Description
Book SynopsisThe Baltic philosopher Vasily Sesemann (1884-1963), rooted in the Classics and influenced but not dominated by Kant, Herder, Bergson, Husserl, and Lossky, was a first-rate scholar in the fields of aesthetics, epistemology, logic, and history of philosophy. But he is still relatively unknown internationally because he wrote mostly in Lithuanian and some of his many works are only now being translated into English. This successor volume to his Aesthetics collects eight noteworthy essays, ranging from the scholarly to the popular, on aesthetics, aesthetic education, national culture, and theory of knowledge. They reveal a sympathetic and responsive mind equally at home in Ancient Greek and modern French, German, and Russian philosophy; and capable both of untendentiously expounding their dominant ideas and fruitfully anticipating newer developments even as the latter began to take shape in early-to-mid-20th-century Western European philosophy. Hallmarks of Sesemann’s thought are the Heraclitean preference for becoming (dynamism, change) over being (stasis, timelessness) and the idea that any culture, in order to survive and grow, must be intellectually deep and open to foreign influences. This insight has crucial relevance to the debates about multiculturalism today.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Editors’ Preface: Sighting and Sizing Up Sesemann Arūnas Sverdiolas: Vasily Sesemann: The Other and Time Aesthetic Evaluation in the History of Art (On the Relation between Art History and Aesthetics) Aesthetics Aesthetic Culture and Aesthetic Education Physical Education and Aesthetic Culture Protecting the Culture and the Beauty of the Past The Issue of National Culture New Directions in Contemporary Epistemology A Review of Worobiow’s Book on Čiurlionis
