Foreword Martin Jay
Preface to the English Edition
1. Shared perspectives
2. Dangerous Media: Plato's discovery of perspectival images
3. Florence, 1425: the mirror stage of painting
4. Robert Smithson, at lost sight
5. Can perspective be a symbolic form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer
Conclusion: in praise of the plural: for a new perspectivism
Biography
Emmanuel Alloa is Professor of Philosophy and Chair for Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the University of Fribourg. His books in English include Resistance of the Sensible World: An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty (2017) and Looking Through Images: A Phenomenology of Visual Media (2021). He currently serves as President of the German Society of Aesthetics.
"No other book brings together so many disciplinary fields, object domains, and historical periods in a consistently reasoned analytical overview that convincingly demonstrates the impossibility of any absolutistic generalisation. Between universalism and relativism, both untenable and damaging, Alloa succeeds in synthesizing what cannot be isolated, without unduly lumping together so many different aspects of visual experience. “Perspective”, usually considered subjectivist, and “sharing” as an appeal to community, are patiently led into a lively conversation, with philosophers and visual analysts, artists and students bringing in their different views. History and contemporaneity, also, are shown to be compatible, even in need of each other, so that conceptions that kept transforming throughout the centuries retain, not in stability but in movement, their relevance for the turbulent world of today. The itinerary through this amazingly rich treasure of knowledge and insight constantly stays captivating, for us today, eager to understand what we see better."
Mieke Bal, co-founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA)
“Overcoming the alternative between universalism et relativism, Emmanuel Alloa makes a strong case for perspectivism and for singularity. Prepare for a philosophical, historical and artistical dive.”
Nicolas-Xavier Ferrand, La vie des idées, Collège de France
“This praise of perspective as a "sharing of the sensible" (Jacques Rancière), leads Alloa, equipped with the tools of phenomenology and social anthropology, to a long journey through the history of thought, architecture of thought, architecture, painting architecture, painting and the visual arts.”
Robert Maggiori, Libération
“A powerful plea why sharing viewpoints matters today.”
David Zerbib, Le Monde
“Alloa advances a ‘new perspectivism’ that demands and even celebrates plurality without abandoning the notions of truth and objectivity.”
Thibault de Meyer, Common Knowledge
“Alloa has succeeded in making a case […] that perspective implies sharing of a conflict”
Jakub Čapek, Estetika. The Journal of European Aethetics
“Considered through the lens of contemporary phenomenological research, the book presents a significant contribution to the growing literature focusing on sociality and shared intentionality”
Gabriel Barroso, Phenomenological Reviews
“Perceptive and judicious, the book offers a brilliant example of the difficulties and opportunities that confront traditional practices of meaning-making in the age of post-truth.”
Keith Moxey, Art History
