History of Aesthetics

This short paper is an English version of a contribution I will make to a colloquy in 1926 in Paris entitled "Les Voyages d'art d'André Malraux." The paper compares Malraux's thinking with what, for convenience, I call “traditional aesthetics,” by which I mean certain key ideas that have characterised aesthetics since its inception in the eighteenth century - ideas advanced by figures such as Kant, David Hume, and other Enlightenment thinkers still prominent today in the current version of traditional aesthetics (...) often called “analytic aesthetics”. The paper argues that, due to its eighteenth-century assumptions, traditional aesthetics is, not surprisingly, obsolete and unlike Malraux's thinking, no longer capable of explaining the unprecedented universal world of art we know today. (shrink)

This paper was delivered as the keynote address at a conference at the University of London on 19/6/2026. It examines a key aspect of André Malraux’s theory of art – his argument that art endures not through a power of timelessness, as Western culture has believed since the Renaissance, but through its power of metamorphosis. “Metamorphosis,” Malraux writes “is the very life of the work of art in time, one of its specific characteristics”. The paper also contrasts Malraux's thinking with (...) the position of traditional aesthetics (such as analytic aesthetics) which has effectively ignored this issue. (shrink)

It’s common knowledge that those objects we regard as great works of art have a capacity to survive across time. But that observation is only a half-truth: it tells us nothing about the nature of this power of survival – about how art endures. This question was once at the heart of Western thinking about art. The Renaissance solved it by claiming that great art is “timeless”, “eternal” – impervious to time, a belief that exerted a powerful influence on Enlightenment (...) philosophers and, later, on modern aesthetics. The notion that art is timeless was contradicted by nineteenth century thinkers such as Hegel, Marx, and Taine who stressed the historical embeddedness of art. The conflict of these two ideas, together with other major factors discussed in this paper, has left us today without a viable account of the nature of art’s capacity to transcend time. This paper proposes an alternative solution: the proposition that art survives by a process of metamorphosis. But the principal emphasis of the paper is on the question itself: how does art transcend time? (a question that has nothing to do with the so-called “test of time”). If modern aesthetics is to remain relevant to our modern world of art, in which the art of the past – stretching back to Lascaux and beyond – is as important as Picasso and contemporary art, it urgently needs to address this neglected question. (shrink)

Explores the failure of analytic aesthetics to examine the question of the capacity of art to transcend time, and its own commitment – seldom explicitly acknowledged – to the assumption that this capacity functions through the traditional, but no longer viable, notion of timelessness inherited from Enlightenment aesthetics.

In this paper, I argue that the quest for identifying Dionysus' Indian counterpart is a challenging endeavor, one that can only bear fruit when we shift our focus towards understanding Dionysus as a divine force of nature, which manifests in various ways, aligning with the essence conveyed in the Rig Veda verse mentioned earlier. Drawing from Nietzsche's perspective, where he perceives the Dionysian as an inherent force of nature within humanity, it becomes a more plausible hypothesis to establish a connection (...) between Dionysus and India through the lens of Indo-European comparative mythology and philology. (shrink)

Art has a major role in political critique and in the contemporary world of art, ethics, politics, and aesthetics intersect. Using the work of Alfredo Jaar as an example of these intersections, I argue through my reading of Judith Butler, that his art can provide us with better, more egalitarian versions of populations to be perceived as grievable. Once we apprehend grievability, we can affectively apprehend that lives in the context of war and violence are precarious. Here lies the power (...) of art to challenge the dominant norms and frames. Here also lies the central role of aesthetics as a political critique. From this argument I claim that, instead of accounting for aesthetics being separate from ethics and politics, it is important we understand these fields as intersecting with each other. I analyze the work of Susan Sontag on images of suffering and violence, Butler’s turn to aesthetics in her own work, and Jaar’s own conflict over the use of beauty to convey suffering. I defend that apprehension is a term distinct from recognition but central to understand the intersection between ethics, politics, and aesthetics. Key Words: Aesthetics, Affect, Butler, Ethics, Jaar, Politics, Sontag. (shrink)

Do you ever read articles which make arguments but the main value for you of the article is elsewhere, in the information it provides, say? Analytic philosophy is about arguments, right, but do you ever have this experience? Maybe you read Helen Beebee's article on the non-governing conception of laws of nature, got past the hard shell of the opening paragraphs, and the main value for you was not exactly in the arguments, but in learning about two contrasting conceptions of (...) what a law of nature is. What does this have to do with analytic aesthetics? Let's imagine that you are interesting in a book, a book with a claim to be art, a novel let us say. You would like to go to a discussion group where the book is discussed, but unfortunately you do not know of any. You would like to hear some interesting perspectives on the book. Even if you have access to such a discussion group, what the members say may not be suitable for publication in an academic journal. An alternative perspective on what analytic aesthetic is says that analytic philosophy can provide you with the missing discussion group satisfaction and also appear in academic journals and it makes reference to concepts and themes and debates from analytic philosophy to get itself in these journals, but that is not really the main value of the articles for you: that gets them in, but the main value is to provide your with the missing discussion group satisfactions - that novel is discussed. And the contributors to this area even know that and are chiefly aiming to provide those, but do the analytic stuff to merit publication in some academic journal. Of course, the official conception of analytic aesthetics is not this: analytic aesthetics consists of questions such as "What is art?" and "Should we be projectivists about aesthetic qualities" and "What sort of things are musical works?" etc. And the aim of analytic aesthetic is to establish answers to these questions. (I might read analytic aesthetics because I am interested The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, not because I am looking for justified answers to one of these questions.) I don't know if the alternative conception is a good idea, but it is worth sharing, no? (shrink)

Why did human beings first begin making art? In this paper, I present two accounts of its origins, one of which connects the arts to the desire for group demarcation and another to scientific impulses.

Cova et al. (2019) have tested people's beliefs on aesthetic disagreements using experimental studies based on questionnaires. Since the vast majority of participants chose answers that are incompatible with intersubjectivism, they conclude that the traditional approach in aesthetics is ”fundamentally misguided”. Contesi et al. (2024) claim that Cova et al. entirely misunderstand the relevance of their experimental findings to the aesthetics literature: those results actually ”confirm what aestheticians predicted all along”. According to Contesi et al., while aestheticians generally assume “that (...) people explicitly endorse the claim of subjectivism”, folk intersubjectivism ”is mainly seen as remaining implicit in patterns of behaviour”; its presence, therefore, cannot be inferred from people's ”explicit avowals”. Contesi et al. support their understanding of the literature by citing passages from contemporary philosophers. I argue that these passages fail to demonstrate that folk aesthetic intersubjectivism is regarded as implicit. (shrink)

In this chapter, I identify a distinctive use of ‘sublime’ in Adam Smith’s philosophy of science. I show that for Smith a scientific discipline and its theories can be sublime. I trace this idea back to Malebranche. I show that in Smith it is a way to convey something about the irrational nature of the natural order lurking behind’s science’s intellectual achievements. In section 1, I diagnose and distinguish three uses of ‘sublime’ in Smith. I situate two of these in (...) the early modern discussions of the sublime in the wake of Boileau's and William Smith’s translations of Longinus. 1 I argue that the third in which Smith treats intellectual disciplines as themselves sublime is relatively distinctive, although not wholly unique to Smith. In section 2, I put this notion in context and trace it, somewhat speculatively, back to the reception of Isaac Newton by Smith and Smith’s reading of Malebranche. In the third section I conclude with some reflections on the significance of this discussion for Smith’s conception of the nature of scientific rationality. (shrink)

When are morally good actions beautiful, when indeed they are? In this paper, it is argued that morally good actions are beautiful when they appear to express the deep or true self, and in turn tend to give rise to an emotion which is characterised by feelings of being moved, unity, inspiration, and meaningfulness, inter alia. In advancing the case for this claim, it is revealed that there are additional sources of well-formedness in play in the context of moral beauty (...) in addition to those that have tended to be focused on to date: one which is connected to imagining a deep location for the goodness concerned, and another which is connected to imagining that the goodness stems from capacities which are essential to the person. (shrink)

Rasa, or aesthetic emotion, is a central concern of South Asian philosophy. Bhoja, writing in the eleventh century, crafted a unique and intriguing theory of rasa as fundamentally the artistic expression of love. Love, for Bhoja, is a capacity for sensitive attention that grounds self-making and self-awareness. The reason we have to engage with works of art is that they equip us to be who we are.

The symposium comprises six short reflections on Bernard Bolzano’s essays in aesthetics. James Shelley and Mohan Matthen treat the theories of beauty and the arts in their own terms, Jennifer Judkins approaches Bolzano from the perspective of musical performance practice, and Claire Kirwin, Katalin Makkai, and Sandra Shapshay put Bolzano in dialogue with Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Seit ungefähr Mitte der 90er-Jahre und bis heute wird der Frage nach dem Zusammenhang zwischen Ästhetik und Ethik hauptsächlich in der angloamerikanischen und der angelsächsischen analytischen Ästhetik besondere Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. In der Einleitung des Bandes Aesthetics and Ethics. Essays at the Intersection (1998), der eine der ersten Publikationen über das Thema ist, macht Levinson deutlich, dass das Buch das Ziel hat, Debatten der Ästhetik und Ethik zu verbinden, die während der vergangenen 30 Jahre isoliert behandelt worden sind (Levinson 1998, 1). (...) Er bezieht sich dabei auf die angloamerikanische Ästhetik. Seit der Veröffentlichung dieses Bandes ist eine beachtliche Zahl von Beiträgen entstanden, die explizit Themen an der Schnittstelle beider Disziplinen behandeln. Vor diesem Hintergrund soll in diesem Beitrag die Beziehung zwischen Ästhetik und Ethik unter dem Gesichtspunkt der zeitgenössischen philosophischen Ästhetik behandelt werden. Dabei sollen die Anknüpfungspunkte zwischen der neuen englischsprachigen Literatur und den Beiträgen in der deutschen ästhetischen Tradition sichtbar gemacht werden. (shrink)

Recent contributions in Kant scholarship illustrate how Kant’s practical philosophy remains relevant for present global challenges. Climate change is among the most important of these, but commentators have largely addressed it, if at all, with Kant’s ethics and legal philosophy. Kant’s aesthetics remains undervalued here. This makes sense: outside Kant scholarship, environmental philosophers reject his aesthetics as unacceptably anthropocentric. Some environmental philosophers defend the value of alternative (non-Kantian) accounts of sublimity vis-à-vis climate change, while others explore the moral relevance of (...) Kantian sublimity for analogous global challenges, like nuclear hazard (Ferguson 1984). I argue that these developments miss something: with its ethical connections, Kantian sublimity is indeed relevant. (shrink)

In a recent article, Byoungjae Kim has proposed a novel solution to the puzzle of why Hume offers two standards of taste—the rules of art and the joint verdict of true judges. The rules of art, Kim proposes, are easy to formulate, but difficult to apply to particular cases. True judges are those who can reliably apply the rules of art to arrive at their superior judgements of taste. In this discussion note, I argue that this proposal should be rejected. (...) Not only does it lack textual support, but it can also be shown to be implausible on independent grounds. Worse still, Hume explicitly contradicts it. An attentive reading of Hume’s essay does, however, show that Hume thinks that the rules of art have an important use in identifying true judges. This, I argue, is key to understanding the relationship between his two standards of taste. (shrink)

Any adequate account of aesthetic experience must be able to accommodate the pervasiveness of aesthetic experiences in everyday life. While writers on everyday aesthetics have frequently taken inspiration from John Dewey’s Art as Experience, my aim in this article is to show that there is another work in the history of the discipline that provides a much better account of the diversity of everyday aesthetic experiences: R. G. Collingwood’s The Principles of Art. Whereas Dewey limits aesthetic experience to the fulfilment (...) of an interaction with an aspect of the world, Collingwood identifies it with an imaginative activity that affords a conscious awareness and understanding of the felt character of one’s experiences in their individuality. Not only, I argue, does this capture the diversity of aesthetic experiences, but it also provides a more informative account of what makes those experiences aesthetic than its more recent competitors. (shrink)

There is, it is claimed, a long-standing link between photography and the realist novel. Nancy Armstrong in particular argues that the pictorial veridicality of literary realism is at least partly premised upon the rapid propagation of photographic images through late 19th century culture. In doing so, Armstrong argues that photography and realist fiction were mutual participants in an epistemological project wherein the horizons of the ‘real world’—at least within the context of literary fiction—were continuously and unconsciously drawn and redrawn. Meanwhile, (...) within the context of science and technology history, it is often taken for granted that late 19th century science photographers assumed that photographs provided direct, untrammelled access to an entirely different notion of the real: a real unviolated by the messy business of human perception and agency. While this notion is a gross misrepresentation of the facts of the matter, this is not to imply that late 19th century science photographs were ‘fictive’, at least in the sense intended by Armstrong, Novak, Helen Groth, and others. Although it might be the case that non-scientific applications of photography in the late 19th century were conducted in a fictive register, science photography proves a rather more challenging case. In the wake of this observation, this chapter first demarcates and define these conflicting notions of realism, in which I will demonstrate that the epistemic commitments of literary and metaphysical realism (specifically Cartesian realism) are categorically incompatible, though they share a common intuition. Subsequently, I then explain the value of photography to scientific practitioners by appealing to the formal properties of photographs. Third, I argue that although photographic processes guarantee that photographs are traces of the world, there is no further guarantee that those traces will be isomorphic to experience; whilst 19th century science photographs were undeniably visions of the world, they are parts of the world hitherto unseen by human eyes. Finally, I contend that science photography in the late 19th century anticipated key developments in philosophical realism—not least the transition from 18th and 19th century Cartesian realism to 20th century scientific realism. By revealing an invisible universe entirely unlike the one of our phenomenological experience, late 19th century science photography helped reintroduce humanity to a world in which we lack ontological rank or priority. (shrink)

Determining a principle for ornament was an important desideratum for philosophers of art in the eighteenth century. They believed a principle would aid in both creating and assessing works. The question of whether to ornament is not only a practical question of dress, architecture, and more but also a theoretical question about whether ornament aids or detracts from beauty. First, the essay introduces Elizabeth Montagu to contrast her approach to ornament with that of David Hume. They agree that a principle (...) for ornament cannot be given but disagree on whether ornament typically contributes to or distracts from beauty. The link between ornament and superstition is explored further in cases of architecture, sculpture, and dress, which makes clear the deep disagreement between Montagu and Hume on whether ornament’s link to superstition is a religious or aesthetic problem. Because Montagu and Hume believe the same issue of ornament applies in writing as it does in other areas, we turn to their deep disagreement about whether Shakespeare was a genius to explore how ornament and superstition relate to aesthetic evaluation in poetry and drama. Finally, the discussion of ornament and superstition reveals an underappreciated aspect of Hume’s essay on the standard of taste. (shrink)

Should we save bees or bears? Should you repair the sofa or buy a new one? Allow construction on the beachfront? These apparently technical decisions conceal a deeper truth: they are shaped by our aesthetic education. We prefer forests to swamps because we perceive them as more beautiful. In a society obsessed with the “aesthetic,” we have lost the tools for genuine aesthetic judgment. In this journey —from the garden to the bedroom, passing through the threshold, the living room, the (...) kitchen, and the bathroom— Raquel Cascales reveals how we shape the world through our everyday decisions. Guided by the thought of Yuriko Saito, we discover that all reality has an aesthetic dimension: the tone of a voice, the gesture of opening a door, or the arrangement of a hospital room. The way things appear to us is never neutral. It influences us, affects us, invites us in, or pushes us away. Against the reduction of aesthetics to mere cosmetics, this book defends an embodied understanding of aesthetics, in which repairing a chair, taking out the trash, or caring for a pet become aesthetic ways of shaping and inhabiting the world. (shrink)

Im Rahmen der derzeitigen Politisierung des Designs gelingt es seinen Diskursen und Praktiken oft nicht hinreichend, die Verhältnisse, gegen die es opponiert, nicht zu reproduzieren. Die Beiträger*innen setzen grundsätzlicher an. Aus der Perspektive der Tradition und anhand von Leitfragen der kritischen Theorie thematisieren sie, was im Design sinnvoll unter Kritik verstanden werden kann.

There have been a number of recent readings of Daoist creativity in terms of contextual responsiveness, playfulness, flexibility, adaptivity, novelty, and epistemic virtue. These readings emphasize how the Daoist classics, the Laozi and the Zhuangzi, offer a model of agency that avoids excessive conscious intentionality, control, rigidity, dogmatism, and perspectival myopia. This paper claims that these readings, while not incorrect, are one-sidedly in favor of the “everyday” at the expense of the more “fantastical” aspects of Daoist creativity. These readings appear (...) to be rooted in an understanding of Daoist creation that mostly ignores the constant, self-causal, and absolutely inclusive nature of the Dao’s generative power. By contrast, this paper argues that Daoist creativity is better viewed as the local expression of Daoist creation, thus rendering Daoist creation itself global creativity. This view of Daoist creativity reads the famous examples of creators in Daoist texts as cases of beings who receive inspiration from, and ultimately identify with, the Dao’s or nature’s global creativity. This is a thoroughly non-supernatural notion of inspiration. Daoist creativity is thus the making explicit of Daoist creation in specific aesthetic forms and objects. This is a reading that requires championing the fantastical, paradoxical, and stranger aspects of Daoist metaphysics. Through a switch of perspective to the source of creation itself, Daoist creativity is no longer addressed only in terms of the reactive traits listed above, but rather seen in its full positive identity as an expression of the Dao’s constant self-generation. (shrink)

This paper explores the mechanism and metaphysics of aesthetic experience according to the 10th–11th-century Sanskrit nondual Pratyabhijñā Śaiva philosopher Abhinavagupta. It contributes to the global history of aesthetics by showing how the same mechanism, apoha (exclusion), accounts for both art appreciation and artistic creation in Abhinavagupta’s work. Examining the technical elements of this mechanism from Abhinavagupta’s metaphysical works sheds notable light on the nature of commonization (sādhāraṇī+√ kṛ/bhū), a key element of Abhinavagupta’s aesthetic theory. This paper also contributes to cross-cultural (...) aesthetic theorizing by drawing on C. Thi Nguyen’s work on agency as an artistic medium to provide a framework for contemporary philosophers of aesthetics to approach Abhinavagupta’s theory. (shrink)

Charles Batteux’nün Tek Bir İlkeye İndirgenmiş Güzel Sanatlar adlı yapıtı, felsefi estetik tarihinde güzel sanatlar sistemini oluşturan kurucu metinlerden biri olarak kabul edilir. Batteux’nün bu çalışmadaki temel projesi, henüz ortak bir kavramsal çerçeveden yoksun olan sanatlar arasında rasyonel bir birlik kurmaktır. Bu makale, eserin birleştirici ilkesi olan belle nature kavramını modern sanat felsefesinin ve güzel sanatlar kategorisinin oluşumundaki rolü bakımından yeniden yorumlamaktadır. Makale, belle nature’ü yalnızca bir taklit ilkesi olarak gören ve kavramı “güzel doğa”ya indirgeyen sınırlı yaklaşımların aksine, onun normatif (...) boyutunu ve Batteux’nün “Güzel Sanatlar” sistemindeki merkezi rolünü ortaya koymayı amaçlamaktadır. Makalenin temel iddiası, belle nature’ün yalnızca doğanın bir kopyası veya ondan tamamen kopuk soyut bir ideal olmadığı, aksine, sanatçının yargıda bulunma, seçme ve arı bir forma ulaşma sürecinde açığa çıkan, doğa ile ideal arasında aracılık eden normatif bir ilke olduğudur. Bu ilke, sanatın yalnızca var olanı taklit etmediğini, aynı zamanda onu olması gerekenden hareketle yeniden kurduğunu savunur. Böylece taklit ile idealleştirme arasındaki ilişki, estetik değerin temel kaynağı hâline gelir. Metin merkezli tarihsel ve kavramsal analiz yöntemini izleyen bu çalışma, Batteux’nün projesini “güzel sanatların modern sistemi” tartışmaları bağlamına yerleştirmektedir. Çalışmada, belle nature’ün Du Bos, Crousaz ve André gibi kuramcıların sanatsal yaratım ve doğa ilişkisi üzerine görüşleriyle olan bağı ortaya konacak; belle nature kavramının taklit, doğa ve güzel sanatlar arasındaki kilit konumu gösterilecek; son olarak, belle nature’ün evrensellik iddiasının tarihsel ve kültürel sınırları incelenerek Batteux’nün sisteminin günümüz için ne ifade ettiği tartışılacaktır. Bu çalışma, belle nature’ün yalnızca on sekizinci yüzyıl estetiğini anlamak için değil, aynı zamanda günümüzde sanatların çoğulluğu ile onların normatif birliği arasındaki kalıcı gerilimi düşünmek için de hâlâ verimli bir kavramsal çerçeve sunduğunu ortaya koymayı amaçlamaktadır. (shrink)

I.A. Richards’ critical output, especially in Principles of Literary Criticism and Practical Criticism, is often placed at the fore of an uncomplicated trajectory from New Criticism through a series of formalist approaches to literary texts, before finally being displaced by structuralism. Less routinely, Richards has been read as an early precursor to the late rise of cognitive approaches to literary theory and analysis. This paper adopts the less routine approach and, where previous considerations have been more generalist, opts to assess (...) the more particular cognitivist inclinations in Richards’ work. It does so by, firstly, bringing together the main precepts and principles of modern theories of ‘embodied cognition’, ‘image schemata’, ‘affordances’, and ‘texture’ with relevant analogues in Richards’ work, namely the ‘experience of forms’, ‘muscular images’, ‘poise’, and finally ‘texture’ as well as ‘rhythm’. Secondly, keeping in mind this ‘cognitive aesthetic’ toolkit, a term adopted in reflection of Richards’ broad theoretical reliance on the discipline of aesthetics in particular, it evaluates Richards’ consonance with, and potential contribution to, cognitivist scholarship. (shrink)

In Essays on Beauty & the Arts (2023) (‘Essays’), Dominic McIver Lopes has unearthed something of a champion for his ongoing mission to rejuvenate anal.

The aim of this paper is to situate Addison’s aesthetics within the diverse, transdisciplinary aesthetic communication of the early eighteenth century, through which the new anthropology of sensibility took shape. Like many of his contemporaries, Addison draws on the medico-physiological literature of his time. Aesthetic pleasure is explained as consisting in or being produced by neurophysiological processes described in terms of iatromechanism and animal spirit physiology. These processes, he argues, are beneficial to the health and well-being of the human body (...) and mind, and can prevent and even cure mental diseases such as melancholy, which were thought to be caused by the disordered movement of the animal spirits. This means that aesthetic pleasure functions as a kind of therapeutic in Addison’s aesthetics. A comparison with his essays on therapeutic somatic practices reveals that Addison describes the neurophysiological processes involved in aesthetic pleasure in much the same way as those involved in physical exercise. When he refers to the pleasures of the imagination as “gentle exercise” (Spectator 411), Addison is drawing on the medico-physiological literature on exercise, especially Francis Fuller’s Medicina Gymnastica. For Addison, both physical exercise and the “gentle exercise” offered by aesthetic pleasure share the same normative goal: a “cheerful” mind, i.e. the lively movement and the proper distribution of animal spirits. Exercise, both physical and aesthetic, can achieve this by rearranging the movement of the animal spirits: exercise distracts the solitary, constricted and inert melancholic mind, releases the animal spirits from their confused and disordered movements by communicating to them a Motion contrary to theirs. In a way, both physical exercise and aesthetic pleasure re-connect or synchronise us with our environment: they lead the melancholic mind back to the beauty, novelty and greatness of nature, the delights of social life and the bounties of the providential order itself. For Addison, cheerfulness is much more than optimal neurophysiological functioning: it is a virtuous, sociable and pious “habit of mind” (Spectator 387) that makes us feel at home in our natural, social and providential world. Thus, due to its medical and physiological underpinnings, Addison’s aesthetics takes its place in the tradition of the “care of the self”, still reverberating in the eighteenth century, fusing medicine, aesthetics, morality and piety in the normative goal of the Addisonian quest for self-transformation: cheerfulness. (shrink)

Over the course of five hundred years, the grotesque came to acquire a wealth of meanings, forms, and functions, spanning from naive drolleries to hideous atrocities. The variety of its historical manifestations challenges unambiguous assertions about its significance and value in modern western culture. This dissertation reconsiders the concept of the grotesque in the context of modern aesthetics, particularly the aesthetic theories of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel, developing a philosophical framework to address the transformation of the concept (...) at the turn of the nineteenth century. My analysis focuses on the period extending from 1790, the date of the first publication of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement, to the 1820s, when Victor Hugo articulated the Romantic paradigm of the grotesque in his Preface to Cromwell and Hegel delivered his famous lectures on fine art at the University of Berlin. This period corresponds to a major shift in the history of the grotesque under the influence of a new, Romantic sensibility, which legitimized the grotesque as a central principle of modern artistic expression and intensified its sinister overtones. The Romantic revival of the grotesque belongs to a broader philosophical debate about the legitimacy of art in modern secular societies and the importance of aesthetic sensibility in the mediation between nature and freedom. The aim of this study is thus twofold: on the one hand, to critically examine the Romantic paradigm of the grotesque from the perspective of Kant and Hegel; on the other hand, to investigate the tension between the sensible and the supersensible in Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics through the lens of the grotesque. -/- Broadly construed, the grotesque can be conceived as the extreme distortion of natural forms, especially the human form, in an exaggerated expression of human corporeality and animality that is deemed incongruous with rational principles. In response to the first aim of the study, I argue that, within Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics, we find two strands of grotesqueness: a revelatory strand that presupposes a deliberate attempt to express or embody the supersensible, and a recreational strand that results from the carefree play with forms, often with no concern for the content or meaning of the work. From the perspective of Kant and Hegel, both strands fail to provide a truthful insight into the supersensible. Instead, they are grounded in a radical affirmation of particularity: in the revelatory grotesque, particularity assumes an objective guise, latching on to rational principles, whereas in the recreational grotesque, it tends to be recognized and valued for its own sake, disregarding objectivity. In either case, the grotesque exaggerates the chasm between our natural inclinations and our rational aspirations, suggesting the weakness and contingency of human reason. From the perspective of Kant and Hegel, the grotesque can only afford a self-contradictory and unsustainable model of reconciliation, since it undermines our awareness of ourselves as rational, self-determining agents and thus hinders the realization of human freedom in the phenomenal world. It is, therefore, plausible that Kant and Hegel were reluctant to recognize the relevance of the revelatory grotesque in European modernity, after the Enlightenment had supposedly purged reason from sensuous excesses. Insofar as the grotesque persists in modernity, it is, in their view, deprived of transcendent aspirations, restricted to the individual, and strictly opposed to reason and understanding. -/- Following the second aim of the study, I argue that the concept of the grotesque enhances our understanding of the attempts to reconcile freedom and nature within Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics in three ways. First, the grotesque reveals the depths of nature (within and outside us) as impenetrable by rationality, challenging Kant’s principle of purposiveness of nature and Hegel’s notion of a “second nature”. While the grotesque does not necessarily invalidate these principles, it stresses their limits, serving as a helpful reminder of human finitude and the constraints it imposes on human cognition. Second, especially in the revelatory strand, the grotesque suggests that reason is constitutively enmeshed with sensuousness, dependent on external circumstances, inclinations, and feelings. In an inversion of the Hegelian Idea, the grotesque tends towards a unity of spirit and nature in which nature is dominant and generates spirit out of itself, weakening Kantian and Hegelian claims to the autonomy and universality of reason. Finally, the grotesque reveals a tension within Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics between their attempts to reconcile the sensible with the supersensible and their tendency to relegate the body to a subordinate position, de-sensualizing beauty and art. Within Romanticism, on the contrary, human finitude becomes a source of laughter, joy, and intuitive wisdom, with an implicit legitimization of sensations and emotions as integral to our grasp of the supersensible. With some ambivalence, the Romantic legitimization of the grotesque brings the body to the centre of our collective self-understanding, opening fine art to a plurality of aesthetic qualities traditionally disregarded as non-aesthetic, anti-aesthetic, or of bad taste. (shrink)

The dissertation examines Hegel’s account of art’s importance to the actualization of freedom by exploring how he takes art to be a form of absolute spirit. Hegel was convinced that art plays a crucial role in human life by realizing a form of freedom which expands on the freedom realized by social institutions without undermining it. The central thesis of my work is that Hegel provides a unique description of the way in which art changes our attitude to ethical norms. (...) Art encourages and enables what I term normative lingering: instead of having us pull back from ethical norms and criticize them from an external position, art allows us to linger with them long enough to bring out their deeper significance and potential contradictions. Art mediates between subjective experience and objective social institutions in a way that changes our relationship to the ethical norms embodied in those institutions. Rather than seeing them as fully determinate demands imposed on us externally, we come to understand them as historically variable realizations of a deeper political principle which we can affirm or criticize. Art, in other words, helps us relate freely to socially constituted ethical norms. (shrink)

What role should examples play in aesthetic inquiry? This essay brings a neglected early episode in the history of aesthetics to bear on this question. Asked 'What is beauty?' in Plato's Hippias Major, Hippias first cites a beautiful maiden. Surprisingly, before refuting this answer, Socrates asks about other examples: a beautiful mare, lyre, and pot (chytra). These widely ignored examples, I show, work to contest an association between beauty and aristocratic class. By beginning the inquiry in this way, Plato emphasizes (...) the need to critique and not rely on cultural examples that incline reflection on beauty. (shrink)

Volume 74 in the series Hallesche Beiträge zur Europäischen Aufklärung -/- Die vor-autonome und noch nicht auf das Feld der Künste beschränkte Ästhetik des ›langen 18. Jahrhunderts‹ strebte eine interdisziplinäre und internationale Kommunikationspraxis an, die eine universelle Verständigung unter den Menschen ermöglichen sollte. -/- Der Band versammelt Beiträge zu der europäischen Geschichte dieser anthropologisch ausgerichteten ästhetischen Kommunikation. Die Aufsätze der ersten Sektion beschäftigen sich mit der zeitgenössichen Theorie der ästhetischen Wissensvermittlung: Es wird die fachübergreifende (Proto-) Ästhetik Shaftesburys und Addisons, die (...) Sprachtheorie von Coleridge bzw. die schwierige Einbürgerüng der Disziplin ›Ästhetik‹ in Frankreich thematisiert. Im zweiten Teil beschäftigen sich zwei Aufsätze mit der Kommunikation durch Bilder, anhand der Analyse von Gemälden Jean-Siméon Chardins und Caspar David Friedrichs. Die Bedeutung des Bild- und Erzählstoffes ›Herkules am Scheideweg‹ für Wielands ästhetische Kommunikation wird hier ebenfalls behandelt. Die dritte Sektion enthält Untersuchungen zu zwei wichtigen Gattungen der ästhetischen Kommunikation. Es werden zunächst unterschiedliche Varianten des Genres Traumerzählung bei Johann Gottlob Krüger und Mihály Vörösmarty beleuchtet. Der Band schließt mit der Analyse von József Eötvös’ Künstlerroman Der Karthäuser. -/- Die Fallstudien tragen zu dem besseren Verständnis einer Ästhetik bei, die die Bildung der Menschen durch intersubjektive Kommunikation vorantreiben wollte. (shrink)

I reconstruct 20th-century Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos’s answers to two important aesthetic-political questions: (1) Can aesthetic judgments bind community? and (2) Can aesthetic judgments drive political, social, and cultural change? My objectives are twofold: one, to show that Vasconcelos’s responses make original contributions to an important aesthetic-political tradition that begins with Kant, and two, to offer key ideas from Vasconcelos’s aesthetics to a wider audience, as an invitation to engage with his work in their research and teaching. In section I, (...) I argue that Kant’s remarks suggest that aesthetic judgments bind the community. In section II, I explain that Kant sometimes appears to suggest that aesthetic judgments promote political, social, and cultural change. Section III discusses two bridge figures—Schiller and Arendt—that help us better understand how Kantian aesthetics binds community and serves political purposes. In section IV, I argue that Vasconcelos aligns with the Kantian tradition exemplified by Schiller and Arendt when developing a plan for aesthetically-guided social and political progress. I also show that, during his time in various positions of power in the Mexican government, Vasconcelos brought ideas from the Kantian tradition to life. I conclude by reflecting on how Vasconcelos reveals new possibilities for the Kantian tradition. (shrink)

While surrealist art is often thought of as some rejection of classical conceptions of beauty, we can use such approaches to analyze certain surrealist art works. By using a realist metaphysical idea of beauty and art, particularly in the tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, a deeper meaning can be drawn from surrealist paintings. Far from casting away realist metaphysics, surrealist art calls us to contemplate this realism in a new way. This new paradigm is exemplified in considering the (...) contemplative aspects of several works by Salvador Dalí; and while not comprehensive, the analysis provides an insight for scholars into how they can use this aesthetic framework in their own analyses. If this realist method, specifically designed in light of traditional and classical art, can provide a fruitful way of approaching new, innovative, and non-traditional art, it deserves a broader consideration as a window into both aesthetic and metaphysical theory. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to trace a specific influence from Immanuel Kant to Fyodor Dostoevsky, through Friedrich Schiller. I do so by utilizing Anton Barba-Kay’s arguments about Schiller’s philosophical reactions to Kant’s moral and aesthetic philosophies. Barba-Kay argues that Kant’s moral maxim of duty raises a problem of “aesthetic visibility,” opening an epistemic gap between external action and internal intention. In response to this widening gap between the external and the internal, Schiller does what Kant refused to do (...) and combines the moral with the aesthetic. In reaction to Kant, Schiller posits two moral/aesthetic types: “Grace” and “Dignity.” After showing the general influence Schiller had on Dostoevsky, I show how these two Schillerian moral/aesthetic types play central roles in The Brothers Karamazov. I close by showing one literary technique Dostoevsky uses to overcome the problem of aesthetic visibility which Barba-Kay fears. (shrink)

This research investigates the historical origins of porcelain pottery from Hasami and Arita in western Kyushu, Japan, emphasizing the crucial yet often overlooked role of Korean potters, who were forcibly brought to Japan during the Imjin War (1592–1598). A striking contrast emerges between the euphemistic narratives found in Kyushu museums—where Koreans (if they are mentioned at all) are described as having been "brought back" to Japan—and the emotive views of Soetsu Yanagi (1889-1961), founder of the Mingei (folk crafts) movement. Despite (...) the foundational contributions of Korean artisans—particularly figures like Ri Sam-Pei—many museums in Kyushu either downplay or completely omit the violent context behind the emergence of the region’s pottery traditions. Hasami ware especially, known today for its elegant simplicity, clearly reflects Korean influence. Yanagi, on the other hand, openly acknowledged the suffering endured by Koreans during Japanese invasions and colonial rule, arguing that the depth and minimalist beauty of Korean ceramics arose from this very history of hardship. He described this aesthetic as Hiai No Bi (the “Beauty of Sorrow”), a concept that, while influential, has also sparked controversy. While some scholars value Yanagi’s admiration for Korean craftsmanship, others critique his romanticization of trauma and the colonial context in which he wrote. By juxtaposing current museum presentations with Yanagi’s forthright–though contested–perspective, this study advocates for a more truthful and comprehensive account of Kyushu porcelain pottery’s origins. It urges cultural institutions to move beyond the sanitized or even absent narratives, embracing the diverse influences and complex histories that have shaped Japanese craft and design. (shrink)

The absence of ‘tactile art’ in Western culture is often associated with a marginalization of the sense of touch in the aesthetic experience of art. This paper considers several explanations for the apparent historical neglect of touch as an aesthetic sense. While dismissing the idea that the relevance of touch for aesthetic engagement with art depends on there being an art of touch, it also explores how tactual experiences might contribute to the aesthetic appreciation of artworks across a variety of (...) media. It argues that touch plays a crucial role in our engagement with artworks. Ultimately, it aims to enrich aesthetic theory by foregrounding the subtle yet significant influence of touch in art, proposing a broader, more inclusive understanding of sensory engagement in artistic practices. (shrink)

Die Beiträge des sechsten Bandes geben einen Einblick in gestalterische Forschungs- und Reflexionsprozesse an der Technischen Hochschule Würzburg-Schweinfurt, der Universität Leiden sowie der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. Im thematischen und methodischen Fokus der sechs Beiträge stehen Fragen nach der Einbettung und Anschlussfähigkeit von Designprozessen im Rahmen eines umfassenderen, sozial und politisch situierten Verständnisses von Praktiken der Kulturproduktion. Der Band verdeutlicht den Zusammenhang engagierter und forschender Designhaltungen.

The Routledge History of the Senses presents readers with an overview of the field. As well as pointing to directions for the future of the discipline, it illustrates the extent to which the subject offers a considerable space for the exploration of diverse historical topics through the lens of sensory experience. -/- The handbook brings together essays and case studies from some of the leading academics on the history of the senses. Together, they not only chart topics and arguments in (...) existing scholarship but introduce fresh methodologies for future analyses. Specifically, the chapters collectively show that the senses of the historical body often portray the intensity of the invasion of capital upon the functions of the mind throughout global history. As a global history, this work arrives at a time when many sensory historians are looking for a touchstone for moving beyond the often heavily Western frameworks that dominate the existing literature on the historical senses. -/- Not only will this book appeal to students and scholars of the history of senses, visual studies, art history, food studies, and many of the social sciences, but individual chapters also offer useful reading material for a wide range of history modules and contemporary topics. (shrink)

Anne Le Fèvre Dacier (1645-1720) was the most important woman of letters of her time and Of the Causes of the Corruption of Taste is her most significant work. This book is one of the wellsprings of modern aesthetics. While Dacier was a classical philologist—not an aesthetician or philosopher of art—in several ways she anticipated and laid the groundwork for subsequent writers on the fine arts, including Batteux and Du Bos, both of whom cite her. Her views on art are (...) at least as sophisticated and interesting as those found in contemporaries such as Addison and Shaftesbury or anyone in France. Dacier addresses topics that would become staples in the philosophy of art, in many cases long before other writers did. She contributed to the demise of the rationalist approach to art criticism and to the rise of the view that the beauties of art are apprehended by means of experience, a view which came to dominate eighteenth-century thinking about the arts. -/- Dacier was one of the first eighteenth-century authors to emphasize that art is essentially the imitation of nature and belle nature. She raised questions about whether art can be a source of moral knowledge long before this became a widely discussed question in the philosophy of art. She richly deserves a prominent place in the early history of aesthetics. This volume is the first-ever translation of a work by Dacier into English. It includes a substantial introduction that not only examines her contributions to the philosophy of art but also traces her influence on the development of the subject through the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Over the past decades, much attention has been paid to Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic theory and theory of fine art. Yet not very much has been written on Kant’s reflections on the actual artworks, artists, and art forms he engaged with, or on how these might inform his theory of art. This special issue seeks to address this fundamental gap. It aims to explore Kant’s theory of art in light of his reflections on the actual art he was aware of.