Alexander Kremer
University of Szeged, Philosophy, Faculty Member
- Pragmatism (Philosophy), Hermeneutics, Bioethics, Aesthetics, Somaesthetics, Existentialism In Philosophy, and 35 moreLiterature and Cinema (Kierkegaard), Jaspers, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Bataille, Dostoevskij, Beckett, Godard), Vision, Percpetion, Neuroarthistory, Neuroscience, Synaesthesia, Blind Vision, Phenomenology, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Luce Irigary, Embodiment, Multisensoriality, American Philosophy, John Dewey, Pragmatism, NeoPragmatism, Media and Technology, Charles S. Peirce, Richard Rorty, Ancient Philosophy, Philosophy of the Subject, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Existentialism, Philosophy, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Edmund Husserl, and Richard Shustermanedit
If we are interested in the culture of sexuality, then we are lucky because Richard Shusterman has presented two writings to us. One of them is his actual book, Ars erotica: Sex and somaesthetics in the classical arts of love (2021),... more
If we are interested in the culture of sexuality, then we are lucky because Richard Shusterman has presented two writings to us. One of them is his actual book, Ars erotica: Sex and somaesthetics in the classical arts of love (2021), which will surely be a guide to the next generations for decades in the future, since it has achieved much more than Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality (1976) The other is an article by Shusterman, “Pragmatism and Sex: An Unfulfilled Connection” (2021), which will be used frequently by people who are interested in pragmatism. Shusterman, who created the somaesthetic project, developed a naturalist aesthetic that has its origins in John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934). This somaesthetics is an excellent pragmatist aesthetics, which was named in this way first time also by Shusterman. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that somaesthetics is already much more today than mere aesthetics because it has become a philosophy (Kremer, 2022). Shusterm...
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... Nyírő 201 eighteen a Koala's face, a pig's Slaughters, and rorty's conception of Self and Society ... if pragmatism could reach a sustainable, mutually enriching exchange with hermeneutically-minded philosophies,... more
... Nyírő 201 eighteen a Koala's face, a pig's Slaughters, and rorty's conception of Self and Society ... if pragmatism could reach a sustainable, mutually enriching exchange with hermeneutically-minded philosophies, whether hermeneutic in the classic sense or neo ...
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Although the first ‘pragmatist aesthetics’ was devised by John Dewey in his Art as Experience (1934), Richard Shusterman has been the only scholar to use the notion of “pragmatist aesthetics” in his Pragmatist Aesthetics (1992). In this... more
Although the first ‘pragmatist aesthetics’ was devised by John Dewey in his Art as Experience (1934), Richard Shusterman has been the only scholar to use the notion of “pragmatist aesthetics” in his Pragmatist Aesthetics (1992). In this paper, I show that Dewey already refuses the gap between the practices of the ‘artworld’ and that of everyday life. In Art as Experience, he criticizes the ‘museum conception’ of art to argue that some aesthetic experiences in our daily life have the same essential structure as the experience of art. While Rorty has revised Dewey’s basic premises, Shusterman has rather restated them. Since the end of the 1980s, he has started developing his own philosophical project, named ‘somaesthetics’. Shusterman’s somaesthetics does not simply incorporate many Deweyan views, but also develops them further. Accepting a Deweyan framework, Shusterman rejects the sharp dualism of the so-called “lower and higher levels of art”. What is more, he considers philosophy a...
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Richard Rorty stands as one the most important philosophical figures of recent decades. He is most known for his groundbreaking philosophical work, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). In this book, and in subsequent books and... more
Richard Rorty stands as one the most important philosophical figures of recent decades. He is most known for his groundbreaking philosophical work, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). In this book, and in subsequent books and essays, Rorty challenges the ...
Research Interests:
Richard Rorty stands as one the most important philosophical figures of recent decades. He is most known for his groundbreaking philosophical work, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). In this book, and in subsequent books and... more
Richard Rorty stands as one the most important philosophical figures of recent decades. He is most known for his groundbreaking philosophical work, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). In this book, and in subsequent books and essays, Rorty challenges the ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Review of Richard Shusterman's book Ars Erotica (2020) by Alexander Kremer. Published in the Journal of Somaesthetics (vol. 7, no. 2 (2021)). The full journal can be accessed here: https://somaesthetics.aau.dk/index.php/JOS/issue/view/428
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What is a city? The answer depends on the interpreter's angle. For a modern politician, a city is a place where he can get more votes and form people's lives. For a criminal , a city is a place of goods and people that can be stolen or... more
What is a city? The answer depends on the interpreter's angle. For a modern politician, a city is a place where he can get more votes and form people's lives. For a criminal , a city is a place of goods and people that can be stolen or robed. For a businessman, the city can be a place of abundant financial opportunities. For urban planners, the city is a large human settlement, where they try to create the so-called "smart city." On the most general level, taking into account these and similar opportunities , we can say that the city is the most crucial artificial space of living in humankind's history. If we focus on a particular level, it is to recognize that there are as many different approaches as many central values and interests are connected to city life. One of these possible approaches is the aesthetic view of street life and the city. Richard Shusterman and his colleagues approach the city-phenomenon from a som-aesthetic point of view. They created an excellent volume of essays that describe the extremely diverse somaesthet-ic qualities of city life. As Shusterman wrote it, Somaesthetics, then, can be defined as the critical study and meliorative cultivation of the body as the site not only of experienced subjec-tivity and sensory appreciation (aesthesis) that guides our action and performance but also of our creative self-fashioning through the ways we use, groom, and adorn our physical bodies to express our values and stylize ourselves. To realize its aims of improving somatic experience and expression, somaesthetics advocates integrating theory and practice. (p. 15) The soma-centered approach of city life results-at least-in two consequences. On the one hand, somaes-thetics is multidimensional; on the other hand, it is all-embracing. The multifaceted approach follows from the fact that our soma as "the tool of tools" takes part 1
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We live in the age of narrative philosophy. This is especially important pertaining to the notion of the self, since it is a result of our personal narratives, in which the combination of self-esteem and self-identity plays a decisive... more
We live in the age of narrative philosophy. This is especially important pertaining to the notion of the self, since it is a result of our personal narratives, in which the combination of self-esteem and self-identity plays a decisive role. After a general survey of these topics, I will show Rorty's particular application of the narrative identity theory both on the individual and the social level. In the second main part I will summarize Shusterman's criticism on Rorty's notion of the self and his own description of that which is rather an internarrative identity theory.
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In this paper, I will focus on the broader sense of cultural politics. First I will offer a theoretical background to the topic in the form of a short summary of my social philosophy. Secondly, I will examine Rorty’s usage of philosophy... more
In this paper, I will focus on the broader sense of cultural politics. First I will offer a theoretical background to the topic in the form of a short summary of my social philosophy. Secondly, I will examine Rorty’s usage of philosophy as cultural politics. Thirdly I will show Shusterman’s criticism on Rorty and his own interpretation of philosophy as cultural politics. In the end, I will examine the relationship between pragmatism and cultural politics in general.
Key words: cultural politics, pragmatism, Dewey, Rorty, Shusterman, philosophy, ideology, politics.
Key words: cultural politics, pragmatism, Dewey, Rorty, Shusterman, philosophy, ideology, politics.
In this paper, I will explain Richard Rorty’s criticism of Immanuel Kant’s ethics. I show first of all the main characteristics of Kant’s ethics in contrast with the Natural Law ethics of Thomas of Aquinas since I am persuaded that Kant... more
In this paper, I will explain Richard Rorty’s criticism of Immanuel Kant’s ethics. I show first of all the main characteristics of Kant’s ethics in contrast with the Natural Law ethics of Thomas of Aquinas since I am persuaded that Kant wrote his ethics in the rational spirit of Enlightenment. Secondly, I summarize the essence of Rorty’s Neo-pragmatism, which will serve as a basis for the interpretation of Rorty’s ethics and his obvious criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy. Rorty recognized clearly the unsolvable inner contradictions of Kant’s ethics, which come from his special philosophical anthropology, and replaced it with a new pragmatist, evolutionary view of the human being, and this view forms the basis of his criticism.
It is beyond question that every ethics rests on particular presumptions, which we always can find in the general philosophy of the given author. On the one hand, this is the reason, why particular ethics is always a part of the author’s philosophy, even in the case if it is not worked out in a special book. (This is the situation when somebody is ‘only’ an ethicist.) On the other hand, that is, why I had to write seemingly long introductions to both Kant and Rorty. I am persuaded that it is necessary even in the case if a paper is written to professionals. Everybody knows, namely, that the same philosophies have very different interpretations, and this is the situation in Kant’s and especially in Rorty’s case. I need my particular interpretation of Kant’s and Rorty’s philosophy in general since these are my presumptions regarding the interpretation of their ethics, which are parts of these philosophies.
It is beyond question that every ethics rests on particular presumptions, which we always can find in the general philosophy of the given author. On the one hand, this is the reason, why particular ethics is always a part of the author’s philosophy, even in the case if it is not worked out in a special book. (This is the situation when somebody is ‘only’ an ethicist.) On the other hand, that is, why I had to write seemingly long introductions to both Kant and Rorty. I am persuaded that it is necessary even in the case if a paper is written to professionals. Everybody knows, namely, that the same philosophies have very different interpretations, and this is the situation in Kant’s and especially in Rorty’s case. I need my particular interpretation of Kant’s and Rorty’s philosophy in general since these are my presumptions regarding the interpretation of their ethics, which are parts of these philosophies.
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In my paper I will prove my overall thesis that Rorty consistently enforces his politically saturated liberal ironic standpoint in the fields of science and politics from his " Contingency " book (1989). As a neopragmatist thinker he... more
In my paper I will prove my overall thesis that Rorty consistently enforces his politically saturated liberal ironic standpoint in the fields of science and politics from his " Contingency " book (1989). As a neopragmatist thinker he gives priority to politics in the sense of a liberal democracy over everything else. Even philosophy as " cultural politics " serves this purpose. He did not want to create a detailed political philosophy, but the main motive of his philosophy is political. He is charged with complacency, relativism and misinterpreting traditional pragmatism, but I show that this is mistaken. Rorty offers " only " a non-systematic, but logical and permanently developed interpretation of our present world on the basis of knowledge he appropriated and improved by building bridges between pragmatism, analytic and continental philosophy. I will analyze briefly in the first part his neo-pragmatist thoughts on science in connection with his political views. In the second part I will interpret Rorty as a liberal ironist who regards almost everything as contingent, except democracy. He outlines a liberal utopia that means first of all a just society in a Rawlsian sense, but he also develops his idea further in a neo-pragmatic way.
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Political Self in Modern Democracy: Individual Liberty and Personal Rights versus Republican Virtue and Communitarian Responsiveness. In: "Self and Society", The Central European Pragmatist Forum Vol. 4, Edited by John Ryder and Alexander Kremer, Value Inquiry Book Series, Rodopi Press, (forthcomingmore
