Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Interpretation

  • Four Lectures on danto

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ The complete lecture notes and video for my unit on Danto, in my upper-division Aesthetics course, PHI 320. Danto 1 ____ In my view Danto’s Transfiguration of the Commonplace represents the most sophisticated, best effort to define ‘art’ in what I have called “the New Wave” in the Philosophy of…

  • Prolegomena for a Pluralist Metaphysics: Actions, Reasons, Causes … and Ends

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ I’ve been saying that I’d like a return to philosophical “normalcy,” meaning that I’d like us to stop indulging what I’ve been calling, alternatively, “crazy” and “desperate” philosophical positions: Panpsychism; Hard Determinism; Eliminative Materialism and “Illusionism”; Platonism; Mind/Body Dualism; and so on. I’m running an ongoing series of conversations with…

  • Interpretation and the “Investigative” Concept of Criticism

    by Daniel A. Kaufman **In light of my recent Course Notes on Danto’s theory of interpretation, I thought readers might be interested in my own critique of his theory.  The following paper originally appeared in Angelaki, Volume 17, Issue 1, Page 3-12, March 2012** §1 My subject is the popular view in (mainly Analytic) philosophy…

  • Course Notes: Arthur Danto on “Surface” and “Deep” Interpretation

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Before the coronavirus turned everything upside-down, the students in my upper-division Aesthetics course and I were working through Arthur Danto’s theory of interpretation, so as eventually to bring it into tension with Susan Sontag’s take in her famous essay, “Against Interpretation,” on which I wrote in the early days of…

  • Envisaging Homer’s World

    by Mark English To what extent do we have access to the thought-worlds of past eras? My experience of doing research in intellectual history has led me to be acutely aware of the difficulties. At first you think you understand. Then, gradually, you realize the extent of your ignorance. The subtleties of a given culture…