New Waves in Musical Ontology
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Jerrold Levinson's Musical Concerns: Essays In
___________________________________________________________________________ Book Review LEVINSON, JERROLD. Musical Concerns: Essays in Philosophy of Music. Oxford University Press 2015, 176 pp., $45 hardcover. Reviewed by Caterina Moruzzi Musical Concerns collects twelve essays written by Jerrold Levinson between 2006 and 2014. The value of this collection consists in providing insights both into traditional discussions of the philosophy of music, such as the music-emotion relation, and into alternative and emerging ones, such as the idiosyncrasies of jazz and the values possessed by music. In the first essay, “Philosophy and Music,” Levinson highlights the beneficial results these two disciplines can obtain from mutual engagement. In addition to the more traditional interrelation between composers who look to philosophical theories to get inspiration for their works and philosophers influenced by musical works, he identifies three features common to philosophy and music: the search for completeness (9–10), their nature as forms of thought (10–13), and their deep usefulness despite superficial impracticality (13). “Indication, Abstraction, and Individuation” contrasts a theory developed by Levinson with formalist theories that identify the nature of musical works with their pure form and structure. 1 Levinson’s musical contextualism ascribes ontological importance also to contextual factors such as composer, time of composition, and instrumentation. The creation of the work is carried out by an act of artistic indication, the result of a deliberate choice that sets the standards for the performance of the work itself (50), which assigns to the author’s creation the status of artwork. The next essential step after the creation of a work is its reception by an audience: “The Aesthetic Appreciation of Music” deals with different kinds of appreciation the audience can experience by listening to music. -
1993 PROGRAM COMMITTEE NOTE: All Friday Afternoon Sessions Are at the LEVINSON and the RESISTING READER: William J
9:30 - 10:25 am VISTA MAR MONTE II IS THERE A DEFINITlDN OF ART? Vanda Boziccvic) Philosophy, University of Croatia 2:00 - 3:50 pm COMMENT: Stephanie Ross, Philosophy, FOUR QUESTIONS FOR MARGOLIS University of Missouri/Saint LOt~is Michael Krausz, Philosophy, Brytl Mawr C HAIR: Roger Shiner, Philosophy, University of Alberta MARGOLIS AND THE METAPHYSICS OF CULTURE Dale Jacquette, Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University Break: 10:30 - 10:45 am COMMENT: joseph Margolis, Philosophy, Tempi, University 10:45 - II :40 am CHAIR: Curtis Carter, Philosophy, Marquette University THE IMPACT OF JAZZ ON CHINESE AUDIENCES Shirley Kennedy, Black Studies, Break: 4:00 - 4:15 pm University of California/Santa Barbara COMMENT: David Samue ls, Anthropology, , 4:15 - 5:10 pm University of Texas/Austin PAINTINGS AND FRAMES CHAIR: jo Ellen jacobs, Philosophy, Millikin University Barbara Savedoft; Philosophy, CUNY/Baruch College COMMENT: Claudia Sole, Santa Barbara 11:45 am - 12:40 pm CHAIR: Susa n FC::lgin, Philosophy, IL FAUT ETRE ABSOLUMENT RADICALIEI University of Missouri/ Kansas City Peter Madsen, Comparative Literature, University of Copenhagen COMMENT: Gary Shapiro, Philosophy, VISTA MA1~ MONTli III University of Richmond CHAIR: Mechthild Nagel, Philosophy, 2:00 - 4:00 pm Uni.versity of Massachusetts/Amh errt AESTHETICS AND YOUNG PEOPLE Marcia Eaton, PIJi/flwph.y, Ut/i,',.,'sily oj'Mimll:sota Cynthia Rost:lt1koW I'k.I, I'lul(/ltlp/~y, Sa" losr Seate University VISTA MAR MONTE III Ellen Handler Spill, P''Ytl!j·,fU'Y, Cornell Vlli"frllly Alr, IIII,! ( -
Annual Report 2020 1
ACLS Annual Report 2020 1 AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES Annual Report 2020 2 ACLS Annual Report 2020 Table of Contents Mission and Purpose 1 Message from the President 2 Who We Are 6 Year in Review 12 President’s Report to the Council 18 What We Do 23 Supporting Our Work 70 Financial Statements 84 ACLS Annual Report 2020 1 Mission and Purpose The American Council of Learned Societies supports the creation and circulation of knowledge that advances understanding of humanity and human endeavors in the past, present, and future, with a view toward improving human experience. SUPPORT CONNECT AMPLIFY RENEW We support humanistic knowledge by making resources available to scholars and by strengthening the infrastructure for scholarship at the level of the individual scholar, the department, the institution, the learned society, and the national and international network. We work in collaboration with member societies, institutions of higher education, scholars, students, foundations, and the public. We seek out and support new and emerging organizations that share our mission. We commit to expanding the forms, content, and flow of scholarly knowledge because we value diversity of identity and experience, the free play of intellectual curiosity, and the spirit of exploration—and above all, because we view humanistic understanding as crucially necessary to prototyping better futures for humanity. It is a public good that should serve the interests of a diverse public. We see humanistic knowledge in paradoxical circumstances: at once central to human flourishing while also fighting for greater recognition in the public eye and, increasingly, in institutions of higher education. -
Legal Theory Workshop UCLA School of Law Asya Passinsky
Legal Theory Workshop UCLA School of Law Asya Passinsky Visiting Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “NORM AND OBJECT: A NORMATIVE HYLOMORPHIC THEORY OF SOCIAL OBJECTS” Thursday, March 4, 2021, 5:00-6:00 pm Via Zoom Draft, February 19, 2021. For UCLA Workshop. Please Don’t Cite Or Quote Without Permission. Norm and Object: A Normative Hylomorphic Theory of Social Objects Asya Passinsky ABSTRACT: This paper is an investigation into the metaphysics of social objects such as political borders, states, and organizations. I articulate a metaphysical puzzle concerning such objects and then propose a novel account of social objects that provides a solution to the puzzle. The basic idea behind the puzzle is that under appropriate circumstances, seemingly concrete social objects can apparently be created by acts of agreement, decree, declaration, or the like. Yet there is reason to believe that no concrete object can be created in this way. The central idea of my positive account is that social objects have a normative component to them, and seemingly concrete social objects have both normative and material components. I develop this idea more rigorously using resources from the Aristotelian hylomorphic tradition. The resulting normative hylomorphic account, I argue, solves the puzzle by providing a satisfying explanation of creation-by-agreement and the like, while at the same time avoiding the difficulties facing extant accounts of social objects. 1. Introduction This paper is an investigation into the metaphysics of social objects such as political borders, states, and organizations. Roughly speaking, social objects are things that can be created through the performance of social acts such as agreement, decree, declaration, or the like. -
A Powerful Defence of Musical Formalism Hanne Appelqvist: Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Commu- Nication
REVIEW A Powerful Defence of Musical Formalism Hanne Appelqvist: Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Commu- nication. Acta Philosophica Fennica Vol. 85, Helsinki: The Philosophical Society of Finland, 2008. 152 pages. isbn 978-951-9265-68-4 A typical problem with approaches to aesthetic questions which draw heavily on the views of a single philosopher is that those who are en- gaged in the debate over the philosophical problem to which his or her views are applied may often have trouble seeing the relevance of the proposed account. This is not the case with Hanne Appelqvist’s work Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication. She develops a highly persuasive variant of musical formalism based on a reading of remarks on the analogy between the understanding of music and the un- derstanding of language found in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later writings. With this sort of Wittgensteinian formalism she challenges an influen- tial tradition in contemporary philosophy of music in which music’s con- tent is considered to consist of the expression of emotions and in which musical understanding is seen as the capacity to grasp the emotion a par- ticular musical phrase or piece supposedly expresses. Simultaneously, Appelqvist manages to provide a rehabilitation of the musical formalism developed by Eduard Hanslick who contemporary analytic philosophers of music have, in her opinion, undeservedly looked down on. The first two chapters of Appelqvist’s work explore the relationship between the early and later parts of Wittgenstein’s philosophical career. While it is well-known that Wittgenstein’s thinking changed radically in certain respects between the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations, in Appelqvist’s view, the concerns of the two works nevertheless overlap in that they both attempt “to give an account of the necessary conditions of meaning in language” (41). -
Genealogical Debunking Arguments, Moral Realism, and the Possibility of Moral Knowledge
Taking the Helm: Genealogical Debunking Arguments, Moral Realism, and the Possibility of Moral Knowledge by Joshua D. McBee A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland April 2019 © Joshua McBee 2019 All Rights Reserved Abstract Genealogical debunking arguments aim to show that, given their provenance, none of our moral beliefs are justified, at least assuming moral realism. In particular, they claim that this is so because the best, complete explanation of why we hold the moral beliefs we do neither presupposes nor entails their truth. I dispute this explanatory claim, suggesting instead that, in at least some cases, the best explanation of our beliefs must appeal to our capacity to acquire moral knowledge through reflection. To defend this suggestion, I respond to three different rejoinders debunkers might offer. One of these contends that the proposed explanation is redundant: if we want to explain why someone judges some action wrong, all we need to know is the character of their moral sensibilities. Two other rejoinders appeal to general skeptical challenges. According to the first, if realism is true, the evidence available to us in reflection necessarily underdetermines the truth of our ethical beliefs. Like the so-called Benacerraf-Field challenge to mathematical platonism from which it derives, the second challenge involves two distinct charges: first, that knowledge requires there be a causal or explanatory connection between our beliefs and the facts that realism precludes, and second, that realists cannot explain our reliability in ethics. Making novel use of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remarks about following rules, I argue that that each of the first two rejoinders rests on a confused view about the ways we are liable to go wrong in ethical reflection. -
Metaphysics, History, Phenomenology 341
METAPHYSICS,HISTORY,PHENOMENOLOGY Kris McDaniel Abstract: There are three interconnected goals of this paper. The first is to articulate and motivate a view of the methodology for doing metaphysics that is broadly phenomenological in the sense of Husserl circa the Logical Investigations. The second is to articulate an argument for the importance of studying the history of philosophy when doing metaphysics that is in accordance with this methodology. The third is to confront this methodology with a series of objections and determine how well it fares in light of them. 1 Introduction Here is an easy observation. In one respect, we all know the methodology of philosophy as it is currently practiced today, at least among large portions of the ‘analytic tradition.’ Some person—sometimes it is more than one person—has an idea. She talks about it with colleagues or friends, either in person or by email. Eventually it is written up as a talk or as a paper, and either way is vetted in some sort of public venue. If things go well for her and her idea, the written thing eventually appears as a publication in a journal, book chapter, or whatnot; if things go not so well, it ends up as a blog post. Either way, other philosophers might eventually read the written thing, and might then have some new ideas as a consequence. Is there a plausible explanation of how this way of doing things could be justified or reasonable given that the goal of philosophy is the acquisition of philosophical knowledge, that is, the acquisition of true and appropriately warranted beliefs about characteristically philosophical questions?1 Call such an explanation a justificatory story. -
Piece for the End of Time: in Defence of Musical Ontology
Trinity University Digital Commons @ Trinity Philosophy Faculty Research Philosophy Department 1-2008 Piece for the End of Time: In Defence of Musical Ontology Andrew Kania Trinity University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/phil_faculty Part of the Philosophy Commons Repository Citation Kania, A. (2008). Piece for the end of time: In defence of musical ontology. British Journal of Aesthetics, 48(1), 65-79. doi:10.1093/aesthj/aym040 This Post-Print is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy Department at Digital Commons @ Trinity. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Faculty Research by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Trinity. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Piece for the End of Time: In Defence of Musical Ontology Andrew Kania [This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in The British Journal of Aesthetics following peer review. The version of record (Andrew Kania, “Piece for the End of Time: In Defence of Musical Ontology” British Journal of Aesthetics 48 (2008): 65-79) is available online at: http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/content/48/1/65.abstract?sid=9e5cc66e- c952-4d71-9a27-f80e13bf3c67. Please cite only the published version.] Abstract Aaron Ridley has recently attacked the study of musical ontology – an apparently fertile area in the philosophy of music. I argue here that Ridley’s arguments are unsound. There are genuinely puzzling ontological questions about music, many of which are closely related to questions of musical value. While it is true that musical ontology must be descriptive of pre-existing musical practices and that some debates, such as that over the creatability of musical works, have little consequence for questions of musical value, none of this implies that these debates themselves are without value. -
Aesthetic Contextualism Jerrold Levinson University of Maryland
Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 4, No. 3, December 2007 AESTHETIC CONTEXTUALISM JERROLD LEVINSON UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND Let me begin with a quote: “The universal organum of philosophy—the ground stone of its entire architecture—is the philosophy of art.”1 This statement, made in 1800 by the German Idealist philosopher Friedrich Schelling, is rather striking, not only because of its grandiosity, but also because it contrasts with what the majority of contemporary philosophers would be prepared to say on the subject. There is nevertheless a grain of truth in the claim that there is a peculiar connection between art and philosophy and in the claim that aesthetics is a central area of philosophy. First of all, it is worth noting that, even if the philosophy of art has not played a role in the systems of all the indisputably great philosophers, or even of most of them, it has occupied an important place in the thought of quite a few, among them Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hegel and Sartre. And a good number of philosophers of lesser rank—including Croce, Collingwood, Dewey, Bergson, Santayana, Gadamer and, evidently, Schelling, also had a philosophy of art; one finds them perhaps more interested in it than in, say, ethics. Why this natural, even if not inevitable, link between philosophy and art? Well, both art and philosophy are concerned with ultimate value, with what makes life worth living. In both art and philosophy, expression, clarification, and formulation are important, though whether the content of what is expressed, clarified and formulated in art and in philosophy is the same is another matter. -
Hegel on Music
Swarthmore College Works Philosophy Faculty Works Philosophy 2007 Hegel On Music Richard Thomas Eldridge Swarthmore College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy Part of the Philosophy Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits ouy Recommended Citation Richard Thomas Eldridge. (2007). "Hegel On Music". Hegel And The Arts. 119-145. https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy/106 This work is brought to you for free by Swarthmore College Libraries' Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Hegel on Music Richard Eldridge 1 At first glance, Hegel says some striking but apparently inconsistent things about music. He appears, first, to defend musical formalism: the view, urged by theorists from Eduard Hanslick to Peter Kivy, that pure instru mental music is an acoustic arrangement that signifies nothing. In music as an art, Hegel notes, “sound, just as sound, is treated as an end in it self; ... its own form, artistic note-formation, can become its essential end” (A 2:899).* He goes on to indicate in particular that successful art music need not be based on any verbal text. Music has the maximum possibility of freeing itself from any actual text as well as from the expression of any specific subject-matter, with a view to finding satisfaction solely in a self-enclosed series of the conjunc tions, changes, oppositions, and modulations falling within the purely musical sphere of sounds. (A 2:901-2) Yet, second, Hegel also remarks that music that is simply self- enclosed development “remains empty and meaningless” (A 2:902). -
A Tentative Theory for Chinese Contemporary Art Peng
paths to the middle 271 PATHS TO THE MIDDLE: A TENTATIVE THEORY FOR CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART Peng Feng Chinese contemporary art can be divided into three stages: following the Other, being valuated by the Other, and finally getting its identity.1 Only in the third stage can Chinese contemporary art have its self- awareness or self-understanding, i.e., can Chinese contemporary art realize itself as Chinese contemporary art. However, according to Hegel and Danto, the history of art is at an end as soon as art has real- ized itself. By the same token, does Chinese contemporary art come to an end since it has realized itself in the third stage? Does art or Chinese or contemporary come to an end? What is the difference between them? If art comes to an end, it, according to Hegel and Danto, is sub- lated into philosophy.2 If Chinese art comes to an end, it, according to the scholars who advocate trans-cultural aesthetics, is substituted for by a new International Style.3 If contemporary art comes to an end, it, according to the scholars who advocate evolutionary aesthetics, welcomes “the return of beauty”.4 I propose to discuss the first issue in this paper and leave the others for other papers. If what comes to an end is not Chinese but contemporary art, it should be sublated into Chinese traditional philosophy. Ironically, once contemporary art takes shelter in Chinese traditional philosophy, it can refuse to come to an end and welcome a new beginning. With 1 Li Xiaofeng, “Preface for Chenxiang Exhibition,” in Chenxiang Catalogue (Shanghai: Shanghai Shipingxian Gallery). -
1 Phil 1370 Philosophy of Art When and Where: Tuesday & Thursday, 2
Phil 1370 Philosophy of Art When and where: Tuesday & Thursday, 2:30–3:45 pm, CL 349. Instructor: Anja Jauernig, CL 1028F, 624-5782, [email protected]. Office Hours: Thursday 1:15–2:15, and by appointment. Readings. All readings are available through E-reserve at http://pitt.libguides.com/er.php?ecid=9451. Password: aj37pa. Requirements and grading. You are required to write one medium length paper about half-way through the course (about 7 pages, 30%), and one longer paper at the end (about 14 pages, 60%). There will be several paper topics to choose from for the first paper; you will choose the topic for the second paper yourself (in consultation with me). You are also required to post one short comment or question about, or objection to, the readings for each meeting by 9 am on the day of the meeting on the Philosophy of Art message board on CourseWeb (10%). (How long should the comment be? A few sentences or a brief paragraph will be sufficient.) It is a necessary condition for passing the course that you get a passing grade on each paper, and that you post a comment for at least 80% of meetings. Extensions. If you are unable to hand in your paper on time for a legitimate reason, we can arrange for you to submit your work at a later time. If you do not have a good excuse there will be an automatic late penalty of 0.333 on the usual grading scale for every begun 3 hours of being late.