The Filiation of Aesthetic Ideas in the Neoplatonic School

1926 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 148-151
Author(s):  
H. P. R. Finberg

The famous passage (Enn. V. 8. 1) in which Plotinus declares that fine art, so far from simply reproducing nature, ‘goes back to the Reason-principles from which nature herself emanates,’ has hitherto been generally regarded as a tacit criticism of Plato's teaching, and as an original contribution to the philosophy of art involving a rupture with the entire previous tradition of Greek aesthetic theory. Yet Plotinus introduces it, not as if he were proclaiming a new gospel, but almost casually, as a subordinate link in his discussion of Intelligible Beauty. And though his respect for Plato was not the half-superstitious reverence of the later Neoplatonists, he was at all times more zealous to walk in Plato's footsteps than to correct or criticize him, tacitly or otherwise. Moreover, can it be said with certainty that his doctrine is in itself opposed to Plato's? That question can be answered only by a detailed examination of Plato's theory of art—a task which I hope to accomplish elsewhere. In the present article, postponing all enquiry into the relation between these two aesthetic theories, I shall endeavour to show that the teaching of Plotinus was not a sudden innovation, but the natural and indeed inevitable outcome of preceding thought.

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles DeBord

AbstractIn his Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant explicates the creation of works of fine art (schöne Kunst) in terms of aesthetic ideas. His analysis of aesthetic ideas claims that they are not concepts (Begriffe) and are therefore not definable or describable in determinate language. Nevertheless, Kant claims that aesthetic ideas are communicable via spirit (Geist), a special mental ability he associates with artistic genius. This paper argues that Kant's notion of Geist is central to his analysis of fine art's expressive power. The notion of Geist constitutes a conceptual link between Kant's aesthetic theory and that of G. W. F. Hegel, for whose analysis Geist is the subject.


Author(s):  
Morwenna Ludlow

Ancient authors commonly compared writing with painting. The sculpting of the soul was a common philosophical theme. This book takes its starting-point from such figures to recover a sense of ancient authorship as craft. The ancient concept of craft (ars, technē) spans ‘high’ or ‘fine’ art and practical or applied arts. It unites the beautiful and the useful. It includes both skills or practices (like medicine and music) and productive arts like painting, sculpting, and the composition of texts. By using craft as a guiding concept for understanding fourth-century Christian authorship, this book recovers a sense of them engaged in a shared practice which is both beautiful and theologically useful, which shapes souls but which is also engaged in the production of texts. It focuses on Greek writers, especially the Cappadocians (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa) and John Chrysostom, all of whom were trained in rhetoric. Through a detailed examination of their use of two particular literary techniques—ekphrasis and prosōpopoeia—it shows how they adapt and experiment with them, in order to make theological arguments and in order to evoke an active response from their readership.


2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 499-517
Author(s):  
M.S. Silk

In 1998, I suggested a new text for a notably corrupt passage in Pindar's Isthmian 5. This article is in effect a sequel to that earlier discussion. In the 1998 article, I proposed, inter alia, that the modern vulgate text of I. 5.58, ἐλπίδων ἔκνισ’ ὄπιν, is indefensible and the product of scribal corruption in antiquity, and that chief among the indefensible products of corruption there is the supposed secular use of ὄπις, as if used to mean something like ‘zeal’. This (as I hope to have demonstrated) is a sense for which there is no good evidence in classical Greek, where ὄπις always has a delimited religious denotation, meaning either (a) ‘gods’ response’, ‘divine retribution’, or else (b) ‘religious awe’ or ‘reverence’ towards the gods, through fear of that response or that retribution. If we discount I. 5.58 itself (and likewise the focus of the present article, O. 2.6), all the pre-Hellenistic attestations can be straightforwardly listed under these headings: (a) Il. 16.388 θεῶν ὄπιν οὐκ ἀλέγοντες, Od. 14.88 ὄπιδος κρατερὸν δέος, Hes. Theog. 221–2 θεαὶ . . . | . . . ἀπὸ τῷ δώωσι κακὴν ὄπιν, Pind. P. 8.71–2 θεῶν δ’ ὄπιν | ἄφθονον αἰτέω, sim. Od. 20.215, 21.28, Hes. Op. 187, 251, 706, along with, seemingly, a fragmentary fifth-century Thessalian verse inscription, CEG 1.120.1 Hansen; (b) Hdt. 9.76.2 θεῶν ὄπιν ἔχοντας, 8.143.2. In addition, one other instance can be interpreted as either (a) or (b), or in effect both: Od. 14.82 (of the suitors) οὐκ ὄπιδα φρονέοντες . . . οὐδ’ ἐλεητύν. In all cases, though, ‘gods’ are specified, usually as a dependent genitive with ὄπις, or else separately but in the near context. Hellenistic and later occurrences of the word are few, and (as I argued in 1998) hints there of a secular reading can actually be taken to reflect misunderstandings based on, precisely, the early corruption in I. 5.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (05) ◽  
pp. 140-144
Author(s):  
Nəzrin Novruz qızı Məmmədova ◽  

The heritage that Mirza Alakbar Sabir left for us has always been a source of inspiration for creative people throughout ages. People who are engaged in fine art have always highly appreciated this work too. It requires too much responsibility to address Mirza Alakbar Sabir’s poetry, one of the most famous literary figures in world literature. As if the artists who addressed this patriotic writer’s poetry, feel the poet and created unique works with an inspiration that they got from him. It is undeniable that Azim Azimzada played a vital role in publicity of Mirza Alakbar Sabir’s poetry. Azim Azimzada’s all illustrations are engraved in people’s memory. Average spectators can perceive artist’s illustrations too. By looking through illustrations, it is possible to guess almost all poems that they are dedicated to. Educating people who are indifferent to education and waking them up from this ignorance was Azim Azimzada’s main goal. Artist’s illustrations differentiate with its harsh ironic spirit which is the main peculiarity of Sabir’s poetry. We can definitely see the strong influence of Sabir’s poetry in Azim Azimzada’s works. This is the reason why Azim Azimzada is usually called as Sabir of fine art. Literary approach of artists towards Sabir’s poetry has still been ongoing so far. Addressing Sabir’s poetry by most artists is the sign of love, respect and curiosity to Sabir’s works and life. Key words: Mirza Alakbar Sabir, book illustrations, Azim Azimzade, “Hophopname”, Azerbaijani graphic art, master of caricature


2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
J. M. Bernstein

Abstract Theodor W. Adorno’s governing procedure in Aesthetic Theory is to reconstruct the terms and concepts of traditional aesthetics and the philosophy of art through the actuality of artistic modernism in its various guises. The necessity of this procedure turns on the recognition that modernist art has become a stand-in for the now-wrecked authority of living nature. Adorno contends that “natural beauty,” as elaborated by Immanuel Kant, is the recognition of that now-lost experience of nature, and that art beauty must be thereby interpreted as becoming the reconstructed afterimage of natural beauty. The article tracks the development of this thought from Kant’s account of “wild beauties” through Adorno’s chapter “Natural Beauty” to its actualization in Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.


Experiment ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67
Author(s):  
Maria Taroutina

Abstract Although traditionally associated with the ascendance of National Romanticism, Slavic folklore, and the Neo-Russian style in painting, architecture, and the decorative arts, the Abramtsevo artistic circle was also privy to the inception and production of a number of manifestly Orientalist works, such as Vasilii Polenov’s Christ and the Adulteress (1888), Mikhail Vrubel’s ceramic sculptures of The Assyrian, The Egyptian Girl, The Pharaoh, and The Libyan Lion (1890s), and the costumes and set designs for the theatrical productions Judith (1878, 1898), Joseph (1880, 1881, 1887, 1889), The Black Turban (1884, 1887, 1889), King Saul (1890), and To the Caucasus (1891). In addition, a series of hybrid works that fused elements of the exotic with national thematic and stylistic content, such as Viktor Vasnetsov’s Underwater Kingdom (1884) and Mikhail Vrubel’s Princess Volkhova (1898), were likewise produced under the auspices of Savva Mamontov and the Abramtsevo community, thus blurring the boundaries between native and foreign, local and global, self and other, and Slavophilia and Orientalia. The present article posits that an understanding of the romanticized, Neo-Russian artistic and theatrical productions, and the nationalist polemics of the Abramtsevo artistic circle is necessarily incomplete without a detailed examination of the various Orientalist crosscurrents which informed and structured many of the group’s artworks throughout the 1880s and 1890s—a narrative that has been largely left out of scholarly accounts of the movement.


2019 ◽  
Vol 124 (1) ◽  
pp. 219-230
Author(s):  
Elena Martínez-Rodríguez

Abstract The present article offers a detailed examination of the Lycian phonetic development from a labial glide u̯ {w} into a fricative {b} [v]/[β], which results from contact with an obstruent ([β]/[v] {b} < u̯/C_, AHP: 289). The study of phonetic contexts within each lexeme will allow us to establish new conditions for this change, whether extensions or restrictions, and also to propose some derivations and etymologies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-261
Author(s):  
Antanas Andrijauskas ◽  

This article mainly focuses on one of the most refined movements in world aesthetics and fine art—one that spread when Chinese Renaissance ideas arose during the Song Epoch and that was called the Intellectual (Wenrenhua) Movement. The ideological sources of intellectual aesthetics are discussed—as well as the distinctive nature of its fundamental theoretical views and of its creative principles in relation to a changing historical, cultural, and ideological contexts. The greatest attention is devoted to a complex analysis of the attitudes toward the artistic creation of the most typical intellectuals, Su Shi and Mi Fu; the close interaction between the principles of painting, calligraphy, and poetry is emphasized; a special attention is paid to the landscape genre and to conveying the beauty of nature. This article discusses in detail the most important components of artist’s creative potential, the opportunities to employ them during the creative act, and the influence of Confucian, Daoist, and Chan aesthetic ideas. The various external and internal factors influencing the intellectual creative process are analyzed; artist’s psychological preparation before creating is discussed along with the characteristics of his entrance into the creative process. This article highlights the meditational nature of artistic creation typical of representatives of this movement, the freedom of the spontaneous creative act, and the quest for the inner harmony of the artist’s soul with expressions of beauty in the natural world.


Semiotica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (230) ◽  
pp. 369-387
Author(s):  
Katya Mandoki

AbstractPeirce proposed the concept of abductive inference to inquire into the generation of new hypotheses and defined it as another term for pragmatism, no less (Admitting, then, that the question of Pragmatism is the question of Abduction, let us consider it under that form. What is good abduction? What should an explanatory hypothesis be to be worthy to rank as a hypothesis? Of course, it must explain the facts. But what other conditions ought it to fulfill to be good? The question of the goodness of anything is whether that thing fulfills its end. What, then, is the end of an explanatory hypothesis? Its end is, through subjection to the test of experiment, to lead to the avoidance of all surprise and to the establishment of a habit of positive expectation that shall not be disappointed (Peirce. 1931–1966. The collected papers of Charles S. Peirce, 8 vols., C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss & A. W. Burks (eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 5.197)). Apart from being linked to the vague idea of the play of musement as an almost dreamlike process of epiphany or inspiration or as an inverted minor premise from a syllogism, we are far from understanding the dynamics and specificity of this kind of inference. Among authors dealing with this problem I could trace three factors at work in processes of abduction, i.e. combination, resemblance, and dialetics or questioning. In this paper I attempt to look a bit further into this enigma by a category of play I defined as “peripatos” or games of invention, riddles, and puzzles, hoping it could shed some light on the process of creativity in several social activities such as science, art, war, and religion. The approach will take on Huizinga’s idea of the play of culture, Lakoff and Johnson’s conception of cross-domain correlations, Kant’s view of “aesthetic ideas,” and my proposal of the play of peripatos through a “what if-as if” coupling into this very common yet little understood, and thus mystified, process of the generation of innovative ideas.


2019 ◽  
pp. 302-306
Author(s):  
Lydia L. Moland

Hegel’s wide-ranging philosophy of art allows us both to assess the expression of different worldviews in art and the ways in which individual arts—architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry—allow us to sense ourselves and become aware of the world around us. His aesthetic theory elucidates crucial components of philosophical idealism generally, and his description of how art gives us joy illuminates modern aesthetic experience as well. This chapter connects Hegel’s “aesthetics of truth,” and so his idealism, to a description of aesthetic pleasure, then briefly speculates on how Hegel’s theory of art can be applied and extended to our experiences of contemporary art today.


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