Aesthetic Investigations (E-Journal, Dutch Association of Aesthetics)
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Merleau-Ponty about Le doute de Cézanne
Full text linkMerleau-Ponty’s essay about Cézanne’s doubt from 1946 is still in discussion. Merleau-Ponty tries to explain the peculiarities of Cézanne’s pictorial language, for instance his abandonment of the geometrical perspective, as expression of, what he calls, the “primordial perception”, which is free from the distortions of metaphysical dualism and of modern sciences. There are two main problems here: 1. that primordiality remains an obscure notion, which is more explained by Cézannes work, than it explains it. 2. Merleau-Ponty tends to forget, that Cézanne’s perception is first of all a painters perception, inspired by the idea of what a painting should be and by a conception of the physical performances by which it comes into being. Cézanne tries to liberate painting from the Albertinian idea, that the work is similar to a window, opening the view on a section of reality. Contrary to this he stresses the autonomy of the work, its presence as being painted, without giving up its contact to the reality depicted
Grounding Ethics in Aesthetics
Full text linkIn this Editor’s column I suggest a more modern aesthetics, in order to fill in some of the promise the current Special Issue on The Birth of the Discipline has in store for us. I base my suggestion more on Kant and Aristotle, though
Aesthetic Disinterestedness in Neuroaesthetics: A Phenomenological Critique
Full text linkIn recent neuroaesthetic discussion, neuroscientists have linked aesthetic pleasure to the brain’s reward systems, but they have also attempted to dissociate it from utilitarian rewards and ultimately explain it as a disinterested state of mind. This paper examines this neuroaesthetic approach, juxtaposing it with elements of phenomenological thought on the subject of aesthetic disinterestedness, to present three interrelated concerns that can be raised from a phenomenological perspective, as well as to outline how to overcome these problems phenomenologically. The paper ends with the suggestion that neuroaesthetics, if it is ever going to offer something important or useful regarding our understanding of aesthetic experience, has to become phenomenologically sensitive and informed
Emotion and Empirical Aesthetics
Full text linkThe rise in neuroaesthetics laboratories across the globe has led to scores of experiments designed to grasp people’s emotional, cognitive and perceptual responses to artworks, yet few researchers have studied spectators experiencing visual art in actual exhibitions. In 2015, Volker Kirchberg and Martin Tröndle published the results of their five-year experiment, whereby they mapped the physiological, social, psychological and aesthetic experiences of ‘600 diverse persons with a designed exhibition of classic modern and contemporary art as part of the Swiss national research project eMotion’. Their study’s most counter-intuitive discovery is the negligible role played by emotional response for those most engaged with artworks, that is, those spectators who regularly assess, evaluate and judge artworks. Given that not all appreciative attitudes reflect emotional responses, this paper argues that it would behoove researchers to study artworks that literally ‘move us’, causing us to take action, shift perspectives and adopt new values
Emerson’s Vision of America in John Ford’s "Stagecoach"
Full text linkWhen Ralph Waldo Emerson addressed the Phi Betta Kappa Society in 1837 at Harvard College, his directives included the establishment of an American literary tradition derived from the unique experience of his fellow citizens in a new context that included a wild frontier. He sought to establish a different moral foundation built on a romantic sense of spiritual attachment to nature. This essay extends the new American grain and ground Emerson’s directives in a truly original and unique American artistic genre – the western film. My thesis is simply that John Ford’s elevation of the western film to artistic status with 1939’s Stagecoach is a uniquely appropriate fulfilment of Emerson’s call in the “American Scholar” for genre elevation, literary nationalism, romantic moral sentiment, and ultimately for confirming an American mythology that articulated and reinforced a native self-identity
Getting Away with Murder? "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and Alternative Conceptions of Justice
Full text linkAs with most great works of art, great films are typically amenable to multiple interpretations, and there need be no determinate answer to which interpretation is ‘right’ or even the ‘best’. Yet some interpretations can render a work more compelling—perhaps more morally or religiously deep—than others. And that might be one reason for preferring the interpretation in question. This article focuses on Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, which has often been construed as an attempt to illustrate the thesis that crime sometimes pays (or, at any rate, that it is not the case that crime necessarily does not pay). I call this the unjust reading of the film and contrast it with the just reading. I argue, however, that both these readings presuppose a consequentialist conception of justice that is not the only conception available. Reinterpreted from a perspective of intrinsic justice, the film gains a depth that is unavailable in the light of the other interpretations
When the silent universe speaks. Testing Camus’ notion of the absurd in the alien encounters of "Contact" and "Arrival"
Full text linkAlbert Camus\u27 concept of absurdity - as articulated in his works The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, and The Rebel - outlines a metaphysics of inherent struggle between the human mind that strives for unity and clarity and an inhumanly silent universe. When an absurd mind realises its own inescapable frontiers of knowing, meaning, separation and mortality, Camus argues, it has the Sisyphean choice to embrace such a universe nevertheless, while forever retaining the spirit of revolt that defies it.
In this essay I analyse, side by side, two first-contact films - Robert Zemeckis\u27 Contact (1997) and Denis Villeneuve\u27s Arrival (2016) - to test the validity of Camus\u27 metaphysics in a universe where human estrangement seems to be disrupted by cosmic visitors. The films\u27 thought experiments support Camus\u27 universal vision, indirectly suggesting that even aliens are prone to absurdity. On the other hand, both films offer an approach of intimate communion with the cosmos, in light of which Camus\u27 description of the universe as a stranger seems to demonstrate a limited perspective
Ordinary Language Film Studies
Full text linkThis essay explains Ordinary Language Philosophy (OLP), because it is relatively unfamiliar to those working in the field of Film-Philosophy, and proposes it as beneficial to film study. OLP provides us with a method of philosophising in relation to films that (1) is not theoretical, paradigmatic or thematic, and is therefore potentially unrestrained because it is not a priori or determining; that (2) is context sensitive, proceeding on a case-by-case basis, while also capable of synoptic overview (through connective analysis); that (3) encourages conceptual clarification and responsive articulation in order to present a perspicacious picture of individual films and our experience of them; and that (4) can act therapeutically by uncoupling us from unhelpful linguistic attachments that may restrict, helping us to see anew
Thorsten Botz-Borstein’s Organic Cinema: Film, Architecture, and the Work of Béla Tarr
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Inaugurating Philosophy of Film Without Theory
Full text linkPhilosophy of film without theory is a methodology that aims to motivate and legitimise the current and future development of a range of a-, non-, and anti-theoretical ways of working at the intersection of film and philosophy. We contrast philosophy of film without theory with the main traditions of theoretically orientated philosophy of film, as well as philosophically inflected film Theory and film-philosophy. We also draw attention to the range of philosophical practices and pursuits that distinguish philosophy (in general) without theory and contemporary philosophy (in general) with its near ubiquitous theoretical presumption. The paper finishes with a brief introduction to the various contributions to this Special Issue of Aesthetic Investigations on Philosophy of Film Without Theory