Aesthetics

The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature

Malcolm Budd

Consists of four self‐contained essays on the aesthetics of nature, which complement one another by exploring the subject from different points of view. The first is concerned with how ... More

Consists of four self‐contained essays on the aesthetics of nature, which complement one another by exploring the subject from different points of view. The first is concerned with how the idea of aesthetic appreciation of nature should be understood and proposes that it is best understood as aesthetic appreciation of nature as nature—as what nature actually is. This idea is elaborated by means of accounts of what is meant by nature, what is meant by a response to nature as nature, and what an aesthetic response consists in, and through an examination of the aesthetic relevance of knowledge of nature. The second essay, which is divided into three separate chapters, expounds and critically examines Immanuel Kant's theory of aesthetic judgements about nature. The first of these chapters deals with Kant's account of aesthetic judgements about natural beauty; the second with his claims about the connections between love of natural beauty and morality (which are contrasted with Schiller's claim about love of naive nature); and the third examines his theory of aesthetic judgements about the sublime in nature, rejecting much of Kant's view and proposing an alternative account of the emotion of the sublime. The third essay argues against the assimilation of the aesthetics of nature to that of art, explores the question of what determines the aesthetic properties of a natural item, and attempts to show that the doctrine of positive aesthetics with respect to nature, which maintains that nature unaffected by humanity is such as to make negative aesthetic judgements about the products of the natural world misplaced, is in certain versions false, in others inherently problematic. The fourth essay is a critical survey of much of the most significant recent literature on the aesthetics of nature. Various models of the aesthetic appreciation of nature have been advanced, but none of these is acceptable and, it is argued, no model is needed. Less

Aesthetic Creation

Nick Zangwill

The first chapter addresses the criteria of adequacy of a theory of art. Chapters 2-5 are constructive — they advance a positive view of the nature of art, explore its consequences, and ... More

The first chapter addresses the criteria of adequacy of a theory of art. Chapters 2-5 are constructive — they advance a positive view of the nature of art, explore its consequences, and defend it against objections. The last two chapters are destructive — they argue against other views of the nature of art, and they do so by contrast with the kind of view put forward earlier, and in the light of the groundrules laid down in the first chapter. Less

The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology

Elisabeth Schellekens, Peter Goldie (eds)

This collection of original essays from leading researchers across a wide range of disciplines engages with a number of issues concerning ‘the aesthetic mind’. It is the only collection ... More

This collection of original essays from leading researchers across a wide range of disciplines engages with a number of issues concerning ‘the aesthetic mind’. It is the only collection which specifically targets the extent to which the empirical sciences can contribute to our philosophical understanding of the notions of the aesthetic and the artistic. The questions addressed include the following: The collection is divided into seven parts: ‘The Aesthetic Mind’, ‘Emotion in Aesthetic Experience’, ‘Beauty and Universality’, Imagination and Make-Believe’, ‘Fiction and Empathy’, ‘Music, Dance and Expressivity’, and ‘Pictorial Representation’. Less

Antithetical Arts: On the Ancient Quarrel Between Literature and Music

Peter Kivy

This book constitutes a defence of musical formalism against those who would put literary interpretations on the absolute music canon. In Part I, the historical origins of both the ... More

This book constitutes a defence of musical formalism against those who would put literary interpretations on the absolute music canon. In Part I, the historical origins of both the literary interpretation of absolute music and musical formalism are laid out. In Part II, specific attempts to put literary interpretations on various works of the absolute music canon are examined and criticized. Finally, in Part III, the question is raised as to what the human significance of absolute music is, if it does not lie in its representational or narrative content. The answer is that, as yet, philosophy has no answer, and that the question should be considered an important one for philosophers of art to consider, and to try to answer without appeal to representational or narrative content. Less

Approach to Aesthetics: Collected Papers on Philosophical Aesthetics

Frank Sibley

John Benson, Betty Redfern, Jeremy Roxbee Cox (eds)

Includes some of the most significant of Sibley’s published papers as well as five new essays previously unpublished. The point of the book is not a systematic introduction to ... More

Includes some of the most significant of Sibley’s published papers as well as five new essays previously unpublished. The point of the book is not a systematic introduction to aesthetics, but rather a theoretical discussion of some core topics. The first three papers study the difference and the relation between aesthetic and non-aesthetic properties. Papers 4–6 show how aesthetic properties depend on non-aesthetic ones. In papers 7–9 is discussed the difficulty in finding criteria of aesthetic merit. The distinction between attributive and predicative use of adjectives and its application to the cases of beautiful and ugly is considered in Chs 12–14. The nature of aesthetic and the relation between concepts of the aesthetic of art are the arguments of papers 10 and 15. Finally, papers 11 and 16 investigate the impossibility of isolating and defining a ‘purely music’ experience and illustrate the ontological status of works of visual art respectively. Less

Art and Abstract Objects

Christy Mag Uidhir (ed.)

The standard way of thinking about non-repeatable (single-instance) artworks such as paintings, drawings, and non-cast sculpture is that they are concrete things (i.e. material, causally ... More

The standard way of thinking about non-repeatable (single-instance) artworks such as paintings, drawings, and non-cast sculpture is that they are concrete things (i.e. material, causally efficacious, located in space and time). For example, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is currently located in Paris, Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc weighs 73 tonnes, Vermeer’s The Concert was stolen in 1990, and Michaelangelo’s David was attacked with a hammer in 1991. By contrast, consider the current location of Melville’s Moby Dick or the weight of Yeats’s ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ or how one might go about stealing Puccini’s La Bohemme. The standard view of repeatable (multiple-instance) artworks such as novels, poems, plays, operas, films, and symphonies is that they must be abstract things (i.e. immaterial, casually inert, outside space-time). Although novels, poems, and symphonies may not appear to be stock abstract objects, most philosophers of art claim that for the basic intuitions, practices, and conventions surrounding such works to be preserved, repeatable artworks must be abstracta. The purpose of this volume is to examine how philosophical enquiry into the nature of art might productively inform or be productively informed by enquiry into the nature of abstracta taking place within other areas of philosophy such as metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind and language. The aim is to provide a general methodological blueprint from which those within philosophy of art and those without can begin building responsible, and therefore mutually informative and productive, relationships between their respective fields. Less

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to Self-Consciousness

Paul Crowther

Critical Aesthetics and Postmodernism (Clarendon Press, 1993) argued that art and aesthetic experiences have the capacity to humanize. In this book, the author develops ... More

Critical Aesthetics and Postmodernism (Clarendon Press, 1993) argued that art and aesthetic experiences have the capacity to humanize. In this book, the author develops this theme in much greater depth, arguing that art can bridge the gap between philosophy's traditional striving for generality and completeness, and the concreteness and contingency of humanity's basic relation to the world. As the key element in his theory, he proposes an ecological definition of art. His strategy involves first mapping out and analysing the logical boundaries and ontological structures of the aesthetic domain. He then considers key concepts from this analysis in the light of a tradition in Continental philosophy (notably the work of Kant, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Hegel) which — by virtue of the philosophical significance that it assigns to art — significantly anticipates the ecological conception. On this basis the author is able to give a full formulation of his ecological definition. Art, in making sensible or imaginative material into symbolic form, harmonizes and conserves what is unique and what is general in human experience. The aesthetic domain answers basic needs intrinsic to self-consciousness itself, and art is the highest realization of such needs. In the creation and reception of art the embodied subject is fully at home with his or her environment. Less

Art and Emotion

Derek Matravers

This book examines how emotions form a bridge between our experience of art and of life. We often find that a particular poem, painting, or piece of music carries an emotional charge; we ... More

This book examines how emotions form a bridge between our experience of art and of life. We often find that a particular poem, painting, or piece of music carries an emotional charge; we may also experience emotions towards, or on behalf of, a particular fictional character. These experiences are philosophically puzzling, for their causes seem quite different from the causes of emotion in the rest of our lives. Using many literary, visual and musical examples, this book shows that what these experiences have in common, and what links them to the expression of emotion in non-artistic cases, is the role played by feeling. It surveys various accounts of the nature of fiction, attacks contemporary cognitivist accounts of expression, and offers an uncompromising defence of a controversial view about musical expression: that music expresses the emotions it causes its listeners to feel. Whilst this book engages with the work of contemporary theorists, it remains accessible to readers without philosophical training. Less

Art and Intention: A Philosophical Study

Paisley Livingston

In aesthetics, the topic of intentions comes up most often in the perennial debate between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists over standards of interpretation. The underlying ... More

In aesthetics, the topic of intentions comes up most often in the perennial debate between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists over standards of interpretation. The underlying assumptions about the nature and functions of intentions are, however, rarely explicitly developed, even though divergent and at times tendentious premises are often relied upon in this controversy. Livingston provides a survey of contentions about the nature and status of intentions and intentionalist psychology more generally, arguing for an account that recognizes the multiple functions fulfilled by intentions in the lives of temporally situated agents who deliberate over what to do, settle on ends and means, and try to realize some of their plans. Artists’ intentions are the same sorts of attitudes that we attribute to ourselves and to others as we attempt to describe, explain, and predict our actions. As such, intentions are relevant not only to debates over the interpretation of works of art but also to a range of other basic topics in the philosophy of art, including artistic creation and authorship, the ontology of art, the nature of texts, works, versions, and life-works, and the status and nature of fiction and fictional truth. With regard to the controversy over the interpretation of art, Livingston advocates a ‘partial’ intentionalism. Intentions are never infallible, so there is a conceptual gap between the completed work and the intentions that initiated and guided its making. Yet in spite of the fallibility of intentions and of our beliefs and claims about them, intentions regularly contribute to the determination of a work’s features, including implicit meanings, the recognition of which requires the uptake of the artist’s intentional design. Partial intentionalism also finds support in the idea that at least one sort of artistic value depends on the artist’s skilful accomplishment of intentions. Less