1980 Imagination: aesthetic and religious

Theology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 123 (4) ◽  
pp. 265-271
Author(s):  
Mary Warnock
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Sharp Line ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Aesthetic

The philosopher Mary Warnock (1924–2019) first delivered this article in 1980 as an Oxford University sermon when she was a fellow at St Hugh’s College. In it she links aesthetic imagination to her understanding of the Christian ‘story’. For her, ‘no sharp line can be drawn between imagination employed in the religious mode and the aesthetic imagination’. As a philosopher she was an expert on existentialism and, later, medical ethics. She was also a communicant Anglican churchgoer, but she seldom wrote directly about Christian faith, so this article is particularly significant. Editor.

Against Relativism: Cultural Diversity and the Search for Ethical Universals in Medicine, by Ruth Macklin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 304 pp.

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-579
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Spike
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Strong Argument ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Ethical System ◽  
Oxford University Press

Ruth Macklin's new book, Against Relativism, says in its subtitle that it intends to address cultural diversity and the search for ethical universals in medicine. This it does very well. Every chapter includes some discussion of cultural relativism, cultural anthropology, or postmodernism, and her analyses are acute and scathing. Macklin is unabashed in her defense of the principles of medical ethics, and she gives a strong argument that principles are essential elements of any ethical system that is to successfully survive the skeptical doubts of relativism.

Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis. Edited by John Covach and Graeme M. Boone. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Expression in Pop-Rock Music: A Collection of Critical and Analytical Essays. Edited by Walter Everett. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000.

Popular Music ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brackett
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Music Analysis ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
New Applications

In the intense disciplinary upheavals of the last fifteen years or so within music scholarship, music analysis has been one of the most contentious areas of debate The sense of conflict arises from a confluence of factors: all music scholars who wish to describe the details of musical style must employ some form of music analysis, yet the very strengths of music-analytical practice Ð its ability to describe musical events with precision, its ability to explain details of musical style and demonstrate structural interrelationships Ð are couched in a technical meta-language that seems resistant to socio-cultural analysis, an area of particular interest for those involved in the self-critique of the field. Concurrent with the apearance of what are probably the best-known denouncements of analysis as formalist and tautological by Joseph Kerman in the early to mid-1980s, musicologists who were sympathetic to aspects of KermanÕs critique explored ways to harmonise the description and analysis of musical details with methods of analysis derived from different aspects of cultural theory. Many of the scholars seeking new applications for music analysis also pursued the related project of understanding the socio-historical context for music analysis itself and of unpacking the aesthetic values couched within the apparently neutral practice of analysis.

Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 1793–1796, John Barrell, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-208
Author(s):  
Danny Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Second Line ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One

Abstract This review essay has two divisions. In its first division it sets out a brief overview of recent Marxist research in the field of ‘Romanticism’, identifying two major lines of inquiry. On the one hand, the attempt to expand our sense of what might constitute a ruthless critique of social relations; on the other, an attempt to develop a materialist account of aesthetic disengagement. This first division concludes with an extended summary of John Barrell’s account of the treason trials of the middle 1790s, as set out in his book Imagining the King’s Death. It argues that Barrell’s book is the most significant recent work belonging to the second line of inquiry. In its second division the review responds to Barrell’s concluding discussion, in which the aesthetic consequences of the treason trials are established by means of a close reading of some of the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The division finishes with some more general remarks on the subject of a materialist aesthetics of disengagement.

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