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129Is Art Modern? Kristeller's ‘Modern System of the Arts’ Reconsidered: ArticlesBritish Journal of Aesthetics 49 (1): 1-24. 2009.Kristeller's article ‘The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics’ is a classic statement of the view, now widely adopted but rarely examined, that aesthetics became possible only in the eighteenth-century with the emergence of the fine arts. I wish to contest this view, for three reasons. Firstly, Kristeller's historical account can be questioned; alternative and equally plausible accounts are available. Secondly, ‘the modern system of the arts’ appears to have been neit…Read more
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71Reply to ShinerBritish Journal of Aesthetics 49 (2): 171-178. 2009.Larry Shiner has risen to an impassioned defence against my criticisms of an iconic figure, claiming that I have ‘misrepresent[ed] Kristeller's central aim’ and therefore missed ‘the real shortcomings of Kristeller's essay’ and ‘obscure[d] substantive issues behind simplistic dichotomies’. These, and a series of disagreements over countless small details, take up the first part of his reply. He then proceeds to summarize his own book's achievements in correcting Kristeller's shortcomings. Shiner…Read more
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49The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece: Matter, Sensation, and ExperienceCambridge University Press. 2010.This is the first modern attempt to put aesthetics back on the map in classical studies. James I. Porter traces the origins of aesthetic thought and inquiry in their broadest manifestations as they evolved from before Homer down to the fourth century and then into later antiquity, with an emphasis on Greece in its earlier phases. Greek aesthetics, he argues, originated in an attention to the senses and to matter as opposed to the formalism and idealism that were enshrined by Plato and Aristotle,…Read more
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48The invention of dionysus and the platonic midwife: Nietzsche'sJournal of the History of Philosophy 33 (3): 467-497. 1995.
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43Theater of the AbsurdAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84 (2): 313-336. 2010.The paper seeks to demystify Nietzsche’s concept of genealogy. Genealogy tells the story of historical origins in the form of a myth that is betrayed fromwithin, while readers have naively assumed it tells a story that Nietzsche endorses—whether of history or naturalized origins. Looked at more closely, genealogy,I claim, tells the story of human consciousness and its extraordinary fallibility. It relates the conditions and limits of consciousness and how these are activelyavoided and forgotten,…Read more
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43Binder, Korenjak, Noack Epitaphien. Tod, Totenrede, Rhetorik. Auswahl, Übersetzung und Kommentar. . Pp. x + 358. Rahden/Westf.: Verlag Marie Leidorf, 2007. Paper, €39.80. ISBN: 978-83-86757-182-1 (review)The Classical Review 60 (1): 306-307. 2010.
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40“Don't Quote Me on That!”: Wilamowitz Contra Nietzsche in 1872 and 1873Journal of Nietzsche Studies 42 (1): 73-99. 2011.ABSTRACT This article examines an oddity that has gone unnoticed since Nietzsche first pointed it out to his friend and confidant Erwin Rohde in 1872—namely, that Wilamowitz, in his attack on The Birth of Tragedy, systematically misquotes Nietzsche. A large number of the quotations from The Birth of Tragedy by Wilamowitz in both installments of Zukunftsphilologie! are pseudo-quotations—whether they are off by a word or more or whether they are a collage of phrases drawn freely from Nietzsche's v…Read more
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38The seductions of GorgiasClassical Antiquity 12 (2): 267-299. 1993.From the older handbooks to the more recent scholarly literature, Gorgias's professions about his art are taken literally at their word: conjured up in all of these accounts is the image of a hearer irresistibly overwhelmed by Gorgias's apagogic and psychagogic persuasions. Gorgias's own description of his art, in effect, replaces our description of it. "His proofs... give the impression of ineluctability" . "Thus logos is almost an independent external power which forces the hearer to do its wi…Read more
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37Nietzsche and the Philology of the FutureStanford University Press. 2000.Drawing on Nietzsche's prolific early notebooks and correspondence, this book challenges the polarized picture of Nietzsche as a philosopher who abandoned classical philology.
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35The Invention of Dionysus and the Platonic Midwife: Nietzsche's Birth of TragedyJournal of the History of Philosophy 33 (3): 467-497. 1995.
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32Time for Foucault? Reflections on the Roman Self form Seneca to AugustineFoucault Studies 22 113-133. 2017.The essay approaches the idea of the self as this was most often formulated in antiquity from Heraclitus to Augustine—not as the object of self-fashioning and self-care, but as an irresolvable problem that was a productive if disconcerting source of inquiry. The self is less cultivated than it is “unbounded,” less wedded to regimes of truth and discovery than it is exposed, precariously, to crises of identity and coherence in the face of a constantly changing and unfathomable world. The self on …Read more
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28The invention of Dionysus: an essay on The birth of tragedyStanford University Press. 2000.Rather than representing a break with his earlier philosophical undertakings, The Birth of Tragedy can be seen as continuous with them and Nietzsche's later works. James Porter argues that Nietzsche's argumentative and writerly strategies resemble his earlier writings on philology in his 'staging' of meaning rather than in his advocacy of various positions. The derivation of the Dionysian from the Apollinian, and the interest in the atomistic challenges to Platonism, are anticipated in earlier w…Read more
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27Birth of the Symbol. Ancient Readers at the Limits of their Texts (review)The Classical Review 57 (1): 50-52. 2007.
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22Past times G. cajani, D. Lanza (edd.): L'antico degli antichi . Pp. 181, ills. Rome: Palumbo, 2001. Paper, €15.49. Isbn: 88-8020-298- (review)The Classical Review 53 (02): 470-. 2003.
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20The Poetics of Phantasia: Imagination in Ancient Aesthetics, by Anne Sheppard: London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014, pp. ix + 122, £65 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (2): 412-413. 2015.
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19Review of Oleg V. Bychkov, Anne Sheppard (eds., Trs.), Greek and Roman Aesthetics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011 (3). 2011.
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182.6 Why Nietzsche Opposes the Creation of ValuesNietzsche Studien 44 (1). 2015.Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 44 Heft: 1 Seiten: 133-135
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17Untimely Meditations: Nietzsche's Zeitatomistik in ContextJournal of Nietzsche Studies 20 58-81. 2000.
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132.On the Relationship of Art History and Art Theory': Translators' IntroductionOn the Relationship of Art History and Art Theory': Translators' Introduction (pp. 33-42) (review)Critical Inquiry 35 (1): 43-71. 2008.
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12Life Cycles beyond the Human: Biomass and Biorhythms in HeraclitusClassical Antiquity 43 (1): 50-96. 2024.All parts of Heraclitus’ cosmos are simultaneously living and dying. Its constituent stuffs (“biomasses”) cycle endlessly through physical changes in sweeping patterns (“biorhythms”) that are reflected in the dynamic rhythms of Heraclitus’ own thought and language. These natural processes are best examined at a more-than-human level that exceeds individuation, stable identity, rational comprehension, and linguistic capture. B62 (“mortals immortals”), one of Heraclitus’ most perplexing fragments,…Read more
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10Living on the EdgeClassical Antiquity 39 (2): 225-283. 2020.Roman Stoicism is typically read as a therapeutic philosophy that is centered around the care of the self and presented in the form of a self-help manual. Closer examination reveals a less reassuring and more challenging side to the school’s teachings, one that provokes ethical reflection at the limits of the self’s intactness and coherence. The self is less an object of inquiry than the by-product of a complex set of experiences in the face of nature and society and across any number of flashpo…Read more
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University of California, IrvineRegular Faculty
Irvine, California, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
European Philosophy |