How the philosophy of Giambattista Vico was influenced by eighteenth-century Neopolitan painting Can painting transform philosophy? In Inventing Falsehood, Making Truth, Malcolm Bull looks at Neapolitan art around 1700 through the eyes of the philosopher Giambattista Vico. Surrounded by extravagant examples of late Baroque painting by artists like Luca Giordano and Francesco Solimena, Vico concluded that human truth was a product of the imagination. Truth was not something that could be observed: instead, it was something made in the way that paintings were made--through the exercise of fantasy. Juxtaposing paintings and texts, Bull presents the masterpieces of late Baroque painting in early eighteenth-century Naples from an entirely new perspective. Revealing the close connections between the arguments of the philosophers and the arguments of the painters, he shows how Vico drew on both in his influential philosophy of history, The New Science. Bull suggests that painting can serve not just as an illustration for philosophical arguments, but also as the model for them--that painting itself has sometimes been a form of epistemological experiment, and that, perhaps surprisingly, the Neapolitan Baroque may have been one of the routes through which modern consciousness was formed.

How the philosophy of Giambattista Vico was influenced by eighteenth-century Neopolitan painting Can painting transform philosophy? In Inventing Falsehood, Making Truth, Malcolm Bull looks at Neapolitan art around 1700 through the eyes of the philosopher Giambattista Vico. Surrounded by extravagant examples of late Baroque painting by artists like Luca Giordano and Francesco Solimena, Vico concluded that human truth was a product of the imagination. Truth was not something that could be observed: instead, it was something made in the way that paintings were made--through the exercise of fantasy. Juxtaposing paintings and texts, Bull presents the masterpieces of late Baroque painting in early eighteenth-century Naples from an entirely new perspective. Revealing the close connections between the arguments of the philosophers and the arguments of the painters, he shows how Vico drew on both in his influential philosophy of history, The New Science. Bull suggests that painting can serve not just as an illustration for philosophical arguments, but also as the model for them--that painting itself has sometimes been a form of epistemological experiment, and that, perhaps surprisingly, the Neapolitan Baroque may have been one of the routes through which modern consciousness was formed.

Tending the Fire at the Center of the World engages the central question of Christian formation, that is, what kind of knowing is most likely to awaken and sustain Christian faith? This book seeks to reclaim aesthetics—beauty and creativity—as the church’s most native theological way of knowing and being, which participates with God’s own glory and creativity. This book traces the prominence of aesthetics up until the dawn of the Enlightenment, including recent theologians who reclaim aesthetics for theology and formation. The book elaborates the aims and techniques of aesthetic approaches to teaching and learning in the church. Finally, this book cautions against overly determined rationalisms and moralisms that do not retain a sense of wonder, delight, and openness in the church’s teaching, liturgy, and proclamation. In this view, the church does not simply regurgitate familiar texts, political tropes, or flattened doctrines but breaks into the world as Christ’s body, a parable, a song, a flash mob, interrupting business as usual, giving new expression to acts of care, repentance, forgiveness, joy, and communion, awake to the beauty of God’s gifts and inviting our worship.

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? This question opens up an important research perspective. In this book, Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books. Focusing on the intersection of information technology and architectural formulation, the authors create an evolving intellectual reflection on digital architecture and computer science.

The artwork of Maria Bussmann, a trained academic German philosopher and a significant visual artist, provides an ideal test case for a philosophical study of visual art. Bussmann has internalized the relationship between art and philosophy. In this exploration of the history of German aesthetics through Bussmann's work, David Carrier places the philosophical tradition in the context of contemporary visual culture. Each chapter focuses on the arguments of a major philosopher whose concerns Bussmann has dealt with as an artist: Kant, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein and Arendt. Offering comparative accounts of artists and philosophers whose work is of especial relevance, Carrier shows how Bussmann responds visually to writings of philosophers in art that has an elusive but essential relationship to theorizing. Tackling the question of whether philosophical subjects can be presented visually, Carrier offers a fresh perspective on the German idealist position through the visual art of 21st-century artist steeped in the tradition and continually challenging it through her work.

Living in a province dominated by powerful oligarchs, Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) concluded that political philosophy should work to undermine aristocratic authority and prevent political devolution into feudalism. Rejecting the possibility that the free market could successfully instill civil behavior, he advocated for a strong central judicial system to work closely with citizens to promote stability and justice. This study puts Vico in conversation with other Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Rousseau, and Mandeville to show how his alternative warrants serious consideration. In contrast to scholars who read Vico's New Science as a defense of the imagination, this study casts his account of poetic wisdom politically as an epistemological critique of the aristocratic mentality. Myth and Authority argues that Vico's depiction of pagan religion is a refined attempt to explain how oligarchy maintains its stranglehold on power. While Western civilization did not follow the path Vico suggested, it may now be more relevant as concerns grow about the increasing influence of the wealthy on civil institutions.

This book examines anti-imperialist thought in European philosophy. It features an international group of both emerging and established scholars who directly respond to Timothy Brennan’s far-reaching call to rethink intellectual histories, literary histories, and the reading habits of postcolonialism, in relation to the anti-imperialist tradition of critique. Each contributor rethinks postcolonial and world literature, Continental thought, and intellectual history in relation to anti-imperialist histories and traditions of critique, through geographically diverse analysis. This book provides a forum for the next generation of scholars to draw on and engage with the marginal yet influential work of the first generation of dissidents within postcolonial studies. It will appeal to researchers and students in the field of postcolonial studies, world literature, geography, and Continental thought.