Volume 18. Krystyna Wilkoszewska (ed.). Aesthetics in Action. International Yearbook of Aesthetics. Volume 18. 2014
Content
The 18th volume of the International Yearbook of Aesthetics comprises a selection of papers presented at the 19th International Congress of Aesthetics, which took place in Cracow in 2013. The Congress entitled “Aesthetics in Action” was intended to cover an extended research area of aesthetics going beyond the fine arts towards various forms of human practice. In this way it bore witness to the transformation that aesthetics has been undergoing for a few decades at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries.
About the Editor
Krystyna Wilkoszewska is professor of philosophy and aesthetics and Head of the Department of Aesthetics at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. She is President of the Polish Society of Aesthetics and Director of John Dewey Research Center founded by her at the Jagiellonian University. She is a delegate in the Executive Committee in the International Association for Aesthetics and a member of Board in Central European Pragmatist Forum. She was awarded research grants from ACLS and Humboldt Foundation. Her main interest is in pragmatist philosophy and aesthetics, somaesthetics, postmodern philosophy and art, eco-aesthetics, transcultural studies. She published Art as the Rhythm of Life: Reconstruction of John Dewey’s Philosophy of Art; Postmodernism in Philosophy and Art and edited among others three volume Japanese Aesthetics; Vision and Revision; Transcultural Aesthetics; Aesthetics and Cultures. She is editor of the series: “Aesthetics in the World”, “Classics of Polish Aesthetics”.
Paul Ricoeur: Thinker of the Margins?
University of Antwerp & VU-University Amsterdam
September, 18-20, 2014, Antwerp
Ricoeur can be called the philosopher of all dialogues. He engaged virtually all the great movements of thought, entered into debate with scientists, and voices his concerns in the public debate. He never sought to engage in polemics but tried to engage seemingly unbridgeable positions or thinkers in a fruitful dialogue. Ricoeur was not a radical thinker in search of extremes, but rather committed to mediate between conflicting philosophers and streams of thought, therein lies part of his originality and creativity. Where others sees dichotomy, he sees dialectic. In this regard one cannot but note how often Ricoeur uses the word between (entre) in the titles of his articles, always in search of connections, confrontations, and unexpected syntheses between thinkers who have preceded him. He really is a thinker of the between.
But does Ricoeur’s ‘dialogical approach’ not result in a harmonization of often diverging positions? Is Ricoeur able to hear the radicalness of certain insights? Is it possible that his hermeneutical philosophy takes away the sharpness of certain problems in current religious, political and philosophical debates? Might it even be the case that he did not hear certain voices, precisely because they resist synthesis? This conference inquires what happens to Ricoeur’s hermeneutical approach if we confront it with its limits.
The conference will address topical philosophical, socio-political and religious issues, from a Ricoeurian perspective, but in conversation with other, more ‘radical’ thinkers
Possible topics include:
Justice and the Struggle for Recognition: Justice is an important concept in Ricoeur’s work, first of all, as an ethical concept. For Ricoeur, justice is a way of establishing peace, both in concrete relations to others, as on the level of institutions. In The Course of Recognition, Ricoeur however shifts the focus on political philosophy, and, in so doing he creates a tension in his understanding of justice. On the one hand, he agrees with Hegel and Honneth that justice is a justification for violence that is part of “the struggle for recognition”. On the other hand, Ricoeur also points again to the role of justice for peace. As he argues with Marcel Hénaff, in the exchange of gifts for instance, the parties involved proof their recognition to one another, and, in this sense, they maintain a peaceful relationship. This session aims at investigating the tension between justice and recognition in Ricoeur’s work, and especially in The Course of Recognition
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- http://www.iaaesthetics.org/plugins/system/jat3/jat3/base-themes/default/images/bullet.gif) 20px 7px no-repeat;">Ricoeur, the Religious Other and Interreligious Dialogue: In the vast collection of his writings Ricoeur only sporadically raised the issue of interreligious dialogue. Though Ricoeur was sensitive to issues of religious diversity, interreligious violence and the encounter between religions, he did not engage into a systematic debate on these issues. However Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy may offer a framework enabling a thorough reflection on the challenges presented by the encounter between religions.
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- http://www.iaaesthetics.org/plugins/system/jat3/jat3/base-themes/default/images/bullet.gif) 20px 7px no-repeat;">Discourse, Normativity and Power : The reason that Ricoeur’s thinking is not often mentioned in the context of feminist, queer and race theory is perhaps his consideration of discourse as a “laboratory of thought experiments”, instead of as excluding and normative. On the other hand, his hermeneutics of suspicion, notions of critique and distanciation, and his ideas about the narrative and ethical self do seem interesting for thinking about alterity and difference. For this session, we invite papers that reflect upon Ricoeur’s notion of discourse, and address the question of normativity and power.
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- http://www.iaaesthetics.org/plugins/system/jat3/jat3/base-themes/default/images/bullet.gif) 20px 7px no-repeat;">Literature, Identity, Politics: Literary fiction plays an important role in Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of subjectivity, especially with regard to his concept of narrative identity, which enables him to synthesize different aspects of personal identity. Ricoeur is less explicit about the relation between literary fiction and politics. This relation entails, however, vital issues, like for instance the role of fiction in the constitution of a political entity, the (legitimizing, critical or anarchic) function of narratives in political discourse, the power dependency (and transformation) of the narrative imagination, the possibility of politic pluralism, etc. In this session, we intend to critically examine the contribution of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics to these issues.
Editor’s Note:
see also: http://www.eurosa.org/esa2014/
International Conference “Literary Theories and Critiques of Our Time” & 11thAnnual Conference of China Association of Sino-Foreign Literary and Arts Theories (CASFLAT), August 15-19, 2014
Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan Province, China co-sponsored by CASFLAT, Henan University College of Humanities, Section of Literary Theories of Institute of Literature, CASS, and International Association for Aesthetics
The 11th Annual Conference of CASFLAT on “The Literary Theory and Critique of Our Times” concentrates on the relationship of literary theory and critique to the times, society and contemporary living condition. Theme of 2014 is to restate the commitment of relating literary theoretical studies with the presence of contemporary China, in the hope of exploring the ways to rectifying the separation between theories and practices, and the inadequate introductions and interpretations of the foreign and classical literary theories.
The Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology aims to encourage and promote research in aesthetics that draws inspiration from the phenomenological tradition as broadly understood, where “phenomenology” is inclusive of, but goes beyond the limits of, intellectual practices associated with the tradition and its well-known representative thinkers. Unique in the English speaking world, the journal welcomes scholarly articles written in a phenomenological vein as well as analyses of aesthetic phenomena by researchers working on phenomenology within analytic philosophy.
The field of the Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology is further defined by its close connections with the arts and culture, including the reality of human experience and its environment. Besides philosophical rigor, the journal puts emphasis on both creativity of ideas and precision of language. It provides a platform for new innovative ideas crossing the boundaries of both philosophical traditions and traditionally accepted fields of research in aesthetics.
See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/journal/journal-of-aesthetics-and-phenomenology/#sthash.uYYkvy29.dpuf
