The Science of Beauty

The Science of Beauty
Author: Annelie Ramsbrock
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2015-05-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137523158

What did the cosmetic practices of middle-class women in the nineteenth century have in common with the repair of men's bodies mutilated in war? What did the New Woman of the Weimar years have to do with the field of social medicine that emerged in the same period? They were all part of a conversation about the cosmetic modification of bodies, a debate shaped by scientific knowledge and normative social models. Conceived as a cultural history, this book examines the history of artificially created beauty in Germany from the late Enlightenment to the early days of National Socialist rule.

Dogmatic Aesthetics

Dogmatic Aesthetics
Author: Stephen John Wright
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2014
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1451465599

The identification of God with beauty is one of the most aesthetically rich notions within Christian thought. To avoid a theological account of beauty becoming a mere projection of our wildest desires, it must be reined in by dogmatics. This book employs the thought of Robert W Jenson to construct a dogmatic aesthetics.

Contingent Computation

Contingent Computation
Author: M. Beatrice Fazi
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2018-11-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1786606097

In Contingent Computation, M. Beatrice Fazi offers a new theoretical perspective through which we can engage philosophically with computing. The book proves that aesthetics is a viable mode of investigating contemporary computational systems. It does so by advancing an original conception of computational aesthetics that does not just concern art made by or with computers, but rather the modes of being and becoming of computational processes. Contingent Computation mobilises the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead in order to address aesthetics as an ontological study of the generative potential of reality. Through a novel philosophical reading of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and of Turing’s notion of incomputability, Fazi finds this potential at the formal heart of computational systems, and argues that computation is a process of determining indeterminacy. This indeterminacy, which is central to computational systems, does not contradict their functionality. Instead, it drives their very operation, albeit in a manner that might not always fit with the instrumental, representational and cognitivist purposes that we have assigned to computing.

Ontology of Divinity

Ontology of Divinity
Author: Mirosław Szatkowski
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 844
Release: 2024-04-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 311133256X

This volume announces a new era in the philosophy of God. Many of its contributions work to create stronger links between the philosophy of God, on the one hand, and mathematics or metamathematics, on the other hand. It is about not only the possibilities of applying mathematics or metamathematics to questions about God, but also the reverse question: Does the philosophy of God have anything to offer mathematics or metamathematics? The remaining contributions tackle stereotypes in the philosophy of religion. The volume includes 35 contributions. It is divided into nine parts: 1. Who Created the Concept of God; 2. Omniscience, Omnipotence, Timelessness and Spacelessness of God; 3. God and Perfect Goodness, Perfect Beauty, Perfect Freedom; 4. God, Fundamentality and Creation of All Else; 5. Simplicity and Ineffability of God; 6. God, Necessity and Abstract Objects; 7. God, Infinity, and Pascal’s Wager; 8. God and (Meta-)Mathematics; and 9. God and Mind.

Beauty

Beauty
Author: Natalie Carnes
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2014-11-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1630876674

Beauty engages fourth-century bishop Gregory of Nyssa to address beauty's place in theology and the broader world. With the recent resurgence of attention to beauty among theologians, questions still remain about what exactly beauty is, how it is perceived, and whether we should celebrate its return. If beauty fell out of favor because it was seen to distract from the weightier concerns of poverty and suffering--because it can even be a tool of oppression--why should we laud it now? Gregory's writings offer surprisingly rich and relevant reflections that can move contemporary conversations beyond current impasses and critiques of beauty. Drawing Gregory into conversation with such disparate voices as novelist J. M. Coetzee and art theorist Kaja Silverman, Beauty displays the importance of beauty to theology and theology to beauty in a discussion that bridges ancient and modern, practical and theoretical, secular and religious.

Interpreting Schelling

Interpreting Schelling
Author: Lara Ostaric
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2014-09-29
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1107018927

The first volume on Schelling in English exploring the study of the history of philosophy and core systematic philosophical issues.

The Philosophy of Design

The Philosophy of Design
Author: Glenn Parsons
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2015-11-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 150950219X

The Philosophy of Design is an introduction to the fundamental philosophical issues raised by the contemporary practice of design. The first book to systematically examine design from the perspective of contemporary philosophy, it offers a broad perspective, ranging across key philosophical areas such as aesthetics, epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. The first part of the book explores central issues about the nature of design and its products, and the rationality of design methods. A central theme is that Modernist ideas, such as those offered by Loos and Gropius, provide important responses to these philosophical issues. In the second part of the book, these Modernist ideas serve as touchstones in the exploration of key issues for design, including: the place of aesthetics in design; designs relation to personal expression; the meaning of function; and designs relation to consumerism. The social responsibility of designers, and the impact of design practice on ethical reasoning are also discussed. Written in an accessible style, The Philosophy of Design presents a new perspective on design and a provocative reassessment of the Modernist legacy. It will engage students and designers with current philosophical debates, helping them to bring into clearer focus the meaning of contemporary design, and its unique challenges and possibilities.

Hunks, Hotties, and Pretty Boys

Hunks, Hotties, and Pretty Boys
Author: Steven L. Davis
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2010-08-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1443824534

White, heterosexual, middle-class men have long served as the standard for masculine “beauty,” even if such men have refused to embrace this term. This study seeks to denaturalize this standard by exploring the connections between beauty and the broad spectrum of masculinities. The chapters included in Hunks, Hotties, and Pretty Boys contribute primarily to the field of gender studies, specifically masculinity studies. They consider twentieth-century representations of male beauty through a variety of mediums: performance, literature, art, photography, film and television. Although the contributors hail from both the humanities and the social sciences, all share a concern for how beauty informs, shapes, defines, and re-defines our understanding of masculinity itself. These scholars investigate a range of historical periods and draw from a broad scope of critical approaches. Some interrogate male beauty through the female gaze and look to the influence of female performance on notions of masculine beauty. Others examine how queer and racial constructions of male beauty refuse and offer alternatives to hegemonic models of identity. Another revisits previous philosophical and theoretical conceptions of beauty, only to deconstruct gendered conceptions of the beautiful and the sublime. In all, these essays complicate masculine beauty by examining Chicano, Asian, working class, and female constructions of male beauty in Western culture.

Faith and the Philosophers

Faith and the Philosophers
Author: John Hick
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2011-07-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725229854

To define and explore contemporary philosophical critiques of Christian belief is the purpose of this book, which arises out of a conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary. In a frank and extensive confrontation, outstanding philosophers and theologians met to search for greater clarity on some important issues in the philosophy of religion. The book contains the papers written for the conference, the prepared criticism, and excerpts from the debates. The discussions revolved around the experiential grounds of religious belief; the question as to what conclusions may legitimately be drawn from religious experience; the "emptiness" or otherwise of Christian belief and ethic in the modern world; the Freudian explanation of faith; and the Barthian defense of Christianity.