Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant’s leading thread in the analytic of the beautiful
2006, In Rebecca Kukla (ed.), Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant's Critical Philosophy. Cambridge University Press.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag UidhirAbstract: Kant conducts his Analytic of the Beautiful, in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, according to the 'leading thread' that also guided the table of the categories in the first Critique: the four titles of the logical functions of judgement. This leading thread, which has not met with much favor on the part of Kant's readers where the first Critique is concerned, is even less popular in the case of the third Critique. In this essay, I will argue that this ill repute is unmerited. In fact, Kant's use of the leading thread of the logical functions of judgment to analyze judgments of taste merits close attention. In particular, it brings to light a striking feature of judgments of taste as analyzed by Kant. We would expect the main headings in the table of logical functions (quantity, quality, relation, modality) to guide the analysis of aesthetic judgments as judgments about an object ('this rose is beautiful,' 'this painting is beautiful'). Now they certainly do serve this purpose. But in addition, it turns out that they also serve to analyze another judgment, one that remains implicitly contained within the predicate ('beautiful') of the judgments of taste. This second judgment, embedded, as it were, in the first (or in the predicate of the first), and that only the critique of taste brings to discursive clarity, is a judgment no longer about the object, but about the judging subjects, namely, the subjects that pass the judgment: 'this rose is beautiful,' 'this painting is beautiful,' and so on.Comment: This is a stub entry. Please add your comments below to help us expand it
Moland, Lydia. Hegel’s Philosophy of Art
2017, In Dean Moyar (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Hegel. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 559-580.
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Added by: Alison StoneAbstract: Despite Hegel's effusive praise for art as one of the ways humans express truth, art by his description is both essentially limited and at perpetual risk of ending. This hybrid assessment is apparent first in Hegel's account of art's development, which shows art culminating in classical sculpture's perfect unity, but then, unable to depict Christianity's interiority, evolving into religion, surrendering to division, or dissipating into prose. It is also evident in his ranking of artistic genres from architecture to poetry according to their ability to help humans produce themselves both individually and collectively: the more adequately art depicts human self-understanding, the more it risks ceasing to be art. Nevertheless, art's myriad endings do not exhaust its potential. Art that makes humans alive to the unity and interdependence at the heart of reality continues to express the Idea and so achieves Hegel's ambitions for its role in human life.Comment: A concise overview of Hegel's aesthetics and philosophy of art. Could be used on an aesthetics course when covering Hegel, either as supplementary to a reading from Hegel or as primary reading introducing a further reading by Hegel the following week.
Møller, Sofie. The Court of Reason in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
2013, Kant-Studien 104 (3):301-320.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Charlotte SabourinAbstract: The aim of the present paper is to discuss how the legal metaphors in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason can help us understand the work's transcendental argumentation. I discuss Dieter Henrich's claim that legal deductions form a methodological paradigm for all three Critiques that exempts the deductions from following a stringent logical structure. I also consider Rüdiger Bubner's proposal that the legal metaphors show that the transcendental deduction is a rhetorical argument. On the basis of my own reading of the many different uses of legal analogies in the first Critique, I argue that they cannot form a consistent methodological paradigm as Henrich and Bubner claim.
O'Neill, Onora. Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy
1989, Cambridge University Press.
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Added by: Clotilde TorregrossaPublisher's Note: Two centuries after they were published, Kant's ethical writings are as much admired and imitated as they have ever been, yet serious and long-standing accusations of internal incoherence remain unresolved. Onora O'Neill traces the alleged incoherences to attempts to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, action and rights. When the temptation to assimilate is resisted, a strikingly different and more cohesive account of reason and morality emerges. Kant offers a "constructivist" vindication of reason and a moral vision in which obligations are prior to rights and in which justice and virtue are linked. O'Neill begins by reconsidering Kant's conceptions of philosophical method, reason, freedom, autonomy and action. She then moves on to the more familiar terrain of interpretation of the Categorical Imperative, while in the last section she emphasizes differences between Kant's ethics and recent "Kantian" ethics, including the work of John Rawls and other contemporary liberal political philosophers
Shapshay, Sandra. Schopenhauer’s Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
2012, Philosophy Compass 7 (1):11-22.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag UidhirAbstract: This essay focuses on Schopenhauer's aesthetics and philosophy of art, areas of his philosophy which have attracted the most philosophical attention in recent years. After discussing the subjective and objective aspects of aesthetic experience on his account, I shall offer interpretations of Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime and solution to the problem of tragedy. In addition, I shall touch upon the liveliest interpretive debates concerning his aesthetic theory: the intelligibility of the 'Platonic Ideas' as the objects of aesthetic experience and the very possibility of aesthetic experience within Schopenhauer's system. Another aim of this essay is to suggest how some of Schopenhauer's aesthetic doctrines may be interpreted in a less metaphysically extravagant way. When understood in this manner, contemporary aestheticians might be inclined to take a closer look at Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory and philosophy of art, for it is distinctive in the tradition of Western philosophical aesthetics in its attempt to highlight and balance the hedonic and cognitive importance of aesthetic experiences; in its sensitivity both to the aesthetic experience of nature as well as of art; in the high value placed on the experience of music ; and in the innovative solution to the problem of tragedy it offers
Vasterling, Veronica. Heidegger’s hermeneutic account of cognition
2015, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14(4): 1145-1163.
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Added by: Andrea BlomqvistAbstract: Hermeneutic phenomenology is absent in 4 EAC literature (embedded, embodied, enactive, extended and affective cognition). The aim of this article is to show that hermeneutic phenomenology as elaborated in the work of Heidegger is relevant to 4 EAC research. In the first part of the article I describe the hermeneutic turn Heidegger performs in tandem with his ontological turn of transcendental phenomenology, and the hermeneutic account of cognition resulting from it. I explicate the main thesis of the hermeneutic account, namely that cognition is interaction with the world, followed by a discussion of the modes of cognition distinguished in the hermeneutic account. In the second part of the article I discuss the implications of this account with respect to the status and meaning of first, second and third person perspective of cognition. The article concludes with the draft and discussion of an exploratory model of hermeneutic cognition.Comment: The text gives a very concise overview and interpretation of Heidegger's account of hermeneutics, relating it to 4E debates in the philosophy of mind and cognition. It could be interesting as advanced reading in courses in the philosophy of mind, or more introductory reading in hermeneutic phenomenology and the work of Heidegger.
Veltman, Andrea. Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt on Labor
2010, Hypatia 25 (1):55 - 78
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
Comparing the typologies of human activities developed by Beauvoir and Arendt, I argue that these philosophers share the same concept of labor as well as a similar insight that labor cannot provide a justification or evaluative measure for human life. But Beauvoir and Arendt think differently about work (as contrasted with labor), and Arendt alone illuminates the inability of constructive work to provide non-utilitarian value for human existence. Beauvoir, on the other hand, exceeds Arendt in examining the ethical implications of our existential need for a plurality of free peers in a public realm.
Comment: This essay presents a side-by side analysis of both de Beauvoir's and Arendt's philosophical accounts of labour and work. It also touches on some of the ethical implications of those accounts, and their meaning for a philosphical understanding of the concepts of work and labor as they relate to human life. The author highlights a previously unnoticed similarity between how both thinkers approaches the concept of labor, as the category of human activity relegated to the inherently ephemeral: 'labor itself produces no great works or deed worthy of remembrance, nor does it directly contribute to constructing the artifice of the human world that distinguishes human existence from unchanging animal life.' She also discusses the author approaches as they relate to their major predecessor on the topic: Marx. As such, the essay may be used in a variety of intermediate undergraduate as well as master's level courses covering work and labor, feminist perspectives on work and labor, the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt, respectively, or even philosophical critiques of Marx. The text, while offering a close textual read of both others, also has value for it's broader take on the concepts of work and labor - concepts which have not been readily discussed in contemporary analytic philosophy outside of the Marxist literature.
Young, Iris Marion. Responsibility for Justice
2011, Oxford Universiy Press
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Added by: Olivia Maegaard NielsenAbstract:
When the noted political philosopher Iris Marion Young died in 2006, her death was mourned as the passing of “one of the most important political philosophers of the past quarter-century” (Cass Sunstein) and as an important and innovative thinker working at the conjunction of a number of important topics: global justice; democracy and difference; continental political theory; ethics and international affairs; and gender, race and public policy. This book discusses our responsibilities to address “structural” injustices in which we among many are implicated (but for which we are not to blame), often by virtue of participating in a market, such as buying goods produced in sweatshops, or participating in booming housing markets that leave many homeless. The book argues that addressing these structural injustices requires a new model of responsibility, which it calls the “social connection” model. The book develops this idea by clarifying the nature of structural injustice; developing the notion of political responsibility for injustice and how it differs from older ideas of blame and guilt; and finally how we can then use this model to describe our responsibilities to others no matter who we are and where we live.
Comment: This book is very suitable for teaching classes on justice, structures, or metaethics, since it at once covers various important ethical theories and theories of justice, while also asking a question that is still relevant to this day: what responsibility do we carry in the face of structural injustices? The book could be read in length, but the chapters can also be read individually.
Zuckert, Rachel. Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the ‘Critique of Judgment’
2007, Cambridge University Press.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Jonas Jervell IndregardPublisher's Note: Kant's Critique of Judgment has often been interpreted by scholars as comprising separate treatments of three uneasily connected topics: beauty, biology, and empirical knowledge. Rachel Zuckert's book interprets the Critique as a unified argument concerning all three domains. She argues that on Kant's view, human beings demonstrate a distinctive cognitive ability in appreciating beauty and understanding organic life: an ability to anticipate a whole that we do not completely understand according to preconceived categories. This ability is necessary, moreover, for human beings to gain knowledge of nature in its empirical character as it is, not as we might assume it to be. Her wide-ranging and original study will be valuable for readers in all areas of Kant's philosophy.Comment: Perfect for a course on Kant's Third Critique. Covers both of the main parts of that work, namely the critique of aesthetic judgment and the critique of teleological judgment.
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