Topic of the issue AESTHETICS: FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE FUTURE
Issue editor: Ivanka Stapova
CONTENTS & Abstracts & Keywords & The authors in the issue
Ivan Stefanov (Prof. DSc. at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”)
Art and Media
Abstract:This article deals with the way art and media not only deny but also constantly integrate each other, thereby reaching a difficult to discern absolute unity. Thus, the two spheres – art and communication – lose their independence and solidity and turn into endless cultural streams. Their dual, hybrid form is constructed by the widespread perception of them and their constant presence, as well as by their incompleteness and fast transience. This is why in mass culture there is no eternal return to elite pieces of art, but rather an eternal movement of endless artistic-communicative streams, aimed at taking possession of an endless, linear time.
Keywords: Benjamin; Lotman; art; mass media; mass culture.
Silviya Kristeva (Assoc. Prof. at South-West University “Neofit Rilski”)
The Construction of the Fantastic Image. Kant and Schelling
Abstract: The paper offers a discourse and approach to Kant's and Schelling's vision of imagination and fantasy and attempts to illuminate the construction of the fantastic image. Kant separates fantasy as a spontaneous play of productive imagination, even though he admits its ability to create objects that “are not given in the experience”. According to Schelling, the total human activity in art is already a separate research object. This activity unfolds in the universe as a form of the absolute, in which the first images of ideas form the ideal world and determine each specific artistic image. The deduced conditions of the construction of the fantastic image (the pure continuum of intuition and a possible apperception of the image) establish the framework of a new thematic field – the philosophy of the fantastic.
Keywords: Kant; Schelling; philosophy of art; imagination; fantasy; internal contemplation; the universe of image making; philosophy of the fantastic.
Silvia Borisova (Assist. Prof., PhD at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
Ontology of the Work of Art in Gadamer
Abstract:The article is a comment on Hans-Georg Gadamer's concept of the work of art presented in his most significant work, Truth and Method. Gadamer's view of the being of the artwork is consistently deduced from the broader context of the problem of truth in the humanities compared with truth in the natural sciences; and from the immanent positioning of the idea of aesthetic consciousness in the field of the humanities alongside historical, philosophical and hermeneutic consciousness, so that it attains the receptive-aesthetic interpretation of the artwork as playing that has gained an increase of being in terms of a “transformation into a figure”.
Keywords: Gadamer; truth in the humanities; aesthetic consciousness; artwork; play; “transformation into a figure”
Art and Media
Abstract:This article deals with the way art and media not only deny but also constantly integrate each other, thereby reaching a difficult to discern absolute unity. Thus, the two spheres – art and communication – lose their independence and solidity and turn into endless cultural streams. Their dual, hybrid form is constructed by the widespread perception of them and their constant presence, as well as by their incompleteness and fast transience. This is why in mass culture there is no eternal return to elite pieces of art, but rather an eternal movement of endless artistic-communicative streams, aimed at taking possession of an endless, linear time.
Keywords: Benjamin; Lotman; art; mass media; mass culture.
Silviya Kristeva (Assoc. Prof. at South-West University “Neofit Rilski”)
The Construction of the Fantastic Image. Kant and Schelling
Abstract: The paper offers a discourse and approach to Kant's and Schelling's vision of imagination and fantasy and attempts to illuminate the construction of the fantastic image. Kant separates fantasy as a spontaneous play of productive imagination, even though he admits its ability to create objects that “are not given in the experience”. According to Schelling, the total human activity in art is already a separate research object. This activity unfolds in the universe as a form of the absolute, in which the first images of ideas form the ideal world and determine each specific artistic image. The deduced conditions of the construction of the fantastic image (the pure continuum of intuition and a possible apperception of the image) establish the framework of a new thematic field – the philosophy of the fantastic.
Keywords: Kant; Schelling; philosophy of art; imagination; fantasy; internal contemplation; the universe of image making; philosophy of the fantastic.
Silvia Borisova (Assist. Prof., PhD at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
Ontology of the Work of Art in Gadamer
Abstract:The article is a comment on Hans-Georg Gadamer's concept of the work of art presented in his most significant work, Truth and Method. Gadamer's view of the being of the artwork is consistently deduced from the broader context of the problem of truth in the humanities compared with truth in the natural sciences; and from the immanent positioning of the idea of aesthetic consciousness in the field of the humanities alongside historical, philosophical and hermeneutic consciousness, so that it attains the receptive-aesthetic interpretation of the artwork as playing that has gained an increase of being in terms of a “transformation into a figure”.
Keywords: Gadamer; truth in the humanities; aesthetic consciousness; artwork; play; “transformation into a figure”
Ahinora Antova (BPhil at the University of Vienna (Hauptuniversität Wien)
Baroque or Postmodernism. Between Leibniz and Deleuze
Abstract: The article attempts to translate adequately into Bulgarian my more or less essayistic interpretation (originally written in German (1988)) of Deleuze's book Le pli. Leibniz et le Baroque. The problem of the relevant translation and the multilingualism of my approach to the book can in itself already be regarded as a kind of philosophical reflection insofar as the invention of new terms, according to Deleuze, already represents a philosophical practice. My text concentrates on the French term pli (fold), which Deleuze first discovers in his reading of Leibniz's Monadology and then uses to define Baroque mentality in general. This term also becomes synonymous with monad or subject in the same sense as Deleuze understands it – namely, as a difference. Parallel to my analysis of Deleuze's book, references are also made to other texts and authors who have explicitly dealt with the Baroque period, which helps me to define his philosophy and aesthetics precisely as proto-postmodern.
Keywords: baroque; postmodernity; subject; monad; allegory; concept; logic of the event.
Nikolay Velev (PhD at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”)
Alois Riegl and Max Dvořák: Normativity of Vision and Spirituality of Perception
Abstract: This text researches Riegl's and Dvořák's concepts of artistic will and spirit of art as theoretical foundations for structural transformation in the history of art. The focus is on the common points as well as the differences; the article develops the thesis that, while Riegl still adheres to strict normativity in the theory of art, Dvořák manages to adapt his theory to the on-going processes in modern art, and particularly to expressionism.
Keywords: painting; normativity; formal school; Riegl; Dvořák; vision; modern art; expressionism.
Galin Penev (Assist. Prof., PhD at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology , Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
The Concept of Symbol in Aleksey Losev
Abstract: The article considers different plans of symbolic cognition and being, examined in Losev's earliest works. Throughout all of Losev`s works, myth is consistently established as a symbolic representation of being. Every usual thing becomes a symbol of an absolute individuality when it takes part in a dialectics of part and whole. This dialectics is just a skeleton of the intuitively grasped body of the vital being of the symbol. The genuine symbol overcomes the decomposing antinomies and restores the unity between image and word, present and absence.
Keywords:symbol; dialectics; philosophy of name; model; ipseitas.
Baroque or Postmodernism. Between Leibniz and Deleuze
Abstract: The article attempts to translate adequately into Bulgarian my more or less essayistic interpretation (originally written in German (1988)) of Deleuze's book Le pli. Leibniz et le Baroque. The problem of the relevant translation and the multilingualism of my approach to the book can in itself already be regarded as a kind of philosophical reflection insofar as the invention of new terms, according to Deleuze, already represents a philosophical practice. My text concentrates on the French term pli (fold), which Deleuze first discovers in his reading of Leibniz's Monadology and then uses to define Baroque mentality in general. This term also becomes synonymous with monad or subject in the same sense as Deleuze understands it – namely, as a difference. Parallel to my analysis of Deleuze's book, references are also made to other texts and authors who have explicitly dealt with the Baroque period, which helps me to define his philosophy and aesthetics precisely as proto-postmodern.
Keywords: baroque; postmodernity; subject; monad; allegory; concept; logic of the event.
Nikolay Velev (PhD at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”)
Alois Riegl and Max Dvořák: Normativity of Vision and Spirituality of Perception
Abstract: This text researches Riegl's and Dvořák's concepts of artistic will and spirit of art as theoretical foundations for structural transformation in the history of art. The focus is on the common points as well as the differences; the article develops the thesis that, while Riegl still adheres to strict normativity in the theory of art, Dvořák manages to adapt his theory to the on-going processes in modern art, and particularly to expressionism.
Keywords: painting; normativity; formal school; Riegl; Dvořák; vision; modern art; expressionism.
Galin Penev (Assist. Prof., PhD at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology , Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
The Concept of Symbol in Aleksey Losev
Abstract: The article considers different plans of symbolic cognition and being, examined in Losev's earliest works. Throughout all of Losev`s works, myth is consistently established as a symbolic representation of being. Every usual thing becomes a symbol of an absolute individuality when it takes part in a dialectics of part and whole. This dialectics is just a skeleton of the intuitively grasped body of the vital being of the symbol. The genuine symbol overcomes the decomposing antinomies and restores the unity between image and word, present and absence.
Keywords:symbol; dialectics; philosophy of name; model; ipseitas.
George Santayana (George Santayana is the anglicized name of Jorge Agustнn Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás – (16.12.1863–26.09.1952 г.). Аn American philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist, born in Madrid and raised in the US.)
The Sense of Beauty. Part 1. The Nature of Beauty (an excerpt)
Abstract: This text is part of George Santayana's central aesthetic opus, The Sense of Beauty, and presents three paragraphs from Part I. The Nature of Beauty. The main topics covered in the paragraphs are, in successive order: the argumentation of the philosophy of beauty as a theory of values, the difference between aesthetic values and moral ones, and a narrower definition of beauty.
Keywords: philosophy of beauty; theory of value; aesthetic appreciation; aesthetic values; moral values; beauty; pleasure; pain; good; evil.
Mikhail Bakhtin (Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) - a Russian philosopher, literary critic and semiotician.)
Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity
Abstract: Essentially important for the adequate understanding of Bakhtin's multi-layered aesthetics is his great work Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity, written in the early 1920s and dealing with the correlation between author and character in aesthetic activity, in the act of artistic creativity and in the work of art. The book, for its part, belongs to its time, which is reflected in its difficult, complex and multi-faceted terminology. But it assumes the topical significance that the problem of the author acquires not only for Bakhtin, but also for contemporary aesthetics and poetics in general. Bakhtin's scientific position in the 1920s can be defined as a withdrawal and repulsion from those fields of art and poetics that he generally defines as "material aesthetics". The work in question also provides a thorough and precise critique of the author's attitude towards the hero – philosophically developed here as a critique of the reduction of vital values to material ones. Another object of fundamental critique is the concept of "feeling"(Einfuhlung), which was highly influential in aesthetics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here, Bakhtin defines his own field of study as "the aesthetics of verbal creativity", and this too broad and multi-layered in its meaning formula was justifiably chosen by the publishers as the title of the manuscript book.
Keywords:author; hero; the author's attitude to the character; the subject and structure of the character; certainty and stability of the image of the character; unreflexiveness of the author in the creative process; receptive perception; active generating energy; psychologically driven consciousness; incarnation of the meaning of being; feeling (Einfuhlung).
The Sense of Beauty. Part 1. The Nature of Beauty (an excerpt)
Abstract: This text is part of George Santayana's central aesthetic opus, The Sense of Beauty, and presents three paragraphs from Part I. The Nature of Beauty. The main topics covered in the paragraphs are, in successive order: the argumentation of the philosophy of beauty as a theory of values, the difference between aesthetic values and moral ones, and a narrower definition of beauty.
Keywords: philosophy of beauty; theory of value; aesthetic appreciation; aesthetic values; moral values; beauty; pleasure; pain; good; evil.
Mikhail Bakhtin (Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) - a Russian philosopher, literary critic and semiotician.)
Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity
Abstract: Essentially important for the adequate understanding of Bakhtin's multi-layered aesthetics is his great work Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity, written in the early 1920s and dealing with the correlation between author and character in aesthetic activity, in the act of artistic creativity and in the work of art. The book, for its part, belongs to its time, which is reflected in its difficult, complex and multi-faceted terminology. But it assumes the topical significance that the problem of the author acquires not only for Bakhtin, but also for contemporary aesthetics and poetics in general. Bakhtin's scientific position in the 1920s can be defined as a withdrawal and repulsion from those fields of art and poetics that he generally defines as "material aesthetics". The work in question also provides a thorough and precise critique of the author's attitude towards the hero – philosophically developed here as a critique of the reduction of vital values to material ones. Another object of fundamental critique is the concept of "feeling"(Einfuhlung), which was highly influential in aesthetics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here, Bakhtin defines his own field of study as "the aesthetics of verbal creativity", and this too broad and multi-layered in its meaning formula was justifiably chosen by the publishers as the title of the manuscript book.
Keywords:author; hero; the author's attitude to the character; the subject and structure of the character; certainty and stability of the image of the character; unreflexiveness of the author in the creative process; receptive perception; active generating energy; psychologically driven consciousness; incarnation of the meaning of being; feeling (Einfuhlung).
Avrora Andreeva (PhD in Philosophy, ballet pedagogist and choreographer at The Dance Center Luzern, Switzerland)
The Communicative Function of Dance as a Subject of Philosophical Aesthetics
Abstract:This study focuses on an essential aspect of dance that is often neglected or rejected in dance research. The being of dance is viewed and considered as an aesthetic and social phenomenon. At the same time, the study postulates that dance – as an art form and as a social phenomenon – is a way of communication, of non-verbal expression, and a miscellaneous means for interchange of thoughts, feelings, perceptions and ideas between the participants in dance reality, an invitation to the outside world to enter within. The article holds the view that dance necessarily carries some kind of message and content. The means of expression involved in dance reveal their potential to transcend, transmit, to imply or hint, and sometimes even to hide meaning within the realized dance reality. In addition, the detailed analysis of the ballet-mime scene in Swan Lake traces a conversation, a “silent dialogue” between the two main characters, which is probably one of the best illustrations of the direct act of communication through art in general, and dance in particular.
Keywords:aesthetic movement; ballet mime; communication; dance; expression.
Vyara Popova (Assist. Prof., PhD at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
From the Whirl of the Ritual Dance Sema to the Fateful Meeting between the Poet and Mystic Rumi and the Dervish Shams on the Path to Divine Love and Light
Abstract:The text offers a formal and meaningful analysis of the ritual dance-prayer Sema; on this basis, the author: 1) briefly presents Sufism as a specific mystical movement in Islam, and 2) introduces expository concepts and terminology specific to Sufism. The text proceeds from the premise that Sema is a visual demonstration of Rumi's ideas, expressed in his poetry, regarding the Path, Love, and the Beloved as symbols of the relation of the human being (as created) to the Creator. Thus, the dance Sema becomes a visual-figurative cipher for the adequate reading and understanding of Rumi's mystical poetry.
Keywords: Sema; suufism; sufi; order; Muslim asceticism; passions; enlightenment; prayer; Divine Love; spiritual Light; Orhan Pamuk; Elif Shafrak.
The Communicative Function of Dance as a Subject of Philosophical Aesthetics
Abstract:This study focuses on an essential aspect of dance that is often neglected or rejected in dance research. The being of dance is viewed and considered as an aesthetic and social phenomenon. At the same time, the study postulates that dance – as an art form and as a social phenomenon – is a way of communication, of non-verbal expression, and a miscellaneous means for interchange of thoughts, feelings, perceptions and ideas between the participants in dance reality, an invitation to the outside world to enter within. The article holds the view that dance necessarily carries some kind of message and content. The means of expression involved in dance reveal their potential to transcend, transmit, to imply or hint, and sometimes even to hide meaning within the realized dance reality. In addition, the detailed analysis of the ballet-mime scene in Swan Lake traces a conversation, a “silent dialogue” between the two main characters, which is probably one of the best illustrations of the direct act of communication through art in general, and dance in particular.
Keywords:aesthetic movement; ballet mime; communication; dance; expression.
Vyara Popova (Assist. Prof., PhD at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
From the Whirl of the Ritual Dance Sema to the Fateful Meeting between the Poet and Mystic Rumi and the Dervish Shams on the Path to Divine Love and Light
Abstract:The text offers a formal and meaningful analysis of the ritual dance-prayer Sema; on this basis, the author: 1) briefly presents Sufism as a specific mystical movement in Islam, and 2) introduces expository concepts and terminology specific to Sufism. The text proceeds from the premise that Sema is a visual demonstration of Rumi's ideas, expressed in his poetry, regarding the Path, Love, and the Beloved as symbols of the relation of the human being (as created) to the Creator. Thus, the dance Sema becomes a visual-figurative cipher for the adequate reading and understanding of Rumi's mystical poetry.
Keywords: Sema; suufism; sufi; order; Muslim asceticism; passions; enlightenment; prayer; Divine Love; spiritual Light; Orhan Pamuk; Elif Shafrak.
Nikifor Avramov (Assist. Prof., PhD at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”)
Aesthetics and Morphology
Abstract:The text poses the question of the ontological definition of the aesthetical subject independently of historiographical and cultural accretions. It therefore sees aesthetics as stemming from the knowledge of the form of the “pure” aesthetical subject. Morphology, understood in the context of the unity between inner and outer form, is presented in turn as a method mediating between the two and revealing the meaning of the creative act.
Keywords: aesthetics; morphology; inner form; outer form; historiography; relativism; essentialism.
Nikolina Deleva (PhD Graduate Student at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
Aesthetic Evolution of Authorship in Theatre
Abstract: The article discusses the historical evolution of the concept of authorship in theatre, It explores the subject of the death of the author, the disappearance of subjectivity and reality in postmodern art. Аnother topic is the conceptual crisis of aesthetics with regard to the definition and evaluation of contemporary art forms.
Keywords: author; theatre; playwright; director; producer; audience; actor; interactor; subject; work of art; happening; performance; postmodern art.
Vasil Vasilev (PhD Graduate Student at the Institute for Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
The Street as a Place of Transformation for the German Expressionists, Geo Milev and Asen Raztsvetnikov
Abstract:This text deals with the dynamics and dialectics of the street as a special space of multifaceted impacts and transformations, which are in many cases of a borderline and ecstatic kind. From the viewpoint of the authors under consideration, the street is seen and experienced as a topos of crisis, of revelations, but also of secrets, of apocalyptic visions revealed primarily in the depths of affect, but also through morbid expressionistic reflection; visions that seem to come together and unite within hypnotic prophecies...
Keywords:chaos; breakdown; destruction; transformation; vitality; intensity; power; elation; ecstasy; expression; unity; Spirit.
Mitko Markov (Philosophy teacher at 138th Language School “Prof. Vasil Zlatarski”)
The Male Nude in Ancient Greece: Aesthetics and/or Metaphysics?
Abstract:The aim of this paper is to show the close connection between the question of the metaphysical notion of the Beginning (arche) in Ancient Greek philosophy and the aesthetical perception of the male form. The philosophical notion of “arche” and all abstract-theoretical thought, I conclude, is part of the organic mythological perception represented in the numerous kouroi statues that show the idealized male body.
Keywords:masculinity; male; nude; Ancient Greece; sculpture; arche; kouroi.
Aesthetics and Morphology
Abstract:The text poses the question of the ontological definition of the aesthetical subject independently of historiographical and cultural accretions. It therefore sees aesthetics as stemming from the knowledge of the form of the “pure” aesthetical subject. Morphology, understood in the context of the unity between inner and outer form, is presented in turn as a method mediating between the two and revealing the meaning of the creative act.
Keywords: aesthetics; morphology; inner form; outer form; historiography; relativism; essentialism.
Nikolina Deleva (PhD Graduate Student at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
Aesthetic Evolution of Authorship in Theatre
Abstract: The article discusses the historical evolution of the concept of authorship in theatre, It explores the subject of the death of the author, the disappearance of subjectivity and reality in postmodern art. Аnother topic is the conceptual crisis of aesthetics with regard to the definition and evaluation of contemporary art forms.
Keywords: author; theatre; playwright; director; producer; audience; actor; interactor; subject; work of art; happening; performance; postmodern art.
Vasil Vasilev (PhD Graduate Student at the Institute for Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
The Street as a Place of Transformation for the German Expressionists, Geo Milev and Asen Raztsvetnikov
Abstract:This text deals with the dynamics and dialectics of the street as a special space of multifaceted impacts and transformations, which are in many cases of a borderline and ecstatic kind. From the viewpoint of the authors under consideration, the street is seen and experienced as a topos of crisis, of revelations, but also of secrets, of apocalyptic visions revealed primarily in the depths of affect, but also through morbid expressionistic reflection; visions that seem to come together and unite within hypnotic prophecies...
Keywords:chaos; breakdown; destruction; transformation; vitality; intensity; power; elation; ecstasy; expression; unity; Spirit.
Mitko Markov (Philosophy teacher at 138th Language School “Prof. Vasil Zlatarski”)
The Male Nude in Ancient Greece: Aesthetics and/or Metaphysics?
Abstract:The aim of this paper is to show the close connection between the question of the metaphysical notion of the Beginning (arche) in Ancient Greek philosophy and the aesthetical perception of the male form. The philosophical notion of “arche” and all abstract-theoretical thought, I conclude, is part of the organic mythological perception represented in the numerous kouroi statues that show the idealized male body.
Keywords:masculinity; male; nude; Ancient Greece; sculpture; arche; kouroi.
Nonka Bogomilova (DSc., Professor, Retired)
The Reality of the Unreal
Nina Dimitrova (DSc., Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
The Multifaceted Being of Man
The Reality of the Unreal
Nina Dimitrova (DSc., Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
The Multifaceted Being of Man