An Infinite Multiplicity of Hierarchies Chapter XV: The Razor’s Edge of Ontology Appendix: IV, the Phantom Tonic Bibliography About the Author

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Book SynopsisOn Art and Selfhood lies at the intersection of existentialism and the philosophy of art. On the philosophy of art side, it addresses questions about why art matters and how we ought to appreciate it. On the existentialism side, it attends to questions pertaining to authenticity or authentic selfhood. That is to say, it focuses on issues and problems having to do with our personal identity or our sense of who we are. The goal of the book is to bring together these two topics in a productive manner by showing that works of art matter partly because they can help us with the project of selfhood. In other words, works of art are important in part because they can offer us much needed guidance and support as we try to figure out who we really are. To make the case for this thesis, On Art and Selfhood draws on the works of the Danish thinker, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55). It mines his writings for insights regarding aesthetics and personal identity, and then uses these insights to contributeTrade ReviewAntony Aumann’s Art and Selfhood strikes a remarkable balance between philosophical ambition and communicative clarity. Seeking nothing less than an account of how it is possible for art to be an integral part of our self-understanding and self-constitution, Aumann draws on his deep knowledge of Kierkegaard and his intellectual context, contemporary philosophy, and art from the Renaissance to our own time, to argue with remarkable lucidity and humane wisdom. Unafraid both to walk with Kierkegaard and to challenge him, Art and Selfhood cement’s Aumann’s place as a leading voice of Kierkegaardian thought. -- Patrick Stokes, Deakin UniversityThis excellent book not only advances our understanding of art and selfhood as viewed from an existential standpoint: it also offers an appreciative and insightful reading of both the 'how' and the 'what' of Kierkegaard's literary artistry. -- Rick Anthony Furtak, Colorado CollegeThis is a wonderfully clear and carefully argued book in which Aumann draws creatively on Kierkegaard's work to show the relevance of art to the development of authentic selfhood. -- Anthony Rudd, St. OlafThis innovative, clearly argued work shows that an interpersonal conception of authentic self-definition can be defended on Kierkegaardian grounds -- including the edifying potential of artworks and obligations on artists to care about the wellbeing of their audiences. Aumann brings Kierkegaardian themes to life without relying solely on a religious framework. -- John Davenport, Professor of Philosophy, Fordham UniveristyTable of ContentsIllustrations Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction Part I. On Selfhood Chapter 1. The Inner Sense Model: Finding Ourselves Within Chapter 2. The Constitution Model: The Self as Artistic Creation Chapter 3. Kierkegaard’s Religious Model: Receiving Ourselves from God Chapter 4. The Dialogical Model: A Secular Alternative Part II. On Art Chapter 5. The Value of Art: An Indirect Method of Communication Chapter 6. The Nature of Art Appreciation: Overcoming the Tradition of Disinterest Chapter 7. Rules for Art Creation: Two Moral Considerations Chapter 8. Art, Selfhood, and the Role of Academic Philosophy Bibliography About the Author

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Book SynopsisOn Art and Selfhood lies at the intersection of existentialism and the philosophy of art. On the philosophy of art side, it addresses questions about why art matters and how we ought to appreciate it. On the existentialism side, it attends to questions pertaining to authenticity or authentic selfhood. That is to say, it focuses on issues and problems having to do with our personal identity or our sense of who we are. The goal of the book is to bring together these two topics in a productive manner by showing that works of art matter partly because they can help us with the project of selfhood. In other words, works of art are important in part because they can offer us much needed guidance and support as we try to figure out who we really are. To make the case for this thesis, On Art and Selfhood draws on the works of the Danish thinker, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55). It mines his writings for insights regarding aesthetics and personal identity, and then uses these insights tTrade ReviewAccording to Aumann (Northern Michigan Univ.), Søren Kierkegaard held that art has the power to instruct in self-formulation. This view shares features with the “cognitive value of art,” according to which art is argued to have the capacity to put forward propositions and generate knowledge. In the early chapters of Art and Selfhood, Aumann canvases four models of selfhood, each of which has been thought to be a good framework for self-creation: the inner sense, constitution, religious, and dialogical models. Each of these ways of self-creation has textual evidence from Kierkegaard’s works to recommend it, but each also has textual evidence running counter to it. Ultimately, Aumann finds that art’s value in constructing a self is the most valuable model, in that it teaches one about the world and about oneself. Aumann does a good job of laying out the various ways one might go about putting together all the elements for a healthy self. Though some familiarity with Continental philosophers would be helpful, it is not a necessity; the author presents his ideas clearly and thoughtfully.Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-and upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; general readers. * CHOICE *Antony Aumann’s Art and Selfhood strikes a remarkable balance between philosophical ambition and communicative clarity. Seeking nothing less than an account of how it is possible for art to be an integral part of our self-understanding and self-constitution, Aumann draws on his deep knowledge of Kierkegaard and his intellectual context, contemporary philosophy, and art from the Renaissance to our own time, to argue with remarkable lucidity and humane wisdom. Unafraid both to walk with Kierkegaard and to challenge him, Art and Selfhood cement’s Aumann’s place as a leading voice of Kierkegaardian thought. -- Patrick Stokes, Deakin UniversityThis excellent book not only advances our understanding of art and selfhood as viewed from an existential standpoint: it also offers an appreciative and insightful reading of both the 'how' and the 'what' of Kierkegaard's literary artistry. -- Rick Anthony Furtak, Colorado CollegeThis is a wonderfully clear and carefully argued book in which Aumann draws creatively on Kierkegaard's work to show the relevance of art to the development of authentic selfhood. -- Anthony Rudd, St. OlafThis innovative, clearly argued work shows that an interpersonal conception of authentic self-definition can be defended on Kierkegaardian grounds -- including the edifying potential of artworks and obligations on artists to care about the wellbeing of their audiences. Aumann brings Kierkegaardian themes to life without relying solely on a religious framework. -- John Davenport, Professor of Philosophy, Fordham UniveristyTable of ContentsIntroductionPart I. On SelfhoodChapter 1. The Inner Sense Model: Finding Ourselves WithinChapter 2. The Constitution Model: The Self as Artistic CreationChapter 3. Kierkegaard’s Religious Model: Receiving Ourselves from GodChapter 4. The Dialogical Model: A Secular AlternativePart II. On ArtChapter 5. The Value of Art: An Indirect Method of CommunicationChapter 6. The Nature of Art Appreciation: Overcoming the Tradition of DisinterestChapter 7. Rules for Art Creation: Two Moral ConsiderationsChapter 8. Art, Selfhood, and the Role of Academic PhilosophyBibliographyAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisLudwig Wittgenstein's On Certainty explores a myriad of new and important ideas regarding our notions of belief, knowledge, skepticism, and certainty. During the course of his exploration, Wittgenstein makes a fascinating new discovery about certitude, namely, that it is categorically distinct from knowledge. As his investigation advances, he recognizes that certainty must be non-propositional and non-ratiocinated; borne out not in the things we say, but in our actions, our deeds. Many philosophers working outside of epistemology recognized Wittgenstein''s insights and determined that his work''s abrupt end might serve as an excellent launching point for still further philosophical expeditions. In Exploring Certainty: Wittgenstein and Wide Fields of Thought, Robert Greenleaf Brice surveys some of this rich topography. Wittgenstein''s writings serve as a point of departure for Brice''s own ideas about certainty. He shows how Wittgenstein''s rough and unpolished notion of certitude mightTrade ReviewThis brief book of Wittgenstein's On Certainty lives up to its subtitle. The 'fields of thought' it covers are indeed wide; they include epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, religion, cognitive science, mathematics, psychotherapy and even Wittgenstein's political views. Brice successfully shows the broad reach of Wittgenstein's ideas... [This] interpretation is worth understanding, and Brice's book offers a concise introduction to it, as well as some interesting developments of it. * Philosophical Investigations *Exploring Certainty: Wittgenstein and Wide Fields of Thought is a creative and original work on one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. This will give it a broad audience, including Wittgenstein scholars, anyone in analytic philosophy, and the non-analytic philosopher. It is easily accessible to the newcomer to Wittgenstein. Thus it will have a wide appeal. -- Patrick Bourgeois, Loyola University"Drawing on recent scholarship that makes the case for the neglected importance of Wittgenstein's On Certainty, this book applies Wittgenstein's strikingly insightful ideas to foundational questions in ethics, aesthetics, religion, and philosophy of mind and mathematics. Exploring Certainty: Wittgenstein and Wide Fields of Thought is a stimulating and provocative contribution to Wittgensteinian exegesis." -- Nigel Pleasants, University of ExeterThis brief book on Wittgenstein’s On Certainty lives up to its subtitle. The “fields of thought” it covers are indeed wide; they include epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, religion, cognitive science, mathematics, psychotherapy and even Wittgenstein’s political views. Brice successfully shows the broad reach of Wittgenstein’s ideas…. His book is clearly written and accessible to a wide range of scholars, not just Wittgenstein’s scholars, and it might even interest some scholars outside of philosophy, such as those in any of the “fields of thought." * Philosophical Investigations *Table of ContentsIntroduction: “Wide Fields of Thought” Chapter 1: Common Sense Propositions: Moore and Wittgenstein Chapter 2: Recognizing Targets Chapter 3: Mistakes and Mental Disturbances: Pleasants, Wittgenstein, and Basic Moral Certainty Chapter 4: “Aesthetic Scaffolding”: Hagberg and Wittgensteinian Certitude Chapter 5: “Hinge Propositions,” Actional Certainty, and Religious Belief Chapter 6: “The Whole Hurly-Burly”: Wittgenstein, Language, and Embodied Cognition Chapter 7: The Peculiar Inexorability of Mathematics: Wittgenstein and Mathematical Certainty Chapter 8: Exceeding A Different Scope: Wittgenstein’s Political Views Chapter 9: “A Sketch of the Landscape”

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Book SynopsisWhat does it mean for nature to be sacred? Is anything supernatural or even unnatural? Nature's Transcendence and Immanence: A Comparative Interdisciplinary Ecstatic Naturalism discusses nature's divinizing process of unfolding and folding through East-West dialogues and interdisciplinary methodologies. Nature's selving/god-ing processes are the sacred that is revealed as nature's transcendent and immanent dimensions. Each chapter of Nature's Transcendence and Immanence: A Comparative Interdisciplinary Ecstatic Naturalism shares a part of nature's sacred folds that are complexes within nature that have unusual semiotic density. These discussions serve to help restore a better relationship to nature as a whole through an innovative combination of research and ideas from a variety of traditions and disciplines. This collection not only introduces ecstatic naturalism and deep pantheism as sacred practices of philosophy and theology, but also invites a broader audience from a wide range ofTrade ReviewRobert S. Corrington’s “Ecstatic Naturalism” is an important philosophical manifesto for our time. It combines American and Continental philosophy, semiotics, psychoanalysis, art, and other motifs into a rich blend of philosophical and religious wisdom—all focused on the mysterious processes of nature as these relate to human life. The authors of this edited collection focus on Ecstatic Naturalism from a variety of insightful directions, both appreciative and critical, and help in this way to bring its fascinating facets and challenging possibilities into view. -- Donald A. Crosby, Colorado State UniversityNature's Transcendence and Immanence provides us with an exciting glimpse into the ongoing interdisciplinary and intercultural conversations of a growing group of scholars contributing to the vitally contingent "community of interpreters" working in the constellation of Robert Corrington's unique brand of ordinal phenomenology, deep pantheism, and ecstatic naturalism. This particular set of essays offers many exemplary and insightful perspectives on how to do comparative philosophy-cum-theology in an ecstatically naturalistic vein. -- Joseph E. Harroff, East Stroudsburg University of PennsylvaniaThis book is an important contribution to the expanding body of work on Ecstatic Naturalism. It represents emerging thought from well-established scholars on the philosophy of Robert S. Corrington. The text is a masterful collection of essays from the perspectives of philosophy, theology, and psychoanalysis. -- Nicholas J. Wernicki, Delaware County Community CollegeThis sparkling, startling set of thought-experiments in a naturalism always exceeding itself demonstrates the pluriversal potential of the “community of interpreters.” Beautifully framed, the creative brilliance of these fresh voices, bursting with dialogical diversity, sustains a gripping momentum. It carries the reader along the crumbling edges of the natural, the cultural, the human, the technological, the western, the religious, the possible. -- Catherine Keller, Drew UniversityTable of ContentsForeword by Robert S. Corrington An Introduction—Marilynn Lawrence with Jea Sophia Oh I. Between Immanence and Transcendence of Nature 1. Chaosmic Naturalisms: Cosmological Immanence, Multiplicity and Divinity in Corrington and Faber—Austin Roberts 2. Trinitarian Nature? Tehom, Word and Spirit: A Constructive and Contemplative Journey Through Pannikar, Tillich, and Corrington—Rory McEntee 3. Wild Air: Toward a Poetics of Ecstatic Naturalism—Rose Ellen Dunn II. Nature’s Semiosis and Unconscious 4. Driven from the Bottomless Lake of Consciousness: Neuropsychoanalysis, Peirce, and an Ecstatic Naturalism—Wade A. Mitchell 5. Groundwork for a Transcendentalist Semeiotics of Nature—Nicholas L. Guardiano 6. The Meaning of Nature: Toward a Philosophical Ecology—Leon Niemoczynski 7. Landscapes of the Unconscious and the Longings of Nature—Elaine Padilla III. Nature’s Plurality and Hybridity 8. Mystical Pluralism: James, Blood, and the Experience of Ecstatic Nature—Thomas Millary 9. Vulnerable Transcendence of Nature: A Naturalistic Reading of Hybridity, Beginning, and Colliding in Chinese Creation Mythology—Jea Sophia Oh 10. A Post-Naturalist Idea of Ec-stacy: An East-West Dialogue in a Post-Human Age—Iljoon Park 11. Daseok’s God in Dialogue with Deep Pantheism and Process Panentheism—Hiheon Kim Bibliography About the Contributors

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Book SynopsisTheories of Hope: Exploring Affective Dimensions of Human Experience is a collection of essays dedicated to inquiring into the nature of hope in its multiple and varied guises. Looking specifically at the ways in which some experiences of hope emerge within contexts of marginalization, transgression, and inquiry, this volume seeks to explore the experiences of hope through a lens of its more challenging aspects.Trade ReviewThis book is not only a first rate philosophical study of hope, it also instills hope. It weds philosophical rigor with wisdom, illumining hope at the social and political margins as well as pluming its depths in the human condition. The reader will find it uplifting. -- Alan Mittleman, The Jewish Theological Seminary of AmericaThese eight original essays contribute to a broader, ongoing effort to push our thinking about hope beyond the level of greeting cards and political slogans. In addition to some key historical explorations of the concept, Green’s carefully curated anthology includes new ideas from well-known theorists of hope as well as some first-time efforts by younger voices. It is also impressively methodologically diverse. This is an excellent place to start thinking about the crucial roles that hope plays across our various life stages and political contexts. -- Andrew Chignell, Princeton UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction, by Rochelle Green Part I: Theory Section One: Expanding the View of Hope from the Margins Chapter 1. Faces of Hope, by Nancy Snow Chapter 2. Secular Hopes in the Face of Death, by Luc Bovens Section Two: Hope and Transgression Chapter 3. Shame, Hope, and the Courage to Transgress, by Patrick Shade Chapter 4. Redemptive Transgressions: The Dialectical Evolution of Hope and Freedom in the West, by Akiba Lerner Part II: Application Section Three: Hopes and Histories Chapter 5. Historia Abscondita: Or, on Nietzsche, Hope, and History, by Allison Merrick Chapter 6. Cultivating Hope in Feminist Political Praxis, by Rochelle Green Section Four: Application and Policy Implementation Chapter 7. Education and the Construction of Hope, by Darren Webb Chapter 8. Hope, the Environment, and Moral Imagination, by Lisa Kretz

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Book SynopsisThis collection presents twenty-seven new essays in Japanese aesthetics by leading experts in the field. Beginning with an extended foreword by the renowned scholar and artist Stephen Addiss and a comprehensive introduction that surveys the history of Japanese aesthetics and the ways in which it is similar to and different from Western aesthetics, this groundbreaking work brings together a large variety of disciplinary perspectivesincluding philosophy, literature, and cultural politicsto shed light on the artistic and aesthetic traditions of Japan and the central themes in Japanese art and aesthetics. Contributors explore topics from the philosophical groundings for Japanese aesthetics and the Japanese aesthetics of imperfection and insufficiency to the Japanese love of and respect for nature and the paradoxical ability of Japanese art and culture to absorb enormous amounts of foreign influence and yet maintain its own unique identity. New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics will appeal not Trade ReviewAesthetic concerns permeate Japanese culture; thus, a comprehensive understanding of Japanese culture requires a comprehensive understanding of Japanese aesthetics. Nguyen (Eastern Kentucky Univ.) achieves just that in this collection. The volume opens with two introductory essays: an excellent overview of central Japanese aesthetic concepts, practices, and their histories by Yuriko Saito, and a comprehensive overview of contents by Nguyen and the contributors to the volume. The 27 original essays are divided into six parts, each covering Japanese aesthetics in combination with another topic, namely philosophy, culture, cultural politics, literature, visual arts, and the legacy of Kuki Shūzō, author of "Iki" no kōzō (The Structure of Iki), 1930, regarded as the most important book on Japanese aesthetics of the 20th century. The strengths of this volume are many, and included among them are its breadth and depth, its deft engagement with both contemporary and historical concepts and issues, and its cross-cultural (East and West) nature. With regard to the last, Western philosophers are used to helping readers understand the Japanese concepts, and Japanese concepts are used to explore issues not usually treated in Western philosophy. This rich cultural/historical reciprocity permeates the book. This reviewer came away with the feeling that a lifetime could fruitfully and joyfully be spent studying this text. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above. * CHOICE *A. Minh Nguyen’s New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics is an important, comprehensive, and fascinating collection. Beginning with historical and systematic overviews of the philosophical tenets of Japanese aesthetics and treatments of central themes in Japanese art and aesthetics, this is a book of enormous scope, including discussions of traditional art forms such as the tea ceremony, calligraphy, haiku, Nō drama, pottery, and the martial arts, quotidian activities such as gift wrapping, flower arranging, cooking, etiquette, and gardening, and contemporary movements in Japanese literature, film, and the visual arts. This is a book that no student of Japanese aesthetics, whether beginning or advanced, should be without. -- Philip Alperson, Temple UniversityA. Minh Nguyen’s New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics is a kaleidoscope of twenty-seven new contributions on the unrelenting pursuit of elegance across Japanese culture that have been written specifically for this volume by nothing less than a cadre of the world’s most distinguished Japanologists. As it is turned in the hand of the reader, it reveals from a bottomless array of angles the different strategies this always unique and yet porous culture has deployed to enchant the human experience, aspiring as it does to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary and the mundane into the sublime. -- Roger T. Ames, Peking UniversityA. Minh Nguyen’s New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics is a most impressive collection. This volume provides important information to all who study Japanese aesthetics. I know of no other book that covers the subject so completely. -- Donald Keene, Columbia UniversityA. Minh Nguyen has put together an important volume that gives us, in one place, the tools to understand the knotty subject of Japanese aesthetics. The most notable scholars address these questions from various perspectives: some of them walk us through the history of aesthetics in Japan, others explicate the broad issues and ramifications of these ideas, while others take us deep into particular artists, genres, and works. This is an impressive achievement of long-lived value. -- Doug Slaymaker, University of KentuckyJapanese aesthetics, famous throughout the world, is more often revered and celebrated than meticulously analyzed. New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics goes beyond surface pleasures to uncover the relations and tensions that shape aesthetic worlds in Japan. Encyclopedic in breadth, the book is a must-have for anyone seeking to better understand this intriguing and elegant domain. -- Kristin Surak, School of Oriental and African StudiesA trove of treasures for thinking across the history of Japanese artistic practice and aesthetic thought, ranging from literature and the visual arts to philosophy, politics, and the aesthetics of daily life, this is a compendious work that will return many readers and introduce many more to the most vital topics and motifs of the Japanese cultural tradition with fresh insights and lucid clarifications of complex matters. A perfect text for reading in and for teaching from. -- Alan Tansman, University of California, BerkeleyTable of ContentsForeword Stephen Addiss Preface A. Minh Nguyen Introduction: Historical Overview of Japanese Aesthetics Yuriko Saito Introduction: New Contributions to Japanese Aesthetics A. Minh Nguyen I: Japanese Aesthetics and Philosophy 1 A Philosophic Grounding for Japanese Aesthetics Robert E. Carter 2 Cloud, Mist, Shadow, Shakuhachi: The Aesthetics of the Indistinct David E. Cooper 3 Authority in Taste Richard Bullen 4 Beauty as Ecstasy in the Aesthetics of Nishida and Schopenhauer Steve Odin 5 Bodily Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues Yuriko Saito II: Japanese Aesthetics and Culture 6 Beyond Zeami: Innovating Mise en Scѐne in Contemporary Nō Theatre Performance C. Michael Rich 7 The Appreciative Paradox of Japanese Gardens Allen Carlson 8 Savoring Tastes: Appreciating Food in Japan Graham Parkes 9 Art of War, Art of Self: Aesthetic Cultivation in Japanese Martial Arts James McRae III: Japanese Aesthetics and Cultural Politics 10 Ainu Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art: Replication, Remembering, Recovery Koji Yamasaki and Mara Miller 11 The Idea of Greece in Modern Japan’s Cultural Dreams Hiroshi Nara 12 Yashiro Yukio and the Aesthetics of Japanese Art History J. Thomas Rimer 13 Aestheticizing Sacrifice: Ritual, Education, and Media during the Asia-Pacific War Akiko Takenaka 14 Nagai Kafū and the Aesthetics of Urban Strolling Timothy Unverzagt Goddard 15 Cool-Kawaii Aesthetics and New World Modernity Thorsten Botz-Bornstein IV: Japanese Aesthetics and Literature 16 Bashō and the Art of Eternal Now Michiko Yusa 17 Knowing Elegance: The Ideals of the Bunjin (Literatus) in Early Modern Haikai Cheryl Crowley 18 The Measure of Comparison: Correspondence and Collision in Japanese Aesthetics Meera Viswanathan 19 On Kawabata, Kishida, and Barefoot Gen: Agency, Identity, and Aesthetic Experience in Post-Atomic Japanese Narrative Mara Miller 20 Japanese Poetry and the Aesthetics of Disaster Roy Starrs V: Japanese Aesthetics and the Visual Arts 21 Inner Beauty: Kishida Ryūsei’s Concept of Realism and Pre-Modern Asian Aesthetics Mikiko Hirayama 22 The Pan Real Art Association’s Revolt against “the Beauties of Nature” Matthew Larking 23 The Aesthetics of Emptiness in Japanese Calligraphy and Abstract Expressionism John C. Maraldo 24 On Not Disturbing Still Water: Ozu Yasujirō and the Technical-Aesthetic Product Jason M. Wirth VI: The Legacy of Kuki Shūzō 25 Finding Iki: Iki and the Floating World David Bell 26 Iki and Glamour as Aesthetic Properties of Persons: Reflections in a Cross-Cultural Mirror Carol Steinberg Gould 27 Scents and Sensibility: Kuki Shūzō and Olfactory Aesthetics Peter Leech Contributors

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Book SynopsisThe essays in this volume all ask what it means for human beings to be embodied as desiring creaturesand perhaps still more piercingly, what it means for a philosopher to be embodied. In taking up this challenge via phenomenology, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of literature, the volume questions the orthodoxies not only of Western metaphysics but even of the phenomenological tradition itself. We miss much that has philosophical import when we exclude the somatic aspects of human life, and it is therefore the philosopher's duty now to rediscover the meaning inherent in desire, emotion, and passionwithout letting the biases of any tradition determine in advance the meaning that reveals itself in embodied desire. Continental philosophers have already done much to challenge binary oppositions, and this volume sets out a new challenge: we must now also question the dichotomy between being at home and being alienated. Alterity is not simply something out there, separate frTable of ContentsSection I: “Somatic Desire: Uncovering Corporeality in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics” Christine Rojcewicz Chapter One: “Desire, Body, and Freedom: Themes from Husserl's ‘Studies on the Structures of Consciousness’” Andrea Staiti (Università degli Studi di Parma) Chapter Two: “Lateralization and Leaning: Somatic Desire as a Model for Supple Wisdom” Brian Treanor (Loyola Marymount University) Chapter Three: “The Recovery of the Flesh in Ricoeur and Merleau-Ponty” Richard Kearney (Boston College) Chapter Four: “Ricoeur on the Body – A Response to Richard Kearney” Gonçalo Marcelo (Universidade de Coimbra / Católica Porto Business School) Section II: “The Body in Love and Sickness” Sarah Horton Chapter Five: “Embrace and Differentiation: A Phenomenology of Eros” Emmanuel Falque (L’Institut Catholique de Paris) and Richard Kearney (Boston College) Chapter Six: “Toward an Ethics of the Spread Body” Emmanuel Falque (L’Institut Catholique de Paris) Chapter Seven: “Dying to Desire: Soma, Sema, Sarx, and Sex” John Panteleimon Manoussakis (College of the Holy Cross) Section III: “The Inscribed Body: Text and the Afterlife of the Flesh” Stephen Mendelsohn Chapter Eight: “Anxiety, Melancholy, and Shrapnel” Richard Rojcewicz (Duquesne University) Chapter Nine: “The Poetics of Lack and the Problem of Ground in Knut Hamsun’s Hunger” Christopher Yates (University of Virginia) Chapter Ten: “From the Writing of Desire to the Desire of Writing: Reflections on Proust” Miguel de Beistegui (The University of Warwick). Chapter Eleven: “Miracle” Alphonso Lingis (Pennsylvania State University)

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Book SynopsisIn this first ever book-length study of aesthetic expertise, Ole Martin Skilleås outlines the nature and purpose of aesthetic expertise, with particular emphasis on the direction of attention, and examines how aesthetic expertise manifests across diverse roles within aesthetic practices. He discusses the foundations of aesthetic trust via the concept of calibration, thereby developing an outline of social aesthetics using the concept of embedded expertise. Skilleås distinguishes between practitionersthose who create and perform aesthetically engaging worksand advisors, who educate, enlighten, and make recommendations. Considering the latter roles, Aesthetic Expertise: An Exploration and Defense argues that aesthetics ought to move away from a paradigm centered on critics and reviewers and the idea of a standard of taste, and over to an approach anchored in instruction and the triangulation between instructor, artwork, and learner. This educational interaction is pivota

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Book SynopsisA Hermeneutics of Poetic Education: The Play of the In-Between explores the ways in which both play and poetry orient us toward what surpasses us. Catherine Homan develops an original account of poetic education that builds on Friedrich Hölderlin's idea of poetry as a teacher of humanity. Whereas aesthetic education emphasizes judgments of taste and rational autonomy, poetic education foregrounds self-formation and openness to the other. Critically engaging the works of Eugen Fink, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Celan, this book argues that poetry and play call for a particular stance in the world and with others. Open toward the infinite while simultaneously reaching toward its own finitude, the poetic work addresses us and invites our response. Poetry reveals the human condition as in-between and dialogical, even at the limits of language. Although many philosophers mistakenly view play as frivolous, Homan takes play seriously. Play--spontaneous and creative--resists mastery and insteaTrade Review“Interpretation, play, and creativity are not simply behaviors,” Homan (philosophy, Mount Mary Univ.) argues in this perceptive and trenchant new book, “but ways of being in the world” (p. 134). Tracing, engaging, and building on this ontological orientation in the works of many key German language poets and philosophers—including Hölderlin, Kant, Schiller, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Celan, Fink, Gadamer, and others—the author identifies a pervasive “as if” stance that marks many of their perspectives on language, education, and existence. Human existence is groundless yet finite and thus tragic. And language (while not merely a tool) is capable of enlarging understanding even though it always remains incomplete. The poetic, however, keeps these tensions alive and therefore offers the true promise of a liberatory and playful education. Homan underscores the seriousness of play as it provides the bridge that enables one to reclaim an original unity obscured by ubiquitous dualisms (e.g., subject/object, self/world, familiar/foreign, and so on). A concluding chapter responds to some critiques of hermeneutics and offers a justification of education as Bildung, which Homan regards as consistent with hermeneutics in that it is premised on “the spontaneity and openness to what is other" (p. 166). This is exemplary and astute scholarship with a timely and timeless focus. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. * Choice *"Catherine Homan makes a compelling case for poetic education, beginning with Hölderlin’s appeal to the creative arts in the nineteenth century. Weaving imaginatively different play traditions from the hermeneutic encounter with Gadamer and Fink to the social justice concerns of Gloria Anzaldúa, Mariana Ortega, and bell hooks, Homan brings an original perspective to philosophy of education, arguing for language to be attuned to dialogical interplay and affectively rooted in the world. With her focus on an ethics of vulnerability, drawing on Paul Celan’s poetry, her book serves as an important corrective to play narratives in the hermeneutic tradition that merely tarry with the aesthetic." -- Mechthild Nagel, SUNY CortlandTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsAbbreviationsIntroduction1. Aesthetic Education and the Roots of Poetic Education2. Poetry as Teacher of Humanity3. Play, Paidia, and Paideia4. Becoming Who We Are: A ConversationConclusion: The Play of the In-BetweenBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisIn Judgments of Beauty in Theory Evaluation, Devon Brickhouse-Bryson argues that judgments of beauty are a justified part of theory evaluation of all sorts, including both scientific theory evaluation and philosophical theory evaluation. He supports this argument with an account of beautyinherited from Kant and Mothersillon which the distinctive nature of judgments of beauty is that they are unprincipled, yet possible. Brickhouse-Bryson analyzes two important methods of theory evaluationreflective equilibrium and simplicityand argues that these methods require making judgments of beauty understood. He further argues that these methods of theory evaluation are not anomalies, but that they point to a deeper lesson about the nature of theorizing and the necessity of using judgments of beauty to evaluate systems, like theories. This book has implications for the debate in philosophy of science over judgments of beauty and also prompts a reckoning in philosophy itself over the use of judgmeTable of ContentsIntroduction: Theory EvaluationChapter 1: Relativism about BeautyChapter 2: An Account of Beauty: Unprincipled, Yet GenuineChapter 3: Reflective Equilibrium: Judgments of Coherence as Judgments of BeautyChapter 4: Simplicity: Judgments of Simplicity as Judgments of BeautyChapter 5: Justifying Beauty-Related Methods of Theory EvaluationCoda: Three Issues for Future WorkBibliographyAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisIn Judgments of Beauty in Theory Evaluation, Devon Brickhouse-Bryson argues that judgments of beauty are a justified part of theory evaluation of all sorts, including both scientific theory evaluation and philosophical theory evaluation. He supports this argument with an account of beautyinherited from Kant and Mothersillon which the distinctive nature of judgments of beauty is that they are unprincipled, yet possible. Brickhouse-Bryson analyzes two important methods of theory evaluationreflective equilibrium and simplicityand argues that these methods require making judgments of beauty understood. He further argues that these methods of theory evaluation are not anomalies, but that they point to a deeper lesson about the nature of theorizing and the necessity of using judgments of beauty to evaluate systems, like theories. This book has implications for the debate in philosophy of science over judgments of beauty and also prompts a reckoning in philosophy itself over the use of judgmeTrade ReviewBrickhouse-Bryson (philosophy, Univ. of Lynchburg) presents a nimble and conceptually agile account of the role of aesthetic criteria in theory evaluation. In five succinct chapters, each confined to the careful articulation of a major premise in a concisely unfolding argument, the author presents the fullest defense given, at least since Kant's masterwork the Critique of Judgment (1790), that judgments of aesthetic value, like beauty and simplicity, feature in the intersubjective appraisal of "systems of thought," such as how true or useful one takes explanatory theories to be. On Brickhouse-Bryson's reading, such threadbare notions as simplicity and systematicity unavoidably feature in every theory-evaluation, whether these relate to how well theories fit the data or how elegant or simple one construes their scope. Judgments of beauty help one identify "systems as systems," since they feature not only in the selection-level, between competing systematicity theories (regarding their respective aptitudes for simplicity), but also in their construction phase (regarding their exhibition of systematicity) and are even apparent in their Kuhnian phase (regarding their capacity for paradigm shift). A well-written, stimulating read, this book would make a perfect resource for seminars in a variety of disciplines. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. * Choice *"Brickhouse-Bryson makes a compelling case for the importance of aesthetic judgments. Clearly written and well-researched, Judgments of Beauty in Theory Evaluation takes a bold and much-needed step toward consociating sometimes disparate literatures in aesthetics, philosophy of science, and metaphilosophy, showing surprising similarities among inquiries in art, science, and philosophy." -- Ian O'Loughlin, Pacific UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Theory EvaluationChapter 1: Relativism about BeautyChapter 2: An Account of Beauty: Unprincipled, Yet GenuineChapter 3: Reflective Equilibrium: Judgments of Coherence as Judgments of BeautyChapter 4: Simplicity: Judgments of Simplicity as Judgments of BeautyChapter 5: Justifying Beauty-Related Methods of Theory EvaluationCoda: Three Issues for Future WorkBibliographyAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisWhat is a television series? A widespread answer takes it to be a totality of episodes and seasons. Luca Bandirali and Enrico Terrone argue against this characterization. In Concept TV: An Aesthetics of Television Series, they contend that television series are concepts that manifest themselves through episodes and seasons, just as works of conceptual art can manifest themselves through installations or performances. In this sense, a television series is a conceptual narrative, a principle of construction of similar narratives. While the film viewer directly appreciates a narrative made of images and sounds, the TV viewer relies on images and sounds to grasp the conceptual narrative that they express. Here lies the key difference between television and film. Reflecting on this difference paves the way for an aesthetics of television series that makes room for their alleged prolixity, their tendency to repetition, and their lack of narrative closure. Bandirali and Terrone shed light Trade Review"This innovative study is an informative and thought-provoking read, especially for the many of us who have greatly enjoyed watching multi-season television series and who have pondered their artistic merits and defects. The authors provide impressive, detailed discussions of a wide range of series. They broach intriguing philosophical questions about long television series and present their own positions on these matters with admirable clarity." -- Paisley Livingston, Uppsala UniversityTable of ContentsList of FiguresAcknowledgments Introduction1. The Problem: Supersize Narratives2. The Solution: Conceptual Narratives3. The Upshot: Engaging With Conceptual NarrativesBibliography

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Book SynopsisThe authors of the standard approach to Bonaventure's aesthetics established the broad themes that continue to inform the current interpretation of his philosophy, theology, and mysticism of beauty: his definition of beauty and its status as a transcendental of being, his description of the aesthetic experience, and the role of that experience in the soul's ascent into God. Nevertheless, they also introduced a series of pointed questions that remain without adequate resolution in the current literature. Thomas J. McKenna's book, Bonaventure's Aesthetics: The Delight of the Soul in Its Ascent into God, provides a comprehensive analysis of Bonaventure's aesthetics, the first to appear since Balthasar's Herrlichkeit, and, in doing so, argues for a resolution to these questions in the context of his principal aesthetic text, the Itinerarium mentis in Deum.Table of ContentsA Note on the Cover IllustrationAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Disputed Questions on Bonaventure’s Aesthetics1. Bonaventure’s Debt to l’Esthétique Musicale2. Bonaventure’s Debt to l’Esthétique de la Lumière3. Bonaventure’s Account of the Aesthetic Experience4. The Aesthetic Dimensions of the Itinerarium Mentis in DeumConclusionBibliography

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