Abstract
Ironies are implicit in the title of Zoltan Somhegyi’s book Reviewing the Past: The Presence of Ruins, and this is in keeping with ruins’ own paradoxical character as manifesting endurance and fragility, presence and absence, vivid physicality and an import that is almost entirely reflective. By inviting readers to take a desultory approach to the sequence of the book’s chapters, the author positions them to be active co-explorers of ruins who are reflective about their responses. Somhegyi analyzes various threats to the survival of ruins as structures and aesthetic objects but nevertheless finds bases for some optimism. He ends the book with a chapter on a topic that seems far afield from ruins: museums that make the process of remembering thematic. This somewhat abrupt conclusion forces the reader to draw connections between his remarks on such museums and the topic of ruins. This provocation of the reader’s own reflections encourages a stance akin to that involved in the aesthetic appreciation of ruins and draws attention to their open-endedness.
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Notes
Hegel’s notion of “romantic” art may characterize artworks of a much broader timespan than the Romantic period, but certainly Hegel included in this category the art of his own era.
References
Makarius, M. (2004). Ruins. Flammarion.
Somhegyi, Z. (2020). Reviewing the Past: The Presence of Ruins. Rowman & Littlefield.
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Higgins, K. Zoltan Somhegyi’s Reviewing the Past: The Aesthetics, Irony, and Authenticity of Ruins. Philosophia 50, 1529–1536 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00476-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00476-1