Although popular music is increasingly recognized as an important area of inquiry in philosophy of art, many organizing principles have been taken over from other fields without scrutiny. This article selects heavy metal as an example of the value of applying philosophy of criticism to discourse about popular music. Metal is now in its fifth decade, and its combination of longevity and diversity have made it an attractive topic in popular music studies. In accounts of metal by musicologists and social (...) science researches, metal is almost always referred to as a genre of music, and the genre is said to unify diverse metal subcultures, which are associated with diverse styles of metal. An examination of the concepts of genre and subculture as they are typically understood in popular music studies generally, and in metal studies in particular, suggests that they do not function to delineate metal as a unitary category. However, contemporary philosophy of art provides several theoretical principles that provide criteria for identifying a unified genre. The relevant theories are historical definitions of art and Kendall Walton's account of style. Viewed in terms of these philosophical developments, metal should be seen as an evolving assemblage of related styles, only some of which are associated with fans who constitute a subculture. However, it is not a "category" in Walton's sense of that term. Video abstract. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 173-187 [Access article in PDF] Symposium: On Ken Burns's "Jazz" Jazz After Jazz: Ken Burns and the Construction of Jazz History Theodore Gracyk As all action is by its nature to be figured as extended in breadth and in depth, as well as in length; and so spreads abroad on all hands... so all narrative is, by its nature, of only one dimension; (...) only travels forward towards one, or towards successive points; narrative is linear, action is solid. Alas for our "chains" or chainlets, of "causes and effects." —Thomas Carlyle, "On History," 1830 Jazz and freedom are synonyms. —Mezz Mezzrow I JAZZ, A FILM BY KEN BURNS is a fascinating and monumental achievement. In this essay, I identify and critique some of the project's core assumptions. My principal target is the assumption that a specific essence of jazz underlies most (but not all) of the music that is regularly identified as jazz and that the historical unfolding of this essence is the true subject of a historical investigation of jazz. This assumption accounts for the project's otherwise puzzling suggestion that jazz history ended approximately thirty-five years ago.The most visible element of the historical project is the ten-part, nineteen-hour documentary, Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns. However, the historical project has three other public elements. The first is a book, Jazz: A History of America's Music. 1 Credited to both Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, the bulk of the book is the film's spoken text, which includes both a unifying narrative and numerous quotations. The book makes it clear that this text is primarily Ward's work. Second, there is a website that makes available extensive transcripts of many of the [End Page 173] seventy-five interviews conducted for use in the film. Third, there is a set of twenty-two compact discs, each giving an overview of an important jazz musician (e.g., one devoted to Count Basie, one devoted to Dizzy Gillespie). Highlights of these discs have, in turn, been assembled into a five-disc box set called Ken Burns Jazz. My aim is to reveal and examine the conceptual scaffolding that supports and organizes this vast, multifaceted project.What is the principal assumption of this historical project? The project consistently emphasizes the music's capacity to give audible embodiment to the idea of American democracy. At the same time, the project is less than forthcoming about the aesthetic assumptions embraced by Ward and Burns. Familiar and predictable arguments are introduced to justify the appellation of "art" and to address the issue of the purported death of jazz in the 1970s. However, these two strands of the larger argument may be at cross-purposes with the principal assumption and the ideology that jointly justify the project's status as jazz history.Let me begin by describing the principal assumption in some detail. While there is no reason to suppose that its source is Ken Burns or his chief collaborator, historian Geoffrey Ward, the following blurb was used to advertise the project: Jazz has been called the purest expression of American democracy; a music built on individualism and compromise, independence and cooperation. Join us for an exploration of jazz, America's greatest cultural achievement. In keeping with this theme, the narration and principal interviewees of the film are positioned to emphasize that jazz is an audible embodiment of the idea of American democracy. Let us call this idea the democracy thesis. It is placed as a frame around the whole film: Wynton Marsalis announces it in the opening minutes of the first episode, and then he reiterates it in fresh words at the end of the last episode. Although it is repeated with numerous variations, the democracy thesis proposes that jazz involves an ideal of democratic America, not the fact of life in America: jazz, Wynton Marsalis assures us, is "a glimpse of what America is going to be when it becomes itself. And this music tells you that it will become itself." 2 Jazz... (shrink)

What the Body Told is the second book of poetry from Rafael Campo, a practicing physician, a gay Cuban American, and winner of the National Poetry Series 1993 Open Competition. Exploring the themes began in his first book, The Other Man Was Me, Campo extends the search for identity into new realms of fantasy and physicality. He travels inwardly to the most intimate spaces of the imagination where sexuality and gender collide and where life crosses into death. Whether facing a (...) frenetic hospital emergency room to assess a patient critically ill with AIDS or breathing in the quiet of his mother's closet, Campo proposes with these poems an alternative means of healing and exposes the extent to which words themselves may be the most vital working parts of our bodies. The secret truths in What the Body Told, as the title implies, are already within each of us. In these vivid and provocative poems, Rafael Campo gives them a voice. (shrink)

David Hume's celebrated essay ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ is the central text for understanding Hume's aesthetic theory, yet an important claim in that essay has received inadequate attention in the literature. Although it is understood that Hume stresses the importance of delicacy of taste, it is less well understood that this delicacy is a delicacy of imagination, which is distinct from a delicacy of perception. Using both the essay and other texts to elucidate this thesis, it appears that Hume's (...) account of taste faces unresolved difficulties in defending a standard of taste. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Art Subjects: Making Artists in the American UniversityTheodore GracykArt Subjects: Making Artists in the American University, by Howard Singerman. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1999, 296 pp., $19.95 paper.Howard Singerman's Art Subjects is a study of the training of visual artists in American universities from 1912 to the present. More precisely, the book is an account of how two philosophies ofeducation have competed to inform (...) that training. At the outset, Singerman announces that the book explores a long-standing "struggle between vision and language" (p. 10) that culminates with a decisive privileging of language. The book mimics its putative subject in at least one interesting way. As it was for art and the training of American artists in the twentieth century (at least on Singerman's account of them), so it is with the book. Each moves from a practice grounded in objective reality to a jargon-ridden discourse that limits entry to anyone outside of its acutely self-regarding disciplinary field. Although the book's acknowledgments segment thanks one individual for demanding thatSingerman "come to a real conclusion" for the book, readers should note Singerman's subsequent admission that it may not have one. At times it even appears that Singerman goes out of his way to avoid drawing one.Art Subjects appears to have started life as Singerman's doctoral dissertation, but it only occasionally displays the dull by-the-numbers writing of such documents. The book has a clear organization and its numerous quotations are carefully documented. The overall argument is framed, beginning and end, with Singerman's autobiography of his own time as a university art student. It provides him with his framing question: if he has a M.F.A. in sculpture but never learned to sculpt, what does his professional degree signify? The answer is that it indicates that his work is no longer facile. He has progressed from the realm of the artist whose work is professional, displaying facility, to the stage where he is professional. He has progressed to the point where being an artist is theartist's true subject: "Artists are the subject of graduate school; they are both who and what is taught" (p. 3). If this progression is best indicated by an artist's lack of facility in producing works of art, that is the price of professionalism. In the post-World War II university, art training is "founded on the primacy of theory over practice" (p. 181). Yet the result is professionalism without a clear profession other than as an employee of the post-World War II university: the M.F.A. prepares artists for the university discipline of art. Citing Foucault, Singerman seems satisfied that artists have taken command of a theoretical field. Disciplinary boundaries are created and policed by its rules of professional discourse. At the same time, Singerman declares his intention to "use the concept of the discipline as it constrains and structures discourses to keep from having to judge whether or not art is a profession" (p. 201). He likewise mentions [End Page 119] but does not take any stand on the "putative decline of recent art" (p. 210). This ongoing refusal to judge deprives the book of potentially interesting conclusions. It also calls into question Singerman's repeated references to the "self-criticality" of the discipline.Singerman's neutrality might berefreshing were it not for his use of Foucault to introduce the notion that each new "proposition" within the disciplinary discourse represents progress in a "theoretical field," moving "knowledge" forward. Talking about art (and not, to be sure, talking all that much about specific works of art) and talking about being an artist may or may not represent progress. For instance, Singerman's early chaptersmake the case that the triumph of artistic modernism must be understood as a repudiation of a "female" aesthetic and even of women as artists. Singerman returns to the topic ofwomen artists only once, to note Griselda Pollock's approval of the entry of feminism into the academic discipline of art. Thus Singerman is silent on the question of whether progress is made when the number of women is... (shrink)

The Philosophy of Art is a highly accessible introduction to current key issues and debates in aesthetics and philosophy of art.

_The Philosophy of Art_ is a highly accessible introduction to current key issues and debates in aesthetics and philosophy of art. Chapters on standard topics are balanced by topics of interest to today's students, including creativity, authenticity, cultural appropriation, and the distinction between popular and fine art. Other topics include emotive expression, pictorial representation, definitional strategies, and artistic value. Presupposing no prior knowledge of philosophy, Theodore Gracyk draws on three decades of teaching experience to provide a balanced and engaging (...) overview, clear explanations, and many thought-provoking examples. All chapters have a strong focus on current debates in the field, yet historical figures are not neglected. Major current theories are set beside key ideas from Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Marx, and Hegel. Chapters conclude with advice on further readings, and there are recommendations of films that will serve as a basis for further reflection and discussion. Key ideas are immediately accompanied by exercises that will test students' reactions and understanding. Many chapters call attention to ideology, prejudices, and common clichés that interfere with clear thinking. Beautifully written and thoroughly comprehensive, _The Philosophy of Art_ is the ideal resource for anyone who wants to explore recent developments in philosophical thinking about the arts. It is also provides the perfect starting point for anyone who wants to reflect on, and challenge, their own assumptions about the nature and value of art. (shrink)

Arthur C. Danto’s The Transfiguration of the Commonplace is one of the most influential recent books on philosophy of art. It is noteworthy for both his method, which emphasizes indiscernible pairs and sets of objects, and his conclusion, which is that artworks are distinguished from non-artwork counterparts by a semantic and aesthetic transfiguration that depends on their relationship to art history. In numerous contexts, Danto has confirmed that the relevant concept of art is the concept of fine art. Examples of (...) music that are not fine art demonstrate that semantic and aesthetic transfiguration does not require a relationship to art history or art theory. Appropriate interpretation and individuation of a great deal of music can be achieved by listeners who do not grasp art theory and who do not guide their interpretation by reference to the concept of art. (shrink)

Opinionated and example-filled, this extremely concise and accessible book provides a survey of some fundamental and longstanding debates about the nature of music. The central arguments and ideas of historical and contemporary philosophers are presented with the goal of making them as accessible as possible to general readers who have no background in philosophy. The emphasis is on instrumental music, but examples are drawn from many cultures as well as from Western classical, jazz, folk, and popular music.

_The Philosophy of Art _is a highly accessible introduction to current key issues and debates in aesthetics and philosophy of art. Chapters on standard topics are balanced by topics of interest to today's students, including creativity, authenticity, cultural appropriation, and the distinction between popular and fine art. Other topics include emotive expression, pictorial representation, definitional strategies, and artistic value. Presupposing no prior knowledge of philosophy, Theodore Gracyk draws on three decades of teaching experience to provide a balanced and engaging (...) overview, clear explanations, and many thought-provoking examples. All chapters have a strong focus on current debates in the field, yet historical figures are not neglected. Major current theories are set beside key ideas from Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Marx, and Hegel. Chapters conclude with advice on further readings, and there are recommendations of films that will serve as a basis for further reflection and discussion. Key ideas are immediately accompanied by exercises that will test students' reactions and understanding. Many chapters call attention to ideology, prejudices, and common clichés that interfere with clear thinking. Beautifully written and thoroughly comprehensive, _The Philosophy of Art _is the ideal resource for anyone who wants to explore recent developments in philosophical thinking about the arts. It is also provides the perfect starting point for anyone who wants to reflect on, and challenge, their own assumptions about the nature and value of art. (shrink)

The key idea given in Eminem's defense is that viewers who were upset were simply not understanding the nature of his performance. Implicitly, his defense admits that lip‐synching would be a fraudulent performance. However, the defense reclassifies these performances as genuine but flawed, ones in which he sometimes went silent when he should have been “doubling” the prerecorded vocal. Basically, Eminem's Saturday Night Live (SNL) presentations of “Mosh” and “Bezerk” are Andy Kaufman's “Mighty Mouse” piece minus the frame that raises (...) the philosophical issues. Offering no larger frame and no indication of more complex intentions, Eminem's SNL performances of “Mosh” and “Bezerk” offer the audience little or nothing to appreciate. Depending on what a reader thinks he intended to do, he either did not give a live performance, or he gave a bad live performance. Kaufman, in contrast, used lip‐synching to give a great live performance. (shrink)

Education and learning occur in various settings, some of which are more formally institutionalized than others. Even if it seems to have failed as a definition of art, awareness of art-world institutions has increased in the wake of George Dickie’s proposal that art enmeshes an artifact in a set of interlocking yet informally structured art-world systems, that is, “the art-world.”1 However, relatively little of that attention has fallen on the distinctively educative roles played by art-world institutions and those who act (...) on their behalf. This oversight is sometimes addressed when the topic is the art museum,2 but very little has been said about parallel issues concerning music, the concert hall, and what Virgil.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary EntertainmentTheodore GracykNeo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment, by Angela Ndalianis. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 2004, 323 pp., $34.95 cloth.Like the cliché about not judging a book by its cover, the prominence of the term "aesthetics" in a book's title is no indication of what one will find inside. Has the term become so elastic that it will now cover everything cultural? Or is (...) it the case, as in Angela Ndalianis's discussions of theme park rides and computer games, that the term applies to anything that has a parallel in earlier practices covered by this rubric? Ndalianis may be stretching it too far, for the book in question emphasizes parallels with baroque practices that predate Alexander Baumgarten's 1735 proposal to use "aesthetics" as the name of an emerging discipline concerned [End Page 115] with perception. We are alternately informed that the book explores the poetics, semiotics, and the "logic of contemporary media." But because Ndalianis holds that recent visual media involve a "specific system of perception" that arises from a "radical cultural transformation" (22-23), the term "aesthetics" may be as good as any other in conveying her purposes. For she is not concerned with artistic style—presumably the province of art historians. She is theorizing broadly about visual media by examining an assortment of media strategies found in the two eras and aims to identify their common "morphology" (19). Her sources are Fredric Jameson, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze rather than, say, Kendall Walton, Noël Carroll, or Gregory Currie.Ndalianis's main idea is that there is a strong but not exact parallel between our own times and the visual forms favored in the seventeenth century. (For Ndalianis, the baroque period stretches from 1492 to the 1680s.) The two epochs involve similar cultural sensibilities and artistic practices, so if we understand baroque art and visual media, we will better understand what is going on in contemporary media. In short, the framing assumption is Shelley's dictum that art is the expression of the spirit of its time. More specifically, the design of modern entertainment media is argued to be very similar to a wide range of baroque entertainment and representational practice. But the similarity is not due to either awareness or imitation of baroque style. Each "logically emerged as a result of systemic and cultural transformations" peculiar to its own time (17). The similar "logic" of each period is thus seen as evidence that there are parallels in the "general tendencies" and consequent "dominant cultural sensibilities" of the two periods (17-21). Because hindsight is more reliable than precognition, a backward glance at the baroque may help us to better grasp our own historical and cultural context.Having outlined these proposals in a lengthy introduction, Ndalianis offers five chapters, each devoted to a specific parallel. All five chapters share a similar strategy. A different aspect of neo-baroque communication is highlighted, and one type of baroque art or entertainment is compared and contrasted with its neo-baroque counterpart, with at least one neo-baroque example explored in considerable detail.The introduction focuses on Jurassic Park (both the film and the theme park ride). Chapter 1 focuses on neo-baroque "narrative strategies," as first Don Quixote and its sequel and then the palace at Versailles are compared to the various Alien films and comic books. The main focus is "serial" art as an outgrowth of capitalism, generating "an aesthetics of repetition" enriched by its "rampant self-reflexivity" (69). Chapter 2 shifts to the baroque love of labyrinthine structure, with its "enforced circuitousness, planned chaos, choice among paths, intricacy, complexity, and an invitation to the audience to engage reflexively" in exploring the labyrinth (84). Ndalianis's baroque case is Pietro de Cortona's elaborate painted ceiling for the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. The neo-baroque counterpart is the Doom video game and its sequel, Doom II. Inexplicably, for a book with numerous illustrations, there are no visuals to display Doom for those unfamiliar with such games. Chapter 3 examines baroque cartography as a background for discussing geographic discovery and colonization, leading to the neo-baroque... (shrink)

There is a resurgence of interest in aesthetic value. The models widely considered standard—sometimes lumped under the title aesthetic hedonism or aesthetic emp.

This essay details David Hume’s complex contextualist account of aesthetic properties. Focusing mainly on the essay “Of the standard of taste”, I argue that Hume’s account of aesthetic properties anticipates many points advanced in Kendall Walton’s 1970 essay “Categories of art”, most notably the thesis that proper detection of most aesthetic properties depends on awareness of which nonaesthetic properties are standard, contra-standard, and variable for the relevant category of art. Consequently, they both reject the position we now describe as aesthetic (...) empiricism. Yet there are also distinctive aspects of Hume’s account. Most notably, Hume holds that delicacy of imagination is involved in avoiding prejudice when perceiving nonaesthetic properties. He also proposes that aesthetic terms such as “beauty” and “elegance” capture positively valenced thick concepts because aesthetic properties are necessarily (in part) value properties. (shrink)

_The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music_ is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics, subjects, thinkers and debates in philosophy and music. Over fifty entries by an international team of contributors are organised into six clear sections: general issues emotion history figures kinds of music music, philosophy and related disciplines _The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music_ is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, music and musicology.

An overview of the philosophical questions raised by musical performances and recordings.

An overview of philosophical issues raised by musical performances and recordings.

Philosophy of art presupposes differences between art and other cultural activity. Philosophers have recently paid more attention to this excluded activity, particularly to the range of cultural production known as popular art. Three issues have dominated these discussions. First, there is debate about the basis of the distinction. Some philosophers contend that fine art is essentially different from popular art, but others hold that the distinction is entirely social in origin. Second, philosophers disagree on the degree of continuity or discontinuity (...) that holds between fine and popular art. Third, there is controversy about the relative value of the two, and about the basis for the supposed superiority of fine art. (shrink)

The Value of Popular Music: An Approach from Post-Kantian AestheticsSTONEALISONPALGRAVE MACMILLAN. 2016. pp. 294. £29.99.

Creating android and humanoid robots to furnish companionship in the nursing care of older people continues to attract substantial development capital and research. Some people object, though, that machines of this kind furnish human–robot interaction characterized by inauthentic relationships. In particular, robotic and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have been charged with substituting mindless mimicry of human behaviour for the real presence of conscious caring offered by human nurses. When thus viewed as deceptive, the robots also have prompted corresponding concerns regarding (...) their potential psychological, moral, and spiritual implications for people who will be interacting socially with these machines. The foregoing objections and concerns can be assessed quite differently, depending upon ambient religious beliefs or metaphysical presuppositions. The complaints may be set aside as unnecessary, for example, within religious traditions for which even current robots can be viewed as presenting spiritual aspects. Elsewhere, technological cultures may reject the complaints as expression of outdated superstition, holding that the machines eventually will enjoy a consciousness described entirely in materialist and behaviourist terms. While recognizing such assessments, the authors of this essay propose that the heart of the foregoing objections and concerns may be evaluated, in part, scientifically – albeit with a conclusion recommending fundamental revisions in AI modelling of human mental life. Specifically, considerations now favour introduction of AI models using interactive classical and quantum computation. Without this change, the answer to the essay's title question arguably is ‘no’ – with it, the answer plausibly becomes ‘maybe’. Either outcome holds very interesting implications for nurses. (shrink)

We show that every nontrivial interval in the recursively enumerable degrees contains an incomparable pair which have an infimum in the recursively enumerable degrees.