David Boersema describes how two very different thinkers were on the trail of similar ideas about the nature of consciousness. Charles Peirce (1839-1914) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) were two towering figures in philosophy who wrestled with issues of consciousness and the ego, or self. These are matters that have long concerned philosophers and cross the …
Michael Allen Fox argues that old approaches to the problem don’t work. Who am I? That’s a difficult question to tackle, and each of us must do so for him- or herself, if it is to be tackled at all. But importantly related to this question is another: Am I the same person now as …
Brian Breeze takes time to think. Everyone knows what time is: don’t they? But perhaps, when we look more closely, we will find that our initial confidence is not entirely justified. St. Augustine wrote around 397 AD: “What… is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I …
Raymond Tallis is hungry to expand human consciousness through art. Past and Future In what follows, I shall focus less on what art has been or has meant in the past than on what it might be or might mean in the future. Of course my vision of the future of art is informed and …
Art (and Philosophy) and the Ultimate Aims of Human Life Read More »
Patricia Railing explains the philosophical ideas behind some of abstract art’s most famous abstractions. There has been much philosophical speculation on the relationship between artistic materials and artistic experience down through the centuries. Christopher Perricone pointed this out in his article ‘Does the Philosophy of Art Have a Mind/Body Problem?’ back in Issue 46. Now …
Art As Sensation: Four Painters As Philosophers Of Art Read More »
To introduce our art issue, Anja Steinbauer describes the troubled relationship between art and theory. We might imagine aesthetics, the study of art and beauty, and philosophy as two unhappy partners in a failing relationship, coming to us seeking counselling. “You can’t give me anything”, aesthetics might complain, “you don’t help people appreciate art or …
Aesthetics and Philosophy: A Match Made in Heaven? Read More »
Dzifa Benson is compelled to consider the nature of performance. Shakespeare’s melancholic hero Jacques is a libertine-turned-philosopher. He has turned to philosophy in his quest for a new identity, and as a philosopher he questions much of what he sees around him, causing him to offer the soliloquy from which the above excerpt is taken. …
So how do you apply philosophical principles to think about art? An example can be derived from an unlikely source. Reneh Karamians uses Heidegger’s philosophy as an illustration of how to understand aesthetic experience. Martin Heidegger gave philosophy a new description of humanity. No longer was mankind defined in terms of mind distinct from the …
Jeffrey Gordon rereads a correspondence on war between Einstein and Freud. In 1932 the greatest genius of the Twentieth Century wrote an urgent letter to the century’s most influential psychologist. In that letter, Albert Einstein asked Sigmund Freud, “Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?” It was the same year …
Dustin Gray finds out that continuing to exist isn’t as simple as you might think. What does it mean for an object to persist through time? Consider the statement, ‘My car is filthy, I need to wash it.’ Consider the response, ‘How did it get that way?’ The answer is that dirt, dust and other …