Paisley Livingston

This essay provides a conceptual analysis and reconstruction of the notion of mimetic desire, first proposed in Girard (1961). The basic idea behind the idea of mimetic desire is that imitation can play a key role in human motivational processes. Yet mimetic desire is distinguished from related notions such as social modelling and imitation. In episodes of mimetic desire, the process in which the imitative agent's desires are formed is oriented by a particular species of belief about the model or mediator whose desire is copied. These 'tutelary beliefs' essential to mimetic desire are distinguished from the 'thin' and purely instrumental beliefs about the model central to Bandura's (1986) social cognitive theory and similar models of observational learning. The problem of the identity of the objects of desire in episodes of social modelling motivates a distinction between internal and external forms of interpersonal mediation. Girard's claims about cognitive constraints associated with mimetic desire are examined, and scenarios of reciprocal mimetic modelling are analysed.

The idea that films can be philosophical, or in some sense ‘do’ philosophy, has recently found a number of prominent proponents. What is at stake here is generally more than the tepid claim that some documentaries about philosophy and related topics convey philosophically relevant content. Instead, the contention is that cinematic fictions, including popular movies such as The Matrix, make significant contributions to philosophy. Various more specific claims are linked to this basic idea. One, relatively weak, but pedagogically important observation is that some films can be used to provide philosophy students with vivid and thought-provoking illustrations of philosophical issues. Film screenings stimulate discussion and may motivate renewed engagement with difficult philosophical texts. A stronger contention, however, seeks to link innovative and philosophically valuable thinking to ‘the film itself’ or to the ‘specificity of the cinematic medium’. Such claims raise interesting questions, including questions about the status of the increasingly prevalent philosophically motivated interpretations of particular movies. Who is actually doing the philosophizing in such cases? Is it the audio-visual display, the film-maker, or the philosopher who devises an interpretation of the work? What is the role of specifically cinematic devices in the philosophical points made in such interpretations? Is there any tension between the goal of appreciating a film as a work of art and the goal of arguing that a film has significant implications for a position on a problem in philosophy? A course in the general area of cinema as philosophy can focus on issues related to the locus and status of cinematic philosophizing. It can also delve into specific films and film-makers and philosophically oriented interpretations of specific philosophical topics, such as personal identity. Issues pertaining to interpretation, meaning, and authorship can be usefully investigated in this connection, as can topics in meta-philosophy related to the very nature of philosophical insight or knowledge

This paper sets forth Bolzano’s little-known 1843 account of beauty. Bolzano accepted the thesis that beauty is what rewards contemplation with pleasure. The originality of his proposal lies in his claim that the source of this pleasure is a special kind of cognitive process, namely, the formation of an adequate concept of the object’s attributes through the successful exercise of the observer’s proficiency at obscure and confused cognition. To appreciate this proposal we must understand how Bolzano explicated a number of concepts in his Wissenschaftslehre. I argue that Bolzano was ahead of his time and anticipated some of the results of recent empirical psychological research on the relations between beauty, affect, and processing fluency. Bolzano’s remarks on ugliness and on relations between pure and mixed beauty are also of contemporary interest. The upshot is that Bolzano’s account of beauty is neither as derivative nor ‘dark’ as some of his commentators have claimed

The word ‘genius’ is often associated with the idea that artistic creativity is entirely a matter of an involuntary sort of inspiration visited upon the individual artist. My aim in referring to cinematic genius is not, however, to defend that dubious thesis, but to direct attention to the remarkable artistic achievements that some film-makers, working individually or in collaborative teams, have managed to bring about in their intentional and often painstaking creation of cinematic works. Genius, as I understand it, is the exceptional ability to do something difficult, such as the intentional making of an innovative and valuable work of art. My central claim in what follows is that our longstanding and legitimate interest in manifestations of this kind of skill has important implications for a number of interrelated issues in the philosophy of art, and in particular, for some of the questions taken up in the ever-expanding literature on the ontology of works of art.

In Art and intention Paisley Livingston develops a broad and balanced perspective on perennial disputes between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists in philosophical aesthetics and critical theory. He surveys and assesses a wide range of rival assumptions about the nature of intentions and the status of intentionalist psychology. With detailed reference to examples from diverse media, art forms, and traditions, he demonstrates that insights into the multiple functions of intentions have important implications for our understanding of artistic creation and authorship, the ontology of art, conceptions of texts, works, and versions, basic issues pertaining to the nature of fiction and fictional truth, and the theory of art interpretation and appreciation. Livingston argues that neither the inspirationist nor rationalistic conceptions can capture the blending of deliberate and intentional, spontaneous and unintentional processes in the creation of art. Texts, works, and artistic structures and performances cannot be adequately individuated in the absence of a recognition of the relevant makers4intentions. The distinction between complete and incomplete works receives an action-theoretic analysis that makes possible an elucidation of several different senses of "fragment" in critical discourse. Livingston develops an account of authorship, contending that the recognition of intentions is in fact crucial to our understanding of diverse forms of collective art-making. An artist's short-term intentions and long-term plans and policies interact in complex ways in the emergence of an artistic oeuvre, and our uptake of such attitudes makes an important difference to our appreciation of the relations between items belonging to a single life-work. The intentionalism Livingston advocates is, however, a partial one, and accommodates a number of important anti-intentionalist contentions. Intentions are fallible, and works of art, like other artefacts, can be put to a bewildering diversity of uses. Yet some important aspects of art's meaning and value are linked to the artist's aims and activities.

It is quite common to draw a distinction between complete and unfinished works of art. For example, it is uncontroversial to think that Vermeer had actually completed View of Delft before inept restorers added layers of coloured varnish to give the picture an antique quality, and there is very good evidence to support the related claim that the artist had not finished the work before he effected several pentimenti, including the painting over of a figure in the foreground on the right. Such beliefs oriented a costly and elaborate restoration that was begun in 1994 and terminated two years later

Did Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, or other "poststructuralist" theorists writing in the wake of May '68 come up with any good ideas about authorship and related topics in the philosophy of literature? The three volumes under review have a common point of departure in that broad question, but offer a number of contrasting responses to it. In what follows I describe and assess some of the various perspectives on offer in these 700 or so pages. The short answer to my initial question comes at the end. Carla Benedetti's book was first published in 1999 in Milan as L'ombra lunga dell'autore: Indagine su una figura cancellata. Professor of Italian and Theory of Literature at the University of Pisa, and Recurrent Visiting Professor at NYU, she clearly shares some of Foucault's basic assumptions about authorship: "It is the reader or viewer who transforms the artist's selections, which in themselves may even be random or compelled, into subjective choices endowed with intentionality: that intentionality that is capable of providing meaning and artistic value to what we are viewing or reading" (p. 12). Benedetti contends that such attributions are a necessary part of the literary and artistic discursive formation of modernity, and she persuasively demonstrates that the author has not "disappeared," in spite of what Barthes and others may have thought or wished. According to Benedetti, authorialism, or the thesis that artistic value can only derive from original authorship, is the product of a modern ideology. She contends that a self-reflexive, late modernist train of thought generates a highly problematic relation to authorship and such related notions as genius, novelty, and creativity. More specifically, Benedetti finds a Batesonian double bind or paradoxical injunction in modernity's incessant demand for an extreme form of novelty. As soon as something innovative has been done, yet another innovation is desired. Not only does it become harder and harder to make a radically new move in the game, but the entire pursuit appears to be hopeless. Although Benedetti does not say so, the key thought was neatly captured by Oscar Wilde when he quipped: "Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly." To be old-fashioned is abhorrent, yet to try to obey the injunction to be "absolutely modern" is to risk becoming old-fashioned in a hurry, so failure seems inevitable. One of the constitutive myths of late modernity has it, then, that artistic activity must be recognized as authorless because it is impossible to create some sort of fundamentally novel work of lasting value. For those in the grip of this unsound thought, it seems necessary to conclude that the writer-no-longer-author must be recognized as an essentially uncreative epigone. Benedetti comments rather sweepingly, "All that poststructuralist thought speaks of, in its multifarious elaborations, is merely our supposed irreversible impossibility to create" (p. 202). She links Derrida's rejection of the possibility of decisive epistemological "ruptures" to the same late modernist mythology. Benedetti concludes her book by saying that the late modernist mythology conflates one kind of novelty with the new in general. This distinction sounds promising, but is not developed any further, and this reader was left wondering how the putative crippling error of a vast artistic dispensation could be revealed by means of a distinction between two kinds of newness. I also wonder whether her diagnosis probes deeply enough into the sources and nature of the modish sensibility that leads perversely to the Last Year in Marienbad syndrome. Not everyone is equally interested in trying to be dazzlingly innovative and fashionable; some who do have this inclination manage to produce excellent works of art; and many artists active in the period in question have not worked with the assumptions Benedetti criticizes. Whatever one thinks about Benedetti's Foucauldian premises about authorship, her book is highly informative, engaging, and replete with astute comments on a wide range of European literary and artistic movements and critical trends. With a keen eye for significant detail, she writes elegantly and discusses many fascinating examples, including interesting, lesser-known Italian ones. A variety of perspectives on authorship are presented..

The ever-expanding literature on narrative reveals a striking divergence of claims about the epistemic valence of narrative. One such claim is the oftstated idea that narratives or stories generate both “hot” and “cold” epistemic irrationality. A familiar, rival claim is that narrative has an exclusive capacity to embody or convey important types of knowledge. Such contrasting contentions are not typically presented as statements about the accidents or effects of particular narratives; the ambition, rather, has been to identify a strong link between a single, positive or negative epistemic valence and narrativity, or the traits in virtue of which some discourse, utterance, or series of thoughts is aptly classified as a narrative or story. In this essay I contend that arguments in this vein are dubious.Not only are contentions about the specificity of narrative tenuous and controversial, but even if they were not, there are serious problems with the postulated connections between narrativity and the epistemic merits or demerits of narratives. These difficulties are identified in a critical discussion of prominent examples from the literature. My conclusion is not that there is nothing worth saying about relations between narratives and various epistemic desiderata, but that one prevalent theoretical ambition in this area ought to be renounced in favor of more viable avenues of inquiry

Paisley Livingston here addresses contemporary controversies over the role of "theory" within the humanistic disciplines. In the process, he suggests ways in which significant modern texts in the philosophy of science relate to the study of literature. Livingston first surveys prevalent views of theory, and then proposes an alternative: theory, an indispensable element in the study of literature, should be understood as a Cogently argued and informed in its judgments, this book points the way to a fuller understanding of the special contribution that literary knowledge may make within the human sciences.

Cet article propose une reconstruction de la théorie de la rationalité dynamique esquissée par Michael Bratman dans Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason. Evaluer la rationalité de l'agent, dit Bratman, ce n'est pas simplement évaluer les raisons d'agir qu'avait l'agent au moment de sa décision. Il faut se demander non seulement si l'agent était rationnel lorsqu'il a formé son intention d'agir, mais aussi s'il l'était encore en gardant ou en abandonnant cette même intention. Il s'agit d'une perspective interne dans la mesure où elle prend en compte les rapports entre l'action, l'intention qui la guide et le processus de délibération qui est en amont de celle-ci. Mais la perspective que nous adoptons lorsque nous évaluons la rationalité de l'agent est aussi externe, car elle fait référence à des conditions dont l'agent n'a pas la maîtrise, comme les dispositions et les habitudes qui lui sont propres et qui se manifestent dans ses comportements non intentionnels. Dans un premier temps, je décris le dilemme que la théorie de Bratman cherche à résoudre ; dans un second temps, je présente les principes que Bratman développe; finalement, j'en évalue les résultats en identifiant certains des problèmes qui restent à résoudre ; je propose de réviser l'un des principes de Bratman en substituant une approche contrefactuelle à l'approche conséquentialiste qu'il propose.This paper reconstructs the theory of dynamic rationality sketched by Michael Bratman in Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason. Evaluating agent's rationality is not just a matter of evaluating the agent's reasons for acting at the moment of a decision. We must ask not only whether it was rational of the agent to form a future-directed intention, but also whether it is rational of the agent to revise or retain that intention when the moment of action arrives. Such judgements are internal to the framework of the agent's ongoing plans, intentions, and the deliberative processes upstream of every decision. Yet they are also external because they refer to unintentional behavior and conditions beyond the agent's purposive control, such as habits and dispositions. I describe the dilemma Bratmans theory attempts to resolve, present Bratmans normative principles, and identify some outstanding problems. I propose a revision of one of Bratmans principles, arguing for a counterfactual evaluation of non-intentional factors as opposed to his consequentialist approach based on the long-term benefits of the agent's habits.