Undoubtedly the Renaissance era was a period during which art was closely related to philosophy, probably more than in any other time. This is partly due to the interest awoken to people of that time in classical antiquity, declaring, therefore, their clash with their immediate past. Thus, it is this interest in the Classical world that reignites the study of ancient philosophy as well. Neoplatonism, which dominated Florence with the founding of the Platonic Academy, affected fundamentally and directly the formation of art in that city; whereas the influence over the art of Venice was more implicit. Even if the Venetian artists seem on the surface to bypass the systematic study of the unrivalled Greek ideals, a closer look reveals that in reality they competed with classic heritage by integrating it in various ways and in many levels in their artwork.

Graffiti is an art of identity: individual, collective, ethnic and racial. From the disenfranchised poor sprang up the “ghetto youth” in New York in the 1960s. Many members of this marginalized youth attempted by inventing and putting into public circulation a new name, the tag, to assert their subjective presence, to disrupt the planned invisibility, to escape political exclusion and to force their violent daily experiences into public view. Graffiti writers also built inclusive communities, the crews, where they learned the value of both self and community, and developed collective identity based on collaborative work. Additionally, graffiti as a subcultural, vernacular art form was produced, for the most part, by racial and ethnic minorities. Therefore, our concern is to indicate this precise creole process that requires the ability to recognize the point where two cultures, the marginalized and the mainstream, meet. When graffiti entered the mainstream art world in the early 1980s, a critical discourse was informed that established writing as galleried “graffiti art”. The scope of this paper is therefore to examine the principles on which the critique was grounded; whether and to what extent the critical discourse was class and race colored; the numerous contradictions between and within the culture of writing and the culture of galleried art.

Two different kinds of art exist in Japan: ‘geijutsu’, the English equivalent to ‘arts’ or ‘fine arts’ and ‘geidō’, which does not have a literal equivalent in any Western languages. “Geidō” literally means the “way of arts”. During the 15th century the term ‘geidō’ first appeared. In the 17th century similar terms such as ‘sadō’ (way of tea), internationally known as “tea ceremony” and ‘kadō’ (way of the flower), also known as “flower arrangement” appeared. In the Edo period, adding ‘dō’ at the end of the name of any art form, including martial arts, was a common practice, although these terms such as ‘sadō’ or ‘kadō’ did not supersede the more common terms ‘cha-no-yu’ or ‘ikebana’. In the early 20th century many types of ‘geidō’ became household words. These ‘geidō’ were not taught at art schools or universities where Western arts were mainly taught. However, ‘shodō’ (calligraphy) became a regular course in teachers’ colleges. Many forms of ‘geidō’ flourished in cities. Many of these “ways of arts” were revived in a rapidly industrializing nation, where Western arts were replacing traditional arts. ‘Geidō’ was in a sense an antithesis to ‘geijutsu’, which literally means the “technique of arts” or the “art of arts”, or, in other words, “art for art’s sake”, then a major trend in Western art. Although “ways of arts” are sometimes criticized for their monopolizing attitude toward teaching by school heads, contemporary art can learn something from the philosophy of ‘geidō’ such as the appreciation of the process, denial of completion or indifference to results, since daily activities are without end or completion and will continue until the end of one’s life. In the course of de­voting one’s life to these activities, one comes to realize that they are relevant to the shared values of human life.

Some contemporary analyses of the nature of artistic works have been too narrowly focused to establish the ontological status of the literary work. In her many books and articles Amie Thomasson reflects on the variety of problems involved in establishing clarity on the ontological status of an artistic work. Her conclusion is that the ontological status is either unanswerable or that the question is ill-formed. It is only because of a limited em­pirical model of evaluation that the ontological integrity of the literary work is unseen. I propose to use Roman Ingarden’s work to provide a more substantial direction for an aesthetic ontology. Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden wrote the Literary work of Art in 1931 and wrote The cognition of the Literary work of Art in 1937. Both these texts are largely ignored by philosophers today (though they were influential in the Wellek and Warren theory of literature in the 1940’s). Ingarden’s work provides a multi-layered reality which defines the ontological status of a literary work of art. Two specific issues characterize the literary work for Ingarden: the nature of the quasi-judgment and the metaphysical qualities that transcend individual works.

In this paper, I am trying to reconstruct Shaftesbury’s views on natural beauty, writing and painting. Thus, the term ‘aesthetics’ I am using refers to both aesthetic experience and artistic creativity, to both natural and artistic beauty. As, however, in Shaftesbury’s work aesthetics cannot be considered irrespective of his overall philosophy, I am obliged to examine in parallel with aesthetics Shaftesbury’s ontology and moral theory. It is the concern for this last one that gave the occasion for the emergence of an aesthetic theory in Shaftesbury’s work. My argument is that Shaftesbury’s view on natural beauty and his deep appreciation of natural scenery opened extremely fertile prospects for aesthetics, prospects that were meant to give their seeds both in enlightenment and in romanticism The concepts of disinterestedness, of natural sublimity and genius, for example, are some of Shaftesbury’s main contributions to the newborn discipline of aesthetics that were to have great future in the relevant conversation. In the case of writing, while the paradigm Shaftesbury uses comes undoubtedly from Horace and his advice to the poets to study philosophy, the place reserved for the true poet, his apotheosis indeed, anticipated the romantic appreciation of artists. The analysis of painting, finally, retains the strong link between art and morality and is based mainly on the Aristotelian concepts of unity and probability. It is thus undoubtedly a typical example of neoclassical analysis. It remains, however, a strong testimony of Shaftesbury’s pertinent commitment to empiric reality against those views that would present him as a high-flown Neoplatonist metaphysician.

Philosophical interpretation of works of art can be done by quite definite criteria. The symbols taken from traditional art might be such criteria; they form sense and image of works. We will elaborate a method of analysis of philosophical interpretation of works of art through eliciting symbols that form the core of an image and a plot of a given work by philosophical categories, such as ‘motion’, ‘form’ and ‘image’. 1) Motion – is an active element of the art work. 2) Form is a passive element lined up by the trajectory of motion. 3) Image stems from the combination of motion and form. Motion organizes the inherent parts of art work to one rhythm, and the sounder and more compact the rhythm, the brighter the image. Then the symbol can be elicited from the image as something archetypal, existing independently from our ideas and concepts. With this method of philosophical interpretation it is possible to develop a new scientific category – “philosophical sense of work of art”. To make this method useful and applicable in practice we need an extensive empirical base of symbols and signs.

Paul Guyer has proposed that, despite Kant’s apparent avowals that judgements of beauty of things are made without consideration of the purposes that we have for them, purposes do enter into aesthetic judgements of “adherent beauty.” He even attributes to Kant the view that functionality is a necessary condition for the beauty of objects that have certain ends or functions. I consider his claims and propose that, according to Kant, the degree to which an object fulfills its ends may pose a psychological – rather than a logical – factor in its aesthetic appreciation. I agree that judgements of beauty, with regard to many things, certainly are made in relation to the functions that we attribute to those things, but argue that these judgements, as such, are logically independent of whatever judgements are made regarding their functionality, even if in practice their functionality may impinge on our aesthetic judgements.

My presentation will open a window into the artists’ daily life from a political philosophy perspective. I ask: what is an artists’ work? We can look this question from different perspectives. From the aesthetics perspective we can ask: do an artist’s works represent the real world and life or are they a mimesis? Usually we accept that imagination and creativity are separate from authentic realism (which is also a very difficult issue, as Charles Taylor noted), but when artists create something that is “politically hot” we define this piece of work as realism. This leads us to understand that an artist’s main mental tools (imagination and creativity) might be values that are controlled by the values of society. The idea of freedom is thus questionable. Also in the social philosophical framework, a question ever since the times of Plato has been: what is the position of the artist in society? Plato thought artists might be dangerous for the order of the Polis, especially for the concept of paideia: many unsuitable ideas could damage young men. Throughout history this viewpoint has been alive and reflected in various artists’ positions. The work they do as professional members of society seems to be connected to the time at hand, and to power. Different kinds of ethical or moral values usually determine artists as persons, and define their works, in social spaces. My theoretical and philosophical perspective will touch on ancient names such as Plato and Aristotle, but my main focus is on contemporary philosophers such as Adorno, John Rawls, Alain Badiou, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Jean-Luc Nancy. I will also briefly demonstrate empirical examples from research materials on artists in Finland.

I offer a Kantian model for an aesthetic of ecology with ethical implications. I begin with the example of a landscape rehabilitation project, the Bordelais Bog (St. Lazare, Quebec) an 8000-year-old landscape of rare species, in which an architectural framework has been constructed to preserve nature. I examine the work against the use of the natural landscape for residential development, what Emily Brady has termed, the hedonistic model of aesthetic appreciation. In residential development aesthetic appreciation becomes purely instrumental and indistinguishable from pleasures connected to practical use. I expand on Brady’s Kantian model to elaborate the aesthetic of the Bordelais Bog. The architectural structure designed to protect the bog acts as a programmatic whole, protecting the organic wholeness of the site and therein lays its fittingness to purpose. This is analogous to the concept of ‘functional fit’ as articulated by Allen Carlson, involving the way in which the natural environment is composed of, many-layered and interlocking ecosystems. In his theory a particular fit is essential for the survival of organisms and whole systems. It is necessary to formulate the appropriate fit in terms of the functionality of the human ecosystem in balance with natural ecosystems.

Even if it is easier to see a branch of art by looking at particular works of art, to define the features of a branch of art is different from to define the feature of art in general. Even if the essence of art can only be investigated by considering what art is in general, the only thing that remains concretely visible are individual works of art. Nevertheless, it is the art in general – not merely any particular branch of art– what is to be defined, when we do philosophy of art. Particular works of art and the essence of art constitute two different poles seen thorough different perspectives. These two perspectives are constituted by the concept of art as skill and the concept of art as fiction about human possibilities. Since some philosophers, who investigate what art is, are not able to handle both poles simultaneously, they unwittingly investigate art from within one of these perspectives. Most of the problems in the philosophy of art arise from this unwitting one sidedness. This is at issue in the philosophy of cinema as well. The debate between Bill Nichols and Carl R. Plantinga on the characteristics of documentary seems to be an example of that problem.

This paper discusses for the first time the problem of the concept of music in aesthetics. All discoveries and inventions in the creative activity necessarily involve the appearance of a new concept, so productive and creative activity involves development and transformation of the conceptual sphere. The concept in music (we call it audial) is the general logical type expressing laws of musical forms. The definition of ‘audial’ that can be regarded as a cultural code is fundamentally new, synthesizing acoustic and conceptual spheres. All concepts as categories are expressed in language forms (in a musical text), but the musical sense is not limited only by speculative categories and concepts that can merge or dissolve in the acoustic space. The recipient perceives such space both sensually and emotionally. Therefore, musical concepts necessarily suggest figurative, sensual-perceptual (aesthesis) segment and imaginative aspects. So, we think that to reveal the particularities of the concept we should introduce the appropriate definition – an audial conceptual image. The category of “audial conceptual image” dialectically expresses the idea of synthesis of sense (aesthetic) and rational (logical) aspects. Audial conceptual image, being a result of a musical experiment, creates a complete picture of the universe and is also a tool in studying the musical shape of the era.

This paper focuses mainly on the aesthetics of the physical landscape in Plato’s Phaedrus. Although Phaedrus depicts basically the microcosm of the human soul, which strives to reach the forms in a superheaven realm, this paper remains well-rounded and focused on the physicality of the natural beauty of the place, which embraces in a unique way the mythical imagined beauty of the Muses’ art (performance). The first and biggest part of the paper is devoted to the characteristics of the natural beauty of the surroundings, where the dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus takes place. The second part pays attention to the beauty of the Muses’ art, included in the cicadas myth that Socrates narrates. The link between the beautiful natural space and the beautiful song and dance of the Muses is the pleasant cicadas’ song. But, while the beauty of the place is omnipresent and depicted in a most lively and vigorous way, the performance of the Muses is restricted to the realm of the imagination and its beauty is more implied than indicated. How does this general beauty work for the two protagonists? Why does Plato give so much emphasis on the aesthetic description of the natural space?

The term ‘Aesthetics’ has been considered in Indian Philosophy as Saundaryash a-stra or Nandansh a-stra which is a branch of philosophical enquiry and precisely means the philosophical study of ‘Beauty’ and ‘Sublime’. In my selected topic, I have tried to explain in brief the views of some best art-thinkers of India who described philosophical similarity between sculpture, painting, poetry, music and dance. Here, the foundation stone of saundaryash a-stra enlarges upon the maxim, Vibha-va, Anubha-va, Vyabhi­ca-ri samyoga-d rasnishpattih. It gets its origin in drama, reaches its culmination of growth in poetics and is developed in architecture and music. This maxim contains in it the psychological reality of a member of the audience as well as the contents of artistic expression which transforms the mental state of an individual. How an artistic expression works on audience as well as on actor or performer or creator has been presented through this maxim. According to it an artistic presentation transforms one’s emotions into a purely aesthetic transcendental feeling i.e., divine bliss. It is the transformation of mood (bha-va) into its essence - Rasa. Vibha-va is the means by which an emotion is activated. The outward manifestations as a result of vibha-va are the anub­ha-va. Vyabhica-rí or sancha-ri bhava-s (complementary states) are feelings which develop the permanent mood (Sthayibha-vas). The prime philosophical concept of ‘Time’ conceived in several schools of Indian philosophy as a portion of time and in any musical performance (including instrumental and dance) is actually measured in terms of time and named as ka-la-khanda. The aesthetic pursuit is primarily the pursuit of ‘Ka-ma’, which in wider sense as a constituent of the interactive relationship with the others, it could be linked to love or the aesthetic equivalent ‘S′rin·g a-ra’ and taken as a movement towards ‘moks′a’. Most of the aesthetic-thinkers of India consummate in bliss that is the goal of aesthetics. So, all explanations have been attempted to show how this purpose is served in different schools of Indian philosophy at various stages of their development.

Chinese classical aesthetics are based on agricultural civilization; it leads to the typical agricultural trait of Chinese traditional aesthetics specifically manifested as follows: first, the reliance of agricultural productive mode on nature bringing the relation between man and nature to the center of concern of Chinese aesthetics. Secondly, natural materials such as soil (vegetation etc.) concerned with agricultural production are the most fundamental materials employed by Chinese artistic creation. Thirdly, the reliance on the earth of agricultural production has shaped the Chinese conception of time and space, which is of distinctive aesthetic characteristics. Fourthly, nature dominates Chinese environmental cognition and landscape fancy, and “moving nature home” is the fundamental idea of landscape design.

I argue that the metaphysical idea of “sub specie aeternitatis” might have a heuristic function for aesthetic reflection. This means, simply, that various conceptions of infinity are constitutive to the configuration of artworks. From this perspective, we need to focus on the tension between two concurring conceptualizations of time in the history of fine arts. The concept of infinity will be contrasted with duration, which is mostly motivated by the will to consider artworks as entities or symbolic systems. After the collapse of traditional metaphysics, a modern substitute for the idea of infinity has been proposed by many avant-garde artists. One of the conceptions of infinity might already be employed in modern artists’ idea of ephemerality. In the representation of ephemerality, we observe the artists’ critical attitudes toward the traditional concept of duration. The temporality of space, self-expressiveness of the matter itself, and reconstruction through media are the symptoms of late postmodern art. However, the well-known postmodern rejection of the metaphysical ideal might fail because postmodernism is not in control of infinity as an aesthetic idea. The alleged insistence on the fragmentary, differential, and contingent character of artistic self-understanding indicates toward their despair regarding the infinity problem.

This article was motivated by a critic material received from Etienne Boulba (2007), independent art critic, in which was said that the AICA International Congress (Art Critics International Association) that took place in Paris in 2006 showed a crisis in this profession in front of a selection difficulty which only grows, because a displacement is noticed - every time larger - of the aesthetics for the sociology and the anthropology. This last sentence drew attention, because the main idea matches some statements found in the Art Congresses agenda worldwide. The continuous interest is detected in the 20th century art, upcoming for practices and thoughts that seem to surpass their competence. These art concerns would produce constant indefinitions towards their disciplinary view, their group of knowledge, their episteme. What would impel and characterize this way of thinking and acting of art as well as their productions? How can we locate this problem act? Could we suppose that art would not have more specificity? Would the art specifics not have a disciplinary specificity? In the last National Meetings of Plastic Art researchers’ topics were already pointing to this matter and now are intended to displace the center to the implications due to the extent of the visual field in relation to production and research of the multiple study concerns, and this article intends to contribute to this subject.

Kant divides philosophy into theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy. Theoretical philosophy tackles the study of nature, while practical philosophy tackles morality. Both spheres of knowledge remain separated from each other. The Critique of Judgement aims to join both spheres through reflective judgement. Reflective judgement has two variants: the judgement of taste and teleological judgement. In the judgement of taste freedom of the imagination allows artistic creation and in doing so, it also allows man to contemplate nature according to ends. In both variants of reflective judgement, the freedom of imagination is the necessary condition, which allows man to create art or to contemplate nature according to an end which embraces the whole nature. In our paper we try to demonstrate that without freedom of imagination, reflective judgement could not take place.

The analysis refers to the logical systems of historical evaluation and to the reconstruction of previous or even contemporary artistic works through their reference to “(their) appraisal through derivation” or to “interpretation of their new meaning through origin” in accordance to the theorem of Philippe Bruneau, Professor of Classical Archaeology, according to which art is identified as that which is derived from art etc. This notion was formulated in 1974 in his prophetic article “Situation méthodologique de l’histoire de l’art antique”, ([…] Il y a art si les usagers croient qu’il y a art […]), and coincided with the statements by contemporary American minimalist and conceptual artists, who at roughly the same time expressed the idea that ‘[…] A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention, that is, he is saying that a particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art. […]’ (1969, Joseph Kosuth) or that ‘[…] if someone calls it art, it’s art […]’ (Donald Judd) or that ‘[…] The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. […]’ according to Sol Lewitt (1967). The main characteristic of this tautological system of analysis is that the retrospective construction or pre-installation of a reference guarantees its subsequent artistic consequences, which in turn refer anew to the reference from which they derived from in order to reinterpret it, and so on. This system was initially installed by Kazimir Malevich, between 1924 and 1927 via his “additional element” (“élément ajouté”) theory according to which by interposing itself each time as something new in previous artistic formations, this element alters the conditions of the formation and causes new artistic conditions. That is how Malevich explained the transition from Cézanne to cubism, futurism and to his own artistic theory, suprematism. An equivalent system was supported by Alfred Barr Jr. in the preface of his classic book Cubism and abstract art (1936), in which via complex interconnections he recorded about 25 tendencies in contemporary art. The central idea of this - apparently obligatory transition from one movement to the other - revealed to both authors, the normative, educational, social and theoretical character of each artistic suggestion, since it replaced the ontological question “what is art” with the epistemological question “where does art comes from, how does art act and perform”, implying that this circular system is inevitable and therefore universal. Moreover, the theoretical choices of American art critic Clement Greenberg –inspired by the aesthetic categories of the Swiss Heinrich Wölfflin regarding the conditions of the transition from the Renaissance to Baroque – conceived a correspondingly obligatory transition from Analytical Cubism to American Expressionism. Later, the artists of the “Support/Surface” group in France established themselves as the successors of American abstract painting through the ideas of Malevich and, in 1972, the French art historian Jean Clair constructed a diagram of art in France during the 1960s, through a juxtaposition of neo-figurative and conceptual artists. Finally, in her renowned article entitled “A view of Modernism” (1972), American professor Rosalind Krauss distanced herself from the linear conception of the interpretation of art, and later juxtaposed it – through the curation, with Yve-Alain Bois of the “L’informe, mode d’emploi” exhibition in 1996 at the Centre Georges Pompidou– with the “entropy” of the material and its degradation regardless of the gaze, through references to Georges Bataille and Robert Smithson. Respectively and in the same year, American art historian Hal Foster, in his book The Return of the Real, offered a similar critique of the linear system of interpretation via the identification of the correlation of the involvement of both the gaze and its object in the same public relation and public operation. The author of the papaer concludes that there is a correspondence between the ideas expressed by Foster and those voiced by French encyclopaedist Denis Diderot, according to whom the idea of the relation and the engagement of the relation itself is the foundation of Beauty (of art).

In recent years, a divide has emerged in Anglo-American scholarship between Alexander Nehamas’ reading of Nietzsche as an aestheticist who eschews the dogmatism implicit in the scientific project and Brian Leiter’s reading of Nietzsche as a hardnosed naturalist whose project is continuous with work in the natural sciences. In this paper, I argue that this divide is a false one. This is because Nietzsche thinks that a certain worldview, which he associates with the philosophy of Heraclitus, is conducive to the flourishing of art, and rather than avoiding the dangers of dogmatism in presenting this view, he turns to the natural sciences to show why everyone should accept it. As a result, the crucial divide in Nietzsche’s thinking is not between naturalism and aestheticism and so science and art, but between the naturalism and aestheticism that flourished during what Nietzsche calls the tragic age of the Greeks and the metaphysics and morality characteristic of the Platonic-Christian tradition.

The essay presented attempts to correlate aesthetical validation and design of landscape with the broader theoretical scope of modern Western societies, having as initial period of reference that of the 18th century. By that time representations and formations concerning landscape had already been organized in the European developed societies, offering to philosophical inquiry a corpus of perceptional references. At the same time the theoretical proposal of Schematism had been formed, indicating the terms of mental control over external reality. The evolution of the initial concept of Schematism through subsequent periods indicates similar transformations of control conditions exerted on natural reality; the latter, having to do either with mental or material constructions, as in the case of concepts, representations and forma­tions concerning landscape. The transition from static Euclidean Schematization to algebraic description or to Schematization concerning transformation terms, such as those described by topological or parametric approaches, can be respectively traced in changes that appeared at the same time in landscape concepts and in design. More extensively they can be seen as equivalent to changes related to the overall interpretation of the environment, both natural and man-made and by modern and contemporary culture in general.