New, completely revised and re-written edition. Offers a detailed but accessible account of the vital German philosophical tradition of thinking about art and the self. Looks at recent historical research and contemporary arguments in philosophy and theory in the humanities, following the path of German philosophy from Kant, via Fichte and Holderlin, the early Romantics, Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher, to Nietzsche. Develops the approaches to subjectivity, aesthetics, music and language in relation to new theoretical developments bridging the divide between the continental and analytical traditions of philosophy. The huge growth of interest in German philosophy as a resource for re-thinking both literary and cultural theory, and contemporary philosophy will make this an indispensable read -- .

Artistic Research Methodology argues for artistic research as a context-aware and historical process that works inside-in, beginning and ending with acts committed within an artistic practice. An artistic researcher has three intertwined tasks. First, she needs to develop and perfect her own artistic skills, vision and conceptual thinking. This happens by developing a vocabulary for not only making but also writing and speaking about art. Second, an artistic researcher has to contribute to academia and the "invisible colleges" around the world by proposing an argument in the form of a thesis, a narrative; and in so doing helping to build a community of artistic research and the bodies of knowledge these communities rely on. Third, she must communicate with practicing artists and the larger public, performing what one could call "audience education". There is no way of being an engaged and committed partner in a community without taking sides, without getting entangled in issues of power. Consequently, the methodology of artistic research has to be responsive both to the requirements of the practice and the traditions of science. Here the embedded nature of the knowledge produced through artistic research becomes evident. Artistic Research Methodology is essential reading for university courses in art, art education, media and social sciences.

With the emerging dominance of digital technology, the time is ripe to reconsider the nature of the image. Some say that there is no longer a phenomenal image, only disembodied information (0-1) waiting to be configured. For photography, this implies that a faith in the principle of an "evidential force" of the impossibility of doubting that the subject was before the lens is no longer plausible. Technologically speaking, we have arrived at a point where the manipulation of the image is an ever-present possibility, when once it was difficult, if not impossible.

What are the key moments in the genealogy of the Western image which might illuminate the present status of the image? And what exactly is the situation to which we have arrived as far as the image is concerned? These are the questions guiding the reflections in this book. In it we move, in Part 1, from a study of the Greek to the Byzantine image, from the Renaissance image and the image in the Enlightenment to the image as it emerges in the Industrial Revolution.

Part 2 examines key aspects of the image today, such as the digital and the cinema image, as well as the work of philosophers of the image, including: Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Paul Sartre and Bernard Stiegler. "

The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice investigates the widely debated, deeply flawed yet influential concept of the uncanny through the lens of feminist theory and contemporary art practice. Not merely a subversive strategy but a cipher of the fraught but fertile dialogue between feminism and psychoanalysis, the uncanny makes an ideal vehicle for an arrangement marked by ambivalence and acts as a constant reminder that feminism and psychoanalysis are never quite at home with one another. The Feminist Uncanny begins by charting the uncanniness of femininity in foundational psychoanalytic texts by Ernst Jentsch, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Mladen Dolar, and contextually introduces a range of feminist responses and appropriations by Helene Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Sarah Kofman, among others. The book also offers thematically organised interpretations of famous artworks and practices informed by feminism, including Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, Faith Ringgold's story quilts and Susan Hiller's 'paraconceptualism', as well as less well-known practice, such as the Women's Postal Art Even (Feministo) and the photomontages of Maud Sulter. Dead (lexicalised) metaphors, unhomely domesticity, identity and (dis)identification, and the tension between family stories and art's histories are examined in and from the perspective of different artistic and critical practices, illustrating different aspects of the feminist uncanny. Through a 'partisan' yet comprehensive critical review of the fascinating concept of the uncanny, The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice proposes a new concept, the feminist uncanny, which it upholds as one of the most enduring legacies of the Women's Liberation Movement in contemporary art theory and practice.

Kierkegaard's Concepts is a comprehensive, multi-volume survey of the key concepts and categories that inform Kierkegaard's writings. Each article is a substantial, original piece of scholarship, which discusses the etymology and lexical meaning of the relevant Danish term, traces the development of the concept over the course of the authorship, and explains how it functions in the wider context of Kierkegaard's thought. Concepts have been selected on the basis of their importance for Kierkegaard's contributions to philosophy, theology, the social sciences, literature and aesthetics, thereby making this volume an ideal reference work for students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines.

Originally published in Italian in 2010, this book is the first to address the theory of atmospheres in a thorough and systematic way. It examines the role of atmospheres in daily life, and defines their main characteristics. Outlining the typical phenomenological situations in which we experience atmospheres, it assesses their impact on contemporary aesthetics. It puts forward a philosophical approach which systematises a constellation of affects and climates, finds patterns in the emotional tones of different spaces (affordances) and assesses their impact on the felt body. It also critically discusses the spatial turn invoked by several of the social sciences, and argues that there is a need for a non-psychologistic rethinking of the philosophy of emotions. It provides a history of the term 'atmosphere' and of the concepts anticipating its meaning (genius loci, aura, Stimmung, numinous, emotional design and ambiance), and examines the main ontological characteristics of atmospheres and their principal phenomenological characteristics. It concludes by showing how atmospheres affect our emotions, our bodies' reactions, our state of mind and, as a result, our behaviour and judgments. Griffero assesses how atmospheres are more effective than we have been rationally willing to admit, and to what extent traditional aesthetics, unilaterally oriented towards art, has underestimated this truth.

Listening is a social process. Even apparently trivial acts of listening are expert performances of acquired cognitive and bodily habits. Contemporary scholars acknowledge this fact with the notion that there are "auditory cultures." In the fourth century BCE, Greek philosophers recognized a similar phenomenon in music, which they treated as a privileged site for the cultural manufacture of sensory capabilities, and proof that in a traditional culture perception could be ordered, regular, and reliable. This approachable and elegantly written book tells the story of how music became a vital topic for understanding the senses and their role in the creation of knowledge. Focussing in particular on discussions of music and sensation in Plato and Aristoxenus, Sean Gurd explores a crucial early chapter in the history of hearing and gently raises critical questions about how aesthetic traditionalism and sensory certainty can be joined together in a mutually reinforcing symbiosis.

Across the academy, scholars are debating the question of what bearing scientific inquiry has upon the humanities. The latest addition to the AFI Film Readers series, Cognitive Media Theory takes up this question in the context of film and media studies. This collection of essays by internationally recognized researchers in film and media studies, psychology, and philosophy offers film and media scholars and advanced students an introduction to contemporary cognitive media theory-an approach to the study of diverse media forms and content that draws upon both the methods and explanations of the sciences and the humanities. Exploring topics that range from color perception to the moral appraisal of characters to our interactive engagement with videogames, Cognitive Media Theory showcases the richness and diversity of cognitivist research. This volume will be of interest not only to students and scholars of film and media, but to anyone interested in the possibility of a productive relationship between the sciences and humanities.

Shadow Philosophy: Plato's Cave and Cinema is an accessible and exciting new contribution to film-philosophy, which shows that to take film seriously is also to engage with the fundamental questions of philosophy. Nathan Andersen brings Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange into philosophical conversation with Plato's Republic, comparing their contributions to themes such as the nature of experience and meaning, the character of justice, the contrast between appearance and reality, the importance of art, and the impact of images. At the heart of the book is a novel account of the analogy between Plato's allegory of the cave and cinema, developed in conjunction with a provocative interpretation of the most powerful image from A Clockwork Orange, in which the lead character is strapped to a chair and forced to watch violent films. Key features of the book include: a comprehensive bibliography of suggested readings on Plato, on film, on philosophy, and on the philosophy of film a list of suggested films that can be explored following the approach in this book, including brief descriptions of each film, and suggestions regarding its philosophical implications a summary of Plato's Republic, book by book, highlighting both dramatic context and subject matter. Offering a close reading of the controversial classic film A Clockwork Orange, and an introductory account of the central themes of the philosophical classic The Republic, this book will be of interest to both scholars and students of philosophy and film, as well as to readers of Plato and fans of Stanley Kubrick.

The hope for intimacy lies deep within us all. That moment of feeling uniquely understood, the antidote to isolation, is what gives us value, validation and self-belief. But as Ziyad Marar shows in this fascinating and engaging study, intimacy is a tricky business. The prevalence of social media, for example, is a sign of our desire for human connection, yet is a symptom of how little we truly achieve it. Often confused with love, intimacy is in many ways more important. Marar's investigation and celebration of this elusive but profound human experience shows how intimacy is central to a life well lived. But how do we spot the real thing? Marar helpfully identifies a key set of ingredients - reciprocity, conspiracy, heightened emotion, kindness - that when brought together enable the strongest experiences of intimacy. Without these four characteristics in the mix we are experiencing something less, or something else. Drawing on a wide range of sources - from key thinkers, as well as telling examples from familiar films and novels - Marar illustrates the subtlety and intricacies of intimacy and shows how closely it is bound up with notions of trust, control, risk and our own insecurities. Intimacy, argues Marar, is a necessary component of a fulfilled life. Yet we should not take for granted that we know what it is and how to get it. A better understanding of this powerful experience and the many barriers to achieving it may just help us to brave the search for it. For anyone bold enough to do so, which should be all of us, Intimacy is required reading.

This book investigates the notion of beauty in participatory art, an interdisciplinary form that necessitates the audience's agential participation and that is often seen in interactive art and technology-driven media installations. After considering established theories of beauty, for example, Plato, Alison, Hume, Kant, Gadamer and Santayana through to McMahon and Sartwell, Heinrich argues that the experience of beauty in participatory art demands a revised notion of beauty; a conception that accounts for the performative and ludic turn within various art forms and which is, in a broader sense, a notion of beauty suited to a participatory and technology-saturated culture. Through case studies of participatory art, he provides an art-theoretical approach to the concept of performative beauty; an approach that is then applied to the wider context of media and design artefacts.

In this original and far-reaching contribution to the philosophy of religion, Brian R. Clack examines the manner in which religious belief emerges from the turbulence and anxiety of human existence. Taking his cue from Freud's suggestion that human life is so hard to bear that it requires nothing short of cultural and psychological palliative care, Clack explores each of the 'palliative measures' Freud catalogues - intoxicants, religion, art and love - and evaluates their role in the mitigation of suffering and the provision of the assistance required for an endurable life. This examination provides the context for an investigation into the meaning and function of religious belief when considered as a palliative. Clack initially subjects religion to ferocious critique, defending the psychoanalytic judgment that religious beliefs operate as wish-fulfilling illusions, but then elaborates a revised understanding of religion, one in which comforting illusions are banished and in which religious belief faces up to reality and reconciles us both to the pains and disappointments of existence and to our nullity and inevitable annihilation. in this genuinely interdisciplinary work, Clack breaks new ground by using detailed explorations of the phenomena of drug-use, romantic love and the enjoyment of art in order to throw light on the meaning and nature of religion. This book will be vital reading for anyone concerned with the fundamental questions of religious belief, the psychoanalytic approach to culture, or simply the unavoidable existential problems lying at the very heart of human life.

In this original and far-reaching contribution to the philosophy of religion, Brian R. Clack examines the manner in which religious belief emerges from the turbulence and anxiety of human existence. Taking his cue from Freud's suggestion that human life is so hard to bear that it requires nothing short of cultural and psychological palliative care, Clack explores each of the 'palliative measures' Freud catalogues - intoxicants, religion, art and love - and evaluates their role in the mitigation of suffering and the provision of the assistance required for an endurable life. This examination provides the context for an investigation into the meaning and function of religious belief when considered as a palliative. Clack initially subjects religion to ferocious critique, defending the psychoanalytic judgment that religious beliefs operate as wish-fulfilling illusions, but then elaborates a revised understanding of religion, one in which comforting illusions are banished and in which religious belief faces up to reality and reconciles us both to the pains and disappointments of existence and to our nullity and inevitable annihilation. in this genuinely interdisciplinary work, Clack breaks new ground by using detailed explorations of the phenomena of drug-use, romantic love and the enjoyment of art in order to throw light on the meaning and nature of religion. This book will be vital reading for anyone concerned with the fundamental questions of religious belief, the psychoanalytic approach to culture, or simply the unavoidable existential problems lying at the very heart of human life.

Aesthetics 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 theory of modernity. Aesthetics and Modernity collects the essential essays of Agnes Heller, and is a must-read for anyone interested in Heller's major contributions to philosophy.

Widely regarded as one of the foremost cultural critics of the last century, Walter Benjamin's relation to Modernism has largely been understood in the context of his reception of the aesthetic theories of Early German Romanticism and his associated interest in avant-garde Surrealism. But this Romantic understanding only gives half the picture. Running through Benjamin's thought is also a critique of Romanticism, developed in conjunction with a positive engagement with the philosophical, artistic and historical writings of J. W. von Goethe. In demonstrating the significance of these Goethean elements, this book challenges the dominant understanding of Benjamin's philosophy as essentially Romantic and instead proposes that Goethe's Classicism, conceived as the counterpoint to Romanticism, permits a corrective to the latter's deficiencies. Benjamin's Modernist concept of criticism, it is argued, is constituted in the movement between these polarities of Romanticism and Classicism. Conversely, placing Goethe's Classicism in relation to Benjamin's practice of literary criticism reveals historical tensions with Romanticism that constitute the untimely - indeed, it will be argued, cinematic - Modernism of his work. Adopting a transcritical approach, this book alternates between Benjamin and Goethe in relation to the experiences of colour, language and technology, assembling a constellation of philosophical and artistic figures between them, including the writings of Kant, Nietzsche, Cohen, Deleuze, Koselleck, Klages, and the work of Grunewald, Marees, Klee, Turner, Hulme, Eisenstein, Tretyakov, and Murnau.

The Mahabharata is at once an archive and a living text, a sourcebook complete by itself and an open text perennially under construction. Driving home this striking contemporary relevance of the famous Indian epic, Mahabharata Now focuses on the issues of narration, aesthetics and ethics, as also their interlinkages. The cross-disciplinary essays in the volume imaginatively re-interpret the 'timeless' classic in the light of the pre-modern Indian narrative styles, poetics, aesthetic codes, and moral puzzles; the Western theories on modern ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy of science; and the contemporary social, ethical and political concerns. The essays are all united in their effort to situate the Mahabharata in the context of here and now without violating the sanctity of the 'written text' as we have it today. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of Indian and comparative philosophy, Indian and comparative literature, cultural studies, and history.

Hume's Aesthetic Theory examines the neglected area of the development of aesthetics in empiricist thinking, exploring the link between the empiricist background of aesthetics in the eighteenth century and the work of David Hume. This is a major contribution to our understanding of Hume's general philosophy and provides fresh insights into the history of aesthetics.

This book introduces narrative justice, a new theory of aesthetic education - the thesis that the cultivation of aesthetic or artistic sensibility can both improve moral character and achieve political justice. The author argues that there is a subcategory of narrative representations that provide moral knowledge regardless of their categorisation as fiction or non-fiction, and which therefore can be employed as a means of moral improvement. McGregor applies this narrative ethics to the criminology of inhumanity, including both crimes against humanity and terrorism. Expanding on the methodology of narrative criminology, he demonstrates that narrative representations can be employed to evaluate responsibility for inhumanity, to understand the psychology of inhumanity, and to undermine inhumanity - and are thus a means to the end of opposing injustice. He concludes that the cultivation of narrative sensibility is an important tool for both moral improvement and political justice.

This book is a reconstruction and presentation of the fundamental assumptions of the so-called weak thought, as elaborated mainly by the Italian hermeneutical philosopher Gianni Vattimo and the Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica in his ontology. Both Noica and Vattimo focus on all that is existentially fragile, deficient, crippled or defective. The way in which weak being manifests itself can be best expressed by using the concept of the trace. Some motifs of weak thought serve to reinterpret certain fundamental concepts of poetics, firstly, the concept of mimesis, treated here as a kind of tracing, and secondly, the concept of the textual subject as a trace. The book also describes these tendencies in modern literature in which the intuition of weak being has most fully expressed itself. In general terms, this intuition is that of a reality that has lost its substantiality and essentiality. This intuition is most frequently expressed by the motif of the trace in its various different meanings: as the imprint, the remnant, the sign-message.

In The Aesthetics of Grace: Philosophy, Art, and Nature, Raffaele Milani traces the fascinating history of the idea of 'grace' from ancient times to the 1700s. Although this term has been displaced by other concepts with the advent of modernism and postmodernism, the complex ideas related to the notion of 'grace' remain an important aesthetic category, and Milani presents an impressive panorama of reflections on and interpretations of the subject. The subtitle of the work indicates the broad scope of a study that recounts the origins of the term in Latin gratias (favor, regard, or gift), corresponding to the Greek Kharites (givers of beauty and charm). The volume then goes on to examine the Middle Ages, when the concept acquires a more specifically religious meaning (divine mercy, thanks), the Renaissance, when the terms 'gracefulness' and 'elegance' come to dominate in the treatises of the time, and the Ages of Romanticism and Neoclassicism, with their particular treatment of the topic. In the process, Milani meditates on the visual representations of these multiple meanings in the form of second-century frescoes, fifteenth-century paintings by Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, Da Vinci, Mantegna, Correggio, and Carracci, seventeenth-century canvases by Poussin and sculptures by Bernini, and eighteenth-century sculptures by Antonio Canova and paintings by Fragonard. This engaging work weaves with skill and subtlety philosophical, theological, and artistic ideas into a stimulating tapestry.

Betrayal has never gone out of fashion. It is a ubiquitous phenomenon - from antiquity to the present, from the realm of politics to the most personal relationships. This book gathers essays by scholars from the fields of philosophy, comparative literature, classics, English literature, German studies and film studies to develop a fresh dialogue on betrayal as a problem that, above all, concerns representation. In contradistinction to approaches that privilege a notion of betrayal as a political or personal event, the working premise of this book is that all betrayals presuppose representational strategies. What are the conditions, structures, masks and moves that allow one to play false? This question is posed with special attention to the theological, political, ethical and theatrical dimensions of betrayal, as they emerge in specific texts throughout the Western tradition. Works by Chariton, Seneca, Chaucer, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Kant, Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, Kleist, Hamsun, Pound, Benjamin, Borges, Koestler, Roth, Bruno Doessekker alias Binjamin Wilkomirski and Fassbinder take centre stage in these diverse examinations of betrayal.

John Dewey was the most celebrated and publicly engaged American philosopher in the twentieth century. His naturalistic theory of "experience" generated new approaches to education and democracy and re-grounded philosophy's search for truth in the needs of life as it is shared and lived. However, interpretations of Dewey after the linguistic turn have either obscured or rejected the considerable role that he gives to the non-discursive dimension of experience. In Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious: The Vital Depths of Experience, Bethany Henning argues that much classical American philosophy implicitly recognizes an unconscious dimension of mind that is distinct from Freud's theory. Although the unconscious that emerges within American thought has never been treated systematically, it found its fullest expression in Dewey's work, particularly in his theory of aesthetic experience. This dimension of mind illuminates the continuity between nature and culture, and it provides us with an account of why artwork is often successful at communicating meanings from the ecological and intimate dimensions of life, where discourse often fails. If the relationship between the human and the organic world has emerged as the definitive question of twenty-first century life, then the aesthetic unconscious stands as a resource for our ecological and intimate well-being.

Each of us, waking in the morning, has to open the world we have woken into. We have to endow meaning to people, objects and tasks, have to secure a place in the chaos of time passing. When opening their eyes during the palpable reality of a dream, a person will dream beyond the dream, will carry over meanings and experiences from one sphere to another. The author of these collected essays puts various strategies under the microscope which we deploy to make the world material, analyzing the mythical structures we use for this purpose - interpreting anew their changing guise in the contemporary. Being witness to the changing material desert of post-Soviet Eastern Europe transforming into the over-saturated jungle of modern capitalism, he offers a unique window into the seemingly obvious - only to unveil its manifold human aspects of the hidden.

Although various aesthetic themes have preoccupied many major philosophers, from Plato to Goodman, the central questions of the philosophy of art have remained ill-defined. This book gives a concise and systematic account of the leading philosophical ideas about art and aesthetics from ancient times to the present day, and goes on to propose a new theory of aesthetic satisfaction and artistic abilities.

Bringing some of the insights of modern critical theory to bear on a great deal of information about Pound's activities as a literary critic (some of it made available only recently), K.K. Ruthven provides a provocative re-reading of a major modernist writer who dominated the discourse of modernism.