CFP: Forms of Aesthetics Tomas Kulka’s Philosophy of Art

Editors: Lisa Giombini (Università degli studi Roma Tre, Italy), Ondřej Dadejík (Charles University, Czech Republic), Adrián Kvokačka (University of Prešov, Slovakia)

The editorial board of the ESPES journal continues its commitment to focus on thematic issues dedicated to scholars who have contributed to shape contemporary aesthetic thinking. After the positively received ‘Berleantian’ issue (2/2017) we now aim to concentrate on the philosophy of Tomáš Kulka (1948), which has gained major attention not only within Slovak and Czech aesthetics but also in the wider European and world context.

A graduate in philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics as a student of Karl R. Popper, and a PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Kulka taught for some years at the University of Jerusalem. After founding the Philosophy of Arts Department at the University of Tel Aviv, since 1992 he has been a guest lecturer at the Central European University and since 1996 a Professor at the Department of Aesthetics of the Charles University in Prague. His scholar profile is complemented by his engagement in many international journals like the British Journal for Philosophy of Science, Philosophy and Social Sciences, Poetics Today, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Organon F, Filosofický časopis and Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics.

Kulka’s seminal book, Art and Kitsch, translated in Czech, Hebrew, Finnish and Spanish, probably represents the author’s most famous work, but many of his publications resonate as well in the Slovak aesthetic discourse: he is well known as an author (Umění a falzum / Art and falsum), as a co-editor (Co je umění? Texty angloamerické estetiky 20. století / What is Art? Texts of Anglo-American Aesthetics of the 20th  Century), and as a translator or editor of translations (Umění, krása, šeredno / Art, Beauty, Ugliness; Jazyky umění / Languages of art). Working within the frame of the analytic philosophy of art, Kulka’s philosophy elaborates the foundations of Popper’s thinking by importing his falsifiability theory within the field of aesthetics; it pursues the problem of aesthetic and artistic values in the context of the forgery-original relation and shows a long-term interest in value theory (his new book Art and its Values is announced for 2019 by the ARGO publishing house).

Given Kulka’s contribution to Slovak and Czech aesthetics, the editorial board of ESPES is pleased to launch a thematic call aimed to provide a retrospective on some central thematic areas of his work in the field of aesthetics and the philosophy of art. We welcome contributions that re-evaluate and reflect on Kulka’s relevance to current aesthetic discourse. Submission may focus on all aspects of his reflections in aesthetics and the arts, including, but not limited to the following areas:
● Art and kitsch: a mandatory starting point for future studies of kitsch (Dutton, 1997)
● Forgeries: the relevance of Kulka’s dualistic model of appraisal of a work of art as a response to the problem of (artistic) forgeries
● Problems of value. Aesthetic and artistic values in the world of art.
● 30 years after Art and science: an outline of Popperian aesthetics
● Kulka and Goodman on metaphor

Online submission deadline using espes.ff.unipo.sk: September 15, 2019
Decision and comments sent out: October 30, 2019
Final drafts due on: December 1, 2019
Publication date: end of December 2019
If you have any questions, please contact the editors at: espes@ff.unipo.sk