Aesthetics Beyond Philosophy: Exploring Berleant’s Concept of Engagement Editorial Introduction Bogna J. Gladden-Obidzińska As this volume’s authors explore, in depth, from many different angles, Arnold Berleant’s contribution to the field of aesthetics can be understood as twofold. First, through the prolific books and essays that he has published over the course of several decades, […]
Category: Special Volumes
A Philosophical Retrospective
A Philosophical Retrospective Arnold Berleant The question of what to contribute to this issue of Sztuka y Filozofia has ironically been made more difficult because of the generosity of its contributors. It would have been challenging, no doubt, and also stimulating to respond to questions, explain away misunderstandings, or develop new explanations of what […]
Disinterestedness, Disdain and the Reception of Berleant’s Major Idea
Disinterestedness, Disdain and the Reception of Berleant’s Major Idea Cheryl Foster Abstract Arnold Berleant’s philosophical theories have proven to be prescient in their identification of an aesthetic interface between human beings and the natural world – the interface he calls “engagement,” a form of participatory aesthetics. This essay presents the context out of which […]
Arnold Berleant’s Project of Post-Kantian Aesthetics
Arnold Berleant’s Project of Post-Kantian Aesthetics Krystyna Wilkoszewska Abstract Changes in art and culture toward the end of the twentieth century have become a challenge for aesthetics. Arnold Berleant is one of the forerunners of the revising of modern aesthetics, and has been from the very start of his research. He has especially examined […]
Arnold Berleant’s Environmental Aesthetics and Chinese Ecological Aesthetics
Arnold Berleant’s Environmental Aesthetics and Chinese Ecological Aesthetics Cheng Xiangzhan Abstract Professor Arnold Berleant has visited China academically several times since the early 1990s, becoming more and more popular in Chinese academia. Almost all of his books have been translated into Chinese, which produced a significant impact on Chinese scholars, especially on the development […]
Berleant’s Opening
Berleant’s Opening Crispin Sartwell Abstract Throughout modernity, aesthetics had been marked by a significant narrowing of its subject matter, the early peak of this trend being Kantian aesthetics of disinterestedness and modernist formalism based on distance. Arnold Berleant’s mission in aesthetics has been to re-open its domain towards all elements of every-day life, including consumer […]
The Role of Aesthetics in World-Making
The Role of Aesthetics in World-Making Yuriko Saito Abstract Arnold Berleant’s oeuvre spanning five decades is devoted to restoring aesthetics’ connection to the rest of our lives. In this paper, I shall join him by highlighting the crucial role aesthetics plays in shaping our lives and the world by interacting with objects, environments, and […]
Berleant’s Phenomenology of Sculptural Space: Brâncuşi
Berleant’s Phenomenology of Sculptural Space: Brâncuşi Alicja Kuczyńska Abstract The distinction between reason and senses, until recently maintained in philosophy, has now grown to cause serious doubts. The situation requires creating new forms of cognitive continuity revealed in various levels of emotional experience. Constantin Brâncuşi’s art is analyzed as an example of transgression of […]
Sculpture and its Meaning in the Context of Berleant’s Aesthetic Engagement
Sculpture and its Meaning in the Context of Berleant’s Aesthetic Engagement Anna Wolińska Abstract It is not my intention to provide a comprehensive analysis of Berleant’s notion of aesthetic engagement. My goal is modest. I hope to account for the key significance of the philosophical problematization of sculpture, in the context of engaged aesthetics. […]
The “Body in Motion” as the Substance of Dance Improvisation? Based on Motifs from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception
The “Body in Motion” as the Substance of Dance Improvisation? Based on Motifs from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception Lilianna Bieszczad Abstract In the beginning of my academic career, it was my personal experience of dance practice that provided a direct impulse for studying the phenomenon of dance as art from a philosophical perspective. […]
Visual Interlude I
Negative Aesthetics In Art, Environment, And Everyday Life: Arnold Berleant’s Theory And The Novels Of Kirino Natsuo
Negative Aesthetics In Art, Environment, And Everyday Life: Arnold Berleant’s Theory And The Novels Of Kirino Natsuo Mara Miller Abstract Arnold Berleant’s valuable analysis of ‘negative aesthetics’ in his 2010 book Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World provides an analytic framework not only for general investigation of negative aesthetics but […]
Visual Interlude II
Reflections
Reflections Arnold Berleant It is gratifying to see this special issue of the Polish journal Sztuka y Filozofia, originally published in Polish in 2010, now accessible in an English translation. Along with Polish editions of several of my books, it demonstrated close attention to my work, an interest of which I had not been […]
Editorial Introduction to the Special Volume on Urban Aesthetics
Editorial Introduction to the Special Volume on Urban Aesthetics Sanna Lehtinen 1. Aesthetic interest in cities This Special Volume is dedicated to an increasingly central direction in contemporary philosophical aesthetics that has also been gaining interest in the dynamically developing multidisciplinary field of the philosophy of the city. In addition to these theoretical approaches, […]
What is an Urban Atmosphere?
What is an Urban Atmosphere? Adam Andrzejewski, Mateusz Salwa Abstract Atmosphere is one of the key ideas in contemporary aesthetics. The concept proves to be exceptionally useful whenever particular spaces, including interiors or urban spaces, are discussed regarding their unique features. The goal of the paper is to reconsider how an urban atmosphere may […]
Urban Kinaesthetics
Urban Kinaesthetics Tea Lobo Abstract The question how a city can be an aesthetic object or a beautiful object can be posed in a more fundamental manner: how a city can be perceived in the first place. By city, I mean both a built environment and its less tangible social and political reality, such […]
Visions of Political Form: Kantian Free Play and Urban Space
Visions of Political Form: Kantian Free Play and Urban Space Ryan Wittingslow Abstract A number of commentators have examined Kantian beauty in regards to its political promise. According to these readings, the free play inherent to beauty is a precondition for realizing political forms that are both pluralistic and non-coercive. But what does this […]
Atmospheric Affordances and the Sense of Urban Places
Atmospheric Affordances and the Sense of Urban Places Vesa Vihanninjoki Abstract The places of our everyday lives constitute a fundamental condition for the sensibility and the meaningfulness of our urban experience. Such places afford us various things, and it is precisely the afforded uses and actions that remarkably affect or even define our experience […]
The Socially Transformative Aesthetics of Street Culture: From Walter Benjamin’s One-Way Street to The Arcades Project
The Socially Transformative Aesthetics of Street Culture: From Walter Benjamin’s One-Way Street to The Arcades Project Jules Simon Abstract This paper discusses the dialectical relationship of what I call an ethical aesthetics of the city, exemplified in the relationship of the Haussmannization techniques of architectural administration and spatial domination in their forms of the functionalist […]
Street Art, Decorum, and the Politics of Urban Aesthetics
Street Art, Decorum, and the Politics of Urban Aesthetics Andrea Baldini Abstract In the last forty years or so, authorities across the globe have appealed to the notion of decorum to justify authoritarian policies of urban control. Such a notion is distinctly aesthetic insofar as it deals with good taste in matters of appearances […]
Loneliness, Art and the City
Loneliness, Art and the City David Jenkins Abstract Recognition of the costs of loneliness, in terms of public coffers and people’s health, is a relatively new phenomenon. That cities can be experienced as lonely places is nothing new. Responding to this, urban design focuses primarily on designing parks, housing, and plazas that bring people […]
From Footsteps to Data to Art: Seeing (through) a Bridge
From Footsteps to Data to Art: Seeing (through) a Bridge Sage Cammers-Goodwin and Michael Nagenborg Abstract While the guiding vision for IoT (Internet of Things) suggests that technology withdraws to the background, this paper explores the case of a physically visible, IoT-enabled footbridge to be placed in Amsterdam in summer 2020. The question is, […]
Introduction
Introduction Emmanouil Aretoulakis 1. The aesthetic and the terrorizing–opening Pandora’s terror box with aesthetic tools The publication of a special volume on such a thorny and controversial topic as the affinity between aesthetics and terrorism is not just timely but long overdue. The first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed the steep rise of […]
The Aesthetics of Terrorism and the Temporalities of Representation
The Aesthetics of Terrorism and the Temporalities of Representation Robert Appelbaum Abstract Representations of terrorism, in fiction and non-fiction, summon their readers and viewers to examine terrorism in any of at least four modes of temporality: the past, the past perfect, the continuous present, and the simple present. This essay explains those modalities and […]
ISIS and Futurist Terrorism Versus Cyberpunk
ISIS and Futurist Terrorism Versus Cyberpunk Thorsten Botz-Bornstein Abstract The origin of science fiction is twentieth-century Futurism. For the largest part of the twentieth century, science fiction maintained an optimistic attitude towards the future. At the end of the 1970s, the modern, optimistic, and futurist vision of the future, typical for avant-garde movements of […]
Dismantling Bodies: The War on Terror, and the Wound Aesthetic of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000-2015)
Dismantling Bodies: The War on Terror, and the Wound Aesthetic of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000-2015) Christopher J. Davies Abstract This paper interrogates the aesthetic signature of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000-2015). Utilizing a selection of representative episodes airing during George W. Bush’s first term, I analyze how CSI mobilizes a particular aesthetic of […]
The Power of Horror: Abject Art and Terrorism in Don DeLillo’s Falling Man
The Power of Horror: Abject Art and Terrorism in Don DeLillo’s Falling Man Kelsie Donnelly Abstract This paper argues that Don DeLillo’s 2007 novel, Falling Man, engages with abject art to disrupt the pre-existing systems of signification and dualistic rhetoric that characterized state and media responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. […]
Letters on the Aesthetic Deformation of Man
Letters on the Aesthetic Deformation of Man Katya Mandoki Abstract Friedrich Schiller wrote Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man hoping to elevate human potential through the arts for the development of free citizens of the Republic, and also in reaction to the decline of the French Revolution into a Reign of Terror. Nowadays, […]
Reflections on the Aesthetics of Violence
Reflections on the Aesthetics of Violence Arnold Berleant Abstract Violence has long been a factor in human life and has been widely depicted in the arts. This essay explores how the artistic and appreciative responses to violence have been practiced, understood, and valued. It emphasizes the difference between the aesthetics of distant, disinterested appreciation […]