Aesthetics

One month after Glen told me that he had terminal cancer, I was sitting with him at his dining table in Pasadena, California, discussing an autobiography that he intended as his final book. Glen asked me, "What should I include in my autobiography?" I insisted that he finally write about race. I knew that the topic was important for him as one of the central concepts influencing the connection he made between the way of Jesus and justice within his overall project in theological ethics. Throughout his long and fruitful career that included active participation in the Civil Rights Movement, advocating for human rights, opposition to the death penalty, opposition to torture, advocacy for Palestinians, for the environment, and for just peacemaking, one could hear an underdeveloped response to racism. But it was subtle, and awkward. He wanted to talk about it to improve his understanding. I was sure that he should finally do so in his autobiography. Glen had stories. During the Civil Rights Movement he was an activist, partnering with other activists who struggled for an end to Jim Crow segregation. His family was involved in that work as well, in a collective advocacy for a better society and in opposition to practices of authoritarianism and domination that target society's most vulnerable. Glen's activism stemmed from his formative childhood years in a Christian family that valued integrity and fairness and paid attention to social issues.

This essay focuses on the salient place given to staging both the modern regime of translation and the institution of literature alongside a dramatization of anthropological difference in Liu Cixin's acclaimed science fiction trilogy, Remembrance of Earth's Past (also known as The Three Body Problem). These are concerns that are, I would argue, not only historically central to twentieth-century Chinese literature, but also place twentieth-century Chinese literature squarely at the crux of some of the most fundamental questions about aesthetic modernity. These questions revolve around the way in which the type or the figure plays a crucial role in the construction of the nation-state. As quintessentially modern social institutions, both the regime of translation and the institution of literature converge around aesthetic ideology, in which the figure and the type play a paramount role. This is not just any figure, but rather the figure of the human, configured through the logical economy of genus, species, and individual. As a kind of abstraction that is intimately woven into the fabric of everyday life (or what Marx calls a "real abstraction"), this "logical economy" is most evident in that experience of identity peculiar to modernity: being an individual who belongs to a national community within that community's membership in a larger, single species among other species. Together, these two institutions form an inherently comparative biopolitical infrastructure that I call the apparatus of area and anthropological difference.

Libro dedicado al pensamiento de Bataille, incluyendo en primer lugar un importante texto inédito hasta ahora en español (una conferencia sobre el juego y el placer no incluida en las Obras Completas publicadas en Francia).

A través de sus 18 capítulos, el libro recorre el pensamiento de Georges Bataille en todas sus etapas. Pero propone también un diálogo estrecho con muchas de las temáticas tratadas por Bataille (la transgresión, la soberanía, el juego, la muerte, la experiencia interior, la filosofía, la política, el arte), procurando enfrentarlas con los más variados puntos de vista desde dentro y desde fuera de las perspectivas que en su extensa y compleja obra siguió el propio Bataille.

Este libro tuvo su origen en un congreso en torno al pensamiento de la transgresión de Georges Bataille, celebrado en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid y coordinado por el grupo LA EUROPA DE LA ESCRITURA. Incluye en primer lugar los trabajos que se presentaron en él. Pero se ha abierto también a trabajos relevantes de autores muy cercanos a Bataille como, entre otros, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jean-François Lyotard o Georges Didi-Hubeman, que amplían enormemente su alcance.

A partire dai primi anni del XX secolo, anzitutto
in area germanofona e poi in Italia e
in altri contesti, all’interno delle concezioni
che hanno insistito sull’autonomia come
carattere distintivo dell’arte, si è fatto ricorso
a più riprese alla metafora dell’insularità.
Le particolarità di un’isola – l’essere
separata dalle altre terre e “incorniciata”
dal mare, l’avere contorni ben defi niti, il distinguersi
per particolari elementi autoctoni
– sono state adattate all’opera d’arte per
rivendicarne l’autosuffi cienza semantica
e la conseguente esigenza di essere compresa
e interpretata secondo principi a essa
immanenti. Di qui l’impiego di vocaboli quali
il tedesco Inselhaftigkeit e il suo corrispettivo
italiano “insularità”. Alla storia di questi
termini in ambito estetico e storico-artistico,
che coinvolge personalità come Simmel,
Lukács, Dessoir, Ortega y Gasset, Schlosser,
Croce, Betti, Pareyson e altri studiosi, sono
dedicate le pagine di questo volumetto.

There is a well-documented Pre-Reflective Hostility against Machine Art (PRHMA), exemplified by the sentiments of fear and anxiety. How can it be explained? The present paper attempts to find the answer to this question by surveying a considerable amount of research on machine art. It is found that explanations of PRHMA based on the (alleged) fact that machine art lacks an element that is (allegedly) found in human art (for example, autonomy) do not work. Such explanations cannot account for the sentiments of fear and anxiety present in PRHMA, because the art receiver could simply turn to human art for finding the element she is looking for. By contrast, an explanation based on the idea that machine art is "symbolically" a threat to human survival can be successful, since the art receiver's turning from machine art to human art does not eliminate the (alleged) "symbolic" threat machine art poses for human survival. If there is a pre-reflective belief or feeling that machine art is such a threat, then it is perfectly understandable why humans exhibit a pre-reflective hostility against machine art.

Arthur Danto's extensive body of criticism is naturally informed by his theory of art. In addition to considering his aesthetics from the standpoint of its intensive formulation in texts like the seminal " The Art-World, " or elaborations such as The Transfiguration of the Commonplace and After the End of Art, we can look at Danto's criticism holistically or cartographically. From this perspective it seems clear that the field of Danto's most intensive engagement with the arts was with those we call visual, as contrasted, say, with music, dance, and literature. Danto, of course, made no claim to have a system of the arts, in the grand style of Hegel and many nineteenth century philosophers of art. He was, after all, an avowed epistemologist rather than a " great knower " as his colleague John Herman Randall described thinkers like Aristotle, Hegel, and Dewey. Unlike them, Danto was under no self-imposed philosophical or pedagogical obligation to provide a comprehensive system of the arts. Although he sometimes compared himself to Hegel in terms of their common recognition of art's internal striving toward self-consciousness, and co-taught a class on the whole of Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics, he had no reason to emulate that encyclopedic panorama (if we were to superimpose Danto's aesthetics on Hegel's we would find Warhol's Brillo Box in the place occupied by Shakespearean soliloquies). However, I believe that attending to some of the arts that Danto treated less frequently than others may show that he has an oblique and revealing relation to the system of the arts. In taking this line of inquiry I follow a suggestion made by thinkers like Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou that by analyzing what philosophers exclude or marginalize that we may gain insights into the deep structure of their thought. So Danto's priority was the visual, even if he did occasionally write about literature. Beyond this, he also devoted much more attention to certain visual arts, notably painting, than to sculpture, architecture, and site-specific works (let us adopt these classifications for now, even if they turn out to be problematic). Looking over Danto's vast body of critical essays, many published in The Nation, as well as those discussed in his volumes of theory, it seems clear that painting gets the lion's share of attention, followed in descending order by sculpture, architecture, and site-specific art. In examining Danto's analysis of work that is site or place-intensive, I will attempt to articulate an overview of his concepts of monuments, memorials, other public art, earthworks, and related forms. The intention is to determine whether he has a consistent theory of art in place and how his treatment of it can be related both to his general theory of art and to the artistic canon and mainstream tradition of aesthetics inherited by his generation of Anglo-American philosophers. I Monuments, Memorials, Context Danto developed a sensitive analysis of Washington's Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM), designed by Maya Lin, a once controversial work that's gained increasing acceptance and respect in the thirty-plus years it's been up (or down, to be more precise). The VVM is situated within an extensive and growing complex of monuments and memorials in which the United States attempts to express and embody the meaning of its history. It is a place consecrated to permanent public art that means to embody a nation's conception of its meaningful history. Within the limits of the nation-state, no art could have a greater claim on public space. Danto's account gives full weight to the collective sorrows and regrets connected with that war and to the rather unusual way in which each dead soldier is honored with his or her name inscribed on the

Arts-based Education in Outdoor Learning is a compendium of artistic endeavour created for the purposes of learning. The contents stem mainly from teaching BA undergraduate Outdoor students at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, UK, showcased here to promote critical discussion on Outdoor issues and foster pedagogical progress wherever that may be found. This introduction outlines the structure of the book, which also illuminates the plan of teaching that has brought about such a vibrant collection of chapters. The ethos of my educational mission has been for students to become philosophical about things, ‘having ideas’ with a view to making a comment about some state of affairs in the Outdoors. With a nugget of an idea latched on to, fuelled with some passion, the next step was to transform that idea into some physical presence through an artistic medium; shape it. Thereafter, the academic task was to polish and present the artwork with a supporting chapter, in order to communicate their idea to the world; share it. The creation of art in this context was always a means to an educational end, the artworks being an impressive by-product from this experience – but now the artworks are leading the show, representing the style of education we enjoyed. It seems worth mentioning at the outset, that all the Outdoor students I have taught are not artists, they are climbers, canoeists and mountaineers. They never came to university to do or study art and nor did I teach them as such. If I have done anything, it was to free up the possibility of thinking slightly differently about topics they chose, and then equip them with some basic artistic tools to play with those ideas. As a result, I discovered a huge increase in student confidence and a palpable increase in enjoyment of learning, as much for me as their teacher as for them. In effect, what I did was invite into my classroom a raft of untapped talent in thinking and learning that suddenly had a place in their university degrees.

L’appréciation esthétique oscille le plus souvent, tel un pendule,  entre deux sortes d’illusions : celle de l’objectivité du beau (comme si la beauté pouvait être un attribut de la chose même), et celle de sa subjectivité (selon la formule du relativisme : « à chacun ses goûts »). Il s’agit ici de penser les critères du jugement de goût par-delà le réalisme dogmatique et le relativisme nihiliste, à la faveur d’un relativisme hiérarchique. Le sentiment du beau s’inscrit dans un contexte social, historique et psychologique, certes, mais il y a quelque chose d’universel dans la relativité du beau. Tous les goûts ne se valent pas, et les critères de la hiérarchisation des jugements de goûts sont immanents à l’activité de juger comme telle. L’article cherche à préciser ces critères.

Matsumoto, Naomi. 'The Operatic Mad Scene: Its Origins and Early Development up to c. 1700' (PhD Dissertation, University of London, 2005).

This thesis investigates the origins of the operatic mad scene, its development up to c.1700, and questions of its definition and meaning. Chapters 1 and 2 trace the traditions behind musico-theatrical portrayals of insanity from ancient times through to the Renaissance, and in Chapter 3 seventeenth-century Italian examples of “mad” operas are codified and examined. Chapters 4 – 6 discuss the dissemination of the “mad” opera through France, England, Spain, Germany and Austria, and the relevant indigenous musical and theatrical conventions of each country are discussed.
        Having reconstructed the surviving repertory, in Chapters 7 and 8, the textual, prosodic, behavioural and musical topoi used in association with such works are examined. The difficulties of attempting to establish purely musical signifiers for operatic insanity are demonstrated, and other means of approaching a definition are suggested. In Chapter 8, the forms and uses of aria, recitative, recitative soliloquy and arioso are analysed, and their contributions to the musical characterisation of the insane explored. In Chapter 9 the insights already gained are brought together in a case study of Iro from Monteverdi’s Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria.
        The final chapter attempts to construct a typology of madness in seventeenth century opera based partly on literary criteria. It theorises the notion of fictive truth as a contract between the audience, the composer and librettist, and the protagonist on the stage. Next, the functions of mad characters within the plots are analysed in relation to the distinctive dramaturgical effects achieved by “fictive personalities”, “roles” and “character-types”. Finally, there is an attempt to locate our understanding of madness in opera within wider critical horizons, and to explain the cultural work that mad scenes do for us, as we listen to examples from the historically situated traditions of opera.

Poter accedere a qualsiasi immagine, in qualsiasi momento, in qualsiasi luogo. I nuovi media prospettano straordinarie vie di fruizione. Ma come orientarsi in questo scenario? La nostra cultura visuale è capace di tenere il passo della tecnologia? Questo libro racconta come il cinema, ben prima dell'avvento della tecnologia digitale, abbia saputo accogliere immagini provenienti da archivi pubblici e privati: dai rapporti con la pittura al foundfootage, dalla pratica del remake all'intermedialità. Molte volte assegnato al compito di produrre un calco del "reale", il film costituisce piuttosto uno spazio del pensiero nel quale si rielaborano le immagini del passato e si rigenerano i materiali "usurati" della cultura. Se i nuovi media invitano lo spettatore a manipolare le immagini e non semplicemente a osservarle, è dunque a partire dalle lezioni di montaggio offerte da maestri come Godard e Herzog, Sokurov e Van Sant, Pasolini e Moretti, che diventa possibile assumere un ruolo attivo e consapevole nell'orizzonte estetico e mediatico contemporaneo.

El presente texto es el prólogo para mi traducción de Q. Meillassoux, "Metafísica y ficción extracientífica" (Santiago: Roneo, 2020), que co-escribimos M. Ramírez y yo. Contiene una explicación general del 'realismo especulativo' y el rol que el filósofo Q. Meillassoux juega en él, a partir de su propuesta de 'materialismo especulativo' y la crítica a la noción de 'correlacionismo' allí implicada. Luego, el prólogo entrega indicaciones sobre la relación entre metafísica y ficción propuesta por el autor.

In conseguenza di gravi traumi, talvolta per un nonnulla, la storia di ognuno di noi può subire un radicale cambiamento: la vita che avevamo progettato per anni è costretta a una deviazione improvvisa e irreversibile. Dal trauma sorge una personalità nuova, senza precedenti. Una personalità nata da un incidente, nata per accidente. Il fortuito diviene così sostanziale e l’inaspettato s’inscrive nel nucleo più profondo del nostro essere. Affrontando con delicatezza il tema dell’impatto che i traumi psicofisici possono avere sulla nostra vita, Catherine Malabou intraprende un’avventura filosofica e letteraria in cui Spinoza, Deleuze e Freud incrociano Ovidio, Kafka, Proust e Duras, disegnando un’inedita ontologia fondata sul potere plastico della distruzione, sulla tendenza esplosiva che minaccia segretamente ognuno di noi.

Catherine Malabou insegna Filosofia all’Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre ed è docente presso il Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy della Kingston University di Londra. È autrice di numerosi saggi, fra i quali, tradotti in italiano, ricordiamo: Cosa fare del nostro cervello (2007) e, con Judith Butler, Che tu sia il mio corpo. Una lettura contemporanea della signoria e della servitù in Hegel (2017).

Addendum: Footnote 24 on page 590 should be to pages 88-89 of the following:

Martin Heidegger. Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insight into That Which Is and Basic Principles of Thinking. Translated by Andrew Mitchell. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012.

Tiger C. Roholt explains why grooves, which are forged in music's rhythmic nuances, remain hidden to some listeners. He argues that grooves are not graspable through the intellect nor through mere listening; rather, grooves are disclosed through our bodily engagement with music. We grasp a groove bodily by moving with music's pulsations. By invoking the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's notion of "motor intentionality," Roholt shows that the "feel" of a groove, and the understanding of it, are two sides of a coin: to "get" a groove just is to comprehend it bodily and to feel that embodied comprehension.

Indice
Introduzione©7
1. La negoziazione delle estetiche organizzative©9
1.1. Negoziazione, aggregazione e discriminazione©9
1.2. Estetica organizzativa al plurale©14
1.3. Estetica come consapevolezza metodologica©17
1.4. Se l’estetica non viene data per scontata©18
2. Giudizio estetico, organizzazione e comunità
di pratiche©27
2.1. Estetica ed etica organizzativa©28
2.2. Estetica tra organizzazione e comunità di pratiche©34
2.3. Estetica e potere nell’organizzazione©41
3. Performance e burocrazia©47
3.1. Principi estetici del teatro e vita organizzativa©49
3.2. Performance artistica e organizzazione©55
3.3. Che cosa rimane della performance organizzativa?©63
4. Arte, estetica e creatività organizzativa©71
4.1. Creatività dell’organizzare tra arte e design©71
4.2. Estetica organizzativa come emancipazione©81
5. Sociologia dei sensi e approccio estetico©88
5.1. Sensi e pratica sociale nell’organizzazione©90
5.2. L’odore dell’organizzazione©103
Conclusioni©112
Bibliografia©114

Neugier ist eine entscheidende Triebkraft, die Neues entstehen lässt, Wissensgewinn fördert und biologisch tief verwurzelt ist. Dies zeigt sich auch daran, dass die Erfüllung der Neugier, also die Reduktion des Nicht-Wissens, das neuronale Belohnungssystem aktiviert und dass das Fehlen von neuen Reizen (sensorische Deprivation) einen unerträglichen Zustand darstellt. Sowohl im individuellen als auch im evolutionären Maßstab sind Entwicklungen schwer vorstellbar ohne den Drang, Neues zu erleben, neue Handlungen auszuprobieren und Unbekanntes zu entdecken. Biologische Studien zeigen, dass sowohl Neophilie als auch Neophobie situativ vor- und nachteilig sein können, und ein Individuum Gewinn und Risiko jeweils gegeneinander abwägen muss. Zuwenig Neugier schränkt die Möglichkeit des Lernens ein, wohingegen zuviel Neugier Gefahren bergen kann. Vielleicht ist dies ein Grund, weswegen wir unsere Neugier auch im künstlerischen Modus zu stillen suchen. Die künstlerische Rahmung bietet einen Raum, in dem wir Erfahrungen sammeln können, ohne dabei allzu große Risiken eingehen zu müssen. Auf diese Weise erlaubt der künstlerische Modus, tief genug in eine Erfahrung einzutauchen, und dennoch gleichzeitig die Möglichkeit zu empfinden, trotz des Erkenntnisgewinns ohne andere gravierende Konsequenzen in das nicht künstlerisch gerahmte Leben zurück zu kehren. So bietet die Kunst einen geschützten und gleichzeitig potentiell wirklichkeitsverändernden Raum für Erfahrungen. Diese künstlerischen Erfahrungen sind auch die Quelle für eine künstlerische Art zu forschen, die zu spezifischen Erkenntnissen führen kann. Auch wenn die Neugier in der Kunstwelt eher eine periphere Rolle spielen mag, kann sie auf diese Weise dazu beitragen, unser Wissen über uns und die Welt zu verändern und zu vermehren.

An insurance man, a rocker, a partisan, a deportee, a bandoneonist.... What can such different figures have in common? Very little, you might say, apart from the fact that they are among the main protagonists of "contemporary music", a world from which people generally prefer to keep away because it seems distant, complicated and incomprehensible. But is it really so?
The exciting story proposed in the book intends to bring contemporary music closer to its potential listeners through the stories of people such as Stockhausen, Gershwin, Berio, Xenakis, Takemitsu, Piazzolla or Sofija Gubajdulina who, in their variety, give an idea of the exceptional richness of the musical languages of the 20th and 21st centuries and their closeness to the human condition of our time.

Krešimir Purgar has assembled a striking collection of essays on Image Studies. I have not been able to stop reading them. They cover a huge range and represent intelligent and well informed opinions containing important topics of interest to all its students. Anyone interested in this relatively recent field of study will find access to some of its essential methods and theories.

This paper is dealing with new industrial architecture as emerging, re-birthed phenomenon in
architectural practice. Although the industrial buildings are not a new building typology, industrial
architecture was not always, so to say, “present” in construction of industrial facilities. Through
discussion in this paper we will try to define what we can call a new industrial architecture and
what the boundaries of this definition are. In this context, we made a distinction between the
vastness of the industrial buildings built as mass production facilities without any architectural
integrity and at the same time tried to find and present several examples of architectural works that
belong to the same building typology, but that can be considered as really representations of
industrial architecture.

Both for Kant and for Nietzsche, aesthetics must not be considered as a systematic science based merely on logical premises but rather as a set of intuitively attained artistic ideas that constitute or reconstitute the sensible perceptions and supersensible representations into a new whole. Kantian and Nietzschean aesthetics are both aiming to see beyond the forms of objects to provide explanations for the nobility and sublimity of human art and life. We can safely say that Kant and Nietzsche used the dualities of the beautiful/sublime and Apollonian/Dionysian to advocate their general philosophical worldview, and that the initial formation (in Observations and The Birth of Tragedy) and final dissolution (in the Critique of Judgment and Zarathustra and other later works) of these dualities are determined by the gradually established telos of their philosophical endeavor. Therefore, by observing the evolution of these so-called dualities, Kaplama gathers important clues as to how Kant's and Nietzsche's aesthetics transformed into different ways to affirm human art and life. On the one hand, Kaplama argues, the Dionysian came to be the heart and soul of Nietzschean aesthetics and ethics, and the Apollonian (or the formal drive of individuation) was reduced into a mere aesthetic criterion. On the other, Kant treats the sublime (which is originally an idea-producing feeling and/or judgment) as a mere appendix to his Critique of Judgment and aesthetic theory teleologically reducing it into its possible moral consequences. This is why Schopenhauer calls the sublime " by far the most excellent thing in the Critique of Judgment " which touches on the real problem of aesthetics very closely but does not provide a real solution for it. Kant's forced teleological move is to make his theory of aesthetic judgment stand as a 'reaffirmation' of the www.cosmosandhistory.org 166

An exploration of the philosophical and mystical potential of the art of Victor Ekpuk and the Nsibidi symbolism of the Ekpe esoteric order of South-South and South-East Nigeria and South-West Cameroon which inspires his work, in the
context of Africana and global esotericism.

The idea of 'art as research' and 'research as art' have risen over the past two decades as important critical focuses for the philosophy of media, aesthetics, and art. Of particular interest is how the methodologies of art and science might be merged to create better conceptual understanding of art-based research. The book deconstructs and displaces the terminology that typically accompanies the question of the relationship between art and scientific truth. Identifying artistic practices as modes of thought that do no make use of language in a way that can easily be translated into scientific discourse, the text advocates for a genuine aesthetic mode of thought beyond 'linguistic turn', a way of thinking that cannot be substituted by any other disciplinary system.

Four different areas of concern can be singled out within ‘ancient aesthetics’, if we take the latter term to describe ancient authors’ attempts to theoretically comprehend beauty and the arts:

i. The attempt to understand beauty (to kalon) as an ‘objective’ quality in the world that characterises some objects, people, and nature herself;
ii. The attempt to understand what we would call the ‘subjective’ dimension involved in human responsiveness to beauty and the arts: the way that beautiful things please or move us, and the way that their effect upon us can be edifying, purifying us from negative beliefs or emotions (katharsis), or morally elevating us to be better citizens or human beings (in the context of paideia);
iii. Attempts to understand how artistic objects, from poems to sculptures, are produced: whether through madness or inspiration, or by following codifiable technical norms, and with what ends;
iv. falling between (i.) and (ii.), attempts to theorise the ethical and political significance of the arts, given their capacities to powerfully affect and transform individuals or groups.

The chapter traces these four concerns as they come in and out of focus in the prephilosophical Greeks, Pythagoras and Plato, Aristotle, and then the Hellenistics, led by the Stoics.

El tema de esta tesis es la educación musical en la filosofía de Platón. En la República de Platón, la etapa educativa más importante es la niñez; los vehículos de esta educación son la mousiké para el alma (o mente) y la gimnasia para el cuerpo. La palabra griega mousiké describe un conjunto de artes compuesto por la música, la poesía, el canto y el baile. Así mismo, una educación musical para Platón describe una educación cultural. Además, Platón entiende que la conservación política de la ciudad ideal depende de una adecuada práctica musical, y de proteger los modos musicales. Por ende, la educación musical es un tema meridiano en la pedagogía si concedemos que la República es más bien un libro cuyo tema es la educación. Que el elemento fundamental del tema educativo (la mousiké) provoque sorpresa, sea en el lector antiguo o moderno, problematiza el significado del concepto humano de la educación. Que provoque sorpresa puede dejar entrever que una pedagogía que no otorga a las artes (y notablemente, a los modos musicales) importancia suprema, está condenada al fracaso. Igual destino puede esperar a una filosofía o práctica política que ignore su importancia. Es en el contexto de estas inquietudes que surge la pregunta que esta tesis intenta contestar: ¿Por qué considera Platón que la mousiké es central en la polis? La tesis que se defiende es la siguiente: Platón postula que la mousiké es aquello que educa la sociedad porque tiene el efecto de moldear el alma (o la mente). Esto tiene consecuencias políticas, pues la legislación y la justicia, que son las dos artes de la política, dependen del carácter de los individuos que componen la polis.

The domain of the sublime is vast, and in any period hard to define. In this essay, I attempt to explore the concept of the sublime in relation to seventeenth-century landscape painting, mainly from Italy. I have chosen some key works through which to explore aspects of the baroque passion for the stupendous and terrifying, in such phenomena as volcanoes, storms, the jagged peaks of mountains, and the crash of waterfalls, as well as in the prodigies and monsters associated with a dark and still-mysterious natural world. These works evoked emotions of wonder, mystical rapture, and horror or fear, which would only later be categorized as sublime. My concern here has been to contextualize these emotions, to suggest the strains of thought and feeling which contemporary viewers brought to them, and which suggest how the sublime was exper ienced in a pre-Burkian era. 1 Classical Sources of the Seventeenth-Century Sublime The major source for the sublime in the seventeenth century was an anonymous treatise on rhetoric titled On the Sublime, probably written in the mid first century CE. It was long thought to be written by Longinus, and I shall here use this traditional name and association. For Longinus, the sublime was a rhetorical phenomenon, a quality of writing that expresses great thoughts in rich and emotionally powerful words and images. It uplifts the soul, and through its intensity and expression of vehement passion sweeps audiences off their feet in amazement, transporting them with wonder. 2 Longinus associates his " godlike authors " through metaphor, with the violence of the elements and with soaring beyond " the boundaries by which we are circumscribed. " 3 His instances of sublimity are predominantly drawn from the elemental forces of nature: from the violence of shipwrecks and battle, from immensity and energy, and he admires those writers who can create terror, who can make the hearer feel that they are " moving in the thick of the danger. " 4 The orator had the power to create a lifelike image, causing an overwhelming and visceral shock in his audience, and most of Longinus's examples of such images are associated with terror.

The Structure of Iki and the Listening to the Voice of Being. Reflections
on Language between Shūzō Kuki and Martin Heidegger
This essay aims to establish the possibility of a dialogue between different
linguistic and aesthetic experiences: are Western culture and Japanese
culture able to grasp the same essence of language and of artistic
experience? Is there a profound identity, typical of every culture, that
renders a genuine dialogue between civilizations impossible? This article
will attempt to answer these basic questions by analysing Heidegger’s
essay entitled Between a Japanese and an Inquirer, contained in the collection
of writings On the Way to Language. This dialogue involves Heidegger
(the “Inquirer”) and Tomio Tezuka (the “Japanese”) and starts
with a reference to the Japanese notion of iki. The first part of this essay
is therefore dedicated to the analysis of this concept, which is described in Shūzō Kuki’s masterpiece The structure of iki. In the second part, the
article refers to Heidegger’s distinction between verbal language and
language as the “house of being”. Through investigating pivotal notions
such as hermeneutics, Lichtung, alétheia, and the “ringing of silence”
(Geläut der Stille), the final goal of the essay is to explore the possibility
of a common listening to the language of being beyond any cultural difference.
The conclusion will show how in the Japanese expression Koto
ba and in the German expression Die Sage the silent essence of the preverbal
language seems to shine almost in the same way for the “Japanese”
as for the “Inquirer”.

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.