Social Appearances A Philosophy of Display and Prestige (Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts)
epub | 12.55 MB | English | Author :Barbara Carnevali | 0231187076 | 2020 | Columbia University Press

Book Description :

Philosophers have long distinguished between appearance and reality, and the opposition between a supposedly deceptive surface and a more profound truth is deeply rooted in Western culture. At a time of obsession with self-representation, when politics is enmeshed with spectacle and social and economic forces are intensely aestheticized, philosophy remains moored in traditional dichotomies: being versus appearing, interiority versus exteriority, authenticity versus alienation. Might there be more to appearance than meets the eye?
In this strikingly original book, Barbara Carnevali offers a philosophical examination of the roles that appearances play in social life. While Western metaphysics and morals have predominantly disdained appearances and expelled them from their domain, Carnevali invites us to look at society, ancient to contemporary, as an aesthetic phenomenon. The ways in which we appear in public and the impressions we make in terms of images, sounds, smells,...

Category : | Aesthetics, Semiotics & Theory Literary Criticism, Philosophy Criticism