The Marriage of Aesthetics and Ethics

315 Pages·2015·1.27 MB·English

by  Stéphane Symons

The Marriage of Aesthetics and Ethics
Critical Studies in German
Idealism
Series Editor
Paul G. Cobben
Advisory Board
Simon Critchley – Paul Cruysberghs – Rózsa Erzsébet – Garth Green –
Vittorio Hösle – Francesca Menegoni – Martin Moors – Michael Quante –
Ludwig Siep – Timo Slootweg – Klaus Vieweg
VOLUME 15
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/csgi
The Marriage of Aesthetics
and Ethics
Edited By
Stéphane Symons
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Symons, Stéphane (Philosopher)
 The marriage of aesthetics and ethics / by Stephane Symons.
  pages cm. — (Critical studies in German idealism, ISSN 1878-9986 ; volume 15)
 Includes index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-29882-8 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-29881-1 (e-book) 1. Ethics. 2. Aesthetics.
3. Arts and morals. 4. Art—Moral and ethical aspects. 5. Idealism, German. 6. Marriage. 7. Friendship.
I. Title.
 BJ46.S96 2015
 170—dc23
2015023725
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering
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issn 1878-9986
isbn 978-90-04-29882-8 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-29881-1 (e-book)
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Contents
Contributors vii
Introduction 1
Stéphane Symons
Part 1
Friendship and Love
1 “A Bushel of Salt”: On Aesthetics and Ethics in Friendship 9
Karl Verstrynge
2 Recapturing the Self: Montaigne on Friendship, Self-Knowledge,
and the Art of Living 27
Vincent Caudron
3 The Singularity of Friendship: On Kierkegaard and Friends 46
Anne Christine Habbard
4 “A Garçon has the Whole World for a Bride” Or: On the Bliss
of Marriage 63
Walter Jaeschke
Part 2
Aesthetics and Ethics in the Context of German Idealism
5 “Remember that All Poetry is to Be Regarded as a Work of Love”:
Ethics and Aesthetics in Schleiermacher 81
Andreas Arndt
6 Hegel’s Concept of Pathos as the Keeper of the Marriage between
Aesthetics and Ethics 95
Paul Cobben
7 In Search of a Second Ethics: From Kant to Kierkegaard 110
Paul Cruysberghs
vi contents
8 The Kantian Sublime: A Feeling of Superiority? 151
Gerbert Faure
9 Kant’s Transcendental Reflection: An Indispensable Element
of the Philosophy of Culture 169
Simon Truwant
10 Adorno’s Response to Kierkegaard: The Ethical Validity
of the Aesthetic? 185
Margherita Tonon
Part 3
Post-Hegelian Thinkers on Art and Aesthetics
11 The Aesthetic Act as Interface between Theory and Praxis 203
Baldine Saint Girons
12 Leap into the Surface: Photography, Repetition,
and Recollection 220
Stéphane Symons
13 Jonny Greenwood vs. Johannes Brahms: Alliances and Displacement
in There Will Be Blood 234
Marlies De Munck
14 Pathology and the Search for a Modern Ethics in the Writings
of Robert Musil 251
Stijn De Cauwer
15 The Gnostic “Sur” in Surrealism: On Transcendence and Modern
Art 276
Willem Styfhals
Index 296
Contributors
Andreas Arndt
is Professor at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin and at the Berlin-
Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. His most recent book is the
2013 volume Friedrich Schleiermacher als Philosoph.
Vincent Caudron
studied philosophy and international and comparative politics at KU Leuven.
He is currently pursuing a PhD in philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy
(Husserl Archives) at KU Leuven, where he also teaches a course on philo-
sophical methodology. His research focuses on the concepts of human nature,
autonomy, and self-knowledge in early modern French philosophy.
Stijn De Cauwer
is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Research Foundation Flanders. His
book A Diagnosis of Modern Life: Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften
as a Critical-Utopian Project was published in 2014 by Peter Lang.
Paul Cobben
is Professor of Philosophy at Tilburg University in The Netherlands. His publi-
cations focus mainly on practical philosophy, combining a systematic and his-
torical approach. Among his books are Das endliche Selbst (1999), Das Gesetz
der multikulturellen Gesellschaft (2002), Hegel-Lexikon (ed.), (2006), The Nature
of the Self: Recognition in the Form of Right and Morality (2009), Institutions
of Education: Then and Today (ed.) (2010), and The Paradigm of Recognition:
Freedom as Overcoming the Fear of Death (2012).
Paul Cruysberghs
is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven. He has pub-
lished widely on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Søren Kierkegaard, as well as
on aesthetics in general. He has also edited numerous volumes on Hegel for
Akademie Verlag (Berlin).
Marlies De Munck
obtained her PhD in philosophy from KU Leuven and is currently a member of
the Department of Philosophy at the University of Antwerp. Her main research
interests are aesthetics and the philosophy of music.
viii contributors
Gerbert Faure
holds a PhD from the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven. His doctoral thesis
investigated the relationship between the concept of morality and the con-
cept of free will. Other research topics include the philosophical relevance of
Richard Wagner’s operas and the experience of meaning in art.
Anne Christine Habbard
is a former student of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and Maître de
Conférences in philosophy at the University of Lille, France. She is currently
visiting professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)
in Pakistan. She has worked extensively on Søren Kierkegaard, and her current
focus is on political philosophy and the philosophy of space.
Walter Jaeschke
is the Director of the Hegel Archives at Ruhr University Bochum, and he is in
charge of the publication of the collected works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel. His most recent book publication is Die Klassische Deutsche Philosophie
nach Kant: Systeme der reinen Vernunft und ihre Kritik 1785–1845 (2012, co-
authored with Andreas Arndt).
Baldine Saint Girons
is Professor of Aesthetics and specialises in seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century thought. She teaches at the Université de Paris X, Nanterre, and is a
member of the Institut Universitaire de France.
Willem Styfhals
is a PhD student in philosophy at KU Leuven and is a member of the Institute of
Philosophy’s Centre for Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Culture. Currently,
he is also a research fellow at the Research Foundation Flanders. His doctoral
research focuses on the notion of Gnosticism in postwar German theories of
secularisation. He is interested in twentieth-century intellectual history and
continental philosophy. More specific areas of interest include the philosophy
of history, the philosophy of religion, the theory of secularisation, and modern
Jewish thought.
Stéphane Symons
is Assistant Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture at the Institute
of Philosophy, KU Leuven. He works mainly on nineteenth- and twentieth-
century continental thought. His book Walter Benjamin: Presence of Mind,
Failure to Comprehend was published in 2013 by Brill.
contributors ix
Margherita Tonon
obtained her PhD in philosophy from KU Leuven. She is the author of “For
the Sake of the Possible”: Negative Dialectics in Kierkegaard and Adorno (forth-
coming 2015), is co-editor (with Alison Assiter) of Kierkegaard and the Political
(2012), and has written numerous articles on German Idealism and criti-
cal theory, with specific reference to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Søren
Kierkegaard, and Theodor Adorno. She currently lives and lectures in Limerick,
Ireland.
Simon Truwant
is a doctoral researcher at KU Leuven and a research fellow at the Research
Foundation Flanders. His research focuses on the philosophy of Immanuel
Kant and its influence on the thought of Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, and
Emmanuel Levinas.
Karl Verstrynge
is Professor of Philosophy and Applied Ethics in the Department of Philosophy
and Moral Sciences and the Department of Communication Studies at the Free
University of Brussels (VUB). He is currently President of the Centre for Ethics
and Humanism, Chairman of the editorial board of “Kierkegaard Werken,” and
co-editor of the periodical Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook (Walter De Gruyter).
His publications focus mainly on existentialism (most notably Kierkegaard),
existentialist themes, and media-related ethical issues.