Books & ideas

From the Order of Nature to Social Order

Laurent Folliot — 2021-02-01T08:00:00Z

The art of English gardens in the eighteenth century opens up new ground that nurtures the invention of different forms of community life. Jacques Rancière untangles the threads of this complex genealogy.

Tests in Aesthetics

Jacques Morizot — 2020-02-24T08:00:00Z

In order to understand the aesthetic experience, do we need to use the natural sciences as our model? Based on protocols and tests, experimental philosophy seeks to fill a gap between conceptualisation and empirical data. These methods are now entering the field of aesthetics.

Veils in the Western World: a Thousand-Year History

Francesca Canadé Sautman — 2019-01-03T07:00:00Z

Men and women have been wearing veils for over a millennium in the West. Nicole Pellegrin shows that, far from always being a response to religious or moral precepts, head coverings also tell us about the aesthetic experiences of a Western world hungry for transparency.

When Creativity Becomes the Watchword

Olivier Alexandre — 2018-10-22T07:00:00Z

‘Let's be creative!' Andreas Reckwitz traces the genealogy of this word, joyfully exploring its successive historic circumvolutions. A stimulating work that has not relinquished a certain philosophy of history.

Why Do We Restore Artworks and Many Other Objects?

Bernard Sève — 2018-03-15T08:00:00Z

From ethnological objects to contemporary installations, everything is now susceptible to being restored. According to Jean-Pierre Cometti, this is the mark of an era in which artistic and cultural objects are “transitive” and reversible, in the sense that they can exchange positions.

Ecology of Monads

Thibault De Meyer — 2017-09-07T07:00:00Z

Will Leibniz's philosophy turn us into ecologists? This is the bet of Pauline Phemister who, building upon Leibniz's theory of perception and of the interdependence of beings, shows that biodiversity is a form of beauty, and that its destruction impoverishes our experience.

Arthur C. Danto or the Duality of Worlds

Laure Bordonaba — 2016-09-05T07:00:00Z

What distinguishes a blank canvas from an empty frame? A simple object from a readymade? What is this mysterious gap that art digs as it separates from life? Such are the questions posed by Arthur Danto, a major figure of contemporary art theory.

The Rules of Improvisation

Pierre Saint-Germier — 2016-03-29T07:00:00Z

Starting from the experimentations of three European ensembles playing improvised music at the turn of the 1970s, Matthieu Saladin defines an aesthetics of free improvisation, whose genuine political dimension he brings to light.

We Have Always Been Modern

Anne Boissière — 2010-11-26T08:55:56Z

What does it mean to be modern? Is the modern era over, as proponents of post-modernism claim? Flying in the face of conventional definitions, Pierre-Damien Huyghe defends a conception of the modern based on the transformative power of technology, which has always been a characteristic of man.