Cubism and the Fourth Dimension

This article revisits the historiography of Cubism and mathematics, with a particular focus on Pablo Picasso's uses of geometry at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. In particular, I consider the artistic appropriation of the concept of the fourth dimension, and its pictorial uses as a conduit for a conceptual reformulation of pictorial space. I investigate Picasso's distinctive adoption of this geometric framework in relation to one of his 1909 experiments across painting and photography, and advocate the possibility of drawing novel historiographical lessons from Picasso's work — lessons that bring the historiography of Cubism in a closer dialogue with recent debates in the historiography of science. I conclude with an appeal to consider the continued relevance of this past experiment in art and science when assessing the contemporary drive toward art-science collaborations, and use the case of Cubism and the fourth dimension as a springboard for a critical reflection on the future directions of art-science collaborations.     

Multiple Horizons: Phenomenology,Cubism, Architecture

Phenomenology is often described as a paradigm shift that calls for a re-assessment of inherited themes and concepts. One of its most important contributions is the central role given to the embodied subject as opposed to the conception of the disembodied subject that has dominated philosophy since Descartes. If perspectival painting best represents the paradigm of modern philosophy since the Renaissance, it is the multiple perspectives of Cubist painting that best represent the phenomenological paradigm. While the relationship between phenomenology and art has been widely studied, my aim in this article is to focus on the way in which Cubism represents the embodied, horizonal structure of our perception, and then to discuss the new form of contemporary art installation as an actualization of Cubist principles in the age of digital reproduction. The embodiment of the subject necessarily involves intersubjectivity, for others appear in the subject’s contextual frame of public space. While for Arendt the shift from private subjective space to public intersubjective space is effected through dialogue, I argue that it is also effected architecturally, for architecture facilitates dialogue by offering multiple perspectives on common space and shared time. I suggest, finally, that architecture’s multiperspectival strategies offer the humanities a useful model of a multidisciplinary methodology.     

Political Phenomenology: Radical Democracy and Truth

Abstract

In light of the "theological turn" in recent phenomenology, a question arises for contemporary thought of how the relationships among philosophy, religion, and democratic politics might be recontextualized and understood from a specifically phenomenological perspective. Essential in addressing this question is a critical examination of the method of reduction, or epoche instituted by Edmund Husserl as the original, core practice of phenomenology. Reinterpreting the epoche in terms of its social, historical, and political dimensions, later phenomenologists Enzo Paci and Jan Patocka demonstrate how phenomenology's conception of truth is necessarily coordinated with a commitment to collective democratic praxis. In Paci, the practice of epoche initiates critical resistance to ideological and idolatrous social and political forms through contrast with the infinite openness of truth's real universality. In Patocka, phenomenological method as applied to historically-embedded religious and philosophical traditions helps to clarify what in particular distinguishes democratic from autocratic forms of life. By drawing the insights of Paci and Patocka into conjunction, a new conception emerges of the unique religio— the collective, existential commitment— of phenomenology as such: to express the experience(s) of truth through democratic praxis in collaboration with other analogous philosophical, religious and scientific traditions.     

Culture and Truth: Nietzsche and Classical Philology

Several recent studies have returned to the famous controversy over the reception of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872). By reinterpreting it within the immediate context of Germany in the early 1870s, James Whitman understands this controversy as a Methodenstreit within Classical Philology and James I. Porter claims that, through this controversy, Nietzsche developed an extensive critique of modern culture. I contend that Nietzsche’s reaction to the scholarly rejection of his first publication resulted in no immediate response on his behalf; rather, it led to three years of intense rethinking and strengthening of the position he took in The Birth of Tragedy. This is evidenced in his early published essays and notebooks of 1872–1875. From the first readers of these early notebooks, Karl Schlechta and Anni Anders, to its most recent interpreters, Richard T. Grey and Alexander Nehamas, these scholars are unanimous in understanding them as Nietzsche’s attempt to work through a number of conventional philosophical problems. I argue that Nietzsche developed in these essays and notebooks a type of criticism that broke away from all traditional philosophical problems and creatively introduced such notions as cultural horizon, background phenomena, and life as a philosophical measure — all of which would be further refined in his mature texts of the 1880s and underpin his innovative concepts of the will to power and eternal recurrence.     

哲学之为穷理

西方思想源于古希腊的理性传统。西方哲学从一开始就对必然性的知识有一种相当明确的追求,其与因宗教而获得的信仰,及因科学而对客观世界及其规律的认知不尽相同,在追求必然性、唯一性的体系的同时,哲学的兴趣是在探索和我们连在一起的世界的道理,而且还应是在不同的贯通的系统之间的对话,对话的目的不是要达到更高的贯通和共识,而是追求在一定程度上融贯的、不断丰满和变得厚实的思想。     

修志务必存真求实——学习《地方志工作条例》有感

本文提出存真求实是方志编纂的基本原则,是对修志者在职业道德上的一个基本要求。存真求实必须具备科学的真实观,必须坚持秉笔直书,必须注重调查研究。     

留学与移民：从学习到迁徙

我很荣幸再次来到哥本哈根,这次是和夫人一起来。我们特别高兴能在有着悠久历史的艾尔辛诺(Elsinore)逗留。这个地方使我们回想起我们年轻的时候,那个时候我们尚不知将会在生活的城堡中“生存还是毁灭”[1]。请允许我代表世界海外华人研究学会和在座的诸位,向朱梅(MetteThun)以及她的同事们表示祝贺,祝贺他们使这次研讨会得以在欧洲成功召开。很久以来,世界海外华人研究学会就期待能到欧洲——这个吸引大量合法或其他各种华人移民的最有活力的地区之一——召开国际研讨会。我们对过去数十年来欧洲在移民研究领域取得的新成就都有目共睹,…