Embodied Meaning in Hegel and Merleau-Ponty

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ciavatta
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Embodied Meaning ◽  
The One

AbstractIn this paper it is argued that the conceptions of embodied meaning and of intuition that Hegel appeals to in the Aesthetics anticipate some of Merleau-Ponty’s insights concerning the distinctive character of pre-conceptual, sensuous forms of meaning. It is argued that, for Hegel, our aesthetic experience of the beautiful is such that we cannot readily differentiate in it the purportedly distinct roles that sensation and thought play, and so that the account of sensuous intuition operative here differs from the one appealed to in more familiar, ‘intellectualist’ conceptions that are premised upon our being able to make such a distinction. Some of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological insights are brought to bear to help support and illuminate some of the implications of Hegel’s conception of such sensuously embodied meaning.

scholarly journals Art as a Critique of Language: On the Continuity of the Tradition of the Avant-Garde Aesthetic in the Modern and the Postmodern

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-303
Author(s):  
Susanne Kogler
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
New Music ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Traditional Language ◽  
Art Philosophy ◽  
Language Of Music ◽  
The One

That art functions as a corrective to rational-scientific insights is one of the formative thoughts of art philosophy. The fact that artistic expression represents a corrective to linguistically-rationally affected insight also ranks among the constants of art philosophy in the 20th century. “Expression is the opponent of articulating something” can be read, for instance, in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory with regards to the character of language in art and Jean François Lyotard wrote on aesthetic experience: “What happens to us is by no means something which we would have controlled, programmed or conceptually apprehended beforehand”. The uneducible, conceptually unattainable is also at the centre of current art production of the 21st century. On the basis of Lyotard’s and Adorno’s positions, the article shows that one should acknowledge a constancy of the topos of art as non-conceptual knowledge on the one hand as the continuing function of a tradition defined from the philosophical aesthetics of modernity to post-modernity and orientated on the artistic avant-garde. On the other hand and beyond this a continuous line of tradition of New Music becomes clear, leading to the expressionistic avant-garde of the 20th century which represented the starting point for Adorno’s music philosophy, through Lyotard’s focus on John Cage, up to the avant-garde of New Music in the era of post modernity. Specific features of contemporary art, such as rebellion against linguistic standards, an understanding of expressivity that opposes the traditional language of music and operates on the verge of silence, as well as the utopian vision of a modified reality which aims at transcendency enable a conception of art as non-conceptual knowledge, corresponding with the positions of art philosophy in modernity and post-modernity in important points. The relevance of focusing on this line of tradition for musicology lies in the fact that it sheds new light on the musical avant-garde and its further function and, last but not least, that it opens new perspectives in understanding contemporary artistic productions.

Symbolic Cognition in Poetic Experience: Re-representing the Paraphrase Paradox

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-298
Author(s):  
Sarah Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Faith Healing ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Symbolic Cognition ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
The One

Abstract This article considers an apparent tension between, on the one hand, a widespread belief among literature teachers that the appreciation of a poem involves an experience of form-content inseparability and, on the other hand, these same teachers’ use of paraphrase to encourage appreciation. Using Terrence Deacon’s model of art experience, I argue that the tensions of this ‘paraphrase paradox’ mirror tensions inherent in poetic experience. Section II draws upon work by Rafe McGregor, Peter Lamarque, and Peter Kivy to frame an approach to the form-content distinction, and to offer a brief overview of the paraphrase paradox. Sections III-IV summarize Deacon’s model of aesthetic experience, and argue that this model implies that poetic experience both triggers an impulse towards paraphrase, and frustrates this impulse. Section V looks at implications for the poetry teacher’s attempts to navigate the paraphrase paradox. Section VI tests these implications through an analysis of Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Faith Healing’.

scholarly journals Die Grenzen des ästhetisch en Empirismus

2012 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-110
Author(s):  
Fabian Dorsch
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Aesthetic Judgement ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Aesthetic Evaluation ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One

In den letzten Jahren ist es recht populär geworden, traditionelle Fragen der philosophischen Ästhetik – wie zum Beispiel die nach der Natur und Rechtfertigung ästhetischer Beurteilungen – mithilfe empirischer Forschungsergebnisse zu beantworten zu versuchen. Diesem empiristisch geprägten Ansatz möchte ich gerne eine rationalistisch orientierte Auffassung der ästhetischen Erfahrung und Bewertung von Kunstwerken entgegensetzen. Insbesondere möchte ich die ästhetische Relevanz dreier verschiedener Arten empirischer Studien kritisch diskutieren: solcher, die einzelne Kunstwerke unter Einsatz der Natur- oder Geschichtswissenschaften erforschen; solcher, die sich der empirischen Methoden der Psychologie und der Soziologie bedienen, um unsere ästhetischen Beurteilungen einzelner Werke oder Werkgruppen zu untersuchen; und schließlich solcher, die unser allgemeines ästhetisches Urteilsvermögen einer kognitionswissenschaftlichen Überprüfung unterziehen.<br><br>In recent years, it has become rather popular to rely on the results of empirical studies in trying to answer some of the traditional questions in philosophical aesthetics, such as the one concerning the nature and justification of aesthetic evaluation. In opposition to this very empiricist approach, I would like to put forward a more rationalist picture of the aesthetic experience and evaluation of artworks. More specifically, I aim to critically discuss the aesthetic relevance of three kinds of empirical studies: of those that examine particular artworks by means of scientific or historical investigations; of those that use the empirical methods of psychology and sociology in order to examine our aesthetic evaluations of single works or groups of work; and finally of those that scrutinize our general faculty for aesthetic judgement by means of the cognitive sciences.

O impulso metafísico na experiência estética. Itinerário da fenomenologia “afectiva” de Mikel Dufrenne

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Bizarro Morais
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One ◽  
The Waves

This research will focus on the works of Mikel Dufrenne devoted to aesthetic reflection, especially on those where the author elucidates more systematically his notion of aesthetic experience. It is our intention to find out whether, inside the limits of this conception, he admits the possibility of a metaphysical dimension within the processivity of an aesthetic experience, and on what philosophical foundations he establishes that possibility. Being a controversial hypothesis, we hope to modestly contribute to the critical enhancement of the philosophical legacy that Mikel Dufrenne left us through his thought-provoking work as we are celebrating the first centenary of his birth and fifteen years of his death (1910-1995). More broadly, it is our purpose - through the clues given by the author - to bring back to the core of aesthetic debate the instances of ontological and metaphysical reflection that have been underestimated, since the waves of postmodern relativism invaded the cultural and philosophical debate. We will follow the author in setting up a phenomenological version of the Aesthetics in order to stress that, already in that conceptual project, it is possible to find methodological and systematic original choices, which point to the presence of a "surge" that breaks off the categorical boundaries of the experienced. The thematic alignment that we propose on chapters two and three aims at consolidating the image of an aesthetic experience that evolves gradually to more intense and profound levels of experience, and which scope of phenomenological, anthropological and ontological implications strengthens the conviction that we are in the presence of a metaphysical sap that nurtures it. However, we are aware that Dufrenne hesitated long enough when it came to translate philosophically this horizon of metaphysical meaning of the aesthetic experience. This fact also has probably led other researchers to formulate interpretations that are significantly discrepant from the one that we propose. Nevertheless, as we intend to show in the last chapter, it is not this lack of explicitness that prevents us from finding the aesthetic and emotional, spiritual and intellectual fruits coming from the aesthetic experience, fluidized by a metaphysical openness to the absolute. As we present those conclusions, we are convinced that the path taken by Mikel Dufrenne, while phenomenologist, became even more comprehensive and credible.

scholarly journals Towards an expansive object and a restrictive experience in Everyday Aesthetics: A Chestertonian metaxological approach

Kepes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (24) ◽  
pp. 197-231
Author(s):  
Miguel A. Romero-Ramírez ◽  
Duncan Reyburn
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Original Intention ◽  
Everyday Aesthetics ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One

This article proposes to resolve an internal ambiguity in the subdiscipline called Everyday Aesthetics (EA), systematized by the researcher Horacio Pérez-Henao, according to whom the extension of aesthetics to the everyday has been done, on the one hand, by means of a consideration of an expansive object and subject according to aesthesis itself, as mainly proposed by Katya Mandoki, and, on the other hand, by means of a restrictive object and subject according to the parameters of an authentic aesthetic experience, a theory headed by John Dewey. Methodology: To resolve this tension, a hermeneutic methodology known as the fourfold sense of being, related to Hegelian dialectic, albeit with important modifications supplied by William Desmond was used. This methodology allows a suitable way to explore and discuss different approaches in everyday aesthetics epitomized by Mandoki and Dewey, and makes possible the proposal of a third way, epitomized by G. K. Chesterton. Results: Bearing in mind the original intention of EA—according to which the everyday must be revitalized from an aesthetic perspective, as explained by Joseph Kupfer, it is argued that the two alternate positions of Mandoki and Dewey are unsatisfactory; an attempt is therefore made to respond to this through the analysis of the aesthetic approach of G. K. Chesterton. From his aesthetic reflections, it can be ascertained that to revitalize daily life, the object must be expansive and the subject, restrictive, from a certain méthodos and according to patterns that qualify an everyday aesthetic experience. All of this seeks to pave the way for subsequent investigations of EA being both expansive and restrictive. Finally, it is argued that this Chestertonian EA converges with and extends the aesthetics of design of Jane Forsey, and thus shows that design itself can be revitalized in keeping with a restrictiveexpansive approach to everyday aesthetics. Conclusion: aesthetics should be expansive every day, in that it should concern itself with any aspect of daily life, and restrictive, in that it should set certain limits on the self and its intentions with regard to the possibilities of aesthetic experience.

Art, definition of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Davies
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Theory ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Informal Institution ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Art Works ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

Many of the earliest definitions of art were probably intended to emphasize salient or important features for an audience already familiar with the concept, rather than to analyse the essence possessed by all art works and only by them. Indeed, it has been argued that art could not be defined any more rigorously, since no immutable essence is observable in its instances. But, on the one hand, this view faces difficulties in explaining the unity of the concept – similarities between them, for example, are insufficient to distinguish works of art from other things. And, on the other, it overlooks the attractive possibility that art is to be defined in terms of a relation between the activities of artists, the products that result and the audiences that receive them. Two types of definition have come to prominence since the 1970s: the functional and procedural. The former regards something as art only if it serves the function for which we have art, usually said to be that of providing aesthetic experience. The latter regards something as art only if it has been baptized as such through an agent’s application of the appropriate procedures. In the version where the agent takes their authority from their location within an informal institution, the ‘artworld’, proceduralism is known as the institutional theory. These definitional strategies are opposed in practice, if not in theory, because the relevant procedures are sometimes used apart from, or to oppose, the alleged function of art; obviously these theories disagree then about whether the outcome is art. To take account of art’s historically changing character a definition might take a recursive form, holding that something is art if it stands in an appropriate relation to previous art works: it is the location of an item within accepted art-making traditions that makes it a work of art. Theories developed in the 1980s have often taken this form. They variously see the crucial relation between the piece and the corpus of accepted works as, for example, a matter of the manner in which it is intended to be regarded, or of a shared style, or of its being forged by a particular kind of narrative.

Art, definition of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Davies
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Theory ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Informal Institution ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Art Works ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

Many of the earliest definitions of art were probably intended to emphasize salient or important features for an audience already familiar with the concept, rather than to analyse the essence possessed by all art works and only by them. Indeed, it has been argued that art could not be defined any more rigorously, since no immutable essence is observable in its instances. But, on the one hand, this view faces difficulties in explaining the unity of the concept – similarities between them, for example, are insufficient to distinguish works of art from other things. And, on the other, it overlooks the attractive possibility that art is to be defined in terms of a relation between the activities of artists, the products that result and the audiences that receive them. Two types of definition have come to prominence since the 1970s: the functional and procedural. The former regards something as art only if it serves the function for which we have art, usually said to be that of providing aesthetic experience. The latter regards something as art only if it has been baptized as such through an agent’s application of the appropriate procedures. In the version where the agent takes their authority from their location within an informal institution, the ‘artworld’, proceduralism is known as the institutional theory. These definitional strategies are opposed in practice, if not in theory, because the relevant procedures are sometimes used apart from, or to oppose, the alleged function of art; obviously these theories disagree then about whether the outcome is art. To take account of art’s historically changing character a definition might take a recursive form, holding that something is art if it stands in an appropriate relation to previous art works: it is the location of an item within accepted art-making traditions that makes it a work of art. Theories developed in the 1980s have often taken this form. They variously see the crucial relation between the piece and the corpus of accepted works as, for example, a matter of the manner in which it is intended to be regarded, or of a shared style, or of its being forged by a particular kind of narrative.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Johannes Riquet
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Material World ◽  
Global Space ◽  
Age Of Discovery ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Modern Experience ◽  
The One ◽  
Fictional Representations

Drawing on (post-)phenomenological and geopoetic perspectives, the introduction explains the book’s interest in considering islands at the intersection of material and poetic production on the one hand, and aesthetic experience of the phenomenal world on the other. It suggests that the modern experience of islands in the age of discovery went hand in hand with a disintegration of received models of understanding global space, and that fictional and non-fictional representations of islands negotiate these perceptual challenges. It thereby explains how The Aesthetic of Island Space complicates the common account of islands as discrete shapes, geometrical abstractions, and easily understandable images. Instead, it foregrounds the importance of water, mobility, and a range of dynamic geo(morpho)logical and poetic processes in the figuration of islands. The introduction ends by discussing the significance of considering islands in relation to an ‘aesthetics of the earth’ (DeLoughrey and Handley) and a poetics of the material world.

scholarly journals 'Paisajes del yo': Simbiosis sensible del cuerpo, espacio y luz en el aula de infantil

2018 ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
José María Mesías-Lema ◽  
Carlota Sánchez Paz
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Aesthetic Experiences ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Self Study ◽  
The One

Resumen: El presente artículo plantea una investigación artística acerca de la identidad en educación infantil a través de espacios que permitan vivenciar experiencias estéticas. Se parte de provocaciones relacionales entre los niños y el arte contemporáneo, experiencias lumínicas y corporales para la experimentación sensible en infantil. Se parte de la idea de cómo la luz ofrece posibilidades artísticas para la exploración del propio cuerpo, el vínculo con el espacio y la sinestesia del color. Todas las acciones desarrolladas se plasman a través de narrativas visuales. Estas poseen una doble finalidad: por una parte, documentar el proceso creativo y, por otro lado, interpretarlo desde la perspectiva del self-study en la investigación docente dentro del aula. Palabras clave: Experiencia estética relacional, Educación Artística Sensible, Narrativa visual, Micro-acciones performativas, Educación Infantil.   Abstract: This paper develops an arts-based educational research about the identity within the early years of life through workshops that allow to live aesthetic experiences. The starting point is the intencional relationships between children and contemporary art, lighting and body experiences in order to experience sensitiveness. It focuses on the idea of how light can be artistically used to explore the own body, the relation with space and the color’s synaesthesia. Each one of the actions has been developed trough visual narratives whith a dual aim: on the one hand, to generate documentacion about the creative process and, on the other hand, to interpret it from a self-study perspective in teaching research within the classroom. Key words: Relational Aesthetic Experience, Sensitive Art Education, Visual Narrative, Micro-performative Actions, Early Childhood Education.   http://dx.doi.org/10.7203/eari.9.10927

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