A Comparative Philosophy of Sport and Art

A Comparative Philosophy of Sport and Art

Author: Paul Taylor

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-06-16

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 3030723348

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This book compares two major leisure activities – watching sport and engaging with art. It explores a range of philosophical questions that arise when sport and art are placed side by side: The works of Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Mozart have continued to fill playhouses, galleries and concert halls for centuries since they were created, while our interest in even the most epic sporting contests fades after just a few years, or even a single season. What explains this difference? Sporting contests are merely games. So why do sports fans attach such great importance to whether their team wins or loses? Do sporting contests have meaning in the way works of art do? Beauty is a central value in art. Is it important in sport? What role does morality play in sport and art? What value do sport and art contribute to the world and to the meaning of people’s lives?


Author:

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published:

Total Pages: 1233

ISBN-13: 2384762974

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Striking Beauty

Striking Beauty

Author: Barry Allen

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-08-04

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0231539347

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The first book to focus on the intersection of Western philosophy and the Asian martial arts, Striking Beauty comparatively studies the historical and philosophical traditions of martial arts practice and their ethical value in the modern world. Expanding Western philosophy's global outlook, the book forces a theoretical reckoning with the concerns of Chinese philosophy and the aesthetic and technical dimensions of martial arts practice. Striking Beauty explains the relationship between Asian martial arts and the Chinese philosophical traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, in addition to Sunzi's Art of War. It connects martial arts practice to the Western concepts of mind-body dualism and materialism, sports aesthetics, and the ethics of violence. The work ameliorates Western philosophy's hostility toward the body, emphasizing the pleasure of watching and engaging in martial arts, along with their beauty and the ethical problem of their violence.


Art Without Borders

Art Without Borders

Author: Ben-Ami Scharfstein

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-08-01

Total Pages: 558

ISBN-13: 0226736113

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People all over the world make art and take pleasure in it, and they have done so for millennia. But acknowledging that art is a universal part of human experience leads us to some big questions: Why does it exist? Why do we enjoy it? And how do the world’s different art traditions relate to art and to each other? Art Without Borders is an extraordinary exploration of those questions, a profound and personal meditation on the human hunger for art and a dazzling synthesis of the whole range of inquiry into its significance. Esteemed thinker Ben-Ami Scharfstein’s encyclopedic erudition is here brought to bear on the full breadth of the world of art. He draws on neuroscience and psychology to understand the way we both perceive and conceive of art, including its resistance to verbal exposition. Through examples of work by Indian, Chinese, European, African, and Australianartists, Art Without Borders probes the distinction between accepting a tradition and defying it through innovation, which leads to a consideration of the notion of artistic genius. Continuing in this comparative vein, Scharfstein examines the mutual influence of European and non-European artists. Then, through a comprehensive evaluation of the world’s major art cultures, he shows how all of these individual traditions are gradually, but haltingly, conjoining into a single current of universal art. Finally, he concludes by looking at the ways empathy and intuition can allow members of one culture to appreciate the art of another. Lucid, learned, and incomparably rich in thought and detail, Art Without Borders is a monumental accomplishment, on par with the artistic achievements Scharfstein writes about so lovingly in its pages.


Philosophy and the Martial Arts

Philosophy and the Martial Arts

Author: Graham Priest

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 9781138016606

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This is the first substantial academic book to lay out the philosophical terrain within the study of the martial arts and to explore the significance of this fascinating subject for contemporary philosophy. The book is divided into three sections. The first section concerns what philosophical reflection can teach us about the martial arts, and especially the nature and value of its practice. The second section deals with the other direction of the dialectical interplay between philosophy and the martial arts: how the martial arts can inform philosophical issues important in their own right. Finally, because many of the notable martial arts are of Asian origin, there are particularly close links between the arts and Asian philosophies – and Buddhism in particular – and therefore the last section is devoted to this topic. The essays in this collection deal with a wide range of philosophical issues: normative ethics, meta-ethics, aesthetics, phenomenology, the philosophy of mind, Ancient Greek and Buddhist thought. By demonstrating the very real nature of the engagement between the martial arts and philosophy, this book is essential reading for any serious student or scholar with an interest in the martial arts, Eastern philosophy, the philosophy of sport, or the study of physical culture.


On the Philosophy of Central European Art

On the Philosophy of Central European Art

Author: Max Ryynänen

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-11-17

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1793634181

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This book is an introduction to the history of the concept and the institution of (fine) art, from its ancient Southern European roots to the establishment of the modern system of the arts in eighteenth century Central Europe. It highlights the way the concept and institution of (fine) art, through colonialism and diaspora, conquered the world. Ryynänen presents globally competing frameworks from India to Japan but also describes how the art system debased local European artistic cultures (by women, members of the working class, etc) and how art with the capital A appropriated not just non-Western but also Western alternatives to art (popular culture). The book discusses alternative art forms such as sport, kitsch, and rap music as pockets of resistance and resources for future concepts of art. Ultimately, the book introduces nobrow as an alternative to high and low, a new concept that sheds light on the democratic potentials of the field of art and invites reader to rethink the nature of art.


Somaesthetics and Sport

Somaesthetics and Sport

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-04-04

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9004510656

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The contributors to Somaesthetics and Sport explore our embodied experiences of watching and playing sport, including sport’s beauty; the place of exercise in our sense of living a good life; and how we cope with pain and suffering.


Philosophy and the 'Dazzling Ideal' of Science

Philosophy and the 'Dazzling Ideal' of Science

Author: Graham McFee

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-08-27

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 3030216756

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Recent decades have seen attacks on philosophy as an irrelevant field of inquiry when compared with science. In this book, Graham McFee defends the claims of philosophy against attempts to minimize either philosophy’s possibility or its importance by deploying a contrast with what Wittgenstein characterized as the “dazzling ideal” of science. This ‘dazzling ideal’ incorporates both the imagined completeness of scientific explanation—whereby completing its project would leave nothing unexplained—and the exceptionless character of the associated conception of causality. On such a scientistic world-view, what need is there for philosophy? In his defense of philosophy (and its truth-claims), McFee shows that rejecting such scientism is not automatically anti-scientific, and that it permits granting to natural science (properly understood) its own truth-generating power. Further, McFee argues for contextualism in the project of philosophy, and sets aside the pervasive (and pernicious) requirement for exceptionless generalizations while relating his account to interconnections between the concepts of person, substance, agency, and causation.


Rembrandt

Rembrandt

Author: Georg Simmel

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0415926696

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First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.


Games

Games

Author: C. Thi Nguyen

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0190052082

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Games are a unique art form. They do not just tell stories, nor are they simply conceptual art. They are the art form that works in the medium of agency. Game designers tell us who to be in games and what to care about; they designate the player's in-game abilities and motivations. In other words, designers create alternate agencies, and players submerge themselves in those agencies. Games let us explore alternate forms of agency. The fact that we play games demonstrates something remarkable about the nature of our own agency: we are capable of incredible fluidity with our own motivations and rationality. This volume presents a new theory of games which insists on games' unique value in human life. C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part of how we become mature, free people. Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games. We can pursue goals, not for their own value, but for the sake of the struggle. Playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life, and the fact that we can engage in this motivational inversion lets us use games to experience forms of agency we might never have developed on our own. Games, then, are a special medium for communication. They are the technology that allows us to write down and transmit forms of agency. Thus, the body of games forms a "library of agency" which we can use to help develop our freedom and autonomy. Nguyen also presents a new theory of the aesthetics of games. Games sculpt our practical activities, allowing us to experience the beauty of our own actions and reasoning. They are unlike traditional artworks in that they are designed to sculpt activities - and to promote their players' aesthetic appreciation of their own activity.