Reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts in relation to the novelty introduced by virtual bodies.Arguing that the virtual body is something new-namely, an entity that from an ontological perspective has only recently entered the world-Roberto Diodato considers the implications of this kind of body for aesthetics. Virtual bodies insert themselves into the space opened up by the famous distinction in Aristotle's Physics between natural and artificial beings-they are b...

This book investigates the ontological state of relations in a unique way. Starting with the notion of system, it shows that the system can be understood as a relational structure, and that relations can be assessed within themselves, with no need to transform relations in elements. “Relations” are understood in contrast to “relational property”: without a relation there is no identity, therefore no existence. What allows us to do that without hypostatizing the relation, and without immedi...

Aesthetics in Present Future: The Arts and the Technological Horizon is a collection of essays by scholars and a few artists who focus on the issue of how arts either change when conveyed by new media (such as the web, 3D printers, and videos) or are simply diffused by them. The contributors’ analyses describe how both virtual production and virtual communication change our attitudes toward what we call the arts. The scope of the topics ranges from photography to cinema and painting, from ...

Collected here in one volume are three of Søren Kierkegaard's most important works: Fear and Trembling, Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, and Sickness Unto Death. Fear and Trembling: In our time nobody is content to stop with faith but wants to go further. It would perhaps be rash to ask where these people are going, but it is surely a sign of breeding and culture for me to assume that everybody has faith, for otherwise it would be queer for them to be . . . going further. In those old...

No philosopher has held a higher opinion of art than Hegel, yet nor was any so profoundly pessimistic about its prospects - despite living in the German golden age of Goethe, Mozart and Schiller. For if the artists of classical Greece could find the perfect fusion of content and form, modernity faced complicating - and ultimately disabling - questions. Christianity, with its code of unworldliness, had compromised the immediacy of man's relationship with reality, and ironic detachment had a...

Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. In it, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls "poetry" (a term which in Greek literally means "making" and in this context includes drama—comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play—as well as lyric poetry, epic poetry, and the dithyramb). He examines its "first principles" and identifies its genres and basic elements. His analysis of tragedy constitu...

In 'Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic', Benedetto Croce undertakes a profound exploration of aesthetics through the prism of expression and language. Croce articulates a philosophy of art that emphasizes the intrinsic connection between aesthetic feeling and expression, setting his work apart in the early 20th-century discourse surrounding aesthetics and linguistic theory. His literary style combines rigorous argumentation with a lyrical prose that illuminates the n...

The increasingly popular idea that cinematic fictions can 'do' philosophy raises some difficult questions. Who is actually doing the philosophizing? Is it the philosophical commentator who reads general arguments or theories into the stories conveyed by a film? Could it be the film-maker, or a group of collaborating film-makers, who raise and try to answer philosophical questions with a film? Is there something about the experience of films that is especially suited to the stimulation of w...

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film is the first comprehensive volume to explore the main themes, topics, thinkers and issues in philosophy and film. The Companion features sixty specially commissioned chapters from international scholars and is divided into four clear parts:• issues and concepts• authors and trends• genres• film as philosophy.Part one is a comprehensive section examining key concepts, including chapters on ...

The renowned philosopher contemplates the medium of drawing in "a book full of dazzling insights, imaginative curves and provocative renewals" (Sarah Clift, University of King's College).In 2007, philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy curated an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon. This book, originally written for that exhibition, explores the interplay between drawing and form—viewing the act of drawing as a formative force. Recalling that the terms 'drawing' and '...

A comprehensive, critical and accessible account of Theodor W. Adorno's materialist-dialectical aesthetic theory of art from a contemporary perspective, this volume shows how Adorno's critical theory is awash with images crystallising thoughts to such a degree that it has every reason to be described as aesthetic.

Christine Buci-Glucksmann’s The Madness of Vision is one of the most influential studies in phenomenological aesthetics of the baroque. Integrating the work of Merleau-Ponty with Lacanian psychoanalysis, Renaissance studies in optics, and twentieth-century mathematics, the author asserts the materiality of the body and world in her aesthetic theory. All vision is embodied vision, with the body and the emotions continually at play on the visual field. Thus vision, once considered a...