Immanuel Kant on thoughts, intuitions and concepts

Posted on 02/12/2011 by W&V

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant, researched, lectured and wrote on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment. At the time, there were major successes and advances in the sciences (for example: Isaac Newton, Carl Friedrich Gauss, and Robert Boyle) using reason and logic. But this stood in sharp contrast to the scepticism and lack of agreement or progress in empiricist philosophy.

Kant’s magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781), aimed to unite reason with experience to move beyond what he took to be failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He hoped to end an age of speculation where objects outside experience were used to support what he saw as futile theories, while opposing the scepticism of thinkers such as Descartes, Berkeley and Hume.

David Hume on Beauty

Posted on 14/10/2011 by W&V

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment.
Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic “science of man” that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In stark opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour, saying: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.”

Henri Bergson on sex appeal

Posted on 31/05/2011 by W&V

Henri Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality. He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature “in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented.

Fashion quote | Epictetus on identity, look and dressing up

Posted on 31/03/2011 by W&V

Epictetus was a Greek philosopher. The Philosophy, he taught, is a way of life and not just a theoretical discipline. To Epictetus, all external events are determined by fate, and are thus beyond our control, but we can accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. Individuals, however, are responsible for their own actions, which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline. Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power. As part of the universal city that is the universe, human beings have a duty to care for all fellow humans. The person who followed these precepts would achieve happiness and peace of mind according to Epictetus.

Book | Thoughts on dreams | analogic hyperlinks

Posted on 12/01/2011 by W&V

Maria Fisher is a German artist. For her final project at the University of Augsberg, she was tasked with designing and creating a book on the subject of dreams. She created the book “Traumgedanken” (“Thoughts on dreams”) with threaded, analogical hyperlinks woven into the pages of the book, connecting key words of the various philosophical, literary, psychological and scientific theories of dreams. The goal of the project was to create a book that not only informed, but also captured the same elusive and temporal quality of the dream state.

This is why it is designed as a model of a dream about dreaming. Analogue to a dream, where pieces of reality are assembled to build a story, it brings different text excerpts together. On five pages there are illustrations made out of thread. Their shape and colour relies on the key words on the opposite page. This way an abstract image of the dream about dreaming is generated.

Traumgedanken is a fascinating piece of conceptual design and writing.