This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Schopenhauerian Challenge “Justification” The Extension of “Aesthetic Phenomenon” The Aestheticization of Suffering Concluding Remarks: The Ethics of Aesthetic Justification.

ABSTRACT A disagreement about the nature of Nietzsche's “aesthetic justification of existence” has recently emerged in the literature. In this essay, I argue that the disagreement stems from a common but mistaken assumption that Nietzsche focuses on works of art to justify life. Instead, in the Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche shifts to the beauty of exemplary individuals to justify life. Through an examination of the Kantian practical arguments in the Untimely Meditations, I show how the scholarly debate can be overcome (...) and suggest that Nietzsche's early period views can illuminate the basis of some of his late period ideals, such as the overman and philosopher of the future. (shrink)

Em tempos de aceleração, de competição consigo mesmo e de uma linguagem instrumental e pragmática para se falar da educação, qual seria o valor de uma justificativa estética da existência em se tratando da formação de professores? Tendo tal problemática como motivadora, objetivamos, com este estudo, levantar a discussão acerca da relação entre literatura e docência, procurando aproximá-las de modo não utilitário, mas com vistas à estética da existência. Como um modo de resistência, optamos por perguntar pela formação de professores (...) pautada pelo exercício do pensamento, pela problematização dos valores e pelo cuidado consigo e com os demais. A partir disso, utilizamo-nos da pesquisa com inspiração arquegenealógica em Foucault, nos debruçando sobre autores que abordam ou a literatura ou a docência como possibilidades de entendimentos outros que não os conteudistas. Assim, tomamos a literatura, com inspiração nos estudos foucaultianos para problematizar a constituição docente. Mais especificamente, buscamos, nos estudos sobre a genealogia da subjetivação, a leitura, e a escrita tomadas como práticas possíveis do cuidado de si, quando da investigação de Foucault na Antiguidade greco-romana, especialmente nos primeiros séculos da nossa era. Todavia, não se trata de uma aplicação conceitual anacrônica, mas de tomarmos esse ferramental para pensar o que estamos nos tornando no presente, quais são os modos contemporâneos de dominação e quais são as possibilidades, em brechas, de criação de uma estilística da existência. Sendo um ensaio teórico, operamos com a literatura como possibilidade de dobra na linguagem tida como verdade, que poderia funcionar não fora da linguagem, mas fora da ordem do discurso. Seguindo essa perspectiva, entendemos que ela pode não ter apenas a função de revelar outra verdade, ser um passatempo, informar ou transmitir um saber, mas pode funcionar como uma prática de si num exercício de pensamento que problematiza o que estamos fazendo com nossa vida e com a vida dos demais no presente. Palavras-chave: Literatura. Docência. Práticas de si. Foucault. (shrink)

Apparently snobbery undermines justification for and legitimacy of aesthetic claims. It is also pervasive in the aesthetic realm, much more so than we tend to presume. If these two claims are combined, a fundamental problem arises: we do not know whether or not we are justified in believing or making aesthetic claims. Addressing this new challenge requires an epistemological story which underpins when, where and why snobbish judgement is problematic, and how appreciative claims can survive. This leads (...) towards a virtue-theoretic account of art appreciation and aesthetic justification, as contrasted with a purely reliabilist one – a new direction for contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

In this article, I present two objections against the view that aesthetic judgements – that is, judgemental ascriptions of aesthetic qualities like elegance or harmony – are justified non‐inferentially. The first is that this view cannot make sense of our practice to support our aesthetic judgements by reference to lower‐level features of the objects concerned. The second objection maintains that non‐inferentialism about the justification of aesthetic judgements cannot explain why our aesthetic interest in artworks and (...) other objects is limited to only some of their lower‐level features that realise their higher‐level aesthetic qualities. Although my concern with the view that aesthetic judgements are subject to non‐inferential justification is very general, my discussion is primarily structured around Sibley's well‐developed and influential version of this view. (shrink)

Friedrich Schiller’s notion of moral virtue includes self-determination through practical rationality as well as sensual self-determination through the pursuit of aesthetic value, i.e., through beauty. This paper surveys conceptual assumptions behind Schiller’s notions of moral and aesthetic perfections that allow him to ground both, moral virtue and beauty on conceptions of freedom. While Schiller’s notions of grace and dignity describe relations between the aesthetic and the moral aspects of certain determining actions, the ‘aesthetic condition’ conceptualises human (...) beings from the perspective of aesthetic self-determinability. Schiller thereby provides a normative aesthetic standard that not only affects the moral nature of our motives and actions, but also of what we, as human beings, want to and should be conceived of in the first place. As I argue in this paper, considering this aesthetic self-determinability from a moral perspective results in an aesthetic constitution of moral virtue, which in turn justifies aesthetic obligations. Schiller thereby merges the perfections of the two normative domains for an extended anthropological conception of aesthetically infused notion of moral virtue while assuring the conceptual autonomy of each normative domain. Giving aesthetic demands a practical normative role by partly constituting moral virtue and thereby still maintain their aesthetic normative source is a move that opens up many resources for current research on the interactions between various normative demands, such as aesthetic reasons for moral or legal judgements and action, aesthetic obligations or weighing varying sources and elements of normative authority and hegemony against each other. (shrink)

Aesthetic reasons should be significant factors in justifying decisions about both natural and humanized environments. Far from being trivial or mere tools to find serious considerations, aesthetic rationales are necessary for appropriate environmental protection. Aesthetic responses to environments should be construed broadly to include cognitive, expressive, and sense-of-place dimensions. Aesthetic justifications for environmental protection go beyond shallow and deep anthropocentric rationales and involve direct appeal to environmental aesthetic merit. Although nature is not aesthetically positive in (...) all dimensions, natural beauty is sufficiently widespread for aesthetic protectionism to be consequential. Environmental aesthetic responses can be better or worse and such objectivity is required if aesthetic protectionism is to be fully functional. By paying attention to the interaction between aesthetics and ethics, the prima facie beauty of some degraded environments is called into question. Aesthetic merit has an important place among the other compelling reasons for environmental protection. (shrink)

This paper identifies the ultimate justification for business activity as an aesthetic justification. Aesthetics, loosely defined as the appreciation of beauty, subsumes both ethics and economics within an holistic justificatory mechanism for business decisions. Five essential qualities of aesthetic judgment are identified: disinterest, subjectivity, inclusivity, contemplativity, and internality. The quality of aesthetic judgment, exercised by the individual through the organization, will determine the extent to which business activity enhances quality of life.

Aesthetic and historical values are commonly distinguished from each other. Yet there has not been sustained discussion of what, precisely, differs between them. In fact, recent scholarship has focused on various ways in which the two are related. I argue, though, that historical value can differ in an interesting way from aesthetic value and that this difference may have significant implications for environmental preservation. In valuing something for its historical significance, it need not always be the case that (...) there is a reason to want people to experience the entity. Valuing something for its aesthetic merit, by contrast, does imply a reason to want people to experience the entity. I suggest that in virtue of this difference, some historical values may offer better justification for preserving natural environments than do aesthetic considerations. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce an account of aesthetic understanding. Recent discussions of aesthetic understanding have associated it with aesthetic justification and with understanding why, for example, a given object is aesthetically valuable. I introduce a notion of aesthetic understanding as a form of objectual understanding, which I refer to as ‘appreciative understanding’. Appreciative understanding is related to and partly constituted by an agent’s capacity to comprehend and experience an artwork holistically and to communicate effectively regarding (...) its particular aesthetic character and value. I then argue for the understanding account of aesthetic judgement on which the paradigmatic form of aesthetic judgement is grounded on appreciative understanding. This argument partly consists in demonstrating how the understanding account can explain the autonomy of aesthetic judgement. In closing, I explore the potential of the understanding account to explain the structure of our appreciative practices. That is, I put forward the view that our appreciative practices are structured so as to promote appreciative understanding. (shrink)

The specialist literature has investigated extensively the link between Benjamin and German Romanticism and, less frequently, his relation to Kant. However, these contributions tend to take up these links separately, and therefore do not analyse in detail the process which begins with the theoretical sketches on Kant and concludes with the writing of the doctoral thesis on the Frühromantik. This paper argues that there is a marked continuity between the objectives which led Benjamin to plan, in the first place, his (...) doctoral investigation on Kant and those which were finally realized. I try to demonstrate that such continuity consists in a displacement of the problem of the justification of knowledge, from the field of the criticism of knowledge in general to a particular sphere: that of art criticism. In this shift the purpose of linking the justification of knowledge with a messianic philosophy of time and history is also preserved. (shrink)

Literature has been philosophically understood as a practice in the last thirty years, which involves “modes of utterance” and stances, not intrinsic textual properties. Thus, the place for semantics in philosophical inquiry has clearly diminished. Literary aesthetic appreciation has shifted its focus from aesthetic realism, based on the study of textual features, to ways of reading. Peter Lamarque’s concept of narrative opacity is a clear example of this shift. According to the philosophy of literature, literature, like any other (...) art form, does not compel us to engage realistically with it. Against this trend, this paper argues for the distinction between two kinds of opacity, defending textual opacity as a necessary condition for literary opacity. In this sense, examples in literary criticism properly illustrate not a peripheral role of meaning in literary appreciation, but arbitrariness in interpretation, which involves semantic concerns. So the assumed interest in the specific ways in which literature embeds meaning in fictional narrative works. (shrink)

One influential tradition holds that blame is a moral attitude: blame is appropriate only when the target of blame has violated a moral norm without excuse or justification. Against this, some have recently argued that agents can be blameworthy for their violation of epistemic norms even when no moral norms are thereby violated. This paper defends the appropriateness of aesthetic blame: agents can be blameworthy for their violation of aesthetic norms as such, where aesthetic norms are the (...) norms of social practices that aim at aesthetic values. I adapt a generic account of blame as protest, which can take variable forms, and then argue that aesthetic distortion cases—cases in which an existing artwork is distorted in its presentation—most clearly warrant blame even in the absence of violations of moral norms. (shrink)

In his earliest philosophical work, Moritz Schlick developed a proposal for rendering aesthetics into a field of empirical science. His 1908 book Lebensweisheit developed an evolutionary account of the emergence of both scientific knowledge and aesthetic feelings from play. This constitutes the framework of Schlick’s evolutionary psychological methodology for examining the origins of the aesthetic feeling of the beautiful he proposed in 1909. He defends his methodology by objecting to both experimental psychological and Darwinian reductionist accounts of aesthetics. (...) Having countered these approaches, Schlick applies Külpe’s psychological distinction between stimulus-feelings and idea-feelings to collapse the traditional philosophical opposition between the agreeable and the beautiful. Both types of feeling, Schlick argues, result from humans’ adaptation to their environment. Because of this adaptation, feelings that were once only stimuli for action can come to be enjoyed for their own sake. This thesis underlies Schlick’s 1908 argument that art, qua mimesis, is necessarily inferior to aesthetic feelings directed towards the environment. Part of Schlick’s justification for this view is that humans are, through a long evolutionary process, better adapted to their environment than to artworks. Schlick nevertheless concedes that mimetic art can involve ways of abstracting from the objects it copies to produce idealised regularities that are not found in the original. Schlick thus concludes that art teaches its audience how to perceive the world in this abstract and idealised manner. This type of environmental aesthetics constitutes a means for reaching Schlick’s utopian ecological vision of a future in which culture will become harmonised with nature. (shrink)

The thesis that aesthetic testimony cannot provide aesthetic justification or knowledge is widely accepted--even by realists about aesthetic properties and values. This Kantian position is mistaken. Some testimony about beauty and artistic value can provide a degree of aesthetic justification and, perhaps, even knowledge. That is, there are cases in which one can be justified in making an aesthetic judgment purely on the basis of someone else's testimony. But widespread aesthetic unreliability creates a problem (...) for much aesthetic testimony. Hence, most testimony about art does not have much epistemic value. The situation is somewhat different with respect to aesthetic testimony about nature, proofs, and theories. (shrink)

This volume builds on two recent developments in philosophy on the relationship between art and science: the notion of representation and the role of values in theory choice and the development of scientific theories. Its aim is to address questions regarding scientific creativity and imagination, the status of scientific performances--such as thought experiments and visual aids--and the role of aesthetic considerations in the context of discovery and justification of scientific theories. Several contributions focus on the concept of beauty as (...) employed by practising scientists, the aesthetic factors at play in science and their role in decision making. Other essays address the question of scientific creativity and how aesthetic judgment resolves the problem of theory choice by employing aesthetic criteria and incorporating insights from both objectivism and subjectivism. The volume also features original perspectives on the role of the sublime in science and sheds light on the empirical work studying the experience of the sublime in science and its relation to the experience of understanding. The Aesthetics of Science tackles these topics from a variety of novel and thought-provoking angles. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in philosophy of science and aesthetics, as well as other subdisciplines such as epistemology and philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that aesthetic testimony can provide aesthetic knowledge. This leaves us with the question: why does getting aesthetic knowledge by experience – by seeing a painting up close, or witnessing a performance first-hand – nevertheless seem superior to aesthetic testimony? I argue that it is due to differences in their epistemic value; in the diversity of epistemic goods each one provides. Aesthetic experience, or the experience of art or other aesthetic objects, affords (...) multiple, distinctive epistemic goods whereas aesthetic testimony affords less. In particular, it provides aesthetic knowledge of truths, a kind of propositional knowledge, as well as aesthetic knowledge of things, a kind of non-propositional knowledge. Although aesthetic experience is superior because it has more epistemic value, this doesn’t mean that aesthetic testimony provides weaker justification for aesthetic belief than aesthetic experience; the difference is evaluative, not normative. In this way, we can explain a key pessimistic intuition about aesthetic testimony – that it is inferior to aesthetic experience – whilst preserving the optimistic view that aesthetic testimony makes aesthetic knowledge available to others. The superior epistemic value of first-hand aesthetic experience is compatible with a number of important observations about aesthetic testimony, including the importance of aesthetic trust. (shrink)

Even though it’s frequently asserted that we are living in a golden age of scripted television, television as a medium is still not taken seriously as an artistic art form, nor has the stigma of television as “chewing gum for the mind” really disappeared. -/- Philosopher Martin Shuster argues that television is the modern art form, full of promise and urgency, and in New Television, he offers a strong philosophical justification for its importance. Through careful analysis of shows including The (...) Wire, Justified, and Weeds, among others; and European and Anglophone philosophers, such as Stanley Cavell, Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, and John Rawls; Shuster reveals how various contemporary television series engage deeply with aesthetic and philosophical issues in modernism and modernity. What unifies the aesthetic and philosophical ambitions of new television is a commitment to portraying and exploring the family as the last site of political possibility in a world otherwise bereft of any other sources of traditional authority; consequently, at the heart of new television are profound political stakes. (shrink)

Rational aesthetic deference becomes apparent when one person’s aesthetic belief gives another person a reason to move his own aesthetic belief in the direction of the other person. It occurs when one person’s aesthetic belief gives another person a normative reason to move your belief in the direction of mine, on epistemic grounds. In such a case, what the first person believes also provides a justification for the second person’s aesthetic belief. This kind of justification (...) is an indirect justification because it is based on reasons that merit deferring to someone else’s judgment, rather than on reasons that support.. (shrink)

Empirical findings may be relevant for aesthetic evaluation in at least two ways. First — within criticism — they may help us to identify the aesthetic value of objects. Second— whithin philosophy — they may help us to decide which theory of aesthetic value and evaluation to prefer. In this paper, I address both kinds of relevance. My focus is thereby on empirical evidence gathered, not by means of first-personal experiences, but by means of third-personal scientific investigations (...) of individual artworks or, more generally, our interaction with art. The main thesis to be defended is that third-personal empirical findings are of limited significance for both critical and philosophical aesthetics. Indeed, they matter only to the extent to which they draw our attention to features or facts that we then iden- tify, from our first-personal perspective, as aesthetically relevant — for instance, as reasons counting for or against certain ascriptions of aesthetic value, or as factors that causally influence our actual as- sessments and thus render them partly inadequate or irrational. This limited significance of empirical findings is in line with the rationalist approach to the formation and justification of aesthetic judgements, that I have already started to defend elsewhere. -/- With respect to critical aesthetics, one problem is that empirical investigations cannot capture the normativity of the aesthetic relevance of lower-level features or facts: the respective studies can tell us what we take to be reason-giving or valuable, but not what is reason-giving or valuable. Furthermore, we cannot use empirically knowable principles to infer the presence of aesthetic values or reasons on the basis of recognising measurable lower-level features because the only available principles are too specific to allow for their actual application to more than one existing object, or even for their actual formulation. For their antecedents make reference to a large number of very determinate properties, as well as sometimes to particular events of creation. The only exception are conceptual principles (such as ‘something symmetrical is balanced’) or default principles (such as ‘something elegant is, by default, beautiful’). But knowledge of these principles is of little inferential use due to the holistic character of the justificatory power of aesthetic reasons and, moreover, does not allow for empirical acquisition. -/- With respect to philosophical aesthetics, I start with considering the limits of evolutionary accounts of aesthetic value. Even if it is true that humans originally came to value artworks because they recognised that artworks reveal certain skills or features of artists (such as imaginativeness or resourcefulness) that are desirable in sexual partners, it does not value that our reasons for valuing art have not changed, or at least not become much more complex. In addition, the answer to the question of why we value art from an evolutionary perspective has no obvious bearing on the issue of how we should appreciate art from an aesthetic perspective, or what such aesthetic appreciation would consist in. On the other hand, experimental studies showing that our actual aesthetic evaluations are influenced by factors (such as exposure e ects, or knowledge of the prices of objects), that undermine the good standing of our responses, just reveal that it is more difficult than perhaps expected to form sound aesthetic judgements; and that we need to improve our future aesthetic judgements by diminishing as much as possible the impact of those factors. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that aesthetic testimony can provide aesthetic knowledge. This leaves us with the question: why does getting aesthetic knowledge by experience – by seeing a painting up close, or witnessing a performance first-hand – nevertheless seem superior to aesthetic testimony? I argue that it is due to differences in their epistemic value; in the diversity of epistemic goods each one provides. Aesthetic experience, or the experience of art or other aesthetic objects, affords (...) multiple, distinctive epistemic goods whereas aesthetic testimony affords less. In particular, it provides aesthetic knowledge of truths, a kind of propositional knowledge, as well as aesthetic knowledge of things, a kind of non-propositional knowledge. Although aesthetic experience is superior because it has more epistemic value, this doesn’t mean that aesthetic testimony provides weaker justification for aesthetic belief than aesthetic experience; the difference is evaluative, not normative. In this way, we can explain a key pessimistic intuition about aesthetic testimony – that it is inferior to aesthetic experience – whilst preserving the optimistic view that aesthetic testimony makes aesthetic knowledge available to others. The superior epistemic value of first-hand aesthetic experience is compatible with a number of important observations about aesthetic testimony, including the importance of aesthetic trust. (shrink)

We often derive aesthetic pleasure from nature as well as from works of art. Although our experiences of both are analogous in some respects, there are some important differences. Since nature is not created specifically for aesthetic enjoyment it can be appreciated in more various ways than art. Hence, the distinction between aesthetic and non-aesthetic experience is crucial in examining the aesthetic appreciation of nature. ;An appreciation of any object is considered aesthetic if it (...) is directed toward the sensuous surface of the object for its own sake. This notion of the aesthetic, however, does not necessarily preclude the aesthetic relevance of various conceptual considerations. Examples are provided to illustrate how associated facts can modify our perception of the object's sensuous surface. Thus, a variety of aesthetic appreciations of the same object are possible. ;Among various possible appreciations of an artwork, the range of appropriate responses is limited by cultural, historical, and institutional determinations. In contrast, nature lacks such determinations; consequently, aesthetic considerations in most cases cannot show that certain responses toward nature are inappropriate. Neither can we claim that certain aesthetic responses toward nature are improper because they do not help justify the preservation of nature, hence are ethically undesirable. An aesthetic justification for preserving nature, therefore, presupposes its ethical justification. ;Contrary to a widely held view, such ethical considerations against destroying nature are not suggested by the traditional Japanese love of nature. The Japanese traditionally have appreciated nature for its psychological, aesthetic, and metaphysical values and thus their love toward nature lacks an ethical dimension. I suggest instead that the most fundamental reason for preserving nature concerns its functional unity which is indispensable to our health and survival. In this sense, the aesthetic appreciation of nature that incorporates the scientific considerations regarding such unity helps us develop an ecologically sensitive attitude toward nature. (shrink)

Aesthetic attraction and artful execution of the object, careful design and seemingly blatant falsification by the creator, voluntarily accepted counterfeit imitation and celebration of a melancholy-filled illusion – these, and many other, often contradictory, particularities can describe one of the most complex aesthetic phenomena, that of fake ruins. Questions of perfection and mistake, accurate planning and permissive randomness, genuineness and authenticity – or the convincing justification of aesthetic experience despite the complete lack of them – profound references (...) to the nature of decay, the transience of all human creation and nostalgia can all be found around this object of art. In this article I analyse the fakeness of fake ruins with regard to the multiple consequences that this type of fake can contribute to the better understanding of both their aesthetics and the concept of mistake. (shrink)

In this essay I argue the extent to which meaning and judgment in aesthetics figures in Wittgenstein’s later conception of language, particularly in his conception of how philosophy might go about explaining the ordinary functioning of language. Following a review of some biographical and textual matters concerning Wittgenstein’s life with music, I outline the connection among (1) Wittgenstein’s discussions of philosophical clarity or perspicuity, (2) our attempts to give clarity to our aesthetic experiences by wording them, and (3) the (...) clarifying experience of the dawning of an aspect, which Wittgenstein pictures as the perception of an internal relation. By examining Wittgenstein’s use of “internal relation” from the Tractatus to his later writings, I come to challenge the still prevalent understanding of Wittgenstein’s appeals to grammar as an appeal to something given (e.g., to a set of grammatical rules). Instead, as I argue, Wittgensteinian appeals to grammatical criteria should be understood as modeled by the form of justification found in our conversations about art. (shrink)

Why does aesthetics matter in aesthetic education? What are the issues that this area of philosophy deals with, and what kind of questions does it raise in relation to art and the experience one has when s/he comes into contact with a work of art? Moreover, how can aesthetic theory provide sufficient justification for establishing aesthetic education as an autonomous and important field in education? In addressing these fundamental questions, the author: A) follows the development of aesthetics (...) as a series of transformations and continual engagement with the core issues related to art and the aesthetic experience. She argues that the task of aesthetic theory is to re-examine the conditions under which both art and the aesthetic experience are approached and, in the process, to challenge unsubstantiated claims and prejudices associated with them. B) The author also attempts to show how, due to its reflective and critical nature, aesthetics could become the foundation of aesthetic education. She argues that, as a result, questions of major importance for shaping the content and aims of aesthetic education can be fruitfully answered from the perspective of aesthetic theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 1-18 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Inquiry in Education:Community,Transcendence, and the Meaning of Pedagogy Hanan A. Alexander What does it mean to understand education as an art, to conceive inquiry in education aesthetically, or to assess pedagogy artistically? Answers to these queries are often grounded in Deweyan instrumentalism, neo-Marxist critical theory, or postmodern skepticism that tend to fall prey to (...) the paradoxes of radical relativism and extreme subjectivism. 1 This essay offers an alternative, communitarian account of education as an art and a neo-Kantian approach to aesthetic inquiry in education that avoids these difficulties.I begin by examining the emergence of aesthetic inquiry in education in the context of the larger qualitative revolution in educational research. The struggle to justify the qualitative turn in educational thought was initially framed in terms of two influential doctrines: that cognition and affect on the one hand, and truth, beauty, and goodness on the other, can be clearly distinguished from one another. Qualitative methods were conceived as an alternative research paradigm — a new epistemology — in keeping with Thomas Kuhn's influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2 Qualitative research, on this account, is a cognitive endeavor aimed at discovering a form of knowledge no less valid and reliable than that produced by quantitative methodologies. This way of framing the discussion led to the dichotomizing of positivist and postpositivist epistemologies, one embracing absolutism, objectivism, and rationalism, the other relativism, subjectivism, and romanticism. 3 This approach succeeded in pointing to some serious flaws in the prevailing positivist account of social research, yet it left qualitative inquiry dependent on versions of epistemological relativism and subjectivism that philosophers of knowledge have shown to be self-contradictory and incoherent. 4 [End Page 1]Conceiving of pedagogy in aesthetic terms challenges the prevailing positivist epistemology on a deeper level because it questions the accepted distinctions between thinking and feeling, and between truth, beauty, and goodness. If art can be conceived as a form of cognitive inquiry in addition to affective expression, then the appreciation and assessment of education as art requires not merely a new research paradigm or an alternative epistemology. Rather, it entails a reshuffling of our very conception of the relations between science, art, and ethics.These concepts can be reconceived to avoid the paradoxes of radical relativism and extreme subjectivism if we recognize with Iris Murdoch that sovereignty belongs to communal conceptions of a transcendent good. Educational arts empower people to express, appreciate, and critique collective conceptions of goodness, and artistic criticism of pedagogy celebrates a sacred dimension in educational thought and practice. 5 This approach occasions a fresh look not only at the practice, appreciation, and assessment of pedagogy, but also at the very meaning of the concept of education and the sorts of inquiry that can fruitfully inform its practice. Two Dogmas of Educational Research Two dogmas have dominated educational research for most of this century: the idea that there exists a clear disjunction between the cognitive and affective domains; and the supposed radical independence from one another of truth, beauty, and goodness. 6 According to a popular view rooted in these doctrines, the search for truth is a cognitive affair governed by science, while ethics and the arts are tied to the emotions and the humanities. Inquiry into the former is objective — reliability depends on method not researcher — and into the latter, subjective — results can vary according to interpreter. In this attitude, the cognitive domain dominates the public arena through the influence and prestige of science and measurement. 7Until the middle 1970s, behavioral and social research in education expressed these dichotomies in the distinction made between quantitative and qualitative research. The former was thought to be scientific and objective, the latter, humanistic and subjective. As qualitative inquiry came into its own in the 1980s, its proponents sought justification and legitimization in accord with cognitive dominance. 8 First, they argued that qualitative research methods had checks against error as rigorous as its quantitative counterparts. 9 Later, the cognitive domain... (shrink)

The article is part of a longer argument, the gist of which stands in direct opposition to the claim implied by the article’s title. The ambition of that larger whole is to offer a theory of art evaluation together with a theoretical model showing how aesthetic value judgements can be inter-subjectively tested and justified. Here the author therefore plays devil’s advocate by citing, strengthening, and inventing arguments against the very possibility of justification or explanation of aesthetic judgements. The (...) reason is his conviction that such arguments have not been fully met. The article is thus intended as a challenge: any theory of art evaluation which assumes, or tries to establish, that some works of art are better than others or that aesthetic judgements are not just statements expressing personal likes and dislikes, should show how such arguments can be demolished. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue against empiricist positions which claim that empirical evidence can be sufficient to defeasibly justify aesthetic judgements, or judgements about the adequacy of aesthetic judgements, or sceptical judgements about someone's capacity to form adequate aesthetic judgements. First, empirical evidence provides neither inferential, nor non-inferential justification for aesthetic opinions. Second, while empirical evidence may tell us how we do respond aesthetically to artworks, it cannot tell us how we should respond to them. And, (...) third, empirical insights into the irrationality of many of our aesthetic judgements do not warrant the sceptical conclusion that we ought to refrain from forming aesthetic opinions. As a consequence of these limitations to aesthetic empiricism, we should endorse the rationalist position that aesthetic criticism is largely a matter of reasoning and, moreover, a collective undertaking. (shrink)

Aesthetic non-inferentialism is the widely-held thesis that aesthetic judgements either are identical to, or are made on the basis of, sensory states like perceptual experience and emotion. It is sometimes objected to on the basis that testimony is a legitimate source of such judgements. Less often is the view challenged on the grounds that one’s inferences can be a source of aesthetic judgements. This paper aims to do precisely that. According to the theory defended here, aesthetic (...) judgements may be unreasoned, insofar as they are immediate judgements made on the basis of, and acquiring their justification from, causally prior sensory states. Yet they may also be reasoned, insofar as they may be the outputs of certain inferences. Crucially, a token aesthetic judgement may be unreasoned and reasoned, simultaneously. A key reason for allowing inference a serious role in aesthetic judgements emerges from reflection upon the nature of aesthetic expertise. (shrink)

Many people claim that we can gain knowledge from reading novels and other forms of narrative fiction. In a trivial sense, this claim seems uncontroversial. There is no doubt that reading Pride and Prejudice can teach me, for example, what the novel is about or give me some insight into the character of Regency English. This is because a novel, like any other text, constitutes direct evidence for propositions about its own content and language. But it is widely questioned whether (...) such a work could ever give us knowledge of any of the general propositions it expresses about the world outside the text, for it is commonly held that fictional narratives do not have the resources to justify such propositions, however.. (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)

This essay counters the claim, made by Arnold Isenberg, Mary Mothersill, and others, that there can be no straightforward justification of critical evaluations of artworks, because there can be no critical laws. My argument is that if we adopt an Aristotelian view of the value of artworks, the problem of critical laws is reduced to a mere problem of scope and is easily solved. An Aristotelian system of kind classification, which groups artworks according to common formal and narrative purposes, provides (...) the mechanism by which we can limit the scope of critical laws in a non-arbitrary way, one that is in keeping with the actual practices of art historians and critics. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the possibility of an objectivism for aesthetic judgements capable of incorporating certain ‘subjectivist’ elements of aesthetic experience. The discussion focuses primarily on a desired cognitivism for aesthetic judgements, rather than on any putative realism of aesthetic properties. Two cognitivist theories of aesthetic judgements are discussed, one subjectivist, the other objectivist. It is argued that whilst the subjectivist theory relies too heavily upon analogies with secondary qualities, the objectivist account, which allows (...) for some such analogies at the epistemological level, is too quick to ground aesthetic judgements in perceptual experiences alone. Further, it is held that aesthetic justification can, contra the objectivist theory under scrutiny, be based on an appeal to generally available justifying reasons without overthrowing the non-inferential character of aesthetic judgements. This possibility relies on a clearly established delineation between (i) aesthetic perception and aesthetic judgement, (ii) justifying reasons and explaining reasons, and (iii) judgement-making and judgement-justification. (shrink)

This article is critical of “bioethics” as it is widely understood and taught, noting in particular an emphasis given to philosophical justification, reason and rationality. It is proposed that “balancing” bioethics be achieved by giving greater weight to practice and the aesthetic: defined in terms of sensory perception, emotion and feeling. Each of those three elements is elaborated as a non-cognitive capacity and, when taken together, comprise aesthetic sensitivity and responsiveness. This is to recognise the aesthetic as (...) a productive element in bioethics as practice. Contributions from the philosophy of art and aesthetics are drawn into the discussion to bring depth to an understanding of “the aesthetic”. This approach is buttressed by philosophers – including Foucault and 18th century German philosophers – who recognized a link between ethics and aesthetics. The article aims to give substance to a claim that bioethics necessarily comprises a cognitive component, relating to reason, and a non-cognitive component that draws on aesthetic sensibility and relates to practice. A number of advantages of bioethics, understood to explicitly acknowledge the aesthetic, are proffered. Having defined bioethics in conventional terms, there is discussion of the extent to which other approaches to bioethics recognize aesthetic sensitivity in their practice. It is apparent that they do so to varying extents although not always explicitly. By examining this aspect of applied ethics, the paper aims to draw attention to aesthetic sensitivity and responsiveness as integral to ethical and effective health care. (shrink)

Both for Kant and for Nietzsche, aesthetics must not be considered as a systematic science based merely on logical premises but rather as a set of intuitively attained artistic ideas that constitute or reconstitute the sensible perceptions and supersensible representations into a new whole. Kantian and Nietzschean aesthetics are both aiming to see beyond the forms of objects to provide explanations for the nobility and sublimity of human art and life. We can safely say that Kant and Nietzsche used the (...) dualities of the beautiful/sublime and Apollonian/Dionysian to advocate their general philosophical worldview, and that the initial formation (in Observations and The Birth of Tragedy) and final dissolution (in the Critique of Judgment and Zarathustra and other later works) of these dualities are determined by the gradually established telos of their philosophical endeavor. Therefore, by observing the evolution of these so-called dualities, Kaplama gathers important clues as to how Kant’s and Nietzsche’s aesthetics transformed into different ways to affirm human art and life. On the one hand, Kaplama argues, the Dionysian came to be the heart and soul of Nietzschean aesthetics and ethics, and the Apollonian (or the formal drive of individuation) was reduced into a mere aesthetic criterion. On the other, Kant treats the sublime (which is originally an idea-producing feeling and/or judgment) as a mere appendix to his Critique of Judgment and aesthetic theory teleologically reducing it into its possible moral consequences. This is why Schopenhauer calls the sublime “by far the most excellent thing in the Critique of Judgment” which touches on the real problem of aesthetics very closely but does not provide a real solution for it. Kant’s forced teleological move is to make his theory of aesthetic judgment stand as a ‘reaffirmation’ of the earlier ethical justification he believed to have accomplished in the first two Critiques and the Groundwork where he defends an affirmation of human life through a teleological morality centered on the principle of free-will. In contrast, Nietzsche’s aesthetics (particularly the Dionysian) guides his ethics and metaphysics again through defining an ideal human nature without which ethos would be static and meaningless, lacking the ability to move and change and represent the tragic pathos of human life. (shrink)

Salim Kemal clarifies the nature of aesthetic judgements and their epistemological status, and examines the scope of Kant's justification of their validity.

The same person who claims to be a relativist about musical beauty—who claims that all musical works are equally ‘valid’ and beautiful---adores certain musical works while detesting others. And the same person who claims to be a relativist about personal beauty—who claims that all people are beautiful, if only ‘on the inside’---finds certain people intensely attractive and finds others equally intensely repellent. And the same person who is guilty of the one hypocrisy is almost always guilty of the other. So (...) we are dealing with two hypocrisies---two ‘open secrets’, each of which has a social justification while lacking an alethic or logical justification---that parallel each other. And that is because the one hypocrisy is really just a proxy for the other: relativism about musical beauty—which is just an absurd purely philosophical position---is really just a proxy for relativism about female beauty—which is not an absurd philosophical position, but a deeply important social protocol that is rooted in the depths of female psychology. (shrink)

The article follows Kant’s different views on aesthetics ranging from the pre-critical period to the Critique of the Power of Judgement. It argues that John Zammito’s psychological explanation of why Kant in the third Critique developed an argument for the transcendental justification of judgements of taste is unconvincing. As an alternative, the article shows how Kant in his published pre-critical discussions of aesthetics was relying upon empiricist sources while he in private comments turned to consider the culture critique of Rousseau. (...) Kant’s preoccupation with questions of culture critique, it is argued, was an important reason to enlarge the doctrines of transcendental philosophy with a third Critique containing a transcendental aesthetics of beauty. Additionally, it is pointed out an interesting similarity throughout the development of Kant’s philosophy. In 1765 and in the third Critique Kant was concerned to keep philosophy and judgements of taste apart from science. (shrink)

Polanyi insisted that scientific knowledge was intensely personal in nature, though held with universal intent. His insights regarding the personal values of beauty and morality in science are first enunciated. These are then explored for their relevance to engineering. It is shown that the practice of engineering is also governed by aesthetics and ethics. For example, Polanyi’s three spheres of morality in science—that of the individual scientist, the scientific community and the wider society—has parallel entities in engineering. The existence of (...) shared values in engineering is also demonstrated, in aesthetics through an example that shows convergence of practitioner opinion to solutions that represent accepted models of aesthetics; and in ethics through the recognition that many professional engineering institutions hold that the safety of the public supersedes the interests of the client. Such professional consensus can be seen as justification for studying engineering aesthetics and ethics as inter-subjective disciplines. (shrink)

The article is part of a longer argument, the gist of which stands in direct opposition to the claim implied by the article’s title. The ambition of that larger whole is to offer a theory of art evaluation together with a theoretical model showing how aesthetic value judgements can be inter-subjectively tested and justified. Here the author therefore plays devil’s advocate by citing, strengthening, and inventing arguments against the very possibility of justification or explanation of aesthetic judgements. The (...) reason is his conviction that such arguments have not been fully met. The article is thus intended as a challenge: any theory of art evaluation which assumes, or tries to establish, that some works of art are better than others or that aesthetic judgements are not just statements expressing personal likes and dislikes, should show how such arguments can be demolished. (shrink)