In this volume, Baz offers a wide-ranging discussion of Wittgenstein's remarks on aspect-perception, with special focus on Wittgenstein's method. Baz starts out with an interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on aspects and continues with attempts to characterize and defend Wittgenstein's approach to the understanding and dissolution of philosophical difficulties. Baz ends with attempts to articulate-under the inspiration of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology-certain dissatisfactions, both with Wittgenstein's remarks on aspect perception, and with his philosophical approach more generally. On the way, Baz explores connections between Wittgenstein's remarks on aspects and Kant's aesthetics. He examines ways in which the remarks on aspects may be brought to bear on contemporary philosophical work on perception. He discusses some of the implications of Wittgenstein's work on aspect perception for issues in moral philosophy and the philosophy of action.

Originally published in 2004. Thanks to computer simulations science is beginning to understand complex natural processes such as the weather, earthquakes and the evolution of life. The Significance of Complexity deals with the importance of the sciences of complexity - for the humanities and theology. First, three scientists explain the science of complexity and illustrate it with concrete examples. Second, two scholars consider the concept of complexity and possible applications of complexity theory within the humanities, e.g. as a tool to understand the interplay between the artist, the work of art and the user in interactive art. Finally, three theologians ask what can be learned from the science of complexity for a religious understanding of humankind and the world. The Significance of Complexity is a pioneering work exploring the import of a fascinating new branch of science for human self-understanding. It caters for all those who are interested in relating science to the quest for the meaning of life.

Supposition is frequently invoked in many fields within philosophy, including aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and epistemology. However, there is a striking lack of consensus about the nature of supposition. What is supposition? Is supposition a sui generis type of mental state or is it reducible to some other type of mental state? These are the main questions Margherita Arcangeli explores in this book. She examines the characteristic features of supposition, along the dimensions of phenomenology and emotionality, among others, in a journey through the imaginative realm. An informed answer to the question "What is supposition?" must involve an analysis of imagination, since supposition is so often defined in opposition to the latter. She assesses rival explanations of supposition putting forward a novel view, according to which the proper way of seeing supposition is as a primitive type of imaginative state. Supposition and the Imaginative Realm: A Philosophical Inquiry will be of great interest to students of philosophy of psychology, aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and epistemology.

This book addresses how our revisionary practices account for relations between texts and how they are read. It offers an overarching philosophy of revision concerning works of fiction, fact, and faith, revealing unexpected insights about the philosophy of language, the metaphysics of fact and fiction, and the history and philosophy of science and religion. Using the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien as exemplars, the authors introduce a fundamental distinction between the purely physical and the linguistic aspects of texts. They then demonstrate how two competing theories of reference-descriptivism and referentialism-are instead constitutive of a single semantic account needed to explain all kinds of revision. The authors also propose their own metaphysical foundations of fiction and fact. The next part of the book brings the authors' philosophy of revision into dialogue with Thomas Kuhn's famous analysis of factual, and specifically scientific, change. It also discusses a complex episode in the history of paleontology, demonstrating how scientific and popular texts can diverge over time. Finally, the authors expand their philosophy of revision to religious texts, arguing that, rather than being distinct, such texts are always read as other kinds, that faith tends to be more important as evidence for religious texts than for others, and that the latter explains why religious communities tend to have remarkable historical longevity. Revising Fiction, Fact, and Faith offers a unique and comprehensive account of the philosophy of revision. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophy of literature, literary theory and criticism, and history and philosophy of science and religion.

Across sociology and cultural studies in particular, the concept of authenticity has begun to occupy a central role, yet in spite of its popularity as an ideal and philosophical value authenticity notably suffers from a certain vagueness, with work in this area tending to borrow ideas from outside of sociology, whilst failing to present empirical studies which centre on the concept itself. Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society addresses the problems surrounding this concept, offering a sociological analysis of it for the first time in order to provide readers in the social and cultural sciences with a clear conceptualization of authenticity and with a survey of original empirical studies focused on its experience, negotiation, and social relevance at the levels of self, culture and specific social settings.

New Waves in Philosophy of Science captures the diverse array of issues in the rapidly developing area of philosophy of science by bringing together a pool of talented young philosophers from across the globe to debate the field and show where it's heading.

This is the first comprehensive book-length introduction to the philosophy of Western music that fully integrates consideration of popular music and hybrid musical forms, especially song. Its author, Andrew Kania, begins by asking whether Bob Dylan should even have been eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature, given that he is a musician. This motivates a discussion of music as an artistic medium, and what philosophy has to contribute to our thinking about music. Chapters 2-5 investigate the most commonly defended sources of musical value: its emotional power, its form, and specifically musical features (such as pitch, rhythm, and harmony). In chapters 6-9, Kania explores issues arising from different musical practices, particularly work-performance (with a focus on classical music), improvisation (with a focus on jazz), and recording (with a focus on rock and pop). Chapter 10 examines the intersection of music and morality. The book ends with a consideration of what, ultimately, music is. Key Features Uses popular-song examples throughout, but also discusses a range of musical traditions (notably, rock, pop, classical, and jazz) Explains both philosophical and musical terms when they are first introduced Provides publicly accessible Spotify playlists of the musical examples discussed in the book Each chapter begins with an overview and ends with questions for testing comprehension and stimulating further thought, along with suggestions for further reading

Many philosophical accounts of reason are geared toward providing rational justifications ex post facto rather than accounting for the role reason plays in actu in the process of creative work. Moreover, when in actu accounts of reason are given, they are usually too narrow to describe the sort of high-level creative work that is involved in the composition of poetry or the creation of a scientific theory. This book suggests that the rudiments of a broader account are found in various German Idealist figures, most notably the philosopher-novelist-critic Friedrich Schlegel and the philosophical poet and novelist Friedrich Hoelderlin. However, German Idealism generally is subject to Hans Blumenberg 's secularization critique which provides a strong prima facie argument that the accounts of poetic reason suggested by Schlegel and Hoelderlin are indefensible. This book argues that confronting Blumenberg's secularization critique and his associated legitimation of modernity with a romantic conception of poetic reason requires revisions on both sides, and that the work of Lacan is especially well-suited to provide the conditions upon which a legitimation of poetic reason can be provided.

Aesthetics in Present Future: The Arts and the Technological Horizon collects essays by specialized scholars and a few artists, who focus on the issue of how deeply the arts change when conveyed by the new media (the web; 3D printers, videos, etc.) or also simply diffused by them. Every author shows to analyze the topic without glorifying nor criticizing this strong tendency. Their analyses proceed as descriptions, stating how both the virtual production and virtual communication change our attitudes toward what we call the arts. The scope of the topics goes from photography to cinema, to painting, from theatre to avant-guarde art and net art, construction of robots and simulation of brain functions. The result is an astonishing range of new possibilities for the arts and new perspectives regarding our knowledge of the world.

This book presents a new interpretation of the principle of utility in moral and political theory based on the writings of the classical utilitarians from Hume to J.S. Mill. Discussion of utility in writers such as Adam Smith, William Paley and Jeremy Bentham is included.

Contemporary discussions of the image like to emphasize art's societal functions. Few studies come close to answering why pictures and sculptures fascinate and intrigue regardless of any practical functions they might serve. In this original, thought-provoking study, Paul Crowther reveals the intrinsic significance of pictures and sculptures. To address the question of how painting becomes an art, Crowther uses the analytic philosophy of Richard Wollheim as a starting point. But to sufficiently answer the question, he makes an important link to a tradition much more successful in giving voice to the deeper ontology of visual art - existential phenomenology. The result is a work that demonstrates the reciprocal relationship between phenomenology and analytic aesthetics. To expand its ontological scope and solve the problem of expression, analytic aesthetics needs phenomenology; while to develop a sustained, critically balanced, and intellectually available ontology, phenomenology needs the discursive force and lucidity of analytic philosophy. This convincing case for a post-analytic phenomenology of art is an important advancement of contemporary discussions of the philosophy of art.

The book contains analyses and interpretations of multidimensional perspectives in philosophical, economical and psychological research on imagination. The authors analyse Russian (N. Bierdiajew) and French philosophy and anthropology (G. Bachelard, G. Durand), German conceptions (I. Kant's, F. Baader's, F. Schiller 's or Heideggerian interpretations) of the role of imagination in art, science and sociopolitical domains. Image and imagination play the main role in the contemporary social world. It is investigated by psychology, sociology and political sciences, and many subdisciplines of philosophy have their own traditions in approaches to image and imagination problem. The authors try to integrate the results of these research efforts.

American pragmatism is premised on the notion that to find out what something is, look to fruits rather than roots. But the thought of the classical pragmatists is itself the fruit, this book argues, of earlier literary experiments in American literature. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and (contemporaneously with the flowering of pragmatism) Henry James, each in their different ways prefigure at the level of literary form what emerge as the guiding ideas of classical pragmatism. Specifically, this link occurs in the way an experimental approach to composition informs the classical pragmatists' guiding and central idea that experience is not a matter of correspondence but of an ongoing attunement to the process. The link between experience and experiment is thus a way of gauging the deeper intellectual history by which literary experiments such as Emerson's Essays, Poe's invention of the detective story in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Melville's strange follow-up to Moby-Dick, Pierre, and Henry James's late style, find their philosophical expression in some of the guiding ideas of classical pragmatism: Charles Peirce's notion of the "abductive" inference; William James's notion of "Radical empiricism" and John Dewey's naturalist account of experience. The book frames this set of claims in relation to more contemporary debates within literary criticism and philosophy that have so far not been taken up in this context: putting Richard Poirier's account of the relation of pragmatism to literature into dialogue with Stanley Cavell's inheritance of Emerson as someone decidedly not a "pragmatist"; to the differences between classical pragmatists like William James and John Dewey and more recent, post-linguistic turn thinkers like Richard Rorty and Robert Brandom.

This volume builds on two recent developments in philosophy on the relationship between art and science: the notion of representation and the role of values in theory choice and the development of scientific theories. Its aim is to address questions regarding scientific creativity and imagination, the status of scientific performances-such as thought experiments and visual aids-and the role of aesthetic considerations in the context of discovery and justification of scientific theories. Several contributions focus on the concept of beauty as employed by practising scientists, the aesthetic factors at play in science and their role in decision making. Other essays address the question of scientific creativity and how aesthetic judgment resolves the problem of theory choice by employing aesthetic criteria and incorporating insights from both objectivism and subjectivism. The volume also features original perspectives on the role of the sublime in science and sheds light on the empirical work studying the experience of the sublime in science and its relation to the experience of understanding. The Aesthetics of Science tackles these topics from a variety of novel and thought-provoking angles. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in philosophy of science and aesthetics, as well as other subdisciplines such as epistemology and philosophy of mathematics.

Diotima's Children is a re-examination of the rationalist tradition of aesthetics which prevailed in Germany in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. It is partly an historical survey of the central figures and themes of this tradition But it is also a philosophical defense of some of its leading ideas, viz., that beauty plays an integral role in life, that aesthetic pleasure is the perception of perfection, that aesthetic rules are inevitable and valuable. It shows that the criticisms of Kant and Nietzsche of this tradition are largely unfounded. The rationalist tradition deserves re-examination because it is of great historical significance, marking the beginning of modern aesthetics, art criticism, and art history.

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.

Offering new and original readings of literature, poetry, and education as interpreted through the conceptual lens of Heidegger's later philosophy of the "Turn", this book helps readers understand Heidegger's later thought and presents new takes on how to engage the themes that emerged from his later writing. Suggesting novel ways to consider Heidegger's ideas on literature, poetry, and education, Magrini and Schwieler provide a deep understanding of the "Turn," a topic not often explored in contemporary Heideggerian scholarship. Their inter- and extra-disciplinary postmodern approaches offer a nuanced examination, taking into account Heidegger's controversial place in history, and filling a gap in educational research.

In the course of its long and tumultuous history the sublime has alternated between spatial and temporal definitions, from its conceptualization in terms of the grandeur and infinity of Nature (spatial), to its postmodern redefinition as an "event" (temporal), from its conceptualization in terms of our failure to "cognitively map" the decentered global network of capital or the rhizomatic structure of the postmetropolis (spatial), to its neurophenomenological redefinition in terms of the new temporality of presence produced by network/real time (temporal). This volume explores the place of the sublime in contemporary culture and the aesthetic, cultural, and political values coded in it. It offers a map of the contemporary sublime in terms of the limits-cinematic, cognitive, neurophysiological, technological, or environmental-of representation.

This book connects Schopenhauer's philosophy with transcendental idealism by exploring the distinctly Kantian roots of his pessimism. By clearly discerning four types of coming to knowledge, it demonstrates how Schopenhauer's epistemology can enlighten this connection with other areas of his philosophy. The individual chapters in this book discuss how these knowledge types-immediate or mediate, representational or non-representational-relate to Schopenhauer's metaphysics, ethics and action, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and asceticism. In each of these areas, a specific sense of pessimism serves to disarm a number of paradoxes and inconsistencies typically associated with Schopenhauer's philosophy. The Kantian Foundation of Schopenhauer's Pessismism shows how Schopenhauer's claim that he is a true successor to Kant can be justified.

This volume advances the contemporary debate on five central issues in the philosophy of film. These issues concern the relation between the art and technology of film, the nature of film realism, how narrative fiction films narrate, how we engage emotionally with films, and whether films can philosophize. Two new essays by leading figures in the field present different views on each issue. The paired essays contain significant points of both agreement and disagreement; new theories and frameworks are proposed at the same time as authors review the current state of debate. Given their combination of richness and clarity, the essays in this volume can effectively engage both students, undergraduate or graduate, and academic researchers.

Contemporary television has been marked by such exceptional programming that it is now common to hear claims that TV has finally become an art. In Appreciating the Art of Television, Nannicelli contends that televisual art is not a recent development, but has in fact existed for a long time. Yet despite the flourishing of two relevant academic subfields-the philosophy of film and television aesthetics-there is little scholarship on television, in general, as an art form. This book aims to provide scholars active in television aesthetics with a critical overview of the relevant philosophical literature, while also giving philosophers of film a particular account of the art of television that will hopefully spur further interest and debate. It offers the first sustained theoretical examination of what is involved in appreciating television as an art and how this bears on the practical business of television scholars, critics, students, and fans-namely the comprehension, interpretation, and evaluation of specific televisual artworks.

Charting the period that extends from the 1860s to the 1940s, this volume offers fresh perspectives on Aestheticism and Modernism. By acknowledging that both movements had a passion for the 'new', it goes beyond the alleged divide between Modernism and its predecessors. Rather than reading the modernist credo, 'Make it New!', as a desire to break away from the past, the authors of this book suggest reading it as a continuation and a reappropriation of the spirit of the 'New' that characterizes Aestheticism. Basing their arguments on recent reassessments of Aestheticism and Modernism and their articulation, contributors take up the challenge of interrogating the connections, continuities, and intersections between the two movements, thus revealing the working processes of cultural and aesthetic change so as to reassess the value of the new for each. Attending to well-known writers such as Waugh, Woolf, Richardson, Eliot, Pound, Ford, Symons, Wilde, and Hopkins, as well as to hitherto neglected figures such as Lucas Malet, L.S. Gibbon, Leonard Woolf, or George Egerton, they revise assumptions about Aestheticism and Modernism and their very definitions. This collection brings together international scholars specializing in Aestheticism or Modernism who push their analyses beyond their strict period of expertise and take both movements into account through exciting approaches that borrow from aesthetics, philosophy, or economics. The volume proposes a corrective to the traditional narratives of the history of Aestheticism and Modernism, revitalizing definitions of these movements and revealing new directions in aestheticist and modernist studies.

This book explores the place of art in the modern world, but instead of asking what art is, it begins with the question of art's appeal in modernity. Why is the appellation 'art' so desired for movies, food, and fashion, for example? Why is there the assumption of esteem when someone calls themselves an 'artist'? On the other hand, why is modern art so often seen as, at best, difficult and, at worst, not, in fact, art? Engaging with a broad range of theory, the author draws on the thought of Max Weber to offer an account of art's widespread appeal in terms of its constituting a self-contained value-sphere of meaning, which provides a feeling of tremendous salvation from the senseless routines of modern life. In this way, major theories on aesthetics in philosophy and sociology - including those of Kant, Hegel, Adorno and Bourdieu - are critically recast and incorporated into an overall explanation, and fundamental questions concerning the relation of art to politics and ethics are given innovative answers. A fresh examination of the development of the aesthetic sphere that shows how art came to be regarded as one of the last bastions of freedom and the highest human achievement, and, also, how it became increasingly isolated from the rest of society, The Appeal of Art in Modernity will appeal to scholars of philosophy, social theory, and sociology with interests in art, modernity, and Weber.

Lacan and the Formulae of Sexuation provides the first critical reading of Lacan's formulae of sexuation, examining both their logical consistency and clinical consequences. Are there two different entities named Man and Woman, separated by the gulf of sexual difference? Or is it better to conceive of this difference as something purely relative, each human being situated on a sort of continuum from more or less 'man' to more or less 'woman'? Sigmund Freud established the strange way through which sexuality determines being human: his concept of drive was no longer the heteronormative sexual instinct used by the psychiatrists of his time. With his provocative formula according to which 'there is no sexual relationship', Lacan has reinforced this perspective, combining logic and sexuality through the invention of a new operator, the concept 'not all', which points to a form of incompleteness at stake in his 'formulae of sexuation'. This book examines how these formulae have been constructed, and how we should read them in connection with, on one hand, their own logical consistency (a logical square different from Aristotelian tradition) and, on the other hand, a 'part object' in a very different sense to Melanie Klein's. The book also investigates the underlying logic of clinical vignettes, so much in favour in psychoanalytical literature today. The book represents essential reading for Lacanian psychoanalysts, as well as researchers at the cross-section of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and gender studies.