Intelligible Beauty

Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 96 (1):147-164 (2022)
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Abstract

Arthur Danto argued from the premiss that artworks are essentially cognitive to the conclusion that they are incidentally aesthetic. I wonder why Danto, and the very many of us he persuaded, came to believe that the cognitive and the aesthetic oppose one another. I argue, contrary to Danto’s historical claims, that the cognitive and the aesthetic did not come into opposition until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and that they were brought into opposition for reasons of art-critical expediency rather than philosophical necessity. I conclude that a robustly cognitive notion of the aesthetic remains an option for us.

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James Shelley
Auburn University

Citations of this work

Simple Theory of Aesthetic Value.James Shelley - 2023 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 81 (1):98-100.
Categorizing Art.Kiyohiro Sen - 2024 - Dissertation, University of Tokyo

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References found in this work

Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man.Thomas Reid - 1785 - University Park, Pa.: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Derek R. Brookes & Knud Haakonssen.
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.David Hume - 1751 - New York,: Oxford University Press UK. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp.
The Foundations of Science.Henri Poincaré - 2017 - New York and Garrison, N.Y.,: The Science press. Edited by George Bruce Halsted.

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