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Lafferty, Michael Gerald. "Arthur Danto's philosophy of art." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2006. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/42211/.
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The thesis is a critical examination of Danto's philosophy of art. It begins with his article 'The Artworld' where he proposes a special is of artistic identification to distinguish artworks. Danto's idea of the artworld is discussed, a historical and contextual theory of art, which arose from his attempt to explain the difference between Warhol's Brillo Boxes sculpture and an indiscernible stack of everyday Brillo boxes. It is argued that Danto unsuccessfully attempts to shore up his artworld concept with the special is. The technique of comparing indiscernible counterparts, from Danto's book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, is examined. It is argued that the technique is philosophically redundant, but it is a redundant premise which has been added to a valid inference (Danto's historical and contextual view of art: his artworld theory) therefore, this does not make the original inference invalid. Danto's treatment of metaphor, expression, and style is shown to result in four claims. First, artworks embody rhetorical ellipsis. Second, artworks share features of metaphor: they are intensional (with an s) in structure and cannot be paraphrased. Third, a work of art expresses what it is a metaphor for by the way it depicts its subject. Fourth, artworks embody style. The conclusion, has two parts. The first part gives a summary of the criticism of Danto's theory of art: (1) there are logical inconsistencies in his concept of the is of artistic identification and in his use of indiscernible counterparts, (2) his theory suffers by being over-inclusive and (3) he uses circular arguments. The second part is based on a response to the criticism: it provides a definition of art. This has three elements. First, an argument is proposed for a spectrum of artistic presence in which all human activity and artefacts can be placed. Second, there is an acceptance of Danto's view of art (or artistic presence) being both intentional (with a t) and intensional (with an s); however, by applying these concepts to a spectrum, the problem of over-inclusiveness is avoided. Finally, it is argued there can he no wholly non-circular account of art.
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Gustafsson, Daniel. "A philosophy of Christian art." Thesis, University of York, 2014. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/8052/.
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This thesis offers an original and comprehensive philosophical approach to the understanding of Christian art. It draws on a range of sources, from analytic and theological aesthetics, philosophy and theology, to interpret and articulate a vision of the aims and prerogatives of Christian art. Works by William Blake, David Jones, and R. S. Thomas are among those receiving close attention; works which yield a picture of art and creative labour as deeply implicated in the central mysteries and practices of the Christian faith. In five chapters, the thesis addresses the nature and the implications of the Form, the Beauty, the Good, the Ontology, and the Love of Christian art. It is the aim of Christian art to manifest God under the particular forms and beauty of the artwork. These forms are realised and discerned in the context of a Christian life. The artwork’s beauty invites a response of delight, gratitude, and the reorientation of our desires and dispositions towards the infinite beauty of God. As a sacramental object, the Christian artwork is positioned in a Christian ontological narrative, in which we humans are entrusted with transformative stewardship of the world. Outside this conceptual and ontological context, the work will not be experienced as what it is. Ultimately, the Christian artwork begs to be perceived and engaged with – as indeed it is created – as an object of love. Thus the artwork finds its place within an understanding of Christian faith as the striving for a personal union with God. Above all, Christian art is made, received and loved as part of our calling to grow in the divine likeness. In presenting this vision, the thesis breaks new ground, and not only makes significant contributions to analytic and theological aesthetics, but also offers material with implications for philosophy and theology more widely.
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Peters, Julia Helene. "Art and philosophy in Hegel's system." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2009. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/18022/.
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My thesis addresses a puzzle concerning Hegel's notion of the value of beauty. On the one hand, the contemplation of beauty, in particular artistic beauty, has the same status for Hegel as philosophical knowledge, since through both, we come to grasp the absolute truth: the unity of spirit and nature, or of the human individual and the world it lives in. On the other hand, Hegel thinks that the aesthetic unity of spirit and nature is in some way deficient, when compared to the unity we come to grasp through philosophical knowledge. Thus Hegel claims that philosophy and art have the same content, while philosophy is higher than art. I suggest that this puzzle can be dissolved if we consider that beautiful art, for Hegel, is associated with a form of life, in which the aesthetic unity of spirit and nature becomes social and political reality: the ancient Greek polis. Since the social and political structure of the polis inevitably leads to tragic collisions, Hegel concludes that the value of beauty provides no ground for establishing an ultimate unity of the human individual and the world it lives in. In Hegel's view, it is only philosophical reflection, and the social and political institutions which emerge from such reflection, which can provide an adequate ground for ultimate reconciliation. Nevertheless, I argue, the contemplation of beauty remains a perfectly adequate way of grasping, if not establishing, this unity. Hence according to the interpretation I propose, philosophy is higher than art in a twofold sense for Hegel. On the one hand, it serves a critical function with respect to the value of beauty: it points out the limits of beauty, in particular the fact that beauty is incapable of making the unity of spirit and nature concrete and real, by turning it into social and political reality. On the other hand, philosophy redeems the promise which is left unfulfilled by beauty: to establish an ultimate unity of spirit and nature, of human individual and the world it lives in.
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Thompson, Seth Aaron. "Art Unfettered: Bergson and a Fluid Conception of Art." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2018. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1248388/.
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This dissertation applies philosopher Henri Bergson's methodology and his ideas of duration and creativity to the definitional problem of art, particularly as formulated within analytic aesthetics. In mid-20th century, analytic aesthetics rejected essentialist definitions of art, but within a decade, two predominant definitions of art emerged as answers to the anti-essentialism of the decade prior: functionalism and proceduralism. These two definitions define art, respectively, in terms of the purpose that art serves and in terms of the conventions in place that confer the status of art onto artifacts. Despite other important definitions (including historical and intentionalist definitions), much of the literature in the analytic field of aesthetics center on the functional/procedural dichotomy, and this dichotomy is an exclusive one insofar as the two definitions appear incompatible with each other when it comes to art. I use Bergson's methodology to demonstrate that the tension between functionalism and proceduralism is an artificial one. In turn, abandoning the strict dichotomy between these two definitions of art opens the way for a more fluid conception of art. Using Bergson's application of duration and creativity to problems of laughter and morality, I draw parallels to what a Bergsonian characterization would entail.
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McGuiggan, James Camien. "This is art : a defence of R.G. Collingwood's philosophy of art." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2017. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/407958/.
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Al-Obaid, Hanan. "Philosophy of Islamic ornament in Islamic art." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2005. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/55634/.
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The view of Islamic art as a minor art and its various ornaments as without any purpose or meaning is questionable since such a perspective ignores the great influence of the Islamic religion on it. This study investigates in close detail the philosophy of ornament in Islamic art. Clearly, Islamic ornamentation plays a central role in Islamic art and architecture. It is divided into four main elements: Arabic calligraphy, vegetal and geometric ornament, and human and animal figural representation. Due to the significance of Islamic ornamentation, this study will examine its origins, development and impacts on the art and architecture of other cultures as well as the influence of other cultures on the development of Islamic ornamentation. It will also examine the rich historical and cultural background from which the art of Islamic ornament emerged in order to identify the characteristics of Islamic ornament in the context of history, its development, its aesthetic values and its underlying philosophy and forms of expression. In this study the historical survey method is employed to examine the development of Islamic ornamental elements. This study also explores the various Islamic ornamental methods and techniques that artists used to create beautiful Islamic ornaments as well as the meanings of Islamic ornamental symbols in both Islamic art and architecture. This study identifies the most important factors contributing to the beauty of Islamic ornamentation. The nature of the relationship between Islamic artists and spectators and their roles in the context of Islamic art also is examined. The thesis concludes that Islamic ornamentations are based on a divine philosophy that stimulates contemplation of God's Majesty and transcendence through wonder at the cosmos He has created. Another important characteristic of Islamic culture is its acceptance of cultural variations which it absorbed and then used to develop its own unique character and identity. Finally, the study identifies two types of Islamic ornamentation, namely, secular ornamentation and pure Islamic ornamentation, and offers a contrastive definition of both.
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Engstrom, Timothy Hildreth. "Pragmatic rhetoric and the art of philosophy." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/18866.
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Rampley, Matthew. "Dialectics of contingency : Nietzsche's philosophy of art." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14775.
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This thesis examines the function of art in Nietzsche's philosophy. Its primary concern is with Nietzsche's turn to art as the means to counter what he terms metaphysics. Metaphysics is a metonym for the system of beliefs sustaining our culture whereby human judgements about the world are perceived as uncovering an objective truth antecedent to those judgements, with an implicit faith in the possibility of exhausting the totality of these antecedent truths. This thesis consequently has two principal strands. The first is to analyse Nietzsche's criticism of metaphysics. The second is to explore the way in which, using a specific understanding of art, Nietzsche attempts to reconcile extreme scepticism towards all forms of human knowledge with a continued belief in their necessity. The thesis argues that Nietzsche lays an importance on art as providing an aesthetic education to replace the misguided theoretical orientation of metaphysics. Nietzsche criticises metaphysics for its inability to recognise that its interpretations are mere interpretations, that logic and the rational serve as means to make the world meaningful from the human perspective. My thesis explores how he sees art, and in particular the tragic, as constituting a mode of world interpretation which declares its status as such. I argue that for Nietzsche this is crucial inasmuch as a failure to recognise the contingency of our interpretations results in a refusal to give value in any interpretations. For Nietzsche the advent of the Modern age heralds the danger of such refusal, and hence I argue that his turn to art is a response to the specifically Modern temptation to descend into mere cynical Nihilism.
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Fidalgo, Christopher J. "Art, Gaut and Games: the Case for Why Some Video Games Are Art." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2012. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/philosophy_hontheses/5.
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In this paper, I argue that there are some video games which are art. I begin my paper by laying out several objections as to why video games could not be art. After laying out these objections, I present the theory of art I find most persuasive, Berys Gaut’s cluster concept of art. Because of the nature of Gaut’s cluster concept, I argue that video games, as a medium of expression, do not need to be defended as a whole. Rather, like all other media of expression, only certain works are worthy of the title art. I then introduce and defend several games as art. After, I return to the initial objections against video games and respond in light of my defended cases. I conclude that video games, as a medium of expression, are still growing, but every day there are more examples of video games as art.
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Hanson, Louise Mary. "Conceptual art : what is it?" Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:1ce65d49-6864-4a29-8600-5c54e405ef5e.
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Conceptual Art (henceforth CA) has the peculiar status of being at once a neglected topic in philosophical aesthetics, and one on which a degree of philosophical weight disproportionate to the attention it has received is placed. On the one hand it is frequently mentioned by philosophers as a problematic case, one that general theories of art have difficulty dealing with, but on the other, there is a notable lack of philosophical research taking CA as its focus. It is largely taken as a given that CA is radically different from other art in various ways and thus poses problems for some of the general statements about art that philosophers tend to make. But it is striking that these claims are not, for the most part, grounded in a thorough investigation into the nature of CA. The purpose of my research is to conduct such an investigation; to address the question of what CA is, and what makes it different from other art, in order to come to a clearer view of what particular philosophical issues or difficulties CA raises for the philosophy of art. In existing literature on CA, it is standard to take CA’s distinctiveness to have something to do with the importance of ‘ideas’. I investigate what could be meant here by ‘idea’, and identify two broad schools of thought as to what form this emphasis on ideas in CA takes: Priority Accounts, which claim that in CA ideas are the most important aspect of the work and Constitution Accounts, which claim that works of CA are ideas. I identify serious problems for Constitution Accounts, in general, and for some kinds of Priority Account. I then put forward a new kind of Priority account which I think overcomes the problems faced by its rivals.
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Millsop, Rebecca Victoria. "Precisifying art pluralism." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/107093.
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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2016.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 105-110).
This dissertation explores the legitimacy of art pluralism-the thesis that there are multiple, valid accounts of art. In 2011 Mag Uidhir and Magnus introduced the idea of art pluralism to revive the debate over the definition of art. This discussion has been pushed aside over the past half a century because all proposed accounts prove fallible under scrutiny. The overarching goal of this dissertation is to determine how this new approach-art pluralism-might prove useful in obtaining a satisfactory theory of art. In the first chapter, I introduce art pluralism with the aid of species pluralism the thesis that there are multiple, legitimate species accounts. I go on to criticize the arguments for art pluralism provided by Mag Uidhir and Magnus and go on to provide a stronger, direct argument for art pluralism. In the second chapter, I consider the nature of pluralism in depth by introducing the notion of a complex kind. I claim that all pluralistic kinds are complex kinds and that there are multiple ways a kind can be complex. A kind is complex if and only if more than one account is required to explain its unification and working out the nature of this unification results in the precisification of that complex kind. I go on to precisify species pluralism as an example of this process. In the third and fourth chapters, I demonstrate how each of the relevant art accounts-institutional, historical, and aesthetic-succeed and fail in providing the satisfactory account of art on their own. Instead we must understand these accounts as structurally dependent on one another. I describe the result of this particular structural dependence focal-looping pluralism. In the conclusion, I acknowledge the importance of pluralism throughout the narrative of this dissertation but I am forced to question whether or not the thesis I end up arguing for is really best understood as pluralistic. I argue that art is best understood as a complex, not a pluralistic, kind and that the monist/pluralist dichotomy should be understood as less informative than the simple/complex kind distinction more generally.
by Rebecca Victoria Millsop.
Ph. D.
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Weis, Kristin K. "Art as Negation: A Defense of Conceptual Art as Art." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1461602608.
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Farrelly-Jackson, Steven. "Universalism, morality, and art." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.333323.
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Thomas, Christopher. "The place of art in Spinoza's naturalist philosophy." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2017. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=237177.
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The lack of discussion on art in Spinoza's works has led to the belief that a) the principles of his philosophy are actively hostile to art, and b) that his philosophy has nothing to offer regarding art's theorisation. This thesis examines the few places that Spinoza refers to art in order to discern three things: I) what Spinoza's thoughts on art are; II) how his views on art fit into the wider themes of his philosophy; and III) how his general philosophical position as well as his specific ideas on art might contribute to new models of theorising art. In Chapter One I develop Spinoza's relational and naturalistic concept of individuation, therein providing the theoretical ground for the subsequent chapters which, following Spinoza, treat the work of art as a complex body that conforms to the rules of individuation as they are developed across the Ethics. Chapter Two locates Spinoza's views on the creative act from what he notes of architecture, painting, and other 'things of this kind' in IIIP2Schol. Here I argue that Spinoza radically naturalises the creative act, deriving it from the complex causal activity of extended substance itself. To this extent art is given in IIIP2Schol as an expression of the complexity of Nature. Chapter Three turns to Spinoza's brief words on art and culture in IVP45Schol to ascertain his position on artistic experience. Here I argue that according to IVP45Schol art's necessity for the wise man lies in its ability to foster affective complexity. Chapter Four turns to that other peculiarly human artefact, Holy Scripture, to identify how 'nonnatural' objects come to be differentiated from merely 'natural' objects in Spinoza's strong naturalism. Finally I end with an appendix that brings Spinozistic principles to bear on a consideration of a poem by Futurist poet Mina Loy.
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Buydens, Mireille. "Formalisme et aformalisme: essai sur le statut de la forme et du regard au travers d'une analyse du maniérisme." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/212664.
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Nickels, Zachary. "The Art of Loneliness." Kent State University Honors College / OhioLINK, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ksuhonors1462549085.
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Rinaldi, Juan. "Art and geopolitics : politics and autonomy in Argentine contemporary art." Thesis, Kingston University, 2013. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/26287/.
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This thesis critically analyses the implications of a now global capitalist modernity for Theodor W. Adorno's theory of art. The thesis takes as its starting point the sociological presuppositions at play in his social theory and problematises the spatial and historical dimensions in which they are embedded. The analysis of the process of homogenisation of social relations that Adorno presents as a constitutive feature of societies during monopoly capitalism brings to the fore the centrality of the state as administrator. This thesis claims that there is a spatial contradiction in Adorno's definition of society, given that the interconnectedness of capitalism as a system is negated by the restriction of that definition to industrialised societies. In other words, there is a universalisation of the particularity of industrialised societies underlying Adorno's social theory, that hides a functionalist understanding of the state and disavows its constitutive character for capitalist social relations. The introduction of an analysis of the particularity of the state in latin American societies serves as a counterpoint to the societies analysed by Adorno. latin American societies are analysed from the point of view of Dependency Theory, particularly in relation to Henrique Cardoso's and Enzo Faletto's concept of dependent development. This concept allows a further differentiation internal to latin American societies and problematises the common assumption that structural heterogeneity is a key concept for understanding these societies. Consequently, the thesis focuses its analysis on the socio-economic and political situation of the societies in the Southern Cone of South America, particularly Argentina, given their relative social homogenisation during the 1960s. The thesis claims that contrary to Adorno's assumption that capitalist social development destroys collective subjectivities while producing homogenisation, the Southern Cone societies show that development and relative social homogenisation in contexts of dependency do not necessarily produce political neutralisation but rather its opposite. The problematisation of Adorno's social theory is further complicated by the historical development of capitalism during neoliberalism. The decoupling of the spatial grounding of the relation between capital and labour constituted during monopoly capitalism is presented from the point of view of the radical transformation of Argentine society from the mid-1970s onwards. The thesis introduced the concept of the 'destruction of the social' in reference to the central role that the process of accumulation by dispossession, as theorised by David Harvey, has for the transformation of Argentina. Given this expanded global context, the thesis then discusses the effects that the transformation of the relation between capital and labour has for the conditions of production of artistic labour during neoliberalism. In particular, it claims that the 'developmentalist' dynamic that aligns technological development, industrialisation and artistic material in Adorno's concept of the new, has been problematised by the primacy of financial valorisation as a form of accumulation, and the dynamic role that accumulation by dispossession has in it. The emergence of a globally expanded labour theory of culture is analysed in relation to the contemporary art produced in Argentina between the late 1960s and the 2000s. The relation between the socially regressive tendencies developed during this period and artistic technique is analysed throguh the introduction of the notion of the 'return to craft.'
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North, John Harry. "Wincklemann's philosophy of art : a prelude to German classicism." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.538667.
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Hernandez, Brian. "Nihilism and the Formulation of a Philosophy of Art." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2011. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67991/.
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Nihilism is often associated with feelings of despair, hopelessness and meaningless. It is certainly true that once the implications of this philosophy become apparent that these feelings are valid. However, this reaction is merely the first stage of dealing with nihilism and stopping here fails to examine the various types of nihilism that deal specifically with knowledge, ethics, metaphysics, truth, and art. Nihilism at its base is a philosophy that recognizes the history of human thought and what it means to be and to think. My focus is the way in which a completed nihilism is in fact an emancipatory act and the implications it has for art and the artist in the 21st century.
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Clancy, Catherine. "Poiesis and obstruction in art practice." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2015. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/7842/.
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This PhD thesis examines the concept of poiesis, that is ‘calling into existence that which was not there before’, in the context of obstruction in studio practice. It poses the question ‘Is there a methodology that engages with obstruction which in turn calls new work’? In this thesis, the concept of poiesis emerging from the late Dr. Murray Cox’s ‘Aeolian Mode’, is analyzed alongside a concept of praxis, (a philosophical companion to poiesis), familiar to artistic practice. This thesis describes the orientation of the original idea, The Aeolian Mode, clinically developed by Dr. Murray Cox in Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital. This PhD seeks to identify if there are similar ‘tenets of approach’ held within the methodology of ‘The Aeolian Mode’, that would be useful or are identifiable in artistic studio practice. This thesis draws on the work of the philosopher, Professor Richard Kearney, specifically Kearney’s ideas on the necessity of ‘the other’ for ‘radical possibility’ to occur. It maps a context of both Freudian and Jungian interpretations of art practice, identifying how these ideas have shaped the way art is seen today. Furthermore, it challenges the Freudian idea of ‘pathography’ and favours a Jungian approach of ‘individuation’ in the understanding of creative processes. It develops a ‘methodology of the conversation’, interviewing students, established artists, tutors about their approaches to obstruction/poiesis in art practice. Additionally, it examines my own obstruction to painting and identifies the methodology that released me from this obstruction. Conducting these interviews on art practice has enabled me to confirm my initial concerns about Freudian ‘pathography’ whilst validating the possibility of the Jungian concept of ‘individuation’ being of use to art practice. Finally, this PhD discusses the implications for further study and research, which have emerged during the ‘methodology of the conversation’ and the task of dissolving my obstruction to painting.
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Bresnahan, Aili. "Dance As Art: A Studio-Based Account." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2012. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/173544.
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PhilosophyPh.D.
This dissertation is an attempt to articulate the conviction, born of ten years of intensive experience in learning and practicing to be a dance performer, that the dance performer, through collaboration with the choreographer, makes an important contribution to how we can and do understand artistic dance performance. Further, this contribution involves on-the-fly-thinking-while-doing in which the movement of the dancer's body is run through by consciousness. Some of this activity of "consciousness" in movement may not be part of the deliberative mentality of which the agent is aware; it may instead be something that is part of our body's natural and acquired plan for how to move in the world that is shaped by years of artistic and cultural training and practice. The result is a qualitative and visceral performance that can, although need not, be a representation of some deliberative thought or intention that a dancer can articulate beforehand. It is also the sort of thinking movement that in many cases can be conceived as expression; an utterance of dance artists that is not limited to the communication of emotion that can be appreciated and understood, at least in principle, by a public or audience. What this means for the Philosophy of Dance as Art includes the following: 1) there may not always be a stable, fixed "work" of dance art that can be identified, going forward, as the only relevant work on which critical and philosophical attention should be focused because of variable, contingent and irreducibly individual features of live dance performances, attributable in large part to the efforts, style and improvisation of particular dance performers; 2) the experience of dance artists is relevant to understand dance as art because experiential evidence of practice can supplement and ground the appreciable properties that we can detect in artistic dance performances; 3) artistic dance performance can be conceived as expression without being expressive of either an artist's felt emotion or of human emotion in general - no particular content is needed as long as there is a content; 4) artistic dance performance conceived as expression can, but need not, function as representation in both the strong (imitative) and weak (referential) sense; and 5) artistic dance performance is real, not illusory and not necessarily either a transformation or transfiguration of the real. Dance as art, like theatre, like music and even, perhaps, like painting, sculpture and architecture, although in less clearly artist-present, extemporaneous and embodied ways, is human-constructed, human-understood, human-driven and a full, rich, interactive and meaningful part of human life.
Temple University--Theses
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Walsh, Dale. "Art and secular spirituality." Thesis, McGill University, 2001. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=33946.
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Despite the numerous examples throughout history, the study of secular spirituality in art was mostly ignored until recently by contemporary writers, critics, historians, philosophers and educators. In my thesis, through the examination of selected images and writings, I determine how a differentiation between doctrinal and secular spirituality can be established. The importance of a rooted cosmopolitan outlook with respect to cross-cultural artistic manifestations is explored with the aim of synthesizing spiritual elements that transcend all cultures. The political, social and educational implications of ignoring spirituality are examined. A proposal to incorporate spirituality into education is introduced using art as a means to self-knowledge and understanding the implications of interconnectedness.
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Weh, Michael. "Being art - a study in ontology." Thesis, St Andrews, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/213.
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Andersson, Asa K. "Intimations of intimacy : phenomenological encounters between contemporary art and philosophy." Thesis, Staffordshire University, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.299938.
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Bartlett, Mark. "Chronotopology and the scientific-aesthetic in philosophy, literature and art /." Diss., Digital Dissertations Database. Restricted to UC campuses, 2005. http://uclibs.org/PID/11984.
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Lynch, Liam Joseph. "Complex truth from simple beauty: Oscar Wilde’s philosophy of art." Thesis, Curtin University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/195.
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In this thesis I analyse a selection of the works of playwright, poet, novelist and essayist, Oscar Wilde, with the purpose of interpreting his philosophy of art. The thesis interprets Wilde’s philosophy of art as embodying a dialectical relationship, in the Hegelian sense, between the aesthetic, sensual experience of art, and the cognitive contemplation of the artwork.
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Willis, Gary C. "Contemporary art: the key issues: art, philosophy and politics in the context of contemporary cultural production." Connect to thesis, 2007. http://repository.unimelb.edu.au/10187/2245.
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This submission comes in two parts; the written dissertation, Contemporary art: the key issues, and the exhibition Melbourne - Moderne. When taken together they present a discourse on the conditions facing contemporary art practice and one artist’s response to these conditions in the context of Melbourne 2003-2007. (For complete abstract open document)
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Lopez, Noelle Regina. "The art of Platonic love." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5e9b2d70-49d9-4e75-b445-fcb0bfecdcef.
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This is a study of love (erōs) in Plato’s Symposium. It’s a study undertaken over three chapters, each of which serves as a stepping stone for the following and addresses one of three primary aims. First: to provide an interpretation of Plato’s favored theory of erōs in the Symposium, or as it’s referred to here, a theory of Platonic love. This theory is understood to be ultimately concerned with a practice of living which, if developed correctly, may come to constitute the life most worth living for a human being. On this interpretation, Platonic love is the desire for Beauty, ultimately for the sake of eudaimonic immortality, manifested through productive activity. Second: to offer a reading of the Symposium which attends to the work’s literary elements, especially characterization and narrative structure, as partially constitutive of Plato’s philosophical thought on erōs. Here it’s suggested that Platonic love is concerned with seeking and producing truly virtuous action and true poetry. This reading positions us to see that a correctly progressing and well-practiced Platonic love is illustrated in the character of the philosopher Socrates, who is known and followed for his bizarre displays of virtue and whom Alcibiades crowns over either Aristophanes or Agathon as the wisest and most beautiful poet at the Symposium. Third: to account for how to love a person Platonically. Contra Gregory Vlastos’ influential critical interpretation, it’s here argued that the Platonic lover is able to really love a person: to really love a person Platonically is to seek jointly for Beauty; it is to work together as co-practitioners in the art of love. The art of Platonic love is set up in this way to be explored as a practice potentially constitutive of the life most worth living for a human being.
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Griffin, Daniel. "The Role of Poetry and Language in Hegel's Philosophy of Art." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2011. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/philosophy_theses/90.
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Hegel's view of poetry clarifies the overall role of language in his system and allows him to makes sense of a difficult linguistic issue: how to distinguish between poetry and prose. For Hegel, this distinction is crucial because it illuminates the different ways poetry and prose allow us to understand ourselves as members of an ethical community. In this paper, I argue, using Hegel, that the distinction between poetry and prose can only properly be understood in terms of their fundamentally different kinds of content instead of in terms of any formal differences between the two. Then, I address an objection to Hegel by Paul de Man which uses Hegel's concept of memory to collapse the distinction between poetry and philosophical prose. Finally, I argue that Hegel can respond to this objection by showing how de Man misunderstands how philosophical thought conceptually develops from memory.
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Aldous, Veronica. "An exploration of the transcending experience in the art-making process." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2002. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/744.
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This study explored the transcending experience as described by visual artists that sometimes occurs during the art-making process. The exploration was conducted within a philosophical framework informed by the researcher's practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM). From this perspective, transcending is related to personal, inner (subjective), and ephemeral aesthetic experiences which never-the-less make a powerful contribution to the visual artist's experience of the creative process and to a lesser extent, the final product. The focus of the study was on the identification and documentation of the personal and subjective aspects of art-making. The study consisted of two parts; (a) this written thesis that elucidates and supports the argument, and (b) an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and journals which represent a personal narrative. The research questions for the written document are directed towards extracting artists' statements that describe the nature and benefits of transcending during art-making. Document analysis techniques were employed to study the writings of a variety of artists and to create a mosaic of insightful commentary. As a visual arts educator, the significance of the study related to the benefits of the art-making process for students of all ages. Both the exhibition and written document are presented to demonstrate that art-making and the viewing of art can provide access to silent (inner) experiences of the human mind. Strengthening the students' spiritual/aesthetic experience through art-making may bring the benefits of personal enrichment for some students by promoting the development of stronger self-concepts and self-esteem. This study presents research about an aspect of visual arts education that has to date been largely ignored. Arguments for the development of self-realization and a fuller understanding of the aesthetic experience may contribute to a case for strengthening the place of the visual arts within the curriculum.
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Kopsiafti, Ioanna. "Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms and the problem of pictorial art." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.297363.
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Thomson, Katherine J. M. "The art museum at the end of art, Arthur C. Danto's Philosophy of art and its implications for the posthistorical museum." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0010/MQ31259.pdf.
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Kieran, Matthew Laurence. "The nature and value of art." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14807.
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This thesis examines the nature and value of art. It is primarily concerned to advance an argument which makes sense of the significance we ordinarily afford art, rather than rendering it merely aesthetic and thus cognitively trivial. Contrary to philosophical orthodoxy, it is argued that 'art' does not have two distinct senses. Rather, we should understand art as an inherently evaluative, evolving cultural practice. Thus, I argue, 'art' is essentially a cluster concept. I consider an account of art according to which it is in the pleasure art affords, that its value lies. However, though we derive pleasure even from apparently unpleasant artworks, the mark of art's value lies elsewhere. That is, the pleasure we derive from art is the result of an artwork's being of value in some other way. Through critically assessing the standard accounts of art's value, I argue that art's pleasures are primarily cognitive. Furthermore, I argue, the cognitive value of art arises primarily from the engagement of our imagination and interpretation of artworks. That is, we enjoy the imaginative activity of engaging with artworks and the promotion of particular imaginative understandings. Furthermore, as imaginative understanding is of fundamental importance in grasping the nature of our world and others, art may have a distinctive significance. That is, art may afford insights into and thus promote our imaginative understandings of our world and others. Thus, through the promotion of imaginative understanding, art may cultivate our moral understanding. Therefore, art is of profound significance and import.
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House, Theresa L. "Making authentic connections between art and life an evolution of student engagement in the process of learning art in an elementary classroom /." Ohio : Ohio University, 2009. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?ohiou1213021116.
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Palucci, Piera. "Emergence of an art education philosophy through a personal narrative inquiry." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape3/PQDD_0020/MQ47867.pdf.
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Kim, Byoungjae. "Sympathy and reflection in Hume's philosophy : mind, morals, art and politics." Thesis, Durham University, 2018. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12958/.
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Hume, as an "anatomist" of human nature, believes that "the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences". The naturalistic and experimental analysis of human nature, as it informs his epistemology, is the basis for other areas. Thus, in order fully to understand his philosophy, we need to shed light on the connection between Hume's experimental analysis of human nature in epistemology, and his naturalistic account in ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy. However, too often, writers on the latter are not always fully informed on his general philosophy and vice versa. A principal aim of this research is to bring together investigation of his naturalistic epistemology, and his ethics, aesthetics and political philosophy. This project brings close attention to bear on all of these areas, focusing on three key concepts: sympathy, general rule, and reflection. First, I examine the nature of sympathy. I argue against recent interpreters who use his concept of sympathy to construct a solution to the Problem of Other Minds. On my interpretation, Hume employs the concept of sympathy for his ethics, aesthetics and political philosophy, not for his epistemology. Second, I show that the concept of general rule plays an essential role in his philosophy. On my interpretation, Hume first establishes the general rules of human nature. He then establishes the general rules of his ethics, aesthetics and political philosophy. Third, I uncover the role of reflection in his philosophy. According to him, it is wrong to apply abstract reasoning to matters of fact; Instead, we should adopt the experimental reasoning that he terms "reflection" to observe and generalise matters of fact, thus establishing general rules in ethics, aesthetics and political philosophy. In this way, we can see the intimate connections between these diverse aspects of his philosophical writings.
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Miyoshi, Akihiko. "Art and authenticity /." Link to online version, 2005. https://ritdml.rit.edu/dspace/handle/1850/1106.
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Allen, Rika. "The anthropology of art and the art of anthropology : a complex relationship." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/2304.
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Thesis (MPhil (Sociology and Social Anthropology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2008.It has been said that anthropology operates in “liminal spaces” which can be defined as “spaces between disciplines”. This study will explore the space where the fields of art and anthropology meet in order to discover the epistemological and representational challenges that arise from this encounter. The common ground on which art and anthropology engage can be defined in terms of their observational and knowledge producing practices. Both art and anthropology rely on observational skills and varying forms of visual literacy to collect and represent data. Anthropologists represent their data mostly in written form by means of ethnographic accounts, and artists represent their findings by means of imaginative artistic mediums such as painting, sculpture, filmmaking and music. Following the so-called ‘ethnographic turn’, contemporary artists have adopted an ‘anthropological’ gaze, including methodologies, such as fieldwork, in their appropriation of other cultures. Anthropologists, on the other hand, in the wake of the ‘writing culture’ critique of the 1980s, are starting to explore new forms of visual research and representational practices that go beyond written texts.
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Rausch, Juliana Adele. "The New Journalism as Avant-Garde Art." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2017. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/443068.
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EnglishPh.D.
Can journalism be avant-garde? This question arises from the body of work produced by the New Journalists, whose leading figures include Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, and Norman Mailer. Today, this question is urgent for considerations of the journalist’s role within a political landscape increasingly hostile to the news media. Yet it is a question that has not been sufficiently explored in the field of literary study. Scholars of literary journalism have identified the features of an experimental journalism, traced its historical origins, and made claims about how to situate the New Journalism generically. While important, this scholarship overlooks the relationship between experimentation with conventional journalistic form and similar experimentations in other artistic fields. As a result, the stakes of the New Journalism’s experimentations with conventional reporting have not been sufficiently mined. In order to remedy this, I place the New Journalism within a broader history of avant-garde art. The agitation of mainstream journalistic practice undertaken by each of the writers above was spurred by a questioning of a foundational journalistic practice: objectivity. The New Journalists challenged the authority of fact and its capacity to represent the human condition. This challenge to objectivity drove an experimentation with journalistic form that produced a deeply innovative body of work; however, these innovations are not merely formal. They also call into question the epistemological assumptions that tether journalism to a phenomenal world assumed to be fully representable. Significantly, the challenges to objectivity posed by the New Journalists parallel the challenges to representation posed by avant-garde artists like Paul Cezanne and Karel Appel. My dissertation thus situates the challenges to journalistic form undertaken by the New Journalists within a broader history of artistic experimentation and demonstrates that the significance of these experimentations exceeds the fields in which they occur. These arguments provide a framework for understanding not only the formal innovations of avant-garde artists, but also the epistemological consequences, and ethical imperatives, inherent in these innovations. My understanding of avant-garde art is informed by the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard. Over the course of his career, Lyotard illuminated the philosophical dimensions of artistic innovation. For Lyotard, one of the hallmarks of avant-garde experimentation is its ability to confront and redress problems across a variety of discursive fields. That is, Lyotard values avant-garde experimentation because it responds to discourses beyond its own, and much of Lyotard’s writing about avant-garde art establishes connections between artistic innovation and broader issues of ethics, politics, and justice. Over the course of this dissertation, I demonstrate how the New Journalism participates in this tradition by asking questions about the role and responsibility of the reporter through the self-conscious development of an experimental journalistic aesthetic.
Temple University--Theses
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Martel, Marie D. "L'oeuvre comme interaction : anti-textualisme, actionnalisme et ontologie écologique." Thesis, McGill University, 2004. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=85187.
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In this thesis, we defend the view of works-as-interaction by developing three independent arguments: the anti-textualist, the actionalist and the ecological arguments. The anti-textualist argument has two parts. First, the uniform category of text does not cover the diversity of types of literary works, as it is shown by oral works, multiple-texts works, visual literary works and numerical literary works. Second, we reject the idea that the text is sufficient to give the identity conditions of the literary work. The latter argument forces us to include the history of production and, in particular, of the generative actions required for the apprehension and appreciation of the ontology of the literary work. This is the historicist argument. However, before defending an actionalist point of view, various alternatives are considered. Thus, we consider various textualist proposals that claim to be able to accommodate historical aspects of the production of a work. From the weaknesses of these views, we move to other, more historically inclined, positions, in particular Levinson's post-textualist position. However, the latter is based on a theory of types which we find to be incompatible with his historicist inclinations. Moreover, Levison's views do not meet the requirements of an epistemology of performance. Thus, the actional thesis seems to be the only alternative left. Using Davies theory of performance as a springboard, we develop and defend the idea of the work-as-interaction according to which a work consists in a relation between the generative action and the integrative action. We also include an ecological premise. We develop a further criticism of analytic aesthetics and the theory of performance, arguing that the actions composing the environment, the context of reception in which the generative action is integrated, have to be included. Our thesis of work-as-interaction explains, on the side of the generative act, a variety of li
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Machado, Oscar A. "A Philosophy of Architecture." Scholarly Repository, 2009. http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/oa_theses/205.
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To evaluate specific architectural theories, an analytic methodology was used. The specific architectural theories evaluated all have in common the fact that their formative models can explain how their original ideas manifest in the practice of architectural works. Although these architectural theories researched are thousands or in some cases hundreds of years apart, a way to compare and contrast them was to use philosophies of art common to all. This contemporary approach to analysis was done with the use of ?analytic philosophy? for its effectiveness to clarify concepts. Central aspects of architectural theories will be analyzed in detail through the lenses of four contemporary theories of the philosophy of art. They are: formalism (including neo-formalism and theories that emphasize the connection between form and function), expression theories, representation theories (including neo-representational and mimetic accounts), and theories based on aesthetic experience. Looking at architecture from the viewpoint of analytic philosophy of art provides new insights into the nature of architecture and illuminates the field in significant ways. A recommendation for further study is enclosed.
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Matuk, Nyla Jean. "Charles Taylor on art and moral sources : a pragmatist re-evaluation." Thesis, McGill University, 1994. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26296.
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The thesis examines Charles Taylor's theory of agency and the moral sources that he believes inform our modern notion of the self. Taylor's concept of the strong evaluator is outlined and brought to bear on post-structuralist and postmodernist literary-theoretical positions that attempt to reconcile amoral positions and nonagency with multicultural political demands and the demands of what Taylor calls a "culture of authenticity". In order to do full justice to a theory of art that would incorporate Taylor's concept of agency, however, it becomes necessary to critique the philosopher's account of art, which he derives from widely held doctrines of Romanticism and aesthetic autonomy found in the Western tradition. The concept of a pragmatist approach to art serves as the main argument against Taylor's views, which exclude certain agents and their social experiences. Those agents who do not subscribe to Romantic and high Modernist ideas about art's function can often be said to adopt a pragmatic critique, which takes into account the uses of art in defining modern identities, and exposes the social privilege that has typically accompanied the autonomy that art has been awarded.
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Jackson, Myles Wayne. "Goethe's law and order : nature and art in Elective Affinities." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.386168.
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Nogues, Rosa. "The body of sexuation : feminist art practice in the 1990s." Thesis, Kingston University, 2013. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/27842/.
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The representation of the female body at the centre of a number of art practices of the 1990s reveals a radical problematisation of sex. What constitutes the body as sexed? What is the sex of the female body? Is the female body the body of 'woman'? This thesis argues that these are some of the questions raised by the work of a loose group of artists who came to prominence in the 1990s, such as Rist, McCarty, Yuskavage and Beecroft, and whose work was largely excluded from the field of feminist art. Our claim is that the work of these artists requires that it be critically understood as a specific intervention within the field of feminist art and criticism. The fundamental question at the root of the thesis concerns the precise nature of the female body and its relation to sex and sexual difference. Our discussion is positioned outside both biology - where sexual difference is determined by the function in reproduction - and sociology, where the highlighting of the inequality of the social manifestations of sexual difference leaves the principle of the binary organisation of sex unexamined. Our argument is located within the field of feminist art criticism, and more specifically, the feminist critique of representation, and so, it is in terms of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, which provided the conceptual tools for this critique, that the specific problematic as regards the nature of the female body, which the practices discussed pinpoint, is addressed. The thesis investigates Lacan's conceptualisation of sexuatian as neither a biological nor a sociological category and argues that it provides an articulation of sex, based on the fundamental principle that 'there is no sexual relation', which leads not to a theory of sexual differentiation, but to an articulation of two possibilities of 'jouissance', the latter being that in terms of which the sexed body is produced. In engaging with the representation of the female body in the relevant art practices from the 1990s in terms of this conception of the body produced by sexuation, this thesis argues that these practices present a radical problematisation of sex. It is in terms of this fundamental feminist exercise of critically engaging with the meaning and nature of sex that their intervention within the field of feminist art and criticism must be understood.
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Morton, Luise H. "Theories of three conceptual artists : a critique and comparison." Virtual Press, 1985. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/425069.
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Conceptual Art emerged as an international, avant-garde art movement in the mid-60s. Attacking the prevailing aesthetics of modern art, Conceptual artists claim that art lies not in the object itself but in the artist's idea or intention. Their asserted goals have been to combine theory with art and to eliminate the need for form in artworks. The purpose of this study was to examine and critique the key theoretical writings of three artists whose works have been recognized by the critics as significant and seminal for the Conceptual Art Movement: Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, and Terry Atkinson.Historical aspects relevant to this study included the following: (i) early twentieth-century antecedents of Conceptual Art; (ii) recent avant-garde movements of the 60s and 70s; (iii) the history and nature of the concept theories of Kosuth, LeWitt, and Atkinson; (ii) a critiqueof t ese theories in terms of their consistency and viabi ity for generating art; (iii) a comparison of Conceptual Art theories with both commonly accepted theories of art and more radical aesthetic theories of contemporary philosophers.Upon completion of this study, it was concluded that despite many ideological differences, Kosuth, LeWitt, and Atkinson agree on two key notions: (i) the locus of the "work of art" is not a physical object; and (ii) it is the artist's idea which alone accounts for the significance of an artwork. Their arguments in support of these notions are unsatisfactory. Longstanding issues in aesthetics, viz., the problems of defining art and evaluating its significance, are not resolved. The critics' acclaim of the writings critiqued in this study must therefore rest on extrinsic features such as the prestige of the artists, the relevance of the content of the writings to dominant trends in contemporary art, and the potential historical significance of their challenges to established views about art and aesthetics.
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Boda, Lena. "Facebook goes philosophy : Facebook - ett modernistiskt eller postmodernistiskt projekt?" Thesis, Konstfack, Institutionen för Bildpedagogik (BI), 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:konstfack:diva-515.
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Facebook är ett socialt internet-community som startades 2004 av Harwardstudenten Mark Zuckerberg. Sajten har idag ca 222 miljoner användare spridda över hela världen. Hur kan man, genom att studera ungdomars tankar kring sitt användande av Facebook - och relatera det till två skilda tänkare med mycket olika människosyn, förstå vårt identitetsskapande och vår syn på oss själva på två skilda sätt? Det ena kopplat till modernismen, det andra till postmodernismen. Hegels erkännandebegrepp och Nietzsches idé om vår vilja till makt relateras till modernismen respektive postmodernismen, och observationerna som gjorts under intervjuer med 13 gymnasieungdomar tolkas med hjälp av dem. I analysen bearbetas fyra teman som synliggjorts i intervjuerna. För det första, det frekventa ”rundkollandet” på vad andra gör, vilket ses dels som en kul grej, dels som meningslöst. Det kan förstås som ett sätt att lära känna sig själv genom reflektion – eller som en metod att ta reda på hur man blir som mest framgångsrik. För det andra, strävan att visa vem man är, vilket kan tolkas som ett behov av att prova den egna identiteten genom att visa upp den för andra, eller som en strategisk demonstration av en noggrant formad image. För det tredje, inställningen till att ge och få kommentarer, vilken varierar mellan ett icke problematiserande gillande - och förnekande av ett behov av bekräftelse från andra på den egna personen. Slutligen, svårigheterna som många upplever på grund av att man har en profil som kan ses av alla ens ”vänner”. Detta kan dock vara av nytta om man letar efter sitt sanna jag, som så att säga finns i en från början. Intressant är hur vissa informanter ser formandet av en så ”användbar” image som möjligt avseende de multipla åskådarna som helt oproblematisk. Slutsatsen är att Facebook tycks stimulera såväl ett modernistiskt som ett postmodernistiskt sätt att förhålla sig till identitetsskapandet. Dess redskap uppmuntrar ett demonstrerande av den egna personligheten, men då det samtidigt är mycket lätt att leka med de här redskapen, blir också ett obegränsat formande av identiteten möjligt. Men sajten skulle inte vara intressant om den betraktades som en teaterscen – och det framgår tydligt att det finns en önskan att visa vem man i sanning är, och att det likväl finns en idé om att andra också har dessa sanna jag. Men mediets karaktär uppmuntrar människors misstänksamhet gentemot hur andra eventuellt manipulerar sina identiteter.Facebook is a social Internet community started in 2004 by Harward student Mark Zuckerberg and it has by now around 222 million users all over the world. How can one, by examining a few aspects of young peoples activity on the site, understand the act of identityshaping and the look at ourselfs, in two different ways? One connected to modernism and the other to postmodernism. The philosopher Hegel’s concept of recognition and Nietzsche’s notion of our will to power are related to the terms modernism and postmodernism, and the observations made in the interviews with 13 highschool students are interpreted with the help of them. The analysis treats four themes visible in the interviews. First, the frequent checking out on others’ activities, which is partly seen as fun, partly as useless. It can be understood as a way to get to know oneself throug reflection - or as a method to find out what is a successfull way of being. Second, the strong aim to show who one is, which could be interpreted as a need to try the own identity by showing it to others -or as a strategic demonstration of a consciously shaped image. Third, the attitude towards giving and getting comments, which vary between an unproblematic liking, and a rejection of the need for confirmation of one’s being. Fourth and finally, the difficulties with having one profile to be seen by all the ”friends”. This can be usefull if one is in search for a true identity that is so to speak already in oneself from the beginning. But this shaping of an image that is successfull among multiple viewers is also seen as a rather undramatic, or unproblematic, activity. The conclusion made is that Facebook stimulates as well a modernistic as a postmodernistic way of identity shaping. Its tools encourage the demonstration of the personality, but as it is very easy to play with these tools, an unrestrained designing of the identity is also possible. But the site wouldn’t really be interesting if it was considered a theatre scene – and it is quite clear that there is a wish to show who one really is, and that there is an idea about other persons having that kind of true selfs as well. But the caracter of the medium is such that people frequently suspect others to manipulate their identitys.
BI/Media
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Welchman, Alistair. "'Wild above rule or art' : creation and critique." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1995. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4458/.
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This thesis is an interrogation of the viability of transitive production, which I associate with the Aristotelian term hylomorphic. The central axiom of hylomorphic production that will be targeted for critique is that the agent of production must be distinguished absolutely from the product. The thesis follows the thought of production primarily-but not exclusively-in its characteristically modem instantiation in the Kantian transcendental. The argument seeks to demonstrate that the productive aspect of the operator of transitive production is incompatible with the transcendental element, and that Kant was himself increasingly aware of this problem. The Third Critique, under the rubric of an aesthetics, it will be argued, manifests this awareness in its problematic of a manifold of empirical laws. That this constitutes a difficulty for transcendent idealism means that the transcendental operators of the First Critique have failed to constitute experience in a relevant and important way. Furthermore, it is possible to see in some of the famous slogans of the Third Critique, an indication of another mode of production which is immune to the difficulties of the axiom of transitive production. In conclusion I suggest that the consequences of this new mode of intransitive production, associated with materiality, is destructive of the thought of the axiomatic otherworldliness of production operators. Production is not operated at all. Some suggestions are then made as to the explanation of the error embodied in the axiom of transitivity.
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Kauffman, Elizabeth. "Adrian Piper and Immanuel Kant toward a synthesis of art and philosophy /." Cincinnati, Ohio : University of Cincinnati, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view.cgi?acc_num=ucin1259076570.
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Kambalu, Samson. "Nyau philosophy : contemporary art and the problematic of the gift : a panegyric." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2016. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/12398/.
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Societies in Southern Africa remain largely gift economies, their art conceived as an infrastructure within everyday life, and yet art from the region continues to be read within the values of mimetic art where art is conceived as part of the superstructure of restricted Western economic and social thinking. My research on how the problematic of the gift and Bataille’s theory of the gift, the ‘general economy’, animates various aspects of my art praxis has set out to correct this discrepancy. It includes a re-examination of the general economy of the modern African society, which Achille Mbembe has described as the ‘postcolony’, and how it has impacted on the development of my work as an artist. My research is reflexive and practice-led. The specific praxis considered has included a body of work – published novels, films, installations, multimedia artwork and personal experiences – stretching back to 2000, when I made my first conceptual work of art, as a professional artist in Malawi. The problematic of the gift within my work has been explored alongside contemporary African art with a focus on Meschac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art, and contemporary art at large with a focus on Situationist theory and praxis. I grew up in Malawi, a Chewa, and my research identifies the aesthetic sensibility in my art praxis as being directly influenced by the Nyau gift giving tradition which manifests in Chewa everyday life through play and a robust masquerading tradition, Gule Wamkulu, now a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This thesis compares aspects of the animastic and all-encompassing Chewa Nyau philosophy to Situationism as rooted in Dada and Surrealism. In light of the recent marginalisation of Gule Wamkulu in modern Chewa society, my research identifies the contemporary artist after Situationism as the new creative elite, Gule, akin to Gule Wamkulu in the heyday of Chewa prestation society. In my praxis, Nyau philosophy identifies the ‘cinema of attractions’ (manifest in the Malawi of my childoood as ‘Nyau Cinema’), the internet and the internet bureau, as new bwalo, arenas, to orchestrate play and invariably gift giving within the liminal spaces of modern spectacular cultures and commercial networks in what Negri and Hardt have described as the age of Empire. My thesis is presented as a ‘general writing’, a form of gift giving described by Derrida, and is communicated through an intellectual panegyric with an extensive appendix documenting the nature of my art and research as praxis. The appendix includes a detourned Facebook timeline (2011-16) and legal documents from a Venetian court regarding my installation Sanguinetti Breakout Area at the Venice Biennale 2015. The panegyric is what has united the theoretical and practice components of my research into one on-going inquiry into the problematic of the gift within everyday life.
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Meloni, Gabriele. "Plato on establishing poetry as art." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/9752.
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Plato’s attitude on Art has always been hardly debated among scholars, and in recent times the interest on ancient Aesthetics in general and Plato’s attitude in particular has been even increased in the philosophical debate. The problem with Plato’s position is twofold. On the one hand he expresses hard criticism against poetry and he even banishes the poets from the ideal state he envisages in the Republic. That has been usually regarded as an illiberal, totalitarian position. On the other hand, the criticisms he makes of poetry seem to present inconsistencies among the Platonic corpus and they could prima facie appear to the modern reader odd, paternalistic or moralistic. Throughout my work I suggest to adopt a new approach, based both on historical and theoretical grounds, according to which it will be possible to resolve the problems that Plato’s objections to poetry give rise to. The historical and cultural context will be the focus of the first chapter. It consists of the following points. On the one hand I will first focus on different features that characterize Greek poetry, and on the other I will emphasize the pre-literacy of Plato’s contemporaries. I will also highlight how the ethical and political role, along with the educational function, made poetry the privileged source of information and education, and the ultimate reference for everyone in the Athens of the fifth B.C. In the second section of the first chapter I will analyze Plato’s teleologism, which I regard to be a fundamental entity in his stance on art. Such a notion, although not as much emphasized by scholars, plays a pivotal role in Plato’s arguments on poetry, I contend. This is especially evident in the Republic, where Plato’s criticism regards the flaws of poetry in teaching (Resp. II and III) first, and secondly as the main source of knowledge (X). In the third and last section of chapter one, I will face the complex issue of the alleged existence of the concept of beauty in antiquity. In this occasion I argue in favour of the existence of such an entity, both among average Greeks and for Plato, even though in different ways and degrees of awareness. After having provided the historical and theoretical frame of my approach, I will then move to textual examination of the Platonis Opera. In the second and third chapter I will analyse the so-called ‘early dialogues’, in order to single out the recurrent features of Plato’s stance on poetry. In fact, one of the main goals of my study is to retrace an overall, consistent view on art in general and poetry in particular among the Platonic corpus. While the second chapter is mainly focused on the Apology and the Protagoras, a special emphasis deserves the Ion, which is the object of the third chapter. I argue indeed that for the first time in this early dialogue we find a clear theoretical expression of a key-concept of Plato’s stance on art. In fact, Plato bases his criticism toward the eponymous rhapsode pointing out that the rhapsode on the one hand lacks the knowledge of the things he (demands to be able to) talk(s) about. On the other hand, the rhapsode lacks the knowledge of what poetry, as well as his trade, is. Such a ‘twofold ignorance’, as we will see, it is a recurring pattern in Socrates’ pupil. While the fourth chapter is mainly devoted to the analysis and comment of the Symposium, the fifth, sixth and seventh chapter present the detailed examination of the Book II, III and X of the Republic. They are respectively devoted to the analysis and criticism of the ‘middle dialogues’, the Republic and the ‘late dialogues’. Because of its capital importance for the purpose of my argument, I will analyze Plato’s criticism in the Republic in details and I will face different approaches to the subject. Afterwards I will confront them with my own theory in order to show that adopting my approach the apparent discrepancies regarding Plato’s aesthetics within the Republic itself as well as in others Platonic dialogues disappear. (And, on the contrary, this does not happen if the reader accepts the mainstream interpretation on the subject at issue). In essence: I propose to take Plato’s criticism of poetry not as an aesthetic attitude, but rather as a justified concern about the pursuit of truth through poetry, as if it were the main source of teaching, moral value, knowledge and information in the ancient Greek society. That is the core of my argument. The eighth chapter analyses the ‘late dialogues’, in particular The Laws, given the abundant of relevant passages on the matter. Finally, the ninth and last chapter faces Popper’s notorious judgement of Plato as totalitarian scholar. In this section of the study I will contend that Popper’s notorious reading of Plato’s political system is fallacious. Further, I will reveal that Plato and Popper’s stance on mass media essentially correspond. It is my understanding that such a fundamental passage will give the ultimate proof of the rightness of my revolutionary reading of the vexata quaestio of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry in Plato. Finally, the outcome of my investigations will show that Plato does not banish poetry because he is attacking it as a dangerous, free, “fine” Art. On the contrary, I propose to take his attack as the only way to release poetry from its educational and political context and to baptize it into the realm of Fine Art.