Tereza Hadravova

This paper examines contemporary artistic critiques of anthropocentrism by focusing on two claims: (1) that aesthetic experience can temporarily displace human perceptual frameworks, and (2) that such displacement carries ethical value. I draw on a selection of Czech, Slovak, and international artworks that seek a nonhuman standpoint. I situate these practices within a longer debate about the limits and significance of entering into alien perspectives – ranging from David Hume’s remarks on ancient artworks that espouse moral outlooks radically different from our own to Thomas Nagel’s scepticism about the very possibility to adopt nonhuman points of view. I argue that, although aesthetic experience may prompt a departure from the human perspective, we should neither pursue nor valorise that departure. The connection between more-than-human ethics and more-than-human aesthetics, I suggest, does not proceed via empathy into a nonhuman perspective.

Ted Nannicelli and Andrea Bubenik (2024) propose that significant differences in moral outlooks between the original and contemporary contexts of an artwork should lead us to suspend our moral judgements. They illustrate this with Titian’s Rape of Europa, discussed also by A. W. Eaton (2003). Contrary to Eaton, who argued that the morally problematic nature of this painting diminishes its artistic value, Nannicelli and Bubenik claim that the painting’s original moral value is beyond our reach. I challenge Nannicelli and Bubenik’s argument by highlighting that Eaton effectively demonstrates a narrower gap between past and present moral perspectives than the authors acknowledge. However, I do not fully endorse Eaton’s conclusion, as I argue that the painting does not prescribe a single perspective. Thus, while I support Nannicelli and Bubenik’s reservation regarding supposedly lesser artistic value of the painting, I do so for a different reason.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, researchers in the field of so-called neuoaesthetics recruited research subjects who had been untrained in arts and did not have any pronounced interest in aesthetic matters for their laboratory experiments. The prevalent choice of research subjects has recently changed. Currently, a great number of studies uses subjects who are professionally engaged in the art world. In my paper, I describe, analyze, and critically discuss the two research paradigms regarding the subjects involved in the experiments in neuroaesthetics. I claim that although the more recent one can be generally regarded as an improvement of the research framework, it underestimates the difficulties brought by the notion of expertise in aesthetic perception.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, researchers in the field of so-called neuoaesthetics recruited research subjects who had been untrained in arts and did not have any pronounced interest in aesthetic matters for their laboratory experiments. The prevalent choice of research subjects has recently changed. Currently, a great number of studies uses subjects who are professionally engaged in the art world. In my paper, I describe, analyze, and critically discuss the two research paradigms regarding the subjects involved in the experiments in neuroaesthetics. I claim that although the more recent one can be generally regarded as an improvement of the research framework, it underestimates the difficulties brought by the notion of expertise in aesthetic perception.

The paper concerns a “Note on the Film,” a short appendix to Feeling and Form by Susanne Langer. The interpretation interweaves the Note into a larger context of Langer’s philosophical work – primarily in terms of her understanding of the dream as a lower symbolic form, to which the film is compared – as well as in terms of her account of literary arts among which, she suggests, cinema belongs. Langer’s references to Sergei Eisenstein are discussed and their respective concepts of cinema are compared. An implicit political dimension of Langer’s writing on film is emphasized by relating her critique of modern civilization, as sketched in the last chapter of Philosophy in a New Key, to her film aesthetics. At the end of the paper I compare my interpretation of the Note with the one that was offered by Trisha Curran.