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Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology

Volume 10, Issue 2, 2013
Aesthetic Values and the Process of Civilization

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Displaying: 1-11 of 11 documents


1. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Aldo Marroni The Aesthetic Crisis of Society
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The evaluation of subjectivity and the birth of aesthetics represent the presuppositions of the modern idea of civilization, intended as an endless progress ofsociety. In the contemporary world, the degeneration of subjectivity into narcissism and aesthetics into intimism has destroyed the productive relationship between individual sentiments and society, leading to the phenomenon of neo-cynical decivilization.
2. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Evan Osborne Art as a Capital Asset
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A framework for thinking about the social role of art is developed. Using economic ideas, art is depicted as a capital asset – something that provides insight tosociety over some period of time. The idea of thinking about art as an asset enables a concrete distinction between high and low art, as well as the possibility that art can “race to the bottom,” with low art displacing high art, with the concomitant deleterious consequences.
3. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Mario Perniola Knowledge, Power and Politic-Cultural Civilization
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What kind of relationship has modernity established between knowledge and power? What forms does such a relationship take in contemporary society? Theattempt here is to enter into the merits of its new formulations, focusing attention on the degradation to which power and knowledge have been subjected. The essay also indicates a solution that does not consist in a return to the past or escape into the future, but in the possibility of viewing the present as an opportunity for cultural emancipation.
4. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Geoffrey Skoll The Art of Living Together: How Artistic Work Makes the Moral Bonds of a Community
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A neighborhood in a US city seems to present a possibly unique exception to empirical generalizations and explanations of urban decline and occasional rehabilitation. Resisting decline, gentrification, and outside interests and actors, the neighborhood generated a subculture created by working class artists. As a valuable occasion for revising urban social theory, this essay draws on the work of Howard S. Becker, Pierre Bourdieu, Henri Lefebvre, Jacques Rancière, and Georg Simmel, among others. It relies on ethnographic method for its empirical findings.
5. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Paolo Bartoloni The Aesthetics of Renunciation, and the Irregularities of the 20th Century
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In the essay “Das Wort” (“Words”), Martin Heidegger wrote about “renunciation” (verzicht) in the context of the poetry of Stefan George. According toHeidegger the entrance into the possibility of Saying, with the capital “S” – as opposed to the chatter of every-day life – could be achieved in the instance of the poet’s deliberate acceptance of renunciation. Heidegger’s writings, including “Words,” have had an enormous influence in the second part of the 20th century on authors and thinkers alike. And yet this influence may have had a pernicious effect, at least in the opinion of some commentators. In the 2005 book L’adieu à la littérature, William Marx, for instance, claimed that the 20th century is the time of a literature sans style. If on the one hand literature achieved its autonomy, on the other it farewelled the cognitive purpose with regard to the world, which, some could argue, equates with a retreat from its civilizing purpose. This essay does two things: first it illustrates and contextualizes the notion of “renunciation” from philosophical as well as literary and cultural perspectives: second it discusses a set of authors who have experienced the category of “renunciation” in different ways and with different outcomes. I refer to Maurice Blanchot, Frances Ponge and Édouard Glissant.
6. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Montserrat Martínez García A Panoramic Overview of British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics
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The aim of this paper is not to focus on a particular thematic issue of Aesthetics, offering an exhaustive approach of it, but to display a broader map allowingto capture the essence of this topic from an overall perspective. To achieve it, I have paid attention to a number of points that will help to place Aesthetics in historical terms in the context of 18th century Great Britain. In this vein, I have addressed certain pillars deemed crucial in understanding Aesthetics, such as the socio-historical background in which it emerged, the meaning of this field of study, its main theoreticians and its three most important aesthetic categories. Finally, I close the paper by drawing some brief conclusions.
7. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Pedro Sargento New Materialism and Neutralized Subjectivity. A Cultural Renewal?
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In the increasingly notorious philosophy of new materialism, a serious attempt to redefine subjectivity in terms of its non-dualistic nature can be ascertained.The criticism on dualisms draws directly on a wider critique focusing the anthropocentric and correlationist models that shaped modernity and modern thought. In this paper, I consider new materialism’s non-dualism as a starting point from which a subsequent decline of subjectivity can be purported. This decline does not involve immediately, or at all, devaluation but, instead, it is interpreted as an instance of neutralization. The neutralized subject is an underlying phenomenon ofthe ontology and the epistemology that relates closer to new materialist philosophy. New materialism’s conceptual framework draws widely on Deleuze and Latour’s thought. On what subjectivity is concerned, the concepts of “becoming” and of the “virtual” are crucial in more recent theorizations aligned with new materialism, where a commitment to overcome the barriers imposed by a central and substantial subjectivity is present (for example in Rosi Braidotti’s or Karen Barad’s writings). At the same time, the theory of assemblages and the claim for the existence and observation of the agencies of (inanimate) matter provide a further element, along with a further set of concepts that, as I claim, reinforce the becoming-neutral of the subject. In this case, the works of Manuel de Landa or Jane Bennett are seminal. Finally, when this neutralization is taken as part of a realistic post-humanist conception, the possibility of a new cultural model and a new set of values arises. The edification of a new cultural model, although not entirely intentional or socially widespread, is made possible when the neutralization of subjectivity accompanies a withdrawal of a misleading representation of its centrality and substantiality without denying the properties of its particular embodiment.
8. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Lingling Peng, Yang Geng Cultural Semiosis in Artistic Chinese Calligraphy
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This paper explores iconicity in the metrical structure and the cultural value of Artistic Chinese calligraphy along the lines of Carles S.Peirce’s theory. It drawsattention to the fact that there is a simple categorical correspondence between the outer forms of Artistic Chinese Calligraphy and their subject-matter, presenting it a mixed form of representation, based on resemblances but also creating its own metaphysical meanings simultaneously.
9. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Janez Strehovec Algorithmic Culture and E-Literary Text Semiotics
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This paper aims to explore the notion of algorithmic culture in relation to new media and electronic literature. Such a culture considers human as being immersed in smart technology, which with its code and algorithms defines individual’s behaviour and decision-making, modes of socializing and participation, experiencing and perception. The following lines unveil the paradigm shift that involves semiotic crossings between human and machine languages. In order to do so, it addresses some crucial particularities of the emerging field of electronic literature.
10. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
A.A. Gede Rai Remawa, Imam Santosa, Biranul Anas Zaman Aesthetic and Space Concept of Visual Composition in Interior and Architecture of Bali Madya Dwelling
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Global era is an era of acculturation which may surface difficulties due to the tendency of becoming global chaos that may influence people’s thought. Everyonehas their own views and has made changes with their own worldview perception; hybrid and heterodox. Changes without wisdom will eliminate local elements.This phenomenon has influenced myriad forms of visual composition and architecture of Bali Madya dwelling. Balinese culture has gone through various changes since Rsi Markandeya in the 9th century, Empu Kuturan in the 10th century and Danghyang Nirartha in the 14th century. They changed many dwelling arrangements in architecture. Changes do not mean that one has to demolish the local indigenous elements but, instead, should attempt to develop various indigenous elements with the intention that the visual interior and architectural compositions have their own distinctive characters. In relation to that, aesthetic image and traditional space concept will be arranged in various kinds of acculturation in global visual forms. The dwelling space of Bali Madya concept was acculturated from the Bali Aga’s space concept during the era of Majapahit. This research is based on aesthetic and historical approach that stressed on the artistic aspects and design that are associated with aesthetic appeal. The analysis was done using observations of form and function including the meaning of space composition which was arranged to produce a proportionate composition with local images.
11. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Joseph S. Fulda Value-Sensitive Design as an Ongoing Process of Market Discovery
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Value-sensitive design conceived as an a priori process is necessarily uncompleted, because the foresight needed to accommodate competing values in trueaccord with consumers’ (ever-evolving) wishes is simply unavailable ab initio. True value-sensitive design is, instead, an ongoing process of market discovery which is evolutionary in nature rather than a priori. We illustrate this generality with the landline telephone.