Philosophy: aesthetics Books

Book SynopsisRasa is the most thorough treatment to date of this all-important concept at the heart of Javanese aesthetics. Rasa encompasses not only affect, mood, and intuition, but also theories of musical perception and cognition, as well as meaning and expression in music.Table of ContentsPreface Technical Notes Chapter 1: The Musical Scene in Solo Chapter 2: The Taste of Music: Rasaning Gendhing Chapter 3: The Classification of Rasa Gendhing Chapter 4: Having Rasa, Part 1: Linguistic and Cultural Perspectives Chapter 5: Having Rasa, Part 2: Musicianship Chapter 6: The Communication of Rasa, Part 1: General Considerations of Expression and Perception Chapter 7: The Communication of Rasa, Part 2: Garap and Other Factors Contributing to Specific Rasas Chapter 8: Why Rasa Talk Matters Appendix A: Classifications of Rasa Gendhing from Oral and Written Sources Appendix B: How Iråmå Works Glossary Bibliography Dictionaries and Glossaries Corpus: Works Having Citations of Rasa Terms as Used by Javanese Experts in Music and Related Arts General Works Discography of Recordings Referred to in the Text Index

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Book SynopsisIn this systematic account of aesthetics in relation to the natural environment, Emily Brady provides critical understanding of what aesthetic appreciation of nature involves and develops her own distinctive aesthetic theory.Trade ReviewEmily Brady's timely Aesthetics of the Natural Environment provides a clear and systematic introduction to central topics in environmental aesthetics ! An excellent resource for anyone new to the area. Admirably comprehensive coverage of the subject. -- Professor Arnold Berleant, Emeritus Professor, Long Island University, USA Emily Brady's timely Aesthetics of the Natural Environment provides a clear and systematic introduction to central topics in environmental aesthetics ! An excellent resource for anyone new to the area. Admirably comprehensive coverage of the subject.Table of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Aesthetic Appreciation; Aesthetic Experience; Aesthetic Qualities; Aesthetic Value; 2. Early Theories of Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature; Aesthetic Appreciation before the 18th century; The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Picturesque; Romanticism and After; Towards the Contemporary Debate; 3. Culture, Art and Environment; Nature and Culture; Appreciating Art and Natural Environments; Meaning, Interpretation and Cultural Landscapes; 4. Contemporary Theories of Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature; The Contemporary Debate; Cognitive Theories; Non-Cognitive Theories; 5. The Integrated Aesthetic I: Multi-Sensuous Engagement and Disinterestedness; The Integrated Aesthetic; Multi-Sensuous Engagement; Disinterestedness; Disinterestedness and Valuing Nature; 6. The Integrated Aesthetic II: Imagination, Emotion and Knowledge Imagination; Imagination and Natural Environments; The Communicability of Imagination; Emotion, Expressive Qualities and Nature; Knowledge in the Integrated Aesthetic; 7. Aesthetic Judgements of the Natural Environment and Aesthetic Communication; Aesthetic Judgements and Objectivity; Aesthetic Judgements of Nature; Agreement, Disagreement and the Problem of Taste; Aesthetic Communication; Aesthetic Criticism and Environmental Aesthetic Education; 8. Aesthetics, Ethics and Environmental Conservation; Aesthetic Value in Environmental Conservation; Landscape Character and the Integrated Aesthetic; Aesthetic Character and Aesthetic Integrity: The Case of the Harris Superquarry; Aesthetics, Ethics and Conservation; Aesthetics and Respect for Nature; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisWas performance important to Deleuze? Is Deleuze important to performance; to its practical, as well as theoretical, research? What are the implications of Deleuze''s philosophy of difference, process and becoming, for Performance Studies, a field in which many continue to privilege the notion of performance as representation, as anchored by its imitation of an identity: ''the world'', ''the play'', ''the self''?Deleuze and Performance is a collection of new essays dedicated to Deleuze''s writing on theatre and to the productivity of his philosophy for (re)thinking performance. This book provides rigorous analyses of Deleuze''s writings on theatre practitioners such as Artaud, Beckett and Carmelo Bene, as well as offering innovative readings of historical and contemporary performance including performance art, dance, new media performance, theatre and opera, which use Deleuze''s concepts in exciting new ways. Can philosophy follow Deleuze in overcoming the antitheatrical tradition embedded in its history, perhaps even reconsidering what it means to think in the light of the embodied insights of performance''s practitioners? Experts from the fields of Performance Studies and Deleuze Studies come together in this volume and strive to examine these and other issues in a manner that will be challenging, yet accessible to students and established scholars alike.Trade Review'The vitality of Gilles Deleuze's enduring influence is nowhere more apparent than within the folds of performance. Laura Cull's own precision of thought on these matters is given exquisite, seamless form in this indispensable collection by a first rate cast.' -- Alan Read, Professor of Theatre, King's College London 'This is a welcome addition to the fields of both performance studies and Deleuze studies, one that is sure to stimulate productive research and practice across many domains for years to come.' -- Ronald Bogue, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of GeorgiaTable of ContentsIntroduction by Laura Cull; 1. Performing in the Chaosmos: Farts, Follicles, Mathematics, and Delirium in Deleuze by Herbert Blau; 2. I Artaud BwO: The Uses of Artaud's To have Done with the Judgment of God by Edward Scheer; 3. Expression and Affect in Kleist, Beckett, and Deleuze by Anthony Uhlmann; 4. A Theatre of Subtractive Extinction: Bene without Deleuze by Lorenzo Chiesa; 5. Performing, Strolling, Thinking: From Minor Literature to Theatre of the Future by Daniel Watt and Off the beaten path or, notes towards a Heideggerian deterritorialization: a response to Daniel Watt by Julian Wolfreys; 6. Becoming a Citizen of the World: Deleuze between Allan Kaprow and Adrian Piper by Stephen Zepke; 7. sub specie durationis by Matthew Goulish and Laura Cull; 8. Thinking through Theatre by Maaike Bleeker; 9. Becoming-Dinosaur: Collective Process and Movement Aesthetics by Anna Hickey-Moody; 10. !of butterflies, bodies and biograms! Affective spaces in performativities in the performance of Madama Butterfly by Barbara Kennedy; 11. Like a Prosthesis: Critical Performance a Digital Deleuze by Timothy Murray; 12. Performance as the Distribution of Life: From Aeschylus to Chekhov to VJing via Deleuze and Guattari by Andrew Murphie; 13. The 'minor' arithmetic of rhythm: imagining digital technologies for dance by Stamatia Portanova; Epilogue; Notes on Contributors; Works Cited; Index.

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Book SynopsisThis volume considers the question of whether there is any truth at all in photography, with reference to the works of Walter Benjamin, Helene Cixous, and Jacques Derrida, among others.

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Book SynopsisExplores how Walter Pater and his contemporary aesthetes were influenced by modern philosophies. Repositioning Walter Pater at philosophical nexus of Aestheticism, this title presents the discussion of how Pater redefines Romantic Individualism through his engagements with modern philosophical discourses and in the context of modernity in Britain.

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Book SynopsisStephen Zepke shows how the idea of sublime art waxes and wanes in the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Ranciere and the recent Speculative Realism movement.

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Book SynopsisFocussed around three core themes - capitalism, the metaphysics of democracy and aesthetics - these 13 essays emphasise the potential of Nancy's political thought and situate it within a broader intellectual context.

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Book SynopsisExplores the political force of aesthetic experience and the role space plays in politics. This book argues that politics is about forms of perceiving the world and modes of relating to it. It offers an understanding of politics based on apprehension and revelation.Trade Review'What if political action is the very invention of space? And what if we were to see this making of space as a work of art and imagination? With an artistry of his own, Mustafa Dikec brings Arendt, Nancy and Ranciere into conversation with ordinary people shaping their own everyday worlds. The warmest of invitations into challenging political thought, "Space, Politics, and Aesthetics" is a celebration of the sheer joy of bringing shared spaces into being.'--Nigel Clark, Lancaster University; 'Mustafa Dikec's "Space, Politics and Aesthetics" is philosophically profound, politically astute and conceptually powerful. Articulating critical geography with a politics of aesthetics, the work crosses disciplinary boundaries and provides an innovative intervention into contemporary social theory.'--Michael J. Shaprio, University of Hawai'iTable of ContentsAcknowledgements; 1. Politics and the spatial imagination; 2. Politics of aesthetics; 3. Politics for beginners; 4. Politics in-common; 5. Politics for equals; 6. The sublime element in politics; Bibliography; Index

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Book SynopsisDrawing on a range of contributors, case studies and examples, this book examines ways in which we can think about design through Deleuze, and likewise how Deleuze's thought can be experimented upon and re designed to produce new concepts. It uses Deleuze and Guattari to provide a theoretical framework to address the theory and practice of design.

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Book SynopsisThrough a series of rigorous encounters with key critical figures, this monograph argues that modern thought is, in a double sense, the thought of pain. This book investigates the idea that modern European philosophy after Kant offers less the conceptual equipment to tackle pain in explanatory terms, than an experience of thought that participates in the forms of pain and suffering about which it speaks. Perhaps surprisingly, the question of pain establishes a ground from which to examine key debates in twentieth-century European philosophy, most recently between forms of post-structuralist and ethical thinking imagined to be in crisis and the resurgence of discourses of political emancipation arising from traditions of thought associated with Marxism. Key features: Offers a systematic account of the modern European tradition''s relationship to the question of pain and suffering Suggests new readings of ''ethics'' and ''evil'' Evaluates the politics of contemporary critical theory Sets new agendas for reading post-Kantian philosophy

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of some of Deleuze's key concepts and an introduction to Deleuze's Cinema books. It takes up Deleuze's idea that the true objects of the theory of cinema are the concepts that cinema generates when understood as a practice of images.

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Book Synopsis''Aesthetics'' and ''theological aesthetics'' usually imply a focus on questions about the arts and how faith or religion relates to the arts; only the final pages of this work take up that problem. The central theme of this book is that of beauty. Farley employs a new typology of western texts on beauty and a theological analysis of the image of God and redemption to counter the centuries-long tendency to ignore or marginalize beauty and the aesthetic as part of the life of faith. Studying the interpretation of beauty in ancient Greece, eighteenth-century England, the work of Jonathan Edwards, and nineteenth and twentieth-century philosophies of human self-transcendence, the author explores whether Christian existence, the life of faith, and the ethical exclude or require an aesthetic dimension in the sense of beauty. The work will be of particular interest to those interested in Christian theology, ethics, and religion and the arts.Trade Review’The most important book I have read for years. Farley strikes the right chord in the way he goes behind the current discussion and lays a solid foundation for the kind of theological depth that has to be brought to the question of beauty. He makes the issue alive to the most recent scholarship’ John Cook, President of the Henry Luce Foundation, USA 'In this eloquently written book, Edward Farley brings a gentle, carefully crafted clarity to these matters...With much dexterity, he exposes and challenges some of the dichotomies that have marred a proper appreciation of beauty, not least in the Church...The discussion is rich and full of wisdom, and a model of how to say a great deal with few words.' Theology ' ...Farley's focus on the transformative aspects of beauty allows him to innovatively harmonize a variety of divergent theoretical strands into a complex and satisfying theological asesthetic that is itself beautiful, in the Whiteheadian sense of being a real creative accomplishment of synthesis.' Journal of Religion 'Farley follows a course from ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century to the modern day. His aim is to establish a link between faith, understood as the experience of a redeemed life, and aesthetic experience... Farley's route...is to seek for beauty in the process of redemptive remaking, through the restoration of the divine image in human being marred by sin... it does...point to the potential fruitfulness of a renewed debate between Christian thinkers and contemporary artists.' Art and Christianity Enquiry Bulletin 'In grappling with Christian theology and with aesthetics, Farley has illuminated a valuable area of discussion.' Church Times 'In this magisterial study Farley attempts to situate the transcendental of beauty within the Christian experience of faith. Studying the conflictual relationship between Christianity and esthetic concerns, Farley develops a useful typology of the various identitTable of ContentsContents: Preface. Beauty as the Beast: traditional and postmodern expressions: Beauty and the postmodern; Beauty as the beast in Christian traditions; Hebrew and Christian iconoclasms. Beauty as Being: The Irrepressible Character of Beauty: The 'great theory of beauty'; The Olympian cosmogonies; The Platonic tradition; The 'great theory' in the Middle Ages; The process transmutation of the great theory of beauty; beauty as being. Beauty as Sensibility: Precursors of the 18th-century turn; The new problematic of beauty in the 18th century; The psychological relocation of beauty; The problem of taste; The sublime; Legacies and ambiguities. Beauty as Benevolence: Primary and secondary beauty; Beauty as community; Beauty and God; The problem of objectivity; Beauty and self-transcendence. Beauty in Human Self-Transcendence: Human self-transcendence without beauty; Self-transcendence as passionate subjectivity; Self-transcendence as intentional meaning; Self-transcendence as radical responsibility; The aesthetic aspect of self-transcendence; Beauty as a transcendental condition of experience; Beyond self-preoccupation through beauty; The beauty of the graceful body; Summary. Paths to Beauty in 20th-Century Theology: Anti-aesthetic Protestant approaches to beauty; 20th-century Catholic theologies of beauty. The Beauty of Human Redemption: The image of God as self-transcendence; Formal and ethical self-transcendence; The image of God as potentiality and actuality; The imago dei as beautiful; The despoiled image; The beauty of redemptive remaking; Redemptive self-transcendence; Surmounting the dichotomy of the ethical and the aesthetic; Faith's aesthetic sensibilities. Beauty, Pathos and Joy: Beauty and pathos; Joy: beyond the dichotomy of rigorism and satisfaction; Faith without beauty; The arts in the life of faith. Synopsis: Aesthetics; Beauty; The western story of beauty; Theological aesthetics and redemptive transformation; Index.

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Book SynopsisThe notion of aesthetic illusion relates to a number of art forms and media. Defined as a pleasurable mental state that emerges during the reception of texts and artefacts, it amounts to the reader's or viewer's sense of having entered the represented world while at the same time keeping a distance from it. Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and the Arts is an in-depth study of the main questions surrounding this experience of art as reality.Beginning with an introduction providing historical background to modern discussions of illusion, it deals with a wide range of theoretical issues. The collection explores the nature and function of the aesthetic illusion as well as the role of affect and emotion, the implications of aesthetic illusion for the theory of fiction, the variable forms of aesthetic illusion and its relationship to other components of aesthetic response. Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and the Arts brings together a team of scholars from philosophy, literatuTrade Review[A] valuable contribution to the developing philosophical literature on immersion. If you're interested in the topic, or in closely-related issues such as "fictional worlds," it should be on your reading list. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *This comprehensive outlook on the familiar yet elusive phenomenon of being absorbed, perceptually stimulated, or even deceived by art will be appreciated by academics, art practitioners, and arts audiences alike. The essays are well-referenced and conceptually precise, and the authors' appetite for polemics is exemplary, making the collection as a whole a rich and enjoyable read. * Anežka Kuzmicová, Research Fellow, Stockholm University, Sweden *A fascinating array of reflections on the place of the concept of illusion in theorizing about the arts and aesthetic experience. Central to the sort of illusion of most concern here is an experience of an artwork that has a double character, being at once both absorbing and immersive, on the one hand, and distanced and detached, on the other. That there is illumination of this phenomenon to be had for readers of this volume is no illusion. * Jerrold Levinson, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, USA *Table of Contents1. Introduction Tomáš Koblížek (Institute of Philosophy, The Czech Academy of Sciences) PART I: Illusion and Media 2. Aesthetic Illusion(s)? Werner Wolf (Centre for Intermediality Studies, University of Graz) 3. More Than Meets the Eye: Layers of Artistic Representation Thomas G. Pavel (Department of Comparative Literature, University of Chicago) 4. Mediating Immediacy Göran Rossholm (Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University) 5. Neither Here nor There, but Now. Film Experience and the Aesthetic Illusion Enrico Terrone (Department of Philosophy, University of Torino) PART II: Illusion and the Mind 6. Reading for the Mind: Aesthetic Illusion, Fictional Characters, and the Role of Interpretation Marco Caracciolo (Comparative Literature, University of Freiburg) 7. A Puzzle of Fiction and Cognitive Impenetrability Fredrik Stjernberg (Department of Culture and Communication, Linköping University) 8. Illusion, Distance and Appropriation Martin Pokorný (Comparative Literature, Charles University, Prague) 9. Fact, Fiction and Projection: The Inescapability of Austerlitz’s Impulse Josep Corbí (Department of Metaphysics and Theory of Knowledge, University of Valencia) PART III: Illusive Worlds 10. La Comédie Humaine and the Illusion of Reality Lubomir Doležel (Comparative Literature, University of Toronto) 11. Fiction, Illusion, Reality and Radical Narration Petr Kotátko (Institute of Philosophy, The Czech Academy of Sciences) 12. A Moral Life of Things: Making and Breaking of Aesthetic Illusion in Lyric Poetry Karel Thein (Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague) 13. The Novel and the Aesthetic Illusion Jirí Koten (Faculty of Education, University of Usti nad Labem) PART IV: Questioning Illusion 14. How Should We Talk About Reading Experiences? Arguments and Empirical Evidence Emily Troscianko (Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford) 15. Aesthetic Illusion between the Prague School and Fictional Worlds Theory Bohumil Fort (Language Institute, The Czech Academy of Sciences) 16. Skeptical Reflections on the Concept of Aesthetic Illusion Anders Pettersson (Department of Culture and Media Studies, Umea University) List of Contributors Index of Names Index of Topics

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Book SynopsisCorry Shores is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the Middle Eastern Technical University, Ankara University, Turkey.Trade ReviewThis book provides an important advance in the understanding of Deleuze’s philosophical project. By drawing on the dialetheism of Graham Priest, Shores provides a reading of Deleuze that shows the logical basis for much of his work. * Jeffrey A. Bell, Professor of Philosophy, Southeastern Louisiana University, USA *Using an innovative logical methodology, Corry Shores invites us to grasp Deleuze’s philosophy as laying bare a cinematographic reality conjoining continuity and discontinuity, duration and intellect, Aion and Chronos. In logical terms, Shores convincingly demonstrates how this can be understood along the lines of dialetheism as promulgated by Graham Priest, which is to say as ‘complete and paraconsistent’. This general logic is carefully extracted from a wide ranging and attentive reading of Deleuze’s oeuvre and from his various references to logical notions. * Guillaume Collett, Researcher in the Centre for Critical Thought, University of Kent, UK *This book is the answer to a challenge: to elaborate some basic concepts of Deleuze's philosophy by placing them into the frame of modern logic. What kind of logic can grasp Deleuze's ideas on, for example, synthetic disjunction, coalescent incompossibility, or about the power of falsity? Corry Shores, patient, scrupulous and sharp as he is, gives a brilliant answer to that. * Roland Breeur, Professor of Philosophy, Leuven University, Belgium *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: The Logic of Magic and the Magic of Logic Part I: Dis-composition and Dis-identification 1. Becoming Dialetheic: The Logic of Change 2. Enter the Puddingstone: Demonic Gluonics 3. Sorcerous Conceptions: Deleuze’s Philosophy of Thinking Part II: Logic of Otherness: Negation, or Disjunction? 4. Alternance and Otherness 5. Truth and Bifurcation: Leibniz and the Stoics 6. Wisdom without Logic: Intuitionism Part III. Falsity 7. False Movements 8. False Creations Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisElaborating the history, variety, pervasiveness, and function of the adornments and ornaments with which we beautify ourselves, this book takes in human prehistory, ancient civilizations, hunter-foragers, and present-day industrial societies to tell a captivating story of hair, skin, and make-up practices across times and cultures. From the decline of the hat, the function of jewelry and popularity of tattooing to the wealth of grave goods found in the Upper Paleolithic burials and body painting of the Nuba, we see that there is no one who does not adorn themselves, their possessions, or their environment. But what messages do these adornments send? Drawing on aesthetics, evolutionary history, archaeology, ethology, anthropology, psychology, cultural history, and gender studies, Stephen Davies brings together African, Australian and North and South American indigenous cultures and unites them around the theme of adornment. He shows us that adorning is one of the few social behaviorTrade ReviewThe wondrous array of body ornaments pictured here itself adorns a wide-ranging, learned, accessible, and fascinating discussion of aesthetics by distinguished philosopher Stephen Davies. Adornment is not only a feast for the eyes but for the mind. * Ellen Dissanayake, author of What Is Art For? and Homo Aestheticus *Decoration is often dismissed as trivial, but Davies shows how deep-seated and functional the human impulse to decorate is. He argues that it is nothing less than one of our most fundamental modes of communication. This fascinating tour of adornment is bound to transform readers’ outlook, drawing attention to the aesthetic embellishments that we add to everything we touch. * Kathleen M. Higgins, Professor of Philosophy, The University of Texas at Austin, USA *This work sets itself as the pinnacle of the philosophical debate on adornment and self-decoration. Holding the key-concept of “making special through aesthetic enhancement”, Davies enlightens the merging of pleasure, symbolic value and communicative tasks at place in the practice of adorning. The result comforts with sharp analyses and arguments the priority of the aesthetic attitude on any other such as the religious and moral ones. * Fabrizio Desideri, Professor of Aesthetics, Florence University, Italy *[W]ritten from a scholarly perspective, with a clarity of writing and little academic jargon, the book can engage anyone interested in the subject. * The Journal of Dress History *A great book and very easy to read ... It's highly accessible and easily understood despite the fact that [it deals] with some really complicated concepts. * New Books Network *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Illustrations Preface 1. The Sungir Children 2. What Adornment is 3. Bodily Adornment Practices 4. Aesthetics and Adornment in Prehistory 5. Differences Between Men and Women 6. Body-Painting and Makeup 7. Scarification and Tattoos 8. Piercings, Plugs and Jewelry 9. Clothing 10. Bali: Sungir Writ Large Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisWhen our smartphones distract us, much more is at stake than a momentary lapse of attention. Our use of smartphones can interfere with the building-blocks of meaningfulness and the actions that shape our self-identity. By analyzing social interactions and evolving experiences, Roholt reveals the mechanisms of smartphone-distraction that impact our meaningful projects and activities. Roholt's conception of meaning in life draws from a disparate group of philosophers Susan Wolf, John Dewey, Hubert Dreyfus, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Borgmann. Central to Roholt's argument are what Borgmann calls focal practices: dinners with friends, running, a college seminar, attending sporting events. As a recurring example, Roholt develops the classification of musical instruments as focal things, contending that musical performance can be fruitfully understood as a focal practice. Through this exploration of what generates meaning in life, Roholt makes us rethink the place we allow smartphoneTrade ReviewThis is no neo-Luddite broadside against smartphones but a clear and careful philosophical exploration of what makes life meaningful and how smartphones use can either serve or undermine such meaning. Taking aim at the heart of our present age, Roholt’s book is consistently insightful and provocative. * Iain Thomson, Professor of Philosophy, University of New Mexico, USA *Tiger Roholt's Distracted from Meaning is an invaluable account of how the smartphone revolution impedes our pursuit of a meaningful life. Exploring overlooked ways that smartphones replace genuine experiences with unfocused fragmentation, Roholt details how they routinely and cumulatively undercut their purpose as a device for social engagement. * Theodore Gracyk, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Minnesota State University Moorhead, USA *Tiger Roholt explores how one of the most pervasive devices of the contemporary world—our smartphones—can distract us from the things that matter most. Distracted From Meaning is a useful guide for reorienting ourselves with regard to our devices, and reclaiming what is most meaningful in our lives. * Robert Rosenberger, Associate Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, and President-Elect of the Society for Philosophy and Technology, USA *[T]he author follows a phenomenological and descriptive goal, and for that reason this is a perfect book to better understand the theoretical shapes and forms of smartphones and of our relation with them ...[T]his is a brilliant book of philosophy of smartphones, as in on or about smartphones, ...It is a useful descriptive essay, not an instruction manual. * Teaching Philosophy *Table of Contents1. Introduction 2. Distraction 3. Developed experience 4. Meaning in life 5. Focal things and practices 6. Identity-work 7. A note of cautious optimism Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisWhat designers do and how we all, as users of designed things, live with their products raises fundamental philosophical questions about how we should live, and how the nature of design work and good design relates to our lives. Jeffrey Petts presents a holistic and pragmatist approach to the philosophy of design. Acknowledging the importance of function in design without downplaying the aesthetic dimension, Petts relates the manner of evaluating design to the designing process itself as demonstrated in the work of, for example, William Morris, Walter Gropius and Bauhaus, Charles and Ray Eames, and Dieter Rams. This metacritical and everyday approach to the philosophy of design expresses a commitment to real aesthetics, connecting concrete issues in both practice and experience to philosophical ideas, and reveals the role aesthetics plays in considerations about the good life.Trade ReviewThis informative and probing study serves as both a sure-footed guide to the philosophy of design and an original contribution to its debates not least through the focus given to the role of design—artefact or environment—in everyday life and in human flourishing. Illuminating and pleasantly readable. * Peter Lamarque, Professor of Philosophy, University of York, UK *This book is poised to become a mainstay in the emerging and much needed field of the philosophy of design. As such it will serve both scholars and practitioners alike. * Pradeep A. Dhillon, Emerita Associate Professor, Education Policy, Organization and Leadership, University of Illinois, USA *Petts reviews design activities and products seriously by examining their fundamentals through philosophical thoughts, and sees how some designers have applied ethical and ecological concerns in their exemplary work. His book is superb and inspiring in addressing how apology statements made by contemporary designers can be conceived for our better living. * Eva Kit Wah Man, Chair Professor of Humanities, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong *Through critically analyzing a rich array of examples, Petts argues that design is fundamentally an aesthetic matter informed by people’s experience of living with objects and environments, rather than simply fulfilling basic needs and functionality. The book establishes a new direction of exploration for both aesthetics and design studies. * Yuriko Saito, Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Rhode Island School of Design, USA *Table of ContentsList of Figures Introduction Part I. Design and Philosophy 1. Design from Philosophical Perspectives 2. Aesthetic Functionalism about Design 3. Design and Aesthetics of the Everyday Part II. Design Work 4. The Personal Experience of Designed Things 5. The Beauty of Life: Design and Everyday Living 6. Designing Communities and the Good Life Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisEncounters in the Arts, Literature, and Philosophy focuses on chance and scripted encounters as sites of tensions and alliances where new forms, ideas, meanings, interpretations, and theories can emerge. By moving beyond the realm of traditional hermeneutics, Jérôme Brillaud and Virginie Greene have compiled a volume that vitally illustrates how reading encounters represented in artefacts, texts, and films is a vibrant and dynamic mode of encountering and interpreting.With contributions from esteemed academics such as Christie McDonald, Pierre Saint-Amand, Susan Suleiman, and Jean-Jacques Nattiez, this book is a multidisciplinary collaboration between scholars from a range of disciplines including philosophy, literature, musicology, and film studies. It uses examples chiefly from French culture and covers the Early Modern era to the twentieth century, while providing a thorough and representative array of theoretical and hermeneutical approaches.Trade ReviewAn impressive collection of some of the most talented scholars in French and European Studies. The authors formulate a concept of “encountering” as alternatively a “falling into place” and as a “convergence” – concepts that get to the heart of what good criticism does, namely to “take the risk of meeting anew.” Encounters with God, encounters with eighteenth-century women writers, encounters with music and the visual arts, encounters with others – the range of topics and first-rate scholarship attests to Christie McDonald’s enduring influence and inspiration on literary and cultural studies. * Patrick M. Bray, Associate Professor of French, University College London, UK *Written in honor of Christie McDonald, whose work has analyzed encounters from Rousseau to Proust to Derrida, the fascinating essays in this collection do much more than celebrate a remarkable career; they theorize the concept of the encounter, which lies at the heart of the creative process and at the very foundation of what we do as critics and scholars. * Maurice Samuels, Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French, Yale University, USA *The reader will find in this book not only a marvelous catalogue of encounters in and with a variety of cultural productions and their rich contexts, but also a thick, interactive map of human encounters, anchored by nodal points both intellectual and affective. * Lia Nicole Brozgal, Associate Professor, European Languages and Transcultural Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, USA *Table of ContentsList of Plates Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Encountering the Divine: On the Cognition of God in Early French Christian Humanism, Jacob Vance, New England Conservatory, USA 2. Event and Invention: Reading Montaigne and Rousseau Through Deleuze, Tom Conley, Harvard University, USA 3. Encountering Venture: Dissonance, Deceit, Autobiography, Pierre Saint-Amand, Yale University, USA 4. Colonial Encounters of “La Belle et la Bête”, Kylie Sago, Harvard University, USA 5. Missed Connections: Literary History and Saint-Aubin’s Le Danger des liaisons, Sanam Nader-Esfahani, Amherst College, USA 6. Rejected Encounters with Women Writers: The Case of Les Pensées errantes, Caleb Shelburne, Harvard University, USA 7. Encountering Women Writers and their Texts: Louise de Keralio’s Pioneering Anthology, Vicki Mistacco, Wellesley College, USA 8. Châtelet, Lavoisier, Charrière: Negotiating the Borderlands of the Republic of Letters, Ian Van Wye, Independent Scholar 9. Women’s Fictions and Translations in Support of Enlightenment Values, Monique Moser-Verrey, Université de Montréal, Canada 10. Stowe meets Thomas: What is Literary Property? Gary Wihl, Washington University, USA 11. Form Encounters Sense: the Semiological Dimensions of Wagnerian Anti-Semitism, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Université de Montréal, Canada 12. “Un autre moi-même”: Between the Self and the Other in Proust’s Correspondence, François Proulx, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA 13. Ekphrasing as Encounter: “Try Say” with Georges Didi-Huberman and Hélène Cixous, Ginette Michaud, Université de Montréal, Canada 14. Caring for Encounters, Verena Conley, Harvard University, USA 15. Private Lives, Public History: Encountering the Filmmaker István Szabó, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Harvard University, USA 16. Creation and Re-creation Across Cultures and Disciplines: Tahitian Encounters from Bougainville to Gauguin and Beyond, Christie McDonald, Harvard University, USA

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Book SynopsisPaul Duncum is Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois, USA, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania, Australia. He is the author of Picture Pedagogy (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Popular Pleasures (Bloomsbury, 2021).Trade ReviewAnchored by respect for children and by compelling imagery, Paul Duncum comprehensively and captivatingly interrogates multiple and contradictory discourses that generate both personal and public conceptions of childhood. * Marissa McClure, Professor of Art Education, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA; Associate Editor, Childhood Art: An International Journal of Research *Images convey so much more than we realize. This extraordinary and seminal text will surely expand, enrich, even interrogate, one’s conceptions of what childhood has meant across history, cultural studies and psychology. * Rita L. Irwin, Distinguished University Scholar and Professor, Art Education, The University of British Columbia, Canada *Deconstructing childhood imagery and its ideologies, this book outlines the different ways of understanding infancy throughout history. Gender, abuse, victimization, and commoditization are some of the issues the author reveals through a wide array of historical images. * Cesar Peña, Professor, School of Architecture & Design, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia *Examining the trope of childhood innocence that permeates representations of children throughout Western history, this engaging text highlights the role images play in shaping our conceptions of childhood and our enduring cultural ambivalence toward children. * Christine Marmé Thompson, Professor Emerita, Penn State University School of Visual Arts, USA *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction 1. Worthy Subject 2. Family Member 3. Gendered 4. Adult 5. Schooled 6. Aesthetic 7. Victim 8. Threat 9. Economic Entity 10. Political Propaganda 11. Innocent References Index

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Book SynopsisHow is meaning in our bodies constructed? To what extent is meaning in bodies innate, evolved through biological adaptations? To what extent is meaning in bodies culturally constructed? Does it change when we adorn ourselves in dress? In Adorning Bodies, Marilynn Johnson draws on evolutionary theory and philosophy in order to think about art, beauty, and aesthetics.Considering meaning in bodies and bodily adornment, she explores how the ways we use our bodies are similar to yet at other times different from animals. Johnson engages with the work of evolutionary theorists, philosophers of language, and cultural theorists Charles Darwin, H. P. Grice, and Roland Barthes respectively to examine both natural and non-natural meanings. She addresses how both systems of meaning signify relevant information to other humans, with respect to both bodies and clothes. Johnson also demonstrates that how we dress could negatively influence the way our bodies can be read, and howTrade Review[H]ighly engaging and insightful, it comes as a very welcome entryway into discussions in the present and also leading philosophers into future avenues of research. Johnson presents astute analysis, while demonstrating each move of the argument with examples from history, popular culture, and science. Taking cues from theories of culture, biology, and psychology, this book maintains its core presence as philosophy, while exemplifying the kind of interdisciplinary research that should guide more academics. * Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics *Adorning Bodies is an important reminder of our embodied lives, where our adorned bodies are imbued with meaning, and that ‘everything speaks’. Johnson provides us with a fresh take on these themes, bringing the philosophy of language to life by applying it to our bodily selves in a lucid and engaging way. * Suki Finn, Lecturer, Royal Holloway University of London, UK *Johnson interprets adornment through the combined lenses of the philosophy of language and evolutionary theory. The result is interesting, informative and very enjoyable. The book is full of great insights, and made me re-evaluate my relationship to the clothes I wear. It's an excellent contribution to the literature. * Richard Moore, Senior Research Fellow, University of Warwick, UK *Adorning Bodies invites us to consider how our bodies and clothing convey meaning, for better or for worse. Johnson masterfully appeals to the philosophy of language and evolutionary theory to develop a rich account of the meaning woven into the fabric we wear. From Darwin to Stonewall, the book makes elegant use of historical texts and contemporary examples. It will be invaluable for scholars and interesting to anyone who wants to think more deeply about what it means to get dressed. * Kate Moran, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Brandeis University, USA *Marilynn Johnson's Adorning Bodies rigorously and insightfully brings together three disciplines rarely combined in a unified framework, namely, the philosophy of language, evolutionary theory, and aesthetics. Focusing on bodily adornment, Johnson is able to carefully dissect such issues, among others as the question of whether animals create art, while also arguing that some high fashion is art, properly so called. Written with exemplary clarity, the range of issues is broad with many engaging examples that establish that the philosophy of adornment is a vast understudied area calling for further, continuing inquiry and discussion. * Noël Carroll, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA *Table of Contents1. Meaning in Bodies and Adornment 2. Taking Adornment Seriously: Structuralism and Meaning 3. Details on the Gricean View 4. Deception in the Human and Animal Worlds (Imitation of Natural Meaning & Lying in Non-Natural Meaning) 5. Darwin on Animal Bodies 6. Human Sexual Selection 7. The Evolution of Bodily Adornment: Signaling and Meaning-Making in Prehistory 8. Information, Misperception, Suppression, Expression 9. On Beauty: Aesthetic Choices, Adornment, & Art Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisDenisa Tomková is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Theory of Art and Artworks at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.

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Book SynopsisExplores Persian tribespeople's changing ethics, feelings and lifeways in tough times

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Book SynopsisExamines the role that poets and the poetic word play in the formation of philosophical thinking in the modern German tradition.Several of the most celebrated philosophers in the German tradition since Kant afford to poetry an all-but-unprecedented status in Western thought. Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gadamer argue that the scope, limits, and possibilities of philosophy are intimately intertwined with those of poetry. For them, poetic thinking itself is understood as intrinsic to the kind of thinking that defines philosophical inquiry and the philosophical life, and they developed their views through extensive and sustained considerations of specific poets, as well as specific poetic figures and images. This book offers essays by leading scholars that address each of the major figures of this tradition and the respective poets they engage, including Schiller, Archilochus, Pindar, Hölderlin, Eliot, and Celan, while also discussing the poets'' contemporary relevance to philosophy in the continental tradition.Above all, the book explores an approach to language that rethinks its role as a mere tool for communication or for the dissemination of knowledge. Here language will be understood as an essential event that opens up the world in a primordial sense whereby poetry comes to have a deeply ethical significance for human beings. In this way, the volume positions ethics at the center of continental discourse, even as it engages philosophy itself as a discourse about language attuned to the rigor of what poetry ultimately expresses.

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Book SynopsisSalomé Voegelin is Professor of Sound at the London College of Communication, UAL. An artist and writer, she is also the author of Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound (Bloomsbury, 2014) and The Political Possibility of Sound: Fragments of Listening (Bloomsbury, 2018).Trade ReviewThe examples under discussion range from by-now canonical soundworks...to recent works by a clutch of lesser known artists...Voegelin's critical style is so singular that she avoids cliche in the treatment of all these artists, prising them out of a conversation about music and into a challenging treatise on the art of listening. * The Wire *The book's arguments are complex and developed with rigour, making a perceptive contribution to an emerging debate. In its favour, the work consistently forces the listener off-track to think critically about just what it is that makes listening so powerful and so elusive. * Will Montgomery, The Wire, August 2010 *Reviewed in the London Review of Books 23 September (UK) * London Review of Books *Listening to Noise and Silence will be of interest to a great many people following breakthrough trends within art and philosophy. * Art Monthly *Salome Voegelin has written an excellent book about sound art, escaping cliché and easy categorizations. She establishes a proper aesthetics and philosophy of sound, with a compelling phenomenological account of noise and silence. * Neural *In Voegelin's evocative image, noise holds the listener hostage to his or her own listening... Listening to Noise and Silence contains many moments that sound artists and others will find insightful. * Avant Music News *There cannot be a concluding remark to encompass Listening to Noise and Silence. You might not even completely ‘understand’ it if you refuse to ‘feel’ it and ‘know’ it or if you aim at making ends meet evenly. It will question you, it will confuse you, it will exhilarate you. It will prompt you to reinvent it over and over: in listening, in writing. * Journal of Sonic Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Introduction; Part one Listening; Part two Noise; Part three Silence; Part four Time and Space; Part five Now; Bibliography; List of Works; Notes; Index.

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Book SynopsisJacques Rancière taught at the University of Paris VIII, France, from 1969 to 2000, occupying the Chair of Aesthetics and Politics from 1990 until his retirement.Trade ReviewA compelling study that will leave an enduring mark on film and media studies. * Tom Conley, Harvard University, USA *A remarkable and beautiful book which, with immense elegance, sets aside the difficulties of film theory to recreate a liberating, critical and poetic history of cinema. * Adrian Rifkin, Professor of Visual Culture Media, Middlesex University, UK, and Editor of the Art History journal *An important exploration of the tensions, ruptures and continuities that complicate the twists and folds of the history of cinema. * Geoffrey Whitehall, Theory & Event *What really sets the book apart is Ranciere's gifts as a writer and fine-grain critic... The wide-ranging analyses emerge out of a truly intimate knowledge of the films, expressed with loving attention to the most minute of formal details--a hesitant gesture, a recurring sound, a glimmer of light. Like all the best books by philosophers on cinema, Ranciere encourages us at once to think and to see these images anew. * Paul Fileri in Film Comment *Table of ContentsTranslator's Preface Prologue: A Thwarted Fable Part I: FABLES OF THE VISIBLE Between the age of the theater and the television age 1. Eisenstein's Madness 2. A Silent Tartuffe 3. From One Manhunt to Another: Fritz Lang Between Two Ages 4. The Child Director Part II: CLASSICAL NARRATIVE, ROMANTIC NARRATIVE 5. Some Things To Do: The Poetics of Anthony Mann 6. The Missing Shot: The Poetics of Nicholas Ray Part III: IF THERE IS A CINEMATOGRAPHIC MODERNITY 7. From One Image to Another? Deleuze and the Ages of Cinema 8. Falling Bodies: Rossellini's Physics 9. The Red of La Chinoise: Godard's Politics Part IV: FABLES OF THE CINEMA, (HI)STORIES OF A CENTURY 10. Documentary Fiction: Marker and the Fiction of Memory 11. A Fable Without a Moral: Godard, Cinema, (Hi)stories Index

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Book SynopsisImmanence is a theory of divine presence, in which the divine is found in the material world, not outside of it. This collection brings the major 20th century French philosopher Henri Bergson's work on immanence together with fresh ideas in art theory and the practice of immanent art as found in painting, photography and film.

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Book SynopsisHow does cinema function as a means of ethical resistance and thought? Focusing on Alain Resnais and Chris Marker's cinemas, this book uses the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze to ask how cinema can enable us to see and act in an ethical way. It analyses the cinematic medium itself through concepts of affect, sensation and actual virtual violence.

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