Abstract
Late Antiquity and Early Christianity, Second–Eighth Centuries CE.
Out of early theological debates about how and whether to represent God comes a peculiarly western way of experiencing images—skeptical, detached, aesthetic. This attitude walks away from the emotional mysticism that typifies Platonic-Byzantine iconoclasm and eastern icon-worshipping. Harking back to Aristotle, Christian theology fosters a mental attitude that sees images as not ‘presences’ but fictional artifacts. To see a picture is to disbelieve it and thereby to become a spectator—someone who watches himself seeing. Couched in theology, this skeptical attitude prepares the rise of demystifying bourgeois homo aestheticus.
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Notes
- 1.
Freeman (2002) argues that Christianity was essentially obscurantist; Hannan (2010) and Fried (2015) just the contrary.
- 2.
Corby Finney (1994).
- 3.
See Besançon (2000), p. 110ff. Also, Gruchy (2001), p. 27ff.
- 4.
Holland (2012), p. 166.
- 5.
Belting (1994), p. 220ff.
- 6.
See Chadwick (1967), pp. 258–285.
- 7.
Athanasius, Chap. 6.
- 8.
Plotinus, II, 9, 8.
- 9.
Ibid., V, 8, 1.
- 10.
Ibid., V, 8, 1.
- 11.
Ibid., II, 9, 16.
- 12.
Ibid., IV, 3, 11.
- 13.
Athanasius, Chap. 5.
- 14.
In Tatarkiewicz (1996), vol. 2, p. 46.
- 15.
Belting, pp. 7–12; Runciman (1977), pp. 51–76.
- 16.
Setton (1941).
- 17.
In Davis (1983), p. 302.
- 18.
Chadwick (2005).
- 19.
Seneca (2005), p. 21.
- 20.
In van Os (2000), p. 119.
- 21.
Davis, p. 310.
- 22.
Cassiodorus [c.555].
- 23.
Augustine [389], XXXII, 59.
- 24.
John Scotus Eriugena [867], IV, 17.
- 25.
Ibid., V, 18.
- 26.
Geertz (1973), p. 118.
- 27.
Marett (1914).
- 28.
Subbotsky (2010).
- 29.
Harris (2000), esp. pp. 8–57, 65.
- 30.
See Gopnik (2009), pp. 29–31.
- 31.
Piaget (1969), p. 57.
- 32.
Harris, p. 81.
- 33.
Christian (2004), p. 181.
- 34.
See Stock (1983) and (2001).
- 35.
Wittgenstein (1980), I, §366.
- 36.
In Huizinga (1950), p. 140.
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Maleuvre, D. (2016). The Time of Images. In: The Art of Civilization. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94869-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94869-7_3
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