Yonatan Harel

Yonatan Harel
Yonatan
Harel
Doctoral Fellow 2022-2023

I am a graduate of the PPE program (Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where I also completed my M.A in Philosophy, Magna Cum Laude, and where I am a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Art-History as of now. My main interest is Aesthetics, a topic which I began pursuing whilst studying Architecture, for a year, at 'Bezalel – High Academy for Arts & Design, Jerusalem', prior to my B.A studies. I handled this topic in a wide and diverse spectrum of references, from philosophical and political theories to Plastic Arts, Russian Literature, computer vision, and AI-based arts algorithms.

My M.A thesis analyzed Kant's 'Critique of Judgment', under the supervision of Dr. Tatiana Karachentseva, where I claimed that Kant’s term of Sensus Communis may explain social communication as a symbol-based language that is immersed in the visual sphere.

 

Ph.D. dissertation: ‘Painted Communities Comparative Consideration of Erwin Panofsky's Iconology’

My Ph.D. research deals with Erwin Panofsky’s Iconology. I am trying to demonstrate that this methodology grounded a positivist approach to Aesthetics, thus secularizing its practice, which was, previously, bound almost completely to philosophy. While elaborating on the conceptual core of Iconology, I turn to Panofsky’s critique of Martin Heidegger and go on to demonstrate that this methodology may explain and enhance our knowledge of Benedict Anderson’s notion of Imagined Communities.