Aesthetics and Ethics

How can we describe movements in animated films? In Figure and Force in Animation Aesthetics, Ryan Pierson introduces a powerful new method for the study of animation. By looking for figures--arrangements that seem to intuitively hold together--and forces--underlying units of attraction, repulsion, and direction--Pierson reveals startling new possibilities for animation criticism, history, and theory. Drawing on concepts from Gestalt psychology, Pierson offers a wide-ranging comparative study of four animation techniques--soft-edged forms, walk cycles, camera movement, and rotoscoping--as they appear in commercial, artisanal, and avant-garde works. In the process, through close readings of little-analyzed films, Pierson demonstrates that figures and forces make fertile resources for theoretical speculation, unearthing affinities between animation practice and such topics as the philosophy of mathematics, scientific and political revolution, and love. Beginning and ending with the imperative to look closely, Figure and Force in Animation Aesthetics is a performance in seeing the world of motion anew.

Poter accedere a qualsiasi immagine, in qualsiasi momento, in qualsiasi luogo. I nuovi media prospettano straordinarie vie di fruizione. Ma come orientarsi in questo scenario? La nostra cultura visuale è capace di tenere il passo della tecnologia? Questo libro racconta come il cinema, ben prima dell'avvento della tecnologia digitale, abbia saputo accogliere immagini provenienti da archivi pubblici e privati: dai rapporti con la pittura al foundfootage, dalla pratica del remake all'intermedialità. Molte volte assegnato al compito di produrre un calco del "reale", il film costituisce piuttosto uno spazio del pensiero nel quale si rielaborano le immagini del passato e si rigenerano i materiali "usurati" della cultura. Se i nuovi media invitano lo spettatore a manipolare le immagini e non semplicemente a osservarle, è dunque a partire dalle lezioni di montaggio offerte da maestri come Godard e Herzog, Sokurov e Van Sant, Pasolini e Moretti, che diventa possibile assumere un ruolo attivo e consapevole nell'orizzonte estetico e mediatico contemporaneo.

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

Richard Linklater’s celebrated Before trilogy chronicles the love of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) who first meet up in Before Sunrise, later reconnect in Before Sunset and finally experience a fall-out in Before Midnight. Not only do these films present storylines and dilemmas that invite philosophical discussion, but philosophical discussion itself is at the very heart of the trilogy.

This book, containing specially commissioned chapters by a roster of international contributors, explores the many philosophical themes that feature so vividly in the interactions between Céline and Jesse, including:

the nature of love, romanticism and marriage
the passage and experience of time
the meaning of life
the art of conversation
the narrative self
gender
death

Including an interview with Julie Delpy in which she discusses her involvement in the films and the importance of studying philosophy.

The discourse on the relationship between form and function in the world of design
has its roots in the industrial and Tayloristic model that contrasts and differs from the artistic
and artisanal process since the disciplinary foundation. At the origin of the debate there are
visions about the role of design in society, but also about the specificity of its own language.
The digital revolution and the introduction of Human-computer interaction and the wider
concept of Human-centered design have profoundly transformed this relationship, strongly
shifting it in favor of people, their expectations and their needs. In particular, when design
then focuses on inclusive and universal approaches – i.e. addressing needs that go beyond
standards – form is often sacrificed on the altar of accessibility transforming the experience
of both audiences – “normal” as well as impaired subjects – into a poor and a “low-resolution”
one. On the other hand, for people with disabilities, form itself is the essence of experience.
Whether it is the sound channel or VUI in the case of visual deficiencies, the figurative
language, for acoustic disabilities, or the tactile-sensory component, considering the cognitive
and perceptual aspects, the form becomes both the medium and the message as well. The
paper aims to identify the stages of a possible cultural and social journey, within the broader
scenario of Universal design/Design for all and the culture of accessibility, which includes the
aesthetic-emotional dimension as a shared design value and driver of innovation in the sector.
Besides, it illustrates through the discussion of case studies, in the field of personal and public
communication, possible approaches to ethics and aesthetics of inclusive design.

The Nobel Prize, arguably the most prestigious acknowledgement of ethical achievement, was established by Alfred Nobel to honor those who have performed “to the greatest benefit of mankind” (Nobel, 2018). Despite the many categories for which Nobel laureates are recognized, there is no category that specifically recognizes the visual artist. In addition, many other direct and indirect measures of individual ethical achievement, such as Gallup’s annual most admired man and woman poll, rarely mention artists. This lack raises an important question: Do contributions to the visual arts fall outside the realm of ethics, thus rendering visual artists ineligible to stand as models of the ethical life?
This dissertation aims to cultivate an understanding of the visual artist as a type of ethical exemplar known as the “restored beautiful soul,” a theoretical construct proposed here for the first time in the Masi Model of the Artist as Restored Beautiful Soul (MMARBS). This construct combines the kalos kagathos ideal of the “beautiful soul,” which originated in ancient Greece as the fusion of the beautiful and the good and was revived by Enlightenment philosophers, with a restorative additional element of the communal. Using this new theoretical construct, this investigation analyzes the lives, practices, and influences of a sample of prominent late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century visual artists.
This investigation is not simply a theoretical foray into the construct of the ethical artist, however; it is also a practical contribution to the field of arts education. Currently, arts schools and art programs at institutions of higher learning offer little guidance to help aspiring young artists ground their lives and work in a comprehensive system of personal and professional ethics. To remedy this deficiency, arts educators can incorporate the case examples from this investigation into their own curricula, and, more important still, apply the restored beautiful soul construct (MMARBS) to other historical and contemporary artists. Thus, using this new construct, arts educators can develop one-of-a-kind curricula tailored to the needs of specific students, providing those students with role models to demonstrate what it means to maintain a sense of integrity with respect to one’s work, one’s viewers, and one’s community over a career spanning a lifetime.

Thomas conceived his summa as educationnal: clear texts, concision, exhaustivity  are required so that the student  get  a complete introduction to theology as a whole. That the criteria  (claritas, proportio, completio) are of aesthetic nature is striking.  Taking an aesthetic point of view on theology seems to be  the best way for understanding it  really and deeply. Why is it so?

The origins of modern photojournalism in Germany, during the yeas 1925-1933, is the central object of this dissertation. Checking popular illustrated magazines, such as Berlliner Illustrirte Zeitung, and their contemporary critics, one seeks to know if could understand them with a notion of “aesthetic of transparency”. In order to arrive at the empirical research, some notions about the modern and modernity were delineated, hoping to understand the cultural processes and regimes of visuality of the beginning of 1920s as its unfolding, as well as starting from some reflections of Charles Baudelaire to think the aesthetic experience of modernity and its relation with photography. In addition, it was tried to understand if a dialogue between realism and modernisms could be possible, within the German context. The Weimar Republic was thought of as a democratic space for political, economic and social rearticulation, in which photography would have been articulated by the artistic field such as Neues Sehen (New Vision), by Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, and Neue Sachlichkeit Objectivity), by Albert Renger-Patzsch, exerting on the photographic production in journalism some of its conditions for its modernization. Finally, it was reflected on the modernization of the photojournalism in the Weimar Republic from the illustrated magazines study, based on the use of the photographic series potentially narrating journalistic facts, mainly from some photographs of Erich Salomon and Felix H. Man. This study allowed us to verify that the ripening of photojournalism met a demand of the German reading public for facts, reinforcing a certain professional ideology of objectivity. Having been possible by the coincidence of relations, as photographers willing to produce many images of various aesthetic forms under a diversity of conditions, allied to the freedom of editorial power and its experimentation, besides the rising of photographic agencies that began to order photographic work with the written report.

This chapter scrutinizes a particular debate that is taking place within architectural discourse, on the topic of alleged reduction of ethics to aesthetics in architectural theory, and probes what a sustained philosophical reflection can offer to clarify and advance that debate. To do that, the chapter offers for consideration sources which document and report the alleged reduction. It then attempts to formalize the type of argument that typically accompanies such documentation to establish that such reductions are unacceptable, a claim this chapter will label the “Unacceptability Thesis”. The remainder of the chapter addresses whether or not the reduction is indeed unacceptable from a philosophical point of view, in the sense of being theoretically false.

What ethical challenges arise when you make a dramatized film with popular actors and actresses about a serial killer? A case study on Netflix's recent foray into films about Ted Bundy. Authored by Irie Crenshaw & Scott R. Stroud. More case studies at www.mediaethicsinitiative.org.

En el presente trabajo se realiza un acercamiento critico a la obra del artista contemporaneo Santiago Sierra. La exploracion se sustenta en la perspectiva teorica que ofrecen las categorias de tactica y estrategia utilizadas por Michel de Certeau. El objetivo es analizar el modo en que Sierra plantea la representacion de la condicion laboral y de la sumision corporal al sistema capitalista para problematizar el estatuto mercantil del arte

The aim of this paper is to analyse and assess Arthur Schopenhauer’s theory of the sublime developed in his book named ‘The World as Will and Representation’, in order to have an Aesthetic appreciation of the sublime framework via the analysis of the painters: J.M.W. Turner and his painting ‘The Slave Ship’; and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and his painting ‘The incredulity of Saint Thomas’. The 1st Section will be dealing with a brief analysis of Schopenhauer’s Metaphysical groundings. The 2nd Section will deal with Schopenhauer’s aesthetics and how it is always dependent on his Metaphysics in order to bring about the contrast between the Beautiful and the Sublime, paying attention particularly to the latter. Lastly, the 3rd Section will deal with the analysis of turner’s painting to show why it can represent the mathematical sublime aesthetic experience and Caravaggio’s painting to show why it can represent the dynamic sublime aesthetic experience. I will argue, furthermore, Schopenhauer’s account of the sublime is still redundant and interesting to understand for a fruitful conversation of Aesthetics.

This study is made based on an interview between Professor Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Dr. Md. Abu Sayem about environmental issues. Professor Nasr connected religious / spiritual views of the environment with the present ecological crisis. He advocates a traditional worldview in order to save the natural world.

This article explores the various ways in which noise acts as an aesthetic marker of precarity in Nick Broomfield's Ghosts, a documentary account of the death of 23 undocumented Chinese nationals in the United Kingdom in 2004. Taking its cue from recent work on aesthetics and the temporalities of precarity, it considers the ways in which the different forms of noise-medial and informational-index the ways in which the figure of the undocumented migrant labourer disturbs dominant western accounts of the aesthetic predi-cated on a division between production and consumption. Noise, in the form of Michel Serres' conceptual figure of the parasite, it argues, registers the ways in which precarious labour has revealed the dependence of aesthetic categories on models of production rendered incoherent by the representation of undocumented migrant labour.

[fr] Ce texte est un chapitre à peine remanié de ma thèse de doctorat consacrée à l’histoire de l’idée de littérature. La thèse est une enquête historique sur la littérature telle qu’inventée par le premier romantisme allemand. J’y défends l’idée qu’au XXe siècle, à « l’heure fatale de l’art », des réflexions théoriques et des pratiques littéraires et artistiques créent un schisme, construisant un rapport critique et dialectique à l’idée de littérature romantique, déterminant un nouveau mode d’être de la littérature. Ce chapitre étudie comment, sur le plan théorique, une tradition de « critique de la culture » (Kulturkritik) forge le concept de kitsch de façon à caractériser ce qui, dans l’art et la littérature, rend possible qu’un document de culture soit « en même temps un document de barbarie » (Benjamin).

[en] This text is a hardly modified chapter from my thesis on the history of the idea of literature. The thesis is a historical enquiry into the idea of literature as invented by early German Romanticism. I promote the idea that, in the twentieth century, at a time when the fate of art hangs in the balance, theoretical inquiry and literary and artistic practice bring about a schism, creating as they do a critical and dialectical relation to the Romantic idea of literature and determining a new mode of being for literature. This chapter focuses on how, in the theoretical inquiries, a tradition of Kulturkritik elaborates the concept of kitsch so as to characterize what, in art and literature, makes possible that a document of culture is “at the same time a document of barbarism” (Benjamin).

Come è possibile accostare l’estetica, ovvero lo studio dell’arte e del bello, alla vita di tutti giorni? Eppure nell’attuale dibattito anglo-americano questa locuzione ossimorica sta prendendo sempre più consistenza teorica nell’ambito di una nuova disciplina, l’Everyday Aesthetics. Il libro si propone di presentare, per la prima volta in lingua italiana, questo recente campo di indagine, intrecciando le ricerche anglo-americane sull’Everyday Aesthetics e quelle europee sull’estetizzazione del reale. Da queste analisi appare evidente che l’estetica ha ormai cessato di essere una filosofia riferita a uno specifico oggetto di studio (arte bella), ed è diventata un paradigma transdisciplinare, aperto alle pratiche della vita di ogni giorno (cura del corpo, cibo, moda, design). Tuttavia tale ampliamento di orizzonti verso la quotidianità non deve volgersi a una bellezza superficiale e consumistica, come spesso accade, ma all’acquisizione di una consapevolezza corporea (aisthesis) capace di guidarci verso scelte più responsabili e di indurci ad avere maggiore cura di noi stessi, degli altri e dell’ambiente in cui viviamo.

Der Vortrag geht der Frage nach, inwieweit es möglich ist, sich in aktuellen Umwelten handelnd als ästhetisches Subjekt zu realisieren. Der Fokus liegt dabei in mehrfacher Hinsicht auf Grenzgebieten: Zum einen stehen zeitgenössische ästhetische Praktiken im Fokus, die sich an den Grenzen von Kunst und Alltäglichkeit bewegen. Zum anderen wird spätmodernes Subjektsein selbst als etwas gefasst, das sich fortwährend an Grenzen entlang bewegt und dabei Polaritäten streift: zwischen innen und außen, Aktivität und Passivität, Produktion und Rezeption. Der Vortrag erkundet die Möglichkeiten, diese Parallelen für eine ästhetisch-ethische Konzeption praktischer Subjektivität zu nutzen.

In this chapter I address the concern that UNESCO World Heritage des- ignation leads to unregulated tourism. I argue that heritage tourism not only has a negative impact on the site but may adversely impact local populations and descen- dant communities. I detail two related worries, UNESCO-cide and the Disneyfication of cultural heritage. The term ‘UNESCO-cide’ was coined by Marco d’Eramo to describe the role overtourism has played in the death of cities listed on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. Disneyfication is the process of sanitizing potentially contro- versial or seemingly negative narratives from the tourist site to make the experience more palatable. I focus my analysis on two UNESCO World Heritage sites: Angkor Archaeological Complex in Cambodia and George Town in Malaysia. After a discussion about the negative impacts World Heritage designation has had on these sites, I suggest some mitigating strategies for tourism.

Any conjunction between aesthetics and politics (for a political aesthetic, an aestheticized politics, a geopolitical aesthetic, a politics of aesthetics, and so forth) is necessarily fraught by estranged agendas, and even more so should we conceive of their inter-activation from a willfully ahumanist perspective. Aesthetics and/or politics of what and for what? The cascade of Anthrocidal traumas—from Copernicus and Darwin, to postcolonial and ecological inversions, to transphylum neuroscience and synthetic genomics, from nanorobotics to Queer AI—pulverize figure and ground relations between doxic political traditions and aesthetic discourses. Before any local corpus (the biological body, formal economics, military state, legal corporation, geographic nation, scientific accounting, sculptural debris, or immanent theology) can conserve and appreciate its self-image within the boundaries of its preferred reflection, already its Vitruvian conceits of diagrammatic idealization, historical agency, radiating concentric waves of embodiment, instrumental prostheticization, and manifest cognition are, each in sequence, unwoven by the radically asymmetrical indifferences of plastic matter across unthinkable scales, both temporal and spatial. But while the received brief for political aesthetics is denuded, abnormal assignments proliferate.

This research paper is an attempt to find out the gender inequality in the artistic creation of Myanmar literary works. In this paper, it is proved that gender inequality is a crucial problem that has to resolve straight away for upgrading the individual capacity of human resources in Myanmar society. The research finding is that gender inequality has been rooted in Myanmar tradition in several areas of the society such as family lives, workplace, social relationships, and religious communities while it may not be clarified as the influence of traditional beliefs. Consequently, the individual capacities of women are wasted despite the fact that they possess particular skills in their workplaces or community. This is the demerit of the effective application of human resources as the right person in right place in Myanmar society. Here, it is a noteworthy fact that eliminating gender discrimination and recognizing or reconsidering the crucial role of women not only as women, but individual human resources like that of men is the key to opening up the Myanmar society towards more progressive steps into the world. The literature survey and comparison was made to collect data of some significant Myanmar literary works especially focusing on Myanmar Novels. The Analytical method, descriptive method, and evaluative method were used for data analysis and recommending the functional way for resolving the gender issue, a barrier to development of Myanmar society.

Globalization is viewed in this work as a critical concept by which we understand the transition of human society into the post-pandemic era. In this vein, this paper attempts to look into the process of globalization and its central feature, technology. Technology has become a global force that affects political, social, ethical, and environmental. The ancient Greeks, such as Plato and Aristotle, who lived in aristocratic societies, rejected discourse on technology as unworthy. Social, political, and theoretical activities, rather than technical, were deemed as the highest forms. Plato, for instance, alluded to the artisans merely as the cheapest form of metal compared to gold associated with the philosopher-rulers, while silver is equivalent to the warrior class. Technological change, defined as "progress," is seen as an inevitable process in modern history. This paper explored issues of globalization and the implications of technology, employing crucial viewpoints of Martin Heidegger, acknowledged as one of the powerful and influential philosophers of the 20th century. Specifically, this paper explored "machination (Machenschaft)" and Heidegger's Technik (Technology) or Gestell (Enframing). Machination is not just human conduct but the act of manipulation. It is a revelation of beings as a whole as exploitable and manipulable objects. The world seems to be a collection of present-at-hand thing with no intrinsic meaning or purpose, a cold place where we cannot put down any roots. All we can do is calculate and control. We observe and measure everything. We make things go faster and faster. Thus, there is a need to discuss and recognize issues related to technology. Heidegger's thoughts offer analytic tools that contribute to a critical understanding of the multidimensional effects, risks, and possibilities brought about by modernity and its globalization.

Theorists have recently been exploring the prospects for a virtue-centred approach to aesthetics. Virtue aesthetics encourages a re-focusing of philosophical attention onto the aesthetic character traits of agents, in the same way that virtue ethics and virtue epistemology have encouraged us to focus on moral and intellectual traits. In this paper, I aim to contribute to the development of virtue aesthetics by discussing aesthetic courage, the aesthetic analogue of one of the most widely acknowledged moral virtues. In addition to proposing an account of the nature of this trait, I also argue that aesthetic courage is vital for any sort of aesthetically virtuous life. It is not possible to possess any aesthetic virtue without possessing aesthetic courage. It is important, therefore, for any future development of virtue aesthetics to acknowledge the central importance of aesthetic courage.

Angesichts der todbringenden Gräuel, die Menschen anderen Menschen antun, kann jedes Feilen an sprachlichen Formulierungen obszön wirken und könnte der Schluss gezogen werden, dass nicht nur dieses sinnlos, sondern jede diesbezügliche Arbeit am Begriff oder Suche nach Genauigkeit zum Scheitern verurteilt ist und in Absurdität endet. Noch die unscheinbarste Anstrengung, einen angemessenen Stil zu finden, könnte von Adornos berühmtem Diktum affiziert sein, nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben sei barbarisch. Dabei sollte nicht vergessen werden, dass dieses ganz am Ende seines Aufsatzes Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft zu finden ist, in dem die Unmöglichkeit aufgezeigt werden soll, dass sich Kulturkritik als gesellschaftliche Funktion von der Abhängigkeit von der Gesellschaft und der mit ihr einhergehenden Korruption befreit. Damit wirft Adorno allerdings auch die Frage auf, ob seine fundamentale Kritik an der Kritik von dieser Unmöglichkeit betroffen ist. Nicht nur auf sinnliche Wirkung ausgerichtetes Wortspiel, Zeichenrätsel und sprachlich motivierte assoziative Überlagerung, sondern jede Art von Kunst und ihr Genuss kann hier unter Gedicht subsumiert werden. Kunst, die sich dem Erinnern an das Grauen und den Terror, die aus moralischem Versagen der Gesellschaft resultierten, widmen will, kann sich nur dadurch retten, dass sie als Intervention die kritische Funktion zu übernehmen sucht, die den sprachlichen Schablonen der Kulturkritik durch die gesellschaftliche Vereinnahmung unmöglich gemacht wurde oder wird. Daraus, nämlich dass sowohl Genuss als auch Verstehen unter Verdacht stehen, erklärt sich der Minimalismus der Kunstwerke, die Benjamin Kaufmann 2016 in Wien für eine Ausstellung ausgesucht hatte, um der Shoah zu gedenken, erklärt sich die Klarheit, der Grad an Abstraktion und die Reduktion der eingesetzten bildnerischen Mittel.

Centered on The Andrew Project (2010–13) by artist Shaan Syed, this article is a theoretical meditation on the politics and ethics of the name, drawing, the portrait, anonymity, and the signature, as these bear on a shared sense of loss and its impossible commemoration. I invoke the figure of the urban stranger and passerby to argue for an aesthetics and ethics of social anonymity that does not rely on or demand identification and that thereby remains open to the risk, surprise, and pleasure of shared existence. In doing so, I theorize intimacy as that which remains unnameable in the “commerce” of our everyday lives.

In Relational Aesthetics (1998), Nicolas Bourriaud argues that art works should be judged not on criteria of ‘beauty’, but rather on the relations that they facilitate and the models of sociality that they propose. In this understanding, an art work “has as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context” (1998: 14) creating ‘micro-utopias’, temporary spaces in which people can enter into dialogue and create meaning in a democratic manner. For Bourriaud, this collective elaboration of meaning is underpinned by a ‘transitive ethic’, a profoundly reflective process in which “any inter-subjective relation [...] symbolises the responsibility we have towards others” (1998: 23). But how more precisely is such meaning elaborated from within these micro-utopias? And can this meaning be separated from politics when it is necessarily framed and produced within certain historical contexts?
This paper proposes the concept of ‘relational reflexivity’ as a means of understanding how collective meaning is elaborated from within relational contexts and yet premised upon reflective processes, underpinning ethical and political change. Bourriaud argues that art can act as an “instrument of emancipation, a political tool aimed at the liberation of forms of subjectivity” (1998: 78) and relational reflexivity allows us to more explicitly connect dimensions of aesthetics and ethics, by focussing on the processes of ethical self-cultivation that people undergo in such reflexive spaces. As such the paper’s definitional proposition is both a description of ethnographic realities and also a conceptual analytical approach: through a focus on ethico-aesthetic dimensions, ethnography that mobilises relational reflexivity can denote the multiple ways in which reflexive actions turn aesthetic praxis into ethical poiesis.

Somaesthetics – an inquiry into the qualitative dimensions of our sensually embodied engagements – affords one of the most refined, revealing, and rigorous ways to conduct appreciative and profitable exploration of sport. The chapter delves into several fundamental concepts in Shusterman’s oeuvre with cross-sectional relevance for sport and somaesthetics: constraint, enhancement, self-knowledge, instrumentality, and self-realization. Section one presents a brief overview of extant scholarship at the intersection of both, sport and somaesthetics. Then, section two discourses on games and sport as springs for constrained endeavors that enrich our vital landscape. Section three discusses human enhancement in sport in relation to the somaesthetic transformative agenda. In section four, self-knowledge, central to both sport and somaesthetics, takes center stage. Section five then examines instrumentality, meaning, and “selfless” flourishing. A pithy conclusion highlights key ideas.

Contrary to the assumed invariance of human nature, one may ask: are emotions culturally determined and, therefore, relative to historical periods and civilisational differences that make the emotion-based aesthetic theories to be cultural variants? A plea for discerning 'a new primary emotion. .. that was not recognised by traditional Indian aesthetic doctrines' (Dehejia 2000a: 3) seems to imply this, if one wants to appreciate modern Indian painting in particular, and perhaps modern Indian literature too. This sort of plea highlights the bewilderment of those who are caught in between tradition and modernity, between indigenous and alien, between availability and non-availability of appropriate śāstra, a theory, to appreciate anything that is modern, including the modern art. Rather than fi nding the 'tranquil smile of the Buddha, the majesty of Durgā, the loving tenderness of Pārvatī, the radiance of Naṭarāja' (ibid.: 4), what one now fi nds is the fragmented human image in place of the 'celestial and semi-divine beings' placed in the 'sensuous and lyrical surroundings' that used to defi ne the traditional Indian art. What one now fi nds in modern Indian painting is 'the unmistakable stigmata of despair, not just a state of psychological depression but of an utter and hopeless sense of darkness and hopelessness' (ibid.). How do we engage with this new mode of representation? One's subjective likes and dislikes should hardly matter. The issue involved here cuts deep into the very structuring of aesthetic experience, transcending subjective likes and dislikes, and elevating superfi cial enjoyment which is nothing else but amusement, to the one which is truly aesthetic.

Sesame Street’s playing with fallacies has made learning fun. By combining informal logic with the philosophy of humor, we can see how a variety of informal fallacies are used rhetorically to elicit laughter. Thus, how we understand what we find funny in Sesame Street will go some way in identifying how fallacies -- spoken, written, and visual—contribute to the educational value of the show. It does so by making the children in the audience feel like experts and by keeping the parents tuned in as they are cued into culling the material for its adult references.