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1
Warsop, David John. "Structure and aesthetic properties : an analysis of the notion of structure in aesthetics." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.296764.
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Dugas, Alex T. "Beauty, Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Philosophy of Beauty of Plotinus and St. Augustine." Athenaeum of Ohio / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=athe1526051732407169.
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Rowe, M. W. "Philosophy, psychology, criticism : A defence of traditional aesthetics." Thesis, University of York, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.377287.
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Razumovskaya, Maria. "Heinrich Neuhaus : aesthetics and philosophy of an interpretation." Thesis, Royal College of Music, 2014. http://researchonline.rcm.ac.uk/355/.
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This thesis investigates one of the key figures of Russian pianism in the twentieth century, Heinrich Gustavovich Neuhaus (1888 - 1964). Although Neuhaus is known, particularly in the West, as an important pedagogue of the Moscow Conservatory rather than a performing artist in his own right, this thesis seeks to address the tension between Neuhaus's identities as a pedagogue and his overshadowed conception of himself as a performer - thus presenting a fuller understanding of his specific attitude to the task of musical interpretation. The reader is introduced to aspects of Neuhaus's biography which became decisive factors in the formation of his key aesthetic, philosophical, pedagogical and performative beliefs. The diverse national influences in Neuhaus's upbringing - from his familial circumstances, European education and subsequent career in Russia - are investigated in order to help locate Neuhaus within the wider contexts of Russian and Central European culture at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition, this introduction will highlight ways in which Neuhaus's national identity has been oversimplified in recent literature by both Russian and non-Russian authors. Whilst this thesis draws on a range of contemporaneous and recent international sources throughout its investigation, it presents a substantial amount of Russian-language material that has previously been unavailable in an English translation: this includes many writings and articles by Heinrich Neuhaus, his colleagues and the leading musicologists and critics of his time. The core of the thesis traces Neuhaus's personal philosophical approach to the act of performance and explores the impact it had on his interpretations of Beethoven and Chopin. This will show that despite aspiring to a modern, Urtext-centred approach and sensibility to the score, Neuhaus's Romantic subjectivity meant that he was unafraid of making assumptions and decisions which often misinterpreted or transformed the image of the composer to reflect his own artistic identity. Thus, the investigation of Heinrich Neuhaus as a performing artist, alongside his role as a pedagogue, presents a powerful model of interpretation as a creative process, from which performers today can learn.
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Spoor, Iris P. "Defending Perceptual Objectivism: A Naturalistic Realist Analysis of Aesthetic Properties." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1511799160442784.
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Bailey, Rowan. "The philosophy of sculpture : the sculpture of philosophy : casting bodies of thought." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2009. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/16898/.
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This thesis explores both the conceptual register and tropic play of sculpture as a fine art in some of the key writings of Plato, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. It serves to show how sculpture is both shaped by and reshapes in turn philosophy's explicit register of sculpture as an art form. The central argument within this thesis is that sculpture turns its back on philosophy as soon as philosophy casts sculpture out of its mould. Registering sculpture as a fine art within philosophy reveals that whilst specific examples of sculpture may appear to confirm the conceptual meanings ascribed to it by the philosophers Kant, Herder and Hegel, can equally show its unreliability and inconsistency as an art form. The title of this thesis The Philosophy of Sculpture: The Sculpture of Philosophy serves as a heading for an engagement with an explicit reading of sculpture as a fine ati and the sculptural as a trope. Therefore, the sculpture of philosophy is read as a heading for the presentation of sculpture as an object or art form in the writings of Kant, Herder and Hegel. The philosophy of sculpture appeals to an engagement with the use of the sculptural through the tropes of casting, moulding, sculpting, carving, modelling, shaping and forming in the writing of philosophy. This will show that there is something specifically philosophical about sculpture as a practice. Furthermore, the crossovers between these two approaches highlight the effects they give place to, particularly in the context of reading sculpture through a case study. Therefore, the latter half of this thesis engages with the ways in which the sculptural appears within architectural formations and explores an alternative reading of sculpture in relation to some of the themes generated out of a collaborative project between the philosopher Jacques Derrida and the architect Peter Eisenman.
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Browne, Paul Leduc. "Lukacs's aesthetics and ontology, 1908-23." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.339014.
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This thesis examines the development of Georg Lukacs's early philosophy, and specifically of his concept of the subject-object dialectic, from the History of Development of Modern Drama (1908) to History and Class Consciousness (1923). Between 1908 and 1918, Lukacs came to see as the only possible philosophical options either Hegel's ontology or a resolutely anti-ontological Neo-Kantian value-philosophy inspired by Lask, combined with a quasi-religious metaphysic inspired by Fichte, Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky. In the Heidelberg Aesthetics (1916-1918), the programme of Hegel's metaphysics (the phenomenology of the identical subject-object) is presented as only realizable within a resolutely non-metaphysical aesthetic, as one sphere of validity within a Neo-Kantian framework. History and Class Consciousness transposes the logical structure of this aesthetic theory into the ontological domain, articulating a Marxist critique of Neo-Kantianism which rediscovers in the proletariat the phenomenology of the identical subject-object as the logic of being, i.e. as ontology. This thesis is the first study in English to bring to light fully this dialectic, because it is the first to analyze Lukacs's Philosophy of Art (1912-1914) and Heidelberg Aesthetics (1916-1918), and their relation to History and Class Consciousness. It contributes not only to a new understanding of Lukacs's transition to Marxism, but also sheds light on the genesis of his later philosophy. Its detailed critique of History and Class Consciousness from a point of view inspired by the dialectics of labour in Lukacs's later Ontology of Social Being, lays new emphasis on the latter's relevance to contemporary social theory.
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Gourova, Maria Andreevna. "The Aesthetic Idea and the Unity of Cognitive Faculties in Kant's Aesthetics." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2008. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/philosophy_theses/41.
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In this paper, I will try to answer the question how the aesthetic idea in Kant’s aesthetic theory accounts for the universal validity of the subjective judgment of taste, and what the nature of the aesthetic idea is that makes such account possible. This claim about universal validity of the subjective judgment of taste in Kant’s philosophy is regarded to be problematic because of the seeming contradiction between the subjectivity of a judgment and its universality. What can solve this contradiction, from my point of view, is the role of the aesthetic idea that it plays in the judgment of taste and the subjective principle that puts cognitive powers of mind in a harmonious free relationship. The main feature that makes the aesthetic idea the source of the universal validity is its universal communicability expressed in the universally pleasurable feeling of the judgment of taste.
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Van, der Berg Servaas de V. "On depiction and expression : two essays in philosophical aesthetics." Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/5203.
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Thesis (MA (Philosophy))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.<br>ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis consists of two essays, each focussing on a current topic in aesthetics in the tradition of
analytic philosophy.
First paper (On depiction)
Given broad consensus that resemblance theories do not do well at explaining depiction, two
alternative approaches have dominated the literature in recent decades: (1) Perceptual accounts try to
ground depiction in the phenomenology of our pictorial experiences; (2) Structural accounts
understand pictures as symbols in pictorial symbol systems. I follow Dominic Lopes in granting that the
two approaches, often interpreted as each other’s rivals, both have merit and are successful in
answering divergent questions about depiction.
After taking stock of the most influential theories from both approaches, I turn to John Kulvicki’s recent
work. He has made surprising progress as a proponent of the structural approach. His attempt to
define depiction in structural terms is groundbreaking and, for the most part, successful. The paper
measures some of his suggestions on picture structure and perception against the well-established
“twofoldness”-thesis of the perceptual theorist on depiction, Richard Wollheim. Wollheim’s theory is
defended and suggestions made to adapt Kulvicki’s theory accordingly.
Second paper (On expression)
Since Frank Sibley’s early papers in the mid-twentieth century, analytic aesthetics has broadened its
field of inquiry to extend past the traditional focus on judgements of beauty or aesthetic merit, to
peripheral terms, concepts, properties and judgements (e.g. of grace, elegance, garishness,
daintiness, dumpiness, etc.). Nick Zangwill gives a traditionalist report of what binds the new, broad
and heterogeneous category of the aesthetic together. He argues that purely evaluative aesthetic
judgements of beauty or ugliness (i.e. “verdicts”) are fundamental. All other aesthetic judgements
derive their evaluative aesthetic nature from them.
In this essay it is argued that Zangwill’s defence of beauty’s supremacy in the category of the
aesthetic, does not do justice to ostensible instances of non-evaluative judgements that ascribe
expressive properties to artworks. Nelson Goodman’s cognitivist theory of expression in art is used as
a foil for Zangwill’s claims.<br>AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis bestaan uit twee essays, elk oor ’n aktuele onderwerp in estetika in die tradisie van die
analitiese filosofie.
Eerste essay (Oor uitbeelding, oftewel “piktoriale representasie”)
Gegewe ’n algemene konsensus dat ooreenkoms-teorieë nie slaag daarin om uitbeelding (“depiction”)
te verklaar nie, is daar twee alternatiewe benaderings wat die onlangse literatuur oor die onderwerp
oorheers: (1) die perseptuele benadering probeer uitbeelding begrond in die fenomenologie van ons
piktoriale ervaringe; (2) die strukturele benadering verstaan beelde as simbole in piktoriale simboolsisteme.
In navolging van Dominic Lopes neem ek aan dat dié twee benaderings, wat normaalweg as
mekaar se opponente beskou word, altwee meriete dra en onderskeidelik sukses behaal in die
beantwoording van heel uiteenlopende vrae oor die aard van uitbeelding.
Na ’n bestekopname van die mees invloedryke teorieë onder beide benaderings, word John Kulvicki
se onlangse werk oorweeg. Hy maak verrassende vooruitgang as ondersteuner van die strukturele
benadering. Sy poging om uitbeelding in strukturele terme te definiëer is revolusionêr en bied stof vir
nadenke. In hierdie essay word sommige van sy voorstelle oor beeld-struktuur en -waarneming
gemeet aan die gevestigde “twofoldness”-tesis van Richard Wollheim. Wollheim se perseptuele teorie
word verdedig en ’n voorstelle word gemaak om Kulvicki se teorie daarvolgens aan te pas.
Tweede essay (Oor uitdrukking)
Sedert Frank Sibley se vroeë essays in die middel van die twintigste eeu het die analitiese estetika sy
visier verbreed om verby die tradisionele fokus op oordele van skoonheid en estetiese waarde te kyk,
na perifere terme, begrippe, eienskappe en oordele (van bv. grasie, delikaatheid, balans, strakheid,
elegansie, ens., ens.). Nick Zangwill gee ’n tradisionalistiese verslag van wat die nuwe, breë en
heterogene kategorie van die estetiese saambind. Hy argumenteer dat suiwer evaluerende oordele
van skoonheid fundamenteel bly. Alle ander estetiese oordele se estetiese aard word daarvan afgelei.
In hierdie essay argumenteer ek dat Zangwill se verdediging van skoonheid (of estetiese waarde) as
fundamenteel tot die kategorie van die estetiese, nie laat reg geskied aan aantoonbare gevalle van
nie-evaluerende oordele, naamlik dié wat ekspressiewe eienskappe aan kunswerke toeskryf, nie.
Nelson Goodman se kognitiewe teorie van van uitdrukking in kuns word gebruik as teenhanger en
wegspringplek vir kritiek op Zangwill se aansprake.
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Šparada, Renata. "Internet as Aesthetic Medium." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Avdelningen för estetik, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-452910.
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The dissertation explains the internet as an aesthetic medium, authorship in the medium and platforms’ influence on the medium’s aesthetic function. This is achieved by analysing the actual art that uses the internet as an aesthetic medium. The aesthetic function of the internet as a medium is different from its informative and communicative function. It entails manipulation of the medium defined by the permanent and instant interconnectedness of the digitalised instances or representations of people, things, artificial intelligence and information to achieve a specific aesthetic aim. Internet as a medium, similarly to comics and film, allows for different kinds of authorship. A typical example of art that uses the internet as a medium is a meme. This is because memes involve meta-level discussions and group authorship, elements that are most easily facilitated by the internet as a medium. Art that uses the internet as an aesthetic medium can be single-authored if the sole author manipulates digital interconnectedness in an aesthetically significant way. Besides this general level of how the internet is characterised as a medium, there is a practical level that includes platforms on which artwork is made. These two levels are necessarily connected. Even though platforms also manipulate digitalised interconnectedness, they do not erase the internet’s potential as an aesthetic medium because artists manipulate this already manipulated content.
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McMahon, Melissa Jane. "Deleuze and Kant's Critical Philosophy." University of Sydney. School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI), 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/618.
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This thesis considers the status of Deleuze as a Kantian, and as such committed both to the critical destiny of philosophy, and the contestation of the sense of this destiny. The focus of Deleuze�s reading of Kant is an active conception of thought: the fundamental elements of thought are will and value rather than being or the concept. In the development of this idea we can note a progressive 'tapering' of the foundational instance of thought, in three stages: from the speculative field of being to the practical field of reason; from the intellectual category of the concept to the problematic category of the Idea; from the teleological notion of the organism to the aesthetic notion of the singular. Within each stage we can perceive a polemic between the two terms: it is in each case a question of the 'sufficient reason' of thought, its conditions of the actuality beyond its possibility. The highest expression of our reason, for Kant, is neither theoretical nor utilitarian, but moral: the realisation of our lawful freedom. For Deleuze, on the other hand, the ultimate secret of our freedom and thus all of our thought is to be found rather in the realm of the aesthetic.
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Roche, Jennifer Lynn. "Imagination in the Philosophy of Josiah Royce." OpenSIUC, 2012. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/1038.
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That Josiah Royce's philosophy relies on imagination has been acknowledged, but there has not yet been scholarship behind what this argument consists of or implies, both for imagination and Roycean loyalty. This project works to examine how imagination works in Royce's philosophy and, in particular, the ethical system of loyalty, as imagination serves in the creation and perfection of loyalty. The first level of this explores Royce's psychological groundwork for imagination and how this works into the development of the self. From there, this project works with the connections of aesthetics and beauty to Roycean loyalty, with particular interest in how beauty aids in the self's choice of cause. The final level of this project is concerned with how imagination informs the community and how imagination aids in the development of loyalty to a lost cause and thus loyalty to loyalty.
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Johnson, Carl Matthew. "Watsuji Tetsuro and The Subject of Aesthetics." Thesis, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3569117.
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<p>A central question in aesthetics is whether aesthetic judgment is subjective or objective. Existing approaches to answering this question have been unsatisfying because they begin with the assumption of an individual observer that must then be communalized through the introduction of a transcendent object or the transcendental reason of the subject. </p><p> Rather than introduce a vertical transcendence to account for the ideal observer, I propose an alternative account based on the anthropology of the Japanese philosopher W<p style="font-variant: small-caps">ATSUJI</p> Tetsurō. According to Watsuji, human existence is a movement of double negation whereby we negate our emptiness in order to individuate ourselves and we negate our individuality in order to form communal wholes. Human beings are empty of independent existence, and thus open to create ideal aesthetic subjects in historically and regionally situated communal contexts. </p><p> I propose an account of aesthetic experience as a double negation in which we negate our surroundings in order to create a sense of psychical distance and negate our ordinary selves in order to dissolve into the background of primordial unity. I examine aesthetic normativity and find that the subject of aesthetics is active and plural rather than passive and individual. Aesthetic judgment and taste are, respectively, individual and communal moments in the process of double negation. Artistic evolution is a process by which the context of artist, artwork, and audience develop into a meaningful historical milieu. Genius is the ability to make public one’s private values through the creation of objects that can travel beyond their original contexts and create new contexts around them. Such an ability is the result of a double negation played out between the genius and critical receptivity. </p><p> Extended examples taken from Noh theater, Japanese linked verse, tea ceremony, and <i>The Tale of Genji</i> are also used to illustrate my arguments. </p>
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Johnston, Jennene Louise Hooper. "Angels of desire subtle subjects, aesthetics and ethics /." View thesis, 2004. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20050527.155421/index.html.
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Kovach, Vanya. "Judgement as play: revealing analogies between aesthetics and ethics." Thesis, University of Auckland, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/2488.
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This thesis is about the similarities of process between aesthetic experience and ethical judgement. I claim that in both cases the activity is best described as a type of play in which elements interact in mutual adjustment and transformation. This conception of play has its roots in Kant's aesthetic theory. Describing aesthetic experience as play results in emphasis on three central characteristics. These characteristics become the basis of constraints on judgement. In the case of ethical judgement these are important because they save from subjectivism a moral theory, particularism, which relies on individual judgement rather than moral rules. Seeing the activity of judgement as play suggests a conception of the outcome of judgement as picturing. This conception helps to make sense of reason-giving within the particularist model. A further analogy with the grounds of aesthetic qualities is used to illuminate the problem of justifying the values put into play. These values are ultimately defended in terms of their relationship to human flourishing. Perennial problems for theories based on human flourishing are avoided by my account because prescriptions for action are not derived from the characterisation of flourishing but from the process of individual judgement which values based on flourishing merely inform. One positive effect of adopting my model of judgement as play is the reduction of problems concerning the motivation to act on ethical judgements.
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Evans, Robert A. "An Aesthetic Attitude: An East - West Comparison of Bullough and Nishida." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1274279326.
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Auyer, Jonathan P. "Illusion in the commonplace| Reinterpreting Ernst Gombrich's concept of illusion." Thesis, State University of New York at Albany, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3565358.
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<p> In the dissertation I analyze and interpret Ernst Gombrich's book <i> Art and Illusion,</i> focusing on his view that illusion is involved in pictorial representation. Since Gombrich never gave a concise, systematic account of illusion, my goal will be to fill this void by using the text of <i> Art and Illusion</i> as well as Gombrich's subsequent writings in order to present a coherent account of how illusion might play a role in a picture's representing an object.</p><p> My goal is not to present an unassailable account of pictorial representation. Instead, I offer a version of Gombrich's theory that pushes readers towards a better comprehension of what a Gombrichian theory of illusion involves. In the process I introduce and defend a number of terms and concepts in the service of filling in those places where Gombrich is silent. Among other things, in response to Gombrich's notion of visual substitution I elaborate upon the claims that representational pictures function as relational models and afford recognition of the objects they represent; I reply to Richard Wollheim's "twofoldness" objection to Gombrich; and I contend that Gombrich's use of the notion of illusion is not open to the objections commonly made against it (e.g., that normal picture perception does not involve illusion because "illusion" is synonymous with "delusion").</p>
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Wood, Andrew J. "Makers and Breakers| Pre-Raphaelites, Punks, and Political Imagination." Thesis, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2019. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10829418.
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<p> Weaving together influences from philosophy, visual and sonic aesthetics, and radical political thought, this project argues that individual and collective imagination should be understood as important sites of politics—in cultural, discursive, institutional, and collectivist registers. Rather than proposing dogmatic adherence to any particular ideology, we find that imagining new possibilities, as well as the possibilities for more possibilities, is centrally important to the endeavor of seeking radical change in the contemporary capitalist/state system. By turning to the examples of two politico-aesthetic movements, the Handicraft movement of William Morris and the Hammersmith Socialist League of the 19th century and the 20<sup>th</sup>/21<sup>st</sup> century cultures of punk rock, we witness the successes and failures of attempts to intervene in political imaginaries. I focus on the anachronistic, non-capitalist mode of production of so-called ‘do-it-yourself’ (or D.I.Y.), I argue that such productive processes could represent such an inter-temporal rupture point of radical anachronism that I have theorized, and can therefore demonstrate the potentiality of wellsprings for the creation of new forms of politics, paradoxically contributing to the progress of inclusivity and egalitarian politics through the introduction of anachronistic performances, visuals, and music. </p><p> Specifically, they reveal the surprising ways in which inter-temporal rupture through anachronistic aesthetic forms and modes of productions can not only disrupt hegemonic notions of progressive linear time, but also question the radical imperative towards production of the new. These movements hence illuminate important implications for the tactics, tensions, and most of all thought—and preconditions for thought—that underpin contemporary progressive politics (e.g. Anti-globalization, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, revolutionaries in Rojava and especially, and most contentiously and controversially the contemporary Antifa movements) by demonstrating the radical potentialities of aesthetics, space, and anachronism for the introduction of historical rupture contained within politico-aesthetic shock. These movements are deeply concerned with democratic participation and social justice, and so we can use Morris and punk as a window in to deep analysis of tactics as utilized by the aforementioned anti-capitalist and anti-fascist movements.</p><p>
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Ali, Zulfiqar. "Ethics as aesthetics : Michel Foucault's genealogy of ethics." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2010. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/35118/.
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Aloi, Michael Joseph. "Participation in the Play of Nature: A Hermeneutic Approach to Environmental Aesthetics." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2020. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1752360/.
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Within the environmental aesthetics literature, there is a noticeable schism between two general approaches to understanding the aesthetic value of nature: the ambient approach and the narrative approach. Ambient thinkers focus on the character of aesthetic appreciation of nature, the way in which one is embedded in multi-sensory environment. These ambient theorists emphasize the importance of those aesthetic experiences that are difficult to articulate. Narrative thinkers argue that aesthetic appreciation of nature is enhanced and enriched by narratives that are relevant to the natural object or environment encountered. Certain narratives – usually those based on scientific knowledge – encourage a depth of appreciation that is inaccessible to those unfamiliar with the narratives. In this dissertation, I attempt to articulate an account of environmental aesthetic experience that does justice to both of these approaches by drawing on the resources of philosophical hermeneutics, and especially on the aesthetic theory of Hans-Georg Gadamer. The most important aspects of Gadamer's work for environmental aesthetics are his phenomenology of play, his revival of practical philosophy, and his emphasis on the interpretive character of all understanding. His discussion of play fleshes out the core of ambient accounts, his focus on interpretation explains the insights of narrative accounts, and the two accounts are tied together by his attention to practice.
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Bracewell, Pamel Joyce. "Space, time and the artist : the philosophy and aesthetics of Wyndham Lewis." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1990. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3027/.
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My study, in Part I of this thesis, of Wyndham Lewis's philosophical principles outlined in Time and Western Man (1927), reveals a mode of thought which is inspired and determined by beliefs about visual art and its metaphysical significance. The ultimate rejection of the philosophies of Bergson, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and the 'Space-Timeists' such as Spengler, Whitehead and Alexander, in pursuit of a 'philosophy of the eye' was, I argue, fashioned according to aesthetic objections. 'Time-values' are challenged by 'space-values', ideally expressible for Lewis in the static, spatial medium of visual art. The aesthetics of Vorticism, discussed in Part II, was formalized in the two Blast journals (1914-15), and provides the key to an understanding of Lewis's later philosophy in its negation of Bergsonist-related doctrines. His aversion to chronologism' had emerged in various ways well before the public launch of Vorticism and had subsequently achieved a subtle, effective coherence in the 'logic of contradictions' which directed the theoretical strategies of Blast. But In modernism Lewis recognized 'empty' abstraction and thus the taint of the time-cult itself. As a method of working, abstraction was not abandoned, but was directed away from the sensational and emotional in the service of intellect and rational thought. In order to clarify the interdependence of art and philosophy in Lewis's thought, I propose two schematic models. The first characterizes Lewis's philosophical principles and posits the concept of the vortex as Lewis's noumenon. The second superimposes the aesthetic values and form of the vortex symbol itself as a prior justification of the philosophical schema: each 'model' is clearly incomplete without cognizance of the other. Since, for Lewis, the essential character of Vorticism was first expressed in art practice, the findings of this thesis support Lewis's own retrospective view (1956), that Vorticism was a 'new philosophy' in visual form.
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Reynolds, Christine Sara. "Past presence : aesthetics and the creation of origin /." Connect to title online (Scholars' Bank), 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/6783.
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Mckeown, Conor. "Videogame ecologies : interaction, aesthetics, affect." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8878/.
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This project is driven by omissions at the intersection of ecological game studies and media-ecology. Although authors have studied videogames from a variety of ecological approaches, few have attempted to develop a holistic methodology, embracing videogames' specific attributes while recognising their role within larger physical systems. This thesis is an attempt to address this, reading videogames as simultaneously about and functioning as ecologies. My methodology draws on the agential-realist philosophy of Karen Barad whose theory of 'intra-activity' is abundant with ecological ramifications. Adapting Barad's 'intra-active' framework for use with contemporary videogames, I read them as assemblages of hardware, software and their human players. I explore three significant aspects of game studies: interaction, aesthetics and affect. Focusing on interaction, I analyse the game Shelter. Emphasising the role of hardware and software, I read these processes in conjunction with an understanding of gameplay. This encourages a shift away from seeing gameplay as 'interaction' as it is defined within human-computer-interaction, and instead promotes a view that is 'intra-active'. Siding with Barad, play is radically reframed as a phenomenon that produces the apparent objects of its inception. In the second study I approach a series of more experimental games illustrating how an agential-realist worldview influences aesthetics. Analysing high-concept puzzle games Superhot, Antichamber, and Manifold Garden, I suggest that these games place a focus on aspects of ecology often over-shadowed in so-called 'natural' imaginings of our world, such as time, space and their entanglement. Finally, bringing my focus to the role of the player in my ecological understanding of games I analyse a number of short, human-centred or biographical games. Seeing the role of the player in an ecological manner, designers deviate from traditional methods of generating pathos and affect. Rather than developing empathetic relationships between player and avatar through immersion, viewing the player as only a part of an ecological system demands a posthuman response from players. These designers ask players to empathise while acknowledging their role is small and not central. This thesis presents a novel point of view that draws attention to the ambitious design practices of artists while suggesting new avenues in the future.
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Henry, Jon L. "Techniques of Sensual Perception: The Creation of Emotional Pathways." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1999. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2276/.
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Some artists strive to create artwork that has aesthetic value. If a piece of artwork has the ability to capture the attention of an audience, it must contain strong sensual attributes. Thus, understanding how to design an art form to contain strong sensual attributes may increase the possibility of an aesthetic experience. Since aesthetics is an experience of sensations perceived when in contact with a creative form in any artistic discipline, it is necessary for an artist to understand the nature of the sensual experience. In understanding the sensual experience, artists may be able to create techniques to enhance the aesthetic experience of their work. My video piece, entitled Ararat is a study of methods to enhance the sensual experience. I hope to accomplish this by means of using techniques that optimize an audience's perceptual experience.
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Gao, Weining. "A STUDY OF HUTCHESON’S AND HUME’S THEORIES OF AESTHETIC TASTE." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2018. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1871.
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This thesis examines the aesthetic theories by Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, two of the most influential philosophers of the eighteenth century. Focused on the interpretation of both theories, it concentrates on the issue of human taste, in particular, aesthetic taste, including questions concerning people’s external sense (sensation) and internal sense (sensations), what the differences are between better taste and worse taste, how people possible improve taste by practice, examples, customs, education, and the like. It concludes with a criticism on both philosophers’ works and a positive argument on the explanation of better and worse taste. Primary texts include Hutcheson’s Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony and Design and Hume’s Of the Standard of Taste.
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Migan, Darla Senami. "The confessions of augustine's flesh| Counter-conducts overwhelming to pastoral power in Christian conversion." Thesis, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1553279.
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<p> In his 1978 lectures at the College de France, <i>Security Territory Population</i>, Michel Foucault shifts his analysis of power by arguing for pastoral power as both the prelude to governmentality and as the decisive moment in the constitution of the Western subject. If the history of the Christian pastorate involves "the entire history of procedures of human individualization in the West (184)," then, Foucault argues, there has never been a revolt against pastoral power because such a revolt would be a revolt against the constitution of the self, that is to say against self-consciousness. If the revolt against pastoral power is a revolt against self-consciousness, then I argue that the psychagogic-spiritual, as opposed to rhetorical-theological, practices of religious conversion may be where counter-conducts (already understood to be subsumed within Christian pastoral power) may also overwhelm the Christian pastorate. In his conversion to Christianity Augustine employs techniques that are `overwhelming' to pastoral power, but are never actually an attempt to overcome pastoral power. In the specific experiences recalled by Augustine in his Confessions, through the various non-discrete phases of his conversion he takes up what Foucault calls counter-conducts. Through asceticism (especially in the author's struggle with conscupience); through the establishment of a new religious community (as a Manichean catechumen) through mysticism (in the doctrine of `inner illumination)'; through the exegesis of scripture (significantly in the voluntary reading of Romans 13:12-14 prior to becoming a catechumen of the Christian Church); and through eschatological belief (specifically in the a-millennial conception of the return of Christ), Augustine, author of the Confessions, emerges as a convert to Christianity. Towards Foucault's call for genealogies of pastoral power and towards the call of philosophy understood as ethico-poetic praxes of Eros captured in the phrase epimeleia heatou, this thesis will investigate Augustine of Hippo's conversion to Christianity as an enactment of Foucault's `counter-conducts.' I will argue, through exegesis of Augustine's Confessions, that this parrhesiatic document is simultaneously a narrative of psychagogic practices which reflects Augustine's profound ascesis towards Christian subjectivation as well as a document of the counter-conducts that overwhelm Christian pastoral power while never revolting against it. As a result of his pluralistic and deeply personal approach towards conversion, Augustine's recorded experiences exemplify how `new' technologies (or at least new modalities of old technologies) are established within the Christian pastorate. It is in and through the event of his conversion that Augustine also emerges as a leader of the orthodox Church and simultaneously as an instigator for later revolts against it--arguably, for example, as an inspiration for the leaders of the Protestant Reformation. If there can be no revolution against pastoral power because it is always instituting, circumscribing, and subsuming new forms of resistance on its own, then perhaps we can best understand where counter-conducts are most dangerous to the practices of power by understanding where some practices actually fail to resist power-effects, while simultaneously transforming power-relations.</p>
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Rampley, Matthew. "Dialectics of contingency : Nietzsche's philosophy of art." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14775.
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This thesis examines the function of art in Nietzsche's philosophy. Its primary concern is with Nietzsche's turn to art as the means to counter what he terms metaphysics. Metaphysics is a metonym for the system of beliefs sustaining our culture whereby human judgements about the world are perceived as uncovering an objective truth antecedent to those judgements, with an implicit faith in the possibility of exhausting the totality of these antecedent truths. This thesis consequently has two principal strands. The first is to analyse Nietzsche's criticism of metaphysics. The second is to explore the way in which, using a specific understanding of art, Nietzsche attempts to reconcile extreme scepticism towards all forms of human knowledge with a continued belief in their necessity. The thesis argues that Nietzsche lays an importance on art as providing an aesthetic education to replace the misguided theoretical orientation of metaphysics. Nietzsche criticises metaphysics for its inability to recognise that its interpretations are mere interpretations, that logic and the rational serve as means to make the world meaningful from the human perspective. My thesis explores how he sees art, and in particular the tragic, as constituting a mode of world interpretation which declares its status as such. I argue that for Nietzsche this is crucial inasmuch as a failure to recognise the contingency of our interpretations results in a refusal to give value in any interpretations. For Nietzsche the advent of the Modern age heralds the danger of such refusal, and hence I argue that his turn to art is a response to the specifically Modern temptation to descend into mere cynical Nihilism.
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Collins, Lorna Patricia. "Making sense : art and aesthetics in contemporary French thought." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610086.
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Farinas, Rebecca Lee. "The Aesthetic Agency of Popular Culture in the Writings of Pierre Bourdieu and Arthur C. Danto." OpenSIUC, 2014. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/949.
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ABSTRACT The Aesthetic Agency of Popular Culture: In the Writings of Pierre Bourdieu and Arthur C. Danto Rebecca L. Farinas, Ph.D. Pierre Bourdieu and Arthur C. Danto are significant interlocutors in the areas of aesthetics and popular culture. This study affirmatively answers a question raised by both writers, that popular culture puts forward a strong enough aesthetic to change elitist views of society, which concern people's disrespect for the importance of commonplace and everyday experiences. Bourdieu approaches the problem by applying sociology to aesthetics, and Danto raises the question through a view of aesthetics based on his philosophy of culture, which he begins to cultivate in his late writings. Each approach is important, in that firstly through looking at culture through sociology we can omit highbrow abstractions of some philosophies, and look evidentially at the dynamics of aesthetic agency. Secondly, thinking about culture philosophically, we can reveal how people's feelings and actions make meaningful and ethically valuable aesthetic representations. Comparing the two perspectives, we find two different views of how contemporary societies change for the better through individual and communal aesthetic actions. It is Danto's theory of culture, however, which answers the question of the agency of popular culture fully, because his theory of the third realm of beauty is constituted through communal values, which grow out of people's relationships as they interact through everyday, commonplace experiences. Bourdieu and Danto's writings converge on many points, and we can notice several similarities and one major difference in their philosophies. The main similarities are; that feelings and perceptions change social conditions through ideas and actions, that popular culture is facilitated by people's common relationships with one another, and that people who contribute to a commonplace ethos of mutual respect and openness re-possess popular culture with agency, in contrast to a weak sense of culture that is controlled by abstracted concepts and elitist judgements. Danto's distinction in aesthetics through value making, is especially important because in our contemporary, interconnected, global world popular culture needs to do more than merely create nationalistic standards and static traditions. For Danto, people develop a more creative and fair world through understanding and acting on their commonality of inner beauty. Inner beauty is an aesthetic spirit of virtues made through our reciprocal participation in our cultural representations, and we use this agency to propagate our belief in each other as unique and caring human beings.
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Robertson, Casey. "Illuminating postmodern elements in the music of John Cage." Thesis, California State University, Dominguez Hills, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10020172.
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<p> While the American composer John Cage is often classified as an influential figure in the realm of modernist music, the controversial nature of Cage's work has proven to be more far-reaching than many had initially contended. Through a process of re-examining the work of Cage through a postmodern lens, this thesis rejects the notion that Cage was confined to the realm of modernism, and demonstrates that the composer not only exhibited postmodern tendencies through his ideas and concepts, but also aesthetically in his compositions. By illuminating these postmodern compositional practices and postmodern-influenced belief systems expressed by Cage as an artist, a reinterpretation of the composer and his work is carried out, while also addressing criticisms leveled toward Cage as a postmodernist. Through this contemporary reanalysis, the thesis demonstrates that Cage was a composer that transcended genres and classifications to ultimately resonate as a viable figure of postmodern music.</p>
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Jörnvi, Malin. "Visionary Philosophy." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Avdelningen för estetik, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-429020.
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In this thesis I look at possible implications of the philosophical use of sight metaphors as rendered visible in the philosophy of Iris Murdoch. Through Murdoch’s reading of Plato, and together with the perspectives added by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Paul de Man, Carolyn Korsmeyer, and Mats Persson, I argue that some contemporary philosophy as shaped by science and logic might be partially blind to essential aspects of human life and human awareness. I show that this partial blindness becomes visible in an inability to acknowledge and understand the philosophical importance of that which cannot be seen from a distance, and I argue that this may be due to a modern understanding of clarity. I claim that this understanding of clarity essentially differs from that of Plato and that it becomes particularly evident in Plato’s reliance on metaphors and allegories, not as unclear and obfuscating aspects to be untangled, but as depicting essential dimensions of the inexhaustible complexity of life. I finally argue that it is vital to recover and to philosophically consider these obscurer aspects if philosophy is to stay relevant to actual human beings living in the muddle that is everyday life.
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Smethurst, Coryn Russell Ronald. "Towards a creative aesthetics : with reference to Bergson." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2001. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/104996/.
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This thesis explores issues in aesthetics with reference to Bergson. The first chapter outlines and assesses Bergson's interesting and subtle theory of humour, which emphasises the necessary lack of sympathy in humour, and its generalising, external methodology. In doing so it explores the different ways the motif of 'something encrusted on the living' functions on various levels. This is ultimately found to be an interesting account which has many merits. The second chapter then begins to outline the theoretical structure of Bergson's account of humour in terms of vertical and horizontal movement. This leads to an account of Bergson's critique of 'ordinary' conceptual language and a consideration of other alternatives, including metaphor. The third chapter discusses Bergson's notion of intuition and levels of interpretation - assessing what, if any, relation there is between Russian Formalism and Bergson's own understanding of poetry. The notion of levels helps to define Bergson's anti-modernism, when modernism is understood as the self-referential exposure of the art work's own conditions of possibility. The fourth chapter examines several art forms. Music is discussed in some detail with particular attention being paid to the distinction between rhythm and melody, notions of repetition, creativity and difference. A comparison it then made between Bergson's thoughts on evolution and melodic creativity. This discussion is of importance not only for the light it casts on aesthetic issues, but also because music, or more specifically melody, is often given as an example of the heterogeneous continuity of duration. The thesis also examines painting, particularly in relation to duration, comparing it with photography. Bergson's arguments against cinema are then discussed. The thesis also examines how the role of sympathy functions in artistic production generally. Finally Bergson's ability to distinguish between art and philosophy is examined referring back to notions of self-reflexivity in art.
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Simus, Jason Boaz. "Disturbing Nature's Beauty: Environmental Aesthetics in a New Ecological Paradigm." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2009. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11008/.
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An ecological paradigm shift from the "balance of nature" to the "flux of nature" will change the way we aesthetically appreciate nature if we adopt scientific cognitivism-the view that aesthetic appreciation of nature must be informed by scientific knowledge. Aesthetic judgments are subjective, though we talk about aesthetic qualities as if they were objectively inherent in objects, events, or environments. Aesthetic judgments regarding nature are correct insofar as they are part of a community consensus regarding the currently dominant scientific paradigm. Ecological science is grounded in metaphors: nature is a divine order, a machine, an organism, a community, or a cybernetic system. These metaphors stimulate and guide scientific practice, but do not exist independent of a conceptual framework. They are at most useful fictions in terms of how they reflect the values underlying a paradigm. Contemporary ecology is a science driven more by aesthetic than metaphysical considerations. I review concepts in the history of nature aesthetics such as the picturesque, the sublime, disinterestedness, and formalism. I propose an analogy: just as knowledge of art history and theory should inform aesthetic appreciation of art, knowledge of natural history and ecological theory should inform aesthetic appreciation of nature. The "framing problem," is the problem that natural environments are not discrete objects, so knowing what to focus on in an environment is difficult. The "fusion problem" is the problem of how to fuse the sensory aspect of aesthetic appreciation with highly theoretical scientific knowledge. I resolve these two problems by defending a normative version of the theory-laden observation thesis. Positive aesthetics is the view that insofar as nature is untouched by humans, it is always beautiful and never ugly. I defend an amended and updated version of positive aesthetics that is consistent with the central elements of contemporary ecology, and emphasize the heuristic, exegetical, and pedagogical roles aesthetic qualities play in ecological science.
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Gershkovich, Tatyana. "Held Captive: Tolstoy, Nabokov, and the Aesthetics of Constraint." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493286.
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This dissertation examines a counterintuitive artistic imperative that emerged from the struggles of Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Nabokov with an aesthetic problem of Kantian provenance. These two authors are widely considered to be opposed in their vision of art, but I show that their aesthetics in fact converge upon the same goal: to grant the reader a particular kind of freedom. These authors shared the Kantian view that aesthetic enjoyment requires that the reader not be constrained by any interest or concept. This feeling of freedom, they believed, is threatened not only when a reader looks to an artwork to satisfy his appetites (and thus remains bound by his sensuous interests), but also when he employs the artwork for a further intellectual or creative purpose of his own (and thus remains bound by his concepts). On the latter point, they concluded that too much interpretive license, rather than liberating the reader, actually leaves him trapped within his preexisting conceptual framework. To ensure that their own works grant the freedom necessary for genuine aesthetic pleasure, they developed narrative strategies that (in an apparent paradox) restrict how we read the text.<br>Slavic Languages and Literatures
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Kooy, Michael John. "Aesthetics and moral philosophy in the thought of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1808-1819." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.319145.
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Gurciullo, Sebastian 1968. "Between art and philosophy : Adorno and Foucault as heirs and critics of Enlightenment." Monash University, School of Literary, Visual and Cultural Studies, 2000. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/7662.
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Sweeney, Mark Richard. "The aesthetics of videogame music." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:70a29850-0c0d-4abd-a501-e75224fa856a.
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The videogame now occupies a unique territory in contemporary culture that offers a new perspective on conceptions of high and low art. While the fear that the majority of videogames 'pacify' their audience in an Adornian "culture industry" is not without justification, its reductionism can be countered by a recognition of the diversity and aesthetic potential of the medium. This has been proposed by sociologist, Graeme Kirkpatrick, although without close attention to the role of music. Videogame music often operates in similar ways to music in other mixed-media scenarios, such as film, or opera. In the same way that film music cannot be completely divorced from film, videogame music is contingent on and a crucial part of the videogame aesthetic. However, the interactive nature of the medium - its différance - has naturally led to the development of nonlinear musical systems that tailor music in real time to the game's dynamically changing dramatic action. Musical non-linearity points beyond both music and videogames (and their respective discourses) toward broader issues pertinent to contemporary musicology and critical thinking, not least to matters concerning high modernism (traditionally conceived of as resistant to mass culture). Such issues include Barthes's "death of the author", the significance of order/disorder as a formal spectrum, and postmodern conceptions and experiences of temporality. I argue that in this sense the videogame medium - and its music - warrants attention as a unique but not sui generis aesthetic experience. Precedent can be found for many of the formal ideas employed in such systems in certain aspects of avant-garde art, and especially in the aleatoric music prevalent in the 1950s and 60s. This thesis explores this paradox by considering videogames as both high and low, and, more significantly, I argue that the aesthetics of videogame music draw attention to the centrality of "play" in all cultural objects.
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Hanson, Louise Mary. "Conceptual art : what is it?" Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:1ce65d49-6864-4a29-8600-5c54e405ef5e.
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Conceptual Art (henceforth CA) has the peculiar status of being at once a neglected topic in philosophical aesthetics, and one on which a degree of philosophical weight disproportionate to the attention it has received is placed. On the one hand it is frequently mentioned by philosophers as a problematic case, one that general theories of art have difficulty dealing with, but on the other, there is a notable lack of philosophical research taking CA as its focus. It is largely taken as a given that CA is radically different from other art in various ways and thus poses problems for some of the general statements about art that philosophers tend to make. But it is striking that these claims are not, for the most part, grounded in a thorough investigation into the nature of CA. The purpose of my research is to conduct such an investigation; to address the question of what CA is, and what makes it different from other art, in order to come to a clearer view of what particular philosophical issues or difficulties CA raises for the philosophy of art. In existing literature on CA, it is standard to take CA’s distinctiveness to have something to do with the importance of ‘ideas’. I investigate what could be meant here by ‘idea’, and identify two broad schools of thought as to what form this emphasis on ideas in CA takes: Priority Accounts, which claim that in CA ideas are the most important aspect of the work and Constitution Accounts, which claim that works of CA are ideas. I identify serious problems for Constitution Accounts, in general, and for some kinds of Priority Account. I then put forward a new kind of Priority account which I think overcomes the problems faced by its rivals.
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Ozdemir, Ibrahim Soner. "Grasping The Space Of The Heart/mind: Artistic Creation And Natural Beauty In The Later Philosophy Of Kitar." Phd thesis, METU, 2011. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12613515/index.pdf.
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In this dissertation, focusing on the problem of &ldquo<br>aesthetic form&rdquo<br>and its relation to the distinction between natural and artistic beauty, it is argued that the Japanese philosopher Kitar
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Pitkin, Carissa. "Against Expression?: Avant-garde Aesthetics in Satie's "Parade"." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1595499202615172.
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Garlitz, Dustin Bradley. "Philosophy of new jazz : reconstructing Adorno." [Tampa, Fla.] : University of South Florida, 2007. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0002213.
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高舒 and Shu Phyllis Kao. "Affective gesture in J.S. Bach's keyboard music with special referenceto selected works in D minor." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1995. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31213145.
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O'Brien, Marianne. "Aesthetics and ethics at the intersection: Contemporary reflections on the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.494273.
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In the last hundred years of commentarial literature on Schopenhauer, the breadth and profundity of the relationships that exist between aesthetics and ethics in his philosophy have been overlooked and overshadowed by studies of Schopenhauer as a metaphysician. This exploration of the status of the metaphysical connection between aesthetics and ethics in his philosophy. In order to establish the significance of this connection for contemporary debates on aesthetics and ethics, I elucidate Schopenhauer's philosophy in a manner that addresses its inconsistencies and inadequacies whilst being conducive to the clear articulation and development of its key themes and central insights.
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Wong, Ching-ping. "The manifestation of Chinese philosophy and aesthetics in the performance of the pipa music." Thesis, Kingston University, 1989. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/20532/.
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This thesis attempts to identify the philosophical and aesthetic concepts of pipa music. The discussion is approached from a performer's point of view and is supported by the author's demonstrations on the pipa, in conjunction with the discussion of artistic theories of other Chinese traditional arts. The introductory chapter involves an examination of thehistorical perspective of the pipa, a discussion of the problems of pipa notation and an explanation of the approach of this thesis. Part I (Chapters 1-6) concentrates on the discussion of theoretical matters. An investigation of the various meanings and the evolution of the concepts qi and yun is the first step to approaching Chinese philosophy and aesthetics. The “three levels of qi” involve playing technique, aesthetic and philosophical considerations. The capturing of “qi of intentional effort” is determined by “combined technique” and breathing methods. The articulation of timbre and “slide” are the essence of “yun”. The manipulation of “qi-yun” deals with the art of performance, interpretation and re-creation, as well as major aesthetic concepts and philosophical ideas of other traditional arts. The final approach of Part I (Chapter 6) probes in to the relationship of poetry and music. Pipa music shares a similar artistic appreciation of consummate beauty to that of Chinese poetry. The focus of Part II (Chapters 7 & 8) attempts to present a detailed analytical study of pipa right-hand “combined technique” and left-hand “slide” skills, accompanied by the study of their historical context. Apart from these matters, Part II acts as a support for the aesthetic and philosophical concepts of Part I.
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Fernández, Celso Ignacio. "The distinction between philosophy of art and aesthetics in the thought of Étienne Gilson." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2004. http://www.tren.com.
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Moore, Gregory. "Art and action : exploring postmodern aesthetics." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2010. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/1456.
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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.<br>Bachelors<br>Sciences<br>Political Science
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Thompson, Seth Aaron. "Art Unfettered: Bergson and a Fluid Conception of Art." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2018. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1248388/.
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This dissertation applies philosopher Henri Bergson's methodology and his ideas of duration and creativity to the definitional problem of art, particularly as formulated within analytic aesthetics. In mid-20th century, analytic aesthetics rejected essentialist definitions of art, but within a decade, two predominant definitions of art emerged as answers to the anti-essentialism of the decade prior: functionalism and proceduralism. These two definitions define art, respectively, in terms of the purpose that art serves and in terms of the conventions in place that confer the status of art onto artifacts. Despite other important definitions (including historical and intentionalist definitions), much of the literature in the analytic field of aesthetics center on the functional/procedural dichotomy, and this dichotomy is an exclusive one insofar as the two definitions appear incompatible with each other when it comes to art. I use Bergson's methodology to demonstrate that the tension between functionalism and proceduralism is an artificial one. In turn, abandoning the strict dichotomy between these two definitions of art opens the way for a more fluid conception of art. Using Bergson's application of duration and creativity to problems of laughter and morality, I draw parallels to what a Bergsonian characterization would entail.
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明奇英 and Kee-ying Thomas Ming. "An analysis of the filmic: a philosophical grounding for film aesthetics." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1993. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31212578.
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Bennett-Hunter, Guy Andrew. "Ineffability and religious experience : a philosophical study." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/252237.
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The notion of ineffability (of that which is, in principle, resistant to conceptual formulation and therefore literal linguistic articulation) has been largely ignored by philosophers. The notion is clearly a central one in the Christian mystical tradition and in more recent apophatic theological developments. Mid-twentieth-century philosophical discussions of mysticism invoked the idea and a number of phenomenologists share a sense that the meaningful human world is answerable to some 'background' that is inarticulable and mysterious. But, despite this, the logical implications of the notion of ineffability for religious experience, language and practice have not been explicitly and systematically thought through. This thesis, restricted to a dual focus on twentieth-century and contemporary philosophy and on the Christian religion, attempts to address this neglect. After reviewing the philosophical, and some theological, literature on the notion of ineffability in religion, this thesis identifies a philosophical tension between the notions of 'ineffability' and 'answerability', between the idea that the ineffable is beyond conceptualization and that some kind of experience, language or practice connected with it is required if the notion is to be meaningfully invoked, let alone (as in a religious context) serve as the measure for the meaning of the human world. In this connexion, the meaning of the word 'God' is interpreted as a reference to the concept of ineffability. A recent philosophical defence of the concept is endorsed which, rooted in existential phenomenology and Heidegger's later philosophy, resolves this tension. The detail of theological attempts, by Paul Tillich and John Macquarrie, to accommodate this line of thought as directly inherited from the phenomenologists (especially Heidegger) is examined and criticized, as, eventually, is a more promising theological possibility represented by the neglected philosophy of Karl Jaspers. The rational status of existential phenomenology (its relation to discourse conditioned by the subject-object dichotomy) is examined more closely in the light of the latter criticism. It is concluded that phenomenology's specifically philosophical way of evoking the ineffable is necessarily that of a rationally-based dialectic. The final chapter points to spheres outside philosophy, aesthetic and ritual, which cultivate the experience of the ineffable without such dialectic. It offers an 'aesthetic account of ritual meaning' and concludes by showing how the Eucharistic rite can be philosophically understood as a vehicle for religious experience and expression - the evocation and invocation of the ineffable God.
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DORAN, NICOLE ELLEN. "A CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC AND THE ARTS: THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF SCHAEFFER FAMILY AND THE L'ABRI COMMUNITY." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2002. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1023192423.
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