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1. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Lee B. Brown Documentation and Fabrication in Phonography
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In most general terms, my paper is about the mixture of agendas in the recording industry, where documentation, with its apparently educational implications, becomes difficult to distinguish from a range of distinct, even opposed, goals—which I group under the heading "fabrication." After a few historical remarks, I develop the concept of what I call works of phonography (WPs)—that is, sound-constructs created by the use of recording machinery. (Examples: rap music recordings, electronic compositions for tape machine, sonic pastiche's by pop groups such as Art of Noise.) I detail their ontological characteristics, as contrasted the features of ordinary musical works. WPs are—I claim—replete. (Their finest sonic details are constitutive of them.) They are autographic. (Authenticity of their instances is not tested by the allographic criteria we associate with ordinary musical works, namely, compliance with scores.) And they are phono-accessible—that is, accessible only through playbacks of authentic instances of their record artifacts, e.g., cassette tapes, CDs, etc. I then turn to Theodore Gracyk's recent study of rock music (in his book Rhythm and Noise), arguing that his account is formally similar to my account of WPs. This raises the question of whether there be counter-examples to Gracyk's account—particularly of the sort that show his view to be too broad. I bring this to a focus finally by a comparison of rock recordings with jazz recordings—two classes that Gracyk tries to keep ontologically distinct. I argue that many classic jazz recordings are artifacts of the recording studio, no less than those Gracyk identifies as pure cases of rock music. In the same vein, I argue that, once recorded, the improvisational music of jazz is deformed—indeed, that it acquires features of WPs. This has the further implication that Gracyk cannot preserve his sharp distinction between rock and jazz records that he want's to maintain.
2. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Andrew Chignell The Problem of Particularity in Kant’s Aesthetic Theory
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In moving away from the objective, property-based theories of earlier periods to a subject-based aesthetic, Kant did not intend to give up the idea that judgments of beauty are universalizable. Accordingly, the "Deduction of Judgments of Taste" (KU, § 38) aims to show how reflective aesthetic judgments can be "imputed" a priori to all human subjects. The Deduction is not successful: Kant manages only to justify the imputation of the same form of aesthetic experience to everyone; he does not show that this experience will universally occur in response to the same objects. This is what I call Kant’s Problem of Particularity. After critiquing Anthony Savile’s attempt to overcome this Problem by linking Kant’s aesthetics to the theory of rational ideas, I elucidate the concept of (the oft-unnoticed) aesthetic attributes (§ 49) in a way that allows us to solve the Problem of Particularity.
3. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
W. Stephen Croddy Explaining Modernism
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Modernism in the arts commenced during the second half of the 19th century and extended into most of the 20th. A significant feature of this period is that each type of art gave principal attention to dimensions of itself. This was a type of self-analysis. I consider those art forms consisting of an image on a flat two-dimensional surface. I give particular attention to painting, a familiar example of this type of image. Explanations of Modernism are philosophically relevant not only for aesthetics but also for epistemology. The reason is that an analysis of our perceptions as a result of seeing a painted image can contribute to philosophy's analysis of the process by which we obtain knowledge through perception. I argue that we should interpret Modernism as contributing to this investigation.
4. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Igor Douven Style and Supervenience
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Cope’s Computers and Musical Style (1991) describes a computer program that allegedly can represent and replicate musical styles solely on the basis of compositions that have been entered into it. If this claim is correct, then it must be that an oeuvre’s stylistic characteristics locally supervene on its textual features, which roughly means that its stylistic properties are entirely determined by its textual properties. In my paper I argue that stylistic properties do not locally supervene on textual properties, and thus that neither Cope’s program nor any other that essentially works like it can represent or replicate styles.
5. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Fernando Inciarte Art and Republicanism
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Republicanism is contrasted with liberalism with special reference to the notions of presence, absence and representation. The contrast is more conspicuous in the Platonic tradition of republicanism than it is in the Aristotelian tradition, the former being more likely to degenerate into some form of totalitarianism. Examples thereof are given in accordance with the distinction between a strong and a soft iconoclasm, as it is found both in Antiquity and in Eastern and Western Europe’s quest for absolute presence or—as in avantgarde art of modernity—for absolute self-presence of the work of art. Having left such political and artistic utopias behind it, the pendulum is now swinging back in the direction of representation, but no longer in the illusionist sense which has dominated Western art form the Renaissance to the beginning of our century. Tied to the question of iconoclasm is the debate about the end of art inaugurated by Hegel in the general introduction to his Aesthetics and resumed in our days.
6. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Richard Gilmore Philosophical Beauty: The Sublime in the Beautiful in Kant’s Third Critique and Aristotle’s Poetics
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I argue that Kant's analysis of the experience of the beautiful in the third Critique entails an implicit or potential experience of the sublime, that is, the sublime as he himself describes it. Finding the sublime in the beautiful is what I call philosophical beauty. I then consider some aspects of Aristotle's analysis of tragedy in the Poetics, specifically his identification of the key elements of tragedy as those involving the experience of fear and pity, which leads to a catharsis of these emotions. Aristotle is famously unclear about what happens in this process of catharsis. I use the notion of philosophical beauty derived from Kant to suggest a possible explanation.
7. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Deborah Fitzgerald The British Avant-Garde: A Philosophical Analysis
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British Avant-Garde art, poses a challenge to traditional aesthetic analysis. This paper will argue that such art is best understood in terms of Wittgenstein’s concept of "seeing-as," and will point out that the artists often use this concept in describing their work. This is significant in that if we are to understand art in terms of cultural practice, then we must actually look at the practice. We will discuss initiatives such as the work of Damien Hirst, most famous for his animals in formaldehyde series, and that of Simon Patterson, who warps diagrams, e.g., replacing the names of stops on London Underground maps with those of philosophers. Cornelia Parker’s idea that visual appeal is not the most important thing, but rather that the questions that are set up in an attempt to create an "almost invisible" art are what are central, will also be discussed. Also, if we concur with Danto’s claims that "contemporary art no longer allows itself to be represented by master narratives," that Nothing is ruled out.", then it is indeed fruitful to understand art in terms of seeing-as. For application of this concept to art explains what occurs conceptually when the viewer shifts from identifying a work, as an art object, and then as not an art object, and explains why nothing is ruled out.
8. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Glenn Kuehn Rhythmic Foundations, and the Necessary Aesthetic in Peirce’s Categories
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There has been a tendency in scholarship to steer quite clear of discussions of Peirce and Aesthetics, and I believe that the main reason that Peirce’s works lacks, perhaps even intentionally, a clear aesthetic theory is because his entire architectonic of experience is aesthetically founded. This thesis is based, in part, on the necessary aesthetic descriptions one is forced to use when describing something such as the categories. For example, Secondness necessarily elicits aesthetic descriptions of relations and tensions, Thirdness is described most accurately with words such as harmony and arrangement, and the process by which we come to attain a belief is an "aesthetic" endeavor aimed at satisfaction. Focusing particularly on the categories, and secondarily on the method for attaining belief, I hope to show that Peirce’s foundation is, itself, an aesthetic awareness of life.
9. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Robert Kramchynski Quality as Presentation: The Art of Speaking and the Science of Imitation
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The underlying thesis examined here maintains that meaning is simply subjective value which has been presented (i.e., enlarged or made explicit) in words or in some other plastic or static medium. This presentation of meaning consists in the extending of what is felt by the creator-subject to the other subjects. Although this extension of the primary agent may be the very thing which ultimately creates the space from where reflection might occur, the act of expression itself is not explicitly reflective. In other words, one might say that integral meaning is not reflective but rather is purely informing, while reflective meaning has to some degree lost its integrity. Working from these basic claims, I will examine how quality (or qualification) and quantity (or quantification) are related as functions of the languages of art and of science.
10. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Endre Kiss Philosophical Aspects of Literary Objectiveness
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Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy avoids the problem of literary objectiveness altogether. His approach witnesses the general fact that an indifference towards literary objectiveness in particular, leads to a peculiar neglect of par excellence literariness as such. It seems obvious, however, that the constitutive aspects of the crisis of literary objectiveness cannot be shown to contain the underlying intention of bringing about this situation. At this point, one can identify what could probably be the most important element in a definition of literary objectiveness. In contrast to ‘natural’ objectiveness and objectiveness based on various societal conventions, the legitimacy of a literary work is solely guaranteed by its elements being organized in accordance with the rules of literary objectiveness. Thus when the crisis of literary objectiveness intensifies, literariness will also find itself in a crisis. This crisis detaches new, quasi-literary formations from various definitions of literariness. When literary objectiveness ceases, however, to be understood as a system constituted by various objective formations aiming to correspond in one way or another to the ‘world’, scientific analysis of literary objectiveness will be rendered impossible. The crisis of literary objectiveness thus brings about the crisis of the theory of literature and the philosophy of art. Gadamer explicitly argues that the scientific approach proves to be inadequate in the analysis of artistic experience. This attitude results in the categorical rejection of a scientific orientation (and so in a complete indifference towards literary objectiveness), but he seems to overemphasize an otherwise correct thesis on the non-reflexive character of artistic experience. It is the anti-mimetic and Platonic character of Gadamer’s aesthetic hermeneutics that determines the status of literary (artistic) objectiveness in his system of thought. What is of crucial importance, however, is to point out that this aesthetics entails a fundamental reduction of the significance of literary objectiveness. As soon as the essence of aesthetic object-constitution is taken to be re-cognition (plus the emanating aesthetic possibilities), the absolutely natural interest in the original object represented by a work of art.Undoubtedly, Gadamer’s conception answers a number of questions that tend to be ignored by other theories. It is just as obvious, however, that Gadamer completes here the aesthetic devaluation of the objective domain. It is not the characteristics of the ‘original’ that constitute the image, but in effect the image turns the original into an original. Paraphrasing this claim one arrives at a near paradox: not objectiveness makes a work of art possible, but a work of art lends objects their objectiveness.
11. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Peter LaMarque Poetry and Private Language
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The paper discusses three theses in relation to poetry: (1) the Inadequacy Thesis: language is inadequate to capture, portray, do justice to, the quality and intensity of the inner life; (2) the Empathy Thesis: descriptions of certain kinds of experiences can only be (adequately) understood by a person who has had similar experiences; (3) the Poetic Thesis, which has two parts: (a) only through poetry can we hope to overcome the problem of the Inadequacy Thesis and (b) the difficulty of (some) poetry is at least partly explained by the Empathy Thesis. The paper argues that there are important truths underlying each thesis but that it would be wrong to connect this kernel of truth with a Lockean view of language, and in particular with a view of language as 'private', in the sense implied by Locke and criticized by Wittgenstein. The romantic conception of poetry, to which the theses are related, neither relies on the Lockean view nor does it succumb to the Wittgensteinian view.
12. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Andrew Light Restoration of Art and Restoration of Nature
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Robert Elliot's "Faking Nature," represents one of the strongest philosophical rejections of the ground of restoration ecology ever offered. Here, and in a succession of papers defending the original essay, Elliot argued that ecological restoration was akin to art forgery. Just as a copied art work could not reproduce the value of the original, restored nature could not reproduce the value of nature. I reject Elliot's art forgery analogy, and argue that his paper provides grounds for distinguishing between two forms of restoration that must be given separate normative consideration: (1) malicious restorations, those undertaken as a means of justifying harm to nature, and (2) benevolent restorations, or, those which are akin to art restorations and which cannot serve as justifications for the conditions which would warrant their engagement. This argument will require an investigation of Mark Sagoff's arguments concerning the normative status of art restorations.
13. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Stefan Munteanu The Art and Philosophy of Balance at Constantin Brâncusi
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Our paper intends to be an attempt of making evident the joining of the art and the philosophy of Constantin Brâncusi, the most outstanding representative of sculpture in our century. The way of approaching this topic was suggested to us by the great artist and thinker himself, who urges us that we should not make difficult what he expressed in a simple way. Of course, his multipurpose creation makes our job quite difficult, but we think the effort is worth doing, because in spite of all the limited commentaries, we succeeded in fiding out the coherence and the universality of his thinking as well as his capacity of placing himself above the cleatism—heraclitionism dispute which is considered as being fundamental for the whole history of art. That is because there exists, and we can speak about a unity of his works in all, based on the solidarity of the forms of his sculpture. As a result, mixing up the formal entities with the deviations from the principles of identity and noncontradiction in the discursive logic, we discover another type of logic in his creation. It is the logic of the metaphorical thinking, of the symbolic thinking based on the principle that anything can be something else in the same moment. This is why the aesthetic commentary, concerned with the modality of the suggestive expression, requires a complementarity of a hermeneutics of the symbol, capable of revealing the intention of the work in its complexity. Therefore, our attempt of considering the symbol of the ovoid as the keystone of Brâncusi’s philosophical conception, appears to be verisimilar. That is because, from the archetypal perspective, according to the arhaic Romanian philosophy, the egg is just the in-between shape (between en the spherical and hourglass, between geometric and biotic, between eleatic and heraclitian); it is the element by which the formal-aesthetic analysis can be unified; it is the synthesis of the opposites and the joy of the equilibrium.
14. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Isabelle Sabau The Power of Symbolism in Byzantine Art
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Our deeply visual culture today shows the fascination humanity has with the power of images. This paper intends to discuss the use and importance of images within the context of Byzantine art. The works produced in the service of the Eastern Orthodox Church still employed today, show a remarkable synthesis of doctrine, theology and aesthetics. The rigid program of Church decoration was meant as a didactic element to accompany the liturgy. The majesty of the images bespeaks of the Glory of God and the spiritual realities of the Christian faith. The images were intended to educated and provide contemplation of the invisible realm of the spirit. Byzantine aesthetics, therefore, is thoroughly in the service of theology.
15. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Hugo Roeffaers Aesthetic Experience and Verbal Art
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In this paper I intend to present a philosophical account of what is commonly called verbal or literary art. Starting from the Hegelian conception of language and of the aesthetic experience, I shall argue that literary, and more specifically poetic, discourse can be defined as the verbal completion of an aesthetic experience, and that this distinctive feature marks off literary discourse from other types of discourse, such as scientific and philosophical discourse. In his phenomenological description of the growth of a subject's identity, Hegel situates the birth of language in the transition from consciousness (Verstand) to self-consciousness (Vernunft). In his Philosophy of Fine Art, this transition also marks the locus philosophicus of the artistic experience.
16. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Sandra L. Shapshay Subtle Scripture for an Invisible Church: The Moral Importance of the Beautiful in Kant
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I argue for an interpretation of Kant's aesthetics whereby the experience of the beautiful plays the same functional role in the invisible church of natural religion as Scripture does for the visible churches of ecclesiastical religions. Thus, I contend, the links that Kant himself implies between the aesthetic and the moral (in the third Critique and the Religion) are much stronger than generally portrayed by commentators. Indeed, for Kant, experience of the beautiful may be necessary in order to found what Kant views as the final end of morality — the ethical community — since human moral psychology requires embodiments of moral ideas. Finally, I seek to modify Martha Nussbaums' argument in Poetic Justice (1995) for the increased use of the literary imagination as a means for improving public moral reasoning in this country, with the Kantian insight that aesthetic autonomy is the key to any aesthetic-moral link.
17. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Krystyna Wilkoszewska Problems of Art, Problems of Education
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Some main postmodern ideas, such as the decay of totality or the dispersion of the subject, are too risky to introduce into the education of youth. However, there are some postmodern ideas — though not central ones — that could prove helpful in contemporary education. The hero of this paper is the prefix "inter-" which (especially in the French philosophers' writings) took a new and remarkable meaning by becoming one of the main metaphors of the human condition in the world of culture. The meaning of the prefix "inter-" can be successfully taught by art, for works of art have always exemplified means of oscillating in the sphere of the "inter-" between the concrete and abstraction, detail and generality, freedom and rules, spontaneity and discipline, between Rorty's conception of the "ironist" and the "strong poet."
18. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Andrew Ward Putting Value into Art
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The attempt to base a standard for assessing the value of works of art upon sentiment (the feeling of pleasure or displeasure) was famously made by David Hume in his essay "Of the Standard of Taste." Hume's attempt is generally regarded as fundamentally important in the project of explaining the nature of value judgements in the arts by means of an empirical, rather than a priori, relation. Recently, Hume's argument has been strongly criticized by Malcolm Budd in his book Values of Art. Budd contends that Hume utterly fails to show how any given value judgement in the arts can be more warranted or appropriate than any other if aesthetic judgements are determined by sentiment. This is a remarkable charge, since Hume explicitly sets out to introduce an aesthetic standard for "confirming one sentiment and condemning another." I examine Budd's arguments and conclude that Hume's position-and the empiricist tradition that it inaugurated-can withstand them.
19. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Aldo Tassi The Metaphysics of Performance: The “Theatre of the World”
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Something extraordinary has happened to metaphysics. At the very moment when philosophy is focusing its efforts at bringing metaphysics to an ‘end,’ metaphysics finds itself flourishing in the theatre, which speaks of itself as ‘metaphysics-in-action’ and publishes treatises carrying such titles as The Act of Being: Toward a Theory of Acting. The irony of the situation appears to have been lost on postmodern philosophers. What this paper sets out to do is explore the potential consequences of the metaphysical weight that has been acquired by the theatre for the practice of philosophy. It argues that the theatrical performance is in fact an ‘enactment’ of the performance of being and that, as such, it is possible to extend our understanding of this performance from the theatrical stage to the ‘theatre of the world.’ Finally, in doing so, we can establish the context for a metaphysics that does not privilege presence.
20. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 1
Sarah E. Worth Music, Emotion and Language: Using Music to Communicate
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There has yet to be a culture discovered which lacks music. Music is a part of our existence, but we do not fully understand it. In this paper, working in the tradition of Aristotle, Wittgenstein and Langer, I elucidate some of the connections between music and the emotions. Using contemporary philosophy of mind theories of emotion, I explain how we can have a better understanding of our emotive responses to music. I follow the pattern through representational painting and abstract painting to music, and show how each functions as an intentional object for the object of our emotions in response to each art form.