Ian Verstegen

Summary Is it possible to discover the critical realist foundations of Gestalt theory in Berlin comparative musicology (vergleichende Kunstwissenschaft) associated above all with Erich M. von Hornbostel? The balance of natural science explanation and phenomenal experience is a useful model for overcoming Eurocentrism in comparative ethnomusicology, relying both on third-person tools and indigenous music systems. This paper uses Gestalt critical realist epistemology and methodology and a portrayal of the strata making up the understanding of a musical act with chemico-physical, phenomenal and cultural components to create an “amphibian” ethnomusicology. Using this framework it is possible to understand Hornbostel and Sachs’ musical instrument classification system and Hornbostel’s account of “primitive” music as strata in a Gestalt explanatory system. The potential binding agent through the strata is isomorphism.

Rudolf Arnheim’s theory of perception has been used to challenge the highly influential account of synthetic Cubism as a sign-like process of Rosalind Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois. While the use of Arnheim’s idea of perceptual substitution works in a theoretical sense, it is less successful as a historical argument, because unlike Picasso’s art dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who is discussed by Bois, Arnheim’s ideas weren’t formulated until the 1950s. This article enriches the theoretical argument made on behalf of Arnheim by supplying the theory of Gustaf Britsch as a historical link that fed Arnheim’s later rigorous theory. Britsch articulated an early theory of perceptual substitution, a kind of Gestalt-perception, that is capable of accounting for the innovations of Synthetic Cubism.

Most contemporary approaches to meaning presume the limitation of semiotics (Didi-Huberman, Gumbrecht, Belting). The question of what kind of “semiotics” is required has not been asked. However, without some general science of meaning it is impossible to reform theory without committing past errors or ignoring progress. In the interest of reconnecting contemporary interests in “presence” to long-evolving needs, I review the ossification and decline of one theory of semiotics that serves as the tacit model rejected today. I return to problems of the nature of the sign – whether it is “digital” or “analog” and conceived as “communication” or merely “meaning.” I then reconstitute a workable visual cognitive semiotics based on phenomenological premises.

Summary This article stages a confrontation between latent nominalist attitudes about inherent expression in perception—physiognomy—and new affective modes. In a classic analysis, Gombrich warned of the lack of veridicality of physiognomic perception, a sentiment endorsed by postmodern theories. At the same time, affect theory affirms a level of directly available intensities. Using the example of Rudolf Arnheim, it can be seen that the two are really specular opposites of each other, each merely valorizing different poles of the affect-cognition scale. Arnheim’s Gestalt theory shows how immediate percepts can have a generic structure, which is differentiated with further acquaintance. Arnheim, however, shows how perception can never account for all the power of expressive seeing. Perception and cognition is always embedded in a social matrix. Using an example of racist antisemitic propaganda used by Gombrich, the political implications of Arnheim’s position are demonstrated.

Summary In this article the ethical systems of Risieri Frondizi and Maurice Mandelbaum, both decisively influenced by Wolfgang Köhler, are investigated for the first time. Each writer took different things from Köhler, Frondizi the idea of value as a Gestalt quality and Mandelbaum the idea of value as a felt demand. Their positions are highly complementary and Frondizi’s axiological approach enlightens the ontology of value whereas Mandelbaum’s phenomenological approach clarifies the nature of “requiredness” (Köhler) or “fittingness.”

This monograph presents a synthesis and reconstruction of Rudolf Arnheim’s theory of media. Combining both Arnheim’s well-known writings on film and radio with his later work on the psychology of art, the author presents a coherent approach to the problem of the nature of a medium, space and time, and the differentia between different media. The latent ontological commitments of Arnheim’s theories is drawn out by affirming Arnheim’s membership in the Brentano school of Austrian philosophy, which allows his theories to be clarified and strengthened, particularly with the metaphysical writings of Roman Ingarden. The resulting theory is relational, portraying essential medial differences with neutral criteria and allowing for a rigorous definition of a medium. The way in which a medium is based on the inherent dispositions of medial materials creates a highly appealing theory that is determinate without being deterministic. The theory is thus highly timely as people in media studies seek to address the determinate nature of media after the post-medium condition. The book will appeal to researchers and graduate students in cultural and media studies as well as architecture and design.

This paper fills a gap in Flusser scholarship by conducting an initial comparison of Flusser with Rudolf Arnheim. After noting their similar approaches – open both to science and phenomenology – it looks closely at each theorist’s respective theory of photography. They differ in that Flusser believes that the photography as a technical apparatus is not objective. However, with some contextualization each can be seen to say complementary things. Reflecting on each theorist’s cautiously optimistic or pessimistic approach to evolving media, the paper concludes with thoughts on how they give helpful ideas on how to flesh out aspects of the other’s thought.

ABSTRACTThis essay connects the two critical realist ideas of underlabouring and meta-theory, making the argument that the process of underlabouring and making ‘disclosure and transformation of the deep categorical structures of science and theory’ is ideal for clarifying strata of theory and therefore points of agreement between different practitioners. Using the 1980s debates over feminism in art history, I show how two important interlocutors – T. J. Clark and Griselda Pollock – used Marxist meta-theory to establish a baseline on which their domain-specific concerns might diverge. A return to this sense of shared agreement and disagreement is urged.

Within cultural history there is a widespread eschewal of speculative reasoning. This article notes the complicity of the general postmodern avoidance of metanarratives with Anglo-Saxon empiricism and locates the major problem facing cultural history in postmodernism's conflation of trajectories and teleologies. Any discussion of the directionality of history is imputed to be a full-blown teleology. Using previous discussions from different fields, the difference between a teleology and trajectory is defended and, after clarifying certain confusions, it is argued that trajectories, as following the working of generative mechanisms, are necessary to theorize in order to make interesting progress within the field of cultural history.

This article revisits an earlier social scientific analysis of the thought of Rudolf Arnheim and E. H. Gombrich. Adding to the earlier analysis in terms of social ontology and historical development is an analysis of the sufficiency of perception to yield information about the world, both in ordinary and in artistic contexts. Gombrich held to an idea of perception as hypothesis testing, and it joins with Popper's philosophy in the deferred warrant of the perceptual image. Arnheim, instead, followed the Gestalt theorists to believe that each stage of perceptual experience was incorrigible according to the given conditions. Consequently, Arnheim felt confident addressing the essence of art, while Gombrich remained anti‐essentialist. Ultimately, Gombrich's Popperian empiricism attenuates realism, whereas Arnheim's gestaltism seeks to build a bridge between ordinary and scientific observation.

The two most common names to invoke for a perceptualist aesthetics are Rudolf Arnheim and E. H. Gombrich. But the similaritied and differences between them have never been explicitly drawn. This paper undertakes such an analysis based on the three categories of representation, expression and historical objectivity. Arnheim's less stringent solutions to the problems of representation and expression are applauded but Gombrich's unique attempt to ground both of these categories in a form amenable to non-historicist approach to history are also praised. Gombrich's anti-historicism derives from Karl Popper and Arnheim is fleshed out with the theories of Maurice Mandelbaum. The parallel comparison of Popper-Mandelbaum helps to underscore differences and show an alternative to Gombrich and Popper's nominalism

Abstract This paper is a classic critique of speculative philosophies of history based on Maurice Mandelbaum's work. Unlike the more famous invective by Karl Popper, I argue that Mandelbaum's is a richer and more interesting approach, which reveals through exposition a deeper unity to Mandelbaum's work than is normally evident. Because Popper's nominalism is suspicious of all metaphysics, it loses credibility whereas Mandelbaum placed reflection on the nature of society and causality at the center of his interests. Mandelbaum's critique then is an invitation to investigate metaphysics on realist principles and he requires that we have a robust theory of historical ontology and truth with which to judge what goes beyond the proper representation of history and becomes speculative

Many have wondered about the similarity in name of American critical realism and the movement of the same name begun by Roy Bhaskar. The figure of Maurice Mandelbaum complicates the relationship, not only due to his career bridging the two movements but also Mandelbaum's concern not only with traditional concerns of American critical realism (epistemology and philosophy of science) but the nature of society, the nature of social explanation, and naturalism. This volume reflects both on Mandelbaum's own career and the relation of his thought to Bhaskar's critical realism. By examining Mandelbaum's commitments to phenomenology within critical realism, as well as his goal to enlighten social scientific and above all historiographical categories, it is possible to see how Mandelbaum went beyond the scientific realism of his predecessors. At the same time, a fruitful comparison with Bhaskar's and others' thought is undertaken by examining mandelbaum's solutions to the problems of the ontology of sociology and social laws, the dynamics of cultural change and the overriding master narratives that govern late capitalism. By explaining Mandelbaum's scrupulous attempt to address the horrors of the twentieth century, it is possible to appreciate his significance for the twenty-first. A timely and important book, Maurice Mandelbaum and American Critical Realism is essential reading for all serious students of critical realism and twentieth century philosophy.

_ Source: _Volume 5, Issue 2, pp 323 - 343 The following article attempts to bring critical realism to bear on the changing nature of aesthetic value. Beginning with the transitive-intransitive distinction, it is advised that we withhold judgment on the possibility of aesthetic judgment, lest we commit the epistemic fallacy. Without hoping to attain a form of aesthetic value absolutism, a strategy of ‘eliminative realism’ is introduced, which seeks to remove false causes of apparent judgmental relativism. Then a rough sketch of the ontology of art works and art practices is made in order to provide sufficient complexity for the changing aspects of value from different points of view and assumptions. Finally, a case study is given, in the creation of a market of African slingshots in the 1908s, and the theory is tested. The article closes with a plea to take aesthetic value seriously, as a requirement of ideological discussion

This article attempts to utilize the conceptual clarity typical of the work of Lucia Pizzo Russo to address the muddled question of the objectivity of perspective. By separating out the distinct problems of the objectivity of optical geometry, simple sight, and object recognition, we can clarify what we are not discussing when talking about linear perspective. These forms of objectivity are secured. But the claim is still made that linear perspective in pictorial perception is relative, because its results are not consistent and often not relevant to making pictures. In its place, I nominate another objective method, the so-called Egyptian method, outlined by Rudolf Arnheim in his Art and Visual Perception. Therefore, my position is not purely relativist because the dismantling of linear perspective does not suggest that all is conventional.

Cognitive Iconology is a new theory of the relation of psychology to art. Instead of being an application of psychological principles, it is a methodologically aware account of psychology, art and the nature of explanation. Rather than fight over biology or culture, it shows how they must fit together. The term “cognitive iconology” is meant to mirror other disciplines like cognitive poetics and musicology but the fear that images must be somehow transparent to understanding is calmed by the stratified approach to explanation that is outlined. In the book, cognitive iconology is a theory of cognitive tendencies that contribute to but are not determinative of an artistic meaning. At the center of the book are three case studies: images depicted within images, basic corrections to architectural renderings in images, and murals and paintings seen from the side. In all cases, there is a primitive perceptual pull that contribute to but do not override larger cultural meaning. The book then moves beyond the confines of the image to behavior around the image, and then ends with the concluding question of why some images are harder to understand than others. Cognitive Iconology promises to be important because it moves beyond the turf battles typically fought in image studies. It argues for a sustainable practice of interpretation that can live with other disciplines. Ian Verstegen is an art writer and historian living in Philadelphia. He is the author of Arnheim, Gestalt and Art (2005) and A Realist Theory of Art History (2012)