Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, Jorge Campuzano e Ing. Elias Macotela
la
casa que crece, 1962. Manual
“Casas que Crecen”. Archivo Ramirez Vazquez.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Museo Experimental El Eco
Exhibition
view at Museo Experimental El Eco with a work of Felipe Mujika.
Archit: Mathias Goeritz, 1953, Mexico City.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Casa Eduardo Prieto López
El
vestíbulo de la Casa Eduardo Prieto López con “El ángel”
escultura por Mathias Goertiz, Jardines del Pedregal, México, DF
Arq. Luis Barragán - Reception hall of the Eduardo Prieto Lopez
House with “The Angel” sculpture by Mathias Goeritz, The Gardens
of Pedregal, Mexico City. Architect: Luis Barragan.
Monday, September 22, 2014
Bad Art is Good for Us All
Anonymous thrift store painting titled “Future Tennis Stars”
Text by Alison Gerber
http://theenemyreader.org/bad-art-good-us/
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Staging the Domestic
Staging the Domestic, 2011, wood, acrylic, wool, 120 x 93 x 37 cm
Anna
Chatzinassiou and "Salon de Bricolage" (Athens), present at
"The Hospital Club" in London, a group exhibition titled
"Staging the domestic".
The
term “domestic” is used in this exhibition with its dual meaning,
indicating both the home and the native.
The
title could thus be interpreted both as “installing artwork within
a domestic environment” and as “directing native Greek art across
borders.”
Participating
artists:
Venia
Bechraki, Alexandros Georgiou, Apostolos Georgiou, Panos Kokkinias,
Angelo Plessas, Mantalina Psoma, Alexandros Psychoulis, Georgia
Sagri, Danae Stratou, Elena Syraka, Panos Tsagaris, Kostis Velonis
and Marina Vernicos.
Curated
by Anna Chatzinassiou
16
October - 7 December 2014
"The
Hospital Club" , London.
Saturday, September 13, 2014
How to Become A Non-Artist
How to Become A Non-Artist is a project Ane Hjort Guttu carried out with her four-year-old son. Together they investigated what could comprise an artwork, with her son creating various “installations” around the house. Documented as a narrated slideshow, the work explores the heritage of the readymade from a very personal and humorous angle.
www.anehjortguttu.net
http://www.lesateliersderennes.fr/edition-2014/how-to-become-a-non-artist
Talk with Marcelo Cidade and Kostis Velonis
September 20 / 12:00 pm : Modulario, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City.
Trickster / The variable practice
A
Whales Architects, The Turk, 2014
The
expanded term “trickster”, as a deity that, in shamanistic
mythologies, bears the characteristics of an anthropomorphic animal
but also the qualities of a mythological hero who breaks the laws
while being in fact a seducer. The game between two related
definitions – the one who works miracles and the trickster – can
be useful for appreciating a direction of today’s visual
production. If we consult the ancient Greek definition of “metis”,
which means cunningness and skill, we see that doing the trick was
coming along with both the materialization of a technical invention
or immediate necessity, and the styles of the artistic practice.
The
problem arisen unexpectedly, the apparent impasse not predicted in
the original design, lurks as contingency in the practices of the
artists examined here, as well as in our lives. But through the
multiple and variable wavering of Metis, it turns into a beneficial
accident, something not only manageable but almost desired. The point
of friction operates as a signal for the change of course and
tactics. It did and does indicate the internal dynamics of
situations, goes back to Odysseus and his “many devices”, is
opportunistic in the strategic meaning of the term, outside its
moralistic and negative meaning, and joins up with “cunning
intelligence”: the kind of noesis that Plato overthrew for the
purpose of establishing the idealistic thinking.The
vision of the curator of this exhibition is to assemble works of
contemporary artists who, by their tactics, bring forth the reading
of the world as a permanent global variation, where apparently
insignificant details of daily practice find their meaning in the
evolution of things, and the conjunctures are no longer problematic
imponderable factors but the field of genesis of new dynamics.
Valentina
Karga, "Summer school for Applied Autonomy" , 2014
In
those works and tactics, a kind of intelligence still survives, which
does not paralyze in front of the unpredictable (the conjunctions),
which is able to cope with perplexities in front of the distance that
separates an ideal project from the effort of its implementation.
Participating
artists: A Whales Architects, Arvanitis Nikos, Kamaris Stephanos,
Karga Valentina, Kessanlis Nikos, Kotionis Zissis, Kotsoni Eleni,
Ntelakos Apostolos, Pantazopoulou Ioanna, Sachini Nana, Sachpazis
Costas, Sagri Georgia, Sepetzoglou Nikos, Touloudis Petros.
Curators:
Alexandros Psychoulis, Kostis Velonis
,
theoretical back-up: Phoebe
Giannisi
a.antonopoulou.art
gallery, Athens : 29.9 – 22.11.2014
Friday, September 5, 2014
In the Trance
A
pretty anarchist said to me
It's not that great love happens
What
happened became your great love
Her
echo had an ancient glow & so
proved buoyant for my little
craft
I
left the world & felt a world
The
bee loading its gloves with powder
The albatross wanting one thing
from the sea
Nothing
can wreck our boat said she
&
when the water felt the glacier
The future held a present tense
The
present held a future without cease
Brenda
Hillman
From
Practical Water, 2009
Monday, September 1, 2014
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Love Story
Eight
months ago, I came across a passage in a book that has haunted me
since. It was in Michael Ignatieff’s biography of Isaiah Berlin,
and it concerns a night Berlin spent in Leningrad in 1945. Berlin was
hanging out when a friend asked if he’d like to go visit Anna
Akhmatova. Not knowing much about her, Berlin said yes.
Twenty
years older than Berlin, Akhmatova had been a great pre-revolutionary
poet. Since 1925, the Soviets had allowed her to publish nothing. Her
first husband had been executed on false charges in 1921. In 1938,
her son was taken prisoner. For 17 months, Akhmatova had stood
outside his prison, vainly seeking news of him.
Berlin
was taken to her apartment and met a woman still beautiful and
powerful, but wounded by tyranny and the war. At first, their
conversation was restrained. They talked about war experiences and
British universities. Visitors came and went.
By
midnight, they were alone, sitting on opposite ends of her room. She
told him about her girlhood and marriage and her husband’s
execution. She began to recite Byron’s “Don Juan” with such
passion that Berlin turned his face to the window to hide his
emotions. She began reciting some of her own poems, breaking down as
she described how they had led the Soviets to execute one of her
colleagues.
By
4 in the morning, they were talking about the greats. They agreed
about Pushkin and Chekhov. Berlin liked the light intelligence of
Turgenev, while Akhmatova preferred the dark intensity of
Dostoyevsky.
Deeper
and deeper they talked, baring their souls. Akhmatova confessed her
loneliness, expressed her passions, spoke about literature and art.
Berlin had to go to the bathroom but didn’t dare break the spell.
They had read all the same things, knew what the other knew,
understood each other’s longings. That night, Ignatieff writes,
Berlin’s life “came as close as it ever did to the still
perfection of art.” He finally pulled himself away and returned to
his hotel. It was 11 a.m. He flung himself on the bed and exclaimed,
“I am in love; I am in love.”
Today
we live in a utilitarian moment. We’re surrounded by data and
fast-flowing information. “Our reason has become an instrumental
reason,” as Leon Wieseltier once put it, to be used to solve
practical problems.
The
night Berlin and Akhmatova spent together stands as the beau ideal of
a different sort of communication. It’s communication between
people who think that the knowledge most worth attending to is not
found in data but in the great works of culture, in humanity’s
inherited storehouse of moral, emotional and existential wisdom.
Berlin
and Akhmatova could experience that sort of life-altering
conversation because they had done the reading. They were spiritually
ambitious. They had the common language of literature, written by
geniuses who understand us better than we understand ourselves.
The
night also stands as the beau ideal of a certain sort of bond. This
sort of love depends on so many coincidences that it only happens
once or twice in a lifetime. Berlin and Akhmatova felt all the pieces
fitting amazingly into place. They were the same in many ways. There
was such harmony that all the inner defenses fell down in one night.
If
you read the poems Akhmatova wrote about that night, you get the
impression that they slept together, but, according to Ignatieff,
they barely touched. Their communion was primarily intellectual,
emotional and spiritual, creating a combination of friendship and
love. If friends famously confront the world side by side and lovers
live face to face, Berlin and Akhmatova seemed to somehow enact both
postures at once. They shared and also augmented each other’s
understanding.
For
Berlin, this night was the most important event of his life.
Akhmatova was stuck in the Soviet Union, living under a regime of
manipulation, fear and lies. She suffered horrendously for it. The
regime decided that she had cavorted with a British spy. She was
expelled from the Writers’ Union. Her son was thrown into prison.
She was desolated but never blamed Berlin, speaking of him fervently
and writing movingly about the numinous magic of that night.
I’m
old enough to remember when many people committed themselves to this
sort of life and dreamed of this sort of communion — the whole
Great Books/Big Ideas thing. I am not sure how many people believe
in or aspire to this sort of a life today. I’m not sure how many
schools prepare students for this kind of love.
Text
by David Brooks
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Earth Overshoot Day arrives earlier as we consume too much for planet to replenish
The latest grim news about the Earth’s resources is that we are using them up faster and faster every year, and that is creating bigger and bigger economic inequalities between countries.
We hit what is known as Earth Overshoot Day even earlier this year – on 19 August
Global Footprint Network, the environmental think-tank that monitors mankind’s impact on the planet, working with the World Wide Fund for Nature, said we are running out of irreplaceable reserves.
http://euronews.com/2014/08/19/earth-overshoot-day-arrives-earlier-as-we-consume-too-much/
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
The Theater of the World
Every city is reimagined and rebuilt as a result of a spectacle. Whether it is to boost tourism, to complete political promises or to encourage nationalism, the architecture of a city is often ornamented to demonstrate progress. Ever since the representation of nations at the World Fair´s from the XIX century, to the post-war urban renovation projects, buildings raise as artificial monuments that later become obsolete even when they disguise the urban reality.
The Theater of the World looks into the work of different artists interested in architecture as a place for political and social representation. Although, more than revealing the failed utopias from the past, this exhibition reflects on the world as stage, where the monuments, palaces, ruins and social housing projects coexist and renovate under the same façade of nation and apparent development.
Artists : Alexánder Apostol,Yto Barrada, Marcelo Cidade, Nathan Coley, Livia Corona, José Dávila, Marjolijn Dijkman, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Angela Ferreira, Andreas Fogarasi, Meschac Gaba, Carlos Garaicoa, Terence Gower Pedro Reyes, Pablo Hare, Heidrun Holzfeind-Christoph Draeger, David Maljkovic, Olivia Plender, Anri Sala, Kostis Velonis
Curated by Andrea Torrenblanca.
Curatorial Assistant Ixel Rion.
12.6-28.9.2014
12.6-28.9.2014
Museo Tamayo, Mexico City
Friday, July 25, 2014
Monday, July 21, 2014
Thursday, July 17, 2014
The Whole Nation Builds the Castle
Antoni Chodorowski's cartoon commenting
on the popular interest in the reconstruction of the Royal Castle.The
banner reads “The Whole Nation Builds the Castle”, a play on a
much repeated slogan of the Bierut era, “The Whole Nation builds
its Capital”. Poland, 1975.
Friday, July 11, 2014
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Political Speech -Redefining Sculpture
Kunsthalle Athena invites Kostis Velonis and Socratis Socratous - participating artists in the exhibition This is Not My Beautiful House- to a discussion about their artistic work.
Both artists, choosing sculpture as their medium, make a critical comment upon contemporary reality and undertake a new approach on art.
Kostis Velonis’ sculptures, most often made of wood, articulate narratives that link personal stories to the revisiting of historical events and material cultural facts, including the stage production of avant-garde theatre and working class history. His intention is to evoke contradictory ideas, using the simple materials of a failed builder.
Socratis Socratous’ work refers to an osmosis of politics and art, even though it often has actual political ramifications. At the same time, it mirrors the limits reached by the artist. His installations are often a composition of a series of photographs and the issues that follow from them, together with the utility of ready-mades, while his sculptures appear to refer to a ‘violated’ sense of reality.
The two artists will analyse their work as well as the course of their artistic production, their influences and points of reference, the way their work relates to politics, history and contemporary sociopolitical circumstances. Furthermore, they will elaborate on how forms and materials converse with each other, composing a potentially new approach on the role and the significance of art today. Through this encounter, they will attempt to share their visions with the public, as well as the other elements which constitute their artistic universe.
Thursday, July 10, 20:00
Political Speeches 2014 are part of
This is Not My Beautiful House exhibition
Anastasia Ax, Apostolos Georgiou, Socratis Socratous and Kostis Velonis
May 16 – September 11, 2014
www.kunsthalleathena.org
Friday, July 4, 2014
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Cascando
Το Cascando είναι μουσικός όρος που δηλώνει την επιβράδυνση του ρυθμού και την ταυτόχρονη μείωση της έντασης. Αυτή η ερμηνευτική εξέλιξη συνήθως, προϊδεάζει τον ακροατή για το επερχόμενο τέλος. Στο Cascando, ένα ραδιοφωνικό θεατρικό του Σάμουελ Μπέκετ που γράφτηκε το 1961 ο αφηγητής προσπαθεί να τελειώσει μια ιστορία ή για την ακρίβεια «να βρει την ιστορία που τελειώνει όλες της ιστορίες». Η ολοκλήρωση συνεχώς ματαιώνεται. Το έργο δεν τελειώνει, απλώς σταματά.
Κωστής Βελώνης, Απόστολος Γεωργίου, Γιώργος Γυπαράκης, Απόστολος Ντελάκος, Μαρία Παπαδημητρίου, Αλέξανδρος Ψυχούλης
25 Ιουνίου - 15 Σεπτεμβρίου
CASK gallery, Λάρισα
What Models Can Do—A Short History of the Architectural Model in Contemporary Art
In the field of architecture and urban planning, the three-dimensional architectural model – on a reduced scale -- continues to function as a tool when communicating planned or realised architecture. The model can efficiently provide information about larger spatial contexts, which are either experienced very differently in their original dimensions or may even be impossible to experience at all. Through its reduction in size, the model also facilitates a reduction in spatial complexity. Suddenly, it is possible to grasp things at a glance that can only be understood in their original size through the time-consuming process of a physical inspection.
It is noticeable that contemporary art frequently adopts the architectural and urban model, removing it from its tightly framed functional context, adapting its phenomenological qualities and giving it a fresh function in the context of artistic questions. In the conceptually dominated art of the last 40 years, the architectural model is opened up poetically and employed in a metaphorical and theatrical fashion. Another important aspect in this context is the mysterious aura of the miniature (Gaston Bachelard), which the eye can penetrate – without the body, so to speak, but without forgetting the physical experience.
On the one hand, reference to the architectural model helps to develop issues concerning the sculpture; on the other hand, the architectural model can serve – precisely because of its interim state between concept and realisation – as an instrument of criticism and utopia. It is this not-only-but-also, this simultaneity of direct sensory presence and yet suggestive distance to the viewer’s sphere of experience, which constitutes the fascination of the model.
The exhibition writes a brief history of the architectural model in contemporary art. It begins with the legendary model by Charles Simonds, covers the 1990s with Ludger Gerdes, Hermann Pitz and Thomas Schütte, and weaves the thread further, up to the present day, with Alicia Framis, Hinrich Sachs and Carlos Garaicoa.
Participating artists: Absalon, Michael Ashkin, Thomas Bayrle, Peter Downsbrough, Jean-Pascal Flavien, Alicia Framis, Carlos Garaicoa, Ludger Gerdes, Christian Haake, Gabu Heindl & Drehli Robnik, Matthew Day Jackson, Friederike Klotz, Langlands & Bell, Rita McBride, Isa Melsheimer, Stephan Mörsch, Sirous Namazi, Hermann Pitz, Hinrich Sachs, Michel Sauer, Thomas Schütte, Laurie Simmons & Peter Wheelwright, Charles Simonds, Stephen Willats, Elizabeth Wright und Yin Xiuzhen.
June 29–October 2014
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Untitled
Tonight i'm eating stars
and yer not gonna stop me
travelin through bars
with glitter on my stockings
with glitter on my stockings
My body parts are shimmerin
as i move through my own galaxy
My high heels kick up moondust
I got Saturn's rings for jewelry
Yeh, i know that times are hard
and you got yer shovel waiting on me
But tonight i'm eating stars
so you can shove yer goddamn gravity
But tonight i'm eating stars
so you can shove yer goddamn gravity
The Sun fell down my pants
and I'm gonna dance till Gabriel blows
Search all night long till i find
myself
a couple of celestial bodies
Go on you can dig yer hole
cuz tomorrow you might catch me
But tonight I'm eatin stars
and mother -fucker you can't touch me.
Poem included in the text of Nancy
Scheper-Hughes “The genocidal continuum:peace -time crimes”,
Power and Self , Cambridge University Press, 2002. Street Poet
from Baltimore
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Labor as a Tulip
Labor as a tulip
arrays its flame, nu
form, as the bulb-star,
interred, divines its ore
surging the gulf
rooting it into
appalled memento
pulsing will.
Leaf-blades score the heap.
Other wounds—penetralia—
other worlds, cries, far.
Filaments, simples
emblazoning the rei,
rebus of grief.
Unslumbering terra
premising her kill.
arrays its flame, nu
form, as the bulb-star,
interred, divines its ore
surging the gulf
rooting it into
appalled memento
pulsing will.
Leaf-blades score the heap.
Other wounds—penetralia—
other worlds, cries, far.
Filaments, simples
emblazoning the rei,
rebus of grief.
Unslumbering terra
premising her kill.
Karen Volkman, 2014
The Brancusi Effect
Constantin Brancusi, Le Coq, 1924-1925, Courtesy Züricher Kunstgesellschaft, Schenkung Carola Giedion-Welcker, 2011, © Silke Otto-Knapp, Courtesy greengrassi, London. Foto: Marcus Leith
The Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957) is numbered among the 20th century’s most influential artists. With his considerations of the way that pedestal and presented work relate to each other he launched a reorientation of the relationship between object, viewer and space. This had a decisive influence on minimal art and the aesthetic of the installation as a whole.
Moreover, Brancusi’s work is seen as the initial point of a reflection on the artwork’s historical and institutional positioning. The exhibition The Brancusi Effect takes this potential into account as well as the strongly documentary aspect implicit in Brancusi’s artistic approach, which was expressed in countless photographic images of installations taken in his studio. The exhibition presents original photographic material together with selected positions of contemporary art that reference Brancusi, and so creates an imposing spatial installation comprising various sculptures that reflect the recent currency of the sculptural within contemporary art.
Photographs of Brancusi in his studio in the Impasse Rosin in Paris, showcase how he used installative arrangements to present his works as a spatially unified work of art. Brancusi moreover also personally photographed individual works, in order to translate the special aura of his sculptures into the medium of photography. The loan from the Kunsthaus Zurich provides a fascinating insight into the thinking and the production methods of this artist, who, between tradition and modernity, created a work of singularity within the European avant-garde.
Further insight into the work of Brancusi can be drawn from the work Les 58 numéros flotents, an unwilling collaborative work between Brancusi, the Japanese photographer Soichi Sunami and the Italian publisher Giovanni Scheiwiller, directed both formally and conceptually by Marcel Duchamp’s invisible hand. The five photographs conclude the operation started by Duchamp on Brancusi’s work which began with the installation at Brummer Gallery in 1933 and which completely overturned the reading of the work and paved the way for its future, American perception. Alessio delli Castelli’s work on these objects, oscillating between documents and works of art, is presented in the catalogue alongside Paola Mola’s original studies on the subject.
The contemporary positions in the exhibition are characterised by an enormous heterogeneity, but share an interest in the relationship between work and pedestal, work and space and the modular principle, exemplified in one of Brancusi’s most famous works Endless Column. The combination of different materials, the coexistence of different volumes and the dissolution of the idea of a supporting pedestal in favour of an integral sculptural component, also characterise the selected works by international artists.
An Te Liu transforms Styrofoam parts from transport packaging of hi-fi equipment or household appliances into elegant modular bronze sculptures. In Ok Ok Ok Ok Ok, Sofia Hultén, spans a floor-to-ceiling filigree column out of old car jacks. The works by Koenraad Dedobbeleer muddle up the perception of the relationship between objects and their appearance; the works appear both as sculpture and as pedestal of a sculpture. Ute Müller in turn combines found materials with organically shaped sculptures into dense sculptural arrangements.
The exciting interior and exterior insights arising out of this coexistence of different sculptural positions, in the glass pavilion of Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, in essence once more serve to emphasize the currency of Brancusi.
Artists: Saâdane Afif, Wilfrid Almendra, Nina Beier, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Constantin Brancusi, André Cadere, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Alessio delli Castelli, Thea Djordjadze, Paulien Föllings, Isa Genzken, Konstantin Grcic, Jürgen Mayer H., Sofia Hultén, Haraldur Jónsson, An Te Liu, Josephine Meckseper, Ute Müller, Anca Munteanu Rimnic, Shahryar Nashat, Olaf Nicolai, Odilon Pain, Luiz Roque, Rudi Stanzel.
Curators: Vanessa Joan Müller, Nicolaus Schafhausen
Sunday, June 1, 2014
“Bobby, Ζαμβέζης, Darling, Τσάρ, Liggie, Kittie and Fanny”
Artists: Dirk Bell, Sarah Crowner,
Rallou Panagiotou, Charlotte Posenenske, Georgia Sagri, Kostis
Velonis and special guest. A Summer Show: “Bobby, Ζαμβέζης, Darling, Τσάρ, Liggie, Kittie and Fanny”Andreas Melas & Helena Papadopoulos Gallery
"This is Not My Beautiful House" shots
Rural
Management, 2014
Tribune
Leading to the Ramp and Ramp Leading to the Tribune, 2014
How
One Can Think Freely in the Shadow of a Temple, 2008
http://www.kunsthalleathena.org
Photo
by Stathis Mamalakis
Proto Doric Column
Proto
Doric Column, at the entrance to a tomb, Beni Hasan, Egypt, The
Bridgeman Art Library
Publisher Places a Politically Correct Warning Label on Kant’s Critiques
Most times when I hear someone on a tear about the dangers of “political correctness” I roll my eyes and move on. So many such complaints involve ire at being held to standards of basic human decency, say, or having to share resources, opportunities, or public spaces. But there are many exceptions, when the so-called “PC” impulse to broaden inclusivity and soften offense produces monsters of condescending paternalism. Take the above omnibus edition of “Kant’s Critiques” printed by Wilder Publications in 2008. The publisher, with either kind but painfully obtuse motives, or with an eye toward pre-empting some kind of legal blowback, has seen fit to include a disclaimer at the bottom of the title page:
This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.
Where to begin? First, we must point out Wilder Publications’ strange certainty that a hypothetical Kant of today would express his ideas in tolerant and liberal language. The supposition has the effect of patronizing the dead philosopher and of absolving him of any responsibility for his blind spots and prejudices, assuming that he meant well but was simply a blinkered and unfortunate “product” of his time. But who’s to say that Kant didn’t damn well mean his comments that offend our sensibilities today, and wouldn’t still mean them now were he somehow resurrected and forced to update his major works? Moreover, why assume that all current readers of Kant do not share his more repugnant views? Secondly, who is this editionfor? Philosopher Brian Leiter, who brought this to our attention, humorously titles it “Kant’s 3 Critiques—rated PG-13.” One would hope that any young person precocious enough to read Kant would have the ability to recognize historical context and to approach critically statements that sound unethical, bigoted, or scientifically dated to her modern ears. One would hope parents buying Kant for their kids could do the same without chiding from publishers.
None of this is to say that there aren’t substantive reasons to examine and critique the prejudicial assumptions and biases of classical philosophers. A great many recent scholars have done exactly that. In her Philosophy of Science and Race, for example, Naomi Zack observes that “according to contemporary standards, both [Hume and Kant] were virulent white supremacists.” Yet she also analyzes the problems with applying “contemporary standards” to their systems of thought, which were not necessarily racist in the sense we mean so much as “racialist,” dependent on an “ontology of human races, which underlay Hume and Kant’s value judgments about what they thought were racial differences” (an ontology, it’s worth noting, that produced systemic and institutional racism). Zack respects the vast gulf that separates our judgments from those of the past while still holding the philosophers accountable for contradictions and inconsistencies in their thought that are clearly the products of willful ignorance, chauvinism, and unexamined bias. An informed historical approach allows us to see how books are not simply “products of their time” but are situated in networks of knowledge and ideology that shaped their authors’ assumptions and continue to shape our own—ideologies that persist into the present and cannot and should not be papered over or easily explained away with skittish warning labels and didactic lectures about how much things have changed. In a great many ways of course, they have. And in some significant others, they simply haven’t. To pretend otherwise for the sake of the children is disingenuous and does a grave disservice to both author and reader.
Text by Josh Jones
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2014/03/kants-3-critiques.html
Sunday, May 25, 2014
The world turn'd upside down
The
world turn'd upside down: or, A briefe description of the ridiculous
fashions of these distracted times
by T. J., Taylor, John ,
Jordan, Thomas,
London: Printed for John Smith, Jan 28 1646.
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