The British Journal of Aesthetics - recent issues

The Propositional Challenge to Aesthetics

Dilworth, J. — 2008-04-02

It is generally accepted that Picasso might have used a different canvas as the vehicle for his painting Guernica, and also that the artwork Guernica itself necessarily represents a certain historical episode—rather than, say, a bowl of fruit. I argue that such a conjunctive acceptance entails a broadly propositional view of the nature of representational artworks. In addition, I argue—via a comprehensive examination of possible alternatives—that, perhaps surprisingly, there simply is no other available conjunctive view of the nature of representational artworks in general.

Immoralism and the Anti-Theoretical View

Stecker, R. — 2008-04-02

Can a moral defect be an artistic virtue? Can it make a positive contribution to artistic value? Further, if this can happen on occasion, does this imply that moral value has no systematic connection to artistic value since every conceivable relation between them is possible? The idea that moral defects can sometimes be artistic virtues has received a fair number of defenders recently and so has the anti-theoretical view that there is no systematic relation between artistic and moral value. But I think immoralism—as the first of these views is called—is mistaken and I will try to show that no good reason has been offered to believe it. If immoralism is wrong, the anti-theoretical view at best devolves into moderate moralism—the idea that moral defects sometimes, but not always, are responsible for artistic defects.

Collingwood'S 'Performance' Theory Of Art

Davies, D. — 2008-04-02

Even if we reject the Wollheimian reading of Collingwood as an Idealist in the ontology of art, it remains puzzling how his non-Idealist ontology fits with his idea of art as expression. In trying to clarifying these matters, I argue that (i) the work of art, for Collingwood, is an activity, not the product of an activity; (ii) puzzling features of the Principles arise from attempts to reconcile this claim with the idea of art as expression while preserving the art/craft distinction; and (iii) Collingwood's principal concern in the Principles is with the role of imagination in experience.

Pictorial Space and the Possibility of Art

Crowther, P. — 2008-04-02

This paper addresses the cognitive status of making pictures, rather than their informational function. Discussion centres on the structure of pictorial space. Space of this kind is constituted from the relation between pictorial content's modal plasticity (that is, its capacity to represent actualities, possibilities, and nomological and metaphysical impossibilities) and the formative role of planar structure and idioms of recessional organization. On the basis of this, it is argued that alternative creative realizations and aesthetic significance are inherent to the structure of pictorial space itself qua pictorial. Such space is conceptually connected to the possibility of visual art.

(Kivy on) The Form-Content Identity Thesis

Jolley, K. D. — 2008-04-02

In his Philosophies of Art Peter Kivy investigates the unity of form and content in the arts, particularly in poetry. While Kivy says much with which I happily agree, I sadly disagree with him about the impossibility of form–content identities. Kivy's arguments fail to compel: there are other ways of understanding form–content identities and the need for them that has been felt by artists and critics.

How Kant Might Explain Ugliness

McConnell, S. — 2008-04-02

A number of recent studies have claimed to explain how Kant can or cannot accommodate pure judgements of ugliness in his aesthetic theory. In this paper I critically review the arguments on each side of the debate and then develop a new account of how Kant might explain the pure judgement of the ugly, namely, by appeal to the quickening of the faculties in their harmonious free play. Some implications and applications of such an explanation are then explored, including a rethink of the nature of beauty and ugliness.

Philosophy and Conceptual Art

Hanson, L. — 2008-04-02

Only the Promise of Happiness

Graham, G. — 2008-04-02

Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine

Korsmeyer, C. — 2008-04-02

Aesthetics and Architecture

Goldblatt, D. — 2008-04-02

The Subject in Art: Portraiture and the Birth of the Modern

Reed-Tsocha, K. — 2008-04-02

Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics

Wilson, R. — 2008-04-02

Serene Greed of the Eye: Leon Battista Alberti and the Philosophical Foundations of Renaissance Architectural Theory

Cracolici, S. — 2008-04-02

Books Received

2008-04-02

Journals Received

2008-04-02

Fashion Seen as Something Imitative and Foreign

Pappas, N. — 2007-12-26

Philosophers have recently begun to write about fashion in dress. They acknowledge that philosophy traditionally ignored the subject altogether or else disparaged fashion. They do not observe that those past philosophers who slighted fashion characterized it as mass imitativeness; but in fact that one-sided characterization is what permitted commentators to overlook innovativeness in fashion. Indeed the figure of the foreigner that recurs in philosophical remarks about fashion only makes sense given a reading of fashion as imitative uniformity. The foreigner becomes a deus ex machina accounting for the newness in fashion that the imitative model renders otherwise inexplicable.

Humean Critics: Real or Ideal?

Ross, S. — 2007-12-26

This paper attempts a rational reconstruction of the Humean notion of an ideal critic. Claiming that the traits of practice and comparison can only arise through the gradual accumulation of experience, I argue that Humean critics are real, not ideal. After discussing the nature of perfection and the relation of delicacy to the other Human traits, I propose two supplements to Hume's list: imaginative fluency and emotional responsiveness. I close by examining a trio of challenges to my view and supporting a mitigated aesthetic nonrealism.

The Pervasiveness of the Aesthetic in Ordinary Experience

Irvin, S. — 2007-12-26

I argue that the experiences of everyday life are replete with aesthetic character, though this fact has been largely neglected within contemporary aesthetics. As against Dewey's account of aesthetic experience, I suggest that the fact that many everyday experiences are simple, lacking in unity or closure, and characterized by limited or fragmented awareness does not disqualify them from aesthetic consideration. Aesthetic attention to the domain of everyday experience may provide for lives of greater satisfaction and contribute to our ability to pursue moral aims.

Immoralism and the Valence Constraint

Harold, J. — 2007-12-26

Immoralists hold that in at least some cases, moral flaws in artworks can increase their aesthetic value. They deny what I call the valence constraint: the view that any effect that an artwork's moral value has on its aesthetic merit must have the same valence. The immoralist offers three arguments against the valence constraint. In this paper I argue that these arguments fail, and that this failure reveals something deep and interesting about the relationship between cognitive and moral value. In the final section I offer a positive argument for the valence constraint.

Piece for the End of Time: In Defence of Musical Ontology

Kania, A. — 2007-12-26

Aaron Ridley has recently attacked the study of musical ontology—an apparently fertile area in the philosophy of music. I argue here that Ridley's arguments are unsound. There are genuinely puzzling ontological questions about music, many of which are closely related to questions of musical value. While it is true that musical ontology must be descriptive of pre-existing musical practices and that some debates, such as that over the creatability of musical works, have little consequence for questions of musical value, none of this implies that these debates themselves are without value.

Defending 'Defending Musical Perdurantism'

Caplan, B., Matheson, C. — 2007-12-26

Julian Dodd has recently objected to musical perdurantism—the view that a musical work is a fusion of performances—on the grounds that it entails that one cannot hear all of a musical work and that a musical work can have temporal parts that belong to different ontological categories. We defend musical perdurantism from both objections.

Kaufman on Art, Family Resemblances, and Wittgenstein

Tilghman, B. — 2007-12-26

Kaufman describes the current debate on the possibility of a definition of art between the theorists and the anti-theorist Wittgensteinians. The Wittgensteinian reliance on ‘family resemblances’ is a serious objection to theoretical definitions. Wittgenstein, however, is said to be unable to give a proper account of the ‘inner experience’ encountered in art. By way of response, it is urged that attention to Wittgenstein himself will show that there are misunderstandings of the idea of family resemblances and that Wittgenstein's writings provide all we need to understand the depth of ‘inner experience’.

Critical Study: Reading and Performing

Feagin, S. L. — 2007-12-26

The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink

Cooper, D. E. — 2007-12-26

Art and Architecture: A Place Between

Graham, G. — 2007-12-26

Double Vision: Moral Philosophy and Shakespearean Drama

Altieri, C. — 2007-12-26

Unquiet Understanding: Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics

Hodge, J. — 2007-12-26

Action, Art, History: Engagements with Arthur C. Danto

Gal, M. — 2007-12-26

Aesthetic Life The Past and Present of Artistic Cultures

Ground, I. — 2007-12-26

Books Received

2007-12-26

Journals Received

2007-12-26

The Intersubjective Validity of Aesthetic Judgements

Budd, M. — 2007-10-03

All aesthetic judgements, whether descriptive, evaluative or some combination of the two, and whatever they might be about, whether works of art, artefacts of other kinds, or natural things, declare themselves to be, not mere announcements or expressions of personal responses to the objects of judgement, but claims meriting the agreement of others. Despite the frequent appeal in everyday life to the nihilistic interpretation of the saying ‘It's all a matter of taste’, the doctrine of aesthetic nihilism—the view that such claims are never warranted—does not merit serious attention. What is needed is an articulation of the various kinds of content of aesthetic judgements, one that will reveal what their claim to intersubjective validity amounts to and enable an assessment of what the proper limits of the claim might be. This clarification is what I attempt to provide. After some introductory definitions and classifications, the principal focus of the first part of the paper is descriptive aesthetic judgements, and one issue that figures large is the proper understanding of those judgements of this kind which are expressed in sentences that are intended to be understood metaphorically. A short bridge passage identifies an aesthetic judgement whose content is indicative of the content of evaluative aesthetic judgements of all kinds, and in particular evaluative aesthetic judgements about works of art, which the second part of the paper focuses on. Real illumination of these requires an identification of the aim of art (as such): I offer an account of this aim, which I defend against certain objections that it is liable to attract, and I use it to throw light not just on singular but also on comparative judgements of artistic value. I conclude with some remarks about purely aesthetic value and specifically artistic value and about similarities and differences between evaluative aesthetic judgements of works of art and evaluative aesthetic judgements of works of nature.

Towards A Virtue Theory of Art

Goldie, P. — 2007-10-03

In this paper I sketch a virtue theory of art, analogous to a virtue theory of ethics along Aristotelian lines. What this involves is looking beyond a parochial conception of art understood as work of art, as product, to include intentions, motives, skills, traits, and feelings, all of which can be expressed in artistic activity. The clusters of traits that go to make up the particular virtues of art production and of art appreciation are indeed virtues in part because, when they are expressed in artistic activity, that activity is chosen for its own sake, ‘under the concept of art’; and also they are virtues in part because, when they are so expressed, the activities are themselves partly constitutive of human well-being, along with other activities, including leading an ethical life, and what Aristotle called contemplation. With a virtue theory of art before us, we can begin to see the point of art, to see why art matters to us as human beings.

The Cluster Account of Art Reconsidered

Meskin, A. — 2007-10-03

Berys Gaut has recently articulated and defended a putatively anti-definitional ‘cluster’ theory of art. In the first part of this paper, I argue that Gaut's version of the cluster account is flawed. The key notion of ‘counting toward the application of a concept’ is formulated in such a way that a range of apparently irrelevant properties will count as criterial for the concept of art. Moreover, there does not appear to be any quick fix to this problem. I then turn to an exploration of the relationship between the cluster theory and the possibility of defining art. Gaut has claimed that the truth of the cluster account would provide an independent basis for rejecting the possibility of an adequate definition of art. I argue that this is not the case. But while the truth of the cluster account is consistent with definition, I also argue that it would not entail the definability of art in any ordinary sense.

Musical Listening and the Fine Art of Engagement

Morrison, C. — 2007-10-03

When we listen to music, what do we listen to and for? How do we listen? How well do we listen and how do we listen well? This paper suggests that ‘modes of engagement’ are the active, operational means by which listeners experience music and that listening experiences more often than not involve multiple interacting modes rather than a fixed mode throughout. Modes of engagement may be voluntarily employed or involuntarily adopted; they may be technical or descriptive; they may involve explicitly musical details and relationships, or they may seem more peripheral to the music. In the end, though, successive, simultaneous, and interacting modes of engagement are said to define unique and meaningful trajectories through music as heard.

The Perception of Beauty in Hutcheson's First Inquiry: A Response To James Shelley

Kivy, P. — 2007-10-03

James Shelley argues that the perception of beauty, as Hutcheson characterizes it, in the first of the two treatises that comprise the Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, that is, the Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design, is not what I called in The Seventh Sense, ‘non-epistemic’ perception but, rather, ‘epistemic’ perception through and through. Having studied Shelley's arguments with care, and consulted the relevant primary sources yet again, I am still convinced that the best reading of Hutcheson's second Inquiry, in the first edition of 1725, has Hutcheson espousing a non-epistemic account of our perception of what he calls ‘absolute beauty’. And so I argue in the present paper.

Critical Notice: The Objective Eye

Savile, A. — 2007-10-03

Contemplating Art: Essays in Aesthetics

Matravers, D. — 2007-10-03

Nietzsche on Art

Young, J. — 2007-10-03

Works of Music: An Essay in Ontology

Caplan, B. — 2007-10-03

Reflections on Aesthetic Judgment and other Essays

Saatela, S. — 2007-10-03

Aesthetics of Appearing

Guay, R. — 2007-10-03

Logic and the Art of Memory: The Quest for a Universal Language

Guter, E. — 2007-10-03

Books Received

2007-10-03

Journals Received

2007-10-03