Philosophy by Other Means: The Arts in Philosophy and Philosophy in the Arts
by Robert B. Pippin
University of Chicago Press, 2021 Paper: 978-0-226-77080-2 | Cloth: 978-0-226-77077-2 | eISBN: 978-0-226-77094-9 Library of Congress Classification BH21.P57 2021 Dewey Decimal Classification 111.85
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK Throughout his career, Robert B. Pippin has examined the relationship between philosophy and the arts. With his writings on film, literature, and visual modernism, he has shown that there are aesthetic objects that cannot be properly understood unless we acknowledge and reflect on the philosophical concerns that are integral to their meaning. His latest book, Philosophy by Other Means, extends this trajectory, offering a collection of essays that present profound considerations of philosophical issues in aesthetics alongside close readings of novels by Henry James, Marcel Proust, and J. M. Coetzee.
The arts hold a range of values and ambitions, offering beauty, playfulness, and craftsmanship while deepening our mythologies and enriching the human experience. Some works take on philosophical ambitions, contributing to philosophy in ways that transcend the discipline’s traditional analytic and discursive forms. Pippin’s claim is twofold: criticism properly understood often requires a form of philosophical reflection, and philosophy is impoverished if it is not informed by critical attention to aesthetic objects. In the first part of the book, he examines how philosophers like Kant, Hegel, and Adorno have considered the relationship between art and philosophy. The second part of the book offers an exploration of how individual artworks might be considered forms of philosophical reflection. Pippin demonstrates the importance of practicing philosophical criticism and shows how the arts can provide key insights that are out of reach for philosophy, at least as traditionally understood.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Robert B. Pippin is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Henry James and Modern Moral Life, After the Beautiful, several books on modern German philosophy, and five books on film and philosophy, most recently, Filmed Thought: Cinema as Reflective Form, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
REVIEWS
“This collection of essays addresses the perennial question of the relation between philosophy and aesthetic criticism with cogency and originality. It’s hard to think of anyone better qualified to explore this question, as Pippin has made major contributions both to the study of modern German philosophy and to philosophical approaches to aesthetic objects, notably painting, literary fiction, and film.”
— Derek Attridge, University of York
“When seeking to bring together two distinct practices or disciplines it is all too easy to confuse them or lose sight of what is most interesting about each. Pippin avoids this fate with remarkable grace and precision. His philosophical questions illuminate literature and art, and his interpretations of particular works invite a philosophical connection without depending on it. A wonderful, infinitely interesting project.”
— Michael Wood, Princeton University
“These essays display the enormous range of Pippin’s intelligence as a commentator on philosophy and literature. Whether as an expounder of Hegel’s aesthetics or an interpreter of self-knowledge in What Maisie Knew, he offers discoveries that always reward the attention he demands.”
— David Bromwich, Yale University
"Philosophers weary of banal abstraction will find fresh sources of inspiration within Pippin’s poetic importations... Pippin makes a strong case not only for a philosophic reading of art, but also for an artistic reading of philosophy."
— Athwart
"Artworks are neither aesthetically rendered content ripe for philosophical articulation at a later stage, nor mere particulars resisting interpretation, but are revealed here as the friction that any thinking needs to make its concepts come alive for us. In this way, this book offers the finest compliment philosophy could give to art, not by defining it or grasping it in a comprehensive theory, but by engaging it and letting it offer us something to understand, again and again."
— The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
" [A] marvellous, labyrinthine book."
— Times Literary Supplement
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part One: The Arts in Philosophy
1. Philosophical Criticism
2. Kant and the Problem of Tragedy
3. The Status of Literature in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: On the Lives of Concepts
4. The Absence of Aesthetics in Hegel’s Aesthetics
5. Hegel on Painting
6. Authenticity in Painting: Remarks on Michael Fried’s Art History
7. Photography as Art: Fried and Intention
8. Adorno, Aesthetic Negativity, and the Problem of Idealism
Part Two: Philosophy in the Arts
9. On Maisie’s Knowing Her Own Mind
10. Subjectivity: A Proustian Problem
11. The Shadow of Love: The Role of Jealousy in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu
12. The Paradoxes of Power in the Early Novels of J. M. Coetzee
13. Philosophical Fiction? On J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello
Acknowledgments
Works Cited
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
Philosophy by Other Means: The Arts in Philosophy and Philosophy in the Arts
by Robert B. Pippin
University of Chicago Press, 2021 Paper: 978-0-226-77080-2 Cloth: 978-0-226-77077-2 eISBN: 978-0-226-77094-9
Throughout his career, Robert B. Pippin has examined the relationship between philosophy and the arts. With his writings on film, literature, and visual modernism, he has shown that there are aesthetic objects that cannot be properly understood unless we acknowledge and reflect on the philosophical concerns that are integral to their meaning. His latest book, Philosophy by Other Means, extends this trajectory, offering a collection of essays that present profound considerations of philosophical issues in aesthetics alongside close readings of novels by Henry James, Marcel Proust, and J. M. Coetzee.
The arts hold a range of values and ambitions, offering beauty, playfulness, and craftsmanship while deepening our mythologies and enriching the human experience. Some works take on philosophical ambitions, contributing to philosophy in ways that transcend the discipline’s traditional analytic and discursive forms. Pippin’s claim is twofold: criticism properly understood often requires a form of philosophical reflection, and philosophy is impoverished if it is not informed by critical attention to aesthetic objects. In the first part of the book, he examines how philosophers like Kant, Hegel, and Adorno have considered the relationship between art and philosophy. The second part of the book offers an exploration of how individual artworks might be considered forms of philosophical reflection. Pippin demonstrates the importance of practicing philosophical criticism and shows how the arts can provide key insights that are out of reach for philosophy, at least as traditionally understood.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Robert B. Pippin is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Henry James and Modern Moral Life, After the Beautiful, several books on modern German philosophy, and five books on film and philosophy, most recently, Filmed Thought: Cinema as Reflective Form, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
REVIEWS
“This collection of essays addresses the perennial question of the relation between philosophy and aesthetic criticism with cogency and originality. It’s hard to think of anyone better qualified to explore this question, as Pippin has made major contributions both to the study of modern German philosophy and to philosophical approaches to aesthetic objects, notably painting, literary fiction, and film.”
— Derek Attridge, University of York
“When seeking to bring together two distinct practices or disciplines it is all too easy to confuse them or lose sight of what is most interesting about each. Pippin avoids this fate with remarkable grace and precision. His philosophical questions illuminate literature and art, and his interpretations of particular works invite a philosophical connection without depending on it. A wonderful, infinitely interesting project.”
— Michael Wood, Princeton University
“These essays display the enormous range of Pippin’s intelligence as a commentator on philosophy and literature. Whether as an expounder of Hegel’s aesthetics or an interpreter of self-knowledge in What Maisie Knew, he offers discoveries that always reward the attention he demands.”
— David Bromwich, Yale University
"Philosophers weary of banal abstraction will find fresh sources of inspiration within Pippin’s poetic importations... Pippin makes a strong case not only for a philosophic reading of art, but also for an artistic reading of philosophy."
— Athwart
"Artworks are neither aesthetically rendered content ripe for philosophical articulation at a later stage, nor mere particulars resisting interpretation, but are revealed here as the friction that any thinking needs to make its concepts come alive for us. In this way, this book offers the finest compliment philosophy could give to art, not by defining it or grasping it in a comprehensive theory, but by engaging it and letting it offer us something to understand, again and again."
— The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
" [A] marvellous, labyrinthine book."
— Times Literary Supplement
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part One: The Arts in Philosophy
1. Philosophical Criticism
2. Kant and the Problem of Tragedy
3. The Status of Literature in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: On the Lives of Concepts
4. The Absence of Aesthetics in Hegel’s Aesthetics
5. Hegel on Painting
6. Authenticity in Painting: Remarks on Michael Fried’s Art History
7. Photography as Art: Fried and Intention
8. Adorno, Aesthetic Negativity, and the Problem of Idealism
Part Two: Philosophy in the Arts
9. On Maisie’s Knowing Her Own Mind
10. Subjectivity: A Proustian Problem
11. The Shadow of Love: The Role of Jealousy in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu
12. The Paradoxes of Power in the Early Novels of J. M. Coetzee
13. Philosophical Fiction? On J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello
Acknowledgments
Works Cited
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE