Richard Wollheim

Richard Wollheim (1923-2003) is known primarily for his writings on aesthetics, and on philosophy of mind and psychoanalysis, being a towering figure in these fields. Yet his work had a very wide scope, and a discernible further major strand in his academic output is political philosophy, on which this volume of previously uncollected papers concentrates. The papers range over a number of topics, but several themes recur: a concern for the workings of democracy; a robust defence of individual liberty; great respect for individuality and individual differences and the vital roles of education and culture. There are also studies of the thought of John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, and Isaiah Berlin. Wollheim's distinctive voice is a constant: wit, verve, sophistication, erudition, and subtlety. The originality and penetration of his thinking is apparent throughout. He is always to be seen thinking things through for himself; often in reaction to the great philosophers, sometimes (though relatively rarely) with the assistance of contemporaries, but always with the determination of getting to the bottom of things, with a distinctive approach that remains full of fresh insights. This is one of three planned volumes of Wollheim's previously uncollected work for Oxford University Press. The others are Writing on Art, edited by Gary Kemp and Elisabetta Toreno; and Writing on Philosophy and the Mind, edited by Garry Hagberg.

Richard Wollheim's (1923-2003) was the leading voice in the philosophy of art in the Anglo-American tradition during the second half of the twentieth century. This volume serves two purposes. First, at the time of his death, Wollheim was composing a short book, comprising two lectures first delivered, respectively, at Barcelona and at Lawrence, Kansas--versions of which appeared in 1994 ('On Formalism and Its Kinds') and 2001 ('On Formalism and Pictorial Organisation')--plus substantial new material. The whole text is reproduced here for the first time. The material offers new considerations in favour of his psychological conception of pictorial art as against the semiotic conception, arguments for the inadequacy of formalism, and close and compelling analyses of pictures by Ruisdael, Monet, and others, using in novel ways his well-known ideas in pictorial aesthetics to arrive at a theory of pictorial organisation. Second, although Wollheim was well-served by various collections of his work to 1994, at that point some important articles and reviews had yet to be selected for republication--in some cases available only in locations difficult to access--as well as his having published further work after 1994. The present volume fills both gaps: it thus provides the final pieces for a complete collection of Wollheim's works in the philosophy of art. This is one of three planned volumes of Wollheim's previously uncollected work for Oxford University Press. The others are Writing on Political Philosophy, edited by Jonathan Wolff; and Writing on Philosophy and the Mind, edited by Garry Hagberg.

One of the twentieth century’s most influential texts on philosophical aestheticsPainting as an Art is acclaimed philosopher Richard Wollheim’s encompassing vision of how to view art. Transcending the traditional boundaries of art history, Wollheim draws on his three great passions—philosophy, psychology, and art—to present an illuminating theory of the very experience of art. He shows how to unlock the meaning of a painting by retrieving—almost reenacting—the creative activity that produced it. In order to fully appreciate a work of art, Wollheim argues, critics must bring a much richer conception of human psychology than they have in the past. This classic book points the way to discovering what is most profound and subtle about paintings by major artists such as Titian, Bellini, and de Kooning.

A brilliant, meandering exploration of family and childhood memory by one of the most original British philosophers of the twentieth century. Germs is about first things, the seeds from which a life grows, as well as about the illnesses it incurs, the damage it sustains. Written at the end of the life of Richard Wollheim, a major British philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century, this memoir is not the usual story of growing up, but very much about childhood, that early world we all share in which we do not not know either the world or ourselves for sure, and in which things--houses, clothes, meals, parents, the past--loom large around us, seeming both inevitable and uncontrollable. Richard Wollheim's remarkable, moving, and entirely original book recovers this formative moment that makes us who we are before we really are who we are and that haunts us all our lives in lucid and lyrical prose.

The son of affluent parents - a distant, dandified impresario father he revered; a beautiful, mindless 'Gaiety Girl' mother he came to regret loathing - Richard Wollheim grew up in the English suburbia of the 1920s and 1930s. Germs is his account of those years. It is a book like no other; a remarkable exploration of childhood by one of the English-speaking world's most distinguished postwar thinkers.

'A lucid well-organized expose of the theory and the manner of its development.'Times Literary Supplement

Konsten och dess föremål är en av den moderna estetikens klassiker, och en text för var och en som reflekterar över konstens uttryck och möjliga innebörder. Hur hänger allt det som konstverk representerar och uttrycker för oss ihop med själva målningen, lite färgfläckar på en duk? Berömd är särskilt analysen av "representerande seende". Richard Wollheim menar att samma förmåga som låter oss se ett landskap i en molnformation eller en människa i en bläckplump är grunden till att vi kan se vad bilder föreställer, och att denna förmåga är mer fundamental än varje "likhet" mellan bilden och de avbildade. Wollheim vävde som filosof konsekvent in konst och psykoanalys i sin allmänna filosofi, inspirerad av sin mentor konstnären och esteten Adrian Stokes. Wollheim dog 2003, och hans naket utlämnande barndomsskildring "Germs" utgavs postumt 2004.

Leading philosopher Richard Wollheim recruits into service the insights of literature and of psychoanalysis, as well as of philosophy, in this rich and thought-provoking account of the emotions. Starting from the premise that emotions form a distinct psychological category, Wollheim argues that they are—like beliefs and desires—dispositions or underlying forces in the mind that erupt from time to time into the stream of consciousness. However, to assimilate emotions to beliefs or to desires or to some combination of the two is quite wrong. Emotions are attitudes or orientations to the world, says the author, and in this regard they are naturally associated with the imagination.The book considers what emotions are, how they arise in our lives, and how standard and "moral" emotions differ. Wollheim writes within the analytic tradition, yet decisively abandons a number of assumptions associated with that tradition and instead develops what he calls the psychologization, or repsychologization, of the emotions. Addressing repsychologization of the mind and its contents as a major theme, the author offers sustained discussion of the opinions of Sartre, William James, Freud, Melanie Klein, Stendhal, Montaigne, and Bertrand Russell.

In this distinguished book, first published in 1984, Richard Wollheim offers an original approach to the philosophical understanding of a person. Countering prevailing theories on the nature of persons, Wollheim submits an account of the mind dynamically conceived and proposes that we take as fundamental the process of living as a person. To illuminate this process, the author draws on psychoanalysis and literature, in particular the case studies of Freud and the writings of Proust.“Wollheim’s is a very original and extremely interesting approach to the philosophy of the mind, bringing together three areas of reflection not often combined: the philosophy of mind, psychoanalysis, and ethics.”—Bernard Williams, University of California, Berkeley“There are only a few people who can write intelligently and insightfully about psychoanalysis and philosophy. Richard Wollheim is pre-eminent.”—Jonathan Lear, University of Chicago

The mind as it is manifested in philosophy and art, in the moral life and psychoanalysis, has always been at the core of Richard Wollheim’s celebrated work. This book brings together Wollheim’s broad and abiding concerns to illuminate human thought at its furthest reaches of introspection and expression. Interweaving philosophy, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics, these essays reveal the critical connections between ideas and disciplines too often regarded as separate and distinct.