Ontology Books - Page 7

Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology

George Dickie, Richard Sclafani, Ronald Roblin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Dickie argues that the audience makes the art 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. In George Dickie's book "Aesthetics," talked about the exhibited qualities of the artwork and non-exhibited which is very helpful because it will show that the traditional theories of art focuses on what the work is expressing, and how does the audience respond to that work of art? If we want to know what art is we have to tie in all four features of art; artist, audience, and institutional artworld to define art. There is a strong presumption that all art is to be presented to an audience no matter the size, this goes to the idea that an artist uses art for communication. Dickie explores what structural role does the audience play in the idea of what is art.

Dickie makes a strong assumption, which I agree with, that all art works are meant to be presented to an audience. Audience size does not matter; the artist can be the audience. This goes to the communication idea. Response of audience is a key factor here. How does the audience respond to the work? A deeper question is what historical role does the audience play in the philosophical question of trying to understand, what is art. Art is an intentional object. In some forms of philosophy, the idea of intentionality is to consider the structure of consciousness of something. It is not just consciousness, it is not just the thing, but it is a structure that is related. This is where we get into the question of how essential was the audience's perception to the meaning of art. This is one of the ways in which we can distinguish between an artwork and a natural object. This potential experience is essential to the artwork. If we just talk about an artwork as just a physical object, but that gets us nowhere in trying to understand what makes it an artwork. Therefore, this idea of intentionality and the structure of consciousness is going in that direction. You could use a sculpture as a doorstop, but that is not seeing it as an artwork. Therefore, Dickie observes that the response of an audience becomes the key factor here. This brings up some interesting questions as well. What ought the response of the audience be? Is there something in the artist conception that needs to be communicated, and if the audience doesn't pick it up does that mean the audience failed to respond properly to the art? Or, is it much more fluid? These are just some of the questions Dickie ponders.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, philosophy of art.

Editorial Review:

Aesthetics is both a comprehensive introduction to the field and a broad, in-depth survey of Anglo-American aesthetic thought that provides a collection of 48 classic historical readings, influential scholarly works, and critical analyses. The text also offers unique “theory-and-critique” pairings that help students understand concepts and participate in philosophical debate.

The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford Handbooks)

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Editorial Review:

The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics brings the authority, liveliness, and multi-disciplinary scope of the Handbook series to a fascinating theme in philosophy and the arts. Jerrold Levinson has assembled a hugely impressive range of talent to contribute 48 brand-new essays, making this the most comprehensive guide available to the theory, application, history, and future of the field. This Handbook will be invaluable to academics and students across philosophy and all branches of the arts, both as the reference work of choice and as a stimulus to new research and creativity.

The Multiple States of the Being (Guenon, Rene. Works.)

Rene Guenon

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Infinity and possibility 5 out of 5 stars.
18 of 18 people found this review helpful.

This book has a reputation for being the most difficult of Guenon's purely metaphysical works. Perhaps this is because it is an explanation, or rather introduction, to the totality of Creation- manifest, unmanifest, higher, lower, and probable. Here are described the manifest worlds of the material plane (the least part of creation), the higher planes of more subtle states (touched upon in _The Symbolism of the Cross_ as lying along the vertical axis), and all the possible, but unmanifested worlds on any plane (which sounds remarkably like the modern conception of the "multiverse.")
Yet, it is pointed out that all of this still falls far short of true infinity- it is a small included subset of the unlimited Source.

The human intersection with creation is also covered. This includes hints of "non-corporial modalities" of human existence and consciousness. This covers simultaneously existing aspects of human consciousness on higher planes, that ordinary waking consciousness is ordinarily unaware of (yet, which comprise the greater part of consciousness.)

Above all, it is emphacised that the human state is in reality only one small state of manifestation among countless others. there are an unlimited number of levels in the hierarchy of degrees of existence. Moreover, the human state occupies no priveleged place in the ensemble of universal existence- the human state is in no way "metaphysically distinguished" in relation to other states. It just happens to be the state where most of us find ourselves at the present. That is all it is. If there is anything "special" about the human state, it lies in that spark of the Divine that lies at the heart of all of us, where the divine ray intersects with gross matter. And this intersection can occur at any point on the vertical axis of creation. It is also suggested that nonhuman, never human, entities share this creation with us.

All of this is not just idle "New Age" speculation, these are the conclusions of Guenon, the great metaphysician and mathematician.

Editorial Review:

Study of the ontological hierarchy of the states of being as taught in the traditional metaphyscial doctrines of East and West.

Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity (Studies in Continental Thought)

Martin Heidegger, John van Buren

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FASCINATING AND CHALLENGING 5 out of 5 stars.
22 of 22 people found this review helpful.

This translation of Heidegger's lectures at Freiburg during the summer of 1923 represents an important event in English-speaking Heidegger scholarship. Van Buren has done a masterful job, and rendered us all a real service.

This lecture contains some of the most interesting material from Heidegger's entire corpus. His historical analysis of hermeneutics and of the concept of "man" in the Western philosophical tradition are only the beginning - the whole lecture is simply riveting. Anyone with an interest in Heidegger needs to own this book. The same goes for those who have only heard of Heidegger from the blithering obscurantists who pass themselves off as "scholars." Here is Heidegger addressing issues of real philosophical import with insight and lucidity. A fascinating and challenging piece!

Editorial Review:

"With thematic trajectories pointing both toward and beyond Being and Time, this translation . . . is of enormous significance for students of the development of Heidegger's early thought." --Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Boston University

Ontology follows Heidegger's lectures at the University of Freiburg during the summer semester of 1923. In these lectures, Heidegger reviews and makes critical appropriation of the hermeneutical tradition from Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine to Schleiermacher and Dilthey.

The Meaning of Love

Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov

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Solovyov, transference and the Grail search. 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

If you are searching for the Grail in the mystical experience of love and the transference, this is the book for you. The title says it all. Solovyov explores and uncovers the reason there is such archetypal emotional power in love even though the divine, cosmic source is not consciously recognized and understood. It is the failure to recognize the source behind the emotion which results in such tragic disillusion and despair. Finding the true source can be - should be life transforming.

Editorial Review:

What is the meaning of love's intense emotion? Solovyov points to the spark of divinity that we see in another human being and shows how this "living ideal of Divine love, antecedent to our love, contains in itself the secret of the idealization of our love."

According to Solovyov, love between men and women has a key role to play in the mystical transfiguration of the world. Love, which allows one person to find unconditional completion in another, becomes an evolutionary strategy for overcoming cosmic disintegration.

The Infinite (Problems of Philosophy Their Past and Present)

A.W. Moore

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Thorough yet disappointing 4 out of 5 stars.
18 of 20 people found this review helpful.

This is a perfect book with which to grow impatient and ultimately to reject.

It is highly competent (no factual errors) and could be read by people with no prior exposure to any kind of Deep Thought (clear style, lots of diagrams). It succeeds in condensing the problems and treatments of the Infinite down to easy to grasp outlines; it explains and systematizes what usually appears as hopelessly arcane (LS theorem, Go:del's results, the antinomies of the infinite etc.)

The book fails (as nearly all do) in its attempt of a clear presentation of Cantor's legacy: from the diagonal procedure to the continuum hypothesis. Another omission is an outline of the 'journey to Omega' (current views on Sets that are bigger than ZF axioms can support).

The last three chapters are devoted to a 'defense of finitism'. The mere intent to defend something that is much more intuitive than any of Cantor's results is suspicious. Alas, the hidden tension (how can a finite creature create and use infinite concepts /or the concept of the infinite/) is simply deflated (not 'solved') possibly due to the author's tacit attachment to Kantianism.

Wittgenstein's name is mentioned often, disappointingly, he is also presented as a closeted Kantian (from failure to construct infinite numbers via succession procedure in Tractatus, alleged abandonment of the metaphysical infinity to the later discovery of nonsensical nature of (attempted) language-games concerned with infinity).

AW Moore's work deserves a high rating; partially because of the low quality of other authors' attempts to present the Infinite to the general public.

Editorial Review:

This historical study of the infinite covers all its aspects from the mathematical to the mystical. Anyone who has ever pondered the limitlessness of space and time, or the endlessness of numbers, or the perfection of God will recognize the special fascination of the subject. Beginning with an entertaining account of the main paradoxes of the infinite, including those of Zeno, A.W. Moore traces the history of the topic from Aristotle to Kant, Hegel, Cantor, and Wittgenstein.

Material Beings

Peter Van Inwagen

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contemporary metaphysical classic 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 14 people found this review helpful.

"Peter van Inwagen's _Material Beings_ is an excellent book. Van Inwagen defends with great skill and cogency the contention that the only real material beings are physical simples on the one hand, and living organisms on the other. There is much to be learned from this book, whether one ultimately accepts its conclusions or not. And as an example of sustained philosophical argumentation, it is exemplary: the writing is lucid; the overall dialectical state of play is kept constantly in view; and there is plenty of ongoing give-and-take with potential objectors who are never mere straw persons." -Terence Horgan, from "On What There Isn't", _Philosophy and Phenomenological Research_ LIII (1993): p. 693

My sentiments exactly. Peter van Inwagen is probably my favorite living philosopher besides Kripke, and the quality of this book is representative of the reasons why. It would be hard to overstate the respect I have for van Inwagen's clarity, logical rigor, and unwillingness to overextend one's case to contingent matters. This book should be read as a case study for how to present a philosophically important case.

In _Material Beings_, van Inwagen, with brilliantly straightforward chutzpah, simply asks what it takes for simples to compose a whole, over and above a collection of simples. He surveys various options, and finds the single answer to be: if and only if such simples are caught up in the life of an organism. The result is that there are no other ordinary objects: just aggregates of physical simples. A crucial hinge along the way is van Inwagen's contention that the Denial, as he calls it, does not contradict ordinary beliefs. To defend this idea, he appeals to a sort of contextualism: In saying "There are no chairs," one is making a metaphysical statement--partly enumerating one's ontology--that the layperson simply does not do. Hence, he argues, the Denial does not contradict a statement like "There are two valuable chairs in the next room." Van Inwagen devotes a whole chapter to defending the contention that the Denial does not contradict ordinary beliefs, but I'm inclined to intuit that it actually does in some way, though I don't at present have an argument of my own for that position.

In arguing for the thesis that there are no chairs or any other ordinary inanimate objects, van Inwagen gives compelling reasons for, given his view on the nature of composition, excepting organisms from his Denial. In doing so, he reveals a good grounding in general biology. What he does give short shrift to, and shows little to no recognition for, is the nature of chemical bonding. He passes over possible answers to his Composition Questions involving physical bonding far too quickly, in my opinion, and that's a big issue where he and I part ways.

All that said, what van Inwagen does do here, he does so well, I have no hesitation about giving this five stars. Like I said, a modern classic and an invigorating read, as with everything else by van Inwagen I've read.

Editorial Review:

According to Peter van Inwagen, visible inanimate objects do not, strictly speaking, exist. In defending this controversial thesis, he offers fresh insights on such topics as personal identity, commonsense belief, existence over time, the phenomenon of vagueness, and the relation between metaphysics and ordinary language.

Properties (Oxford Readings in Philosophy)

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What are properties? 5 out of 5 stars.
16 of 17 people found this review helpful.

The essays in this topical collection provide a thorough discussion of that question. Drawn mostly from contemporary philosophy, the collection nevertheless begins a bit further back: with Gottlob Frege's "Function and Concept," two contributions from Bertrand Russell, and F.P. Ramsey's "Universals."

More recent selections are included from W.V.O. Quine ("On What There Is"), Frank Jackson, Michael Devitt, D.M. Armstrong, Donald C. Williams, Keith Campbell, Chris Daly, David Lewis, Sydney Shoemaker, and co-editor D.H. Mellor.

The volume will be of special interest to readers looking for sources on the problem of universals. Naturally each contribution deals with the problem to some extent, but particularly interesting is an exchange between Michael Devitt and D.M. Armstrong. Nominalists and realists sometimes talk past each other about this problem, and sure enough, much of the exchange between Devitt and Armstrong has to do with (a) why nominalists don't think there really _is_ a "problem" of universals and (b) why realists think nominalists are being all but willfully blind.

In a spirited but cheerfully sporting verbal tennis match, Devitt responds to Armstrong's complaints (in _Universals and Scientific Realism_) about "ostrich nominalism" by attacking "mirage realism" instead. Armstrong offers a rejoinder which he thinks improves on his earlier discussion. The two part friends, with no injuries.

There is also good discussion on trope theory and "abstract particulares," as one might expect from the inclusion of essays by Williams, Campbell, and Daly. This is an excellent collection both overall and in detail.

It will be of interest to readers of D.M. Armstrong's _Universals: An Opinionated Introduction_, and it will also fit well alongside Andrew Schoedinger's topical collection _The Problem of Universals_. (There is surprisingly little overlap between Schoedinger's volume and the present one. Ramsey's "Universals," Russell's "The World of Universals," and Quine's "On What There Is" are the only essays common to the two collections.)

Editorial Review:

When we say a certain rose is red, we seem to be attributing a property, redness, to it. But are there really such properties? If so, what are they like, how do we know about them, and how are they related to the objects which have them and the linguistic devices which we use to talk about them? This collection presents these ancient problems in a modern light. In particular, it makes accessible for the first time the most important contributions to the contemporary controversy about the nature of properties. Those new to the subject will find the clearly-written introduction, by two experts in the field, an invaluable guide to the intricacies of this debate. The volume illustrates very well the aims and methods of modern metaphysics and show how a thorough understanding of the metaphysics of properties is crucial to most of analytic philosophy.

Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being (Stein, Edith//the Collected Works of Edith Stein) (Stein, Edith//the Collected Works of Edith Stein)

Edith Stein, translated by Kurt F. Reinhardt

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Editorial Review:

This volume bears the imprint of the extraordinary intellectual and spiritual journey of its author, one of the most remarkable women of the twentieth century. Born in Breslau, Germany into a practicing Jewish family in 1891, Edith Stein abandoned her faith as a teenager and later became a key figure among the early disciples of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. In 1921, she underwent a profound conversion and was baptized into the Catholic church. As a prominent German Catholic laywoman, she continue her teaching, writing, and promotion of women's rights, and began directing her attention toward a deeper encounter between the phenomenolgy she had helped to develop and the modern scholastic tradition of the church she had embraced. In 1933 she left the academic milieu and entered the Carmelite Monastery of Cologne. Yet, encouragd by her religious superiors, she soon took up her intellectual labors again, thoroughly recasting an earlier essay on Potency and Act to produce the present text, which remained unpublished at the time of her death in 1942 at the hands of the Nazis. Finite and Eternal Being is Edith Stein's master work, the culmination of her lifelong search for truth in all its philosophical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. With her careful step-by-step analysis, she gradually shows how the being of all finite existents (especially the human I) finds its ultimate ground and destiny in the eternal Divine Being, the Creator whose trinitarian nature is reflected throughout creation.

The German Aesthetic Tradition

Kai Hammermeister

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A terrific overview 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.

I had been looking for a book like this for a long time. Finally there is an accessible volume that clearly explains the fundamental concepts of German philosophical aesthetics without simplifying them. In fact, this book goes beyond the mere reporting of philosophical positions as it carefully probes them and points out their problems and inconsistencies. Furthermore, the historical narrative that Hammermeister sets up is very original and presents us with a new reading of the developments within the theory of art in Germany.
I found this volume extremely helpful for my studies of philosophical aesthetics, and I expect it to become a classic in this field. However, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone in the humanities with an interest in the history of aesthetic thought. I am sure that Hammermeister's book will establish itself as the main textbook for college classes on German aesthetics. It is thorough, it is enormously learned, it is very well written, and it is lucid and exciting. Indispensible for my own library and work!

Editorial Review:

This is the only available systematic critical overview of German aesthetics from 1750 to the present. The book begins with the work of Baumgarten and covers all the major writers on German aesthetics that follow: Kant, Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer and Adorno. It offers a clear and non-technical exposition of ideas, placing these in a wider philosophical context where necessary. Interest in this book extends far beyond the discipline of philosophy to those of literary studies, fine art and music.