Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this new podcast, including (soon) an additional part to this discussion.Subscribe to PEL to get other part 3's to PEL episodes, plus tons of other bonus recordings, and all of your PEL episodes ad-free. Mark and Wes Closeread the conclusion to Soren Kierkegaard's On the Continue Reading …
Ep. 329: Kierkegaard on Irony (Part Three for Supporters/Closereads Part One)
Mark and Wes Closeread the conclusion to Soren Kierkegaard's On the Concept of Irony (1841), "Irony as a Controlled Element, the Truth of Irony." The discussion starts with the role of irony in good art, and then moves on to discuss the proper role of irony as an existential strategy in a well-grounded, thoughtful life. Read along with us, starting at PDF p. 321. You can Continue Reading …
Ep. 322: Schelling on Art vs. Nature (Part One)
Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free, plus tons of bonus content. Discussing Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling's "On the Relation Between the Plastic Arts and Nature" (1807) and Part 6 of System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. Sponsors: Give more effectively via GiveWell.org (and let them know we sent Continue Reading …
Ep. 322: Schelling on Art vs. Nature (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing (sans Seth) from part one on "On the Relation Between the Plastic Arts and Nature" (1807) and Part 6 of System of Transcendental Idealism (1800). We finish up the 1807 speech by talking about sculpture vs. painting and then move on to this penultimate chapter of this early, systematic, seminal work whose beginning we treated in episodes 273 and 274. The System of Continue Reading …
Ep. 322: Schelling on Art vs. Nature (Part One for Supporters)
Discussing Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling's "On the Relation Between the Plastic Arts and Nature" (1807) and Part 6 of System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. Is the goal of art to imitate nature? Schelling says "sort of." It's not supposed to just be a copy, but is supposed to convey the true inner nature of its subject: It copies Continue Reading …
Ep. 321: August Schlegel on Beauty (Part Two)
Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this ad-free, plus a supporter-exclusive Nightcap discussion largely about philosophy of technology. Listen to a preview.. Continuing from part one on our excerpt from Theory of Art (ca. 1800), we get more into the text, covering Schlegel's critique of various elements of Kant's philosophy of art. We start with the distinction between Continue Reading …
Ep. 321: August Schlegel on Beauty (Part One)
Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free, plus tons of bonus content including (next week) a supporter-exclusive Nightcap discussion. Covering the elder Schlegel brother's Theory of Art (ca. 1800), as excerpted in Theory as Practice: A Critical Anthology of Early German Romantic Writings. Sponsors: Get 15% off a newly cheaper annual membership at Continue Reading …
Ep. 321: August Schlegel on Beauty (Part One for Supporters)
Covering the elder Schlegel brother's Theory of Art (ca. 1800), as excerpted in Theory as Practice: A Critical Anthology of Early German Romantic Writings. August Wilhelm Schlegel was five years older than Friedrich, and was also a well known art critic of his time. This text is a Romantic response to Kant's Third Critique, and we looked back at Kant's comments on the Continue Reading …
Ep. 320: Friedrich Schlegel on Romanticism (Part Two)
Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this ad-free, plus a supporter-exclusive part three. Listen to a preview.. We continue from part one on Schlegel's "Dialogue on Poesy" (1799) and "Concerning the Essence of Critique" (1804). How can Romantic art always aim at some common source of our humanity yet also require originality? How can having some sort of common mythology Continue Reading …
Ep. 320: Friedrich Schlegel on Romanticism (Part Three for Supporters)
Mark and Wes conclude our discussion of the younger Schlegel brother by going through more of his critical fragments, largely published in 1797 in the journal Lyceum tier schonen Kunste. Start with parts one and two. We relate appreciation of art to appreciation of purposiveness a la Shaftesbury, try to figure out what Schlegel means by "wit," the place of otherness in a Continue Reading …
Ep. 320: Friedrich Schlegel on Romanticism (Part One)
Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free, plus tons of bonus content including (next week) a supporter-exclusive part three to this discussion. On selected fragments from 1797-1801, "Dialogue on Poesy" (1799), and "Concerning the Essence of Critique" (1804). What makes art "Romantic"? Friedrich Schlegel (and his older brother August Schlegel, whom we'll read Continue Reading …
Ep. 320: Friedrich Schlegel on Romanticism (Part Two for Supporters)
We continue on Schlegel's "Dialogue on Poesy" (1799) and "Concerning the Essence of Critique" (1804). How can Romantic art always aim at some common source of our humanity yet also require originality? How can having some sort of common mythology help artists be original in this way, and how can we embrace mythology as modern people? We try to figure out this "Speech on Continue Reading …
Ep. 320: Friedrich Schlegel on Romanticism (Part One for Supporters)
On selected fragments from 1797-1801, "Dialogue on Poesy" (1799), and "Concerning the Essence of Critique" (1804). What makes art "Romantic"? Friedrich Schlegel (and his older brother August Schlegel, whom we'll read for ep. 321) were both art critics based in Jena, Germany, which was also where Fichte, Schelling, Schiller, and even Goethe were based at the time. The Continue Reading …
Ep. 292: Langer on Symbolic Music (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. Hear this part ad-free. On Susanne Langer's Philosophy in a New Key (1942), ch. 8-10 ("On Significance in Music," "The Genesis of Artistic Import," and "The Fabric of Meaning" respectively), plus ch. 7, "The Image of Time," from her Form and Feeling (1953). Is music a language? If it's "expressive," what exactly Continue Reading …
Ep. 289: Aesthetic Sense Theory: Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. Hear this part ad-free. On David Hume's "The Standard of Taste" (1760) and its two main influences: The Moralists: A Philosophical Rhapsody (1709) by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, aka the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Part III section 2 "Beauty," and An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design (1725) by Continue Reading …
Ep. 289: Aesthetic Sense Theory: Hume (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one, we get into more detail on David Hume's "The Standard of Taste" (1760). Hume starts out with a paradox: On the one hand, we believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; it's not a property of objects but of the interaction between an object and an observer. On the other hand, some works are obviously, objectively more beautiful than others, Continue Reading …
Ep. 289: Aesthetic Sense Theory: Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume (Part One for Supporters)
On David Hume's "The Standard of Taste" (1760) and its two main influences: The Moralists: A Philosophical Rhapsody (1709) by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, aka the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Part III section 2 "Beauty," and An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design (1725) by Francis Hutcheson. Featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. How do we know what opinions about Continue Reading …
Ep. 288: Scruton on Ethical Art (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. Hear this part ad-free. On Roger Scruton's Beauty (2009), ch. 5-9, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. The latter half of the book completes the survey of types of beauty that we discussed last episode by considering issues in our appreciation of artworks, and then develops a moral and political argument for Continue Reading …
Ep. 288: Scruton on Ethical Art (Part Two for Supporters)
Concluding our treatment of Roger's Scruton's Beauty (2009), ch. 5-9, from part one. We consider why we'd really be attracted to something that according to Scruton's account takes a lot of work. Dylan brings in architecture, which Scruton also wrote about, leading us to wonder about the form/function distinction and whether that standard in architecture (the fact that a Continue Reading …
Ep. 288: Scruton on Ethical Art (Part One for Supporters)
On Roger Scruton's Beauty (2009), ch. 5-9, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. The latter half of the book completes the survey of types of beauty that we discussed last episode by considering issues in our appreciation of artworks, and then develops a moral and political argument for why relativism about taste, i.e. the "democracy of tastes" that says that all aesthetic Continue Reading …