Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
51
result(s) for
"Grace (Aesthetics)"
Sort by:
Schiller's 'On Grace and Dignity' in its Cultural Context
Friedrich Schiller is not only one of the leading poets and dramatists of German Classicism but also an inspiring philosopher. His essay 'über Anmut und Würde' (On Grace and Dignity) marks a radical break with Enlightenment thinking and its morally prescriptive agenda. Here Schiller does not pursue the prevalent interest in the individual artist as genius or in the creative act; instead, he establishes a harmony of mind and body in the aesthetic realm, putting down his thoughts on aesthetics in a systematic way for the first time, building on his own earlier forays into the field and on an intensive study of Kant. The popular essay form allowed Schiller to combine condensed thought with clear and rhetorically effective presentation, but his innovation here is his insistence on a freedom for art that affirms the moral freedom of reason, reuniting the human faculties radically separated by Enlightenment thought. Schiller sees aesthetic autonomy as the way forward for civilization. This is the first English scholarly edition of this pivotal essay, accompanied by the first comprehensive commentary on it. The essays focus on various facets of Schiller's essay and its socio-historical and philosophical context. Schiller's analysis is examined in the light of the thematic context of his plays as well as its surviving influence into the twentieth century. Contributors: Jane Curran, Christophe Fricker, David Pugh, Fritz Heuer, Alan Menhennet. Jane V. Curran is Professor of German at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Christophe Fricker is a D. Phil. candidate at St. John's College, Oxford.
eBook
Skill : is it just a matter of timing? part 6
Explores aspects of biomechanics, with a focus on how an athlete or dancer can coordinate his or her body segments to achieve fluidity, grace, speed and accuracy. Distinguishes between movements requiring a high degree of accuracy or force and those requiring high velocities. Source: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, licensed by the Department of Internal Affairs for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Journal Article
THE SUPERPOWERS
Part mentor, part circus ringmaster, he had an enthusiasm for the mysteries of the universe that infected anyone within earshot: \"The energy made you want to study theoretical physics for the rest of your life,\" recalls psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison, who attended a Feynman lecture years ago. Bernieri strongly suspects that charismatic people are natural \"attractors\" who get others to synchronize to them.\\n Just as Buddhists live by ethical precepts that determine the \"right\" action and speech, icons like Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy were supremely conscious of the correct way to uphold their public role (Prince Harry has yet to figure this out, and Princess Stephanie never did). Nelson Mandela, leader of South Africa's antiapartheid struggle, spent decades in prison, yet retained his dignity and, like Mahatma Gandhi, led a peace movement.
Magazine Article
Art and the Good Neighbor Policy: Grace Morley's Role in the Office of Inter-American Affairs Art Committee during World War II
This article examines the pivotal role of Grace McCann Morley in promoting Latin American art in the United States during the era of the Good Neighbor Policy (1933). As director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and a key figure in the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA), Morley challenged Eurocentric perspectives and advocated for Latin American art's unique identity. The article focuses on her organization of itinerant exhibitions, highlighting the cultural diversity of Latin American art while navigating political and institutional obstacles. Using archives and correspondence, I reassess Morley's contributions to the cultural diplomacy efforts of the 1940s and her influence on the recognition of Latin American modernism in U.S. museums.
Journal Article
Are Ashes All That Is Left? Grace Jantzen’s Aesthetics and the Beauty of Biodiversity
As the climate crisis continues to worsen and it becomes apparent that the earth faces its sixth mass extinction event, it is more important than ever to find an alternative to the disordered thinking that prevents meaningful environmental reform in nations of the Global North with large carbon footprints such as the United States. Informed by affect theory, I revisit Grace Jantzen’s late work on death and beauty in the context of biodiversity to develop the beginnings of a theological affect of responsiveness to ecological beauty. Juxtaposing Jantzen’s theory of the displacement of beauty with Kevin O’Brien’s theological ethics of biodiversity, I suggest that biodiversity can be key to an ecotheology that combats human exceptionalism and prioritizes responsiveness to beauty. I contend that an aesthetics of natality requires responsiveness to the beauty of biodiversity in order to combat both human exceptionalism and the culture of necrophilia that Jantzen critiqued. Ultimately, I conclude that beauty, natality, and biodiversity may be able to inform an ecological theology centered on nonexceptional theological affects.
Journal Article
“Beyond the Window That Can Never Be Opened”—Roger Scruton on “Moments of Revelation” in Human Life
This study addresses Roger Scruton’s understanding of what he called “moments of revelation”. In two short essays, both entitled “Effing the ineffable”, Scruton framed his discussion of moments of revelation with reference to the medieval Christian mystical discourse. Introducing the medieval discussion of this topic, this study provides an analysis of Scruton’s approach to the theme. In tune with the traditional discourse on revelation, his general aim was to demonstrate that there are ways of revealing important truths about the supernatural, of the world “beyond the window”, that do not require words to be pronounced. He calls our experiences of such phenomena moments of revelation and identifies four different transitory sources of revelation. This study deals with them one by one, after considering whether it is right to label such a revelation transcendental. The four sources of Scruton’s moments of revelation are natural beauty, the beauty of painting, the beauty of music, and personal encounters. The first three examples are connected to his thoughts on art and beauty as a substitute of divine revelation. Perhaps the most surprising of these is the last ones, moments of intersubjective human relationships, “our knowledge of each other”. Relying on both Buber and Levinas, Scruton makes the strong claim that it is in the other that we can experience that world “beyond the window”. His phenomenological exploration of human encounters sheds light on concepts like grace, shekhinah, or real presence and gift. He explains the Christian understanding of the human–divine relationship as well along the lines of the nature of interpersonal human relationship, both of them being in a certain sense, he claims, transcendental. From grace, his account moves forward to self-sacrifice and finally arrives at his idiosyncratic understanding of gratefulness for life. His moments of revelation in art and interpersonal exchange turn out to be, indeed, late and secular versions of the Christian understanding of revelation. In its summary, this study claims that revelation, understood by Scruton as a form of general human experience, allows to catch a glimpse of that which is beyond the window, by the direct, sensually based experience of either the existence of another person or of the beauty of nature and art.
Journal Article
“Heaven and Earth Conspire”: Grace and Nature in Sor Juana's The Divine Narcissus
This essay highlights the dynamic theology of nature and grace expressed within The Divine Narcissus by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–95). Inspired by thinkers such as Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux and, later in her life, an emphasis on the Immaculate Conception, she details an aesthetic relationship between grace and nature: human nature is created to reflect, in grace, the perfect beauty of the incarnate Son of God. Moreover, by securing positive roles for the contributions of women and for indigenous Mexican religious devotion, she highlights the way in which this dynamic between nature and grace recovers the authentic voice of the least in society—those whose voices have been unjustly suppressed by violent domination.
Journal Article
Kierkegaard on “Sobriety”: Christian Virtues, the Ethical, and Triadic Dyads
In her recent book, Kierkegaard and Religion: Personality, Character, and Virtue, Sylvia Walsh argues that Kierkegaard is not a virtue ethicist in the most common senses associated with eudaimonism, which he understands as enlightened self-interest. However, recent disputes about whether the aspects of “character” that Kierkegaard praises are virtues rely partly on whether the “ethical stage” in Kierkegaard’s moral psychology remains important within Christian faith, even when most strictly conceived in his late works. This in turn depends on how we understand the difficult works–grace relation in Kierkegaard’s conception of Christian faith. In this essay, I argue that the ethical existence sphere remains important even though, in works like Practice in Christianity and Judge for Yourself!, Kierkegaard argues that Christian faith is not a mere outgrowth or natural “development” of ethical earnestness or care—hardening the break with immanence that he introduced in earlier works. While he emphasizes a total transformation, a break from natural moral consciousness, and describes Christian qualities as a reversal of ordinary human expectations, there remains an underlying continuity with the attitudes and stances constitutive of the ethical and religiousness A (as existence spheres). This becomes visible when we identify three aspects found across the aesthetic, ethical, and Christian religious versions of major concepts in Kierkegaard’s work, including positive character terms. I use “sobriety” as discussed in Judge for Yourself! as my main example. This analysis confirms several important points advanced by Lee Barrett on the works–grace relation. The paradoxical standoff between ethical effort and grace is bridged to some extent by the continuing significance of the ethical “sphere” as a part of the “religious”, even in Kierkegaard’s late works and journal entries.
Journal Article