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Series: Value Inquiry Book Series 159

�The Aesthetics of Ruins is both a simulation and rewarding experience in which we learn to reconsider our perspective on ruins and aesthetics simultaneously. With good humor and clarity, Ginsberg reclaims the study of ruins from the margins� A broad work, both in its size and scope�[the] extensive and definitive bibliography � provides an excellent source for further research on ruins.�
Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 40, No 4, Winter 2006

�it has real intellectual thought and quirky insights at every turn � a cheerful discussion with the reader in a very conversational style, a mine of detailed and encyclopaedic information �. As academically and intellectually precise in its detail as it is complex in its thought.�
The Art Book, Vol. 13, May 2006

"Bibliographically, this book is outstanding. Ginsberg knows much and tells it all. The generous last chapter (pp. 449-538) contains solid commentaries on books, besides ample indexes of names, titles, and other clues. The illustrations are numerous, diverse in their cultural and geographic choice, and capably selected for their suggestiveness. More generally, the book is encyclopedically conceived: I can hardly remember a work in which sections on "cinema and television as ruin," on music, literature, even nature as ruin coexist side-by-side with philosophical and aesthetic chapters, as well as with more predictable considerations on ruins in the narrower traditional sense: buildings, architecture, and the like."
The Review of Metaphysics, March 1, 2006

�insightful fragments, revealing photographs, and witty poems � [a] courageous book on life and death�
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism - Volume 64, Number 2, Summer 2006

This book constructs a theory of ruins that celebrates their vitality and unity in aesthetic experience. Its argument draws upon over 100 illustrations prepared in 40 countries. Ruins flourish as matter, form, function, incongruity, site, and symbol. Ruin underlies cultural values in cinema, literature and philosophy. Finally, ruin guides meditations upon our mortality and endangered world.

Contents:
List of Illustrations
Foreword by Claire Richter Sherman
Preface
Acknowledgments
ONE The Ruin as Matter
TWO The Ruin as Form
THREE The Ruin as Function
FOUR The Ruin as Incongruity
FIVE The Ruin as Site
SIX The Ruin as Symbol
SEVEN The Ruin as Aesthetic Experience
EIGHT Visit to a Ruin: St. Andrews
NINE Building with Ruin
TEN Nature as Ruin
ELEVEN Sculpture and Other Visual Arts as Ruin
TWELVE Cinema and Television as Ruin
THIRTEEN Literature as Ruin
FOURTEEN Philosophy as Ruin
FIFTEEN The Terminology of Ruin
SIXTEEN Theories of Ruin
SEVENTEEN The Ruining Eye � and Other Senses
EIGHTEEN Fragments of a Chapter on Ruin
NINETEEN Meditations on Humanity, Self, and the World as Ruins
Works Cited
Chronology of Ruin
Appendix Bibliographical Essay on the Literature and Imagery of Ruin
About the Author
Index

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

He carries ruins to ruins.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," The Essays, ed. Alfred R. Ferguson and Jean Ferguson Carr
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987 [orig. pub. 1841]), First Series, p. 46.

Robert Ginsberg was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1937.
From 1952 to 1960, he studied at the University of Chicago, chiefly in aesthetics (B.A., M.A.). Assisted by Fulbright grants, he lived in Paris from 1960 to 1963, continuing his explorations in aesthetics at the Sorbonne. He did additional studies in Sweden, the Netherlands Institute for Art History in The Hague, and the University of Vienna. He returned to America to complete a Ph.D. in philosophy in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania (1966).
Ginsberg has engaged in study missions to Italy (classics), Israel (peace studies), and China (Confucianism). In the United States, he pursued post-doctoral studies at The Johns Hopkins University (film), University of California at Irvine (political philosophy), Brandeis University (classics), the Folger Institute in Washington (history of philosophy), and Georgetown University (classics). Research grants have taken him to Norway, the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Hungary, and Germany.
Ginsberg taught in France and Turkey in the 1960s. In the United States, he served as adjunct professor at Drexel University, Philadelphia, and Temple University, Harrisburg. Appointed as the first faculty member at The Pennsylvania State University's Delaware County Campus in 1967, when it opened its doors in the Philadelphia suburbs, he taught for Penn State for thirty-five years. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Comparative Literature.
During a motor tour of Scotland in 1967, Ginsberg first discovered the beauties of ruins. Subsequently, he has traveled extensively to study and photograph ruins and lecture on them (Pl. 94). To gain experience in the field, he participated in archaeological study tours in Egypt, Tunisia, Italy, Yugoslavia, Mexico, and Guatemala. In developing a career as photographer-philosopher, he has exhibited his visual works in Paris, Hong Kong, Montr�al, Philadelphia, and Washington.
Among Ginsberg's publications are a handbook for students, Welcome to Philosophy! (1977), and a monograph on sculpture, Gustav Vigeland: A Case Study in Art and Culture (1984). He edited Criticism and Theory in the Arts (1963), A Casebook on the Declaration of Independence (1967), The Critique of War: Contemporary Philosophical Explorations (1969), and The Philosopher as Writer: The Eighteenth Century (1987).
Ginsberg edits the book series, New Studies in Aesthetics. Previously, he served as editor of the Social Philosophy Research Institute Book Series (SPRIBS), the Jones and Bartlett Philosophy Series, The Journal of Value Inquiry, and the Value Inquiry Book Series (VIBS). As an editor, he has supervised the publication of two hundred volumes.
In 1962, Robert Ginsberg and Ellen Sutor wed in Paris. Since 1972, the Ginsbergs have made their home in Takoma Park, Maryland, an historic suburb of Washington, where they direct the International Center for the Arts, Humanities, and Value Inquiry.

FOREWORD

Oh the beautiful, the sublime ruins!
From French: Denis Diderot, "Salon de 1761," Oeuvres esth�tiques, ed. Paul Verni�re (Paris: �ditions Garnier Fr�res, "Classiques Garnier," 1959), p. 642.

Robert Ginsberg, in The Aesthetics of Ruins, provides entirely fresh perspectives on this vast subject. His direct and provocative style immediately persuades the reader to lay aside any existing preconceptions based on travel or past writings. The intriguing table of contents frames the exploration of ruins in much wider contexts, including the literary and philosophical traditions. Ginsberg goes beyond the verbal representations of his subject to embrace the visual implications of ruins in the traditional genres of architecture and sculpture and in contemporary media such as video and cinema. From yet another novel vantage point, he considers ruins as more than passive and static forms: as creations of active historical forces, human design, or natural processes. Building on these varied perspectives, in a moving climactic section, Ginsberg meditates on ruins as metaphors of individual and universal human experience.
Ginsberg's analyses of the visual aspects of ruins leads to a new appreciation of their formal unity and structures. He cogently examines the new roles of individual elements of buildings and places in forging renewed aesthetic identities. His sensitivity, based on many years of travel and reflection, brings to his discussions of varied groups of ruins an immediacy and richness of perception. Ranging from a wide array of monuments of ancient Greece and Rome to Medieval ruins of northern Europe and contemporary sites in the Middle East and the United States, a consistent vision ties together the abundant illustrations. Ginsberg transcends methods identified with one or another humanistic discipline to illuminate in a cogent and forceful manner essential aspects of human experience embodied in The Aesthetics of Ruins.
Claire Richter Sherman

SAMPLE PAGE

from Chapter Eight, "Visit to a Ruin: St. Andrews"

Less is more in the ruin. Well, more or less. The open spaces are marvels in their own right and serve as borders to the stones whose total mass we see to be tiny. The shift is between stones delimiting spaces, and spaces delimiting stones. From above, we are outside it all. We look down on the top of stones and on the top of heads. Yet we are in the middle of it. The wind reminds us of our physical vulnerability, the gravity pulls upon us as we lean over the edge. We hold on to the ruin for dear life.
At an angle, from our perch, we admire the Twin Towers for their free-standing height. Their loveliness of form is enhanced by the foreshortening from above, whereas from below they had too great a top-heaviness. Lighter and gayer, the towers screen the Castle ruin, each penetrating the other.
The people below are welcome contributors of motion and color. Ambulatory centers of sensibility, they entertain the eye with their passage between the rows of tombs. The spacing of the visitors tells us of their solitary engagement with the ruin. We can tell apart the passersby from the serious experiencers. We gaze with them upon the towers, rest with them upon the benches, muse with them among the tombstones. Once, I thought I saw myself down below.
Our sharing with our fellows is a human insight into the ruin and the ruin's insight into humanity, for we are still looking at things from the ruin's point of view. The ruin examines its visitors and puts them to the test by diverse exercises. We see them doing what the ruin has set forth for them to do. They crane their necks and look up at us. We are a tower.
The tombstones are neatly tended and are attended by their afternoon shadows. People walk through the ruins and the cemetery, going about their business or play. The floor of the ruin is a gameboard. Benches are pieces installed on the left for relaxation. The sun burns their seats. A line of wall separates them from the space of the dark tombs. The arches throw their sunlight onto the board, doubling their enlightening value.
Strange forms serve as counters or passages between the areas marked out by stone lines. Shadow, sunlight, strollers keep the game going. What a lively world below! We participate in that world as live players by hanging over the edge of the windswept top of St. Regulus. A mismovement and we would make a strong impression on the cemetery.
From our height, we see past the people into the open tombs and their empty stone coffins. We get to the bottom of things. The ruin has the power of going beyond the grave. It goes deeper than death to find life. The formal pattern of the set of four graves is warm and humane, with just the right proportion of variation, as one sarcophagus retains its lid. A handsome set, cushioned nicely by the green sod, and fit for bishops. The dark shadows and the bright sun give happy contrasts and accentuate the depth. The living, moving, human form comes to stop and gaze into the empty containers, the human heart facing the heart of things. Gentle peace, not terror, informs the scene. A new unity comes with this aesthetic reconciliation of being human.