The central claim of this comparative study of Kant and Kierkegaard is that the aesthetic experience of the sublime is both autonomous and formative for extra-aesthetic ends. Aesthetic autonomy is thus inseparable from aesthetic heteronomy. In Part I, through an examination of Kant’s Critique of Judgement and his essays on the French Revolution, the Kantian sublime is shown to conflict with our existing cognitive, moral and political frames of meaning, at the same time that the engagement of the aesthetic judge (Chapter 1) or the enthusiastic spectator (Chapter 2) with this conflict furthers our pursuit of cognitive, moral and political ends. The Kantian sublime is built on the autonomy of aesthetic judgement, which nevertheless has non-aesthetic value. Part II argues that certain aesthetic and ethical-religious figures in Kierkegaard’s work can be shown to be transfigurations of the Kantian sublime, despite the absence of the term. Antigone and the silhouettes from Either/Or embody what I coin the tragic sublime and sublime grief. The God-man in Practice in Christianity is interpreted as a sublime image of contradiction. The figures are submitted to aesthetic representation, while their contradictory interior lives are unrepresentable. The Kierkegaardian sublime is built on a radical critique of aesthetic autonomy, whose failure serves the end of ethico-religious self-formation.

"Everything is contradictory," Hegel declares in Science of Logic. In this analysis of one of the most difficult and neglected topics in Hegelian studies, Songsuk Susan Hahn tackles the status of contradiction in Hegel's thought. Properly philosophical thinking in the Hegelian mode recognizes that contradiction pervades all organic forms of life. Contradiction in Motion presents Hegel's doctrine of contradiction, once widely dismissed, as one deserving serious consideration. The book argues that contradiction is not a sign of error or incoherence, but rather plays an important role in the development of Hegel's system. The first part of the book sets up Hegel's logic of organic wholes in such a way as to motivate his claim that everything is contradictory. Hahn explores how Hegel tests his abstract logical and methodological apparatus against the more concrete, unmanageable aspects of empirical nature. The second and third parts of the book examine the extent to which Hegel's organic model informs his aesthetics and ethics. Hahn reveals the privileged role of art forms in expressing our consciousness of organic unity and shows how Hegel's organic-holistic conception of cognition and nature, with its distinctively contradictory stance, can be incorporated coherently into his ethics.

Donald Meltzer coined the term 'aesthetic conflict' to describe the emotional complexities of the 'apprehension of beauty'. It had its roots in art, literature, infant observation, and above all, in clinical experience. This concept affirmed and illustrated Bion's formula of L, H, K (Love, Hate, and Knowledge), together with its negative (minus L, H, K) as a revision of Klein's fundamental emotional dynamics of Envy and Gratitude. As such, any emotional situation may be read in terms of either struggling with or retreating from the aesthetic conflict that occurs naturally at all key points of psychic development. Meltzer could be said to have encapsulated the essence of Bion's post-Kleinian trajectory when he wrote that 'If we follow Bion's thought closely, we see that the new idea presents itself as an emotional experience of the beauty of the world and its wondrous organisation.' The contributions in this book are by analysts and therapists from a wide variety of countries working with both children and adults. They have all, in individual ways, found 'aesthetic conflict' a useful frame of reference in terms of illuminating the significance of clinical observation, understanding countertransference responses, or practising the psychoanalytic method itself.

This book shares with a number of recent studies an interest in the historical development of English in the United States, in how it became a central discipline in the humanities, and in what the ideological affiliations of literature and literary study might be. It is strikingly original, however, in that instead of focusing on the subject matter of English (e.g., the canon or critical positions), as most recent studies, it examines precisely how work time is spent within English departments, as well as what circulates through them, and to where. For in terms of immediate social authority, such activities as writing letters of recommendation are more directly relevant than critical methodology. The author concludes by locating cultural work in English between such massively capitalized sites of cultural production as television and advertising, and "popular cultures," meaning what people do every day with whatever is cheaply available to them. English is like the former in that it requires highly developed, socially certified skills and knowledges. Like popular cultures, however, work in English is carried out with readily available material means. By recognizing this actual situation, he argues, one can view English as not just passively reproducing the existing system of social values, but as working within popular culture to provide the possibility of meaningful political opposition.

This volume traces a path across the metamorphoses of tragedy and the tragic in Western cultures during the bourgeois age of nations, revolutions, and empires, roughly delimited by the French Revolution and the First World War. Its starting point is the recognition that tragedy did not die with Romanticism, as George Steiner famously argued over half a century ago, but rather mutated and dispersed, converging into a variety of unstable, productive forms both on the stage and off. In turn, the tragic as a concept and mode transformed itself under the pressure of multiple social, historical and political-ideological phenomena. This volume therefore deploys a narrative centred on hybridization extending across media, genres, demographics, faiths both religious and secular, and national boundaries. The essays also tell a story of how tragedy and the tragic offered multiple means of capturing the increasingly fragmented perception of reality and history that emerged in the 19th century. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

Drawing from ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary sources, this textbook offers a comprehensive and systematic historical overview of aesthetic theory.

The book has two aims. First, to examine the extent and significance of the connection between Hume's aesthetics and his moral philosophy; and, second, to consider how, in light of the connection, his moral philosophy answers central questions in ethics. The first aim is realized in chapters 1-4. Chapter 1 examines Hume's essay "Of the Standard of Taste" to understand his search for a "standard" and how this affects the scope of his aesthetics. Chapter 2 establishes that he treats beauty in nature and art and moral beauty as similar in kind, and applies the conclusions about his aesthetics to his moral thought. Chapter 3 solves a puzzle to which this gives rise, namely, how individuals both accept general standards that they also contravene in the course of aesthetic and moral activity. Chapter 4 takes up the normative aspect of Hume's approach by understanding moral character through his view of moral beauty. The second aim of the book is realized in chapters 5-7 by entertaining three objections against Hume's moral philosophy. First, if morality is an immediate reaction to the beauty of vice and the deformity of virtue, why is perfect virtue not the general condition of every human individual? Second, if morality consists of sentiments that arise in the subject, how can moral judgments be objective and claim universal validity? And third, if one can talk of "general standards" governing conduct, how does one account for the diversity of moral systems and their change over time? The first is answered by showing that like good taste in aesthetics, 'right taste' in morals requires that the sentiments are educated; the second, by arguing against the view that Hume is a subjectivist and a relativist, and the third (chapter 6), by showing that his approach contains a view of progress left untouched by any personal prejudices Hume himself might harbor. The book concludes in chapter 7 by showing how Hume's view of philosophy affects the scope of any normative ethics.

The Aesthetic View of Moral Education is the result of in-depth interdisciplinary research in education and aesthetic studies. This book advocates the use of aesthetic ideas and methods to transform moral education activities, which are often trapped in a state of forced indoctrination. This book aims to address the problems of moral education in China and share certain commonalities in the exploration of educational theory. The aesthetic view of moral education is a new and practical philosophy of education. The author's theory of moral education as the appreciation of beauty, the creation of beauty, and the theory of the attainment of the ultimate realm of moral education provide an in-depth analysis of the functions of aesthetic education for moral cultivation. The author also offers unique interpretations of the aesthetic transformation of the process of moral education itself and the pursuit of the realm of moral life and education. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of education and philosophy, East Asian studies, and readers interested in China's cultural traditions.

The artist/educators in this book invite you to come with them on a journey of discovery into the meaning of teaching for aesthetic experience. With learning as their art, they create educational encounters with passion and feeling, and leave their students with vivid impressions, growth, and change. Each author engages in aesthetic experience from an individual perspective - as poet, dancer, visual artist, or musician - and each of them engages as an educator who brings art into his or her classroom, no matter what the subject. Inspired by the words of philosopher Maxine Greene, the contributors transform the theoretical into the practical, urging students to look to the arts and nature for simple beauty, and awaken their minds to new possibilities of creative learning.