commonplacebook has posted this thoughtful piece in response to my last post, for all who are interested in the subject.

With certain exceptions, I have noticed that most of us have been quite silent on the current political situation, make that turmoil, in Iraq. I am specifically referring to the, dare I say it?, torture of Iraqi prisoners. After reading this article in the Times magazine, I am compelled to open up at least a smal public forum for the discussion of ( Read more... )

This is from a posting for a conference called "Philosophy and Conceptual Art" to be held at King's College London on Friday 4th to Saturday 5th of June 2004:

BACKGROUND ( Read more... )

Clarification: It just dawned on me that I wasn't being clear in my use of "aesthetics". When I use the term, I am not referring to any sort of art-historical notion of art, beauty, or artistic creation. Rather, I like to apply it in its original greek sense of aesthesis; this is my fancy way of talking about sensation in art. I hope this helps ( Read more... )

"Art's job is to provoke thought in ways that are difficult to resolve and uncomfortable; it's a relatively neutral place to experience the unresolvable issues that dominate real life, to practice a kind of abstract flexibility that might move us toward resolution in real life."

"In a sense all artworks aspire to be arguments for argument's sake. ( Read more... )

Well, I had extra-ordinarily good news today! It turns out that Galen might just be able to hire me as his research assistant for the summer in preparation for his sabbatical! This would mean searching for grants, reading secondary literature on Merleau-Ponty, helping to revise a doctoral dissertation, preparing for the 2005 Merleau-Ponty Circle ( Read more... )

In Section 50 of Kant's third Critique, he joins together two faculties necessary to fine art. Genius, the capacity to create fine art, is defined as exemplary originality. Taste, the capacity to judge art as fine, is a form of judgment, pure judgment. Kant claims that it is possible to have genius without taste, or taste without genius, and, ( Read more... )

So, with the completion of my last term paper, I finally found time to complete my reading of Jose Saramago's The Cave. It was a very enjoyable book, and one that I highly recommend. If you do decide to read it, however, I would highly recommend not reading the back of the book... it gives away a great deal of the plot not that the plot is ( Read more... )

Well, this weekend was an extremely traumatic one for any number of reasons that I just can't get into right now ( Read more... )

I guess I had a little more time than I thought... You know what I really hate ('oh, great,' they say, 'now we have to listen to this!'): philosophers wh use the "So what?" objection. I think all of the philosophy students out there know what I mean. A great example of this would be something along the lines of this dialogue:

A: So I just ( Read more... )