Abstract

Jean Gabbert Harrell argues persuasively in her book, Soundtracks, that aesthetic theories have often been deficient because they have tried to be too inclusive. That is, the experience of music is profoundly different from that of painting, for instance, and that it is wrong to compare them. Her reasoning for this viewpoint is based in part on a recognition that auditory perception is fully developed in humans prior to either visual or significant tactual perception, bringing a genetic, developmental aspect to her discussion. In its genetic orientation toward sensory development and its concentration exclusively on auditory perception, Soundtracks provides an argument against the relativism of aesthetic judgment in auditory art that has never before been suggested.