Examining multiple modes of spatio-temporal and geometric figurations of life, the author explores how relationships between space, geometry and aesthetics generate productive expressions of subjectivity, developed through Kant's 'reflective subject' and 'geometric' texts by Plato and others towards Deleuze's philosophy of sense.

This classic study probes the geometric interrelationships between art and life in discussions ranging from dissertations by Plato, Pythagoras, and Archimedes to examples of modern architecture and art. Other topics include the Golden Section, geometrical shapes on the plane, geometrical shapes in space, crystal lattices, and other fascinating subjects. 80 plates and 64 figures.

The essays in this volume provide a succinct overview of Victor Burgin's multifaceted work during the last forty years--from its origins in debates within conceptual art to its present concern with everyday perception in the environment of global media.

This book deals with the complexity of art by focusing on the singularity of the work of art. Gathering a selection of writings in art theory and semiotics, it explores the question of apprehending art from its perceptual aspects to aesthetic comprehension and understanding. Theoretical enquiries focus in particular on the dynamics of the perception of forms, the semiotic value of colour, the aesthetic phenomenon of empathy, the function of vision in relation to other senses and its faculty to lead, in a substantial way, to the embodiment of sense. These theoretical points are constantly observed with reference to the analysis of works of art, especially from the beginning of the modern era, when a renovated psychophysical approach oriented the evolution of contemporary aesthetics. Research into art theories sheds light on how differentials in topologic positions, dimensions, relationships and tones contribute to the arising of forms and colours in perception, and affect the perceiver. The essays presented address in different ways the emergence of sense, by conceiving it as deeply anchored to the dynamics of perception, in addition to the cognitive disposition and knowledge, regardless of whether or not the subject (artist or beholder) is aware of these processes. Through in-depth analyses identifying to what extent the aesthetic moment builds on perceptual and semiotic processes, works of art are revealed to be singularities, reflecting the correlation with morphodynamics in the sciences.

This work presents a rethinking of Critical Philosophy through the recovery of a larger sense of 'aesthetics' in Kant. It provides an original unitary reading of the Critique of Judgement . This is situated in relation to Kant's attempt to think ends in general. The question of how to think ends is argued to guide Kant both in his treatment of aesthetics and teleology and to provide the rationale for critique itself. This challenging work will set a new standard for engagements with Kant.

In Aesthetics in Arabic Thought from Pre-Islamic Arabia through al-Andalus José Miguel Puerta Vílchez analyzes the discourses about beauty, the arts, and sense perception that arose within classical Arab culture from pre-Islamic poetry and the Quran (sixth-seventh centuries CE) to the Alhambra palace in Granada (fourteenth century CE). He focuses on the contributions of such great thinkers as Ibn Ḥazm, Avempace, Ibn Ṭufayl, Averroes, Ibn ʿArabī, and Ibn Khaldūn in al-Andalus, and the Brethren of Purity, al-Tawḥīdī, al-Fārābī, Avicenna, Alhazen, and al-Ghazālī in the East. The work also explores literary criticism, calligraphy, music, belles-lettres (adab), and erotic literature, and highlights the contribution of Arab humanism to shaping the field of Aesthetics in the West.

This book focuses on the challenges and uncertainties involved when island geography is translated into words and images, and it explores the complexities and contradictions of islands as figures of thought in Western modernity. Other studies have shown how islands have been imagined as bounded, easily controllable spaces and colonial territories; The Aesthetics of Island Space argues that they have been linked to disorientation and confusion as much asto spatial mastery and control. The book traces four lines in the vast sea of Anglo-American island stories, each of which has its beginning in one of modernity's voyages of discovery. The chapters focus onAmerica's island gateways (Roanoke and Ellis Island), visions of tropical islands (Tahiti and imagined South Sea islands), the islands of the US-Canadian border region in the Pacific Northwest, and the imaginative appeal of geologically mutable islands. The book studies the journals of explorers and scientists alongside literary texts and films. It discusses a panorama of real and imagined journeys that take their narrators, protagonists, and readers to the limits of human perception andunderstanding, where borders are drawn and dissolved in a disorienting world between water and land.