Aviad Kleinberg
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231174701
- eISBN:
- 9780231540247
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231174701.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Where theologians try to convince us why believing the unbelievable is actually good for us.
Where theologians try to convince us why believing the unbelievable is actually good for us.
J. Andrew Dearman
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780199248452
- eISBN:
- 9780191600524
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199248451.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Andrew Dearman examines two elements in the OT: the anthropomorphic presentation of God in theophany and the creation of humankind in the imago Dei. Anthropomorphism was a way that divine presence ...
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Andrew Dearman examines two elements in the OT: the anthropomorphic presentation of God in theophany and the creation of humankind in the imago Dei. Anthropomorphism was a way that divine presence could be apprehended by people, and theomorphism indicated both a basis on which humankind understood its divinely mandated tasks and one way in which the divine‐human relationship could be represented. In spite of anti‐anthropomorphic traditions elsewhere in the OT, these two elements influenced the presentation of Christ in the early church and both may contribute to a modern understanding of the incarnation.Less
Andrew Dearman examines two elements in the OT: the anthropomorphic presentation of God in theophany and the creation of humankind in the imago Dei. Anthropomorphism was a way that divine presence could be apprehended by people, and theomorphism indicated both a basis on which humankind understood its divinely mandated tasks and one way in which the divine‐human relationship could be represented. In spite of anti‐anthropomorphic traditions elsewhere in the OT, these two elements influenced the presentation of Christ in the early church and both may contribute to a modern understanding of the incarnation.
Matthew Mutter
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300221732
- eISBN:
- 9780300227963
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300221732.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Restless Secularism explores the efforts of modernist writers to articulate a viable secular imagination, to trace the relation of this secular imagination to the Christian culture from which it ...
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Restless Secularism explores the efforts of modernist writers to articulate a viable secular imagination, to trace the relation of this secular imagination to the Christian culture from which it emerged, and to purify secular life of its religious residues. Yet it is also a study of the difficulty modernists have disentangling themselves from religious modes of understanding and experiencing the world, and emphasizes the persistent appeal of religious forms of imagination. The book contends that secularism has a distinct and historically contingent imaginary; it traces the modernist struggle both to articulate the contours of this imaginary and to elucidate its consequences for multiple fields of experience. Rather than focusing on private religious belief, the book shows, through a careful investigation of the work of Wallace Stevens, Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats, and W. H. Auden, how the shift from a religious to a secular imaginary has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of language, aesthetics, emotion, and the body and the material world. The book centers on Stevens’s attempts to pit a secular poetics of tautology against the religious promiscuity of metaphor, Woolf’s skirmishes with the eschatological significance of beauty, Yeats’s attempt to replace spiritualized emotion with the pagan “passions,” and Auden’s critique of magical thinking. Finally, it identifies a distinctly post-religious “problem of evil” that disturbs the secular imperative to affirm the immanence of life.Less
Restless Secularism explores the efforts of modernist writers to articulate a viable secular imagination, to trace the relation of this secular imagination to the Christian culture from which it emerged, and to purify secular life of its religious residues. Yet it is also a study of the difficulty modernists have disentangling themselves from religious modes of understanding and experiencing the world, and emphasizes the persistent appeal of religious forms of imagination. The book contends that secularism has a distinct and historically contingent imaginary; it traces the modernist struggle both to articulate the contours of this imaginary and to elucidate its consequences for multiple fields of experience. Rather than focusing on private religious belief, the book shows, through a careful investigation of the work of Wallace Stevens, Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats, and W. H. Auden, how the shift from a religious to a secular imaginary has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of language, aesthetics, emotion, and the body and the material world. The book centers on Stevens’s attempts to pit a secular poetics of tautology against the religious promiscuity of metaphor, Woolf’s skirmishes with the eschatological significance of beauty, Yeats’s attempt to replace spiritualized emotion with the pagan “passions,” and Auden’s critique of magical thinking. Finally, it identifies a distinctly post-religious “problem of evil” that disturbs the secular imperative to affirm the immanence of life.
Stephen Webb
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199316816
- eISBN:
- 9780199369249
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199316816.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This book explains why Mormonism should be considered a branch on the Christian tree. It focuses on the metaphysical foundations of Mormon theology. Mormon metaphysics is a form of Christian ...
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This book explains why Mormonism should be considered a branch on the Christian tree. It focuses on the metaphysical foundations of Mormon theology. Mormon metaphysics is a form of Christian materialism. Mormons believe that spirit is refined matter and thus even God has a material form. Understanding that belief opens up new interpretations of Mormonism’s relationship to traditional Christianity.Less
This book explains why Mormonism should be considered a branch on the Christian tree. It focuses on the metaphysical foundations of Mormon theology. Mormon metaphysics is a form of Christian materialism. Mormons believe that spirit is refined matter and thus even God has a material form. Understanding that belief opens up new interpretations of Mormonism’s relationship to traditional Christianity.
Jan N. Bremmer and Andrew Erskine
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637980
- eISBN:
- 9780748670758
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637980.003.0015
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Religions
The study examines the place of gods in Early Greek philosophy, with attention paid to breaks and continuity with the inherited beliefs from the Homeric age. Beyond the well-known rejection of ...
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The study examines the place of gods in Early Greek philosophy, with attention paid to breaks and continuity with the inherited beliefs from the Homeric age. Beyond the well-known rejection of anthropomorphism by Xenophanes, the author examines the growing tension between various conceptions of the gods as abstract powers and principles and the older notion of divine beings as persons of power. Against earlier work, the author sees little evidence of monotheism, but rather the first rise of the classical pagan theological scheme of world-governing cosmic God and plurality of lesser divine beings.Less
The study examines the place of gods in Early Greek philosophy, with attention paid to breaks and continuity with the inherited beliefs from the Homeric age. Beyond the well-known rejection of anthropomorphism by Xenophanes, the author examines the growing tension between various conceptions of the gods as abstract powers and principles and the older notion of divine beings as persons of power. Against earlier work, the author sees little evidence of monotheism, but rather the first rise of the classical pagan theological scheme of world-governing cosmic God and plurality of lesser divine beings.
Jan N. Bremmer and Andrew Erskine
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637980
- eISBN:
- 9780748670758
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637980.003.0024
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Religions
Greek gods and polytheism as a distinctive feature of Graeco-Roman culture and religion was a favourite theme among the Christian Apologists of the second century AD. This chapter analyses both their ...
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Greek gods and polytheism as a distinctive feature of Graeco-Roman culture and religion was a favourite theme among the Christian Apologists of the second century AD. This chapter analyses both their approaches to Greek deities and the evolution of motifs, which oscillate between the rigid criticism of idolatry based on Jewish lore and a richer rational censure of anthropomorphism originating in Greek philosophy.Less
Greek gods and polytheism as a distinctive feature of Graeco-Roman culture and religion was a favourite theme among the Christian Apologists of the second century AD. This chapter analyses both their approaches to Greek deities and the evolution of motifs, which oscillate between the rigid criticism of idolatry based on Jewish lore and a richer rational censure of anthropomorphism originating in Greek philosophy.
Jan N. Bremmer and Andrew Erskine
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637980
- eISBN:
- 9780748670758
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637980.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Religions
The Greeks were polytheists who believed in a multitude of gods. In the modern discussion of Greek religion the gods take second place to ritual, and the study of individual gods is privileged over ...
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The Greeks were polytheists who believed in a multitude of gods. In the modern discussion of Greek religion the gods take second place to ritual, and the study of individual gods is privileged over attempts to define their general characteristics qua gods. While studies of the functions and personalities of gods like Apollo, Demeter, Dionysos or Herakles abound, no comprehensive treatment of the generic properties of the Greek gods exists. The question “What is Greek god?” is considered too ‘theological’ and therefore shunned. This chapter examines four divine qualities that are shared by all the Greek gods—their immortality, anthropomorphism, foreknowledge, and finally their power.Less
The Greeks were polytheists who believed in a multitude of gods. In the modern discussion of Greek religion the gods take second place to ritual, and the study of individual gods is privileged over attempts to define their general characteristics qua gods. While studies of the functions and personalities of gods like Apollo, Demeter, Dionysos or Herakles abound, no comprehensive treatment of the generic properties of the Greek gods exists. The question “What is Greek god?” is considered too ‘theological’ and therefore shunned. This chapter examines four divine qualities that are shared by all the Greek gods—their immortality, anthropomorphism, foreknowledge, and finally their power.
Jan N. Bremmer and Andrew Erskine
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637980
- eISBN:
- 9780748670758
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637980.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Religions
Richard Buxton discuss five examples of narratives which relate in some way to divine metamorphosis, whether as animals or humans, for the purpose of presenting themselves to mortals. The narratives ...
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Richard Buxton discuss five examples of narratives which relate in some way to divine metamorphosis, whether as animals or humans, for the purpose of presenting themselves to mortals. The narratives studied are the following: Athena’s encounter with Telemachos in the Odyssey, Apollo in the Hymn to Apollo, Thetis’ relationship with Achilles, Dionysos in the Bacchae and Zeus’ serial metamorphoses in pursuit of his erotic ambitions. After drawing conclusions about each of these metamorphoses and epiphanies, Buxton concludes by considering what light this material might shed on the old problem of how far Greek religion was essentially anthropomorphic.Less
Richard Buxton discuss five examples of narratives which relate in some way to divine metamorphosis, whether as animals or humans, for the purpose of presenting themselves to mortals. The narratives studied are the following: Athena’s encounter with Telemachos in the Odyssey, Apollo in the Hymn to Apollo, Thetis’ relationship with Achilles, Dionysos in the Bacchae and Zeus’ serial metamorphoses in pursuit of his erotic ambitions. After drawing conclusions about each of these metamorphoses and epiphanies, Buxton concludes by considering what light this material might shed on the old problem of how far Greek religion was essentially anthropomorphic.
Danielle Sands
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474439039
- eISBN:
- 9781474476881
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474439039.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Examining Donna Haraway’s critique of primatological practices and narratives, and Karen Joy Fowler’s fictional account of primate relations, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,alongside humanist ...
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Examining Donna Haraway’s critique of primatological practices and narratives, and Karen Joy Fowler’s fictional account of primate relations, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,alongside humanist figures of Man, this chapter explores the relationship between accounts of nonhuman primates and perceptions of human identity. Comparing Fowler’s ambivalence towards anthropomorphism to the recent resurgence of scientific interest in anthropomorphism, it develops a parallel between anthropomorphism and empathy. Contending that empathy, like anthropomorphism, is an inescapable component of cross-species relations, it argues that both should be cultivated only insofar as they stimulate new ethical and political responses to nonhuman life. The chapter concludes by outlining how different modes of primatological reading and writing might generate alternatives to the figure of Man which are better able to acknowledge and respond to our responsibilities to nonhuman life.Less
Examining Donna Haraway’s critique of primatological practices and narratives, and Karen Joy Fowler’s fictional account of primate relations, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,alongside humanist figures of Man, this chapter explores the relationship between accounts of nonhuman primates and perceptions of human identity. Comparing Fowler’s ambivalence towards anthropomorphism to the recent resurgence of scientific interest in anthropomorphism, it develops a parallel between anthropomorphism and empathy. Contending that empathy, like anthropomorphism, is an inescapable component of cross-species relations, it argues that both should be cultivated only insofar as they stimulate new ethical and political responses to nonhuman life. The chapter concludes by outlining how different modes of primatological reading and writing might generate alternatives to the figure of Man which are better able to acknowledge and respond to our responsibilities to nonhuman life.
Wesley J. Wildman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198815990
- eISBN:
- 9780191853524
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198815990.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
In Our Own Image is a work of comparative philosophical theology answering three questions. First, it is a study of the roles anthropomorphism and apophaticism play in the construction of conceptual ...
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In Our Own Image is a work of comparative philosophical theology answering three questions. First, it is a study of the roles anthropomorphism and apophaticism play in the construction of conceptual models of ultimate reality. This answers the question: Do we create our ideas of God? Second, it is a comparative analysis of three major classes of ultimacy models, paying particular attention to the way those classes are impacted by anthropomorphism while tracing their relative strengths and weaknesses. This answers the question: Can there be better and worse in our constructed ultimacy models? Third, it is a constructive theological argument on behalf of an apophatic understanding of ultimate reality, showing how this understanding subsumes, challenges, and relates ultimacy models from the three classes being compared. This answers the question: Is there a best way to think about ultimate reality? The book describes and compares competing ultimacy models, fairly and sympathetically. The conclusion is that all models cognitively break on the shoals of ultimate reality, but that the ground-of-being class of models carries us further than the others in regard to the comparative criteria that matter most.Less
In Our Own Image is a work of comparative philosophical theology answering three questions. First, it is a study of the roles anthropomorphism and apophaticism play in the construction of conceptual models of ultimate reality. This answers the question: Do we create our ideas of God? Second, it is a comparative analysis of three major classes of ultimacy models, paying particular attention to the way those classes are impacted by anthropomorphism while tracing their relative strengths and weaknesses. This answers the question: Can there be better and worse in our constructed ultimacy models? Third, it is a constructive theological argument on behalf of an apophatic understanding of ultimate reality, showing how this understanding subsumes, challenges, and relates ultimacy models from the three classes being compared. This answers the question: Is there a best way to think about ultimate reality? The book describes and compares competing ultimacy models, fairly and sympathetically. The conclusion is that all models cognitively break on the shoals of ultimate reality, but that the ground-of-being class of models carries us further than the others in regard to the comparative criteria that matter most.
Lasana T. Harris
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035965
- eISBN:
- 9780262339049
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035965.003.0004
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience
The fourth chapter argues that explanation may be the function of social cognition, aiding survival and driving human evolution. It explores the psychological literature on anthropomorphism—instances ...
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The fourth chapter argues that explanation may be the function of social cognition, aiding survival and driving human evolution. It explores the psychological literature on anthropomorphism—instances where people bring non-human agents and entities to life by engaging social cognition—and describes it as a type of ‘magical’ or imaginary thinking. It then contrasts this ability with dehumanizing people, describing the brain mechanisms enabling dehumanization, and the functions of withholding social cognition to people. It then considers extending social cognition to animals as a domain where the flexible nature of social cognition is revealed. Finally, it implicates explanation as a causal factor in intractable group conflict.Less
The fourth chapter argues that explanation may be the function of social cognition, aiding survival and driving human evolution. It explores the psychological literature on anthropomorphism—instances where people bring non-human agents and entities to life by engaging social cognition—and describes it as a type of ‘magical’ or imaginary thinking. It then contrasts this ability with dehumanizing people, describing the brain mechanisms enabling dehumanization, and the functions of withholding social cognition to people. It then considers extending social cognition to animals as a domain where the flexible nature of social cognition is revealed. Finally, it implicates explanation as a causal factor in intractable group conflict.
Stephen Halliwell
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474403795
- eISBN:
- 9781474435130
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474403795.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter employs a historicising approach to laughter, of the kind elaborated in the same author’s Greek Laughter: a Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity, in order to ...
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This chapter employs a historicising approach to laughter, of the kind elaborated in the same author’s Greek Laughter: a Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity, in order to investigate some important but elusive aspects of the Greek mythico-religious imagination. Its central focus is on depictions of divine laughter at opposite ends of the spectrum of ancient Greek culture, in Homeric epic and Lucianic satire. What does it mean to imagine gods who can laugh at and/or with one another, as well as at and/or with humans? Is such laughter a marker of distance between divine and human conditions of existence, or does the idea of laughter serve to limit the gods by subjecting them to inescapably human evaluation? The chapter rejects models of explanation (both ancient and modern) which treat the laughter of the Olympians either as a contamination of an originally purer conception of the gods or as consistently expressing a serenely detached state of immortality. It argues, instead, that divine laughter reflects tensions between the literal and the symbolic which are intrinsic to anthropomorphising Greek religious sensibilities, and that far from conveying blissful detachment divine laughter characterises gods who are heavily invested in the conflicts of the human world.Less
This chapter employs a historicising approach to laughter, of the kind elaborated in the same author’s Greek Laughter: a Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity, in order to investigate some important but elusive aspects of the Greek mythico-religious imagination. Its central focus is on depictions of divine laughter at opposite ends of the spectrum of ancient Greek culture, in Homeric epic and Lucianic satire. What does it mean to imagine gods who can laugh at and/or with one another, as well as at and/or with humans? Is such laughter a marker of distance between divine and human conditions of existence, or does the idea of laughter serve to limit the gods by subjecting them to inescapably human evaluation? The chapter rejects models of explanation (both ancient and modern) which treat the laughter of the Olympians either as a contamination of an originally purer conception of the gods or as consistently expressing a serenely detached state of immortality. It argues, instead, that divine laughter reflects tensions between the literal and the symbolic which are intrinsic to anthropomorphising Greek religious sensibilities, and that far from conveying blissful detachment divine laughter characterises gods who are heavily invested in the conflicts of the human world.
Matthew Mutter
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300221732
- eISBN:
- 9780300227963
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300221732.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
That Stevens’s poetry repeatedly returns to the death of God as a condition of existential vertigo is a scholarly commonplace, but this chapter argues that for Stevens, language itself harbors a ...
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That Stevens’s poetry repeatedly returns to the death of God as a condition of existential vertigo is a scholarly commonplace, but this chapter argues that for Stevens, language itself harbors a dangerous bias toward transcendence. Stevens is mistrustful of the way metaphor slides into metaphysics, the way an analogical worldview becomes a theological one, and the ways in which signs and symbols tend to refer solid, immanent things to supersensible narratives or “meanings.” In the face of this danger, he develops a poetics of tautology meant to divest language of such bias. Yet later in his career, this chapter contends, he returns to analogy as a mode of transcendence-in-immanence, and establishes a concept of “description without place” in which imagined goods, which have no immanent existence, correspond to details of a particular scene. Stevens is, in other words, working out a version of Nietzsche’s famous claim that we are not rid of God until we are rid of grammar while simultaneously harnessing the religious possibilities of language.Less
That Stevens’s poetry repeatedly returns to the death of God as a condition of existential vertigo is a scholarly commonplace, but this chapter argues that for Stevens, language itself harbors a dangerous bias toward transcendence. Stevens is mistrustful of the way metaphor slides into metaphysics, the way an analogical worldview becomes a theological one, and the ways in which signs and symbols tend to refer solid, immanent things to supersensible narratives or “meanings.” In the face of this danger, he develops a poetics of tautology meant to divest language of such bias. Yet later in his career, this chapter contends, he returns to analogy as a mode of transcendence-in-immanence, and establishes a concept of “description without place” in which imagined goods, which have no immanent existence, correspond to details of a particular scene. Stevens is, in other words, working out a version of Nietzsche’s famous claim that we are not rid of God until we are rid of grammar while simultaneously harnessing the religious possibilities of language.
Matthew Mutter
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300221732
- eISBN:
- 9780300227963
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300221732.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
There has been a small movement among recent critics and philosophers to rehabilitate the reputation of beauty, which suffered under the modernist fascination with ugliness, Romantic and postmodern ...
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There has been a small movement among recent critics and philosophers to rehabilitate the reputation of beauty, which suffered under the modernist fascination with ugliness, Romantic and postmodern prejudice in favor of the sublime, and political criticism of beauty as elitist, inefficacious, and complicit with injustice. This chapter seeks to reframe these debates by examining the link between beauty and religious ontologies. Weber, following Nietzsche, insisted that secular modernity had broken sympathetic relations between beauty and goodness, but in Woolf’s novels the beautiful cannot shed its theological aura: its promise of reconciliation, peace, and divine benevolence. Woolf’s famous conception of “the world as a work of art”—which has, nevertheless, no “creator”—remains entangled in the aesthetic theodicies she repudiates. Her novels struggle to conceptualize secular, mundane models of beauty while simultaneously clinging to intimations of a metaphysical and moral order implicit in aesthetic experience. Beauty is, in her writing, the last and most intractable stronghold of mystical feeling.Less
There has been a small movement among recent critics and philosophers to rehabilitate the reputation of beauty, which suffered under the modernist fascination with ugliness, Romantic and postmodern prejudice in favor of the sublime, and political criticism of beauty as elitist, inefficacious, and complicit with injustice. This chapter seeks to reframe these debates by examining the link between beauty and religious ontologies. Weber, following Nietzsche, insisted that secular modernity had broken sympathetic relations between beauty and goodness, but in Woolf’s novels the beautiful cannot shed its theological aura: its promise of reconciliation, peace, and divine benevolence. Woolf’s famous conception of “the world as a work of art”—which has, nevertheless, no “creator”—remains entangled in the aesthetic theodicies she repudiates. Her novels struggle to conceptualize secular, mundane models of beauty while simultaneously clinging to intimations of a metaphysical and moral order implicit in aesthetic experience. Beauty is, in her writing, the last and most intractable stronghold of mystical feeling.
Christopher Holliday
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474427883
- eISBN:
- 9781474449618
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474427883.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter Four presents new research into animated anthropomorphism, and argues that computer-animated films more readily exploit the non-human element of its characters rather than recourse to the ...
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Chapter Four presents new research into animated anthropomorphism, and argues that computer-animated films more readily exploit the non-human element of its characters rather than recourse to the humanlike to manipulate virtual space through anthropomorphic subjectivity. Drawing from Sergei Eisenstein’s notion of “plasmaticness” (1986) and Gilles Deleuze’s writing on “gaseous perception” (1986), this chapter explores the molecular, sporadic contact that the digital anthropomorph has with the surrounding virtual cartography and the manner in which they constantly reframe and deform the action through a highly inventive cinematic eye. These new qualities of the computer-animated film anthropormorph permits a Luxo world to be defined as aesthetically and stylistically anecdotal. In comparison to other forms of animated worlds, computer-animated films present a virtual reality that is visually channelled through the anthropomorph’s individual activities, movements and viewpoints within, through and across digital space.Less
Chapter Four presents new research into animated anthropomorphism, and argues that computer-animated films more readily exploit the non-human element of its characters rather than recourse to the humanlike to manipulate virtual space through anthropomorphic subjectivity. Drawing from Sergei Eisenstein’s notion of “plasmaticness” (1986) and Gilles Deleuze’s writing on “gaseous perception” (1986), this chapter explores the molecular, sporadic contact that the digital anthropomorph has with the surrounding virtual cartography and the manner in which they constantly reframe and deform the action through a highly inventive cinematic eye. These new qualities of the computer-animated film anthropormorph permits a Luxo world to be defined as aesthetically and stylistically anecdotal. In comparison to other forms of animated worlds, computer-animated films present a virtual reality that is visually channelled through the anthropomorph’s individual activities, movements and viewpoints within, through and across digital space.
Erin McKenna
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823251148
- eISBN:
- 9780823252886
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251148.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
The views of a variety of animal organizations on issues such as ownership versus guardianship are critiqued. Pragmatism is used to argue that given long relationships between humans and ...
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The views of a variety of animal organizations on issues such as ownership versus guardianship are critiqued. Pragmatism is used to argue that given long relationships between humans and domesticated animal beings a certain amount of anthropomorphism makes sense when trying to understand the needs and interests of such animal beings. The use of the term pet is also discussed.Less
The views of a variety of animal organizations on issues such as ownership versus guardianship are critiqued. Pragmatism is used to argue that given long relationships between humans and domesticated animal beings a certain amount of anthropomorphism makes sense when trying to understand the needs and interests of such animal beings. The use of the term pet is also discussed.
Emily Brady
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823254491
- eISBN:
- 9780823261185
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823254491.003.0013
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Emily Brady discusses a question long neglected in environmental aesthetics: on what grounds do we ascribe aesthetic value to wild animals? Recently Glenn Parsons has argued that this value is ...
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Emily Brady discusses a question long neglected in environmental aesthetics: on what grounds do we ascribe aesthetic value to wild animals? Recently Glenn Parsons has argued that this value is grounded in the “fitness” of animals in relation to their form, behavior, and traits. Brady contends that Parsons’ “functional beauty” approach overlooks the important role played by expressive qualities in our aesthetic experience of animals. Drawing on expressive theories of music and discussions of expressive qualities in nature, Brady examines the distinctive character and basis of these qualities in sentient non-human creatures. She then address potential moral problems and objections, in particular, how aesthetic appreciation of expressive qualities is related to or distinct from sentimental, trivial, and anthropomorphic responses to wild animals.Less
Emily Brady discusses a question long neglected in environmental aesthetics: on what grounds do we ascribe aesthetic value to wild animals? Recently Glenn Parsons has argued that this value is grounded in the “fitness” of animals in relation to their form, behavior, and traits. Brady contends that Parsons’ “functional beauty” approach overlooks the important role played by expressive qualities in our aesthetic experience of animals. Drawing on expressive theories of music and discussions of expressive qualities in nature, Brady examines the distinctive character and basis of these qualities in sentient non-human creatures. She then address potential moral problems and objections, in particular, how aesthetic appreciation of expressive qualities is related to or distinct from sentimental, trivial, and anthropomorphic responses to wild animals.
James Williams
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780746312216
- eISBN:
- 9781789629064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9780746312216.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter is concerned with the animals in Lear’s work. It considers the relevance of his background as a zoological illustrator, the relationship between human and animal protagonists in his ...
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This chapter is concerned with the animals in Lear’s work. It considers the relevance of his background as a zoological illustrator, the relationship between human and animal protagonists in his limericks and drawings, and the attempt in the later poems to imagine entirely animal-populated worlds without human agents. It is concerned with how Lear explores the philosophical problem of imagining forms of social life for non-human creatures without straightforward anthropomorphism. It concludes with an extended close reading of “The Owl and the Pussy-cat”.Less
This chapter is concerned with the animals in Lear’s work. It considers the relevance of his background as a zoological illustrator, the relationship between human and animal protagonists in his limericks and drawings, and the attempt in the later poems to imagine entirely animal-populated worlds without human agents. It is concerned with how Lear explores the philosophical problem of imagining forms of social life for non-human creatures without straightforward anthropomorphism. It concludes with an extended close reading of “The Owl and the Pussy-cat”.
Wesley J. Wildman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198815990
- eISBN:
- 9780191853524
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198815990.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
To appreciate the risks and benefits of anthropomorphism, it is important (1) to appreciate the genius and limitations of human cognition, (2) to compare ultimacy models to see what difference ...
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To appreciate the risks and benefits of anthropomorphism, it is important (1) to appreciate the genius and limitations of human cognition, (2) to compare ultimacy models to see what difference anthropomorphic modeling techniques make, and (3) to entertain the possibility of an apophatic approach to ultimate reality that relativizes and relates ultimacy models. An apophatic approach to ultimate reality relativizes ultimacy models but also implies a disintegrating metric that serves to relate ultimacy models to one another. Degree of anthropomorphism is an important component of this disintegrating metric. Comparative analysis helps manifest internal complexity in the idea of anthropomorphism by distinguishing three relatively independent dimensions: Intentionality Attribution, Rational Practicality, and Narrative Comprehensibility. Educational efforts stabilized in cultural traditions can confer on people the desire and ability to resist one or more dimensions of the anthropomorphic default modes of cognition to some degree.Less
To appreciate the risks and benefits of anthropomorphism, it is important (1) to appreciate the genius and limitations of human cognition, (2) to compare ultimacy models to see what difference anthropomorphic modeling techniques make, and (3) to entertain the possibility of an apophatic approach to ultimate reality that relativizes and relates ultimacy models. An apophatic approach to ultimate reality relativizes ultimacy models but also implies a disintegrating metric that serves to relate ultimacy models to one another. Degree of anthropomorphism is an important component of this disintegrating metric. Comparative analysis helps manifest internal complexity in the idea of anthropomorphism by distinguishing three relatively independent dimensions: Intentionality Attribution, Rational Practicality, and Narrative Comprehensibility. Educational efforts stabilized in cultural traditions can confer on people the desire and ability to resist one or more dimensions of the anthropomorphic default modes of cognition to some degree.
Wesley J. Wildman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198815990
- eISBN:
- 9780191853524
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198815990.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Agential-being models of ultimate reality affirm that ultimate reality is an aware, agential being. The Central Result of the scientific study of religion—that human beings will spontaneously create ...
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Agential-being models of ultimate reality affirm that ultimate reality is an aware, agential being. The Central Result of the scientific study of religion—that human beings will spontaneously create anthropomorphic supernatural agents to believe in, and to make religious use of, whether or not those agents actually exist—erodes the plausibility of any belief in supernatural agents, without proving such beliefs false, so it imposes a heavy burden on proponents of agential-being theism to show that the agential-being God hypothesis is plausible in light of all relevant information, and convincingly superior to competitor views. Agential-being ultimacy models resist the Rational Practicality and Narrative Comprehensibility dimensions of anthropomorphism to some degree but continue to employ the Intentionality Attribution dimension of anthropomorphism, resulting in a strategy of judicious anthropomorphism. Variations, strengths, and weaknesses of the agential-being class of ultimacy models are discussed.Less
Agential-being models of ultimate reality affirm that ultimate reality is an aware, agential being. The Central Result of the scientific study of religion—that human beings will spontaneously create anthropomorphic supernatural agents to believe in, and to make religious use of, whether or not those agents actually exist—erodes the plausibility of any belief in supernatural agents, without proving such beliefs false, so it imposes a heavy burden on proponents of agential-being theism to show that the agential-being God hypothesis is plausible in light of all relevant information, and convincingly superior to competitor views. Agential-being ultimacy models resist the Rational Practicality and Narrative Comprehensibility dimensions of anthropomorphism to some degree but continue to employ the Intentionality Attribution dimension of anthropomorphism, resulting in a strategy of judicious anthropomorphism. Variations, strengths, and weaknesses of the agential-being class of ultimacy models are discussed.