Despite its widely acknowledged importance in and beyond the thought of the Romantic period, the distinctive concept of the symbol articulated by such writers as Goethe and F. W. J. Schelling in Germany and S. T. Coleridge in England has defied adequate historical explanation. In contrast to previous scholarship, Nicholas Halmi's study provides such an explanation by relating the content of Romantic symbolist theory - often criticized as irrationalist - to the cultural needs of its time. Because its genealogical method eschews a single disciplinary perspective, this study is able to examine the Romantic concept of the symbol in a broader intellectual context than previous scholarship, a context ranging chronologically from classical antiquity to the present and encompassing literary criticism and theory, aesthetics, semiotics, theology, metaphysics, natural philosophy, astronomy, poetry, and the origins of landscape painting. The concept is thus revealed to be a specifically modern response to modern discontents, neither reverting to pre-modern modes of thought nor secularizing Christian theology, but countering Enlightenment dualisms with means bequeathed by the Enlightenment itself. This book seeks, in short, to do for the Romantic symbol what Percy Bysshe Shelley called on poets to do for the world: to lift from it its veil of familiarity.

This book describes the development of Proust's treatment of material objects from his earliest work

Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century brings together a range of international scholars for a reexamination of Ivan Goncharov's life and work through a twenty-first century critical lens. Contributions to the volume highlight Goncharov's service career, the complex and understudied manifestation of Realism in his work, the diverse philosophical threads that shape his novels, and the often colliding contexts of writer and imperial bureaucrat in the 1858 travel text Frigate Pallada. Chapters engage with approaches from post-colonial and queer studies, theories of genre and the novel, desire, laughter, technology, and mobility and travel.

Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri present a lively introduction to one of the world's richest intellectual traditions: the philosophy of classical India. They begin with the earliest extant literature, the Vedas, and the explanatory works that these inspired, known as Upanisads. They also discuss other famous texts of classical Vedic culture, especially the Mahabharata and its most notable section, the Bhagavad-Gita, alongside the rise of Buddhism and Jainism. In this opening section, Adamson and Ganeri emphasize the way that philosophy was practiced as a form of life in search of liberation from suffering. Next, the pair move on to the explosion of philosophical speculation devoted to foundational texts called 'sutras,' discussing such traditions as the logical and epistemological Nyaya school, the monism of Advaita Vedanta, and the spiritual discipline of Yoga. In the final section of the book, they chart further developments within Buddhism, highlighting Nagarjuna's radical critique of 'non-dependent' concepts and the no-self philosophy of mind found in authors like Dignaga, and within Jainism, focusing especially on its 'standpoint' epistemology. Unlike other introductions that cover the main schools and positions in classical Indian philosophy, Adamson and Ganeri's lively guide also pays attention to philosophical themes such as non-violence, political authority, and the status of women, while considering textual traditions typically left out of overviews of Indian thought, like the Carvaka school, Tantra, and aesthetic theory as well. Adamson and Ganeri conclude by focusing on the much-debated question of whether Indian philosophy may have influenced ancient Greek philosophy and, from there, evaluate the impact that this area of philosophy had on later Western thought.

In this first English translation of one of his most important works, " Statues: The Second Book of Foundations, "Michel Henry""presents a statue as more than a static entity. A statue for Serres is the basis for knowledge, society, the subject and object, the world and experience. Through his prescient analysis of statues and how we create and respond to art, Henry demonstrates how sacrificial art founded society and through this reflects on the centrality of death and the dead body to the human condition.Approaching the problem from multiple angles, Serres comments on Verne's "Around the Moon," Rodin's "The Gates of Hell," the Eiffel Tower, cemeteries, short stories by Maupassant, fables by La Fontaine, clothing and the paintings of Carpaccio, the Challenger disaster and Baal. Each section covers a different time period and statuary topic, ranging from four thousand years ago to 1986. Expository, lyrical, fictionalized and hallucinatory, "Statues" does not follow a linear time sequence but rather plays with time and place, history and story in order to provoke us into thinking in entirely new ways.Through mythic and poetic meditations on various kinds of descent into the underworld and new insights into the relation of the subject and object and their foundation in death, "Statues" contains great treasures and provocations for philosophers, literary critics, art historians and sociologists.

The aim of this book is to understand what Deleuze and Guattari mean by "art." Stephen Zepke argues that art, in their account, is an ontological term and an ontological practice that results in a new understanding of aesthetics. For Deleuze and Guattari understanding what art "is" means understanding how it works, what it does, how it "becomes," and finally, how it lives. This book illuminates these philosophers' discussion of ontology from the viewpoint of art-and vice versa-in a thorough questioning of aesthetic criteria as they are normally understood.

The main theme of this book is that art and an aesthetic sense of beauty is central to all aspects of Japanese life and that this was an important aspect of Japanese tradition and Japanese international success. The book covers such topics as natural beauty, gardens and flowers, architecture, applied art, manners and customs and many more areas of the Japanese

Georg Simmel (1858-1918), was a German sociologist of high regard who was in league with Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Though his most famous work is The Philosophy of Money, first published in 1916 in German, Rembrandt is one of Simmel's most important works. Answering such questions as 'What do we see in a work of art?' and 'What do Rembrandt's portraits tell us about human nature?' this study offers insights not only into art, but also into larger questions on culture, symbols and human relations. Previously, Rembrandt had never been translated into English, and now there are no other titles on art by Simmel in English available. For fans of Simmel and Rembrandt alike, this unique book offers a fresh understanding of their work.

Georg Simmel (1858-1918), was a German sociologist of high regard who was in league with Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Though his most famous work is The Philosophy of Money, first published in 1916 in German, Rembrandt is one of Simmel's most important works. Answering such questions as 'What do we see in a work of art?' and 'What do Rembrandt's portraits tell us about human nature?' this study offers insights not only into art, but also into larger questions on culture, symbols and human relations. Previously, Rembrandt had never been translated into English, and now there are no other titles on art by Simmel in English available. For fans of Simmel and Rembrandt alike, this unique book offers a fresh understanding of their work.

This book of expert essays explores the concept of the whole as it operates within the psychology of Jung, the philosophy of Deleuze, and selected areas of wider twentieth-century Western culture, which provided the context within which these two seminal thinkers worked. Addressing this topic from a variety of perspectives and disciplines and with an eye to contemporary social, political, and environmental crises, the contributors aim to clarify some of the epistemological and ethical issues surrounding attempts, such as those of Jung and Deleuze, to think in terms of the whole, whether the whole in question is a particular bounded system (such as an organism, person, society, or ecosystem) or, most broadly, reality as a whole. Jung, Deleuze, and the Problematic Whole will contribute to enhancing critical self-reflection among the many contemporary theorists and practitioners in whose work thinking in terms of the whole plays a significant role.

A provocative examination of the concept of the sublime from the eighteenth century to its reappearance within contemporary aesthetics and postmodern theory. It delivers a detailed account that traces the concept from the work of Edward Burke and his contemporaries through the Romantics and Kant to its reemergence in the writings of Lyotard and other postmodern thinkers. Although numerous authors have written books theorizing the sublime, this text stands alone as the only historical overview. Consequently, it fills an important gap in the current literature which has seen a recent explosion in writing about beauty. This is a lucid study written with wit and clarity. It will also be of great interest to students and scholars as the most authoritative account of the subject available.

Sublimity addresses the nature of the sublime experience itself, and the function that experience has played, and continues to play, within aesthetic discourse. The book both updates and revises existing treatments of the sublime in the eighteenth century, examines its neglected role in the nineteenth century aesthetics, and analyzes the significance of the modifications the concept has undergone in order to serve the interests of contemporary aesthetics. The book thus offers the most comprehensive coverage of the history of the sublime available.

Viewers in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were encouraged to forge connections between their physical and affective states when they experienced works of art. They believed that their bodies served a critical function in coming to know and make sense of the world around them, and intimately engaged themselves with works of art and architecture on a daily basis. This book examines how viewers in Medicean Florence were self-consciously cultivated to enhance their sensory appreciation of works of art and creatively self-fashion through somaesthetics. Mobilized as a technology for the production of knowledge with and through their bodies, viewers contributed to the essential meaning of Renaissance art and, in the process, bound themselves to others. By investigating the framework and practice of somaesthetic experience of works by Benozzo Gozzoli, Donatello, Benedetto Buglioni, Giorgio Vasari, and others in fifteenth- and sixteenth century Florence, the book approaches the viewer as a powerful tool that was used by patrons to shape identity and power in the Renaissance.

This book provides a critical assessment of Benjamin's writings on Franz Kafka and of Benjamin's related writings. Eliciting from Benjamin's writings a conception of philosophy that is political in its dissociation from - its becoming renegade in relation to, its philosophic shame about - established laws, norms, and forms, the book compares Benjamin's writings with relevant works by Agamben, Heidegger, Levinas, and others. In relating Benjamin's writings on Kafka to Benjamin's writings on politics, the study delineates a philosophic impetus in literature and argues that this impetus has potential political consequences. Finally, the book is critical of Benjamin's messianism insofar as it is oriented by the anticipated elimination of exceptions and distractions. Exceptions and distractions are, the book argues, precisely what literature, like other arts, brings to the fore. Hence the philosophic, and the political, importance of literature.

For over fifty years the concept of memory has played a crucial role in a large number of academic and societal debates. The Work of Forgetting: Or, How Can We Make the Future Possible? draws attention to the limits of the academic field of memory studies. It argues that the faculty of memory offers an inadequate response to the challenges of the present. The book sets up a dialogue between the philosophies of forgetting that underlie the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin and Gilles Deleuze, and the philosophies of memory that inform the work of Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. It builds on the idea that history is inseparable from a type of transience that cannot be counter-acted by the preserving work of memory and develops a new understanding of the phenomenon of forgetting in which the passage of time is asserted in thought and thus made productive.

Contemporary cultural practices have blurred and eroded traditional disciplinary boundaries of art and its discourses, and the ways in which they are taught. They have called into question the ideological premises and cultural assumptions on which traditional academic subjects were founded and which have underwritten the segregation between practice, pragmatic and speculative thought. The Scottish Theoros - Forum for Interdisciplinary Debate was jointly initiated by the Department of Philosophy and the School of Fine Art at the University of Dundee to create a space for dialogue between and across the various disciplines that are concerned with the study of visual arts: practice, aesthetics, theory, history and criticism. Theoros has initiated a series of international conferences bringing together professionals who are engaged in the research and teaching of art from different disciplinary perspectives. This volume contains selected contributions to the first Scottish Theoros conference on 'Aesthetics, Historicity and Practice', held in Dundee in 1998. Historicity marks the temporal nature of our existence and experience. It forms a central aspect in the making of and reflection on art. Here historicity is explored as a common ground for the integration of practice, critical thought and historical enquiry in the spaces of higher education and professional engagement.

Addressing Jean Rhys's composition and positioning of her fiction, this book invites and challenges us to read the tacit, silent and explicit textual bearings she offers and reveals new insights about the formation, scope and complexity of Rhys's experimental aesthetics. Tracing the distinctive and shifting evolution of Rhys's experimental aesthetics over her career, Sue Thomas explores Rhys's practices of composition in her fiction and drafts, as well as her self-reflective comment on her writing. The author examines patterns of interrelation, intertextuality, intermediality and allusion, both diachronic and synchronic, as well as the cultural histories entwined within them. Through close analysis of these, this book reveals new experimental, thematic, generic and political reaches of Rhys's fiction and sharpens our insight into her complex writerly affiliations and lineages.

"Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics" is an innovative attempt to reconceive the key concepts of religious studies through a reading with, and against, Walter Benjamin. Brent Plate deftly sifts through Benjamin's voluminous writings showing how his concepts of art, allegory, and experience undo traditional religious concepts such as myth, symbol, memory, narrative, creation, and redemption. Recasting religion as religious practice, as process and movement, Plate locates a Benjaminian materialist aesthetics, what the author calls an "allegorical aesthetics," in order to uncover sources and establish a new locus for the study of religion.
Placing the concept of an allegorical aesthetics into practice, Plate offers examinations of aesthetic productions such as Daniel Libeskind's architecture and Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades alongside religious developments such as the Hindu Bhakti movement and Jewish Kabbalistic thought.
"Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics" will be necessary reading for those interested in religion and the arts, aesthetics, and material culture.

Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics is an innovative attempt to reconceive the key concepts of religious studies through a reading with, and against, Walter Benjamin. Brent Plate deftly sifts through Benjamin's voluminous writings showing how his concepts of art, allegory, and experience undo traditional religious concepts such as myth, symbol, memory, narrative, creation, and redemption. Recasting religion as religious practice, as process and movement, Plate locates a Benjaminian materialist aesthetics, what the author calls an "allegorical aesthetics," in order to uncover sources and establish a new locus for the study of religion. Placing the concept of an allegorical aesthetics into practice, Plate offers examinations of aesthetic productions such as Daniel Libeskind's architecture and Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades alongside religious developments such as the Hindu Bhakti movement and Jewish Kabbalistic thought. Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics will be necessary reading for those interested in religion and the arts, aesthetics, and material culture.

The essays, collected by Berleant in this volume all express the impulse to reject the received wisdom of modern aesthetics: that art demands a mode of experience sharply different from others and unique to the aesthetic situation, and that the identity of the aesthetic lies in keeping it distinct from other kinds of human experience, such as the moral, the practical, and the social. Berleant shows, on the contrary, that the value, the insight, the force of art and the aesthetic are all enhanced and enlarged by recognizing their social and human role, and that this recognition contributes both to the significance of art and to its humanizing influence on what we like to call civilization.

In German Romanticism, the imagination is the site of the encounter between the subject and its environment; this book examines that encounter. Dealing with both literary and philosophical texts, it argues that the Romantic imagination performs a critique of rationalism. In reflecting on the fragmentary, the Romantics require the reader to both imagine and to question this as a hermeneutic process. As such, they understand writing to be an experiment in memory, both individual and cultural. This book is a study of the writings of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Novalis, Tieck and also of the utopian project of Romanticism itself. Methodologically, it is informed by what Foucault termed the archaeological approach to discourse as well as by psychoanalysis and literary theory. Examining points of contact as well of divergence between Kantian epistemology and Romantic nature philosophy, it also highlights the correspondences between literature, philosophy and science. Above all, it treats Romanticism as an experiment in the portrayal of ambivalent modern identity.

"The Move Beyond Form" focuses on works of art, music, literature, and film since 1960 that convey meaning through a creative undoing of form. Mary Joe Hughes suggests that cultural production of this time period conceived the world not so much as a series of separate entities, including art objects, but as an endless maze of relations and interconnections. By focusing attention on the in-between spaces, these works were able to provide nuance and meaning to a way of thinking that is difficult to demonstrate through language alone. This original study exposes the interrelationships in postmodernism, a perspective that is particularly relevant to contemporary culture, including globalization, electronic technology, and the echo chambers of the media.

On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements comprises eleven essays that explore the myriad ways in which popular music is entwined within social, cultural, musical, historical, and media networks. The authors discuss genres as diverse as mainstream pop, hip hop, classic rock, instrumental synthwave, video game music, amateur ukelele groups, and audiovisual remixes, while also considering the music's relationship to technological developments, various media and material(itie)s, and personal and social identity. The collection presents a range of different methodologies and theoretical positions, which results in an eclecticism that aptly demonstrates the breadth of contemporary popular music research. The chapters are divided into three major sections that address: wider theoretical and analytical issues ("Broad Strokes"), familiar repertoire or concepts from a new perspective ("Second Takes"), and the meanings to arise from music's connections with other media forms ("Audiovisual Entanglements").

Fred Orton's teaching and writing has always combined theoretical and formal-which is to say structural-analysis with historical research and reflection. This collection of essays brings together some of his most decisive contributions to thinking about fine art practice and rethinking the theory and methods of the social history of art. In this collection Orton brilliantly moves from Paul Cezanne to Jasper Johns, from the American cultural critic Harold Rosenberg to a discussion of Marx and Engels' notion of ideology. What emerges is more than an anthology, this collection offers a vivid demonstration of the way theory can work to generate new interpretations and unsettle old ones.

This book uncovers how we make meaning of abstraction, both historically and in present times, and examines abstract images as a visual language. The contributors demonstrate that abstraction is not primarily an artistic phenomenon, but rather arises from human beings' desire to imagine, understand and communicate complex, ineffable concepts in fields ranging from fine art and philosophy to technologies of data visualization, from cartography and medicine to astronomy. The book will be of interest to scholars working in image studies, visual studies, art history, philosophy and aesthetics.