Philosophy of the Arts

Kennis in schoonheid (nl.)

An introduction to modern aesthetics (in Dutch); writing the second edition

The transitive transparency of communication

Any reader of Kafka’s stories realise that in them people do not communicate. In fact, it is the break-down, no, the sheer impossibility of communication that makes for the alienated sphere. But how? Do not the characters talk abundantly to each other? Suddenly the answer to this question dawned on me. The characters talk to…

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Kant, taste and time

Kant’s Critique of Judgement can be seen to put aside all sorts of irrelevant, and illegitimate considerations for our judgements of taste, such as our interests, concepts, moral values, sentiments and excitement. Why is there no discussion in Kant of fashionable and trendy following of judgements, in short: of the influence of one’s time, one’s…

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History’s pictures of perception

Kant, in his so-called Copernican move, filled in the details of this picture in wistful manner. He installed our scientific methods. Hastily. Herder installed our language, instead of the Kantian categories of understanding and the forms of intuition, space and time. And Schopenhauer reduced them to space, time and causality. These were efforts to correct…

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First sentence of Kant’s Critique of Judgement.

The first sentence of the Critique of Judgement contains a puzzling reference to “relating a representation (in your mind) to your feeling”. How does one do that? Can we hold it up in our minds and look at it with our feeling? Part I. Critique of Aesthetic Judgement / Division I. Analytic of Aesthetic Judgement…

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Schopenhauers geluksleer

Afgunstig. Van Schopenhauer is bij SUN een geluksleer verschenen, De kunst om gelukkig te zijn gevuld met citaten van klassieke auteurs en overpeinzingen daarover van Schopenhauer zelf. Ik val maar met de deur in huis, Leefregel 2 zegt: Vermijd afgunst: [..] [‘Je zult nooit gelukkig zijn, als het je kwelt dat een ander gelukkiger is’,…

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