Hans Maes

Richard Linklater’s celebrated Before trilogy chronicles the love of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) who first meet up in Before Sunrise, later reconnect in Before Sunset and finally experience a fall-out in Before Midnight. Not only do these films present storylines and dilemmas that invite philosophical discussion, but philosophical discussion itself is at the very heart of the trilogy.

This book, containing specially commissioned chapters by a roster of international contributors, explores the many philosophical themes that feature so vividly in the interactions between Céline and Jesse, including:

the nature of love, romanticism and marriage
the passage and experience of time
the meaning of life
the art of conversation
the narrative self
gender
death

Including an interview with Julie Delpy in which she discusses her involvement in the films and the importance of studying philosophy.

Portraits are everywhere. One finds them not only in museums and galleries, but also in newspapers and magazines, in the homes of people and in the boardrooms of companies, on stamps and coins, on millions of cell phones and computers. Despite its huge popularity, however, portraiture hasn’t received much philosophical attention. While there are countless art historical studies of portraiture, contemporary philosophy has largely remained silent on the subject. This book aims to address that lacuna. It brings together philosophers (and philosophically minded historians) with different areas of expertise to discuss this enduring and continuously fascinating genre.　

The chapters in this collection are ranged under five broad themes. Part I examines the general nature of portraiture and what makes it distinctive as a genre. Part II looks at some of the subgenres of portraiture, such as double portraiture, and at some special cases, such as sport card portraits and portraits of people not present. How emotions are expressed and evoked by portraits is the central focus of Part III, while Part IV explores the relation between portraiture, fiction, and depiction more generally. Finally, in Part V, some of the ethical issues surrounding portraiture are addressed. The book closes with an epilogue about portraits of philosophers.　

Portraits and Philosophy tangles with deep questions about the nature and effects of portraiture in ways that will substantially advance the scholarly discussion of the genre. It will be of interest to scholars and students working in philosophy of art, history of art, and the visual arts.

What is art? What counts as an aesthetic experience? Does art have to beautiful? Can one reasonably dispute about taste? What is the relation between aesthetic and moral evaluations? How to interpret a work of art? Can we learn anything from literature, film or opera? What is sentimentality? What is irony? How to think philosophically about architecture, dance, or sculpture? What makes something a great portrait? Is music representational or abstract? Why do we feel terrified when we watch a horror movie even though we know it to be fictional?

In Conversations on Art and Aesthetics, Hans Maes discusses these and other key questions in aesthetics with ten world-leading philosophers of art:

Noël Carroll
Gregory Currie
Arthur Danto
Cynthia Freeland
Paul Guyer
Carolyn Korsmeyer
Jerrold Levinson
Jenefer Robinson
Roger Scruton
Kendall Walton

The exchanges are direct, open, and sharp, and give a clear account of these thinkers' core ideas and intellectual development. They also offer new insights into, and a deeper understanding of, contemporary issues in the philosophy of art.

Conversations on Art and Aesthetics will engage anyone who is philosophically curious about art and matters of aesthetics.

Art and Pornography presents a series of essays
which investigate the artistic status and aesthetic
dimension of pornographic pictures, films, and
literature, and explores the distinction, if there is
any, between pornography and erotic art. Is there
any overlap between art and pornography, or are
the two mutually exclusive? If they are, why is
that? If they are not, how might we characterize
pornographic art or artistic pornography, and how
might pornographic art be distinguished, if at all,
from erotic art? Can there be aesthetic experience of
pornography? What are some of the psychological,
social, and political consequences of the creation and
appreciation of erotic art or artistic pornography?
Leading scholars from around the world address these
questions, and more, and bring together different
aesthetic perspectives and approaches to this widely
consumed, increasingly visible, yet aesthetically
underexplored cultural domain. The book, the first
of its kind in philosophical aesthetics, will contribute
to a more accurate and subtle understanding of the
many representations that incorporate explicit sexual
imagery and themes, in both high art and demotic
culture, in Western and non-Western contexts. It is
sure to stir debate, and healthy controversy.

Art or Porn? The popular media will often choose this heading when reviewing the latest sexually explicit novel, film, or art exhibition. The underlying assumption seems to be that the work under discussion has to be one or the other, and cannot be both. But is this not a false dilemma? Can one really draw a sharp line between the pornographic and the artistic? Isn't it time to make room for pornographic art and for an aesthetic investigation of pornography? In answering these questions this book will draw on insights from many different disciplines, including philosophy, feminist theory, aesthetics, art history, film studies, theatre studies, as well as on the experience of people who are actually operating in the art world and porn industry. By offering a variety of theoretical approaches and examples taken from a wide range of art forms and historical periods, the reader will gain a fuller and deeper comprehension of the relations and frictions between art and pornography.

Seks is overal. In kranten en tijdschriften, in
advertenties op bushokjes, op televisie en
het internet, op Instagram en Snapchat. Seks
beheerst en betovert onze beeldcultuur. Af
en toe roept die onafgebroken stroom van
seksuele beelden kritiek op. We lezen over de
‘pornoficatie’ van onze cultuur en hoe de modeindustrie
zelfs kinderen verleidt om sexy strings
te kopen. We horen dat we aan porno verslaafd
zijn, dat alles van waarde vervliegt en dat we
steeds intensere prikkels nodig hebben. Een
zeldzame keer merkt iemand op dat de constante
seksuele objectivering van vrouwenlichamen
de genderongelijkheid in stand houdt. Als seks
overal is, is het niet verwonderlijk dat seks ook
in kunst te vinden is.
Kunst en pornografie lijken elkaar uit te sluiten:
het ene maakt het mooiste en het beste in ons
wakker, het andere onderwerpt ons aan hitsigheid
en dierlijkheid. Het ene viert de schoonheid van
de vrouw, het andere is een kwestie van geweld
en onderwerping.
Toch is de relatie tussen kunst en pornografie
genuanceerder dan ze op het eerste gezicht lijkt.
In deze filosofische verkenning nemen filosofen
Petra Van Brabandt en Hans Maes zowel kunst als
pornografie onder de loep en ontdekken ze dat
de dingen soms helemaal niet zijn wat ze lijken.

Wanneer ben je sexy, en wie bepaalt dat eigenlijk? Gelden dezelfde normen voor mannen en vrouwen? En hoe moeten we als maatschappij omgaan met de toenemende druk om er hot uit te zien? In dit boek zoekt filosoof Hans Maes een antwoord op deze vragen. Onderweg reflecteert hij over sekssymbolen, over de erotiserende werking van macht en rijkdom, en over de rol van kunst.  Hij buigt zich over de notie van seksuele authenticiteit en lanceert ten slotte ook een oproep voor betere pornografie.

'Grapje!' is een boek vol grappen en een boek óver grappen. De auteur Ted Cohen houdt erg van een goeie grap, maar is als filosoof ook geïnteresseerd in hoe zoiets werkt: waarom is de ene grap wel leuk en de andere niet? Waarom vertellen mensen graag grappen? Hoe komen grappen tot stand? Wat zijn de ingrediënten van een goede grap? Mag men over om het even wat of om het even wie grappen maken? Kan een moreel aanstootgevende grap toch geslaagd zijn als grap? Waarom maken we grappen over de dood?
In 'Grapje!' neemt Cohen ons mee op een filosofische speurtocht naar de aard en voorwaarden van échte humor. Zo blijkt de verrassende clou aan het eind van een grap het resultaat van een ingewikkeld samenspel van voorwaarden en denkprocessen. De auteur behandelt kwesties als luisterpubliek, selectie van onderwerpen, het volkskarakter van grappen, hun verborgen ethiek, en geeft een overvloed aan voorbeelden die je laten grinniken, hard laten lachen of zelfs choqueren.

Een goede grap is voor Cohen een mini-kunstwerk: een compact verhaal dat vol zit met menselijk drama en daarom gaat over zaken als vals gedrag, beledigingen en morele dilemma's, waarin clichés, vooroordelen en stereotypen worden ontmaskerd en intimiteit tussen mensen genadeloos wordt uitgespeeld. Voor wie zich wil verdiepen in moraal, in 'waarden en normen', vormen grappen een ware schatkamer. Cohens scherpe analyse staat bol van filosofisch vernuft en verfijnde humor. 'Grapje!' is filosofischer dan de meeste grappenboeken en grappiger dan de meeste filosofieboeken.

Soms is het ongepast om jezelf te beoordelen vanuit een extern gezichtspunt en soms is het zelfs onmogelijk om dat te doen. Het standpunt van anderen kan dus op twee manieren ontoegankelijk zijn, doch dit betekent niet dat het vanzelf ook als onbelangrijk wordt ervaren. Integendeel, het niet in te nemen standpunt van anderen bepaalt vaak in hoge mate de wijze waarop wij tegen onszelf aankijken. Onze zelfwaardering blijkt zodoende op een onophefbare manier afhankelijk van anderen.

Deze algemene stelling vormt de kern van het voorliggende boek. Ze wordt gaandeweg ontwikkeld en onderbouwd in discussie met de bestaande analytisch-filosofische literatuur. De dubbele asymmetrie tussen zelfwaardering en waardering van anderen wordt door hedendaagse auteurs namelijk vaak miskend. Als zodanig kan men spreken van een opvallende en gemeenschappelijke lacune in de actuele debatten over bescheidenheid, ijdelheid en trots.

Emily Brady and Arto Haapala (2003) define melancholy as a complex emotion with aspects of both pain and pleasure that draw on a range of emotionssadness, love and longing-all of which are bound with a reflective, solitary state of mind. Melancholy, they argue, does not just play a role in our encounters with artworks and the natural environment but also invites aesthetic considerations into play in more everyday situations. As such, melancholy can be considered an aesthetic emotion per se. In this paper, I critically examine the various aspects of Brady and Haapala's account, then present an alternative analysis of melancholy and its aesthetic relevance.

In her new book, Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience, Sophie Grace Chappell defines an epiphany as an (1) overwhelming (2) existentially significant manifestation of (3) value, (4) often sudden and surprising, (5) which feeds the psyche, (6) which feels like it “comes from outside” – it is something given, relative to which I am a passive perceiver – which (7) teaches us something new, which (8) “takes us out of ourselves”, and which (9) demands a response (Chappell 2022: 11).

However, it should be noted that the book is not just about epiphanies. As Chappell rightly points out, ‘if epiphanies are the peaks in our experience, then by definition, to study them must also be to study the troughs’ (2022: 9). In this brief essay I want to look more closely at those troughs. I will first discuss what Chappell refers to as a ‘dysepiphany’ or ‘negative epiphany’. In the second section, I will probe Chappell’s claim that dysepiphanies sap our psychic resources and consider whether epiphanies and dysepiphanies may sometimes co-occur and even reinforce each other. In the third and final section, I try to determine what the opposite of an epiphany might be and argue that anyone with an interest in epiphanies should also be keen to investigate any opposing processes that might be at work.

The aim of what I propose to call “existential aesthetics” is to investigate the various ways in which art and certain kinds of aesthetic practice or aesthetic experience can be of existential importance to people. Section I provides a definition of existential aesthetics, while Section II delineates this emerging field from cognate areas of research. Sections III and IV explore various subcategories and examples of existential aesthetics. Section V seeks to identify important avenues for future research and Section VI presents some concluding thoughts about the potential of existential aesthetics and why philosophers should be encouraged to fulfill this potential.

This paper focuses on historic anthropological photographs, meant to depict indigenous individuals as generic models of colonial stereotypes, and examines their later reclamation as portraits. Applying an intention-based account of portraiture, we discuss the historical context and contemporary examples of the utilization of these images in order to address several questions. What happens when the depicted persons in colonial imagery are treated and presented as sitters, rather than model specimens? Does this change the nature of the image? If a photograph was not originally intended as a portrait, can it come to function as such at a later stage? It is clear that, whether or not they fulfill all the requirements necessary for portraiture, these colonial photographs represent a vital resource for the reclamation of indigenous cultural heritage. As such, the paper serves as an introductory discussion into the complex issues surrounding the recategorization, repatriation, and restitution of colonial photographic archives.

Portraiture as a practice has undergone great changes over time. Portraits have been made in different media (from painting and sculpture to film and video), of different kinds of people (from kings and queens to peasants and workers), in a variety of materials (from the ancient Egyptian portraits on wooden panels to Marc Quinn’s self-portrait in blood), and have served a multiplicity of purposes (from glorifying or ridiculing a person to making an artistic or political statement). But what holds the practice of portraiture together? What is it that all portraits have in common and in virtue of which they are portraits? That is the central question of this paper. Starting from, and building on, a critical investigation of some recent philosophical attempts to define the portrait, the paper’s ambition is to arrive at an extensionally adequate account of portraiture, that is, an account that captures as much of the extension as possible of what we ordinarily think counts as a portrait. In section 1 Cynthia Freeland’s theory of portraiture is presented, while section 2 offers some objections against said theory. Freeland’s definition of a portrait as an image that presents a recognizably distinct individual who has emotional or conscious states, and who is able to participate in the creative process by posing, is shown to be too narrow in some respects and too broad in other respects. In section 3 the main features and strengths of Paolo Spinicci’s phenomenological approach to portraiture are articulated, while its particular shortcomings are highlighted in section 4. A discussion of certain subgenres of portraiture, such as animal portraits, deathbed portraits, baby portraits, abstract portraits, portraits in absentia, portraits of fictional characters, portraits in absorption, and the ‘portrait historié,’ will prove helpful in making the case against Spinicci and Freeland. Finally, in sections 5 and 6, an alternative account of portraiture is developed, one that seeks to addresses the numerous objections raised against the two competing theories. In a nutshell, it is argued that something counts as a portrait if it is the product of a largely successful intention to create a portrait, and that the intention to create a portrait necessarily involves having a substantive concept of the nature of portraits as well as having the intention to realise that substantive concept by imposing portrait-relevant features on an object. The main advantage of the proposed account is that it is broad enough to include all bona fide portraits, without being meaninglessly broad, and that it is able to accommodate both the changes and the continuity in the practice of portraiture.

Section 1 proposes a new philosophical account of melancholy. Section 2 examines the reasons why one might think that pornography and melancholy are incompatible. Section 3 discusses some successful examples of melancholic pornography and makes the case that feminist pornographers are particularly well-placed to produce such material.

Philosophers have put a lot of thought into the nature and normativity of aesthetic judgments. But people do not only judge works of art, they are also capable of loving works of art. One might think that focusing on the latter will only serve to loosen the connection between aesthetics and normativity. But I argue that love in general, and the love for art works in particular, has a rational nature and is therefore tied to reasons – provided we accept a conception of reasons as non-deontic and agent-relative.

In May 2017, my book ‘Conversations on Art and Aesthetics’ appeared. It contains conversations with, and photographic portraits of, ten prominent philosophers of art. They are Noël Carroll, Gregory Currie, Arthur Danto, Cynthia Freeland, Paul Guyer, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Jerrold Levinson, Jenefer Robinson, Roger Scruton, and Kendall Walton. The book has two main aims. One is to provide a broad and accessible overview of what aesthetics as a subfield of philosophy has to offer. The other is to stimulate new work in this area of research. In this brief paper I’d like to say a bit more about this second objective.

Art and pornography are often thought to be mutually exclusive. The present article argues that this popular view is without adequate support. Section 1 looks at some of the classic ways of drawing the distinction between these two domains of representation. In Section 2, it is argued that the classic dichotomies (subjectivity versus objectification, the beautiful versus the smutty, contemplation versus arousal, the complex versus the one-dimensional, the original versus the formulaic, imagination versus fantasy) may help to illuminate the differences between certain prototypical instances of pornography and art, but will not serve to justify the claim that pornography and art are fundamentally incompatible. Section 3 considers those definitions of pornography that make an a priori distinction between pornographic and artistic representations. The difference between the ‘merely’ erotic and the pornographic is also discussed in this context. Section 4 provides a critical assessment of the most recent and elaborate arguments against the compatibility of pornography and art. Finally, in Section 5, a case is made for the existence of pornographic art, as a subcategory of erotic art.

What is love? Many theorists have tried to answer this question. One such attempt was made not so long ago by the philosopher and sociologist Axel Honneth who argues that every love relationship between people is the result of an interactional process by which the persons involved detach themselves from an initial state of oneness in such a way that, in the end, they learn to accept and care for each other as independent persons. Hence his definition of love as the affectional expression of care retained over distance. Honneth’s account, however, is not unproblematic. There are profound differences between various kinds of love which his account tends to ignore. C.S. Lewis has drawn attention to some of these differences and in this essay I focus on his discussion of the specific contrast between romantic love and friendship. Friendship, I argue, though certainly a form of love, cannot be accommodated in Honneth’s model. To illustrate this, I refer to what is arguably one of the best films to deal with romantic love and friendship, Casablanca.

Hans Maes (University of Kent)
¿Quién dice que la pornografía no puede ser arte?

Jerrold Levinson y Christy Mag Uidhir han defendido recientemente que el arte y la pornografía son mutuamente excluyentes. Sin embargo, sus argumentos en apoyo de esta tesis siguen sin ser convincentes. En este artículo me propongo mostrar que puede haber arte pornográfico y que los intentos de Levinson y de Mag Uidhir por mostrar lo contrario fracasan. Presentaré los casos más fuertes tanto para la tesis positiva como para la negativa. En primer lugar, mostraré que la conclusión que ambos defienden no se sigue en absoluto de sus premisas –incluso cuando aceptemos dichas premisas como verdaderas. En segundo lugar, argumentaré que puede haber novelas, películas y fotografías consideradas simultáneamente como arte y como pornografía mostrando que de hecho hay tales novelas, películas y fotografías. De este modo, espero mostrar cómo la expresión “arte pornográfico”, lejos de poseer el carácter de oxímoron que Levinson y Mag Uidhir le adscribe, designa de hecho una categoría artística legítima.

extended and revised version of ‘Art or Porn : Clear Division or False Dilemma’

Het is een vraag die met de regelmaat van de klok terugkeert in de media. Bij een nieuwe tentoonstelling, roman of  lm waarin seks een centrale rol speelt, is er altijd wel een recensent of commentator die zich afvraagt: is dit kunst of pornogra e? De vraagsteller geeft daarbij te kennen dat het volgens hem één van beide moet zijn. Ofwel is het kunst, ofwel is het pornografie. Maar is dit geen vals dilemma? Sluiten kunst en pornografie elkaar echt uit? Of zijn er romans,  lms, foto’s, schilderijen of strips die zowel onder de noemer ‘kunst’ als onder de noemer ‘pornografie’ thuishoren?

Judging works of art is one thing. Loving a work of art is something else. When you visit a museum like the Louvre you make hundreds of judgements in the space of just a couple of hours. But you may grow to love only one or a handful of works over the course of your entire life. Depending on the art form you are most aligned with, this can be a painting, a novel, a poem, a song, a work of architecture, or some other art object or performance. As it happens, however, we have fallen in love with a series of films: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. But what does it mean to love a film? What’s the difference between liking a film, loving a film, and being a film lover? How rational or irrational is it to fall in love with a film? What are the constitutive elements of such a love? These are the questions we seek to address in this paper.

Melancholy is a central expressive property of the Before films and key to understanding and appreciating the trilogy as a whole. That, in a nutshell, is the thesis I develop in this paper. In the first section, I present a philosophical account of melancholy in general and aesthetic melancholy in particular. Melancholy is understood here as the profound and bittersweet emotional experience that occurs when we vividly grasp a harsh truth about human existence in such a way that we come to appreciate certain aspects of life more deeply. The second section of the paper focuses on the many intense as well as more subtle moments of melancholy in the various encounters between Celine and Jesse. These moments, I argue, are partly prompted by the environment and the circumstances in which they find themselves. But both of them also actively seek out and create such moments by the stories they tell and the reflections they engage in. That seems part of who they are as individuals and, I contend, it may be part of what attracts them to each other. In the third section, I address ‘film expression’, as opposed to ‘character expression’, and argue that melancholy is not just present in the characters’ dialogue and in their facial and bodily expressions but is also expressed through various cinematic means. The final section centres on the audience and the reception of the Before trilogy. I introduce the distinction between expression and expressiveness and suggest that the films may have resonated deeply with some viewers because they are so expressive of melancholy.

In a chapter that hones in on certain Renaissance portraits by Hans
Holbein, Giorgione, and Jan van Scorel, Hans Maes examines how it
is that we can be deeply moved by such portraits, despite (or perhaps
because of) the fact that we don’t know anything about their sitters.
Standard explanations in terms of the revelation of an inner self or the
recreation of a physical presence prove to be insufficient. Instead, Maes
provides a more rounded account of what makes said portraits moving
and memorable, thereby relying on Barthes’ notion of ‘punctum,’ James
Elkins’ account of why people cry in front of paintings, and a phenomenological exploration of the parallel between portraiture and the tradition of the Vanitas painting.

This paper presents a close analysis of Steve Pyke's famous series of portraits of philosophers. By comparing his photographs to other well-known series of portraits and to other portraits of philosophers we will seek a better understanding of the distinctiveness and fittingness of Pyke's project. With brief nods to Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, G.W.F. Hegel, and Arthur Schopenhauer and an extensive critical investigation of Cynthia Freeland's ideas on portraiture in general and her reading of Steve Pyke's portraits in particular, this paper will also aim to make a contribution to the philosophical debate on portraiture.

In a recent paper Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin (2017) present a feminist critique of sexiness and point to two problems in particular. The first is that women are considered sexy in accordance with an externally dictated conception of sexiness. The second problem is that women are considered sexy in accordance with an unduly narrow conception of sexiness, one that focuses predominantly on the body and thus equates sexiness with objecthood. I offer a critical examination of these claims and consider the role of pornography in steering our sexual desires and influencing our conceptions of sexiness.

All too often women are considered sexy in accordance with an externally dictated and unduly narrow conception of sexiness – one that excludes large portions of the female population from being considered sexy. In response to this, some feminists have suggested that we should give up on sexiness altogether. Since the agency, subjectivity, and autonomy of a woman being judged sexy is generally ignored, they argue, we have, in effect, an equation of sexiness with objecthood. In a recent essay entitled “Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects” Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin object to this strategy because they see sexuality as a crucial element of selfhood – something that one cannot simply ‘give up on’. Instead, they propose to reclaim and redefine sexiness in such a way that makes room for women as sexy subjects desiring and pursuing authentic pleasure. In this paper, I will investigate the merits and shortcomings of their proposal (section 1 and 2), present an alternative account (section 3), and conclude by considering how pornography may be part of the problem but also part of the solution in this matter (section 4 and 5).

Het woord ‘filosoferen’ roept bij sommigen ongetwijfeld het beeld op van mannen met grijze baarden die bij het haardvuur wijsheden over het leven debiteren. Of misschien denkt men eerder aan een wereldvreemde, mensenschuwe enkeling die zich op een eenzaam zolder- kamertje bezighoudt met esoterische vraagstukken. Hoe dan ook, ik vermoed dat men ‘filosoferen’ zelden of nooit in verband zal brengen met de filmzaal of cinema. Discussiëren over de nieuwe Star Trek of Tarantinofilm is in de geesten van velen mijlenver verwijderd van de oubollige en wereldvreemde praktijk van filosofen. Nochtans, niets is minder waar. De filosofische interesse voor film groeit dag aan dag en steeds meer filosofen debatteren, doceren en publiceren over film. In dit snel uitdijende onderzoeksveld kan men het overzicht gemakkelijk verliezen. Daarom begin ik met een fundamenteel onderscheid dat als wegwijzer kan dienen. Filosofen die schrijven over film(s) kan men grofweg in twee groepen onderverdelen. Zij die filosoferen over film en zij die filosoferen aan de hand van films (in het Engels spreekt men van ‘philosophy of film’ versus ‘philosophy through film’). Uiteraard kan men nog verdere onderverdelingen aanbrengen binnen deze twee brede categorieën. Zo kan men in ‘philosophy of film’ nog een onderscheid maken tussen metafysische, esthetische, epistemologische of strikt filmtheoretische vraagstukken. De andere categorie, ‘philosophy through film’, kan dan weer naar believen geordend worden volgens het genre van films dat besproken wordt (sciencefiction, psychologisch drama, enzovoort) of volgens de filosofische discipline die aan bod komt (ethiek, wijsgerige psychologie, godsdienstfilosofie, enzovoort). Omdat het onmogelijk is om al deze subcategorieën hier in detail of zelfs maar beknopt toe te lichten, beperk ik mij tot twee onderwerpen waarover in de vakliteratuur al veel geschreven is. Beide vraagstukken vinden in zekere zin hun oorsprong in hetzelfde intrigerende gegeven, met name het feit dat er lange tijd een zekere weigerachtigheid heeft bestaan om films ernstig te nemen – een weigerachtigheid die in sommige kringen nog steeds niet helemaal verdwenen is. Zo is men, ten eerste, lange tijd zeer sceptisch geweest over het artistieke potentieel van film. Bovendien, en ten tweede, is er in filosofische middens een langdurige weerstand geweest om films filosofisch ernstig te nemen. Dit geeft aanleiding tot de volgende vragen: Heeft het zin om van filmkunst te spreken? En: kunnen films werkelijk filosofisch relevant en interessant zijn? Met de eerste vraag is het filosoferen over film in het begin van de 20ste eeuw eigenlijk begonnen. Zij die filosoferen aan de hand van films worden dan weer voortdurend geconfronteerd met de tweede vraag.

Julie Delpy, who co-wrote the Before trilogy and was twice nominated for an Academy Award (best adapted screenplay) for Before Sunset and Before Midnight, agreed to be interviewed for the book because, as she explains, she has a soft spot for philosophy. She argues that everyone should have the opportunity to study philosophy at school, as it did have a profound effect on her own education. Other themes she discusses are death and romanticism in the Before trilogy, the importance of story-telling, the art of conversation, and social justice when it comes to the making and appreciation of films. Asked about her views on the meaning of life, she replies that “we are everything and we are nothing.” No matter how absurd human existence can seem, our personal life does matter to some people around us. The best thing you can do, she concludes (with a wink to Voltaire), is to raise your children well and do some gardening.

In this conversation philosophers of art Hans Maes and Jenefer Robinson address questions such as: How are emotions different from judgments? Why are we sometimes emotionally affected by something that happens to a fictional character? Is there a fundamental difference between the emotional response of a human being and that of a fish? What is sentimentality and why is it ethically problematic? How to distinguish between music being expressive of emotion, being the expression of someone’s emotion, and music arousing an emotion in an audience? Can we think of pictorial expression along the lines of musical expression? Why is it misleading to think of architecture as frozen music? Is there such a thing as aesthetic disgust? Can we learn from art? If so, what kind of knowledge do we gain? To what extent does philosophy need to be informed by science? To what extent does it need to be informed by the history of ideas?

In this conversation Hans Maes and Roger Scruton address key questions in the philosophy of art including: What makes something art? Are judgments of taste purely subjective? Have we reached the end of art? How is the religious aspect of our experience connected to our experience of art? What are the similarities between an erotic interest and an aesthetic interest? What is the difference between mere drunkenness and the intoxicating quality of wine? How does the latter compare to the intoxicating quality of a great line of poetry? What can we learn from Wagner’s operas? How important is the intention of the composer in resolving issues of musical interpretation? What is metaphorical perception and how does it form the basis of a theory of musical understanding? Why is it helpful to think of music as fluent architecture? Why have philosophers not paid more attention to sculpture?

In this conversation, which took place in October 2014, philosophers of art Hans Maes and Gregory Currie address questions such as: What is a narrative? What is the relation between fiction and narrative? How plausible are narrative theories of the self according to which a person creates her identity by forming an autobiographical narrative of her life? How to distinguish between authors and narrators or between real authors and implied authors? Does one need to take into account the intention of the author in interpreting a story? What is so irritating about the Hollywood happy ending? What is irony?  Why is irony is more difficult to achieve in a pictorial medium than in a linguistic one? Can we learn anything from literature? If it turns out that the beliefs about human psychology embodied in the great 19th century novels are badly flawed, will this have an impact on the literary value we ascribe to them?

In this conversation philosophers of art Hans Maes and Cynthia Freeland address several key questions around portraiture including: What is a portrait? Can there be abstract portraits? Do paintings of animals count as portraits? What makes something a great portrait? Can we evaluate a portrait without knowing anything about the sitter? Are all portraits art? What is art? The conversation also touches on other topics and themes such as kitsch, icons, sexual objectification, feminist readings of Aristotle, the philosophy of photography, everyday aesthetics, 3D movies, progress in art, progress in philosophy, and x-phi. Some of the artists that are mentioned (in no particular order): Dorothea Lange, Käthe Kollwitz, Lewis Hine, William Wegman, Katherine Sophie Dreier, David Hockney, Lucian Freud, Ansel Adams, Daphne Todd, Michael Graves, Georgia O’Keeffe, Goya, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, Willem De Kooning, Diego Velázquez, Gustav Klimt, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt.

In this conversation philosophers of art Hans Maes and Arthur Danto address questions such as: How to define art? How to interpret art? Can we learn from art? Does art have to be beautiful? Is beauty always easy to discern? Has the history of art really come to an end? Does aesthetics have a future? How does the aesthetics of nature compare to the aesthetics of art? Can aesthetics be naturalized? How to write art criticism? Should philosophers write more for the general public? Should philosophy be taught in art schools? And in what way does art accomplish a transfiguration of the commonplace?

In this conversation philosophers of art Hans Maes and Carolyn Korsmeyer address questions such as: Can food be art? Why is it that gustatory taste lends itself so readily to employment as a metaphor in the aesthetic realm? Can one reasonably dispute about taste? Is blind tasting the only true gold standard of tasting? What has been the influence of feminism on philosophy (of art)? Is all art political? How to define art? What is the magnet that attracts all sorts of people to experience things in works of art that they would avoid in real life? What is the nature of pleasure and can the value of art be explained in terms of pleasure? Can one really savor what is disgusting? Should we leave room in art for ‘the sublate’ as opposed to the sublime? Does genuineness count as an aesthetic property?

This is an excerpt of a long interview I did with Paul Guyer in November 2014. The full text, including our discussion of Kant’s aesthetics (which is left out here), will be published in the book Conversations on Art and Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 2016). Please note that this is only a draft.

Portraits are everywhere. One finds them not just in museums and galleries, but also in newspapers and magazines, in the homes of people and in the boardrooms of companies, on stamps and coins, on millions of cell phones and computers. Despite its huge popularity, however, portraiture hasn't received much philosophical attention. While there are countless art historical studies of portraiture, including self-portraiture and group-portraiture, contemporary philosophy has largely remained silent on the subject. The proposed conference aims to address this lacuna and bring together philosophers with different areas of expertise to discuss this enduring and continuously fascinating genre. Call for papers: We invite submissions on any issue related to portraiture. Papers should not exceed 5000 words and should be accompanied by a 100-word abstract and a page with your contact details. Please prepare your submission for blind review.

Portraits are everywhere. We think we know what they are for and what they do. They depict what people look like and they capture or distil their particular identity. But in everyday life, it might be argued, portraits trade in stereotypes and clichés. And if the advent of identity politics has demonstrated any- thing, it is how deeply problematic it is to think that identi- ty can be ‘captured’ or ‘distilled’. This reading list encourages a more analytical understanding of portraiture as an artistic genre, with particular reference to feminist/gender/disability/ ethnic/post-colonial issues. How have artists pushed at the li- mits and conventions of the type, how are people represented in portraits, and how have philosophers understood its essen- tial nature? The list aims to address central topics in aesthetics and philosophy of art through the genre of portraiture, adding relevant insights from art history and art theory, and thus ena- bling students to acquire a more sophisticated understanding of what making and looking at portraits actually involves.