Aesthetic Value, Misc

Analizando las características de las facultades humanas y sus objetos, se proponen algunas distinciones que llevan a una definición coherente del arte y se expone un desarrollo de las consecuencias de dicha definición. Durante este proceso se examinan los aspectos que el arte y otras actividades humanas, como el deporte, poseen en común, y se señalan los criterios fundamentales que dividen lo que es y lo que no es arte. Esto permite articular una crítica a algunas formas de arte contemporáneo, (...) como el arte conceptual y el arte encontrado --art trouvé, readymade--, así como presentar una clasificación filosófica de los valores que toda obra de arte debería satisfacer. (shrink)

Scientists often refer to their experiments, theories, images and instruments as beautiful and report that their scientific work is a source of aesthetic experiences. How do such aesthetic values affect scientific activities, and can aesthetic values play a cognitive role in science? In this chapter, I identify the different levels at which aesthetic values shape scientific products and processes, reflect on how philosophers have justified the cognitive role of such aesthetic values, and draw insights from recent discussions on the aesthetics (...) of scientific practice for the values in science debate. (shrink)

Drawing insights from Aimé Césaire, Sylvia Wynter, and Katherine McKittrick, McBride argues that Dionysian poiesis and radical scholarly praxis (method-making) are tools and levers that can be deployed to stoke imagination, access demonic grounds, and conjure new systems of knowledge in the liberatory praxis of the oppressed.

This paper addresses a question that has sparked heated debate while mostly flying under the philosophical radar: Should people stop wearing merch of bands they don’t listen to? I respond affirmatively. People should stop wearing merch of bands they don’t listen to because (i) doing so can silence people who wear band merch to communicate their taste in music and (ii) this silencing threatens the valuable role that wearing band merch plays in the aesthetic lives of people who share a (...) taste in music: promoting aesthetic community between them. As will emerge throughout the paper, this argument is relevant to the debate on silencing as well as the debate on the value of aesthetic community. (shrink)

You can be convinced that something is true but still desire to see it for yourself. A trusted critic makes some observations about a movie, now you want to watch it with them in mind. A proof demonstrates the validity of a formula, but you are not satisfied until you see how the formula works. In these cases, we place special value on knowing by what Sosa (2021) calls “firsthand insight” a truth that we might already know in some other (...) way such as by testimony, the balance of evidence, or proof. This phenomenon raises two questions. First, what is the nature of firsthand insight? Second, what value motivates us to pursue firsthand insight when other kinds of knowledge are readily available? In the two central parts of this paper, I develop answers to these questions. I argue that firsthand insight that a proposition is true is knowledge based on experience of what makes that proposition true, and I argue that desires for firsthand insight are motivated by concerns with alienation. In a concluding section, I briefly illustrate how the resulting view of the nature and value of firsthand insight might bear on broader topics in the theory of value. (shrink)

Ainu artists were invited to make “replicas” of traditional Ainu arts held in an important museum collection and describe their choices, process and results. The resulting Ainu aesthetics challenges—and changes—our understanding of aesthetics and the philosophy of art, on four levels: descriptive aesthetics, categorical aesthetics (the categories through which the Ainu understand aesthetic value), implications of these aesthetics for a variety of human activities such as museum practice and daily life, and the implications of the first three for our broader (...) understanding of aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Preliminary analysis of Ainu aesthetics suggests it is interested in it not only as the creation and appreciation of pleasure, but also as the creation and appreciation of meaning, of sacrality, of community, and of knowledge. These latter become especially important given the threats to Ainu culture presented first by incorporation into the Japanese polity and culture and then by modernization and commercialization. Ainu works of art, therefore, carry special significance as means of conveying to current and future generations not only the aesthetic experiences of the past, but their sacred relations, sense of community, and knowledge. This suggests new roles for arts and for museums as they strive to present the works in their full physicality to contemporary audiences, especially those of Ainu artists. (shrink)

Does consciousness have non-instrumental aesthetic value? This paper answers this question affirmatively by arguing that consciousness is sublime. The argument consists of three premises. (1) An awe experience of an object provides prima facie justification to believe that the object is sublime. (2) I have an awe experience about consciousness through introspecting three features of consciousness, namely the mystery of consciousness, the connection between consciousness and well-being, and the phenomenological complexity of consciousness. (3) There is no good defeater of the (...) justificatory force of my feeling of awe for the sublime of consciousness. To defend the third premise, I argue against two potential defeaters: The first is that most people do not regard consciousness as sublime. The second is that there do not seem to be physical properties that can ground the sublimity of consciousness. I conclude by emphasizing an important ethical implication of the thesis that consciousness is sublime, namely that it explains why even conscious subjects who cannot have valenced experiences deserve moral consideration. (shrink)

Traditional aesthetic theories emphasize pleasure, while recent non-hedonistic approaches prioritize “getting it right” in aesthetic engagement. This paper critiques Dominic McIver Lopes’s and C. Thi Nguyen’s theories by arguing that correctness is neither the necessary guiding norm nor the constitutive or right motivator. Instead, I propose bias reduction—minimizing the improper influence of prior outlooks. This shift from correctness to minimizing distortion better captures aesthetic agency and allows for pluralism and radical disagreement.

In this paper I hope to show how buck-passing theories of ethics can be applied to aesthetics in the hopes of reunifying aesthetics and ethics, and for reviving medieval and classical theories of beauty. To do so, I will briefly survey the buck-passing metaethical account (as developed by Scanlon and Parfit), show how it might be used to construct a general definition of beauty, and illustrate how this definition (and its implications) capture the core elements of Aquinas and Augustine’s conceptions (...) of beauty. The overall goal of the paper is that the “reasons” language buck-passing accounts employ to refer to fundamental ethical truths provides, at the very least, a neat and coherent way for discussing the normativity of aesthetic value. (shrink)

In the last 20 years, a large number of studies have investigated judgments of the identity of various objects (e.g., persons, material objects, institutions) over time. One influential strand of research has found that identity judgments are shaped by normative considerations. People tend to believe that moral improvement is more compatible with the continuity of identity of a person than moral deterioration, suggesting that persons are taken to be essentially morally good. This asymmetry is often referred to as the “Phineas (...) Gage effect”. However, normativity extends beyond morality. In particular, it is unknown whether changes in aesthetic value have a similar impact on identity judgments. We investigate whether works of art would be analogously seen as essentially aesthetically valuable. We ran four studies (N = 1264) to explore whether aesthetic considerations have a similar influence on judgments of the identity of artworks. We presented the participants with stories describing either a painting or a musical work which undergoes changes and becomes either more or less aesthetically valuable. Overall, we found only mixed evidence for the Phineas Gage effect in relation to the aesthetic value of artworks. Other factors, such as moral value, seem to have a bigger impact on judgments of persistence. (shrink)

This article examines Bolzano’s aesthetic cognitivism. It argues that, while reminiscent of German rationalist aesthetics and hence potentially appearing rigid and outdated, Bolzano’s version of cognitivism is, in fact, highly innovative and more flexible than the cognitivism championed by the rationalists. He imports from the rationalists the idea that aesthetic appreciation and creation are rule-governed, yet does not construe rule-following and engaging in free aesthetic activities as mutually exclusive. Furthermore, thanks to his nuanced treatment of the interaction between aesthetic values (...) and other types of values, Bolzano’s aesthetic cognitivism presents a fresh alternative to contemporary versions of aesthetic cognitivism. (shrink)

In the 1930s, the Bengali philosopher K. C. Bhattacharyya proposed a new theory of rasa, or aesthetic emotion, according to which aesthetic emotions are feelings that have other feelings as their intentional objects. This paper articulates how Bhattacharyya’s theory offers a novel solution to the puzzle of how it is both possible and rational to enjoy the kind of negative emotions that are inspired by tragic and sorrowful tales. The new solution is distinct from the conversion and compensation views that (...) dominate the existing literature, and it derives its significance from how it ties aesthetic experience to self-awareness. (shrink)

In this Handbook, philosophers from around the world address the metaphysics, epistemology, and value of psychoactive (mind-altering) drug use. In so doing, they attempt to answer questions such as: What does the fact of drug-induced mind-altering experiences tell us about natures of the mind, free will, and God? What does it tell us about what, and how, we can know? Are drug-induced mind-altering experiences valuable, morally, aesthetically, or otherwise? Is the acquisition of drug-induced mind-altering experiences ever immoral? Should the acquisition (...) of drug-induced mind-altering experiences ever be legally prohibited? The Handbook gives an overview of the current research, and sets the stage for future directions in philosophical thought relating to psychoactive drug use. (shrink)

The concept of autonomy is central to many debates in aesthetics. However, exactly what it means to be autonomous in our aesthetic engagements is somewhat unclear in the philosophical literature. The normative significance of autonomy is also unclear and hotly debated. In this essay, I propose a method for clarifying this elusive concept by distinguishing three distinct senses or varieties of aesthetic autonomy: experiential autonomy, competence-based autonomy, and personal autonomy. On this taxonomy autonomy is a context-sensitive concept and autonomy applies (...) to several different moments or stages of aesthetic appreciation. Throughout this critical discussion, important issues concerning the nature of aesthetic appreciation are also explored. (shrink)

El presente trabajo busca explicar cómo la filosofía de Leibniz da cuenta de una concepción radicalmente objetiva de la belleza a partir de las posiciones teológicas y cosmológicas defendidas por el alemán en contra de Descartes y Spinoza. Después de introducir, en la primera sección, el lugar de la estética en los sistemas filosóficos de los racionalistas, la segunda sección se centra en exponer la definición de belleza propia de Leibniz y configurar un criterio de objetividad estética con el aporte (...) de discusiones filosóficas históricas y contemporáneas. En la tercera sección, se revisa el argumento de Leibniz contra el voluntarismo cartesiano y el subjetivismo de Spinoza en relación a la noción de belleza. En la cuarta, evaluaremos si la propuesta ontológica sobre la belleza de Leibniz es compatible con la definición de objetividad desarrollada en la segunda sección. Se concluye que, a la luz de la cosmología y metafísica leibniziana, la belleza debe ser independiente de toda corroboración subjetiva, ya que la belleza de las cosas es lógicamente anterior, incluso, a la existencia de éstas, lo que resulta en una concepción autónoma y objetiva de la belleza. (shrink)

What are the conditions under which an agent has an aesthetic reason to stop appreciating something? In this paper, I argue that such a reason is dependent not only on the aesthetic properties of the object of appreciation but also on the hedonic state of the agent. Virtuous aesthetic agents who are responsive to aesthetic reasons need to be sensitive to hedonic changes in relation to the object and to recognise when these changes make it appropriate to sever one’s appreciative (...) focus. The resulting view has implications for how to understand aesthetic fittingness, aesthetic obligation, and the difference between aesthetic and moral reasons. (shrink)

How to account for the power that art holds over us? Why do artworks touch us deeply, consoling, transforming or invigorating us in the process? In this paper, we argue that an answer to this question might emerge from a fecund framework in cognitive science known as predictive processing (a.k.a. active inference). We unpack how this approach connects sense-making and aesthetic experiences through the idea of an ‘epistemic arc’, consisting of three parts (curiosity, epistemic action and aha experiences), which we (...) cast as aspects of active inference. We then show how epistemic arcs are built and sustained by artworks to provide us with those satisfying experiences that we tend to call ‘aesthetic’. Next, we defuse two key objections to this approach; namely, that it places undue emphasis on the cognitive component of our aesthetic encounters—at the expense of affective aspects—and on closure and uncertainty minimization (order)—at the expense of openness and lingering uncertainty (change). We show that the approach offers crucial resources to account for the open-ended, free and playful behaviour inherent in aesthetic experiences. The upshot is a promising but deflationary approach, both philosophically informed and psychologically sound, that opens new empirical avenues for understanding our aesthetic encounters. -/- This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives’. (shrink)

This paper raises puzzles concerning our grasp of others’ aesthetic selves. I first articulate a conception of an aesthetic self, understood as an autonomously adopted orientation to objects of aesthetic value, encompassing the embrace of aesthetic reasons and the qualitative appreciative states that follow. This articulation is motivated by the commonplace observation that people’s aesthetic identities are important to them. Given this importance, we might think it salutary to grasp other people’s aesthetic selves, under the general auspices of ‘interpersonal understanding’. (...) Given the conception of aesthetic selves, we might think that empathy is an appropriate way to do so. But, second, I argue that you can’t find out about another’s aesthetic self via empathy. We might instead think that aesthetic conversation is the way to grasp aesthetic selves. However, third, I argue that the aim of finding out about others’ aesthetic selves is at odds with the ostensible aims of aesthetic conversation, which are to do with effacing individuality and creating commonality. So aesthetic selves seem hard to grasp. I finally briefly canvass some ways of solving this problem, without settling on a firm answer, and consider how the thoughts might extend to practical identities more generally. (shrink)

This paper presents a sustained critique of Colin McGinn’s aesthetic theory of virtue. The critique is twofold. First, I demonstrate that there are a number of theoretical flaws which suggest that McGinn’s theory is unable to properly evaluate racist literature. Then, using the novel Frankenstein, I show that, practically, McGinn’s theory incorrectly evaluates problematically racist characters, such as Victor Frankenstein.

The idea that fictions may educate us is an old one, as is the view that they distort the truth and mislead us. While there is a long tradition of passionate assertion in this debate, systematic arguments are a recent development, and the idea of empirically testing is particularly novel. Our aim in this chapter is to provide clarity about what is at stake in this debate, what the options are, and how empirical work does or might bear on its (...) resolution. We distinguish between merely influencing people’s opinions and providing genuine learning, where the latter requires that the source of the change in opinion should be reliable. Other important ideas here are the extent to which authors of fiction may be considered to provide testimony, or something like it, and the possibility of recognizing an unstated purpose in the project of the fictional work. We ask whether fictions can furnish us not merely with ideas but with reasons for believing them, perhaps by constituting thought experiments. We consider whether the focus should be on understanding rather than on knowledge, and whether fictions can inform us about the qualities of another’s experiences. We briefly describe some experimental work of recent decades and suggest that the evidence for learning from fiction is currently meagre. (shrink)

Poems are not the only things we sometimes call poetic. We experience as poetic also prose passages, as well as films, music, visual art, and even occurrences in daily life. But what is it exactly for something to be poetic in this wider sense? Discussion of the poetic in this sense is virtually nonexistent in the extant analytic literature. The aim of this article is to get a start on trying to come to grips with this phenomenon—the poetic as an (...) aesthetic category that outruns poetry as an art form. It proposes an initial sketch of an account in terms of the fittingness of certain affective reactions to artworks and other things, reactions featuring notably elements of tenderness and elevation. (shrink)

Pleasure is standardly conceived as a state that motivates. This chapter considers three accounts of disinterested pleasure as motivating. On one, it motivates strictly internal states because it is non-conceptual. On a second, it motivates strictly internal states because the link between motivating internal states and world-oriented acts has been inhibited. On the third, it motivates only contemplative acts. All three accounts are coherent. However, none of the three accounts of disinterested pleasure is an account of aesthetic pleasure, where aesthetic (...) pleasure serves either to demarcate aesthetic values or to explain why facts about aesthetic value are reason-giving. The conclusion is that we have no reason to appeal to disinterested pleasure in aesthetics. (shrink)

The aesthetic value of an object is fully grounded in the distinctive value of the proper experience of that object.

Jochen BRIESEN verteidigt in diesem Buch einen Dispositionalismus in Bezug auf ästhetische Eigenschaften und eine „hybride“ Auffassung in Bezug auf ästhetische Urteile: Er vertritt die Ansicht, dass mit jedem ästhetischen Urteil zwei Sprechakte vollzogen werden, nämlich ein expressiver und ein assertiver Sprechakt. Mit dem assertiven Sprechakt wird dem Gegenstand eine ästhetische Eigenschaft zugeschrieben. Die ästhetische Eigenschaft ist eine dispositionelle Eigenschaft, nämlich die Disposition, unter bestimmten (idealen) Bedingungen in einem Rezipienten einen bestimmten mentalen Zustand zu verursachen. Dieser mentale Zustand ist die (...) Manifestation der ästhetischen Eigenschaft. Der expressive Sprechakt soll genau jenen mentalen Zustand ausdrücken, in dem sich die dispositionelle Eigenschaft manifestiert. (shrink)

What is aesthetic appreciation? In this paper, I approach this question in an indirection fashion. First, I introduce the Kantian notion of moral worthy action and an influential analysis of it. Next, I generalise that analysis from the moral to the aesthetic domain, and from actions to affects. Aesthetic appreciation, I suggest, consists in an aesthetically worthy affective response. After unpacking the proposal, I show that it has non-trivial implications while cohering with a number of existing insights concerning the nature (...) of appreciation and the constraints to which it is subject. In closing, I note some limitations on the analogy between aesthetic appreciation and morally worthy action. (shrink)

Resolving to finish reading a novel, staying true to your punk style, or dedicating your life to an artistic project: these are examples of aesthetic commitments. I develop an account of the nature of such commitments, and I argue that they are significant insofar as they help us manage the temporally extended nature of our aesthetic agency and our relationships with aesthetic objects. At the same time, focusing on aesthetic commitments can give us a better grasp on the nature of (...) aesthetic normativity; this is because, in making aesthetic commitments, we are capable of giving aesthetic concerns the weight of obligation. I argue that appealing to aesthetic commitments allows us to account for the existence of aesthetic obligations as well as their grounding. I conclude by arguing that, although the aesthetic domain is a domain of play and freedom of choice, there is nevertheless an important place in it for both aesthetic commitments and the aesthetic obligations they generate. (shrink)

It is rarely noticed that Oakeshott occasionally quotes the Zhuangzi in Rationalism in Politics. The Zhuangzi was an ancient Daoist text emphasizing the free and wandering life of someone who skillfully acts without pretension or independent purpose. Oakeshott quoted it in support of his own typically Oakeshottian conclusions. But I argue in this paper that Oakeshott misunderstood the actual force of the anecdotes to which he referred. Oakeshott used Daoist wisdom to support his practical philosophy but entirely missed that the (...) Zhuangzi was all about achieving a higher immersion in or indifference to reality, and hence was not about battling against ‘rationalism in politics’ but about transcending rationalism, irrationalism and even practice in order to achieve a higher therapeutic end. (shrink)

Alongside the direct parallels and contrasts between traditional narrative fiction and games, there lie certain partial analogies that provide their own insights. This article begins by examining a direct parallel between narrative fiction and games—the role of fictional reliefs and reality checks in shaping aesthetic engagement—before arguing that from this a partial analogy can be developed stemming from a feature that distinguishes most games from most traditional fictions: the presence of rules. The relation between rules and fiction in games has (...) heretofore been acknowledged but not examined in detail, giving an impression of a tension that is constant. However, the paired concepts of formal reliefs and representation checks, once introduced, allow us to explain how rules and fiction interact to alter the ways in which players engage with games in a dynamic but limited way. (shrink)

El valor económico del objeto artístico está dado por el costo de su producción y las fluctuaciones del mercado, además de otros elementos axiológicos en cada caso. Pero ¿es este precio, el representante fiel de su valor estético? ¿El valor económico es directamente proporcional a su valor estético? ¿Su valor de uso corresponde a su valor de cambio? Los problemas de precio y valor nos redirigen a cuestiones más humanas y culturales, no solo a los análisis de costo y beneficio, (...) esta es otra puerta de crítica y salida que podemos ocupar para investigar las paradojas del sistema capitalista. El valor del arte, asumiendo a este como a una vil mercancía más, nos ayuda a confrontar las contrariedades culturales que el sistema como ideología crea a su favor, pero también encontraremos otras coyunturas, como el concepto de patrimonio o el don, para poder explorar otro tipo de opciones de intercambio fuera del mercado económico capitalista. En este ensayo nos inclinamos por el valor de uso de la obra de arte, como objeto enriquecedor de la conciencia humana, por encima de su valor de cambio, el cual es el que domina en la actualidad transmoderna como resultado del papel protagónico de su intercambio mercantil. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer’s Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life puts forth a view that individual experiences could provide us with sources of endless fascination, motivation, and value if only we could live forever to continue to enjoy them. In this article I advocate for more caution about embracing this picture by pointing to three points of tension in Fischer's book. First, I argue that taking meaningfulness in life to be holistic is not compatible with the view immortal lives would be (...) recognizably humanlike. Next, I interrogate Fischer’s claim that that worries about boredom in immortal lives are predicated on the false view that our pursuits are compelling to us because we value them instrumentally, showing that he relies on a more controversial view of the value of our pursuits. Finally, I argue that Fischer’s naturalistic reinterpretation of the value of Near-Death experiences falls somewhat short of capturing their poignancy. Given Fischer’s seeming acknowledgment that what we get from an experience is sometimes ineffable, I argue that he ought to be less skeptical that a genuine Near-Death Experience would give the person experiencing it some (defeasible) evidence of the supernatural. (shrink)

Modern television is awash in programs that focus on the rough hero, a protagonist that is explicitly depicted as immoral. In this paper I examine why audiences find these characters so compelling, focusing on archetypal rough heroes in two programs: The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. I argue that the ability of rough-hero programs to engender a certain degree of empathy for morally deviant characters despite viewers' resistance to empathizing with these characters' moral views is an aesthetic achievement. In addition, I (...) argue that empathy for the rough hero has cognitive value in that it enables us to reflect on the nuances of the psychology underlying moral deviance. In defending these claims, I offer my view as an alternative to A.W. Eaton's robust immoralist view that the aesthetic value of rough-hero programs lies in their ability to make audiences empathize with immoral perspectives; my claim is that empathy for rough heroes does not extend to their moral outlooks. My view also provides an alternative to Matthew Kieran's cognitive immoralist view that a work's depiction of immorality has cognitive value insofar as it imparts a normative lesson; my claim is that rough-hero programs are cognitively valuable not because they teach us about the perils of acting immorally, but because they help us understand the moral psychology that underlies immoral behavior. I defend an interpretation of rough-hero programs that incorporates insights from Eaton's and Kieran's immoralist views but does not support immoralism. (shrink)

Provides an account of what it is for works of academic philosophy to be beautiful in their content or in their mode of expression.

Second-order cybernetics conceives of human beings as agents and participants in the making of worlds, embedded in the design process. This conception of designing as a practice of living with and in a world grants it both urgency and hope. -/- The paper proposes that design practitioners, in the widest sense, can learn from design cybernetics when conceiving new methodologies for the post-Anthropocene era. Further, it proposes that these methodologies’ development can take advantage of comparative studies of design cybernetics and (...) design strategies found in traditional Chinese culture. Significantly, Chinese landscape poetry and landscape painting, and, in relation to this, Chinese classical garden design, emphasise elements that are also present in cybernetics discourse: circularity, a floating observer, and the continuity of observer and environment. The paper proposes that these ideas create the necessary conditions for the development of design approaches that re-connect human beings to their environments and permit future agents to initiate change from within. It concludes with an example of a public art installation that implements these ideas. (shrink)

Aesthetic value empiricism claims that the aesthetic value of an object is grounded in the value of a certain kind of experience of it. The most popular version of value empiricism, and a dominant view in contemporary philosophical aesthetics more generally, is aesthetic hedonism. Hedonism restricts the grounds of aesthetic value to the pleasure enjoyed in the right kind of experience. But hedonism does not enjoy any clear advantage over a more permissive alternative version of value empiricism. This alternative is (...) aesthetic liberalism. On this view, an object’s aesthetic value is fully grounded in any value—not just the hedonic value—of a correct and complete experience of its sensory features. To demonstrate the advantages of liberalism over hedonism, I apply both views to analyze the aesthetic value of the Spring Temple Buddha and Anselm Kiefer’s Seraphim. I detail four advantages of liberalism over hedonism, and I conclude by defending liberalism from two kinds of objection. (shrink)

In his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795), Friedrich Schiller draws a striking connection between aesthetic value and individual and political freedom, claiming that, “it is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom.” However, contemporary ways of thinking about freedom and aesthetic value make it difficult to see what the connection could be. Through a careful reconstruction of the Letters, we argue that Schiller’s theory of aesthetic value serves as the key to understanding not only (...) his view of aesthetic engagement, but also his distinctive account of individual and political freedom. More specifically, we show that Schiller defends a non-hedonic, action-oriented, communitarian theory of aesthetic value and a theory of freedom that makes the aesthetic not just supererogatory but fundamental for any fully autonomous life. Although we have lost touch with this way of thinking about aesthetic value and freedom, we submit that it is illuminating for contemporary thinking about both. (shrink)

This essay argues that bullshit art is a meaningful concept that differs from bullshitting about art, although the two may occur in tandem. I defend what I call the social pretense theory of bullshit art. On this view, calling a work of art ‘bullshit’ highlights a discrepancy between the prestige accorded a work of art and its nonsense character. This category of aesthetic criticism plays a unique role that cannot be identified with kitsch but bears only a contingent connection to (...) it. (shrink)

The article presents Hanslick’s aesthetic formalism as the starting point of the contemporary aesthetics of music. His book, written in the 19th century, is considered contemporary because it still proves to be influential and fruitful in the contemporary theoretical circles, especially in the modern analytic aesthetics of music, where it is widely cited and discussed. The article positions Hanslick’s book in relation to his nearest predecessors Kant and Herbart, and to the neighbouring area where the formalistic view appeared, namely in (...) Fidler’s visual formalism in fine arts. It is shown that by being the first piece of writing to attempt to systematically and comprehensively determine the essence and the content of music, and the criteria for evaluation of musical worth, Hanslick’s book sets the foundation for a rigorous examination of the aesthetics of music, and also breaks off with the widely ingrained preconceptions of music, which were in themselves an obstacle to establishing the aesthetics of music as a scientific discipline. (shrink)

The nature and consequences of readers’ affective engagement with literature has, in recent years, captured the attention of experimental psychologists and philosophers alike. Psychological studies have focused principally on the causal mechanisms explaining our affective interactions with fictions, prescinding from questions concerning their rational justifiability. Transportation Theory, for instance, has sought to map out the mechanisms the reader tracks the narrative experientially, mirroring its descriptions through first-personal perceptual imaginings, affective and motor responses and even evaluative beliefs. Analytical philosophers, by contrast, (...) have largely focussed on the problems fiction poses for traditional theories of rationality (as in the ‘Paradox of Fiction), challenging fiction’s wider epistemic value. The result has been a theoretical impasse in which the power of fiction to affectively ‘transport’ a reader is at once often lauded (by psychologists) as a privileged route to interpersonal understanding, and condemned (by philosophers) as an abdication of the authority of reason. This chapter surveys some of the central claims on both sides, tracing the source of the debate to competing conceptions of rationality. (shrink)

In his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Friedrich Schiller draws a striking connection between aesthetic value and individual and political freedom, claiming that, ‘it is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom’. However, contemporary ways of thinking about freedom and aesthetic value make it difficult to see what the connection could be. Through a careful reconstruction of the Letters, we argue that Schiller’s theory of aesthetic value serves as the key to understanding not only his (...) view of aesthetic engagement, but also his distinctive account of individual and political freedom. In Part I, we develop a reconstruction of Schiller's view that aesthetic value is the only path to individual freedom and in Part II we analyze how Schiller connects aesthetic value to political freedom. In the end, we show that Schiller defends a non-hedonic, action-oriented, communitarian theory of aesthetic value and a theory of freedom that makes the aesthetic not just supererogatory but fundamental for any fully autonomous life. Although we have lost touch with this way of thinking about aesthetic value and freedom, we submit that it is illuminating for contemporary thinking about both. (shrink)

Is it ever aesthetically permissible to engage in acts of cultural appropriation? This paper shows how recent work on aesthetic normativity can help answer this question. Drawing on the work of Lopes and McGonigal, I argue that in many cases those who engage in cultural appropriation act against their aesthetic reasons. Lopes and McGonigal advocate for externalist accounts of aesthetic reasons according to which whether or not an agent has an aesthetic reason to act depends on whether or not their (...) action will be an aesthetic achievement. Employing this framework, I argue that insofar as acts of cultural appropriation are seldom aesthetic achievements, many agents who engage in culturally appropriative aesthetic activities act against their aesthetic reasons. (shrink)

The hope that art could be personally or socially transformational is an important part of art history and contemporary art practice. In the twentieth century, it shaped a movement away from traditional media in an effort to make social life a medium. Artists imagined and created participatory situations designed to facilitate potentially transformative expression in those who engaged with the works. This chapter develops the concept of “transformative expression,” and illustrates how it informs a diverse range of such works. Understanding (...) these artworks in this way raises two interesting questions, one about the nature of aesthetic value and the other about the nature of action. Answers to these questions lie in understanding the social and aesthetic character of our capacity to distance ourselves from our commitments and act in the expressive, playful, spontaneous, or imaginative ways that participatory art invites. (shrink)

How can humanist principles of respect, dignity, and care inform and improve design for non-human lifeforms? This paper uses ageing and dying urban trees to understand how architectural, urban, and landscape design respond to nonhuman concerns. It draws on research in plant sciences, environmental history, ethics, environmental management, and urban design to ask: how can more-than-human ethics improve multispecies cohabitation in urban forests? The paper hypothesises that concepts of dignity and respect can underline the capabilities of nonhuman lifeforms and lead (...) to improved designs for multispecies cohabitation. To investigate the implications of this ethical framework, we 1) indicate injustices of current management in relation to natural and cultural histories of trees; 2) outline a conceptual framework that includes large old trees as stakeholders in urban communities; and 3) use this framework in a thought experiment with urban trees in Melbourne, outlining comparative design outcomes. Our findings show that the expansion of dignity to include nonhuman life is possible and plausible. Such an extension can justify and encourage design innovation for multiple species and sites. The resulting design practices will lead to improvements by supporting communities of trees at all stages of their life-cycles, including old age, death, and rebirth. This approach requires substantial shifts in accepted thinking and practices including history, ethics, aesthetics, regulation, and education. Design can play a significant role in the necessary transitions by demonstrating tangible and positive outcomes. In this context, history emerges as an essential tool that can extend societal imagination by situating possible future places in the context of ancient and ongoing geological, evolutionary, ecological, and cultural processes. (shrink)

Carolyn Korsmeyer's monograph bolsters her reputation as a leading innovator in analytic aesthetics research. Like so much of her previous work, this book is beautifully written, thoughtful and thought-provoking, carefully referenced and rich in artistic examples and historical anecdotes. While its discussion of certain issues could have benefited from greater critical depth, the book is a testament to the possibility of making first-rate philosophical contributions that are fascinating and enjoyable to read. I encourage everyone interested in its themes to read (...) it in full for themselves. (shrink)

According to tradition, aesthetic value is non-contingently connected to a certain feeling of liking or pleasure. Is that true? Two answers are on offer in the field of aesthetics today: 1. The Hedonist answers: Yes, aesthetic value is non-contingently connected to pleasure insofar as this value is constituted and explained by the power of its possessors to please (under standard conditions). 2. The Non-Affectivist answers: No. At best, pleasure is contingently related to aesthetic value. The aim of this paper is (...) to point to a blind spot in the dialectic between these two standard positions by defending a third neglected answer to the question above, the answer of the Value-Meriting-Pleasure [VMP] advocate. According to this answer, a certain kind of (cognitive and responsive) pleasure is connected to aesthetic value non-contingently, but also non-hedonically. VMP is the view that objects of aesthetic value are non-contingently related to pleasure insofar as they merit a certain kind of pleasure. But, pace the hedonist, those objects are valuable (those that are to be engaged with etc.) neither on account of their capacity to give pleasure nor on account of the hedonic value of the attitude they merit. (shrink)

Can a basic sensory property like a bare colour or tone be beautiful? Some, like Kant, say no. But Heidegger suggests, plausibly, that colours ‘glow’ and tones ‘sing’ in artworks. These claims can be productively synthesized: ‘glowing’ colours are not beautiful; but they are sensory forces—not mere ‘matter’, contra Kant—with real aesthetic impact. To the extent that it inheres in sensible properties, beauty is plausibly restricted to structures of sensory force. Kant correspondingly misrepresents the relation of beautiful wholes to their (...) parts. Beautiful form is not extrinsic to sensory force. Sensible beauty is just the holistic impact of agonistically-interacting sensory forces. When sensory forces interact hierarchically, their collective impact is closer to the sublime, in quality if not degree. The simplest sensory experience of sublimity is just the impact of radically intensified sensory forces, similar in kind if not degree to the individual ‘singing’ tones in a beautiful melody. (shrink)

A review of Carolyn Korsmeyer's _Things: In Touch with the Past_.

Biological accounts of art typically start with evolutionary, psychological or neurobiological theories. These approaches might be able to explain many of the similarities we see in art behaviors within and across human populations, but they don't obviously explain the differences we also see. Nor do they give us guidance on how we should engage with art, or the conceptual basis for art. A more comprehensive framework, based also on the ecology of art and how art behaviors get expressed in engineered (...) niches, can help us better understand the full range of art behaviors, their normativity and conceptual basis. (shrink)