A theory of aesthetic normativity states what makes it the case that the fact that an item is beautiful is reason to appreciate it. Aesthetic hedonists characteristically hold that the fact that an item is beautiful is reason to appreciate it because anyone always has reason to do what yields pleasure. Bernard Bolzano was an aesthetic hedonist who is best interpreted as offering a mixed theory of aesthetic normativity. The fact that an item is beautiful is reason to appreciate it (...) because anyone always has reason to do what yields pleasure and because anyone also has reason to do what fosters virtue, the capacity to act well. The argument for this interpretation knits together Bolzano’s aesthetics, his ethics, and his philosophy of science. In doing so, this argument opens up a new perspective on aesthetic normativity. (shrink)

This article addresses the subject of the ekphrastic description of experiencing music. It shows the main differences between ekphrasis and commonly used analysis in music theory and musicology. In approaching the problem of ekphrasis with what is called pure music, I emphasize its ancient understanding, thus differing from Lydia Goehr (2010) and Siglind Bruhn (2000, 2001, 2019). The ekphrastic analysis of the first movement of Arnold Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces Op. 19 conducted in this article uses the methodology developed (...) by Gottfried Boehm (2014) and Georges Didi-Huberman (2005, 2015, 2017, 2018) in the discipline of art history. This article aims to delineate a new way of researching the art of music, an essential feature of which is the combination of the traditions of analytic philosophy and phenomenology. (shrink)