This issue profiles various attempts, both successful and fraught, to engage the divide between asceticism and opulence, between materialism and poverty.

There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I (...) suggest, is that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

I introduce and explicate a new functionalist account of art, namely that something is an artwork iff the fulfillment of its function by a subject requires that the subject aesthetically engage it. This is the Aesthetic Engagement Theory of art. I show how the Aesthetic Engagement Theory outperforms salient rival theories in terms of extensional adequacy, non-arbitrariness, and ability to account for the distinctive value of art. I also give an account of what it is to (...) aesthetically engage a work that relies on our agential capacity to treat an object as having non-instrumental value, even while the ultimate purpose for our engaging the object is to get something from it. (shrink)

Organisational aesthetics is a burgeoning field with a growing community of scholars engaged in arts-based and aesthetic approaches to research. Recent developments in this field can be traced back to the works of early Enlightenment writers such as Vico, Baumgarten and Kant. This paper examines the contributions of these three philosophers. In particular it focuses on Vico’s treatment of history and myth; Baumgarten’s notion of sensation and its relationship to rationality; and Kant’s investigations into form and content. An exploration (...) of an artistic organisation in change demonstrates how the conduct of an aesthetically aware manager can be informed by qualities such as an alert imagination and intuition, comfort with the chaotic, backward thinking, and attention to inner sensations and perceptions, all working together to provide a coherent view of the organisation. (shrink)

The award-winning novel Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, first published in 2016 as コンビニ人間 (Konbini ningen), has received a lot of media attention from readers of both the original Japanese version and the English translation. For some, the novel depicts the wonder and vulnerability of a culture of convenience and conformity, while others have suggested that it highlights the gender discrimination faced by women in contemporary Japan. Yet the novel is ripe for analyses from other perspectives. This paper presents (...) one such new approach to analysing Murata’s Convenience Store Woman: its social-cum-auditory aesthetic. The theory of social aesthetics, developed by Arnold Berleant, essentially holds that there are perceptive values to be found not only in objects but also in social situations. The paper will argue that the convenience store’s environment – the social interactions, and soundscape presented in the novel – invokes and evokes a variety of aesthetic qualities, among them ‘acceptance’, ‘sensuousness’, and ‘reciprocity’. Combining a re-reading methodology and an application of Berleant’s social aesthetics theory, I will show how these sensibilities can be observed through the experiences of Keiko Furukawa, a life-long convenience store worker and the novel’s protagonist. Specifically, the focus will be on Keiko’s auditory sensibilities. (shrink)

This paper applies the account developed by Susanna Siegel in The Rationality of Perception to aesthetic cases and explores the implications of such an account for aesthetic engagement as well as curatorial and exhibitionary practices. It argues that one’s prior outlook – expertise, beliefs, desires, fears, preferences, attitudes – can have both aesthetically good and bad influences on perceptual experiences, just as it can have both epistemically good and bad influences. Analysing these bad influences in cases of (...) ‘hijacked’ aesthetic perception will reveal that, unless we recognize that our perception of high-level and low-level aesthetically relevant properties is norm-governed, we will be at a loss to explain what goes wrong in these cases. Just as perception can be rational or irrational, so too can it be apt or inapt. (shrink)

Drawing on a ritual approach to microsociology, I explain how and why aesthetic and moral practices inform each other and evolve as they do. I continue to develop a theory of aesthetic engagement, specifying how it generates the emotional sensibilities that inform moral practices. Examining aesthetic engagement and emotional sensibilities focuses our theoretical attention on our capacity to find our moral bearings, even in unfamiliar or challenging conditions. To develop this perspective, I draw on Bargheer’s (...) Moral Entanglements and a volume on bird watching’s therapeutic value, Bird Therapy. These two works provide insight into the micro-emotional dynamics through which nature-based practices generate aesthetic power. I conclude by discussing the implications of aesthetic and moral practices for theorizing cognition and culture. In particular, I argue that an aesthetic practice approach to perceiving and knowing about the world does not fit neatly into the dual processing frameworks currently popular in Cultural Sociology. (shrink)

This paper explores the ethical dimensions of aesthetic engagement, the central theme of Arnold Berleant’s aesthetics. His recent works on social aesthetics and negative aesthetics explicitly argue for the inseparability of aesthetics from the rest of life, in particular ethical concerns. Aesthetic engagement requires overcoming the subject-object divide and adopting an attitude of open-mindedness, responsiveness, reciprocity, and collaboration, as well as the willingness and readiness to expose negative aesthetics for what it is. These requirements characterize not (...) only the nature of aesthetic experience but also, perhaps more fundamentally, our mode of being in the world and the accompanying ethical responsibility. Among the present paper’s principal aims is to show how this view of aesthetic and ethical stance is also shared by the important aspects of the Japanese worldview, aesthetics, and artistic practices. (shrink)

Common philosophical accounts of creativity align creative products and processes with a particular kind of agency: namely, that deserving of praise or blame. Considering evolutionary examples, we explore two ways of denying that creativity requires forms of agency. First, we argue that decoupling creativity from praiseworthiness comes at little cost: accepting that evolutionary processes are non-agential, they nonetheless exhibit many of the same characteristics and value associated with creativity. Second, we develop a ‘product-first’ account of creativity by which a process (...) is creative just in case it gives rise to products deserving of certain forms of aesthetic engagement. (shrink)

I propose an account of aesthetic value, where aesthetic value lies in the process of aesthetic engagement: in our activity of perceiving, guiding our attention, interpreting, and otherwise wrestling with aesthetic objects. It also includes our social activities of engagement: arguing with each other, writing criticism, making top-ten lists. (This is a short summary of a view developed in greater detail elsewhere.).

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based (...) in the recognition of others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer. (shrink)

Within the field of aesthetics, there are several approaches to answering what affects how and whether an individual engages with a particular art or aesthetic object. Two theories that attempt to come to a solution on this issue are theories of attunement and attachment which respectively argue that one’s engagement is primarily affected by one’s attunement or attachment, through a system of values, beliefs, and associations, to an object. While these theories are successful in responding to a variety (...) of cases, individually, they leave something to be desired explicatively, and, in light of this, I will develop in this essay an alternative that centres itself on the character of the aesthetic subject which will do the work of both approaches without having to make any taxing conceptual commitments. (shrink)

The interior of the body is an alien landscape, the frontiers of which we are continually expanding. Technological developments have allowed us to see more and more of what lies beneath the skin. Starting with the violently erotic public spectacle of dissection in amphitheatres, through X-ray and endoscopy, to other current and future technologies that work towards the yet to be realized ideal (or myth) of a truly non-invasive but microscopically detailed depiction of the human body. This opening up of (...) the human interior to our gaze is not exclusively a medical phenomenon. It is an exploration that has been shared by scientists, artists and entertainers, variously reappropriating imagery and technologies of seeing. Each new invasive technology brings with it the somewhat naïve belief that it can excavate the essence of the subject, their passions, motivations and faults, their ‘souls’ for lack of a better word. Yet while an X-ray can certainly not tell us anything of the subject’s personality, as we delve deeper we discover more about our chemical and electrical natures, encouraging the perception that our consciousness is the ‘sum of our parts’. However, as technologies have become more sophisticated, there has been an increasing tendency to present the body in segments, detached from their surrounding structures. A certain objectification and distancing that occurs when we view the flesh laid open. How do we engage with these views culturally, and how do they influence how we view others and ourselves? In this article I grapple with notions of a mutating body that we are actively in the process of changing in the context of my own and others’ visual practice, with particular emphasis on making the mediated nature of these images visible. I will engage in a celebratory but critical discussion of others’ and mine. (shrink)

I develop an account of the relationship between aesthetics and knowledge, focusing on scientific practice. Cognitivists infer from ‘partial sensitivity’—aesthetic appreciation partly depends on doxastic states—to ‘factivity’, the idea that the truth or otherwise of those beliefs makes a difference to aesthetic appreciation. Rejecting factivity, I develop a notion of ‘epistemic engagement’: partaking genuinely in a knowledge-directed process of coming to epistemic judgements, and suggest that this better accommodates the relationship between the aesthetic and the epistemic. (...) Scientific training (and other knowledge-directed activities), I argue, involves ‘attunement’: the co-option of aesthetic judgements towards epistemic ends. Thus, the connection between aesthetic appreciation and knowledge is psychological and contingent. This view has consequences for the warrant of aesthetic judgement in science, namely, the locus of justification is those processes of attunement, not the aesthetic judgements themselves. (shrink)

Western aesthetics has privileged contemplation as a necessary condition for authentic aesthetic experience. In contrast, I argue that the adequacy of aesthetic comportment must be measured by the self-presentation of the object in question, shaped by the place from which such presentations issue. Thus, the specific character of many forms of art, particularly in urban contexts, solicits a kind of “distracted” engagement rather than contemplative attention. Distraction is a positive mode of aesthetic engagement. I begin (...) with a critical account of the formalist theories of Kant and Bell as examples of this privileging of contemplative hermeneutics. I then consider Walter Benjamin’s theory of mimesis as a basis for a more fruitful account of aesthetic form, of which certain “distractive” artworks serve as examples. Distraction is an appropriate response to certain presentations, in the face of which absorption would be a kind of aesthetic failure. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the question of engaged philosophy with an emphasis on aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Referring to some specific problems discussed in these areas – in particular climate change, ecological crisis and immoral art – I demonstrate that philosophy can be engaged in two ways: (i) in its aspiration to question social reality, culture, human experience and the strategies for making sense of and finding value in that experience; (ii) in the aspiration to contribute to (...) the well-being of individuals and society through its contribution to understanding that reality and experience. First, I point to the connection between the philosophical questions and the fundamental intellectual aspirations of human beings as social and cultural beings, but also as autonomous knowers and valuers. Second, I respond to two objections that can be directed against engaged philosophy: (i) one that points to a lack of consensus among philosophical responses (the problem of disagreement), and (ii) one that highlights the irrelevance of philosophical debates to our social practice. (shrink)

Aesthetics and Environment: Variations on a Theme is collection of essays that lends emphasis to, and in some cases sheds new light on, Arnold Berleant's distinctive approach to aesthetic theory. T...

The ancient aesthetics of yijing has played a crucial role in traditional Chinese philosophy, literature and art since the eighth century CE. Defined variously by early and contemporary writers, yijing links an artist's emotional domain to objects in the world. This article conceptualises yijing as an ecological aesthetics and distinguishes it from an environmental aesthetics. In particular, two aspects of yijing render it an eco-aesthetics: subject-object correspondence (or 'engagement'); and empathic identification with the environment (or 'bio-empathy'). Three brief case (...) studies from urban planning, environmental conservation and the creative arts demonstrate the contemporary importance of yijing to ecological issues. (shrink)

This article seeks to investigate art in public urban space via a process of activating aesthetics as a way of enhancing pedagogies of engagement. It does this firstly by addressing the question of aesthetics in Enlightenment and twentieth-century frames; then it seeks to understand how artworks may be approached ontologically and epistemologically. The discussion works with the philosophical lenses of two different thinkers: Heidegger, in ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ and ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, and Marxist sociologist, Bourdieu (...) with his work on a theory of practice and habitus. It asks how art may work in the meaning-making processes of place and the human subject in terms of ontological difference and dispositional capital. In bringing these different organising principles of interpretation to specific works of art, the discussion draws from locational research undertaken in Newcastle/gateshead and Melbourne. (shrink)

Both landscape and aesthetics are all too often considered disengaged categories associated with leisure and contemplation. This book establishes landscape as a key concept in contemporary thought and rethinks aesthetics in political and activist terms. In order to do so, it challenges the dualism of "the environment" as the space inhabited by humans and the province of the natural sciences about which philosophy has little to say. (This separation is evident even in the name of the recent field of environmental (...) humanities.) In a holistic view, landscapes are at the intersection of environment and human, place and people, and nature and culture, and aesthetics provide an immersive and engaged approach to them. Landscapes are ways of being in the world and aesthetics practical means of inhabiting them. Utilizing a pragmatist, antiessentialist lens, Alberto L. Siani characterizes landscapes (as opposed to environments and territories) as concrete, experienced habitats, performative ways of making sense of the world, while aesthetics (following Dewey) identify values and ordering criteria that permeate them. He addresses issues such as temporality, environmentalism, justice, education, and interdisciplinarity within this framework and in conversation with scientific positions. A coda gives three phenomenological accounts of intensely experienced and inhabited landscapes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Aesthetics of Representation:Dramatic Texts and Dramatic EngagementKathleen Gallagher (bio)Staking the TerritoryThere are several ways in which aesthetic discourses might be positioned in the field of drama education. While some might locate "aesthetics" in the cognitive or interpretive realm of learning, and others the affective or philosophical realm, I have chosen to speak of the discourses of aesthetics as they relate to both cognitive and embodied responses to (...) the (extra)ordinary events of a drama classroom. I am already unsatisfied with the recognizable distinctions implied in this binary, but I persist in the hope that the relationship between these learning functions will become clear as I proceed with what I have termed the sociology of aesthetics in drama practice. In drama, we attempt—collectively—to represent our lives through art as we come to know the world and our sensuous responses to it.Fenner's brief history of aesthetic experience and aesthetic analysis will further help stake the territory about which we are speaking in a drama classroom.1 Calling aesthetic experiences the "raw data" that aesthetics is meant to explain, he helpfully distinguishes between Kantian understandings of the conditions of aesthetic judgment and the emergence of those thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who began to focus on the psychology of aesthetic experience. Following these thinkers and further developments in the early part of the twentieth century, the work of John Dewey explored the psychological nature of what he called "an experience" in the field of education more generally.2 This article will also privilege the notion of aesthetic experience but will, more specifically, focus on an exploration of ideas borne out of aesthetic experiences that cultivate sociological questions about representation and the nature of cognitive and embodied engagement in classroom drama. Key to my view of dramatic representation is the notion of a provoked imagination. [End Page 82]In the nineteenth century, Archibald Allison claimed that it was the imagination that was responsible for what we term "aesthetic experiences."3 Earlier philosophers of aesthetics had determined that the mere presence of beauty could create an aesthetic experience, but Allison insisted upon the "exercises of the imagination" in his understanding of aesthetic experiences. Contemporary writers in the field of arts education have also favored this more active conception of aesthetic responses, such as the formidable Madeleine Grumet and Maxine Greene. They and others will be cited here in support of a conception of "aesthetic experiences" in the drama classroom as active, selective, and highly framed experiences.Dramatic Texts and Aesthetic Knowing: Framing the ExperiencesOne can hardly discuss the idea of aesthetic exploration without first engaging with the rather unwieldy idea of "creativity." Radford, citing Margaret Boden, puts forward a very helpful notion of creativity as "conceptual space."4 This "conceptual space" is what I will refer to as "the frame" carefully placed around dramatic learning, usually by a highly skilled teacher. Frequently because of this frame, something entirely forgettable to students is shaped into something worth considering. The "frame," therefore, consists of both careful pedagogical planning and, in many cases, a piece of text that ignites the conceptual space and inspires a deliberate probing. This deliberate probing, or what Radford might call creative thought, invites co-creators to "play at the boundaries of sense."5 Bruner speaks about the "creative act" as bringing about a "shock of recognition,"6 or what Radford equally describes as something speaking to something "within us." This idea is particularly helpful in deconstructing what is often at work in a collaborative piece of improvised drama activity in a classroom of young people.To this end, I would like to offer three brief episodes as examples of textual and improvised drama engagement that speak to Bruner's and Radford's ideas of "recognition," or resonance with "something within us," and to my own understanding of how ideas of representation or mimesis are operating in moments of aesthetic knowing for young people. The other principle at work, seemingly at odds with these ideas, is the notion of distance or alienation from an event, in effect a dis-identification. What I would especially hope to demonstrate in the following brief, empirical... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 77-89 [Access article in PDF] Engaging Nature Aesthetically Joseph H. Kupfer Acting in Nature For the most part, most of us appreciate nature as spectators. Some portion of a natural scene is viewed as if it were a painting or photograph. We look for the picturesque in experiencing the real thing because our aesthetic approach toward nature has been filtered (...) through pictures — a canyon's spacious contours, a spectacular waterfall, a weeping willow swaying and billowing in the breeze. And there is certainly nothing wrong with this approach. I like a splendid sunset or majestic peak as much as the next person. However, thinking of nature solely or chiefly as an aesthetic scene to be observed is unnecessarily limiting. Regarding natural phenomena as material for detached, pictorial observation overlooks the aesthetic features revealed only through our active intercourse with nature.In what follows, I outline an active aesthetic of nature appreciation in particular, a series of physical responses to nature which yield a spectrum of aesthetic possibilities. Our active relationship toward nature is expressible by the relevant prepositions, as action can be in or into nature, against or with nature. Of course there will be overlap among these modes of dealing with nature aesthetically, but they are nevertheless fairly distinct and distinguishable. Moreover, the types of activity are arranged so that each succeeding way of addressing nature encompasses the aesthetic virtues of the preceding types of activity. As we move from acting in nature to acting with nature, therefore, our aesthetic experience becomes richer and more inclusive. 1The first active departure from the role of mere observer is found in acting in nature. When we act in or within nature, natural phenomena are the medium of our movement. Whether, hiking up the valley or swimming in the lake, we participate in the natural environment. And that participation [End Page 77] uncovers aesthetic features of nature not available to the mere spectator or observer. Walking through the valley, the prospect of wildflowers shifts from a distant, cascading carpet to a direct encounter with individual shapes, colors, fragrances, and textures. Our aesthetic experience includes appreciation of the shift in perspective itself, from long-range floral vista to more intimate perception.When we swim in the lake, it is no longer simply a thing viewed — a shifting montage of patterns of light playing on its surface. Instead, the lake is experienced as a translucent medium which alternately resists and yields to our arm, leg, and torso movement. Immersed in the water, we feel warm and cool patches, and hear sounds muffled and transmuted by the lake. The sound of our breathing is also modified by the watery medium, as well as by our physical labors.Acting in nature provides two aesthetic opportunities absent from mere spectating. First, the fact that we are active in the natural environment brings home a sense of ourselves as causal agents. Instead of change merely taking place in the natural environment, we are directly bringing about the change. Because we walk through the valley or swim in the lake, otherwise unavailable sensory experiences are enjoyed. Our movement, moreover, enables these experiences to develop from one moment to the next, at best, in an integrated sequence. In addition, there are the specific aesthetic features created for us by our physical activity — our bodily involvement beyond the more typical visual panorama. For example, tension and relaxation in our muscles, the feel and sound of our breathing and heartbeat correspond to change in our natural surroundings. Our bodies furnish us with responses to the natural environment because we are moving in it, not simply observing it.A more homey example of acting in nature is the case of standing or climbing "inside" a tree. Most of us enjoy the aesthetic experience of walking in the woods, among clusters of trees and other wildlife. But the individual tree also offers an opportunity for acting in or within nature. Enclosed within its branches and leaves, whether on the ground or alight a limb, we gain a new aesthetic perspective. The... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 77-89 [Access article in PDF] Engaging Nature Aesthetically Joseph H. Kupfer Acting in Nature For the most part, most of us appreciate nature as spectators. Some portion of a natural scene is viewed as if it were a painting or photograph. We look for the picturesque in experiencing the real thing because our aesthetic approach toward nature has been filtered (...) through pictures — a canyon's spacious contours, a spectacular waterfall, a weeping willow swaying and billowing in the breeze. And there is certainly nothing wrong with this approach. I like a splendid sunset or majestic peak as much as the next person. However, thinking of nature solely or chiefly as an aesthetic scene to be observed is unnecessarily limiting. Regarding natural phenomena as material for detached, pictorial observation overlooks the aesthetic features revealed only through our active intercourse with nature.In what follows, I outline an active aesthetic of nature appreciation in particular, a series of physical responses to nature which yield a spectrum of aesthetic possibilities. Our active relationship toward nature is expressible by the relevant prepositions, as action can be in or into nature, against or with nature. Of course there will be overlap among these modes of dealing with nature aesthetically, but they are nevertheless fairly distinct and distinguishable. Moreover, the types of activity are arranged so that each succeeding way of addressing nature encompasses the aesthetic virtues of the preceding types of activity. As we move from acting in nature to acting with nature, therefore, our aesthetic experience becomes richer and more inclusive. 1The first active departure from the role of mere observer is found in acting in nature. When we act in or within nature, natural phenomena are the medium of our movement. Whether, hiking up the valley or swimming in the lake, we participate in the natural environment. And that participation [End Page 77] uncovers aesthetic features of nature not available to the mere spectator or observer. Walking through the valley, the prospect of wildflowers shifts from a distant, cascading carpet to a direct encounter with individual shapes, colors, fragrances, and textures. Our aesthetic experience includes appreciation of the shift in perspective itself, from long-range floral vista to more intimate perception.When we swim in the lake, it is no longer simply a thing viewed — a shifting montage of patterns of light playing on its surface. Instead, the lake is experienced as a translucent medium which alternately resists and yields to our arm, leg, and torso movement. Immersed in the water, we feel warm and cool patches, and hear sounds muffled and transmuted by the lake. The sound of our breathing is also modified by the watery medium, as well as by our physical labors.Acting in nature provides two aesthetic opportunities absent from mere spectating. First, the fact that we are active in the natural environment brings home a sense of ourselves as causal agents. Instead of change merely taking place in the natural environment, we are directly bringing about the change. Because we walk through the valley or swim in the lake, otherwise unavailable sensory experiences are enjoyed. Our movement, moreover, enables these experiences to develop from one moment to the next, at best, in an integrated sequence. In addition, there are the specific aesthetic features created for us by our physical activity — our bodily involvement beyond the more typical visual panorama. For example, tension and relaxation in our muscles, the feel and sound of our breathing and heartbeat correspond to change in our natural surroundings. Our bodies furnish us with responses to the natural environment because we are moving in it, not simply observing it.A more homey example of acting in nature is the case of standing or climbing "inside" a tree. Most of us enjoy the aesthetic experience of walking in the woods, among clusters of trees and other wildlife. But the individual tree also offers an opportunity for acting in or within nature. Enclosed within its branches and leaves, whether on the ground or alight a limb, we gain a new aesthetic perspective. The... (shrink)

“In a coffee shop in a city, which is every coffee shop in every city, on a day which is everyday …”1Even in her incompleteness, iconic singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco makes a poignant point. Her point pertains to the ubiquity of a coffee shop in a city, which is every coffee shop in every city on a day that is everyday. Such is the vitality of these third places that offer relaxing space and time over and above coffee and other related (...) beverages in the global coffee culture.2 Even though most of these spaces are in some capacity social cogs in the widespread profit-making machinery of global capitalism, their aesthetic import and the scope of their sensuous apprehension is far from explored or tapped. Extant... (shrink)

Among the infinitude of nature’s various forms, precisely what should we aesthetically appreciate? And supposing we come to achieve such discernment, how should we properly appreciate the aesthetic qualities we thereby find? To address these questions, Carlson has argued that the aesthetic appreciation of nature ought to be guided by scientific insight. In response, non-cognitivists have levelled criticism and suggested alternatives, yet Carlson’s (2009) scientific cognitivism remains the best-argued approach to nature appreciation in the field. One non-cognitivist position (...) that Carlson rejects—although much too quickly—is Berleant’s (1985) engagement model. The purpose of this paper is to modify and revive that model. Specifically, I will argue that genuine engagement requires a particular form of disinterest. The result is a non-cognitivist approach to the aesthetic appreciation of nature, stronger than the extant alternatives. (shrink)

Nietzsche and Kant on Aesthetics and Anthropology is the third of a three-volume collection exploring Nietzsche’s relationship to the Kantian legacy in philosophy. This volume examines his relationship to Kant’s aesthetic and anthropological views, focusing on the traces of Kant’s third Critique and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View that can be found in Nietzsche’s published and unpublished works. In this review, I offer a summary of each of its chapters, with some brief commentary, and underscore its major (...) themes, contributions, and omissions. In their introduction, Maria Branco and Katia Hay signal that the scope of this volume goes well beyond a strict understanding of aesthetics as the evaluation of... (shrink)

This paper sets out to reimagine education through a cultural perspective and explores education as a performative practice that establishes certain borders of ‘public’ belonging. Wide-spread debates about the public dimension of schools and universities have focused on how economic rationales need to be replaced with alternative visions of education. This paper seeks to contribute to this revisioning of the public in education by reclaiming education as a specifically cultural endeavour, one tied to practices that are at once both performative (...) and aesthetic. To this end, I draw on theoretical notions of publicity that highlight its performative character. I then offer a reading of a socially engaged art project in order to suggest ways in which this performative character of publicity can be seen to be educational. This paper argues that education itself emerges through various cultural enactments that delineate the contours of who counts as a public and who does not. (shrink)

The notion of the third culture forms the background of the study that seeks to unify humanistic and scientific approaches for a better appreciation of nature, culture, and the arts. This study draws on the kind of emotion and attitude that we may intuit and act out soon after noticing another individual demanding our help in nature and culture. Such feelings as sympathy and empathy, uncertainty and ambiguity, are perceived to be extremely useful in the context of strategy formation and (...) action taking. These preverbal traits that are already more or less encoded in our body and mind may enable us to devise rewarding strategies emerging from the deep inside when we are coping with strange oddities in nature and culture. Such operation is seen on the one hand to save our biologically valuable time in terms of thinking and imagining, and on the other, to achieve brilliant interpretations of various art and life forms. This study reveals that we are estimated to come up with: cogent and digestible propositions; sharpened perceptions and refined tastes; widened horizons of emulating and appreciating types of art and artifice. On top of polishing our own skills and swiftness of inventing strategies, we may also expect to forge encouraging and endearing partnerships between diverse life forms and us. All in all, this study develops the semio-aesthetic idea that we serve the community by way of developing balanced and intriguing viewpoints that may inspire individuals to regain linkages with beings and forms appearing unpleasant or unconvincing at first sight. (shrink)

To what extent do aesthetic taste and our interest in the arts constitute who we are? In this paper, we present a series of empirical findings that suggest an Aesthetic Self Effect supporting the claim that our aesthetic engagements are a central component of our identity. Counterfactual changes in aesthetic preferences, for example, moving from liking classical music to liking pop, are perceived as altering us as a person. The Aesthetic Self Effect is as strong (...) as the impact of moral changes, such as altering political partisanship or religious orientation, and significantly stronger than for other categories of taste, such as food preferences. Using a multidimensional scaling technique to map perceived aesthetic similarities among musical genres, we determined that aesthetic distances between genres correlate highly with the perceived difference in identity. Further studies generalize the Aesthetic Self Effect beyond the musical domain: general changes in visual art preferences, for example from more traditional to abstract art, also elicited a strong Self Effect. Exploring the breadth of this effect we also found an Anaesthetic Self Effect. That is, hypothetical changes from aesthetic indifference to caring about music, art, or beauty are judged to have a significant impact on identity. This effect on identity is stronger for aesthetic fields compared to leisure activities, such as hiking or playing video games. Across our studies, the Anaesthetic Self Effect turns out to be stronger than the Aesthetic Self Effect. Taken together, we found evidence for a link between aesthetics and identity: we are aesthetic selves. When our tastes in music and the arts or our aesthetic interests change we take these to be transformative changes. (shrink)

In _Beyond the Sovereign Self_ Grant H. Kester continues the critique of aesthetic autonomy begun in _The Sovereign Self_, showing how socially engaged art provides an alternative aesthetic with greater possibilities for critical practice. Instead of grounding art in its distance from the social, Kester shows how socially engaged art, developed in conjunction with forms of social or political resistance, encourages the creative capacity required for collective political transformation. Among others, Kester analyzes the work of conceptual artist Adrian (...) Piper, experimental practices associated with the escrache tradition in Argentina, and indigenous Canadian artists such as Nadia Myer and Michèle Taïna Audette, showing how socially engaged art catalyzes forms of resistance that operate beyond the institutional art world. From the Americas and Europe to Iran and South Africa, Kester presents a historical genealogy of recent engaged art practices rooted in a deep history of cultural production, beginning with nineteenth-century political struggles and continuing into contemporary anticolonial resistance and other social movements. (shrink)

A theory of aesthetic value should explain what makes aesthetic value good. Current views about what makes aesthetic value good privilege the individual’s encounter with aesthetic value—listening to music, reading a novel, writing a poem, or viewing a painting. What makes aesthetic value good is its benefit to the individual appreciator. But engagement with aesthetic value is often a social, participatory matter: sharing and discussing aesthetic goods, imitating aesthetic agents, dancing, cooking, (...) dining, or making music together. This article argues that we should understand aesthetic value in a way that centers these social forms of aesthetic engagement. To this end, the article argues that there is a social practice of aesthetic valuing, characterized as a participatory practice governed by the value of aesthetic community, which engages us in the social development of our capacities for discretionary valuing and volitional openness. Current theories of aesthetic value have trouble capturing the character of the practice of aesthetic valuing, and this motivates a novel communitarian theory of aesthetic value: aesthetic value is what is worthy of engagement in the social practice of aesthetic valuing. (shrink)

Aesthetic testimony is testimony about aesthetic properties. For example, in aone straightforward case, one person might tell another that something is beautiful. Philosophical discussion about aesthetic testimony centers on the question of whether there are any important differences between aesthetic testimony and testimony about non-aesthetic descriptive matters. In particular, the focus is often on the respective epistemic credentials of aesthetic and non-aesthetic testimony relative to firsthand judgments in the respective domains. Most are inclined (...) to think that in some way and to some degree we typically treat aesthetic testimony as being epistemically inferior to testimony about non-aesthetic matters. Assuming an asymmetry in the way we typically treat aesthetic and non-aesthetic testimony, the philosophical debate then asks a number of questions. Is aesthetic testimony actually epistemically inferior? If so, in what ways, and what explains its inferiority? If not, why do our ordinary ways of thinking, talking, and engaging with aesthetic testimony treat it as being inferior? In this chapter, I consider various ways in which experimental philosophy can contribute to these debates. Drawing on extant work and some new empirical studies, this chapter provides an overview of what experimental philosophy has told us so far, and summarizes the implications for philosophical debate. (shrink)

Current debates in food aesthetics are moving away from a focus on whether food is art, and worries about the subjectivity and objectivity of taste, and towards questions about food's aesthetic properties, the cultural and social significance of food, our modes of aesthetic engagement with food, and issues involving cultural appropriation and the authenticity of dishes.

The aesthetic domain is a social one. We coordinate our individual acts of creation, appreciation, and performance with those of others in the context of social aesthetic practices. More strongly, many of the richest goods of our aesthetic lives are constitutively social; their value lies in the fact that individuals are engaged in joint aesthetic agency, participating in cooperative and collaborative project that outstrips what can be realized alone. I provide an account of nature and value (...) of two such social aesthetic goods—aesthetic communities and aesthetic traditions—and further argue that such goods are a core constituent of an aesthetically good life. At the same time, I argue that the ideals of the dominant theory of aesthetic value, aesthetic value hedonism, are incompatible with a full commitment to these social aesthetic goods; the hedonist is thereby alienated from the other participants within aesthetic communities and traditions. This sets up a dilemma for the hedonist: either the hedonist must bite the bullet, accepting that the theory leads to a problematic form of aesthetic alienation; or, we must reject aesthetic value hedonism and adopt a different theory of aesthetic value which accommodates the value of social aesthetic goods. I argue that we should take the second horn of the dilemma. (shrink)

Aesthetic value, often viewed as subjective and even trivial compared to other environmental values, is commonly given low priority in policy debates. In this paper I argue that the seriousness and importance of aesthetic value cannot be denied when we recognise the ways that aesthetic experience is already embedded in a range of human practices. The first area of human practice considered involves the complex relationship between aesthetic experience and the development of an ethical attitude towards (...) the environment. I then discuss how aesthetics has played a role in scientific study and the use of evaluative aesthetic concepts in science, such as variety and diversity. The final section shows the connection between the beneficial effects of aesthetic engagement with nature and the restorative value of nature for human well-being. (shrink)

Accounts of aesthetic valuing emphasize two constraints on the formation of aesthetic belief. We must form our own aesthetic beliefs by engaging with aesthetic value first-hand (the acquaintance principle) and by using our own capacities (the autonomy principle). But why? C. Thi Nguyen’s proposal is that aesthetic valuing has an inverted structure. We often care about inquiry and engagement for the sake of having true beliefs, but in aesthetic engagement this is flipped: (...) we care about arriving at good aesthetic beliefs for the sake of the values that arise in the process of doing so. The engagement is the point, so we must use our own capacities in first-hand encounters. Here I challenge Nguyen’s account. I argue that it misconstrues the value of aesthetic belief; it conflicts with restrictions on aesthetic testimony; and it has trouble harnessing engagement-value for a theory of aesthetic value. A better approach emphasizes the social character of aesthetic valuing. On this view, aesthetic valuing is a social practice structured around the collaborative exercise and improvement of certain special capacities. The autonomy and acquaintance principles tell us to engage these capacities in forming our aesthetic beliefs. Understood aright, and contrary to consensus, these rules are identical. (shrink)

Bency Nanay brings the discussion of aesthetics and perception together, to explore how many influential debates in aesthetics look very different, and may be easier to tackle, if we clarify the assumptions they make about perception and about experiences in general. He focuses on the concept of attention and the ways in which the distinction between distributed and focused attention can help us re-evaluate various key concepts and debates in aesthetics. Sometimes our attention is distributed in an unusual way: we (...) are attending to one perceptual object but our attention is distributed across its various properties. But in other aesthetic contexts our attention is not at all distributed but very much focused. The book closes with an analysis of some paradigmatic aesthetic phenomena in which this is the case: identification and engagement with fictional characters. It argues that the conflict and interplay between distributed and focused attention is an important feature of many artworks. (shrink)

The Aesthetics of Human Environments is a companion volume to Carlson's and Berleant's The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Whereas the earlier collection focused on the aesthetic appreciation of nature, The Aesthetics of Human Environments investigates philosophical and aesthetics issues that arise from our engagement with human environments ranging from rural landscapes to urban cityscapes. Our experience of public spaces such as shopping centers, theme parks, and gardens as well as the impact of our personal living spaces on the (...) routine activities of our everyday life are discussed in terms of their aesthetic value and the nature of our aesthetic appreciation. This volume will appeal to any reader concerned about the aesthetic quality of the world in which we live. (shrink)

This volume of lectures on aesthetics, given by Adorno in the winter semester of 1958–9, formed the foundation for his later Aesthetic Theory, widely regarded as one of his greatest works. The lectures cover a wide range of topics, from an intense analysis of the work of Georg Lukács to a sustained reflection on the theory of aesthetic experience, from an examination of works by Plato, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Benjamin, to a discussion of the latest experiments (...) of John Cage, attesting to the virtuosity and breadth of Adorno's engagement. All the while, Adorno remains deeply connected to his surrounding context, offering us a window onto the artistic, intellectual and political confrontations that shaped life in post-war Germany. This volume will appeal to a broad range of students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences, as well as anyone interested in the development of critical theory. (shrink)

What does it mean to be an aesthetic beholder? Is it different than simply being a perceiver? Most theories of aesthetic perception focus on 1) features of the perceived object and its presentation or 2) on psychological evaluative or emotional responses and intentions of perceiver and artist. In this chapter I propose that we need to look at the process of engaged perception itself, and further that this temporal process of be- coming a beholder must be understood in (...) its embodied, contextual and dynamic speci- ficity. Through both phenomenological and neuroscientific explorations I analyze what is characteristic about a more “aesthetic stance” and argue that there is a certain asym- metry between beholder and beheld, which has to do with a disengagement of goal- directed action, and which allows for other kinds of perceptual involvement than in a more “practical stance”. It is a multi-disciplinary project integrating a sensorimotor no- tion of aesthetic affordances, 18th century philosophy, and large-scale brain network findings. What ensues is a new dynamic framework for future empirical and theoretical research on aesthetic perception. (shrink)

Among his generation of intellectuals, the eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder is recognized both for his innovative philosophy of language and history and for his passionate criticism of racism, colonialism, and imperialism. A student of Immanuel Kant, Herder challenged the idea that anyone--even the philosophers of the Enlightenment--could have a monopoly on truth. In Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism, John K. Noyes plumbs the connections between Herder's anti-imperialism, often acknowledged but rarely explored in depth, and his epistemological investigations. Noyes argues (...) that Herder's anti-rationalist epistemology, his rejection of universal conceptions of truth, knowledge, and justice, constitutes the first attempt to establish not just a moral but an epistemological foundation for anti-imperialism. Engaging with the work of postcolonial theorists such Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak, this book is a valuable reassessment of Enlightenment anti-imperialism that demonstrates Herder's continuing relevance to postcolonial studies today. (shrink)

This is the second section of an article (each section in subsequent regular issues of EPAT) that explores the concept of participation. Section I: Introduction and Early Perspectives grounds our exploration of participation and explores definitions and early perspectives of participation we have identified as ‘historically original’ and ‘philosophical.’ Section II: Participation as Engagement in Experience—An Aesthetics Perspective is a continuation of our conceptual exploration of participation that digs into the world of aesthetics. Finally, Section III: The Utilitarian Perspective (...) and Conclusion focuses on utilitarian meanings of participation from political and international development perspectives. Collectively, these sections focus on the meaning and deconstruction of the term, participation. By bringing attention to gradations in meaning, we hope to raise awareness of the superficial use of participation that is reflected in much of the educational literature and highlight possibilities that more thoughtfully formulated and consciously chosen meanings of participation could offer the field of education. (shrink)

Analytic aesthetics has been obsessed with mature, art historically well-informed aesthetic judgment. But the vast majority of our engagement with art fails to take the form of this kind of judgment. Crucially, there seems to be a disconnect between taking pleasure in art and forming mature, well-informed judgments about it. My aim is to shift the emphasis away from aesthetic judgments to ways of engaging with works of art that are more enjoyable, more rewarding and happen to (...) us more often. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to argue that what is distinctive about aesthetic experiences has to do with what we do -- not with our perception or evaluation, but with our action and, more precisely, with our interaction with whatever we are aesthetically engaging with. This view goes against the mainstream inasmuch as aesthetic engagement is widely held to be special precisely because it is detached from the sphere of the practical. I argue that taking the (...) interactive nature of aesthetic experiences seriously can help us to understand some of the most important features of aesthetic experiences and the role they play in our life: their normativity, their crucial role in the ways in which the aesthetic domain looms large in our self-image and in the social dimension of aesthetic engagement. (shrink)

For centuries, philosophers have identified beauty with what brings pleasure. Dominic McIver Lopes challenges this interpretation by offering an entirely new theory of beauty - that beauty engages us in action, in concert with others, in the context of social networks - and sheds light on why aesthetic engagement is crucial for quality of life.

The essays in this volume exhibit many sides of the perceptual complex that is the aesthetic field and develop them in different ways. They reinvigorate our understanding of such arts as music and architecture; they range across the natural landscape to the urban one; they reassess the place of beauty in the modern environment and reassess the significance of the contributions to aesthetic theory of Kant and Dewey; and they broach the kinds of meanings and larger understanding that (...) aesthetic engagement with the human environment can offer. (shrink)