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81. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Polona Tratnik Art Addressing Consumerism in the Age of Late Capitalism
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The globalized world is still in the phase of late capitalism, signified by the establishment of multinational corporations, globalized markets and work, mass consumerism and the fluid flow of capital. The question of the criticism of art towards the capitalist system, its ideology and consumerism is therefore still current and is readdressed in this contribution. Considering this issue, the recurrent theoretical reference is American materialist aesthetician Fredric Jameson, who was among the first to define culture and art in the context of late capitalism. In the article the author revises Jameson’s critique of art addressing consumerism and demonstrates that he did not consider the relevance of the means of consumption as regards the cultural logic of late capitalism. She claims that in order to open space to examine contemporary art as being critical towards consumerism, one also needs to consider the ontological changes that have occurred to art and pay attention to performative art, while Jameson was still focused on a representational mode of art. By being performative and also setting out actions outside of spaces that were traditionally designed for art, in the space meant for consumption, art has much a better chance to act politically, which Jameson wished to see from art which addresses consumerism, but did not. The author argues that if one is to seek critical or political art in late capitalism, those would be the cases of artistic interventions into the means of consumption.
82. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Elena Abate Fashion as an Aesthetic Form of Life: A Wittgensteinian Interpretation
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Fashion is an aesthetic practice which concerns the ordinary sphere of our life: it is associated with everydayness and it is a source of endless aesthetic experiences. The purpose of this paper is to validate a new perspective on fashion based on Wittgenstein’s later aesthetic conception. In Philosophical Perspectives on Fashion (2017), Matteucci introduces the idea of combining the Wittgensteinian concept of “form of life” with fashion. In accordance with this thesis, the paper aims at showing how fashion is constituted as a “form of life”. Specifically, I shall argue that fashion is an “aesthetics form of life” which structurally employs a language of an aesthetic type ––one with a specific grammar (or set of rules) of its own. I claim that there is in fashion a contact point between the grammar of language and socially encoded aesthetic responses: fashion follows slavishly its own grammar, through its cyclical seasonality, while at the same time tending to creatively reinvent itself. Thus, anyone who daily commits to the practices of fashion acquires sensitivity to its rules, contributing to a social dialectic of identification/diversification typically belonging to fashion itself. Finally, on the basis of the claim that fashion is a “form of life”, and indeed since fashion is primarily an aesthetic practice, I claim that Wittgenstein’s aesthetic notions can coherently be related to fashion as well: concepts such as ‘aesthetic reaction’, ‘gesture’, and ‘correctness’ will be shown to be crucial to an analysis of the aesthetic phenomenon of fashion.
83. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
David Collins Davies and Levinson on the Musical Expression of Emotion: What’s the Problem?
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Stephen Davies and Jerrold Levinson have each offered accounts of how music can express emotions. Davies’s ‘Appearance Emotionalism’ holds that music can be expressive of emotion due to a resemblance between its dynamic properties and those of human behaviour typical of people feeling that emotion, while Levinson’s ‘Hypothetical Emotionalism’ contends that a piece is expressive when it can be heard as the expression of the emotion of a hypothetical agent or imagined persona. These have been framed as opposing positions but I show that, on one understanding of ‘expressing’ which they seem to share, each entails the other and so there is no real debate between them. However, Levinson’s account can be read according to another—and arguably more philosophically interesting—understanding of ‘expressing’ whereas Davies’s account cannot as easily be so read. I argue that this reading of Hypothetical Emotionalism can account for much of our talk about music in terms of emotions but must answer another question—viz., how composers or performers can express emotions through music—to explain this relation between music and emotion. I suggest that this question can be answered by drawing on R. G. Collingwood’s theory of artistic expression.
84. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Philip Mills Orcid-ID Doing Things with Words: The Transformative Force of Poetry
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Against the apparent casting away of poetry from contemporary philosophy of language and aesthetics which has left poetry forceless, I argue that poetry has a linguistic, philosophical, and even political force. Against the idea that literature (as novel) can teach us facts about the world, I argue that the force of literature (as poetry) resides in its capacity to change our ways of seeing. First, I contest views which consider poetry forceless by discussing Austin’s and Sartre’s views. Second, I explore the concept of force in the realm of art—focusing on Nietzsche’s philosophy and Menke’s Kraft der Kunst—and the relations between linguistic, artistic, and political forces. Third, I consider how the transformative force of poetry can be considered political by turning to Kristeva’s Revolution in Poetic Language and Meschonnic’s conception of poetry according to which the poem does something to language and the subject. To illustrate this transformative force of poetry, I analyse Caroline Zekri’s poem ‘Un pur rapport grammatical’. I therefore think of poetry not only as doing something with language, but also as doing something to language. To rephrase Austin’s famous title, and thus reverse his evaluation of poetry, poetry might reveal us not only How to Do Things with Words, but how to do things to words and, through this doing, how to transform and affect the world.
85. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Andrew Corsa Learning from Fiction to Change our Personal Narratives
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Can fictional literature help us lead better lives? This essay argues that some works of literature can help us both change our personal narratives and develop new narratives that will guide our actions, enabling us to better achieve our goals. Works of literature can lead us to consider the hypothesis that we might beneficially change our future-oriented, personal narratives. As a case study, this essay considers Ben Lerner’s novel, 10:04, which focuses on humans’ ability to develop new narratives, and which articulates a narrative that takes into account both everyday life and large-scale issues like the global, environmental crisis.
86. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Boran Berčić Orcid-ID Art and the Impossible
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In this article author contrasts possibilism (the view that art is about the logically possible and that it cannot be about the impossible) with impossibilism (the view that art can be and sometimes is about the logically impossible as well). Author argues in favor of possibilism. The main insight is that since impossible objects are necessarily non-existent art cannot be about them, it has to be about something that can exist. Also, author formulates five more detailed views about the issue. Further, author discusses related notions like imaginability and conceivability. Author holds that Hume’s insight that an object cannot be conceived as non-existent counts in favour of possibilism. Besides, author introduces the distinction between real and apparent content of the work of art, believing that this distinction can be relevant in the discussion between possibilism and impossibilism. In the rest of the article author analyzes several prima facie counterexamples to possibilism (Jean-Luc Picard, Anna Karenina, paradox of patricide, Escher’s graphics) and tries to explain them away.
87. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Rafe McGregor Orcid-ID A Literary Aesthetics of War Crime
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In order to develop a literary aesthetics of war crime, I examine the phenomenon of moral immunity in military memoir. Using three paradigmatic examples of memoirs of unjust wars characterised by the routine perpetration of war crimes, I argue that moral immunity is achieved by means of three literary devices: literary irresponsibility, ethical peerage, and moral economy. I then employ the proposed literary aesthetics of war crime to provide an answer to the perennial question of the relationship between literature and morality as well as to two specific instantiations of this question, the value interaction debate in literary aesthetics and the ethics of reading in literary theory. My conclusion is that the literary aesthetics of war crime demonstrates both that there is a systematic relationship between aesthetic value and moral value and that there is no systematic relationship between literary ambiguity and moral uncertainty.
88. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
David Pereplyotchik Orcid-ID Generative Linguistics Meets Normative Inferentialism: Part 2
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This is the second installment of a two-part essay. Limitations of space prevented the publication of the full essay in a previous issue of the Journal (Pereplyotchik 2020). My overall goal is to outline a strategy for integrating generative linguistics with a broadly pragmatist approach to meaning and communication. Two immensely useful guides in this venture are Robert Brandom and Paul Pietroski. Squarely in the Chomskyan tradition, Pietroski’s recent book, Conjoining Meanings, offers an approach to natural-language semantics that rejects foundational assumptions widely held amongst philosophers and linguists. In particular, he argues against extensionalism—the view that meanings are (or determine) truth and satisfaction conditions. Having arrived at the same conclusion by way of Brandom’s defl ationist account of truth and reference, I’ll argue that both theorists have important contributions to make to a broader anti-extensionalist approach to language. Part 1 of the essay was largely exegetical, laying out what I see as the core aspects of Brandom’s normative inferentialism (1) and Pietroski’s naturalistic semantics (2). Now, in Part 2, I argue that there are many convergences between these two theoretical frameworks and, contrary to first appearances, very few points of substantive disagreement between them. If the integration strategy that I propose is correct, then what appear to be sharply contrasting commitments are better seen as interrelated verbal differences that come down to different—but complementary—explanatory goals. The residual disputes are, however, stubborn. I end by discussing how to square Pietroski’s commitment to predicativism with Brandom’s argument that a predicativist language is in principle incapable of expressing ordinary conditionals.
89. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Matija Rajter Rafe McGregor, Narrative Justice
90. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Marin Beroš Tiziana Andina, Petar Bojanić (eds.), Institutions in Action. The Nature and the Role of Institutions in the Real World
91. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Nenad Miščević Orcid-ID United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2020. The Next Frontier Human Development and the Anthropocene
92. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 2
Thom Brooks Are Capabilities Compatible with Political Liberalism? A Third Way
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This article explores the relationship between capabilities and political liberalism. There are two views about how they might be compatible: Sen claims capabilities should be seen as a revision of primary goods while Nussbaum argues capabilities should form part of an overlapping consensus. It is argued they are both right—and incorrect. Whereas Sen identifies where compatibility might best be found, it is Nussbaum’s conception of capabilities that is able to overcome Rawls’s objections to Sen’s proposal. This provides a new third way of conceiving how capabilities and political liberalism might address these concerns that is more compelling for how Sen and Nussbaum claim. The two rivals can come together, but not in the way that either of its most well known champions have argued.
93. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 2
Tim Beaumont J. S. Mill on Higher Pleasures and Modes of Existence
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The passage of Mill’s Utilitarianism that sets out the condition in which one pleasure has a superior quality than another stokes interpretive controversy. According to the Lexical Interpretation, Mill takes one pleasure, P1, to be of a superior quality than another, P2, if, and only if, the smallest quantity of P1 is more valuable than any finite quantity of P2. This paper argues that, while the Lexical Interpretation may be supported with supplementary evidence, the passage itself does not rule out qualitative superiority without lexical dominance, as it only requires P1 to be more valuable than any quantity of P2 that it is possible for someone to experience. Some will object that this concession to opponents of the Lexical Interpretation still renders Mill’s condition for qualitative superiority too demanding to be plausible. However, if Mill’s qualitative rankings apply to higher-order pleasures taken in modes of existence as such rather than to the pleasures of different activities chosen from within these modes, the objection loses much of its force. One upshot is that Mill may have more to contribute to debates in contemporary population axiology than is usually acknowledged.
94. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 2
Adam Andrzejewski Aesthetic Eating
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The aim of this paper is to sketch a framework for perceiving the act of consumption as an aesthetic phenomenon. I shall argue that, under some circumstances, it is possible to receive aesthetic satisfaction from the act of eating food, in which the object of one’s appreciation is, for the most part, considered separately from what is actually eaten. I propose to call such a process “aesthetic eating” and argue that due to its aesthetic autonomy it might be a potential factor in enjoying certain kinds of food. This phenomenon is apparent in the case of the types of food that are acquired tastes. It is plausible that distinguishing the aesthetic pleasures of food from the ones associated with the act of eating can not only enrich our aesthetic life but also deepen the aesthetics of our overall gustatory experience.
95. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 2
Zoltán Vecsey Chomsky’s London
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Semantic externalism is the view according to which proper names and other nominals have the capacity to refer to language-independent objects. On this view, the proper name ‘London’ is related semantically to a worldly object, London. Chomsky’s long held position is that this relational conception of reference is untenable. According to his internalist framework, semantics should be restricted to the examination of the informational features of I-language items. Externalists reject this restriction by saying that without employing the relational notion of reference, it would remain entirely mysterious how we can talk about our perceptible environment. This paper offers a novel argument for externalism. The basic idea is that external reference proves to be indispensable even for Chomskyans who regard our talk about the environment as irrelevant for the purposes of semantics.
96. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 2
Damir Čičić Two Accounts of the Problem of Enhanced Control
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According to event-causal libertarianism, an action is free in the sense relevant to moral responsibility when it is caused indeterministically by an agent’s beliefs, desires, intentions, or by their occurrences. This paper attempts to clarify one of the major objections to this theory: the objection that the theory cannot explain the relevance of indeterminism to this kind of freedom (known as free will). Christopher Evan Franklin (2011, 2018) has argued that the problem of explaining the relevance of indeterminism to free will (which he calls “the problem of enhanced control”) arises because it is difficult to see how indeterminism could enhance our abilities, and disappears when we realize that beside the relevant abilities free will requires opportunities. In this paper, I argue that the problem occurs not because of the focus on abilities, but because of the difficulty to explain how indeterminism could contribute to the satisfaction of the sourcehood condition of free will in the framework of event-causal theory of action.
97. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 2
Martin Nuhlíček The Priority of Common Sense in Philosophy
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The aim of this paper is to explore the issue of priority of common sense in philosophy. It is divided into four parts. The first part discusses examples of common-sense beliefs and indicates their specific nature, especially compared to mere common beliefs. The second part explores in more detail the supposed positive epistemic status of common-sense beliefs and the role they play in delimiting plausible philosophical theories. The third part overviews a few attempts to formulate a legitimate argument, or justification, in favor of the positive epistemic status of common-sense beliefs, none of which, however, appears to be clearly successful. Finally, the fourth part addresses the central issue of priority of common sense. Two different types of priority are introduced, epistemic and methodological, and it is argued that only the latter applies to common-sense beliefs. If so, then common-sense beliefs are not to be conceived as cases of knowledge but as the clearest cases of what we believe is knowledge.
98. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 2
Husein Inusah The Problem with Impure Infinitism
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It is generally believed that pure versions of infinitism face two problems, namely: 1) they are unable to distinguish between potential and actual series of justified reasons because they are defined strictly in terms of relations between beliefs in the series so that every succeeding belief is justified by the belief before it and so on ad infinitum and, 2) they are unable to mark the difference between a set of justified reasons that are connected to truth and one that is not because they are defined strictly in terms of a relation between beliefs in the series of reasons. However, Aikin argues that impure infinitism could surmount these problems without undermining the infinite regress condition because impure infinitism can solve the Modus Ponens Reductio, MPR, argument that threatens pure versions of infinitism. I argue that Aikin does not succeed because his impure infinitism faces some fatal consequences and any attempt to salvage it will undermine the infinite regress of justification.
99. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 2
Ana Grgić J. David Velleman, On Being Me: A Personal Invitation to Philosophy
100. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 21 > Issue: 3
Paolo Labinaz Argumentation as a Speech Act: A (Provisional) Balance
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This paper investigates whether, and if so, in what way, argumentation can be profitably described in speech-act theoretical terms. I suggest that the two theories of argumentation that are supposed to provide the most elaborate analysis of it in speech-act theoretical terms (namely van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst’s Pragma-Dialectics and Lilian Bermejo-Luque’s linguistic normative model of argumentation) both suffer from the same two flaws: firstly, their “illocutionary act pluralism” assumption and secondly, a lack of interest in where arguing belongs in the classification of illocutionary acts. I argue that these flaws derive from the authors’ reliance on an intention-based speech-theoretical framework. Finally, I adopt a deontic framework for speech acts in order to propose an alternative way of accounting for argumentation which seems to overcome the two limitations outlined above. According to this framework, argumentation may be conceived as a speech act sequence, characterized by the conventional effects brought about by the communicative moves (as illocutionary acts) of which it is composed.