This paper analyzes the reception of sensus communis, or common sense, in the context of the debates between Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Rancière on the political implications of Kant’s aesthetic theory. While sensus communis has attracted political attention since Hanna Arendt’s lecture on Kant’s aesthetics, Lyotard has criticized it for problems in the theory of consensus and community. In contrast, Rancière has presented an alternative perspective, emphasizing the political effectiveness of sensus communis and criticizing Lyotard’s argument. By factoring out a common factor in the Third Critique, namely sensus communis, this paper shows that Lyotard and Rancière differ in their understanding of the “ought [Sollen]” in the Third Critique, which has led to their different receptions of Kant’s aesthetics. The paper first provides an overview of the discussion of sensus communis and the “ought” in the Third Critique. It then considers Lyotard’s argument for the importance of the sublime instead of the beautiful grounding sensus communis. The paper subsequently evaluates Rancière’s emphasis on the community of the beautiful, and examines his criticism of Lyotard in this regard. Finally, it identifies where the Kantian reception of Lyotard and Rancière diverges in the Third Critique in terms of “ought”.

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Deleuze and Guattari assert the importance of music over painting with regard to the power of de-territorialization in “A Thousand Plateaus”. Their theory of music cannot be separated from the discussion of the unique concept of refrain. This paper aims to form a basic consensus on what Deleuze’s argument about “refrain” says or does not say. Our first focus will be on the three different aspects that refrain has in response to three different phases: chaos, territory, and de-territorialization. It is also noteworthy that while Deleuze defines “refrain” as the content of music, he opposes “refrain” and “music”. According to Deleuze, “refrain” is a way of doing away with it. Our research clarifies the position of refrain itself, which is recognized independently of the music. In previous research, it has been understood that Deleuze’s “refrain” is to be found in the expressive activities of animals rather than in those of humans. This paper, however, shows that art, defined as “capturing” the “power of de-territorialization”, is ultimately found in human acts of expression. From this point of view, we reconsider “inhumanisme” in the Deleuzean art theory.

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This paper reconsiders an important, yet previously largely overlooked factor of Florentine art criticism: immediacy of artist’s hand. Although in the previous studies the idea of art as the trace of the hand has been primarily related to Venetian art, once we take into consideration writings of the key figures in Florentine art criticism such as Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) and Filippo Baldinucci (1625-1697) on collecting and admiring drawings, it becomes clear that they too had considered the immediacy of the artist’s hand as a crucial aspect of artistic work. Discussion proceeds as follows. First, we will review the historical background of the formation of Baldinucci’s renowned “Notices of the Professors of Design”, and we will find his strong interest in direct observation of the works. Next, Vasari’s so-called “Libro de’ Disegni” is taken into consideration, and we will see Vasari’s inclination towards collecting drawings and prints that bear traces of the artists’ hands. Finally, the influence of Vasari’s “Libro” on Baldinucci is considered, and how he constructed art history is carefully studied.

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Chogyuˉ Takayama (1871-1902), a philosopher and literary critic, and Muneyoshi Yanagi (or Soˉ etsu Yanagi, 1889-1961), a philosopher and founder of the Mingei Movement in Japan, both delineated a concept that connected beauty with our manner of living. This paper discusses the role of the conception of the “absolute” in the thought of Takayama and Yanagi, especially within their theory of “aesthetic life.” Section 1 shows that Yanagi adopted Takayama’s line of thinking throughout his works, with Yanagi mentioning Takayama’s theory for “aesthetic life.” Section 2 focuses on Takayama’s short article “On the Aesthetic Life,” pointing out the connection between the aesthetic and absolute value. Finally, section 3 suggests that, like Takayama, Yanagi also related the aesthetic to daily life and emphasized the importance of the problem of the absolute. Additionally, it can be indicated that both referred to the concept of “nature” as the crossing point between the relative and the absolute. When they referred to “aesthetic life,” they regarded absolute value as the purpose of our daily lives.

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Ambrotype is one of the oldest photographic techniques. Although it began to disappear from the West in the 1860s, the Japanese favoured them throughout the late nineteenth century. Many surviving photographs are portraits of Japanese people, showing their choice of the technique. Interestingly, the Japanese ambrotype works had three characteristics which remained until the twentieth century. They were wooden boxes, glass plates, and achromatic images. Even though the ambrotype was replaced with more economical techniques such as tintype using a tinned or enamelled iron plate in the West, it remained with the above characteristics in Japan. Three characteristics can be described as ‘things’ because they interact not only with a material or an object but also with the people and social environment. Also, it can be illustrated that the ‘things’ made Japanese people grow their fondness for ambrotypes: an action of opening a wooden lid, which inspired a photo viewer with a feeling of closeness between the viewer and the ambrotype portrait; the permanence of glass, which might have affected eternity of the portrait that people wished; and the achromatic image which must have given people reality and entity of the portrait that had never faded.

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Gisèle Brelet (1915-1973) est connue par sa théorie du temps musical, dans son œuvre Le temps musical : essai d’une esthétique nouvelle de la musique (Paris, 1949). Dans cette œuvre, elle dit que le temps musical n’est pas qu’une durée pure, mais un temps ordonné de manière spécifiquement musicale. Ainsi, les recherches précédentes sur son esthétique se concentrent sur sa pensée du temps musical, et peu d’elles voient son contexte dans l’histoire de l’esthétique ; il n’y a pas d’explication qui connecte deux contextes essentiels pour Brelet : formalisme de Hanslick et durée bergsonienne. Ainsi, cet article recherche l’importance de l’esthétique hégélienne dans celle de Brelet. Pour cela, d’abord, par examen du Temps musical, cette étude met en lumière le fait que, dans l’Esthétique (Paris, 1944) de Hegel, Brelet voit le formalisme musical et le rôle du temps dans la musique. Ensuite, cet article revoit la relation entre le formalisme et la théorie du temps dans Le temps musical, et conclut que l’esthétique hégélienne met en lien le formalisme musical et la durée bergsonienne.

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This paper aims to develop a comprehensive theory of fidelity in recorded music. There are several studies about fidelity, but research about high-fidelity and low-fidelity has been done independently. This paper extends a theory of high-fidelity and discusses both high-fidelity and low-fidelity. Existing research defined fidelity as a relation between a recording and what it captures, and in most cases, live performance is regarded as what a recording capture. Due to the manipulability of recording, high-fidelity is criticized for the absence of the performance as original. However, since it is constructed, fidelity is variable and has three types depending on its original: (1) high-fidelity to performance, (2) high-fidelity to recording, and (3) high-fidelity to composition. Manipulability of musical works is a serious criticism of high-fidelity to performance, but not of high-fidelity to recording. Low-fidelity is considered undesirable when high-fidelity is valuable, but sometimes low-fidelity also has high value. For example, lo-fi music, a music genre derived from indie music, has various kinds of imperfect sounds. And these imperfections give high value through unmediated communication between artists and audience. So, high-fidelity and low-fidelity are common in that they both gain value through the unmediated experience for the audience.

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This paper examines the properties of the sense of smell, not only from a traditional aesthetic and philosophical perspective, but also from the more recent perspectives of physiology, neuroscience and cognitive psychology. It then describes what role the sense of smell could play in aesthetics as a ‘science of the senses’ in the future. The sense of smell has been condemned as barbaric, dull and subjective, and there have been very few works of art that engage with the sense of smell. However, since the beginning of the 2000s, there has been an increase in scientific research into olfaction and a corresponding increase in artists and artworks that use odour and scent as their primary medium. Unlike vision, which perceives objects in space, olfaction is a chemical sense caused by reactions in the body. Olfaction is a cross-modal perception that is susceptible to the influence of other senses and is a ‘odor–object’ perception influenced by experience and memory. In fact, this is probably the most important feature of the proximity between olfaction and art. We conclude by reconsidering the potential of olfaction and art in aesthetics as a science of sensibility.

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