Aesthetics, Misc

This paper examines whether a form of art can exist that entirely withholds judgement—that neither invites, permits, nor presupposes attribution. Drawing from the Judgemental Triad—Constructivity, Coherence, Resonance—we assess whether there is a philosophically viable concept of non-attributive aesthetics, wherein artistic phenomena resist structural meaning altogether. We argue that art, by definition, operates through resonance—even if fragmented or subverted. Thus, truly judgement-free art would be structurally indistinct from non-art or ontological noise. We conclude that all meaningful aesthetics require the potential for (...) judgement, even in its delay, refusal, or deconstruction. (shrink)

The System Model of Art is a relational threshold theory of art-entry. Something enters an art-system when it is expressively framed beyond bare function, mediated through form, and made encounterable; these conditions establish minimum art-status only — not artistic value, moral legitimacy, institutional recognition, authorship, ownership, or public access. The model's central contribution is not merely to classify art but to prevent classification from being mistaken for authority: the limits of the classificatory act are built into the theory of art-entry (...) itself, so recognizing something as art licenses no approval, access, reproduction, appropriation, or control. Expressive surplus serves as the anti-overbreadth device, requiring that alleged art-entry be salient, anchored, and encounter-guiding rather than merely declared. The account is developed against institutional, aesthetic, cluster, relational, AI-centered, and buck-passing theories, and tested on boundary cases including found objects, AI output, harmful art, and restricted or community-governed forms. (shrink)

Centers have been out of intellectual and political fashion, because they have been often oppressive. We both celebrate and worry about postmodern fragmentation as we enact it in our technology, while fearing hidden centralization. But centering is important. I would like to mull over some issues concerning centers and criticism.

Generative AI music platforms (e.g., Suno, Udio) and viral chart-topping AI-generated tracks (e.g., "Walk My Walk") have sparked industry upheaval and ontological questions: What is real music in the age of algorithmic creation? This paper applies Martin Heidegger’s philosophy to illuminate AI music’s implications. Drawing on The Origin of the Work of Art, authentic music emerges as poiesis: truth-disclosure (aletheia) through Dasein’s strife between world and earth—requiring lived thrown-projection and historical situatedness. Fully AI-generated music, by contrast, exemplifies Enframing (Gestell): reducing (...) creativity to calculative optimization and standing-reserve, fostering inauthentic “idle talk” (Das Man). Yet Heidegger’s “saving power” suggests reflection on this danger may provoke a turning: recentering music on performative unconcealment while subordinating AI as techne. Engaging Iain Thomson’s recent book, the paper argues generative AI threatens authenticity but harbors promise for rediscovering music’s world-disclosing essence. (shrink)

Structural Omission is a framework for realist painting developed for the post-certainty era of generative AI, when images can be produced at scale with a surface of total certainty. This essay argues that realism remains viable only by abandoning completion as its premise. Traditional realism, even at its best, carried an old promise: that completion was available in principle, and that the artist could deliver wholeness if they chose. Generative AI systems now manufacture that kind of closure faster, cheaper, and (...) more convincingly than any human hand. Structural Omission rebuilds realism on a different ground rooted in perception itself: perceptual limits are not an error in representation. They are the condition of representation. The framework formalizes planned, load-bearing incompleteness through three criteria—Ground (perceptual limits), Structure (structural incompleteness), and Consequence (narrative without resolution). Completion-biased image systems can imitate the look of omissions, but they usually treat gaps as a visual effect rather than structural absence. Rather than competing with algorithmic finish, Structural Omission treats partial visibility as the architecture holding the painting together. The result is realism that is accountable to human perception. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. Consider this scenario: you discover that an artwork you greatly admire, or a captivating novel that deeply moved you, is in fact the product of artificial intelligence, not a human’s work. Would your aesthetic judgment shift? Would you perceive the work differently? If so, why? The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) in the realm of art has sparked numerous philosophical questions related to the authorship and artistic intent behind AI-generated works. This paper explores the debate between viewing AI as (...) a tool employed by human artists and perceiving AI as a new form of artistic expression with minimal human involvement. While we often seek a human mind behind certain artwork, we may still appreciate and engage with works that lack this element but have aesthetic value nonetheless. The paper also considers the traditional concept of “implied author”, suggesting that readers or artwork viewers might construct an authorial presence from the work itself, regardless of its actual origin. It will be finally suggested how AI-generated art might change our perceptions of human authorship itself. (shrink)

This paper starts from the debates on whether the seemingly effortless creation of AI artworks, and by extension some Avant-Garde pieces, diminishes their artistic value. This leads to a broader inquiry into how effort, or the lack thereof, influences our perception of an artwork’s quality and significance. Traditionally, effort in art has been seen in two ways. On the one hand, a skilled artist’s work, which may appear effortless, is often valued for its apparent ease, reflecting genius or inspiration. On (...) the other hand, the Romantic era highlighted the artist’s internal struggle, shifting emphasis from technical proficiency to emotional and intellectual effort. Contemporary empirical research seems to confirm the existence of an “effort heuristic”, suggesting that artworks perceived as requiring more effort are generally valued higher. Finally, this paper suggests defining a notion of “distributed effort” as a category for the appreciation of content and artworks that are the product of complex influences, tradition, technological advancements. As a conclusion it is suggested to investigate the possibility of “artificial effort” in AI-generated art. (shrink)

Chapter 1 of the ongoing online publication "Artificial Aesthetics: A Critical Guide to AI, Media and Design", Lev Manovich and Emanuele Arielli Book information: Assume you're a designer, an architect, a photographer, a videographer, a curator, an art historian, a musician, a writer, an artist, or any other creative professional or student. Perhaps you're a digital content creator who works across multiple platforms. Alternatively, you could be an art historian, curator, or museum professional. You may be wondering how AI will (...) affect your professional area in general and your work and career. Our book offers intellectual tools to help us better see the future of creative fields. These tools come from philosophy of art, experimental psychology, media theory, digital culture studies and data science. The book is the first to combine these different perspectives together. We started the work on the book in summer 2019, exchanging numerous messages, commenting on each other ideas, and sharing drafts of sections. The final book is a result of this process. Although each chapter is written by one author, it reflects the discussions we had over 27 months. (shrink)

Chapter 3 of the ongoing publication "Artificial Aesthetics" Book information: Assume you're a designer, an architect, a photographer, a videographer, a curator, an art historian, a musician, a writer, an artist, or any other creative professional or student. Perhaps you're a digital content creator who works across multiple platforms. Alternatively, you could be an art historian, curator, or museum professional. You may be wondering how AI will affect your professional area in general and your work and career. Our book offers (...) intellectual tools to help us better see the future of creative fields. These tools come from philosophy of art, experimental psychology, media theory, digital culture studies and data science. The book is the first to combine these different perspectives together. We started the work on the book in summer 2019, exchanging numerous messages, commenting on each other ideas, and sharing drafts of sections. The final book is a result of this process. Although each chapter is written by one author, it reflects the discussions we had over 27 months. (shrink)

Chapter 8, "From Tools to Authors" of "Artificial Aesthetics" discusses the evolving role of AI in artistic creation, moving from a tool to a potential creative agent. It explores the concept of "extended aesthetics," where technology enhances both human creativity and perception. The chapter outlines different levels of AI autonomy and examines how this shift challenges traditional ideas of authorship, comparing AI collaborations to historical artistic practices. It raises questions about the value of effort in art, contrasting human struggle with (...) AI's apparent ease, and suggests that AI might ultimately reshape how we perceive creative intentionality and authorship. (shrink)

A chapter about Charles Taylor's philosophy from my forthcoming book, Hope in the Way It Flows: Interpretation, Creation, Faith. A shorter version appears in French as “Un âge religieux ?” in Bernard Gagnon, Domique Leydet, and Guillaume St-Laurent, eds., Débats autour de l’œuvre de Charles Taylor : Diversité, reconnaissance et sécularité (Quebec, QC: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2026); and parts of it also appear in my article "Charles Taylor's Philosophy of Deep Diversity" Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 65, no. 1 (...) (April 2026): 83-98. (shrink)

This chapter explores the relationship between memory and aesthetic appreciation by focusing on cases of the latter that are made possible by a specific form of memory, namely, episodic memory. We distinguish between five different kinds of cases in which episodic remembering could be said to be aesthetic in nature: Aesthetic Replay, Aesthetic Access, Aesthetic Progression, and Aesthetic Appreciation. We then focus on Aesthetic Appreciation, arguing that it constitutes a unique kind of aesthetic practice: the aesthetic of practice of appreciating (...) our personal pasts through memory. If correct, our argument shows that memory is an aesthetic faculty on a par with perception: it is a faculty that discloses aesthetic features of the world in a unique way. (shrink)

Now is a great time to be working in philosophy of popular music. Work is currently being done on rap and hip-hop, pop, E.D.M., country, metal, and punk. Besides this, the problem-space of popular music in general is growing as well. Topics of interest across all of these genres include the nature of versioning, the metaphysics of musical groups, hooks, and groove, among others. If there is any one scholar within analytic philosophy who can take credit for this explosion of (...) work, it is Theodore Gracyk. Gracyk’s pioneering Rhythm and Noise (1996) definitively carved the philosophy of popular music off from the philosophy of music and the rest is, in many ways, history. Now, almost twenty years later, he has followed that work up with Making Meaning in Popular Song (2023), a collection of nine updated but previously published essays from between 2007 and 2017. This new collection, spanning ten years of work, brings together a variety of different threads and places them all into a larger context alongside one another. The emerging picture shows us a more complete vision of Gracyk’s pragmatics-driven philosophy of popular music. It is worth pointing out that the book recently won the American Society for Aesthetics Outstanding Monograph Prize, a fitting recognition of Gracyk’s enormous contributions to the philosophy of popular music. In what follows, I will very briefly summarize these essays in order, after which I will discuss the merits of the book along with one particular critical concern. (shrink)

There are many paradoxes of aversive or painful art. We enjoy being disgusted, scared, sad, and stressed in engaging with art in a way that we don’t, for instance, on the train into work. A similar problem arises in extreme music (metal, hardcore punk, and their various offshoots). In this case, the puzzle is explaining why we enjoy listening to screaming in extreme music but not in our workaday lives. Here, I argue that there is not one, but many answers (...) to the screamed vocals problem. Particular kinds of musical screaming take on their character and value according to the function they play in different genre practices and in order to support the values and activities of those communities. Accordingly, we ought to be pragmatic pluralists about musical screaming. Beyond attempting to make sense of this one particular problem from the philosophy of popular music, I also argue that thinking carefully about the screamed vocals problem can help us clarify some merits of a good aesthetic explanation. (shrink)

This chapter addresses a very old question: Is there a special connection between a person’s moral character and their epistemic character—between how good they are and what they are in a position to know? Focusing specifically on knowledge by acquaintance, the author argues that one’s moral character affects what one is acquainted with and vice versa, so they are indeed interdependent in some very important ways. He argues that one’s moral character affects what one is acquainted with because it affects (...) both what one attends to and how one attends to it. He argues that what one is acquainted with affects one’s moral character because it affects the extent and manner in which one knows and appreciates the moral significance of certain things, and because it motivates one in a unique way to do morally good things. In these ways, acquaintance has unique moral significance. (shrink)

This chapter argues that “weak acquaintance” exists. One is weakly acquainted with something just in case one is consciously aware of it and one’s conscious awareness of it is not mediated by awareness of any other thing. The author argues that if weak acquaintance does not exist, then whenever one is aware of anything, one is aware of infinitely many things. Since no one is aware of infinitely many things—not ever, let alone every time one is aware of anything—it follows (...) that weak acquaintance exists. After defending his argument, the author considers two challenges: one based on a perceived tension between the existence of weak acquaintance and non-relational theories of experience, and another based on a concern that weak acquaintance is a trivial notion. He argues that the tension with non-relational theories doesn’t exist, and that weak acquaintance is far from trivial. (shrink)

This chapter gives an account of “knowledge of things.” Knowledge of things is a genus with two species: Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Knowledge by acquaintance is constituted by direct conscious awareness of properties and objects. Knowledge by description is constituted by conscious awareness of properties and objects as falling under a concept. After saying more about the constituent relation (i.e., awareness) and content (i.e., properties and objects) of knowledge of things, the author considers whether there are further (...) conditions on it parallel to conditions on propositional knowledge (e.g., truth, justification). He suggests that there are. The author calls them “veridicality” and “well-foundedness” conditions, and he spells out different ways to understand them. He concludes this chapter by discussing some ways knowledge of things relates to other forms of knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter further develops the author’s case for the claim that some knowledge is constituted, not by beliefs in propositions, but by conscious awareness of properties and objects. He starts by considering how best to approach the debate over this claim. He adopts an approach that focuses on certain philosophical roles that are played by, and standardly attributed to, knowledge. He argues that conscious perceptual and introspective awareness sometimes plays those roles and, for that reason, should be considered a distinctive (...) type of knowledge. After going through several examples, the author focuses especially on the roles that knowledge plays in guiding behavior and as the basis of knowledge-conferring reasoning. He argues that conscious awareness sometimes plays these roles and that it therefore should be considered knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter argues that acquaintance has unique emotional significance because of how it relates to certain moral emotions—such as empathy, compassion, and what the author calls “The Feeling.” The author starts by introducing a series of examples of the Feeling. Then he highlights certain key features of the Feeling and considers what type of feeling it might be. He considers whether it is empathy, pity, or a certain kind of attitude or perception. Ultimately, the author argues that the Feeling is (...) a form of love—what he calls “Mister Rogers love”—and he suggests that it allows us to more-or-less literally see the value of people around us. Then he argues that acquaintance with this and other emotions is what enables this unique way of perceiving others’ value. Finally, he argues that the Feeling is important partly because it motivates us in a unique way to help those around us. (shrink)

This chapter argues that acquaintance has further epistemic significance beyond what the author attributed to it in previous chapters. The author argues that acquaintance not only has epistemic significance in itself, simply in virtue of being knowledge, but also in virtue of justifying beliefs—both immediately and inferentially. He then uses these results to defend various forms of epistemic foundationalism. Ultimately, the author argues that acquaintance is the foundation for all empirical knowledge. That is, he argues that all knowledge that depends (...) for its justification on perceptual or introspective experience depends on acquaintance for its justification. He considers whether some of these results can be gotten without acquaintance—that is, by appealing to experience in more neutral terms, without positing an acquaintance relation. He argues that they cannot—that acquaintance plays a central, ineliminable role in the epistemology of experience. (shrink)

Present to the Mind is about acquaintance. Acquaintance is the relation of awareness that we bear to the things we experience most directly, such as colors, shapes, smells, tastes, pains, itches, and maybe also things like beauty and goodness. In this book, the author defends three claims about acquaintance: (i) it exists, (ii) it is knowledge, and (iii) it matters. In the first section, the author describes what acquaintance is and argues that several different forms of it exist. In the (...) second section, he argues that acquaintance is itself a kind of knowledge that is distinct from other kinds of knowledge. In the third section, he argues that acquaintance has unique epistemic, aesthetic, emotional, and moral significance. (shrink)

This chapter argues that acquaintance has unique aesthetic significance because much (if not all) aesthetic knowledge and appreciation requires acquaintance. Aesthetic knowledge is knowledge of a thing’s aesthetic properties, like its beauty, unity, or balance. Aesthetic appreciation is a certain positive response to those properties based on aesthetic knowledge of them. The author argues that much of this knowledge and appreciation could not be gained in any other way—that is, without acquaintance—and that acquaintance is therefore required for it. Then he (...) argues that acquaintance is the foundation for all aesthetic appreciation because, even if some aesthetic appreciation does not require acquaintance with the object of appreciation, it does require acquaintance with something aesthetically relevant to it. Finally, the author argues that acquaintance is essential to what makes some instances of aesthetic appreciation more successful than others. (shrink)

This chapter describes what acquaintance is and situates it within contemporary philosophical views, not just about acquaintance, but about knowledge, justification, perception, the metaphysics of experience, and more. The author starts with a brief historical overview of the notion of acquaintance, focusing primarily on the work of Bertrand Russell. Then he describes contemporary acquaintance theories and the debates about perception and introspection that they feature in. Finally, the author defines a core notion of acquaintance—that is, direct conscious awareness of properties (...) and objects—and addresses some lingering questions about it. Along the way, the author distinguishes between two, more specific forms of acquaintance—“weak acquaintance” and “strong acquaintance”—that correspond to how strictly ‘direct’ is understood. The author also argues that the existence of these forms of acquaintance is consistent with all major theories of the metaphysics of experience. (shrink)

This chapter introduces a puzzle about perceptual knowledge. It is based on an example in which you perceptually experience a rich array of objects and properties in a crowded restaurant. The puzzle takes the form of an inconsistent triad of claims about this example: First, you know certain highly specific, fine-grained details of your surroundings. Second, you do not have beliefs concerning all of these details. Third, knowledge requires belief. These claims are all plausible, but they are inconsistent, so they (...) cannot all be true. One of them must be rejected. This chapter argues that the best option is to reject the third claim—that is, that knowledge requires belief. It argues that some knowledge is constituted not by beliefs in propositions but by conscious awareness of properties and objects. (shrink)

This chapter argues that “strong acquaintance” exists. One is strongly acquainted with something just in case one is consciously aware of it, and one’s conscious awareness of it is not mediated by awareness of any other thing, nor by inference, judgment, conceptualization, causal processes, or any other knowledge. To make his case for the existence of strong acquaintance, the author draws on and develops the implications of a very old notion: skeptical doubt. He argues that, in some cases, we cannot (...) doubt that our experiences exist, and that from this we can infer that we are strongly acquainted with them. The author then extends his argument to show that even stronger forms of acquaintance exist, including a form of acquaintance (“phenomenal acquaintance”) that delivers complete immunity to skeptical doubt. (shrink)

This paper aims to drive home an idea that is emphasized by a long tradition of critics and artists, but neglected by philosophers in the last 50 years, at least: the idea that art is often revelatory of the world and of ourselves only to the extent that it creates our world and our ways of living in it. I aim to revive the idea of art as poesis: not only as the product of making, but as the making of (...) ourselves and our world. In spite of Humean assumptions that put a wedge between revelation and creation, cognition and conation, knowledge and responsiveness, I argue that the two are inseparable in many great artworks; they are not even two, but a single dimension of art: often, art reveals the world by creating it. I substantiate this approach to art by drawing on, and closely engaging with a number of works by critics and artists, such as Harold Bloom, William Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Susan Sontag, Oscar Wilde, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean Stafford, and James Baldwin. Taking seriously the approach to art that they recommend, I argue, puts pressure on extant defenses of aesthetic cognitivism. While I motivate and accept aesthetic cognitivism’s core commitment to viewing artworks as embodying modes of knowledge, the heart of the paper raises the concern that the creative-revelatory (bi-directional) dimension of art is insufficiently treated by contemporary aesthetic cognitivists. I argue that this shortcoming lies in underlying mistaken assumptions about (1) the place of art in our lives, (2) the nature and variety of human knowledge, and (3) human nature and life. I conclude, paraphrasing Nelson Goodman, that “we are too timid” if we fail to acknowledge and philosophically account for this creative-revelatory role of art in our lives. (shrink)

This paper explores how Patricia Churchland’s insights on methodological naturalism might underwrite a deeper understanding of the role of touch in aesthetic experience. Although aesthetics has privileged sight and hearing by relying on philosophical assumptions, we argue that recent research in neuroscience provides evidence of multimodal ingredients in meaningful encounters with art, including aesthetic tactual features. This calls for a substantial reassessment of aesthetic theory informed by contemporary neuroscientific insights. To support our claim, we provide a critical historical overview of (...) the aesthetic tradition that systematically excluded the sense of touch. We present empirical evidence from several neuroscientific studies, where aesthetic experience is portrayed as fundamentally multimodal, especially involving touch. We then apply Churchland’s insights on methodological naturalism to aesthetic theory, arguing for her integrative, empirically informed approach in aesthetics. We conclude by exploring some philosophical, artistic, and institutional implications of recognizing touch as an integral dimension of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Art practices reveal the entwinement of perception and understanding, opening possibilities for new ways of enacting the political. An artwork can serve as more than solely an aesthetic object: in the public sphere it beckons us to resist, challenge, and change the world around us. -/- Wide-ranging in scope and application, Life in Art showcases how, at the intersection of art and phenomenology, sociopolitical issues can be examined anew. Thirteen diverse, international, established and emerging academics and artists reveal how art (...) opens possibilities for breaking colonial logics, resisting injustice, and addressing climate catastrophe. Through their multilayered and multidisciplinary phenomenological analyses, these original essays reveal how a variety of artworks from diverse fields—dance, sculpture, performance, photography, literature, architecture, film, and virtual reality—can engage perception in ways that transform the self and the world. Some essays focus on specific artworks; others consider theoretical questions that frame the intersection of aesthetics and phenomenology; and still more expand on the ways art can lead to political and social action. -/- Offering a multiplicity of diverse views on the intersections between phenomenology and aesthetics, Life in Art highlights how this entanglement fosters our desires to mend, repair, and make new worlds. (shrink)

Structural Omission at Site Scale: Landscape, Land, and the Limits of Knowing at Tablas de Daimiel -/- Five wetland paintings, Grand Prize Art and Nature Award (2026), and partial knowing at Tablas de Daimiel National Park by Deborah Scott -/- July 11, 2026 -/- Abstract Structural Omission is a framework for representational painting built around perceptual limits, structural incompleteness, and narrative without resolution. Before 2026, the framework was argued in published theory and tested in paint across figures, still life, interiors, (...) redacted documents, and landscape. This essay examines a site-scale case: five wetland paintings completed as a body of work during the Arte y Naturaleza residency at Tablas de Daimiel National Park (Castilla-La Mancha, Spain), a Spanish National Park, Ramsar wetland, and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (La Mancha Húmeda, 1980). Organizers selected the artist for the framework’s epistemic claims, not landscape spectacle. A state jury awarded the Grand Prize, Art and Nature Award (2026) on the body of work, with remarks connecting the paintings to underground peat fire, wetland fragility, and iron-oxide grounds. The argument is that partial knowing is the structural condition at conservation sites where publics practice scenic completion: treating lush wetland images as if they delivered the whole story. Representational painting can make that limit visible in the architecture of the image without functioning as ecological documentation or environmental advocacy. The essay situates the Tablas body of work within prior articulations of Structural Omission and distinguishes this claim from residency field writing on the same site. -/- Structural Omission, representational painting, landscape painting, epistemic limits, conservation, Tablas de Daimiel, post-certainty, narrative without resolution, phenomenology of perception, wetland . (shrink)

I argue in this paper that there are comic advantages to moral virtue. Namely, it aids and does not hinder one’s ability to make reliable comic judgments. This is so for two reasons. First, contrary to the claims of certain theorists, there is no reason why we should expect moral virtue to systematically diminish one’s ability to be a reliable comic judge. Secondly, moral virtue serves as an important corrective to prevent our sense of humour from being distorted by self-deception (...) and injustice. I argue for this claim independently of the truth of moralism or immoralism and it remains plausible even on subjectivist or relativist views of humour. (shrink)

This article has two aims. The first is to open up a line of inquiry into whether epistemic and aesthetic values interact, at the most general level. Does an overall increase in epistemic or aesthetic value in the world have an effect on the alternative value? The second, and more specific, aim is to argue that yes, it does. In particular, I argue that an increase in epistemic value would result in a decrease in aesthetic value, across two important dimensions. (...) First, I argue that, if beliefs universally aligned with a commonly accepted epistemic principle—namely, doxastic correctness—then there would be less aesthetic diversity in the world. And second, I argue that, if beliefs universally aligned with doxastic correctness, then there would also be less overall aesthetic value in the world, at least in some important respects. (shrink)

The book review of Perullo, N. (2025) Aesthetics without Objects and Subjects: Relational Thinking for Global Challenges. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

We learn from art. By viewing, hearing, touching, creating, performing, and in yet other ways interacting with art, we gain new knowledge—knowledge that we wouldn’t have had, and perhaps couldn’t have had, without encountering that art. That’s obvious. But what is less obvious is the nature, or structure, of this knowledge—what constitutes it. A standard assumption in contemporary analytic philosophy is that all knowledge is and must be propositional—that is, constituted by beliefs in propositions. However, this assumption, despite being standard, (...) has come under attack in recent years. One front in this attack comes from aesthetics and philosophy of art, where some philosophers have claimed that some knowledge gained from art is non-propositional. This paper fortifies this front by giving new reasons to think that some knowledge from art is not propositional and is instead “knowledge of things,” which is constituted, not by beliefs in propositions, but by awareness of properties and objects. It also fills a gap in the contemporary literature by giving an account of this knowledge—of its nature, structure, and relation to other knowledge. (shrink)

The discourse concerning musical expression hinges on a fundamental analogy between music and language. While the extant literature commonly compares music to language, this essay takes the reverse direction, following Wittgenstein’s approach. The discussion contrasts the theoretical underpinnings of the “music as language” simile with those of the “language as music” simile. The emphasis on characterization, performance, mutual tuning-in relationships, the interaction between language and music, and the open-ended effort to reorient ourselves as we draw in significance challenges the “informing (...) paradigm” that has been paramount across contemporary philosophical theories of musical expression. One of the most promising philosophical avenues that emerges as we move beyond the “informing paradigm” is recognizing the inseparable relationship between musical expression and our power to shape our own language. (shrink)

This article reconsiders Michael Fried’s concept of the “pastoral” in eighteenth-century French landscape painting through an examination of a central paradox in his argument. Fried maintains that the same pictorial device intended to absorb the beholder into the scene also serves to secure antitheatricality by removing any indication of the beholder’s presence. Absorption, understood in this context, presupposes the beholder’s presence in order to draw them into the image, yet simultaneously seeks to eliminate the beholder to avoid theatrical address. This (...) contradiction remains unresolved within Fried’s model. To clarify this issue, the study shifts attention from the representation of nature to the function of the landscape figure. Art criticism from Roger de Piles to Denis Diderot consistently identifies figures as the principal bearers of dramatic meaning—a dimension that Fried’s nature-focused reading of Diderot tends to neglect. A close examination of Fried’s analyses of Claude-Joseph Vernet and Hubert Robert demonstrates that the figures in their paintings generate localised dramatic episodes within the scene—precisely the effects that the pastoral framework is intended to exclude. By foregrounding these human figures, the article proposes a revised understanding of the pastoral as a dynamic structure of viewing that coordinates immersion with dramatic tension, rather than simply erasing the beholder. In this way, the article addresses the inconsistency in Fried’s account and contributes to current debates on antitheatricality in eighteenth-century French landscape art. (shrink)

The last decade has seen a marked resurgence of interest in aesthetics and philosophy of art from those working outside these areas, and a reciprocal resurgence of interest in other areas of philosophy from philosophers of art. This volume represents an important step in the spirit of bringing these different fields together. The collection is the first of its kind. It contains twenty-one original essays by leading authors who examine questions at the intersection of art and philosophy. The essays draw (...) meaningful connections between art and philosophy, using artworks to motivate, support, and shape their views. The authors also draw connections between the theoretical discipline of aesthetics and philosophy of art, on the one hand, and the rest of philosophy, on the other. Many of the chapters aim to teach us something about philosophical matters by examining art and other aesthetic objects, and many of them bring together contemporary thought and research in aesthetics and philosophy of art with important developments in other areas of philosophy. The topics range from metaphysics and philosophy of language to creativity and love, paving the way for students, teachers, and researchers to engage directly with the philosophy of art while simultaneously building bridges to and from other areas of philosophy. By placing the connection to art at the forefront, the volume is a testament to the myriad ways art and the philosophy of art intersect and overlap with issues that lie at the core of contemporary philosophy writ large. (shrink)

This book proposes a creative operating system that treats art as core infrastructure for a consciousness-based civilization, rather than as a luxury or representation. It develops new metrics of consciousness and creative resonance, links them to economic and governance structures, and sketches protocols for AI–human co-creation that avoid extraction and collapse dynamics. The result is a speculative but technically framed blueprint for replacing labor-driven societies with creativity-centered, consciousness-indexed institutions capable of coordinating humans and advanced AI without sacrificing freedom, depth, or (...) diversity. (shrink)

Properly speaking, the sublime “cannot be contained in any sensible form, but concerns only ideas of reason”. Moreover, for the sublime to take place—Kant affirms—we must abandon sensibility. To some extent, the sublime is a negation of the sensible world. Therefore, in contrast to Kant’s approach, I will focus instead on the non-sublime aspect of the sublime, i.e., that sensible element that plays a critical role in the experience but is not considered worthy of the label “sublime”. After all, it (...) is the Analytic of the Sublime that highlights what it tries to overshadow: the intractable excess of the sensible realm and imagination’s non-subservience to the mandates of reason. Unlike the properly sublime, art is not intended to serve a shielding function (the sublime comfort us by reassuring us of the purposiveness of our moral vocation); rather, like the non-sublime, it promotes the disruption of what is well formed. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt’s politics is aesthetic rather than practical, motivated by enjoyment rather than well-being, and so it should be rejected. I begin with an account of aestheticism as the doctrine according to which seemingly non-aesthetic things are actually aesthetic, parts of a whole dimension of reality that we might simply call “the aesthetic.” We access it by taking a disinterested attitude, one that affirms things for their own sakes, and there are four ways of doing this: disinterested appreciating (e.g., of (...) beautiful art), fun playing, fantasizing, and putting on shows or spectacles. While Arendt’s politics takes a classical republican form that is like a competitive game, an analysis of her conceptions of acting and judging reveals that the modes of disinterested showing and appreciating are also present. Her philosophy has another motivation, however, alongside enjoying the aesthetic: the need to escape the reality of evil. (shrink)

I argue that a self-referential sense of humor is positively self-accepting by acknowledging imperfection, abnormality, or average status, without genuinely intending ridicule on oneself. Instead, standards of perfection, normality, and greatness are the implicit targets of ridicule, which can provide a form of bonding among those having this sense of humor, who can then find commonality amongst themselves and relief from the pressure of those exacting standards. This self-accepting sense of humor helps to make life more meaningful by facilitating contentment (...) with imperfection both with respect to oneself and one’s situation. While a sense of humor can certainly be helpful for improving character, a perfectionist argument such as this should be balanced by acknowledgement of the value that can be gained from simply accepting ourselves just as we are. (shrink)

In his lecture “Philosophy and the Unheard,” Cavell invites us to observe a pervasive analogy between Schoenberg’s idea of the twelve-tone row and Wittgenstein’s idea of grammar, which is supposed to encapsulate an expansive, sweeping philosophical program—Cavell’s own. For Cavell, the analogy evinces not only the kind of reading of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigation, which is attuned to Wittgenstein’s seemingly paradoxical amalgamation of embrace and resistance in regarding to the conditions of modernity, but also a kind of philosophy of music, which (...) is illuminated by musical procedure. In this essay I probe into Cavell’s analogy, which, I contend, rests on Cavell’s interpretation (contra Von Wright) of Spengler’s influence on Wittgenstein. I argue that Cavell delineated the analogy in a way which does not consider a deeply felt gradation in Wittgenstein’s philosophical attitude toward modern music. This ultimately renders Schoenberg’s composition with twelve-tone incommensurate with Wittgenstein’s Spenglerian scheme of musical decline. I also argue that “Schoenbergian unheard” is not analogous to its purported Wittgensteinian counterpart. While the former inheres in comprehensibility—namely, correct, conscious application of the kind of contrived rules that would ensure coherence—the latter inheres in transparency, namely, a familiar physiognomy, which is internally related to the preconditions as well as the lived, embodied realities of musical intelligibility. From Wittgenstein’s perspective, the Schoenbergian idea of the row with its unforeseen yet pervasive consequences turns out to be tantamount to an idea of grammar for music for the meaning-blind. I conclude that in this “tale of two unheards,” Cavell invariably remains on the side of Wittgenstein. Philosophy, as it mattered most to him, has no business with music for the meaning-blind. (shrink)

In his essay “A Scale of Eternity,” Cavell probes into Mahler’s ‘Cassandra-like fate’—being blessed with a perfect capacity for telling or expressing the truth and cursed with the fate of forever being misunderstood—in relation to Wittgenstein’s predicament as a philosopher in a time without culture. Cavell observes that both Mahler and Wittgenstein were concerned with the maddening and distortion of life, a concern which gives rise to a yearning to hear the music—in human life and in language. Both exhibit the (...) kind of fear of inexpressiveness or suffocation, and a twin fear of uncontrollable expressiveness and exposure, which are fundamental to Cavell’s reading of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. In this essay I take a closer look at this nexus of ideas, which portrays Mahler (reasonably, I contend) as a sort of intellectual alter-ego for Wittgenstein. I argue that Cavell’s observation is supported by his reading (contra Von Wright) of Wittgenstein’s diurnalized Spenglerian view of cultural decline. From that perspective, Mahler’s unique stature is to be portrayed as being endowed with an ability to pronounce the truth in the specious present of the normal, internal death of “high culture” music in the West. I argue further that Wittgenstein’s little studied middle-period diary entries on modern and future music lend support to the contention that, for Wittgenstein, Mahler’s music did not fit the ‘standard’ absurdities of musical decline. It is sui generis philosophical absurd, a limiting case in the history of music. Wittgenstein’s frustration with Mahler had little to do with not caring for his music, and everything to do with Mahler’s artistic failure to allow for an after-image of the breakdown of similarities that unity our form of life, hence his failure to revolt against cultural decline by embracing it—a failure, Wittgenstein feared he shared with Mahler. (shrink)

A "good" arguer is like an architect with a penchant for civil and civic engineering. Such an arguer can design and present their reasons artfully about a variety of topics, as good architects do with a plenitude of structures and in various environments. Failures in this are rarely hidden for long, as poor constructions reveal themselves, often spectacularly, so collaboration among civical engineers can be seen as a virtue. Our logical virtues should be analogous. When our arguments fail due to (...) being uncivil and demagogic, since we inhabit the arguments we build, we are all crushed beneath our flawed reasoning. This mixed metaphor takes us to a self-referential analysis of argumentation, analogy, and humor. I argue that good argumentation strives to collaboratively convince rather than belligerently persuade. A convincing means toward this end is through humorous analogical arguments, whether the matter at hand is ethical, logical, theological, phenomenological, epistemological, metaphysical, political, or about baseball. (shrink)

Recent debates about aesthetics are characterized by a partly intentional, but also partly involuntary, vagueness. Whether it be aestheticisation or anesthetisation, articisation or desartification: what is upheld or deplored under one and the same label in fact designates rather different things. The paper makes a suggestion as to how the field could be reorganized. Taking heed of what political theory discusses as the “political difference” between “politics” and “the political”, the aim is to examine what would be gained by working (...) with an “aesthetic difference” that does not straightforwardly equate “the aesthetic” with “art”, and “the aesthetic” with the totality of sensuous-aisthetic processes. An aesthetic thinking would then amount to a thinking that does justice to these inner polarities and remains faithful to the ambiguity of its objects. (shrink)

While much has been written about verbal narratives, we still lack a clear account of what makes images narrative. I argue that there are narrative characteristics of images and show this with examples of single images. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, I propose that from a semantic perspective, the following two characteristics are necessary for an image to be narrative: a representation of an event and a representation of time. Second, I argue that there are paradigmatic characteristics, such (...) as at least two events, bridging connections, and unifying subjects between these events, characters with intentions, and the representation of goal-directed actions. Third, I show that it is possible to differentiate between narrative and non-narrative images while also accounting for the idea that narrativity is a matter of degree. While I do not provide a full definition of narrative images, my account constitutes a necessary first step in this direction. (shrink)