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Music of the Squares: David Ramsay Hay and the Reinvention of Pythagorean Aesthetics

- May 16, 2019 in aesthetics, architecture, Art & Illustrations, David Ramsay Hay, Music, parthenon, Philosophy

Understanding the same laws to apply to both visual and aural beauty, David Ramsay Hay thought it possible not only to analyse such visual wonders as the Parthenon in terms of music theory, but also to identify their corresponding musical harmonies and melodies. Carmel Raz on the Scottish artist's original, idiosyncratic, and at times bewildering aesthetics.

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Get Thee to a Phalanstery: or, How Fourier Can Still Teach Us to Make Lemonade

- May 1, 2019 in capitalism, Charles Fourier, Fourierism, free-love, orgies, Philosophy, sex, socialism, socialist utopia, utopia, women's rights

Hot on the heels of the French revolution — by way of extravagant orgies, obscure taxonomies, and lemonade seas — Charles Fourier offered up his blueprint for a socialist utopia, and in the process also one of the most influential early critiques of capitalism. Dominic Pettman explores Fourier's radical, bizarre, and often astonishingly modern ideas, and how they might guide us in our own troubled times.

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Get Thee to a Phalanstery: or, How Fourier Can Still Teach Us to Make Lemonade

- May 1, 2019 in capitalism, Charles Fourier, Fourierism, free-love, orgies, Philosophy, sex, socialism, socialist utopia, utopia, women's rights

Hot on the heels of the French revolution — by way of extravagant orgies, obscure taxonomies, and lemonade seas — Charles Fourier offered up his blueprint for a socialist utopia, and in the process also one of the most influential early critiques of capitalism. Dominic Pettman explores Fourier's radical, bizarre, and often astonishingly modern ideas, and how they might guide us in our own troubled times.

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Rambling Reflections: On Summers in Switzerland and Sheffield

- December 11, 2018 in Featured Articles, flâneur, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl phillip moritz, Literature, Philosophy, romanticism, Rousseau, w.g. sebald, walking, Yorkshire

In the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Philipp Moritz — from the peace of Lake Biel to the rugged Peaks — Seán Williams considers the connection between walking and writing.

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The Art of Philosophy: Visualising Aristotle in Early 17th-Century Paris

- October 24, 2017 in allegory, aristotle, Art & Illustrations, Philosophy

With their elaborate interplay of image and text, the several large-scale prints designed by the French friar Martin Meurisse to communicate Aristotelian thought are wonderfully impressive creations. Susanna Berger explores the function of these complex works, and how such visual commentaries not only served to express philosophical ideas in a novel way but also engendered […]

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The Art of Philosophy: Visualising Aristotle in Early 17th-Century Paris

- August 30, 2017 in allegory, aristotle, Art & Illustrations, Philosophy

With their elaborate interplay of image and text, the several large-scale prints designed by the French friar Martin Meurisse to communicate Aristotelian thought are wonderfully impressive creations. Susanna Berger explores the function of these complex works, and how such visual commentaries not only served to express philosophical ideas in a novel way but also engendered their own unique mode of thinking.

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Out From Behind This Mask

- July 27, 2017 in Art & Illustrations, Culture & History, death, death masks, Featured Articles, laurence hutton, laurence hutton collection, masks, memorial, Philosophy, plaster, punctum, roland barthes, walt whitman

A Barthesian bristle and the curious power of Walt Whitman’s posthumous eyelids — D. Graham Burnett on meditations conjured by a visit to the death masks of the Laurence Hutton Collection.

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Micromégas by Voltaire (1752)

- July 11, 2017 in aliens, early science fiction, Enlightenment, outer space, Philosophy, saturn, science fiction, sirius, Voltaire

Early sci-fi short story by Voltaire recounting a visit to Earth by Micromégas, an inhabitant of a distant planet which circles the star Sirius, and his companion hailing from Saturn.

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Micromégas by Voltaire (1752)

- July 11, 2017 in aliens, early science fiction, Enlightenment, outer space, Philosophy, saturn, science fiction, sirius, Voltaire

Early sci-fi short story by Voltaire recounting a visit to Earth by Micromégas, an inhabitant of a distant planet which circles the star Sirius, and his companion hailing from Saturn.

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Micromégas by Voltaire (1752)

- July 11, 2017 in aliens, early science fiction, Enlightenment, outer space, Philosophy, saturn, science fiction, sirius, Voltaire

Early sci-fi short story by Voltaire recounting a visit to Earth by Micromégas, an inhabitant of a distant planet which circles the star Sirius, and his companion hailing from Saturn.

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