Mark Gilks’ latest article, ‘Aesthetic Experience and the Unfathomable: A Pragmatist Critique of Hermeneutic Aesthetics’, has been published by Oxford University Press’ British Journal of Aesthetics.
In this article, he critiques Gadamer’s hermeneutics from the perspective of William James’ Pragmatism, arguing that meaningful experience should not be decoupled from perception and existence.
This publication develops the philosophical foundations for Mark’s PhD research, which examines the aesthetic experiences of war and how war-experience becomes meaningful for the soldier. In this PhD thesis, Mark argues that the “soldier” is not simply a docile being which is “indoctrinated” by the military institution into becoming violent, but is rather an agent whose aesthetic participation in the military institution is significant in bringing forth society’s militarised structures. As is argued in this latest publication, the problem with “ontological” methodological approaches (such as Gadamer’s) is that they overlook the agency of social actors – a methodological outcome which is especially problematic in the context of war.