Engagement with the image has played a decisive role in the formulation of the very idea of philosophy since Plato. Identifying pivotal moments in the history of philosophy, Dennis J. Schmidt develops the question of philosophy's regard of the image in thinking by considering painting-where the image most clearly calls attention to itself as an image. Focusing on Heidegger and the work of Paul Klee, Schmidt pursues larger issues in the relationship between word, image, and truth. As he investigates alternative ways of thinking about truth through word and image, Schmidt shows how the form of art can indeed possess the capacity to change its viewers.

Word, image, and aesthetics of ethical life

About the Author

Dennis J. Schmidt is Liberal Arts Professor of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and German at Pennsylvania State University. He is author of On Germans and Other Greeks: Tragedy and Ethical Life (IUP, 2001).

Reviews

San Filippo is well-read in feminist and queer theory, and the book is sprinkled with ideas from those fields, which makes this most suitable for graduate-level reading. It can, however, serve as undergraduate coursework for students with a solid background in those subjects. . . . Highly recommended.

* Choice *

If anything, the most wonderful aspect of this book is just how much its tone captures indirectly the very texture of its thematized phenomenological challenge. Schmidt manages not only to raise a question, but to attune the reader to the sheer fact of gesture in painting.

* Continental Philosophy Review *

Following on the steps of Continental philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and particularly Gadamer, Schmidt aims to show that artistic images can open on an experience of truth quite distinct from, yet just as valuable as, that occasioned by conceptual knowledge.

* Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism *



Book Information
ISBN 9780253006202
Author Dennis J. Schmidt
Format Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 272g