Philosophy: aesthetics Books

Book SynopsisSubjects and Simulations presents essays focused on suffering and sublimity, representation and subjectivity, and the relation of truth and appearance through engagement with the legacies of Jean Baudrillard and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe.Trade ReviewIn this important new book, the late Hugh J. Silverman and Anne O'Byrne have brought together insightful and engaging essays on two figures now often neglected: Lacoue Labarthe and Baudrillard. The excellent set of writers in this volume make important claims against this neglect while engaging important topics in recent Continental philosophy. A highly recommended read. -- Peter Gratton, Memorial University of NewfoundlandIn this remarkable, interdisciplinary collection, a group of prominent scholars rethink the converging and diverging legacies of Baudrillard and Lacoue-Labarthe in the aftermath of their deaths in 2007. By pushing the boundaries of philosophy, psychoanalysis, aesthetics, politics and media theory, the essays probe the recalcitrance of the real and the remainders of subjectivity in the age of the ever-growing intensity and the new forms of the seduction of simulacra. With elegant and comprehensive introductions written by the editors, Anne O’Byrne and Hugh J. Silverman, Subjects and Simulations is an indispensable reading for anyone interested in the rapidly changing status of 'reality,' 'fiction,' and subjectivity, as well as in the political and ethical challenges brought about by these changes. -- Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, SUNY BuffaloTable of ContentsBetween Subjects and Simulations—at the Limits of Representation, Hugh J. Silverman and Anne O’Byrne Part One: Re-presenting Subjectivity Introduction Chapter 1. Simulate This!:The Seductive Return of the Real in Baudrillard, Drew Hyland Chapter 2. The Fiction of the Unconscious: The Use and Abuse of Representation in Freud, Alina Clej Chapter 3. The Postmodern Subject: Truth and Fiction in Lacoue-Labarthe’s Nietzsche, Hugh J. Silverman Chapter 4. The Subject of the Good: Exhaltation without Representation in Lacoue-Labarthe and Wittig, Stephen David Ross Part Two: The Art of Representation Introduction Chapter 5. Fiction, Allegory, Irony: The Unveiling of Lacoue-Labarthe, Massimo Verdicchio Chapter 6. The Power of the Text: Lacoue-Labarthe, Rorty, and the Literariness of Philosophy, Gary E. Aylesworth Chapter 7. Edging the Sublime: Baudrillard and the Inaccessible Real, Basil O’Neill 119 Chapter 8. In the Wake of Critique: Notes from the Inside Cover of Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, Thomas P. Brockelman Part Three: Unrepresentable Communities Introduction149 Chapter 9. Utopia is Here: Revolutionary Communities in Baudrillard and Nancy, Anne O’Byrne Chapter 10. Eden Foreclosed: The Subjectivity of Social Identification, Bettina Bergo Chapter 11. The (Ir)resistible Suffering of Others: Tragedy, Death and the Spectator, Robin May Schott Chapter 12. The Subjects of Philosophy: "The We" and Us, James R. Watson Part Four: Political Mediations Introduction Chapter 13. 9/11 and the Representation of the Unrepresentable: Chora, Aleph and Mediation, Damian Ward Hey Chapter 14. Amerika (Kafka)/ America (Baudrillard): Modern Media and Tele-tactility, Katherine Rudolph Chapter 15. Dressing like Hitler: Reality, Simulation and Hyperreality, Martin Weiss Chapter 16. Moved by Appearances: Metaphor, Metamorphosis and Irony in the Later Works of Jean Baudrillard, Henk Oosterling

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Book SynopsisConstructing Community examines community from the particular perspective of the shaping and control of urban space in contemporary liberal democracies. Following a consideration and critique of influential theories of community that have arisen within European philosophy over the last three decades, Brian Elliott investigates parallel approaches to community within urban theory and practice over the same period. Underlying the comparison of political theory and urban practice is a basic assumption that community and place are intimately connected such that the one cannot be adequately understood without the other. The underlying intention of this book is to advocate a particular understanding of community, one that centers on collective, grassroots oppositional action. While it draws on certain current theories and practices, the model of community put forward is far from the orthodox position. This study is a provocative and original analysis of the question of urban politics in contTrade ReviewConstructing Community presents a compelling argument about the nature and prospects of urban communities. First, Brian Elliott provides a general account of the self-organization of dissenting, or resisting, localized communities. His approach combines key aspects of "dialogical" (Habermas) and "singular" (Agamben/Nancy) conceptions of social formation. Applying this model to cities like Portland, Oregon, he explains why "New Urbanists" and "postmodern urbanists" run into problems analogous to those faced by theorists of community. He defends a version of dialectical utopianism that is sensitive to both the communicative power of discourse and the exigencies of bare life. Much as Benjamin taught us to think of Paris as the capital of the nineteenth century, Elliott invites us to imagine a dialectically utopian Portland as the capital of the twenty-first. -- Andrew Cutrofello, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University, ChicagoFollowing an exposure of weaknesses that he detects in a variety of post-Habermasian conceptions of the just community, Brian Elliott supports his alternative conception with detailed descriptions of grassroots urban movements demonstrating that traditional liberal rights productive of identity and consensus demand supplementation by a right to a space that is productive of dissent and direct action. His case is presented with cool passion, breadth of vision, and dazzling forensic skill. -- John Llewelyn, University of EdinburghTable of ContentsPart 1 Introduction Part 2 I. Part One. Theories of Community Chapter 3 1. Habermas and Dialogical Community Chapter 4 2. Singular Community Chapter 5 3. Dissenting Community Part 6 II. Urbanism and Community Chapter 7 4. New Urbanism Chapter 8 5. Postmodern Urbanism Chapter 9 6. Dialectical Utopianism Part 10 Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAesthetics and Modernity brings together Agnes Heller''s most recent essays around the topics of aesthetic genres such as painting, music, literature and comedy, aesthetic reception, and embodiment. The essays draw on Heller''s deep appreciation of aesthetics in all its forms from the classical to the Renaissance and the contemporary periods. Heller''s recent work on aesthetics explores the complex and fraught status of artworks within the context of the history of modernity. For Heller, not only does the relation between aesthetics and modernity have to be looked at anew, but also the way in which these terms are conceptualized, and this is the two-fold task that she sets for herself in these essays. She engages this task with a critical recognition of modernity''s pitfalls. This collection highlights these pitfalls in the context of continuing possibilities for aesthetics and our relationship with works of art, and throws light on Heller''s theory of emotions and feelings, and her thTrade ReviewAgnes Heller is peerless as a philosopher of the modern condition. Long acclaimed for her acuity and extraordinary compass, here Heller presents a vivid cross-section of her thinking, convening analyses of emotions and needs, forms of rationality and social association, and questions about the crux of value and human communion around a sustained consideration of artworks and of the beleaguered concept of the beautiful. As John Rundell expounds in his instructive introduction to the collection, Heller approaches postmodern critique as a way of sharpening the best insights of modern thought, while concurrently refusing its metaphysical biases. She resuscitates the notion of a vibrant subjectivity, takes up the ipseity of artworks, and enters into dialogue with an array of thinkers, demonstrating how the urge for sure guarantors of value may be tackled with an understanding of contingency and historical truth. And Heller writes with utter disregard for jargon or cant, confessing her concerns directly and never allowing the reader to forget that this is a discussion of our shared modernity, and of the open possibility of coming to be at home within it. -- Katie Terezakis, Rochester Institute of TechnologyAgnes Heller is one of the sublime philosophical voices of our time. Aesthetics and Modernity is a beguiling and profound collection of essays from 1995 to 2008 reflecting Heller’s late turn to an intensive reflection on the nature of art and the arts. Here she engages with Shakespeare, the Greek gods, jokes, the dignity of artworks and much more besides, casting an astonishing eye over the fate of freedom, beauty and the imagination across the vast terrain that separates Homer from the modern historical novel. The work ripples with intelligence and insight. This exquisite selection draws together threads from one of the most compelling and rewarding inquiries into the aesthetic condition of humankind ever undertaken by a philosopher. -- Peter Murphy, Monash UniversityTable of ContentsChapter 1 Chapter One. Agnes Heller: Modernity, Aesthetics and the Human Condition—An Interpretative Essay Chapter 2 Chapter Two. What Went Wrong with the Concept of the Beautiful? Chapter 3 Chapter Three. Autonomy of Art or the Dignity of the Artwork Chapter 4 Chapter Four. The Role of Emotions in the Reception of Artworks Chapter 5 Chapter Five. Joke culture and transformations of the public sphere. Chapter 6 Chapter Six. The Contemporary Historical Novel Chapter 7 Chapter Seven. The Metaphysics of Embodiment in the Western Tradition Chapter 8 Chapter Eight. European master-narratives about freedom. Chapter 9 Chapter Nine. The Three Logics of Modernity and the Double Bind of the Modern Imagination Chapter 10 Chapter Ten. The Absolute Stranger: Shakespeare and the Drama of Failed Assimilation Chapter 11 Chapter Eleven. The Gods of Greece: Germans and Greeks Chapter 12 Chapter Twelve. Self representation and the representation of the other. Chapter 13 Chapter Thirteen. Where are we at Home?

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Book SynopsisAesthetics and Modernity brings together Agnes Heller''s most recent essays around the topics of aesthetic genres such as painting, music, literature and comedy, aesthetic reception, and embodiment. The essays draw on Heller''s deep appreciation of aesthetics in all its forms from the classical to the Renaissance and the contemporary periods. Heller''s recent work on aesthetics explores the complex and fraught status of artworks within the context of the history of modernity. For Heller, not only does the relation between aesthetics and modernity have to be looked at anew, but also the way in which these terms are conceptualized, and this is the two-fold task that she sets for herself in these essays. She engages this task with a critical recognition of modernity''s pitfalls. This collection highlights these pitfalls in the context of continuing possibilities for aesthetics and our relationship with works of art, and throws light on Heller''s theory of emotions and feelings, and her thTrade ReviewAgnes Heller is peerless as a philosopher of the modern condition. Long acclaimed for her acuity and extraordinary compass, here Heller presents a vivid cross-section of her thinking, convening analyses of emotions and needs, forms of rationality and social association, and questions about the crux of value and human communion around a sustained consideration of artworks and of the beleaguered concept of the beautiful. As John Rundell expounds in his instructive introduction to the collection, Heller approaches postmodern critique as a way of sharpening the best insights of modern thought, while concurrently refusing its metaphysical biases. She resuscitates the notion of a vibrant subjectivity and enters into dialogue with an array of thinkers, demonstrating how the urge for sure guarantors of value may be tackled with an understanding of contingency and historical truth. And Heller writes with utter disregard for jargon or cant, confessing her concerns directly and never allowing the reader to forget that this is a discussion of our shared modernity, and of the open possibility of coming to be at home within it. -- Katie Terezakis, Rochester Institute of TechnologyAgnes Heller is one of the sublime philosophical voices of our time. Aesthetics and Modernity is a beguiling and profound collection of essays from 1995 to 2008 reflecting Heller’s late turn to an intensive reflection on the nature of art and the arts. Here she engages with Shakespeare, the Greek gods, jokes, the dignity of artworks and much more besides, casting an astonishing eye over the fate of freedom, beauty and the imagination across the vast terrain that separates Homer from the modern historical novel. The work ripples with intelligence and insight. This exquisite selection draws together threads from one of the most compelling and rewarding inquiries into the aesthetic condition of humankind ever undertaken by a philosopher. -- Peter Murphy, Monash UniversityTable of ContentsChapter 1 Chapter One. Agnes Heller: Modernity, Aesthetics and the Human Condition—An Interpretative Essay Chapter 2 Chapter Two. What Went Wrong with the Concept of the Beautiful? Chapter 3 Chapter Three. Autonomy of Art or the Dignity of the Artwork Chapter 4 Chapter Four. The Role of Emotions in the Reception of Artworks Chapter 5 Chapter Five. Joke culture and transformations of the public sphere. Chapter 6 Chapter Six. The Contemporary Historical Novel Chapter 7 Chapter Seven. The Metaphysics of Embodiment in the Western Tradition Chapter 8 Chapter Eight. European master-narratives about freedom. Chapter 9 Chapter Nine. The Three Logics of Modernity and the Double Bind of the Modern Imagination Chapter 10 Chapter Ten. The Absolute Stranger: Shakespeare and the Drama of Failed Assimilation Chapter 11 Chapter Eleven. The Gods of Greece: Germans and Greeks Chapter 12 Chapter Twelve. Self representation and the representation of the other. Chapter 13 Chapter Thirteen. Where are we at Home?

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Book SynopsisIn this book, fourteen international authors across various fields analyze the concept of chiasm and its role in human perception and experience, discussing the work of major philosophers like Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Derrida, and Deleuze, and adapting their ideas to cultural analysis.Table of ContentsGeneral Introduction: Rereading Chiasms Kuisma Korhonen PART ONE: Chiasmatic Art: Between Visibility and Ideality Introduction 1: Merleau-Ponty, The Girl with a Pearl Earring, and I Alan Paskow 2: The Chiasmatic Metropolis: Merleau-Ponty’s “Invisible” as a Source of Inspiration for Artistic Creativity Barbara Weber 3: Time as Chiasm: Listening for Ideality through Sibelius Jessica Wiskus 4: Chiasms in Art Roberto Terrosi PART TWO: Becoming Deleuze Introduction 5: Sartre, Deleuze and the Ontology of Make-Up Christine Battersby 6: Black Screen, White Noise: Beyond the Face in David Lynch’s Lost Highway Janne Vanhanen PART THREE: Ethical Encounters Introduction 7: Could the Caress Be the Necessary Third Term in the Chiasmatic Encounter? Chung-yi Chu 8: Chiasmatic Ethical Encounters Nicole Anderson 9: On the Ethical Significance of Encountering the Otherness of Literary Worlds Hanna Meretoja 10: How to Read a Work of Art: Disclosing the World Between Phenomenology and Deconstruction Tomi Kaarto PART FOUR: Does Politics Need Ethics? Does Ethics Need Politics? Introduction 11: Does Politics Need Ethics? Some Existential Meditations Sonia Kruks 12: Why Ethics Needs Politics: A Cosmopolitan Perspective Herta Nagl-Docekal 13: Chiasmatic Reasoning: Strategies of Self-Immunization in Jürgen Habermas Peter Bornedal Notes Bibliography Index of Names Index of Topics Contributors Editors Series Editor

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewTanner's book is a creative exploration of Plato's use of the imagination and its many layers in the dialogues. She offers substantive contributions to the 'quarrel' between philosophy and poetry and to contemporary hermeneutics of Plato. -- Marina McCoy, Boston CollegeIn this lucidly written and engaging book, Sonja Tanner provides an innovative interpretation of the concept of imagination in Plato’s dialogues. Tanner not only rethinks the role imagination plays in Plato’s portrayal of the uneasy yet productive tension between poetry and philosophy, but also extends her analysis to modern debates about the relationship between literature and philosophy. -- Dmitri Nikulin, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social ResearchScholars commonly depict Plato as the archenemy of poetry. This view stems in large part from Socrates' harsh treatment of poets in Republic II, III, and X; however, it also rests on the questionable assumption that Socrates spoke for Plato. Such an assumption, Tanner (Univ. of Colorado at Colorado Springs) insists, flatly ignores the role of literary form in Plato's work. When one takes into consideration that Plato wrote dialogues, not treatises; that the dialogues have poetic features; and that they often violate Plato's alleged prohibitions against quoting and imitating poets, Plato's attitude toward poetry emerges in a different light. Far from being opposed, philosophy and poetry are very much intertwined for Plato; the form of the dialogues contributes to their content. Vital to understanding this relationship is the imagination, though not only in what Plato says of it explicitly but also in how it functions within the dialogues themselves. In the end, though not everyone will agree with Tanner's self-professed 'continental' approach to Platonic studies or find her arguments compelling, her monograph will certainly generate much thought and scholarly discussion. Recommended. * CHOICE, November 2010 *By the time Plato takes up the question of how we are to speak truthfully, the quarrel between the two imposing forms of such speech—philosophy and poetry—was already 'ancient.' And it remains a question that is unsettled and unsettling today. Rather than insisting upon a quarrelsome relation, Sonja Tanner argues that this matter is best understood as an infinite dialog that enriches those who engage it, and she shows how imagination assists in the birth of wisdom. Thus begins her real contribution to a conversation that must never end. -- Dennis J. Schmidt, Pennsylvania State UniversityTable of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction Chapter 1. A History of the Ancient "Quarrel"—The Philosophical "Side" Chapter 2. On the "Side" of Poetry in the Ancient "Quarrel" Chapter 3: Imagination in the Sophist Chapter 4. The Pharmacological Structure of the Imagination Chapter 5. The Unity of Form and Content in Platonic Dialogues Chapter 6. Imagination and the Ancient "Quarrel"

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewTanner's book is a creative exploration of Plato's use of the imagination and its many layers in the dialogues. She offers substantive contributions to the 'quarrel' between philosophy and poetry and to contemporary hermeneutics of Plato. -- Marina McCoy, Boston CollegeIn this lucidly written and engaging book, Sonja Tanner provides an innovative interpretation of the concept of imagination in Plato's dialogues. Tanner not only rethinks the role imagination plays in Plato's portrayal of the uneasy yet productive tension between poetry and philosophy, but also extends her analysis to modern debates about the relationship between literature and philosophy. -- Dmitri Nikulin, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social ResearchScholars commonly depict Plato as the archenemy of poetry. This view stems in large part from Socrates' harsh treatment of poets in Republic II, III, and X; however, it also rests on the questionable assumption that Socrates spoke for Plato. Such an assumption, Tanner (Univ. of Colorado at Colorado Springs) insists, flatly ignores the role of literary form in Plato's work. When one takes into consideration that Plato wrote dialogues, not treatises; that the dialogues have poetic features; and that they often violate Plato's alleged prohibitions against quoting and imitating poets, Plato's attitude toward poetry emerges in a different light. Far from being opposed, philosophy and poetry are very much intertwined for Plato; the form of the dialogues contributes to their content. Vital to understanding this relationship is the imagination, though not only in what Plato says of it explicitly but also in how it functions within the dialogues themselves. In the end, though not everyone will agree with Tanner's self-professed 'continental' approach to Platonic studies or find her arguments compelling, her monograph will certainly generate much thought and scholarly discussion. Recommended. * CHOICE, November 2010 *By the time Plato takes up the question of how we are to speak truthfully, the quarrel between the two imposing forms of such speech—philosophy and poetry—was already 'ancient.' And it remains a question that is unsettled and unsettling today. Rather than insisting upon a quarrelsome relation, Sonja Tanner argues that this matter is best understood as an infinite dialog that enriches those who engage it, and she shows how imagination assists in the birth of wisdom. Thus begins her real contribution to a conversation that must never end. -- Dennis J. Schmidt, Pennsylvania State UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. A History of the Ancient Quarrel?The Philosophical Side Chapter 2. On the Side of Poetry in the Ancient Quarrel Chapter 3: Imagination in the Sophist Chapter 4. The Pharmacological Structure of the Imagination Chapter 5. The Unity of Form and Content in Platonic Dialogues Chapter 6. Imagination and the Ancient Quarrel

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Book SynopsisLudwig Wittgenstein loved movies, and based on his remarks on watching them, there is a strong connection between his experience of watching films and his thoughts on aesthetics. Furthermore, however, Wittgenstein himself has been invoked in recent cinema. Wittgenstein at the Movies is centered on in-depth explorations of two intriguing experimental films on Wittgenstein: Derek Jarman''s Wittgenstein and Péter Forgács'' Wittgenstein Tractatus. The featured essays look at cinematic interpretations of Wittgenstein''s life and philosophy in a manner bound to provoke the lively interest of Wittgenstein scholars, film theorists, and students of film aesthetics. As well, the book engages a broader audience concerned with philosophical issues about film and Wittgenstein''s cultural significance, with the world of fin-de-siècle Vienna, of Cambridge in the first half of the twentieth century, of artistic modernism.Trade ReviewWittgenstein emphasized the role of showing beyond what can be said, and lamented his inability to present philosophy poetically. Movies are a medium for both of these techniques. Finally we have a collection of reflections on Wittgenstein in and at the movies that take these techniques seriously in concrete ways. The contributors are first-rate, and the topics are just what you would hope for. -- James C. Klagge, Virginia TechIt is well know that Wittgenstein was a fan of Hollywood B-movies, using them to clear his mind. It is not so well known that in different places in his writings he expressed a more sophisticated film aesthetic: nor is it so well known that he has been the subject of two movies, directed one by Derek Jarman and the other by Péter Forgács. This volume of original essays edited by Szabados and Stojanova aims to bring these materials to a wider audience—and admirably succeeds. As Szabados has shown in other scholarly writings, Wittgentsein's philosophizing was intensely personal: the ideas, the man, and the life are inextricably linked. These essays show us all three and as well the links. The essays substantially advance our understanding of one of the most elusive figures in twentieth-century philosophy. -- Roger A. Shiner, University of British Columbia OkanaganA sparkling and provocative collection that explores the many connections between Wittgenstein and film. Distinguished philosophers and film theorists provide unexpected and insightful perspectives on Wittgenstein's love of movies, their role in his life and work, and films about him. -- David G. Stern, University of IowaThis book is a collection of essays from both philosophers and film studies scholars, each centered on some aspect of the intersection between Wittgenstein and film. As such, its appeal is potentially wider than that of typical philosophy books....What is unique and valuable is the integration of films into the discussions. * Philosophy in Review *Table of ContentsChapter 1 Wittgenstein at the Movies: An Introduction Chapter 2 Chapter 1. Showing, Not Saying: Filming a Philosophical Genius Chapter 3 Chapter 2. Remarks on the Scripts for Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein Chapter 4 Chapter 3. The World Hued: Jarman and Wittgenstein on Colour Chapter 5 Chapter 4. Sketches of Landscapes: Wittgenstein after Wittgenstein Chapter 6 Chapter 5. "How It Was Then": Home Movies as History in Péter Forgács's Meanwhile Somewhere… Chapter 7 Chapter 6. Meaning Through Pictures: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Péter Forgács Chapter 8 Chapter 7. Beyond Text and Image: Péter Forgács and his Wittgenstein Tractatus

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Book SynopsisThe notion of utopia has largely gone missing from the world. Not coincidentally, though strangely, the notion of utopia has also gone missing in prevailing discourses on the work of Adorno. In Adorno, Radical Negativity, and Cultural Critique: Utopia in the Map of the World, Kathleen League remedies this absence. Advancing explications and arguments as sharpened instruments, League demonstrates that Adorno spiritedly defended the concept of utopia, and he did so in ways that are increasingly relevant. With all the spark and passion of his often punchy, aphorisitic style, with all the fierceness of his critique of an increasingly administered, commodity culture, Adorno embraced and carried forth the spirit of utopia. League shows how his searing insights and analyses are ever more relevant and convey the necessity of the concept of utopia, not only for his time, but for ours. The book''s thesis is pursued through encounters with a diverse set of thinkers and artists such as Jacques DTrade ReviewKathleen League has given us a timely, well argued book on T. W. Adorno's concept of utopia and its implications for the philosophy of art. Adorno, Radical Negativity, and Cultural Critique offers rewards to readers at several levels, ranging from those who have had only the briefest introduction to Adorno's thought to those engaged by the recent controversies of his critics. This richly informed book, drawing on materials from Oscar Wilde to the Sex Pistols and Avatar, both explicates Adorno's argument and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary culture. League builds a persuasive case that Adorno's cultural criticism is even more important now than it was at the time of his death in 1969. -- Gary Shapiro, Tucker-Boatwright Professor in the Humanities-Philosophy, University of RichmondThis text is a welcome blend of a close reading of Adorno and an appeal to the continuing need for the utopian in contemporary society. League puts Adorno in conversation with his critics and successors in order to provide an important argument about the decline of the possibility of utopia in the modern world as well as the dangers that rejection of utopia brings about for our society. This is an important contribution to Adorno scholarship and an equally important contribution to contemporary social theory. -- Richard A. Lee Jr., DePaul University, Professor of Philosophy, DePaul UniversityTable of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction. Adorno, Utopia, Negativity, and Now Chapter 2 Chapter One. Adorno No Sell Out: A Critical Response to Richard Wolin Chapter 3 Chapter Two. Adorno without Negativity: A Preliminary Encounter with Jacques Derrida Chapter 4 Chapter Three. Adorno and the Sex Pistols Chapter 5 Chapter Four. Radical Formalism and the Working Class: A Critical Articulation of Adorno and Bourdieu Chapter 6 Afterword. Unlikely Compatriots of Utopia: Wilde and Adorno

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Book SynopsisThe question of the relativity of interpretations and the relevance of the author''s intentions for interpretation has been at the center of controversy for the past century in different philosophical traditions, but there has been very little effort to examine the different ways this question has been addressed in contemporary philosophy within the space of a single book. Relativism and Intentionalism in Interpretation. Davidson, Hermeneutics, and Pragmatism brings diverse philosophical viewpoints to bear on these issues, addressing them through analytic philosophy, hermeneutics, and pragmatism. Kalle Puolakka develops a view of interpretation drawing on Donald Davidson''s late philosophy of language and mind defending the role of authorial intentions against criticisms intentionalist views have received particularly in hermeneutics and pragmatism. In addition to relativism and intentionalism, the book discusses such issues as the role of imagination and aesthetic experience in interpTrade ReviewA wide-ranging, carefully conducted study that should interest a wide range of philosophers of art, language, and culture, especially those concerned with the bridge-building efforts of Margolis, Rorty, Gadamer and others. The author's guiding aim is to show how Davidson’s later ideas on interpretation can serve as a basis for a form of objectivism about interpretation in both conversational and literary contexts, and as a bulwark against strong forms of relativism and historicism, while yet allowing for reasonable pluralism as regards both conversational and literary meanings. -- Jerrold Levinson, University of Maryland, College ParkTable of ContentsChapter 1 Preface Part 2 I. Does Joseph Margolis' Defense of Relativism Fall into an Impasse?. Part 3 II. From Humpty Dumpty to James Joyce: Donald Davidson's Late Philosophy and the Question of Intention Part 4 III. A New Look at Hermeneutic Criticisms of Intentionalism Part 5 IV. Richard Rorty's Pragmatist Challenge to Intentionalism Part 6 V. Conclusions: How to be a Pluralist without Being a Relativist?

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Book SynopsisAn Ethics of Improvisation takes up the puzzles and lessons of improvised music in order to theorize the building blocks of a politically just society. The investigation of what politics can learn from the people who perform and listen to musical improvisation begins with an examination of current social discourses about the political and an account of what social justice could look like. From there, the book considers what a politically just society's obligations are to people who do not want to be part of the political community, establishing respect for difference as a fundamental principle of social interaction. What this respect for difference entails when applied to questions of the aesthetic value of music is aesthetic pluralism, the book argues. Improvised jazz, in particular, embodies different values than those of the Western classical tradition, and must be judged on its own terms if it is to be respected. Having established the need for aesthetic pluralism in order to respect the diversity of musical traditions, the argument turns back to political theory, and considers what distinct resources improvisation theorythe theorizing of the social context in which musical improvisation takes placehas to offer established political philosophy discourses of deliberative democracy and the politics of recognitionalready themselves grounded in a respect for difference. This strand of the argument takes up the challenge, familiar to peace studies, of creative ways to rebuild fractured civil societies. Throughout all of these intertwined discussions, various behaviors, practices, and value-commitments are identified as constituent parts of the ethics of improvisation that is articulated in the final chapter as the strategy through which individuals can collaboratively build responsive democratic communities.Trade ReviewIn my judgment, An Ethics of Improvisation is a masterful work . . . It succeeds in establishing important new bridges between music and politics. A really impressive volume. -- Paget Henry, Brown UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Our Political Present Chapter One: Possibilities for a Political Future Chapter Two: Respecting Resistance Chapter Three: Aesthetic Perspectives Chapter Four: Aesthetic Pitfalls Chapter Five: Political Perspectives Chapter Six: Political Pitfalls Chapter Seven: Improvising Communities

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Book SynopsisPhilosophers often use the term naturalism' in order to describe their work. It is commonplace to see a metaphysical, epistemological and/or ethical position self-described and described by others as one that is naturalized. But what, if anything, does the term naturalized add--or subtract---to the position being articulated? I demonstrate in The Problem of Naturalism: Analytic and Continental Perspectives, that the term naturalism connotes such a broad meaning that it is difficult to demarcate naturalism from philosophy itself. Still, many philosophers have tried to provide non-trivial and non-vacuous definitions of the term. My book, by and large, argues that such attempts are unsuccessful. Instead, I argue that naturalism is an attitude and neither a methodology nor a substantive position. I then articulate the guidelines the naturalist needs to follow, as well as the virtues he or she needs to practice, in order for the term naturalism to do any meaningful work. Much of the book explains and then critiques the various attempts to define naturalism in the Anglo-American secondary literature. Some of the criticisms I raise seem to emanate from the internal logic of the naturalistic position being expressed. However, others have emerged from gleaning the work of such Continental thinkers as: Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger and Foucault. I use these thinkers in order to expose the unjustified implicit and sometimes explicit assumptions that many naturalistic philosophers presume to hold when they attempt to render a clear, distinct and robust naturalist position.Trade ReviewBlending analytic and continental traditions, Brian Lightbody offers a wonderfully clear and comprehensive exploration of the struggle to be thoroughly naturalistic. While extolling the attitudes of naturalistic philosophers who dare to unearth metaphysical assumptions in others, Lightbody warns us of the more difficult task: to ferret out our own ideological baggage, to be mindful, especially, of the circularity inherent in the knower and the known. -- Malcolm Murray, University of Prince Edward IslandTable of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: What is Naturalism? Chapter Two: Methodological Naturalism Chapter Three: Substance Naturalism Chapter Four: Varieties of Naturalism: Ontological Naturalism Chapter Five: Varieties of Naturalism: Epistemological Naturalism Chapter Six: Varieties of Naturalism: Ethical Naturalism Conclusion Endnotes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewSimpson argues persuasively that the concept of “life as art” offers a “coherent ethical position” responsive to the ethical challenges of the contemporary situation. By presenting an original reading of the history of modern thought and developing a theoretical understanding of its conceptual framework, Simpson demonstrates how life as art strives to affirm the beauty, meaning, and value of life after the “death of God.” And he shows that by “intensifying the relationship between thinking and aesthetics” life as art can function as a form of resistance to the forces of domination and normalization that threaten freedom and solidarity in contemporary societies. This book makes an original contribution to our understanding of the history of modern and post-modern philosophy and it is a valuable addition to the growing field of works that seek to locate the point of intersection between philosophical thinking and life as it is, or could be, lived. -- Edward F. McGushin, Stonehill CollegeTable of ContentsPart I: Introducing Life as Art Chapter 1: The Path Ahead Chapter 2: Dandyism and Life is Art Chapter 3: Nietzsche’s Ideal Types Part II: Resistant Chapter 4: Theodor Adorno on Negative Thinking and Utopia Chapter 5: Herbert Marcuse and the Artful Individual Part III: Affirmation Chapter 6: Martin Heidegger and Poetic Thinking Chapter 7: Merleau-Ponty and Marion on the Thought of Being Part IV: Creation Chapter 8: Albert Camus on the Life Artist Chapter 9: Foucault’s Aesthetics of Existence Chapter 10: Conclusion: Life as Art

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Book SynopsisThe main purpose of this book is to explicate the problematic relationship between the heterogeneity of what is experienced as beautiful and the homogeneity of the conceptualization of that experience, or attempt at such a conceptualization in the era of modern philosophy. While the heterogeneity of what is experienced as beautiful was permitted, and indeed celebrated, in the dominant ancient conceptionfor example, in the Symposium and Phaedrus of Platothe need for homogenization in the later appropriation of Plato and in the Enlightenment period relegated the beautiful to the privileged domain of artworks. In her analysis Agnes Heller provides a unique and significant emphasis on the original ''life content'' of the experience of the beautiful, which becomes lost in the modern system of the arts. This book details the history of the concept of the beautiful, starting with what Agnes Heller distinguishes between the ''warm'' metaphysics of beauty and the ''cold'' oneinspired by Plato''Trade ReviewHeller’s text is an impressive interpretation of a very particular slice of aesthetic theory. . . . The text is especially oriented towards specialists in philosophical aesthetics or critical theory, and thus would be a welcome addition to any academic library. Those working in theological aesthetics may. . . find great value in its presentation, particularly in the introductory essay by Morgan. * Catholic Books Review *Agnes Heller's voice resounds in this pedagogic journey through the history of philosophical conceptions of the beautiful. Her choice of philosophical theories follows a continental strain, from Plato through Hume, Burke, Kant, and Hegel, to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin and Adorno. Her interpretations are original, offering us new insight to her philosophy as a whole and into a world that many claim has no beauty left within it. She engages the pessimistic conclusion deeply but ultimately surpasses it, persuasively and without sentimentality. -- Lydia Goehr, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Columbia UniversityBeautifully narrated, abundant in aphoristic formulations and original thoughts, this book is an engaging biography of the concept of the beautiful from its birth in Plato to its flourishing in Kant and Hegel and to its fragmentation in Benjamin and Adorno. As Heller compellingly argues, the experience of the beautiful can, and perhaps should, lead to a transformation and fulfillment of the human being in her quest for a good life. -- Dmitri Nikulin, Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social ResearchTable of ContentsPreface Editor’s Essay The Concept of the Beautiful, by Agnes Heller Introduction: What Went Wrong with the Concept of the Beautiful? Chapter 1: The Platonic Concept of the Beautiful Chapter 2: Enlightenment, or the This-Worldly Concept of the Beautiful Chapter 3: Kant's Concept of the Beautiful Chapter 4: Departure and Arrival: Hegel's Adventure Chapter 5: The Fragmentation of the Concept of the Beautiful

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Book SynopsisAesthetics in Present Future: The Arts and the Technological Horizon is a collection of essays by scholars and a few artists who focus on the issue of how arts either change when conveyed by new media (such as the web, 3D printers, and videos) or are simply diffused by them. The contributors' analyses describe how both virtual production and virtual communication change our attitudes toward what we call the arts. The scope of the topics ranges from photography to cinema and painting, from theater to avant-garde art and Net art, and from construction of robots to simulation of brain functions. The result is an astonishing range of new possibilities and risks for the arts, and new perspectives regarding our knowledge of the world.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part I: Aesthetics of Future Chapter 1: The Virtual Body Chapter 2: Robots That Have Art Chapter 3: Unimodernism, Or the Aesthetics of Permanent Present Chapter 4: The Kantian philosophy of Twitter Chapter 5: Identifying and Intercting: Notes on the Architecture of the Visual Brain Interlude Mneem Part II: Future of Aesthetics Chapter 6: Aesthetics and Kinesthetics in Performance Chapter 7: Artifice, or a New Nature: Toward a Philosophy of the Automation Chapter 8: Aesthetics and Transcoding. De-Accelerating the Photographic Image Chapter 9: Ruins. Reflections on Aggression and Destruction in Aesthetics Chapter 10: About the “Anything Goes” in Art Chapter 11: The Changing Canvas of the City Bibliography Index About the Authors

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Book SynopsisThis book is a comparative study of the production and role of maps, charts, and atlases in early modern England and France with a particular focus on Paris and London.Trade ReviewPetto describes an important period in the development of mapmaking, including an increased emphasis on scientific methods of surveying as well as national consolidation and colonial expansion. The Dutch were the preeminent mapmakers of the 16th and 17th centuries, but then the French and English took the stage, producing sea charts and land maps. The French monarchy supported mapmakers financially, considering maps a tool of national and royal glory. The English government was less forthcoming, and English maps were a commercial enterprise paid for by subscription or by printing houses. French maps were so superior that English maps were sometimes simply copies of them with names and boundaries altered; for example, maps of Acadia became maps of Nova Scotia. Petto entertainingly describes 'paper encroachments,' in which the competing nations tried to claim more territory on paper than they held in reality. An opening illustrated chapter on cartouches and atlas title pages illuminates the rhetorical function of maps, 'persuasive documents that participated in the contemporary political, social, or scientific discourses.'. . . .Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. * CHOICE *This volume is a fascinating history of the two countries’ mapping and will be essential on any course on the history of cartography for students and for those who wish to know how mapping is interwoven into the societies’ and governments’ requirements and interests of the time. * European History Quarterly *Christine M. Petto is no stranger to cartography's role in state and identity formation in France. . . .Petto should be commended for producing an excellent comparative study. Mapping and Charting in Early Modern England and France . . . should be required reading for all students of the history of cartography. * Journal of Historical Geography *Mapping and Charting in Early Modern England and France provides a wealth of information on French and English mapmakers and is particularly strong on marine charts and hydrography. For historians of cartography, as well as those interested in visual rhetoric and state power, Petto’s book is a solid contribution. * Isis *Following on her book titled When France was King of Cartography, Christine Petto now brings us Mapping and Charting in Early Modern England and France. This little-studied comparative theme allows the author to make striking comparisons between different developments on different sides of the English Channel, in both general history and in the history of cartography. -- David Buisseret, The University of Texas at ArlingtonTable of Contents1 Cartographic Imagery and Representations of Power 2 Mapping the Land: County & Regional Mapping in England and France 2 Chart Making in England and France & Charting the English Channel 4 Paper Encroachments: Colonial Mapping Disputes in the Americas 5 Charting the Seas of the East Indies: Commercial Opportunism vs. Royal Approbation

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Book SynopsisTrade 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 ExeterTable 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 SynopsisThis book boldly crosses traditional academic boundaries, offering an original, philosophically informed argument about the nature of language, reading and interpreting the poetry of Wallace Stevens and the novels of Vladimir Nabokov. Redeeming Words and the Promise of Happiness is a work both in literary criticism and in philosophy. The approach is strongly influenced by Walter Benjamin's philosophy of language and Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory, but the other philosophersnotably Plato, Kant, Hegel, Emerson, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgensteinfigure significantly in the reading and interpretation. Kleinberg-Levin argues that despite its damaged, corrupted condition, language is in its very existence the bearer of a utopian or messianic promise of happiness. Moreover, he argues, by reconciling sensuous sense and intelligible sense; showing the sheer power of words to create fictional worlds and deconstruct what they have just created; and redeeming the revelatory power of wordsthe power to turn the familiar into something astonishing, strange or perplexingthe two writers in this study sustain our hope for a world of reconciled antagonisms and contradictions, evoking in the way they freely play with the sounds and meanings of words, some intimations of a new worldbut our world here, this very world, not some heavenly worldin which the promise of happiness might be redeemed. Reflecting on the poetry of Stevens, Kleinberg-Levin argues that the poet defies the correspondence theory of truth so that words may be faithful to truth as transformative and revelatory. He also argues that in the pleasure we get from the sensuous play of words, there is an anticipation of the promise of happiness that challenges the theological doctrine of an otherworldly happiness. And in reading Nabokov, Kleinberg-Levin shows how that writer inherits Mallarmé's conception of literature, causing with his word plays the sudden reduction of the fictional world he has just created to its necessary conditions of materiality. The novel is revealed as a work of fiction; we see its conditions of possibility, created and destroyed before our very eyes. But the pleasure in seeing words doing this, and the pleasure in their sensuous materiality, are intimations of the promise of happiness that language bears. Using a Kantian definition of modernism, according to which a work is modernist if it reveals and questions inherited assumptions about its necessary conditions of possibility, these studies show how and why both Stevens and Nabokov are exemplars of literary modernism.Trade ReviewFew if any philosophers have had the courage to engage the formal and conceptual difficulties of literary modernism, particularly its regulating idea that, as the poet Stèphane Mallarmé argued, language is made of words but not of the things we use words to produce: concepts, propositions, descriptions, and even expressions of feeling. Not that the literary work lacks such things, but the materiality of its language is irreducible to any of these discursive functions. On the contrary, as David Kleinberg-Levin makes clear in this remarkable book, the sensuous material of language is itself the medium of aesthetic experience as well as an experience of world-making that transforms our relation to how things are. He develops his arguments by way of careful critical readings of Wallace Stevens’s poetry and poetics and by close attention to the self-reflexive features of Vladimir Nabokov’s novels, in which developments of plot and character are always mediated by innovative wordplay and ironic comments on the forms and conventions of fiction-writing that Nabokov himself is employing. Kleinberg-Levin’s principal argument is that, contrary to a good deal of received opinion, the prominence of “sensuous materiality” in poetry and fiction is not a symptom of a decadent aestheticism but the fulfillment of a truly philosophical aesthetics: namely, the transfiguration of our everyday world into genuinely desirable forms of life. -- Gerald L. Bruns, University of Notre DameIn this midst of our current troubled world, Kleinberg-Levin opens a hopeful path for us in explaining how language offers us the happiness of the transfiguration of the world that redeems, even when we have lost faith in other sources of redemption. It is even more hopeful in showing us how Wallace Stevens could find truth and transfiguration in the realm of the sensible and imaginal — a redemption faithful to the earth, as Nietzsche put it, and a more modest happiness than attempts at resolving our pain or transcending it. Nabokov, in Kleinberg-Levin’s account, playfully explores the possibilities of language to draw upon its own sensuous divinity in the materiality and density of its workings, again providing us with a resource for originating meaning, reconciling the intellectual and sensuous, and intensifying beauty. The poetry and prose examined is rich and engaging. You will feel uplifted by this book. -- Glen A. Mazis, Professor of Humanities and Philosophy, Penn State HarrisburgTable of ContentsPart I. Between Wild Sense and Plain Sense: The Language of Truth in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens Chapter One: Truth Chapter Two: Reason’s Folly Chapter Three: The Realism of the Imagination Chapter Four: Word-Play: Language on Holiday Chapter Five: Redemption? Part II. Facing the Surface: Nabokov After Mallarmé Chapter Six: Modernism Chapter Seven: Mischievous Predecessors Chapter Eight: Transparencies and Metamorphoses: Nabokov’s Language Games Chapter Nine: When the Promise of Happiness Appears: Redeeming the Dust on the Surface Chapter Ten: Paradise of Memory and Imagination

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Book SynopsisThe Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott, edited by Adam Barkman, Ashley Barkman, and Nancy Kang, brings together eighteen critical essays that illuminate a nearly comprehensive selection of the director's feature films from cutting-edge multidisciplinary and comparative perspectives. Chapters examine such signature works as Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Thelma and Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), and American Gangster (2007). This volume divides the chapters into three major thematic groups: responsibility, remembering, and revision; real, alienated, and ideal lives; and gender, identity, and selfhood. Each section features six discrete essays, each of which forwards an original thesis about the film or films chosen for analysis. Each chapter features close readings of scenes as well as broader discussions that will interest academics, non-specialists, as well as educated readers with an interest in films as visual texts. While recogniziTrade 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 SynopsisDe-Signing Design: Cartographies of Theory and Practice throws new light on the terrain between theory and practice in transdisciplinary discourses of design and art. The editors, Elizabeth Grierson, Harriet Edquist, and Hélène Frichot, bring together diverse approaches to design theory, practice, and philosophy from leading scholars in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Themes include spatiality, difference, cultural aesthetics, and identity in the expanded field of place-making and being. The concept that design can be de-signed is presented as a way of exploring different approaches to an experimental and experiential thinking-doing that promises to further open up research possibilities in the fields of design and art thinking and practice. The book enacts a series of cartographic devices to articulate the spaces between theory and practice.Trade ReviewAt a moment when the term “design” is used not only to designate acts of a designer — such as projecting the organizational, representational, technical, and material dimensions of an object, building, image or interface — but to reference any act of strategic or even managerial thinking, De-Signing Design: Cartographies of Theory and Practice offers welcome conceptual and discursive tools for thinking critically about the future. Demonstrating the complex relays between thinking and doing, or theory and practice, it marks out a variegated new ground upon which to operate beyond the purely instrumental. -- Felicity D. Scott, Columbia UniversityDe-signing Design: Cartographies of Theory and Practice is a synthetic modernist handbook for de-signing design and for the city as design outcome. Its compelling narrative begins with Jacques Derrida’s provocative placement of the hyphen in the formation of the term “de-signing”. Thus equipped, we set off on a journey that leads from the production of the first atlas by Abraham Ortellus in 1570 all the way to the world of BwO (body-without-organs) and other entities “poised in potentiality”. Strategies and outcomes that once seemed out of the world of Superfictions now appear tantalizingly real. This book will appeal to, will excite, and will inform artists, designers, architects, bio-engineers, narratologists, city planners, graduate students, and anyone with a keen sense of wonder about our future and how it might be “de-signed”. -- Peter Hill, Deakin UniversityTable of Contents1.De-Signing the City: Interventions through Art, Elizabeth Grierson 2.Towards De-Signing: Narrative, Networks and the Open Work, Scott McQuire 3.Designations, Mark Jackson 4.Signs of Postmemory in Dresden: Restoring the Displaced, Marsha Berry 5.Posed Solitude: Signing a Poetics of Community, Maria O’Connor 6.24 Hours Noticing: Designing our Encounters with Place, Laurene Vaughan and Yoko Akama 7.Representing the City: Complementing Science and Technology with Art, William Cartwright 8.Embodied Encounters: The Photographic Seeds of Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr’s Ten Canoes, Linda Daley 9.Mapping Modernity in “Marvellous Melbourne”: Ada Cambridge’s A Woman’s Friendship, Harriet Edquist 10.Mapping an Ethico-Aesthetics for Wet Biotechnological Architectures, Hélène Frichot 11.Digital Organic Design: Architecture, the New Biology and the Knowledge Economy, Karen Burns 12.De-Signing as Bio-technological Endosymbiosis, Stephen Loo 13.Design, Second Life and the Hyper Real, Lisa Dethridge 14.Hopeful: Biology, Architectural Design and Philosophy, Chris L. Smith 15.Design and New Materialism, Neil Leach

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Book SynopsisThis collection begins with an engaging historical overview of Japanese aesthetics and offers contemporary multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives on the artistic and aesthetic traditions of Japan and the central themes in Japanese art and aesthetics.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 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 SynopsisLevinas Faces Biblical Figures captures the drama of the encounter between a great philosopher and a text of primary importance. The book considers the ways in which Levinas's thoughts can open up the biblical text to requestioning, and how the biblical text can inform our reading of Levinas.Trade ReviewIn [the book] the reader is presented with a rich variety of analyses of Levinas’s readings of biblical figures, events, and notions. . . .Of particular note is Eli Schonfeld’s piece on Jonah, which analyzes not only a specific biblical moment, but also attempts to articulate the hermeneutics at play in Levinas’s biblical references in general in order to clarify their role in his larger philosophical project. Alongside addressing a somewhat neglected topic in the study of Levinas, the uniqueness of this volume resides in the essays that use Levinas’s philosophy as a background and inspiration for putting forth intriguing and original readings of the Bible, thereby exhibiting the exegetical productivity a Levinasian prism could offer.This is an insightful contribution to the ever-growing scholarship on Levinas and Judaism. Moreover, it provides support for those who seek to blur the typical distinction made between his philosophical and Jewish writings. Most of the essays assume prior philosophical knowledge and familiarity with Levinas’s corpus, and as such is particularly recommended to graduate students and scholars of philosophy and Jewish studies. * Religious Studies Review *A series of passionate readings that convincingly demonstrate how the continuing dialogue between philosophical and biblical wisdom informs and guides Levinas's key concepts. -- Seàn Hand, University of WarwickWe know that Levinas was one of the most important philosophers of the last century; we also know that he was a brilliant Talmudic commentator. But how do these two aspects of his work relate to one another? Levinas Faces Biblical Figures demonstrates better than ever before that all the strands of Levinas's thought are interlinked. His interpretations of biblical figures and his ethics go hand in hand; and this volume illustrates most impressively that his reverence for ancient texts is inseparable from the contemporary relevance of his thought. -- Colin Davis, Royal Holloway, University of LondonLevinas Faces Biblical Figures, edited and introduced insightfully by Yael Lin, is a pioneering contribution to the emerging field of Levinas and biblical studies. The articles gathered here will be of benefit to students of Levinas, biblical studies, most especially for those at their conjuncture as well as teachers of the religious philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. As someone who has studied and taught Levinas for the past forty years, I heartily recommend this book. -- Richard I. Sugarman, University of VermontTable of ContentsIntroduction The Bible, Ethics and Poetics Yael Lin 1) Subjectivity, Hospitality and Exile The Meaning of the Abrahamic Adventure in Levinas's Thought Ephraim Meir Welcoming the Other: Hospitality, Subjectivity and Otherness in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas and the Biblical Story, the Hospitality of Abraham Edna Langenthal 2) Suffering, Justice, and Forgiveness Cruel Justice, Responsibility, and Forgiveness: On Levinas's Reading of the Gibeonites Gary D. Mole The Power of Goodness – Rizpah Bat Aya in the Interpretation of Levinas Elisabeth Goldwyn 3) Choice and Election Ruth : The Meaning of a Conversion Catherine Chalier Jonah: Hero of the Impossible Escape: The Biblical Interruption of Philosophy in Levinas Eli Schonfeld 4) The Face, Death, and Responsibility Abel's Look – Levinas Reads Cain Michal Ben-Naftali The Mystery of the Red Heifer – Solved, to Nobody’s Satisfaction Richard A. Cohen 5) Judaism, Messianism, and Zionism Joseph: The Voice from the Coffin Hanoch Ben-Pazi Ladders to Heaven: Caleb, Levinas and the Challenge of the Explorers Tamar Abramov

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Book SynopsisSantayana at 150: International Interpretations is an anthology gathering seventeen scholarâs essays on the thought and life of Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana. Themes considered include: materialism, naturalistic ethics, aesthetics, and cosmopolitanism. This volume marks the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of Santayanaâs birth.Trade Review“This rich collection demonstrates the breadth and depth of Santayana’s philosophical reach. His influence spans continents and disciplinary specializations, and the chapters included in this volume display the ongoing significance of Santayana’s original ideas. This book is a fitting tribute to the birth of a man who lives on in the insightful contributions of these writers.” -- Jessica WahmanGiuseppe Patella hits the nail on the head in the introduction when he mentions the task of ‘thinking [Santayana’s heritage] over again’ and letting it ‘resound in our current intellectual concerns.’ The task . . . has been fully achieved and we get a novel, inspiring collection, indispensable for any Santayana scholar willing to keep him/herself up to date. Moreover, the attention given to Santayana’s life and personality as interconnected with his intellectual biography, set in a broad context of intellectual and cultural milieu of the era, constitutes an added value and makes the book of interest for a broader circle of philosophically-oriented readers and scholars of American Studies worldwide. * Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the George Santayana Society *Table of ContentsGeneral Introduction Part I: Reconciling Material and Ideal Realities Section Introduction Chapter 1: Bifurcation of Materialism Chapter 2: Free Will for a Materialist Chapter 3: Nature and the Ideal in Santayana’s Philosophy Chapter 4: Mediterranean Aestheticism and Epicurean Materialism Part II: Santayana’s Cosmopolitanism Section Introduction Chapter 5: Cosmopolitanism and the Spiritual Life Chapter 6: Poetic Italy in the Works of Santayana Chapter 7: A Traveling Philosophy Chapter 8: Ruins as Seats of Values Chapter 9: Santayana’s Theory of Art Part III: Morality and Truth Section Introduction Chapter 10: Scientific Ethics Chapter 11: On Celebrating the Death of Another Person Chapter 12: The Realm of Truth in Santayana Chapter 13: Was Santayana a Stoic Pragmatist? Part IV: The Personal and the Spiritual Section Introduction Chapter 14: Santayana’s Epicureanism Chapter 15: The World, a Stage Chapter 16: Transcending Means and Ends Near the End of Life Chapter 17: Santayana’s Relationship to Rome Afterword About the Contributors

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Book SynopsisThis book comprehensively examines the aesthetic views of Thomas Aquinas, treating both the objective nature and the subjective human experience of beauty. It locates Aquinasâs views in their historical context and illustrates their relations to other popular aesthetic views.Trade ReviewThis study offers an account of Saint Thomas Aquinas’s conception of beauty, the transcendental property associated with objects that, Thomas wrote, 'please when seen.' Though he did not neglect the subjective side in aesthetic perception, Thomas insisted that beauty was never merely in the eye of the beholder. Sevier begins with an examination of the psychological factors involved in aesthetic experience, which entails an appreciation of the complex interplay between desire and pleasure within the human subject. In the central chapter, the author analyzes the objective features in the beautiful object—those essential 'constituents' (proportion, integrity, and clarity) that make particular beings so appealing to perceivers. In addition to tracing the source of these distinctions to the philosophical work of Plato and Pseudo-Dionysius, Sevier addresses the issue of whether Thomas considered beauty a separate transcendental property in relation to being, truth, and goodness. The author suggests that the answer to this textual question, whatever it is, does not affect Thomas’s final judgment that 'everything that exists is de facto also beautiful.' Like its subject matter, this work is a model of proportion, integrity, and clarity. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * CHOICE *[The book is] a work faithful to the mind of Aquinas and well-versed in his texts. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *My first reading of Aquinas on beauty was in a book by Umberto Eco. But Eco believed that the aesthetics of Aquinas is of little value in our age. Sevier argues otherwise and does so with clarity. * Catholic Medical Quarterly *Sevier is to be commended for his pursuit of questions, themes, and texts that are frequently ignored by Aquinas scholarship. Sevier expresses the hope that his volume 'will advance the discussion a little further, that it will expand appreciation for Aquinas’s little acknowledged contribution to the great aesthetic tradition, and that it provides evidence for the all-too-neglected Platonic impulses that punctuate his thought.' On all three counts, Aquinas on Beauty succeeds very well. * Speculum *This book shows us, as Plato thought, that beauty is without a doubt difficult and that in Aquinas it involves aspects of his psychology and ethics, together with his metaphysics and theology—a daunting task for any one book to embark upon—but Sevier’s book does justice to this endeavor. The student of Aquinas will find in this relatively brief book further avenues to pursue on the fascinating, even if at times enigmatic, subject of beauty. * American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly *Of the several books on Aquinas’s aesthetics published in recent decades, Sevier’s is perhaps the boldest attempt to approach beauty by way of Aquinas’s psychology and ethics rather than his epistemology and metaphysics…. Particularly compelling is the way he connects the passions with Aquinas’s theory of beauty. This is a line of research that needs to be deepened, and Sevier has provided an extremely fine resource for doing so. * Philosophy in Review *Another book on Thomas's aesthetics? Yes, because all that might be said hasn't been. Yes, because what Sevier does say offers Thomistic, Scholastic, and aesthetic readers a gift: a fresh survey of Thomas's aesthetics whose expanded scope yields a more beautiful Thomas, not to mention rich endnotes and bibliography. And yes, because there breathes through Aquinas on Beauty exactly the kind of aesthetic delight it means to detail. Theological readers will want more. * Anglican Theological Review *Aquinas’s approach to beauty has not received the attention it deserves among philosophers, theologians, and medievalists. In this excellent and clearly written book, Christopher Scott Sevier provides a thorough, sophisticated and well-documented analysis of it. He recognizes how important it is to understand Aquinas on a range of topics in order to grasp what he says about beauty, and he provides readers with exactly what they need when trying to understand the complexity behind Aquinas’s apparently simple claim that ‘We call those things beautiful which please when seen’. -- Brian Davies, Fordham UniversityChristopher Scott Sevier’s Aquinas on Beauty is a very impressive piece of scholarship on a perennially interesting but notoriously mysterious and elusive subject. The author has done his homework, understood all the relevant medieval nuances of the subject, and has clearly explained and readably expressed Aquinas’ major points directly and succinctly. Sevier demonstrates how Aquinas’ aesthetic follows from and presupposes his metaphysics and cosmology, and clarifies the contrasts between Aquinas and modern theories of beauty. This book will be a touchstone for all subsequent investigations of the subject. -- Peter Kreeft, Boston CollegeTable of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Psychological Components of Beauty Chapter 3 Human Desire and Pleasure Chapter 4 Objective Components of Beauty Chapter 5 Comparison with Significant Influences Chapter 6 Conclusion

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Book SynopsisNaturalism's Philosophy of the Sacred: Justus Buchler, Karl Jaspers, and George Santayanaoffers an interpretation of the sacred based on the ordinal naturalism of Justus Buchler, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century whose work is experiencing a renaissance. This book seeks to find common ground between theists and atheists by arguing that religious beliefs should be retained because they provide a poetic response to nature's mysteries, while also addressing the atheist's concerns regarding the tendency of religious believers to demonize nonbelievers and to idolize their own conceptions of the sacred. The heart of Martin O. Yalcin's argument is that religious violence can be traced to the belief that God is far more real and therefore far more valuable than nature. In contrast to this view, he develops a philosophy of the sacred from the perspective of ontological parity which holds that all things are equally real. He argues that when the sacred is leveled to the plane of nature as one of its innumerable orders, then the virtues of piety and charity replace the vices of demonization and idolization so evident in religions that insist on the utter incommensurability of God with respect to the created order. In the course of developing an aesthetic interpretation of the sacred, Yalcin explores not only the metaphysical categories of Justus Buchler, but also those of Karl Jaspers and George Santayana. The dialogue with Jaspers unearths the absolute otherness of the sacred as the intrinsically unethical dimension of any variant of theism. Having undermined the total absolution of the sacred, Naturalism's Philosophy of the Sacred suggests an alternative aesthetic form of sacred engagement that piggybacks on Santayana's thoroughly natural poetic rendition of the sacred. This book will be of great value to students and scholars working in departments of religion, philosophy, and theology.Table of ContentsForeword by Robert S. Corrington Acknowledgements Introduction: Abjection: Demonization and Idolization Chapter 1: Justus Buchler: Ordinal Naturalism and Ontological Parity Chapter 2: Karl Jaspers: Philosophical Faith and the Absolute Chapter 3: George Santayana: Aesthetic Religion and the Play of Masks Conclusion: Twilight of the Absolute Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisThe vast majority of existing ecocritical studies, even those which espouse the postcolonial ecocritical perspective, operate within a first-world sensibility, speaking on behalf of subalternized human communities and degraded landscapes without actually eliciting the voices of the impacted communities. Ecocriticism of the Global South seeks to allow scholars from (or intimately familiar with) underrepresented regions to write back to the world's centers of political and military and economic power, expressing views of the intersections of nature and culture from the perspective of developing countries. This approach highlights what activist and writer Vandana Shiva has described as the relationship between ecology and the politics of survival, showing both commonalities and local idiosyncrasies by juxtaposing such countries as China and Northern Ireland, New Zealand and Cameroon. Much like Ecoambiguity, Community, and Development, this new book is devoted to representing diverse and iTrade ReviewEcocriticism of the Global South is a rare and much needed achievement in ecocriticism. It speaks from geographical and political contexts—giving it unprecedented planetary reach. In this process, it both extends and transforms the significance of the ecocritical project as a world phenomenon. -- George B. Handley, Brigham Young UniversityTable of ContentsTable of Contents Acknowledgments 1.Scott Slovic, Swarnalatha Rangarajan, and Vidya Sarveswaran, Introduction 2.Priya Kumar, The Environmentalism of The Hungry Tide 3.Sharae Deckard, “The Land Was Wounded”: War Ecologies, Commodity Frontiers, and Sri Lankan Literature 4.Zhou Xiaojing, Scenes from the Global South in China: Zheng Xiaoqiong’s Poetic Agency for Labor and Environmental Justice 5.Christopher Lloyd de Shield, Literary Isomorphism and the Malayan and Caribbean Archipelagos 6.Charles Dawson, Wai tangi, Waters of Grief, wai ora, Waters of Life: Rivers, Reports and Reconciliation in Aotearoa New Zealand 7.Dina El Dessouky, Fish, Coconuts, and Ocean People: Nuclear Violations of Oceania’s “Earthly Design” 8.Benay Blend, Intimate Kinships: Who Speaks for Nature and Who Listens When Nature Speaks for Herself? 9.Adrian Kane, Redefining Modernity in Latin American Fiction: Toward Ecological Consciousness in La loca de Gandoca and Lo que soñó Sebastian 10.James McElroy, Northern Ireland ↔ Global South 11.Eóin Flannery, “Decline and Fall”: Empire, Land, and the Twentieth-Century Irish “Big House” Novel 12.Augustine Nchoujie, Landscape and Animal Tragedy in Nsahlai Nsambu Athanasius’s The Buffalo Rider: Ecocritical Perspectives, the Cameroon Experiment 13.Senayon Olaoluwa, Ecocriticism beyond Animist Inimations in Things Fall Apart 14.Anthony Vital, Ecocriticism, Globalized Cities, and African Narrative, with a Foucs on K. Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents 15.Zahra Parsapoor, Environmental and Cultural Entropy in Bozorg Alavi’s “Gilemard” 16.Munazza Yaqoob, Environmental Consciousness in Contemporary Pakistani Fiction Index About the Contributors

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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, Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman 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 develops a comparative intervention in contemporary metaphilosophy. Drawing on resources from hermeneutics, cognitive linguistics, aesthetics, and Chinese philosophy, she explores how philosophical language is deeply intertwined with the definition and practice of the discipline.Trade ReviewReaders of Mattice's book will learn much and will be left with much to think about. * Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy *Metaphor 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 SynopsisThis book collects the work of leading scholars on Alain Badiou and G.W.F. Hegel, creating a dialogue between, and a critical appraisal of, these two central figures in European philosophy.Trade ReviewThis book contains the first exhaustive analysis of Badiou’s brilliant and surprising texts on Hegel. The essays include an excellent treatment of infinity in Badiou and Hegel that discusses precise mathematical ontology in a way that non-mathematicians can follow and participate in: this is the sort of Badiou scholarship we need. They also include theses on materiality and dialectic, subject and event, society and decision, art and politics, love and tragedy, and, of course, truth procedures. For its close readings of Badiou, and current approaches to Hegel, this collection is indispensible. What is especially good is that it forces readers to participate in controversial decisions, and raises the level at which these controversies will have to be pursued in the future. -- Jay Lampert, University of Guelph, Duquesne UniversityThis collection is a sustained and timely examination of the relationship between one of the foremost philosophers of the twenty-first century and one of the major thinkers of the nineteenth. Of equal use and importance to Badiou and Hegel scholars alike, these essays should provide the bedrock of any serious discussion of many key philosophical terms and approaches over the coming years. -- Nina PowerTable of Contents1. Measuring Up: Some Consequences of Badiou’s Confrontation with Hegel, A.J. Bartlett and Justin Clemens 2. The Good, the Bad and the Indeterminate: Hegel and Badiou on the Dialectics of the Infinite, Tzuchien Tho 3. Badiou contra Hegel: The Materialist Dialectic Against the Myth of the Whole, Adriel M. Trott 4. The Question of Art: Badiou and Hegel, Gabriel Riera 5. Badiou with Hegel: Preliminary Remarks on A(ny) Contemporary Reading of Hegel, Frank Ruda 6. The Biolinguistic Challenge to an Intrinsic Ontology, Norman Madarasz 7. Badiou and Hegel on Love and the Family, Jim Vernon 8. Fidelity to the Political Event: Hegel, Badiou, and the Return to the Same, Antonio Calcagno 9. Taming the Furies: Badiou and Hegel on The Eumenides, Alberto Toscano

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Book SynopsisJulian Young presents Richard Wagner as an important philosopher of art and life, first as a utopian anarchist-communist and then as a Schopenhauerian pessimist. Understanding Wagnerâs philosophy is crucial to understanding his operas, as it is to understanding Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Heidegger.Trade ReviewYoung here presents the results of extensive research into Wagner's philosophical writings. Perhaps the most surprising thing one learns is that Wagner had a relatively clear and coherent philosophy. In fact, Wagner’s philosophy evolved over time, and he always saw himself as more than a composer of operas. Early on, Wagner, influenced by Hegel, maintained that art and music could play a key role in changing the world for the better. Later, his philosophical intuitions and artistic aims would be molded by Schopenhauer’s pessimistic but redemptive views of music. Today, Wagner would be saddened, though perhaps not surprised, to find that most of his operas are heard only by the affluent—a situation that is the antithesis of what he was trying to do. Young’s straightforward writing style is more than welcome in explaining 19th-century German philosophical concepts, which can get very complex very fast. This book is beautifully written, clear, and concise. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and above. * CHOICE *Keenly attuned to Wagner’s intimations of impersonal immortality, Julian Young explains Wagner’s evolving views on the redemptive power of musical drama, an artistic salvation that remains possible even after the death of God. By critically examining Wagner’s philosophical transformation from a Feuerbachian anarcho-revolutionary to a Schopenhauerian world-renunciate, Young uncovers the enduring spiritual quest at the heart of Wagner’s work: Our deep and enduring philosophical need to learn how to die well. -- Iain Thomson, University of New MexicoIn deft, elegant prose, Young convincingly reconstructs two distinct Wagnerian philosophical positions, especially as concerns the relationship between art and society: an early revolutionary and a later Schopenhauerian position. In doing so, Young casts considerable light on the meanings of Wagner's musical dramas, and presents an array of fascinating positions on the proper relations between art and society for contemporary reflection. This is an important book for anyone interested in late-nineteenth-century philosophy of music and art. -- Sandra Shapshay, Indiana University, BloomingtonTable of ContentsPart I: Early Wagner Chapter 1: The Way We are Now Chapter 2: The Greek Ideal Chapter 3: The Death of Art Chapter 4: The Artwork of the Future: Exploratory Questions Part II Later Wagner Chapter 5: Schopenhauer Chapter 6: Wagner’s Appropriation of Schopenhauer Chapter 7: Wagner’s Final Thoughts Epilogue: Wagner and Nietzsche

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis book demonstrates the scholarly rigor and lucid writing that we have come to expect from Singer. -- Robert C. Solomon, Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas, AustIrving Singer offers us his mature reflections on the nature and evaluation of human sexuality in this important new study—a welcome addition to his earlier pathbreaking writings on the philosophy of love. He is, as always, illuminating, insightful, and persuasive. I recommend it without reservation to all who are interested in broad philosophical questions of love and sex. -- Robert M. Stewart, California State University at ChicoTable of ContentsChapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Sex, Love, Compassion Chapter 3 Patterns of the Sensuous and the Passionate Chapter 4 The Nature and Evaluation of Sex Chapter 5 Criteria of Sexual Goodness: Pleasure, Enjoyment and Satisfaction, Completeness and Reciprocity, Love, Embodyment and Absorption, Natural and Unnatural Chapter 6 Is There an Art of Sex? Chapter 7 Conclusion: Toward a Theory of Sex

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Book SynopsisJames Winchester brings the western philosophical tradition into dialog with contemporary African-American thinkers in an attempt to bridge (or at least understand) the culture gap in aesthetic judgments.Trade ReviewWith impressive ease and grace, Winchester guides us through the bold and subtle theories of Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Adorno in search of clues for understanding the art of the oppressed. From a brilliant weave of art and theory comes a highly persuasive conclusion that is neither modern nor postmodern: Art gives us a glimpse, however incomplete, into the world of others. -- Cynthia Willett, Author of Maternal Ethics and Other Slave MoralitiesWinchester's book tackles a difficult and timely subject—cultural diversity in the evaluation of art, especially in the context of contemporary America. To do so he draws on a wide range of classical and recent aesthetic theories and offers a wealth of examples. His book is as diverse and wide-ranging as its topic, but it is guided by a steady theoretical hand throughout. -- David Carr, Emory UniversityThis is an adventurous critical encounter between Continental philosophical aesthetics and some key works from 20th-century black Americans. * CHOICE *Aesthetics Across the Color Line poses an important and timely question: the question of aesthetic judgements across cultural borders. James Winchester addresses it in original ways. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the intersection of art and politics in the contemporary world. -- Robert Bernasconi, Pennsylvania State UniversityTable of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction: Understanding the Art of Others Chapter 2 Understanding Aesthetic Judgments across Cultural Borders Chapter 3 Why Nietzsche (Sometimes) Can't Sing the Blues; or Davis, Nietzsche, and the Social Embededness of Aesthetic Judgments Chapter 4 Misunderstanding Aesthetic Judgments across Cultural Divides Chapter 5 Adorno, Jazz, and the Limits of Apprenticeship Chapter 6 Art and the Politics of Representation in the South Bronx

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Book SynopsisJames Winchester brings the western philosophical tradition into dialog with contemporary African-American thinkers in an attempt to bridge (or at least understand) the culture gap in aesthetic judgments.Trade ReviewWith impressive ease and grace, Winchester guides us through the bold and subtle theories of Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Adorno in search of clues for understanding the art of the oppressed. From a brilliant weave of art and theory comes a highly persuasive conclusion that is neither modern nor postmodern: Art gives us a glimpse, however incomplete, into the world of others. -- Cynthia Willett, Author of Maternal Ethics and Other Slave MoralitiesWinchester's book tackles a difficult and timely subject—cultural diversity in the evaluation of art, especially in the context of contemporary America. To do so he draws on a wide range of classical and recent aesthetic theories and offers a wealth of examples. His book is as diverse and wide-ranging as its topic, but it is guided by a steady theoretical hand throughout. -- David Carr, Emory UniversityThis is an adventurous critical encounter between Continental philosophical aesthetics and some key works from 20th-century black Americans. * CHOICE *Aesthetics Across the Color Line poses an important and timely question: the question of aesthetic judgements across cultural borders. James Winchester addresses it in original ways. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the intersection of art and politics in the contemporary world. -- Robert Bernasconi, Pennsylvania State UniversityTable of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction: Understanding the Art of Others Chapter 2 Understanding Aesthetic Judgments across Cultural Borders Chapter 3 Why Nietzsche (Sometimes) Can't Sing the Blues; or Davis, Nietzsche, and the Social Embededness of Aesthetic Judgments Chapter 4 Misunderstanding Aesthetic Judgments across Cultural Divides Chapter 5 Adorno, Jazz, and the Limits of Apprenticeship Chapter 6 Art and the Politics of Representation in the South Bronx

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Book SynopsisWhat is moral reasoning? Are we being reasonable when we make moral decisions if we cannot supply compelling arguments, criteria, necessary and sufficient conditions, decisive empirical evidence and the like? In Moral Vision, Duane L. Cady critiques the contemporary inclination to model reason after textbook natural science, noting that our values are not conclusions of proofs or derivations but frameworks in which such reasoning may take place, frameworks that we struggle to understand and explain. Cady goes on to suggest a rich conception of reason beyond that of stereotypical science, one that reflects aesthetic, historical, experiential, and pluralistic aspects of moral thinking, one that widens and deepens descriptions of how moral thinking typically happens. This book will be of interest to anyone wondering what philosophy may contribute to our contemporary struggle with conflicting values and value collisions, both personal as well as cultural.Trade ReviewThere are two things I find frustrating. One is that although I spent a lot of time in graduate school studying ethical theories, I find that they aren't very helpful in trying to resolve real-life dilemmas...The other frustration is that serious ethical disagreements rarely seem to get resolved, and good arguments – or at least, what seem like good arguments to me – rarely seem to change anyone's mind. A new book by Duane Cady...has given me fresh insight on both of these perplexities. -- Jeremy Iggers * Star Tribune *Cady draws on I. Murdoch, S. Langer, M. Nussbaum, and the American pragmatists to develop a rich conception of moral vision that includes the goods of pluralism, nonviolence, and coherence…His clear arguments and use of texts would be helpful for students working through issues of metaethical theory and praxis. * CHOICE *A deeply felt, wonderfully clear and heartening book. Moral Vision reflects decades of writing and teaching about theories of war by a philosopher actively engaged in non-violent projects, waging peace. Duane Cady's revisionary moral concepts enable us to think against violence, to see non-violence as reason's dream. -- Sara Ruddick, New School UniversityTable of ContentsChapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Ethics and Rationality Chapter 3 Moral Frameworks Chapter 4 Experience in Context Chapter 5 Aesthetic Aspects of Ethical Thought Chapter 6 Morals and Metaphors Chapter 7 Ethics and Pluralism Chapter 8 Moral Thinking Chapter 9 Afterword: Diversity, Relativism, and Nonviolence

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Book SynopsisWhat is moral reasoning? Are we being reasonable when we make moral decisions if we cannot supply compelling arguments, criteria, necessary and sufficient conditions, decisive empirical evidence and the like? In Moral Vision, Duane L. Cady critiques the contemporary inclination to model reason after textbook natural science, noting that our values are not conclusions of proofs or derivations but frameworks in which such reasoning may take place, frameworks that we struggle to understand and explain. Cady goes on to suggest a rich conception of reason beyond that of stereotypical science, one that reflects aesthetic, historical, experiential, and pluralistic aspects of moral thinking, one that widens and deepens descriptions of how moral thinking typically happens. This book will be of interest to anyone wondering what philosophy may contribute to our contemporary struggle with conflicting values and value collisions, both personal as well as cultural.Trade ReviewThere are two things I find frustrating. One is that although I spent a lot of time in graduate school studying ethical theories, I find that they aren't very helpful in trying to resolve real-life dilemmas...The other frustration is that serious ethical disagreements rarely seem to get resolved, and good arguments – or at least, what seem like good arguments to me – rarely seem to change anyone's mind. A new book by Duane Cady...has given me fresh insight on both of these perplexities. -- Jeremy Iggers * Star Tribune *Cady draws on I. Murdoch, S. Langer, M. Nussbaum, and the American pragmatists to develop a rich conception of moral vision that includes the goods of pluralism, nonviolence, and coherence…His clear arguments and use of texts would be helpful for students working through issues of metaethical theory and praxis. * CHOICE *A deeply felt, wonderfully clear and heartening book. Moral Vision reflects decades of writing and teaching about theories of war by a philosopher actively engaged in non-violent projects, waging peace. Duane Cady's revisionary moral concepts enable us to think against violence, to see non-violence as reason's dream. -- Sara Ruddick, New School UniversityTable of ContentsChapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Ethics and Rationality Chapter 3 Moral Frameworks Chapter 4 Experience in Context Chapter 5 Aesthetic Aspects of Ethical Thought Chapter 6 Morals and Metaphors Chapter 7 Ethics and Pluralism Chapter 8 Moral Thinking Chapter 9 Afterword: Diversity, Relativism, and Nonviolence

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Book SynopsisPraised in its original edition for its up-to-date, rigorous presentation of current debates and for the clarity of its presentation, Robert Stecker''s new edition of Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art preserves the major themes and conclusions of the original, while expanding its content, providing new features, and enhancing accessibility. Stecker introduces students to the history and evolution of aesthetics, and also makes an important distinction between aesthetics and philosophy of art. While aesthetics is the study of value, philosophy of art deals with a much wider array of questions including issues in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, as well value theory. Described as a remarkably unified introduction to many contemporary debates in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, Stecker specializes in sympathetically laying bear the play of argument that emerges as competing views on a topic engage each other. This book does not simply present a controversy in its Trade ReviewRobert Stecker's excellent book was already the best high-level introduction to philosophical aesthetics in the analytic tradition. It has retained this distinction in its second edition, while becoming both more accessible and more wide-ranging, and is appropriate for use in both undergraduate and graduate courses. -- Jerry Levinson, University of MarylandProfessor Stecker gives his readers the elements of aesthetics from an advanced standpoint. His coverage of the core topics in the field is admirably clear and accessible, but more importantly, it is incisive and at the cutting-edge of current debates. -- Paisley Livingston, Lingnan UniversityTable of ContentsChapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Preface to Second Edition Chapter 3 Introduction Chapter 4 Part I: Aesthetics Chapter 5 Environmental Aesthetics: Natural Beauty Chapter 6 Conceptions of the Aesthetic: Aesthetic Experience Chapter 7 Conceptions of the Aesthetic: Aesthetic Properties Chapter 8 Part II: Philosophy of Art Chapter 9 What is Art? Chapter 10 What Kind of Object is a Work of Art? Chapter 11 Interpretation and the Problem of the Relevant Intention Chapter 12 Representation: Fiction Chapter 13 Representation: Depiction Chapter 14 Expressiveness in Music and Poetry Chapter 15 Artistic Value Chapter 16 Interaction: Ethical, Aesthetic and Artistic Value Chapter 17 The Value of Architecture Chapter 18 Conclusion Chapter 19 References Chapter 20 Index

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Book SynopsisAesthetics: A Reader provides centrally important texts that explore the current state of the debate on twelve major topics within aesthetics and the philosophy of art. With the exception of excerpts from classic texts by Hume, Kant, Hanslick, and Collingwood, all the readings are by contemporary authors. Most of these essays have been abridged by the editors to enhance their accessibility and to maximize our ability to present a variety of positions on a given topic. Aesthetics provides a wide-ranging introduction to aesthetic theory and philosophy of art for readers, particularly university students who seek an overview of major controversies, theories, and writers. Each chapter features three to four contrasting views of each topic introduced by an original introductory essay that outlines the chapter''s central issues, concepts, and controversies.Trade ReviewThis is an outstanding blend of essays that address topical and foundational issues in both philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of art. The selections, judiciously chosen and supplemented with clear and astute introductions, provide a thorough and lively overview of contemporary debates. -- Philip Alperson, Temple UniversityThis outstanding collection brings together the best work in aesthetics and the analytic philosophy of art, with comprehensive coverage of a full spread of topics. The editors judiciously combine "classic" writings with contemporary discussions, choosing material that is both central and accessible. This reader provides an invaluable resource for students. -- Stephen Davies, The University of AucklandTable of ContentsChapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Part I: Environmental Aesthetics: Natural Beauty Chapter 3 Introduction Chapter 4 "Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity" Chapter 5 "Interpreting Environments" Chapter 6 "Fact and Fiction in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature" Chapter 7 "Do Non-Native Species Threaten the Natural Environment?" Chapter 8 Further Reading Chapter 9 Part II: Conceptions of Aesthetics: Aesthetic Experience Chapter 10 Introduction Chapter 11 "Analytic of the Beautiful" Chapter 12 "What Makes a Situation Aesthetic" Chapter 13 "Art and the Domain of the Aesthetic" Chapter 14 "Aesthetic Communication" Chapter 15 Further Reading Chapter 16 Part III: Conceptions of the Aesthetic: Aesthetic Properties Chapter 17 Introduction Chapter 18 "Of the Standard of Taste" Chapter 19 "Objectivity and Aesthetics" Chapter 20 "Sensitivity, Sensibility, and Aesthetic Realism" Chapter 21 "Aesthetic Properties, Evaluative Force, and Differences in Sensibility" Chapter 22 Further Reading Chapter 23 Part IV: What Is Art? Chapter 24 Introduction Chapter 25 From The Principles of Art Chapter 26 "An Aesthetic Definition of Art" Chapter 27 From The Art Circle Chapter 28 "Non-Western Art and Art's Definition" Chapter 29 Further Reading Chapter 30 Part V: What Kind of Object is a Work of Art? Chapter 31 Introduction Chapter 32 From Art its Objects Chapter 33 "Interpretation: Process and Structure" Chapter 34 "Musical Works as Eternal Types" Chapter 35 "Types, Indicated and Initiated" Chapter 36 Further Reading Chapter 37 Part VI: Interpretation and the Problem of the Relevant Intention Chapter 38 Introduction Chapter 39 "An Intentional Demonstration" Chapter 40 "A Paradox in Intentionalism" Chapter 41 "On What a Text Is and How It Means" Chapter 42 "Allusion and Intention in Popular Art" Chapter 43 Further Reading Chapter 44 Part VII: Representation: Fiction Chapter 45 Introduction Chapter 46 "The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse" Chapter 47 "What is Fiction?" Chapter 48 "How Can We Fear and Pity Fictions?" Chapter 49 "Spelunking, Simulation, and Slime: On Being Moved by Fiction" Chapter 50 Further Reading Chapter 51 Part VIII: Representation: Depiction Chapter 52 Introduction Chapter 53 "Seeing-as, Seeing-in, and Pictorial Representation" Chapter 54 "Pictorial Recognition" Chapter 55 "Pictorial Art and Visual Experience" Chapter 56 Further Reading Chapter 57 Part IX: Expressiveness in Music Chapter 58 Introduction Chapter 59 From The Beautiful in Music Chapter 60 From Musical Meaning and Expression Chapter 61 From Deeper than Reason Chapter 62 Further Reading Chapter 63 Part X: Artistic Value Chapter 64 Introduction Chapter 65 "Aesthetic Judgment, Principles, and Properties" Chapter 66 "Art and Interaction" Chapter 67 "Empiricism and the Heresy of the Separable Value" Chapter 68 Further Reading Chapter 69 Part XI: Ethical, Aesthetic and Artistic Value Chapter 70 Introduction Chapter 71 "The Ethical Criticism of Art" Chapter 72 "Tragedy and Moral Value" Chapter 73 "Art, Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)moral Character of Art Works and Inter-Relations to Artistic Value" Chapter 74 "Aesthetics as a Guide to Ethics" Chapter 75 Further Reading Chapter 76 Part XII: The Humanly Made Environment Chapter 77 Introduction Chapter 78 "Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism" Chapter 79 "Art and Architecture" Chapter 80 "Reconsidering the Aesthetics of Architecture" Chapter 81 Further Reading Chapter 82 Index

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Book SynopsisAesthetics Today provides centrally important texts that explore the current state of the debate on twelve major topics within aesthetics and the philosophy of art. With the exception of excerpts from classic texts by Hume, Kant, Hanslick, and Collingwood, all the readings are by contemporary authors. Most of these essays have been abridged by the editors to enhance their accessibility and to maximize our ability to present a variety of positions on a given topic. Aesthetics Today provides a wide-ranging introduction to aesthetic theory and philosophy of art for readers, particularly university students who seek an overview of major controversies, theories, and writers. Each chapter features three to four contrasting views of each topic introduced by an original introductory essay that outlines the chapter''s central issues, concepts, and controversies.Trade ReviewThis is an outstanding blend of essays that address topical and foundational issues in both philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of art. The selections, judiciously chosen and supplemented with clear and astute introductions, provide a thorough and lively overview of contemporary debates. -- Philip Alperson, Temple UniversityThis outstanding collection brings together the best work in aesthetics and the analytic philosophy of art, with comprehensive coverage of a full spread of topics. The editors judiciously combine "classic" writings with contemporary discussions, choosing material that is both central and accessible. This reader provides an invaluable resource for students. -- Stephen Davies, The University of AucklandTable of ContentsChapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Part I: Environmental Aesthetics: Natural Beauty Chapter 3 Introduction Chapter 4 "Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity" Chapter 5 "Interpreting Environments" Chapter 6 "Fact and Fiction in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature" Chapter 7 "Do Non-Native Species Threaten the Natural Environment?" Chapter 8 Further Reading Chapter 9 Part II: Conceptions of Aesthetics: Aesthetic Experience Chapter 10 Introduction Chapter 11 "Analytic of the Beautiful" Chapter 12 "What Makes a Situation Aesthetic" Chapter 13 "Art and the Domain of the Aesthetic" Chapter 14 "Aesthetic Communication" Chapter 15 Further Reading Chapter 16 Part III: Conceptions of the Aesthetic: Aesthetic Properties Chapter 17 Introduction Chapter 18 "Of the Standard of Taste" Chapter 19 "Objectivity and Aesthetics" Chapter 20 "Sensitivity, Sensibility, and Aesthetic Realism" Chapter 21 "Aesthetic Properties, Evaluative Force, and Differences in Sensibility" Chapter 22 Further Reading Chapter 23 Part IV: What Is Art? Chapter 24 Introduction Chapter 25 From The Principles of Art Chapter 26 "An Aesthetic Definition of Art" Chapter 27 From The Art Circle Chapter 28 "Non-Western Art and Art's Definition" Chapter 29 Further Reading Chapter 30 Part V: What Kind of Object is a Work of Art? Chapter 31 Introduction Chapter 32 From Art its Objects Chapter 33 "Interpretation: Process and Structure" Chapter 34 "Musical Works as Eternal Types" Chapter 35 "Types, Indicated and Initiated" Chapter 36 Further Reading Chapter 37 Part VI: Interpretation and the Problem of the Relevant Intention Chapter 38 Introduction Chapter 39 "An Intentional Demonstration" Chapter 40 "A Paradox in Intentionalism" Chapter 41 "On What a Text Is and How It Means" Chapter 42 "Allusion and Intention in Popular Art" Chapter 43 Further Reading Chapter 44 Part VII: Representation: Fiction Chapter 45 Introduction Chapter 46 "The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse" Chapter 47 "What is Fiction?" Chapter 48 "How Can We Fear and Pity Fictions?" Chapter 49 "Spelunking, Simulation, and Slime: On Being Moved by Fiction" Chapter 50 Further Reading Chapter 51 Part VIII: Representation: Depiction Chapter 52 Introduction Chapter 53 "Seeing-as, Seeing-in, and Pictorial Representation" Chapter 54 "Pictorial Recognition" Chapter 55 "Pictorial Art and Visual Experience" Chapter 56 Further Reading Chapter 57 Part IX: Expressiveness in Music Chapter 58 Introduction Chapter 59 From The Beautiful in Music Chapter 60 From Musical Meaning and Expression Chapter 61 From Deeper than Reason Chapter 62 Further Reading Chapter 63 Part X: Artistic Value Chapter 64 Introduction Chapter 65 "Aesthetic Judgment, Principles, and Properties" Chapter 66 "Art and Interaction" Chapter 67 "Empiricism and the Heresy of the Separable Value" Chapter 68 Further Reading Chapter 69 Part XI: Ethical, Aesthetic and Artistic Value Chapter 70 Introduction Chapter 71 "The Ethical Criticism of Art" Chapter 72 "Tragedy and Moral Value" Chapter 73 "Art, Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)moral Character of Art Works and Inter-Relations to Artistic Value" Chapter 74 "Aesthetics as a Guide to Ethics" Chapter 75 Further Reading Chapter 76 Part XII: The Humanly Made Environment Chapter 77 Introduction Chapter 78 "Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism" Chapter 79 "Art and Architecture" Chapter 80 "Reconsidering the Aesthetics of Architecture" Chapter 81 Further Reading Chapter 82 Index

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Book SynopsisA study of Continental philosophy and aesthetics, from Kant to the present day, discussing the work and aesthetic theory of such figures as Heidegger, Derrida and Adorno.Trade Review'Bernstein has made a much-needed attempt to place art and its relationship to aesthetics back in the foreground of philosophical historical and political debate.' British Journal of AestheticsTable of ContentsIntroduction: Aesthetic Alienation. 1. Memorial Aesthetics: Kant's Critique of Judgement. 2. The Genius of Being: Heidegger's The Origin of the Work of Art. 3. The Deconstructive Sublime: Derrida's The Truth in Painting. 4. Constellations of Concept and Intuition: Adorno's Aesthetic Theory. 5. Old Gods Ascending: Disintegration and Speculation in Aesthetic Theory.

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Book SynopsisArt and Social Theory provides a comprehensive introduction to sociological studies of the arts. It examines the central debates of social theorists and sociologists about the place of the arts in society and the social significance of aesthetics. provides a comprehensive introduction to sociological study of art; examines the central debates of social theorists and sociologists about the place of the arts in society and the social significance of aesthetics; discusses the meaning of the arts in relation to changing cultural institutions and socio-economic structures; explores questions of aesthetic value and cultural politics, taste and social class, money and patronage, ideology and utopia, myth and popular culture, and the meaning of modernism and postmodernism; presents lucid accounts of leading social theorists of the arts from Weber, Simmel, Benjamin, Kracauer and the Frankfurt School to Foucault, Bourdieu, HabermaTrade Review"This timely book successfully fills what has become a yawning gap in the literature. Harrington renews our interest in the classical problems of sociology of art, setting them in the contexts of more recent social changes and developments in social theory, including globalization and postmodern thinking." Gordon Fyfe, Keele UniversityTable of ContentsList of Illustrations. Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Conceptions and Approaches. Metaphysical conceptions of art. Sociological conceptions of art. Humanistic art history. Marxist social history of art. Cultural studies, cultural materialism and postmodernism. Institutional theories of art in analytical philosophy. Anthropological studies of art. Empirical sociology of contemporary arts institutions. Conclusion. 2. Aesthetic Value and Political Value. Value-relevance and value-neutrality. Liberal-humanistic art scholarship. Socialist criticism. Feminist criticism. Postcolonial criticism. Sociology, politics and aesthetics. Conclusion. 3 Production and Socioeconomic Structure. Art and social class structure: Marxist theories. Art and social evolution: Pitirim Sorokin, Arnold Hauser and Robert Witkin. Patronage: the church, the monarchy and the nobility. Arts markets in early modern Europe. The state and the market in twentieth-century arts funding. Conclusion. 4. Consumption and Aesthetic Autonomy. Kantian aesthetics. Leisure, gentility and aesthetic autonomy. Art and cultural capital: Pierre Bourdieu. Arts consumption in the US. Aesthetic validity versus the sociology of taste. Conclusion. 5. Ideology and Utopia. Origins of the critique of mass culture. Art in German idealist philosophy. Marx, Bloch and Lukács. Art, myth and religion in nineteenth-century high culture. Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche. Sublimation and civilization: Sigmund Freud and Herbert Marcuse. Conclusion. 6. Modernity and Modernism. Aesthetic modernity after Charles Baudelaire. Max Weber: rationalization and the aesthetic sphere. Georg Simmel: money, style and sociability. Walter Benjamin: mourning and the messianic. Siegfried Kracauer: the redemption of physical reality. Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School reassessed. Conclusion. 7. Postmodernism and After. German aesthetic thought since 1945: from Heidegger to Habermas. French aesthetic thought since 1945: literary thinking after the Marquis de Sade. Postmodernism. Beyond postmodernism: autonomy and reflexivity. Globalization and the arts. Conclusion. Further Reading. References. Index

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