Reaffirming the Importance of Beauty
Reaffirming the Importance of Beauty

Author: Sonja Zuba

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2023-08-03

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1527518655

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This book argues that beauty challenges us to find meaning in its object, to make critical comparisons, and to examine our own lives and emotions in the light of what we find. The book examines the importance of beauty not only in terms of art and aesthetics, but also within the context of the current post-religious age. It engages with the philosophical works of Roger Scruton and William Desmond, and endorses and addresses many important discussions surrounding art and beauty found in the works of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. It also takes seriously the role of poetry and painting to explore the theme that runs through this research: the idea that beauty is rationally found. Meditations on the art of Manet, Van Gogh, Delacroix, Rembrandt, and other artists, together with the voices of several poets, show us that beauty cannot be reduced to aesthetics only. Irreducible to philosophy, religion, or aesthetics, the notion of beauty is deeply examined in all its forms and spiritual meaning.

Beauty and the End of Art
Beauty and the End of Art

Author: Sonia Sedivy

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-04-21

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1474255760

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Beauty and the End of Art shows how a resurgence of interest in beauty and a sense of ending in Western art are challenging us to rethink art, beauty and their relationship. By arguing that Wittgenstein's later work and contemporary theory of perception offer just what we need for a unified approach to art and beauty, Sonia Sedivy provides new answers to these contemporary challenges. These new accounts also provide support for the Wittgensteinian realism and theory of perception that make them possible. Wittgenstein's subtle form of realism explains artworks in terms of norm governed practices that have their own varied constitutive norms and values. Wittgensteinian realism also suggests that diverse beauties become available and compelling in different cultural eras and bring a shared 'higher-order' value into view. With this framework in place, Sedivy argues that perception is a form of engagement with the world that draws on our conceptual capacities. This approach explains how perceptual experience and the perceptible presence of the world are of value, helping to account for the diversity of beauties that are available in different historical contexts and why the many faces of beauty allow us to experience the value of the world's perceptible presence. Carefully examining contemporary debates about art, aesthetics and perception, Beauty and the End of Art presents an original approach. Insights from such diverse thinkers as Immanuel Kant, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Arthur Danto, Alexander Nehamas, Elaine Scarry and Dave Hickey are woven together to reveal how they make good sense if we bring contemporary theory of perception and Wittgensteinian realism into the conversation.

Nature and the Nation in Fin-de-Siècle France
Nature and the Nation in Fin-de-Siècle France

Author: Jessica M. Dandona

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-06-14

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13: 1351708775

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By the time of his death in 1904, critics, arts reformers, and government officials were near universal in their praise of Art Nouveau designer Emile Gallé (1846–1904), whose works they described as the essence of French design. Many even went so far as to argue that the artist’s creations could reinvigorate France’s fading arts industries and help restore its economic prosperity by defining a modern style to represent the nation. For fin-de-siècle viewers, Gallé’s works constituted powerful reflections on the idea of national belonging, modernity, and the role of the arts in political engagement. While existing scholarship has largely focused on the artist’s innovative technical processes, a close analysis of Gallé’s works brings to light the surprisingly complex ways in which his fragile creations were imbricated in the political turmoil that characterized fin-de-siècle France. Examining Gallé’s works inspired by Japanese art, his patriotically inflected designs for the Universal Exposition of 1889, his artistic manifesto in support of Dreyfus created in 1900, and finally, his late works that explore the concept of evolution, this book reveals how Gallé returns again and again to the question of national identity as the central issue in his work.

Beauty
Beauty

Author: Natalie Carnes

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2014-11-13

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1625645848

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Beauty engages fourth-century bishop Gregory of Nyssa to address beauty's place in theology and the broader world. With the recent resurgence of attention to beauty among theologians, questions still remain about what exactly beauty is, how it is perceived, and whether we should celebrate its return. If beauty fell out of favor because it was seen to distract from the weightier concerns of poverty and suffering--because it can even be a tool of oppression--why should we laud it now? Gregory's writings offer surprisingly rich and relevant reflections that can move contemporary conversations beyond current impasses and critiques of beauty. Drawing Gregory into conversation with such disparate voices as novelist J. M. Coetzee and art theorist Kaja Silverman, Beauty displays the importance of beauty to theology and theology to beauty in a discussion that bridges ancient and modern, practical and theoretical, secular and religious.

Between Justice and Beauty
Between Justice and Beauty

Author: Howard Gillette, Jr.

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-06-03

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 0812205294

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As the only American city under direct congressional control, Washington has served historically as a testing ground for federal policy initiatives and social experiments—with decidedly mixed results. Well-intentioned efforts to introduce measures of social justice for the district's largely black population have failed. Yet federal plans and federal money have successfully created a large federal presence—a triumph, argues Howard Gillette, of beauty over justice. In a new afterword, Gillette addresses the recent revitalization and the aftereffects of an urban sports arena.

The Fantastic and European Gothic
The Fantastic and European Gothic

Author: Matthew Gibson

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2013-02-15

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 0708326919

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This book examines the rise of Fantastic literature on the continent in the nineteenth century, the development of a European Gothic and the influence which this exerted on British writers. By examining writers like Nodier, Hoffmann, Gautier, Féval and Stevenson, the book argues firstly how their writings subvert entirely the view of the Fantastic accepted by Todorov, Punter and others, to show that it is the reversal of a pre-Enlightenment, spiritual world-view which causes terror in these works, and further demonstrates that Gothic novels frequently use allusion and anachronism to portray a cyclical view of history opposed to that of Scott.

Impersonals and other Agent Defocusing Constructions in French
Impersonals and other Agent Defocusing Constructions in French

Author: Michel Achard

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2015-01-14

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9027269076

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This book investigates French impersonals as a functional category. Any structure whose agent is defocused and whose predicate describes a situation stable enough to be generally available should be considered impersonal. In addition to il impersonals, the category also includes demonstrative (ce/ça), middle (se), and indefinite (on) structures. These different forms belong to the same functional category because they systematically code general and predictable events that cannot be imputed to a specific cause. Because generality and predictability are gradual notions, impersonals can only be identified within the context of specific constructional islands which therefore constitute the organizing principle of the French impersonal category. Conducted in Cognitive Grammar, the analysis follows the functional tradition in expanding the scope of French impersonals beyond il constructions, but also proposes a way of precisely delineating the category. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in impersonal constructions and French linguistics.