Aesthetics as Secular Millennialism

Aesthetics as Secular Millennialism PDF Author: Benjamin Bennett
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 9781611486582
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The author of this book argues that totalitarian politics are located in a secular millennialist tradition which originated in the eighteenth century in the philosophical science of aesthetics.

Aesthetics as Secular Millennialism

Aesthetics as Secular Millennialism PDF Author: Benjamin Bennett
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 9781611486582
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The author of this book argues that totalitarian politics are located in a secular millennialist tradition which originated in the eighteenth century in the philosophical science of aesthetics.

The Aesthetics of Kinship

The Aesthetics of Kinship PDF Author: Heidi Schlipphacke
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1684484553
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The Aesthetics of Kinship intervenes critically into rigidified discourses about the emergence of the nuclear family and the corresponding interior subject in the eighteenth century. By focusing on kinship constellations instead of “family plots” in seminal literary works of the period, this book presents an alternative view of the eighteenth-century literary social world and its concomitant ideologies. Whereas Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophy and political theory posit the nuclear family as a microcosm for the ideal modern nation-state, literature of the period offers a far more heterogeneous image of kinship structures, one that includes members of various classes and is not defined by blood. Through a radical re-reading of the multifarious kinship structures represented in literature of the long eighteenth century, The Aesthetics of Kinship questions the inevitability of the dialectic of the Enlightenment and invokes alternative futures for conceptions of social and political life.

Shaping a Modern Ethics

Shaping a Modern Ethics PDF Author: Benjamin Bennett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350122874
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Is there any such thing as a single ethical system to which all human beings could conceivably subscribe? The short answer is no; and most people, being tolerant, would probably agree with this answer. Yet most people, precisely in being tolerant, also subscribe to an idea of “human rights” which presupposes just such a universal ethics. This basic question of ethics is similarly treacherous when approached on a higher technical level. Specialists have long recognized that Kant's categorical imperative is neither theoretically nor practically tenable. But efforts to revive and repair the Kantian project-including especially the monumental work of Jürgen Habermas-have all themselves been theoretically questionable, while developing a complexity that makes them impractical. Must we then simply do without ethics in the sense of a universal ethical method? By way of a close study of literary and philosophical texts, from Freud to Machiavelli, Benjamin Bennett shows why the failure of a universal or propositional ethics is indeed unavoidable. He uncovers a modern non-propositional ethics that cannot be grasped in a single theoretical move but can only be approached as a collection of instances of a modern ethical “we”, three key examples of which Bennett explores in this book: - The “we” of irony, whose speakers share a strictly preter-verbal knowledge which is concealed in their actual utterances - The insistent exclusive “we” of a group that has neither its own physical locality nor even a clear intellectual identity, comparable to the “we” of Jews in the diaspora - The “we” of feminism, a separate “we” from that embracing people who happen to have been born women.

Beauty and Holiness

Beauty and Holiness PDF Author: James Alfred Martin, Jr.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400860598
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
In this broad historical and critical overview based on a lifetime of scholarship, James Alfred Martin, Jr., examines the development of the concepts of beauty and holiness as employed in theories of aesthetics and of religion. The injunction in the Book of Psalms to "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" addressed a tradition that has comprehended holiness primarily in terms of ethical righteousness--a conception that has strongly influenced Western understandings of religion. As the author points out, however, the Greek forbears of Western thought, as well as many Eastern traditions, were and are more broadly concerned with the pursuit of beauty, truth, and goodness as ideals of human excellence, that is, with the "holiness of beauty." In this work Martin describes a philosophical stance that should prove to be most productive for the dialogue between aesthetics and religion. Beginning with the treatment of beauty and holiness in Hebrew, Greek, and classical Christian thought, the author traces the emergence of modern theories of aesthetics and religion in the Enlightenment. He then outlines the role of aesthetics in the theories of religion proposed by Otto, Eliade, van der Leeuw, and Tillich, in the cultural anthropology of Geertz, and in the thought of Santayana, Dewey, Whitehead, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. In a global context Martin explores the relation of aesthetic theory to religious thought in the traditions of India, China, and Japan and concludes with reflections on the viability of modern aesthetic and religious theory in the light of contemporary cultural and methodological pluralism. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Everyday Aesthetics

Everyday Aesthetics PDF Author: Katya Mandoki
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317138481
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 569

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Book Description
Katya Mandoki advances in this book the thesis that it is not only possible but crucial to open up the field of aesthetics (traditionally confined to the study of art and beauty) toward the richness and complexity of everyday life. She argues that in every process of communication, whether face to face or through the media, fashion, and political propaganda, there is always an excess beyond the informative and functional value of a message. This excess is the aesthetic. Following Huizinga's view of play as an ingredient of any social environment, Mandoki explores how various cultural practices are in fact forms of playing since, for the author, aesthetics and play are Siamese twins. One of the unique contributions of this book is the elaboration and application of a semiotic model for the simultaneous analysis of social interactions in the four registers, namely visual, auditory, verbal and body language, to detect the aesthetic strategies deployed in specific situations. She argues that since the presentation of the self is targeted towards participants' sensibilities, aesthetics plays a key role in these modes of exchange. Consequently, the author updates important debates in this field to clear the way for a socio-aesthetic inquiry through contexts such as the family, school, medical, artistic or religious traditions from which social identities emerge.

The Defective Art of Poetry

The Defective Art of Poetry PDF Author: B. Bennett
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137381884
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Treating the work of Sappho, Goethe, Blake, Hölderlin, Verlaine, George, Mörike, and Yeats in detail, Bennett makes the provocative argument that the nature of lyric poetry in the West has an element of defectiveness. This study delves into the irresolvable conflict between a poem's guise as quasi-architectural stasis and quasi-musical kinesis.

A Pedagogy of Observation

A Pedagogy of Observation PDF Author: Vance Byrd
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 1611488559
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
A Pedagogy of Observation argues that the fascination with learning about the past and new locations in panoramic form spread far from the traditional sites of popular entertainment and amusement. Although painted panoramas captivated audiences from Hamburg to Leipzig and Berlin to Vienna, relatively few people had direct access to this invention. Instead, most Germans in the early nineteenth century encountered panoramas for the first time through the written word. The panorama experience described inthis book centers on the emergence of a new type of visual language and self-fashioning in material culture adopted by Germans at the turn of the nineteenth century, one that took cues from the pedagogy of observing and interpreting space at panorama shows. By reading about what editors, newspaper correspondents, and writers referred to as “panoramas,” curious Germans learned about a new representational medium and a new way to organize and produce knowledge about the scenes on display, even if they had never seen these marvels in person. Like an audience member standing on a panorama platform at a show, reading about panoramas transported Germans to new worlds in the imagination, while maintaining a safe distance from the actual transformations being portrayed. A Pedagogy of Observation identifies how the German bourgeois intelligentsia created literature as panoramic stages both for self-representation and as a venue for critiquing modern life. These written panoramas, so to speak, helped German readers see before their eyes industrial transformations, urban development, scientific exploration, and new possibilities for social interactions. Through the immersive act of reading, Germans entered an experimental realm that fostered critical engagement with modern life before it was experienced firsthand. Surrounded on all sides by new perspectives into the world, these readers occupied the position of the characters that they read about in panoramic literature. From this vantage point, Germans apprehended changes to their immediate environment and prepared themselves for the ones still to come.

Play in the Age of Goethe

Play in the Age of Goethe PDF Author: Edgar Landgraf
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1684482089
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
We are inundated with game play today. Digital devices offer opportunities to play almost anywhere and anytime. No matter our age, gender, social, cultural, or educational background—we play. Play in the Age of Goethe: Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800 is the first book-length work to explore how the modern discourse of play was first shaped during this pivotal period (approximately 1770-1830). The eleven chapters illuminate critical developments in the philosophy, pedagogy, psychology, politics, and poetics of play as evident in the work of major authors of the period including Lessing, Goethe, Kant, Schiller, Pestalozzi, Jacobi, Tieck, Jean Paul, Schleiermacher, and Fröbel. While drawing on more recent theories of play by thinkers such as Jean Piaget, Donald Winnicott, Jost Trier, Gregory Bateson, Jacques Derrida, Thomas Henricks, and Patrick Jagoda, the volume shows the debates around play in German letters of this period to be far richer and more complex than previously thought, as well as more relevant for our current engagement with play. Indeed, modern debates about what constitutes good rather than bad practices of play can be traced to these foundational discourses. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

"The Picture of Dorian Gray" and the Aesthetic Movement in England at the Turn of the Century

Author: Natalia Spektor
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640319567
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar), course: Proseminar B: London Past and Present: Literary and Cultural Heritage of a Metropolis, 16 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: There are some famous writers at the end of the 19th century who are often mentioned as "decadent". They have asserted the superiority of beauty and pleasure over all other considerations. Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray presents the aestheticism and the hedonist way of living. The novel anticipates developments and structures of society of that time. The importance of Dorian's experiences refutes the decadent theories which are described in the Yellow Book that enthralls the protagonist. The novel as a whole can be seen as a psychological study which analyzes the gradual debasement of Dorian's nature. At the end of the story he is responsible for every vice and crime including murder. The author shows that on the one hand pleasure and beauty are the highest goods, on the other hand he argues that they also bring death and crime. The task of this research paper is to analyze the mentioned contradiction and the influence of the Aesthetic movement on the novel as well as Oscar Wilde's view of art. I would like to begin with a brief survey of the social and intellectual background at the end of the 19th century, exploring the major art movements of that time and how far they affect Wilde's work. Afterwards his main principles of Aestheticism and their reflection in the novel are analyzed as well as Dorian's life under the influence of the hedonist model. Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray reveals the contradictions of Wilde's relationship with the decadent trends of that time. He adopts and proclaims their esthetical and literary views, but the flippant amoralism that he sometimes parades so defiantly is belied by the final catastr

Dante in Deutschland

Dante in Deutschland PDF Author: Daniel DiMassa
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1684484189
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Around 1800, German Romantics fixated on Dante's Divine Comedy as a model for the creation of a new mythology of reason. This book traces that fixation across Romantic and Neo-Romantic texts, showing how the Romantic Dante cult in fact generated ominous amalgams of art, myth, and fascism in the twentieth century.