Cursory review of the reception of Adorno's unfinished Aesthetic Theory up to the present suggests that an introduction to the book's major concerns, its structure (or lack thereof), and its concepts is missing to this date. Going back to Fredric Jameson's watershed contribution Late Marxism: Adorno, Or, the Persistence of the Dialectic (1990), the article attempts to provide the introduction missing to date. It is organized around key concepts of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory, beginning with the guiding juxtaposition of Kant's (...) class='Hi'>formalist aesthetics vs. Hegel's content aesthetics and the various notions of the End of Art, followed by two sections on art and its respective others (from the culture industry and art appreciation to nature and natural beauty), and concluding with the axiom of suffering and its impact on the key notions of semblance, expression, and mimesis. (shrink)

The essays deal with the aesthetic and aesthetics; Bourdieu's critique of aesthetics form and content in the arts, musical formalism, the nature and value of literature, Heidegger's philosophy of art, postmodernism and history, Lyotard and the sublime, and the challenge of evolutionary psychology to the humanities.

This book offers, for the first time in aesthetics, a comprehensive account of aestheticism of the 19<SUP>th</SUP> century as a philosophical theory of its own right. Taking philosophical and art-historical viewpoints, this cross-disciplinary book presents aestheticism as the foundational movement of modernist aesthetics of the 20<SUP>th</SUP> century. Emerging in the writings of the foremost aestheticists - Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, James Whistler, and their formalist successors such as Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and Clement Greenberg - aestheticism offers (...) a uniquely synthetic definition of art. It captures the artwork’s relations between form and content, art’s independent ontology and autonomy, art’s internal completeness, criticism, immunity to recruitment, the uniqueness of each medium, and musicality, as well as the logical-theoretical affiliation of art for art’s sake to epistemology, ethics and philosophy of language.<BR> Those are used by Michalle Gal to formulate a definition of art in terms of a theory of Deep Formalism, setting aestheticism, which aspires to preserve the artistic medium, as a critique of the current linguistic-conceptual aesthetics that developed after the linguistic turn of aesthetics. (shrink)

The article presents Hanslick’s aesthetic formalism as the starting point of the contemporary aesthetics of music. His book, written in the 19th century, is considered contemporary because it still proves to be influential and fruitful in the contemporary theoretical circles, especially in the modern analytic aesthetics of music, where it is widely cited and discussed. The article positions Hanslick’s book in relation to his nearest predecessors Kant and Herbart, and to the neighbouring area where the formalistic view appeared, (...) namely in Fidler’s visual formalism in fine arts. It is shown that by being the first piece of writing to attempt to systematically and comprehensively determine the essence and the content of music, and the criteria for evaluation of musical worth, Hanslick’s book sets the foundation for a rigorous examination of the aesthetics of music, and also breaks off with the widely ingrained preconceptions of music, which were in themselves an obstacle to establishing the aesthetics of music as a scientific discipline. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.3 (2004) 19-35 [Access article in PDF] Moderate Formalism As a Theory of the Aesthetic Glenn Parsons Art history and art criticism explore, classify, and critique artworks from a number of perspectives. Their cultural, political, and moral significance are all of interest in this regard. This variety of perspectives notwithstanding, one way of considering artworks retains a central position for these disciplines. Despite (...) perennial shifting in conceptions of the purpose and nature of art, the aesthetic appreciation of art remains at the center of our practices for classifying and evaluating it. Without claiming that the aesthetic dimension of art is the only proper focus of its appreciation or that the aesthetic is a very clearly understood notion, we may say that some degree of contact with the aesthetic is what makes our consideration of an artwork an appreciation of it as art, rather than as historical artifact, manifestation of cultural ideology, and so on.In light of the central position of aesthetic appreciation in art history and criticism, an important concern regarding aesthetic education is what sort of knowledge, if any, is required for appropriate aesthetic appreciation of an artwork. Is knowledge of the historical context of an artwork required for appropriate aesthetic appreciation of it, or is its historical dimension a separate matter, perhaps worthy of appreciation in its own right but not relevant to the appreciation of the artistic achievement of the work? Virtually all modern theories of the aesthetic agree that in order to appreciate an artwork aesthetically, we need to perceive attentively certain of its perceptual properties, such as its shape and color. They differ, however, on whether such attentive perception is sufficient for appropriate aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand we have cognitivist views, which assert that, in addition to this sort of attentive perception, certain kinds of knowledge about the object of appreciation are required for appropriate aesthetic appreciation. On the other hand we have non-cognitivist views, which deny that such knowledge is necessary for appropriate aesthetic appreciation. According to the latter, the aesthetic qualities of an artwork, such as its gracefulness, [End Page 19] are formal in the sense that they depend only upon those perceptual properties, such as color, shape, and size, that constitute the "sensory surface" of the work.1 These properties, apparent to the attentive observer, are the only properties of the object to which one need attend in order to appreciate its gracefulness. Other properties of the painting, such as its depicting German peasants or having been rendered by a communist, are irrelevant to its aesthetic qualities, and knowledge about them is not required for its appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Today this non-cognitivist position is generally called formalism.2In the twentieth century, philosophical aesthetics largely rejected such views in favor of models of aesthetic appreciation with a richer cognitive element. This movement away from formalism has a number of dimensions, including the efforts of feminists to establish the aesthetic value of activist art, the desire to make sense of well-established practices of art appreciation, a growing awareness of the role that beliefs play in our aesthetic responses, the effort to do justice to the aesthetic character of the natural environment, and conceptual difficulties internal to formalism itself.3 Recently, however, some philosophers have revived the spirit, if not the letter, of formalism. Acknowledging widespread criticism of early formalists, such as Clive Bell, they concede that these theorists overstated the case when they claimed that all aesthetic qualities depend on nothing beyond the sensory surface of the object.4 The new formalists, in contrast, claim only that some aesthetic qualities are of this character. They call this doctrine moderate formalism, in contrast to the extreme formalism defended by earlier formalists.5By adopting this more modest position, moderate formalists can accommodate many of the criticisms that led to the decline of extreme formalism. However, if it turns out that only a handful of relatively unimportant aesthetic qualities are formal in nature, then moderate formalism would hardly make an impressively "formalist" theory of the... (shrink)

In the philosophy and psychology of perception there exists a long-standing debate about the detachability of the visual from the conceptual contents of perception. The article analyses the implications of this dilemma for the attribution of aesthetic properties independent of the classification of aesthetic objects and the possibility of aesthetic formalism.

Due to its considerable length, this article is being published in two parts. This first part briefly discusses the intriguing relationship between John Dewey and Albert Barnes, as well as the circumstances behind the creation of the Barnes Foundation and its innovative art-education programs. This is followed by examination of the prominent roles of aesthetic formalism and organic unity in Barnes's writings about the arts and their less technical, more contextual positioning in Dewey's aesthetics. To end Part 1 of (...) the article, a similar dynamic is revealed in Barnes's and Dewey's ultimately disparate understandings of the relationship between form and content in the arts.In its heyday during the first part of the... (shrink)

Due to its considerable length, this article has been published in two parts. Part 1, which appeared in the previous issue of the journal, discussed the intriguing relationship between John Dewey and Albert Barnes, as well as the circumstances behind the creation of the Barnes Foundation and its art education programs. Following this, it established both areas of convergence and divergence in Barnes’s and Dewey’s understandings of aesthetic formalism, organic unity, and form and content in the arts. Part 2 (...) now builds on these findings to explore important differences in their respective treatments of the significant sociocultural context of art. After returning briefly to the question of aesthetic formalism in... (shrink)

Rachel Zuckert - The Purposiveness of Form: A Reading of Kant's Aesthetic Formalism - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 599-622 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents The Purposiveness of Form: A Reading of Kant's Aesthetic Formalism Rachel Zuckert In the "critique of aesthetic judgment," Kant claims that when we find an object beautiful, we are appreciating its "purposive form." Many of Kant's readers have found this claim one of his least interesting (...) and most easily criticized claims about aesthetic experience. Detractors hold up his aesthetics as a paradigmatic case of narrow formalism; and even many admirers of Kant's aesthetics take Kant's claims about form to be problematic, but argue that they are inessential to his aesthetics . Though these critics come to differing evaluations of Kant's aesthetics as a whole, they agree on two points. First, interpretively: that when Kant claims that it is the "form" of an object we find beautiful, he means that in aesthetic appreciation, we find certain spatial and/or temporal properties aesthetically pleasing—and that such properties are exclusively responsible for an object's beauty. Second, evaluatively: that Kant is wrong, at least about this. In this paper, I shall propose that we need not endorse either claim. I shall argue that one may interpret Kant's.. (shrink)

This essay presents the Aestheticism of the 19th century as the foundational movement of modernist-formalist aesthetics of the 20th century. The main principle of this movement is what I denominate “productive opacity”. Aestheticism has not been recognized as a philosophical aesthetic theory. However, its definition of artwork as an exclusive kind of form—a deep, opaque form—is among the most precise ever given in the discipline. This essay offers an interpretation of aestheticism as a formalist theory, referred to (...) here as “deep formalism”, focusing on the thinking of leading aestheticists, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and James Whistler. These three thinkers defined artwork as a form saturated with an inextricable content, viz. opaque form. (shrink)

Hegel’s aesthetic ideal is the perfect integration of form and content within a work of art. This ideal is incompatible with the predominant 20th-century principle of formalist criticism, that form is the sole important factor in a work of art. Although the formalist dichotomy between form and content has been criticized on philosophical grounds, that does not suffice to justify Hegel’s ideal. Justifying Hegel’s ideal requires detailed art criticism that shows how form and content are, (...) and why they should be, integrated in good works of art. This essay provides some of this criticism. By focusing on the work of the contemporary artist, Robert Turner, this criticism further suggests that Hegel’s aesthetic ideal is still relevant. Moreover, the nature of Turner’s work suggests that art is still relevant in our day in ways Hegel did not expect. (shrink)

A clear-cut concept of the aesthetic is elusive. Kant’s Critique of Judgment presents one of the more comprehensive aesthetic theories from which we can extract a set of features, some of which pertain to aesthetic experience and others to the logical structure of aesthetic judgment. When considered together, however, these features present a number of tensions and apparent contradictions. Kant’s own attempt to dissolve these apparent contradictions or dichotomies was not entirely satisfactory as it rested on a vague notion of (...) indeterminacy. He addressed the emerging tensions with his distinction between pure and dependent beauty, which is a distinction I believe a satisfactory theory of aesthetic judgment would reveal as unfounded. In addition, Kant left a crucial connection unaccounted for. This was the connection between the two aspects that he envisaged characterized an aesthetic judgment. The two aspects to which I refer are the “purposiveness of form” provided by the Imagination and the associated mental content,which Kant called “aesthetic ideas.” More recent aesthetic theories treat only a subset of the features addressed in Kant’s aesthetic theory. Even so, the standard aesthetic theories, such as expressivism, cognitivism, and formalism, entrench the kind of thinking that grounds these dichotomies. In contrast, I will demonstrate that a naturalized aesthetic theory can accommodate all the features suggested by the Kantian analysis in such a way that they are shown to be complementary rather than contradictory. (shrink)

Most people encounter art images as digital reproductions on a computer screen instead of as originals in a museum or gallery. With the development of digital technologies, high-resolution artworks can be accessed anywhere and anytime by a large number of viewers. Since these digital images depict the same content and are attributed to the same artist as the original, it is often implicitly assumed that their aesthetic evaluation will be similar. When it comes to the digital reproductions of art, (...) however, it is also obvious that reproductions do differ from the originals in various aspects. Besides image quality, resolution, and format, the most obvious change is in the representation of color. The effects of subjectively varying surface-level image features on art evaluation have not been clearly assessed. To address this gap, we compare the evaluation of digital reproductions of 16 expressionist and impressionist paintings manipulated to have a high color saturation vs. a saturation similar to the original. We also investigate the impact of viewing time and expertise, two other aspects that may impact the perception of art in online contexts. Moreover, we link these dimensions to a recent model of aesthetic experience [the Vienna Integrated Model of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processes in Art Perception ]. Results suggest that color saturation does not exert a major influence on liking. Cognitive and emotional aspects, however, are affected – to different extents for experts and laypersons. For laypersons, the increase in color saturation led to more positive assessments of an artwork, whereas it resulted in increased confusion for art experts. This insight is particularly important when it comes to reproducing artworks digitally. Depending on the intended use, increasing or decreasing the color saturation of the digitally reproduced image might be most appropriate. We conclude with a discussion of these findings and address the question of why empirical aesthetics requires more precise dimensions to better understand the subtle processes that take place in the perception of today’s digitally reproduced art environment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beyond the Aesthetic Garden: Politics and Culture on the Margins of Fin-de Siècle ViennaScott SpectorThe rhetorical structure supporting Carl E. Schorske’s seminal Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture 1 is frankly exposed. The argument—which may have single-handedly changed the discipline of cultural history—is an apparently simple one, and it is reasserted in this series of essays on diverse areas of cultural activity through the use of recurring metaphors. Schorske’s (...) famous thesis (modern culture as political surrogate for a marginalized liberal bourgeoisie) is represented through constantly resurfacing dichotomies: liberal political engagement and (vs.) the aesthetic “garden” of modern art; history and (vs.) desire and “the psyche”; politics and (vs.) culture. All of this is well known. In this essay I want both to assess our necessary debt to Schorske’s powerful work and to suggest what lies beyond it. If at the end of our own century we want to rethink Schorske’s founding project of an interdisciplinary cultural history of Central Europe, we cannot limit this initiative to the obviously important question of extending the contents of cultural inquiry (from high culture to popular culture, from the hegemonic nationality to non-German-speaking cultures, from patriarchy to the voices of women). The formal question packed up in the image of refuge from the historico-political in the aesthetic garden or the fortress of the psyche may offer most productive access to rethinking the Schorskean paradigm, instead of merely expanding its scope. For these reasons I want to focus on the rhetorical structure of Schorske’s essay collection against that of aesthetic and critical works from the Central European turn of the century. 2 Schorske’s historical analysis seems to be at odds [End Page 691] with these projects seen on their own terms—but to utter this is ironically to reiterate the tension between history or politics and aesthetic modernism articulated in the essays.The question at hand is hence two-fold. First of all, what is ideologically at stake in a historiographical construction that identifies Central European modernist aesthetic innovation as an escape from history and politics? Schorske’s interdisciplinary project of contextualization (his significant subtitle “Politics and Culture” has become an unshakable legacy for cultural history) is peculiar insofar as his diagnosis is that culture became increasingly isolated from political life. I have chosen to focus on the rhetorical opposition of “center” and “margin” in this essay because of Schorske’s implicit claim that the very class which was central to nineteenth-century Austrian liberalism—the German-speaking bourgeoisie—was “marginalized” by the rise of hostile anti-liberal ideologies (the “culture-makers” were “alienated along with their class in its extrusion from political power”). 3 As I hope to show, this geometry of center and margins was at the heart of the most innovative and potentially explosive play within so-called aestheticist texts around 1900. This brings us to the second half of this two-fold question: how might the “aesthetic moment” of the Central European fin de siècle be seen if we wish to go beyond Schorske’s diagnosis of a forced retreat into the temple of art, the fortress of the psyche, or the aesthetic garden? To get at both sides of this question—the ideological valence of the aesthetic moment and of its histories—I will focus on literary products, in particular on essays, for several reasons. One of these is that Schorske’s synthetic work is, after all, itself a collection of essays published over two decades.The privileging of the essay genre in coming to terms with the problem of turn-of-the-century aestheticism was established long before Schorske’s work. If we can find early examples of this generic strategy in fin-de-siècle authors such as Musil and Broch, the paradigmatic instance—and the place where the function of the essay-critique within aestheticist criticism is worked through—is the collection of Georg Lukács, Soul and Forms. 4 Several positions are taken in that work which may be useful to an understanding of Schorske’s essay project: Lukács asserts the essay’s fragmentary nature at... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Introducing AestheticsJames McRaeIntroducing Aesthetics. By David E. W. Fenner. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Pp. 170.David E. W. Fenner's Introducing Aesthetics offers a comprehensive introduction to the major traditions of Western aesthetics. Fenner confines his study to Western aesthetics and does not address the aesthetic traditions of Asian philosophy. This is not, by any means, a limitation, as this restriction of scope makes Fenner's (...) work more concise and readily accessible to those unfamiliar with aesthetics.Fenner divides his book into four parts: "Experiences," "Objects and Events," "Meaning," and "Judgment." Part 1 discusses the meaning and scope of the term "aesthetic" and analyzes the significance of "aesthetic experiences" and "aesthetic properties." Here, Fenner also explains the notion of aesthetic attitude as it is understood from the traditional perspective of disinterest (which includes thinkers such as Kant, Schopenhauer, and Stolnitz) and from modern points of view (such as Bullough's psychical distance and Aldrich's impressionistic vision).Part 2 contains three chapters, which discuss the nature of aesthetic objects, the definition of "art," and the concept of creation and re-creation. The chapter that explores the definition of "art" provides a succinct explanation of the major traditions of aesthetics and art criticism: the Greek notions of imitation and representation (with sections on Plato and Aristotle), Romanticism (including Schopenhauer and Nietzsche), Expressionism (focusing on Tolstoy, Croce, and Collingwood), Formalism (particularly Moore and Bell), Anti-Essentialism (which includes Wittgenstein and Weitz), and a final section concerning perspectives on the art world (from theorists such as Danto and Dickie). The final chapter, on creation and re-creation, discusses the nature of creativity and the essential differences between fakes, forgeries, and reproductions.Part 3 is devoted to an exploration of the meaning of art. The first chapter of this section concerns the problem of art interpretation and discusses such issues as the educated viewer, the intentional fallacy, and the possibility of a pluralism of artistic interpretations. The second chapter deals with censorship and examines various approaches to balancing the freedom of artistic expression with the moral concerns of society.In Part 4, Fenner examines the theme of artistic judgment. The first chapter of this section analyzes three traditional approaches to defining the term "beauty": formalism, subjectivism, and naturalism. This chapter includes summaries of the aesthetic theories of thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Dewey, to name but a few. The final chapter is devoted to a discussion of art criticism. Here, Fenner gives a detailed description of the four aspects of critical review (description, information, interpretation, evaluation) and explores the various challenges raised against the very possibility of criticism (such as emotivism). [End Page 515]Because of the clarity of its presentation and the quality of its scholarship, this book would serve well as a text for either introductory or upper-division undergraduate philosophy classes. One of the more useful features of Fenner's book is an extensive appendix that presents the history of Western aesthetics in outline form. Here, the ideas of the most important movements and philosophers of Western aesthetics are neatly summarized and presented in a chronology that clearly illustrates the historical shift in trends of thought and patterns of influence. This appendix would be an indispensable study guide for graduate students who are preparing for comprehensive examinations in the history of aesthetics. [End Page 516]Copyright © 2006 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Forgeries and Art Evaluation:An Argument for Dualism in AestheticsTomas Kulka (bio)If a fake is so expert that even after the most thorough and trustworthy examination its authenticity is still open to doubt, is it or is it not as satisfactory a work of art as if it were unequivocally genuine? 1It is a wonderful moment in the life of a lover of art when he finds himself suddenly (...) confronted with a hitherto unknown painting by a great master, untouched, on the original canvas, and without any restoration, just as it left the painter's studio. And what a picture! Neither the beautiful signature... nor the pointillé on the bread which Christ is blessing, is necessary to convince us that we have here—I am inclined to say—the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft... quite different from all his other paintings and yet every inch a Vermeer. In no other picture by the great master of Delft do we find such sentiment, such a profound understanding of the Bible story—a sentiment so nobly human expressed through the medium of highest art.2The author of these lines is Professor Abraham Bredius, the nestor of Holland's art historians and the greatest authority on seventeenth-century Dutch painting. The source is The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, the most prestigious periodical for the history of art of the period. The year is 1937. The painting, however, is not a masterpiece of Vermeer but a fake produced by the mediocre Dutch artist Han van Meegeren.The Problem of ForgeryMany art dealers have been financially ruined, and many art historians academically discredited, because of incorrect attribution. Apart from the practical problems that worry curators and art historians, there is also a theoretical problem, which has become a subject of heated discussions since the late 1960s. The dispute gained a momentum with the publication of Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art. In its third chapter titled "Art and Authenticity," [End Page 58] which put the problem of forgeries on the agenda of contemporary aesthetics, Goodman states that a "philosopher of art caught without an answer to [the] question... why there is any aesthetic difference between a deceptive forgery and an original work... is at least as badly off as a curator of paintings caught taking a Van Meegeren Vermeer for a Vermeer."3Although the literature on the problem of forgeries is extensive, the answers that have been put forward fall roughly into three categories: the formalist answer, which states that there is no aesthetic difference between an original painting and a deceptive forgery; the reductionist answer, which claims that there is such a difference and that it can be traced to the minute physical differences between originals and its copies; and the historicist answer, which also asserts that there must be an aesthetic difference but claims that it stems from the different histories of the two objects.The most prominent proponent of the formalist approach is Monroe C. Beardsley. His theory is based on the assumption that "two objects that do not differ in any observable qualities cannot differ in aesthetic value."4 Aesthetic formalism, as the name suggests, maintains that works of art should be judged according to their form. Only the visual features of the painted surface—the configuration of its lines and colors, composition, spatial relations, texture, design, etc., are relevant for its appreciation. The subject of our evaluation is the finished product, not the information pertaining to the history of its production. Who, when, and where painted the picture, just like the intentions of the painter, are irrelevant for the assessment of its aesthetic qualities. Only the "internal" properties, that is, the properties of the "work itself," count. The "external" properties, by which Beardsley means anything that "relates to something existing before the work itself, to the manner in which it was produced, or its connection to antecedent objects," have no bearing on aesthetic value. Hence the conclusion that if fakes resemble the original "in their internal characteristics, so that no one could tell them apart just by looking at them" there can be no aesthetic difference between them.5 Originality is thus excluded... (shrink)

Kant's "Critique of Aesthetic Judgement," which is the first part of his larger Critique of Judgement, is enjoying a renewed interest. This renewed interest, however, has brought with it a renewed controversy over just how Kant's aesthetic theory should be understood. Of the many interpretative questions at issue, perhaps the most fundamental is what it is about an object, on Kant's accounting, that makes it beautiful. Traditionally, Kant has been understood as holding a formalist theory of beauty. That is (...) to say, beauty--or better, our appreciation of beauty--is a matter of the way an object is structured or organized. While there can be no doubt that Kant stresses the importance of form in the early sections of the "Critique," the later portions of the text advance what seems to be a quite different, perhaps even antithetical, paradigm of beauty. In these sections, Kant maintains that for an object to be beautiful it must have some content--specifically, the object must express some "idea." What makes an interpretation difficult is that Kant seems to stand on both sides of a wide gulf in modern aesthetic theory. Within a single work on aesthetics, Kant claims first that beauty depends upon form and, later, that it depends upon content. And, yet, it is typically thought that these positions are mutually exclusive. ;My dissertation is directed specifically to the question of what Kant considers as the features of an object responsible for beauty. Stated broadly, I argue that Kant's consistent position is that for an object to be considered as beautiful we must base our judgment upon how the object is organized , but with an eye to how well this organization is able to express an idea . More precisely, I claim that for Kant both form and expression of ideas are necessary conditions for beauty. To support my thesis I shall follow Kant's own procedure for identifying what makes an object beautiful. In the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgement," Kant considers the issue of beauty from the standpoint of an analysis and justification of the judgment that something is beautiful. That is to say, Kant first determines what is meant by such a judgment and then considers what features an object must possess if we are to claim legitimately that something is beautiful. After closely studying Kant's analysis and justification, I argue that an object can be judged as beautiful only if it is organized in such a way as to express an idea. ;In the first two chapters of my dissertation, I describe Kant's project in the Critique of Judgement generally and the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgement" more particularly. I devote Chapter III to a close study of the argument of the first half of the text in order to determine the extent to which Kant presents a coherent justification of judgments of beauty. I subsequently argue, in Chapter IV, that the early sections do not complete Kant's justification of judgments of beauty. Further, I argue for what must yet be shown for Kant to make his case. In the final two chapters, V and VI, I describe Kant's theory of expression, argue that it completes Kant's central argument, and, in the end, I support my interpretation that both form and expression of ideas constitute the requirements for beauty in Kant's theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Directions in Contemporary German AestheticsMatthew PritchardÄsthetisches Denken, 6th ed., by Wolfgang Welsch. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990 (2003), 223 pp.Aisthetik: Vorlesungen Über Ästhetik Als Allgemeine Wahrnehmungslehre, by Gernot Böhme. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2001, 199 pp.Ästhetische Korrespondenzen: Denken Im Technischen Raum, by Reinhard Knodt. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1994, 166 pp.The relationship between the Anglo-American and German aesthetic traditions is a paradoxical one. On the one hand, acquaintance with one or more figures (...) from the “great tradition” in German aesthetic thought over the last 250 years is a given for most philosophically oriented writers on aesthetics in Britain and America. Thinkers such as Kant or Adorno form a real and abiding part of our background. In some cases the connection with German intellectual lineages goes a good deal further. As an extreme case, take Terry Eagleton’s The Ideology of the Aesthetic,1 whose engagement with German thought is so deep that I have come across it as a set text for aesthetics courses in German universities (despite the fact that none of the dozen authors Eagleton analyzes are cited in their original language). On the other hand, interest in contemporary German aesthetics in English and American circles appears to be relatively slight. One would have little idea, from reading any of the philosophical journals in English, of just how much activity there is in this area, only a small proportion of which has been translated, cited, or reviewed. And yet the past two decades have seen the publication of dozens of relevant books by German authors, many proposing independent theoretical approaches. Among these—aside from the books reviewed here—are the substantial work done on performance and performativity by Erika Fischer-Lichte (Ästhetik des Performativen, 2004) and Dieter Mersch (Ereignis und Aura, 2002); the theoretical oeuvre of the prize-winning literary critic Karl Heinz Bohrer, of which Suddenness: On the Moment of Aesthetic Appearance, originally published in 1981, has made it into English; Ruth Sonderegger’s Romantic-leaning plea Für eine Ästhetik des Spiels (2000); Dieter Heinrich’s work on the philosophy of art and subjectivity, Fixpunkte: Aufsätze [End Page 117] und Essays zur Theorie der Kunst (2003); Martin Seel’s Aesthetics of Appearing (2004); the traditional neo-Kantian perspective of the late Rüdiger Bubner as set out in his Ästhetische Erfahrung (1989); Gábor Paál’s Was ist schön?—Ästhetik und Erkenntnis (2003); Konrad Paul Liessmann’s Reiz und Rührung: Über ästhetische Empfindungen (2003)... the list could be continued. And this is not to mention empirical-psychological approaches, works on the history of aesthetics, the reception accorded to analytical aesthetics and American philosophers such as Goodman and Danto, or the continuation of European poststructuralist and Frankfurt School traditions (for example, in the work of Albrecht Wellmer and Christoph Menke).Given this large “backlog” of writing not yet assimilated into Anglo-American discussion, it makes sense to be selective and range a little further than the most recently published texts. Owing to sheer diversity, I cannot honestly claim that the three books I am going to discuss here are “representative” of the interests driving contemporary German aesthetics. But I have chosen them for certain common traits, traditions, and emphases that seem to me to present a stimulating contrast with the approach of Anglo-American philosophical aesthetics, while retaining many points of contact with non-German thought. That the contrast does not come down to the crass standoff of “analytical” vs. “Continental,” and all the clichés about academic style that go with it, should become obvious. It is more interesting than that, and although I want to leave the details to the discussion of the three books, I can mention at the outset a few aspects I regard as important. One is that none of these authors addresses themselves exclusively to either the philosophy of art or to the aesthetics of nature and the environment. Instead they tend to make points relating to both, or to regard both as aspects of a single situation. “Environmental aesthetics” in Anglo-American philosophy—for instance, the work of Allen Carlson—is not only of recent date but is still a subdiscipline separated from aesthetics... (shrink)

Musical formalism is often portrayed as the enemy of artistic freedom. Its main representative, Eduard Hanslick, is seen as a purist who, by emphasizing musical rules, aims at restricting music criticism and even musical practices themselves. It may also seem that formalism is depriving music of its ability to have moral significance, as the semantic connection to the extramusical is denied by the formalistic view. In my paper, I defend formalism by placing Hanslick’s argument in a Kantian framework. It is (...) not hard to find Kantian elements in Hanslick’s work, such as his emphasis on the contemplative and disinterested nature of the aesthetic judgment, the nonconceptuality of music’s content, and his insistence that “beauty has no purpose.” I argue further that Hanslick’s formalism is in fact motivated by and manifests the Kantian conception of freedom as self-legislation. Thus understood, the kind of moral significance music may have rests upon its own autonomous rules. (shrink)

For about the last three decades, postmodernists have exposed the weaknesses of modernist formalism. Western modernist formalism effectively locates art’s meaning in its formal qualities. Clive Bell’s twentieth-century significant form aesthetic theory, Clement Greenberg and abstract art, and art educators’ preoccupation with design elements and principles typify this modernist tendency.1 In contrast, postmodernists generally insist that sociocultural context supplies art’s meaning. Within contemporary art education, postmodernist theory relies strongly on semiotics, neopragmatism, and social constructivist theories of culture; these tend to (...) reduce form to being an arbitrary vehicle for content supplied by cultural.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aesthetics in Feminist PerspectiveJulie Van CampAesthetics in Feminist Perspective, edited by Hilde Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer; xv & 252 pp. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, $39.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.Has feminism been hijacked by one lock-step agenda, suppressing all dialogue and debate? Far from it, judging from this collection of seventeen essays on feminist aesthetics. The first such collection in English, it includes eleven essays previously (...) published in Hypatia (1990).This well-organized volume offers both broad theoretical considerations and applications to specific art forms, diverse methodological perspectives, and healthy debate among the contributors. The section on “The Nature of Art: Some Feminist Alternatives” considers feminist perspectives as alternatives to traditional concepts of art, motivated by considerations of the art of women. Skepticism abounds in the section on “Interpretation and Point of View” concerning a “universal” or “paradigmatic” female voice in literature, film, and visual art. “Philosophical and Critical Legacies” reveals diverse feminist readings of Kant, Nietzsche, Cartesian metaphysics, and postmodernism.Co-editor Hilde Hein proposes that aesthetics provides a promising road map for feminist philosophy and indeed philosophy generally. Aesthetics has learned to reject foundationalism and essentialism in favor of pluralism, a necessity in the face of the astonishing diversity and ever-changing landscape in contemporary art. This theoretical transition in aesthetics shows how philosophy could fruitfully shed the false security of essentialism to embrace the sometimes raucous pluralism of methods, races, cultures, and genders assaulting all humanities disciplines in recent decades. As co-editor Carolyn Korsmeyer notes, feminist scholarship challenges “the mask of universality and gender-neutrality” (p. vii). [End Page 178]The myth that feminist scholarship is merely thinly veiled political action, devoid of intellectual integrity, is shattered by this collection. Well-represented is the diversity of analytic and European methodologies that enrich contemporary philosophical dialogue. Many of the articles scrutinize the nature of “feminism” itself, as well as appropriate methodologies and questions. The interdisciplinarity of feminist research also is in welcome evidence, with seven essays by scholars from English, African-American studies, music, and psychology.Should feminist art and aesthetics be “nondominative”? Should it “endorse” female experience? Do proposals for “ideal” feminist artistic expression inadvertently retreat to the essentialism and uniformity that feminists have sought to dispel? Should feminists reject the tradition of “formalism” in favor of an approach that re-integrates art with the community and the concerns of daily life? This perspective is widespread today in postmodern thought, but feminist considerations bolster the case made elsewhere for the fall of the so-called elite object.Are there distinctive features that mark the work of female artists, such as group participation, rather than performances for passive audiences? This feature is pervasive in contemporary art, from the happenings of Andy Warhol in the 1960s to the “Messiah” sing-alongs popular for decades. Is feminist art marked by a melding of aesthetic and erotic elements? Surely that is also a trait of the art of most cultures, by men as well as women.These explorations reveal a paradox in today’s feminism. In highlighting female traits (such as the virtues of being caring and nondominating), are women being celebrated, liberated, and freed? Or are they frozen into roles which not all women consider their most important attributes as persons?Female artists and theorists deserve enormous credit for encouraging a re-thinking of the ways in which art is created and understood, but many other forces drive these developments as well. Indeed, some of the harshest critics of analytic philosophy are analytic philosophers steeped in that tradition, both male and female. It seems a pointless chicken-and-egg exercise to wonder if feminists caused this re-thinking or were one of several groups in a happy confluence of re-examination from various perspectives. Fortunately, the issue need not be resolved for scholars and students to appreciate this outstanding volume.Julie Van CampCalifornia State University, Long BeachCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

This study concerns the role of reflective judgment in both aesthetical appreciation and one’s self-understanding in relation to an unfamiliar other. Pillow’s thesis is that “Sublime reflection can provide … a model for a kind of interpretive response to the uncanny Other ‘outside’ our conceptual grasp. It thereby advances our sense-making pursuits even while eschewing unified, conceptual determination”. His principal focus is on Kant’s development of sublime judgment in the third Critique, where this form of reflective judgment becomes central to (...) Pillow’s greater theme: “I privilege sublime reflection in particular because it best models our interpretative search for meanings in things … furthermore, this reflection acknowledges the constitutive limitations of context-dependent understanding, its incapacity to determine fully the sense-making wholes it reaches to comprehend”. Hegel is drawn into the study ostensibly for two reasons. First, he has a more extensive, and determinate, idea of the content of aesthetical appreciation, whereas Kant adheres to a formalistic notion; second, Hegel is the foil for Pillow’s postmodern approach to the significance of reflective understanding. Since Hegel’s Aesthetics presents “the content of an art work … [in] a single fixed theme wholly available to conceptual analysis,” it stands opposed to Pillow’s view that the relation between the self-understanding subject and the other must remain “open” and foreign. Between and above Kant and Hegel floats Lyotard whose deconstructionist work on practical reason forms the impetus in Pillow’s study. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The “Magic” of Music:Archaic Dreams in Romantic Aesthetics and an Education in AestheticsAlexandra Kertz-WelzelO, then I close my eyes to all the strife of the world—and withdraw quietly into the land of music, as into the land of belief, where all our doubts and our sufferings are lost in a resounding sea....1Music serves many different functions in human life, accompanying everyday activities such as working, shopping, or (...) watching TV, as well as creating an individual world of sounds in which to relax, to enjoy life, or just to escape into one's dreams. Tia DeNora describes this personal use of music as a technology for the self and quotes Mireille, a contract cleaner, who thinks that "everybody should listen to music. It helps you to be calm, relaxed, to see your life differently."2This desire to change minds or moods and perhaps to be personally transformed by music also motivates adolescents to listen to their music giving them a strong feeling of self-identity and helping to relieve boredom, get through difficult times, or reduce tension.3 Although this obviously everyday use of music is usually different from the life-changing strong experiences with music which Robert Panzarella4 or Alf Gabrielsson5 investigate in their research, it nevertheless shows the natural human desire to use music to transform emotions or experience life more intensively. Certainly, adolescents do have different kinds [End Page 77] of intensive and even ecstatic experiences with music; for example, while attending a rock concert with its pseudo-religious implications, or a Friday night dance party with friends, or while making music in a band. Gabrielsson quotes the description of a young woman, attending an outdoor concert of Prince:One feels so free somehow. At concerts one can dance, jump, scream and sing as much as one wants. You are like a part of it all, not just a spectator. Throughout the whole concert the audience was in total ecstasy. It was only one thing that mattered: the music! You are filled with the wonderful feeling that everything is all right, that you are living only for what is happening 'right now.' You are in a way 'intoxicated with joy."... You don't think about what you are doing. You do what you feel like, without even thinking about it.6This desire for intensive or even ecstatic experiences through music is not only an aspect of individual life, it is also an important issue in the history of music and aesthetics from ancient times. One origin of music and art can be found in the relationship of music with religion and ritual, using sound's emotional and ecstatic power to connect the world of human beings and the sacred. Music as magic and a means of ecstasy was a frequent conceptualization in ancient Egypt, as well as in Greece, in the rites of ancient Celts and early Christians, and also in non-Western religions today.7 Priests or shamans among the Australian Aborigines, Native Americans, and West-African tribes use the emotional power of music to evoke trance in their contemporary practices.Unfortunately, the aesthetics of Western European art music, especially since the eighteenth century, tends to eliminate this sensual "magic"8 of music only to replace an ecstatic way of experiencing music with a more intellectual approach. The idea of absolute music or the aesthetics of formalism attempts to establish a "pure" approach to listening without feeling, imagination, or sensuality. It is a claim to elitism which might be one reason why it is difficult for students to be affected by Western European art music, since it appears to be far away from their own world of intensive music experience. Not only the way of listening and performing Western European art music, but also the music itself may prevent students from further involvement in "classical" music and having the kind of intensive experiences their "own" music offers them. If a goal of music education is not only to involve students in art music but also to deepen and enhance their lives through aesthetic experiences, it may be reasonable to start with their musical experiences and to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plautus vs. Terence: Audience and Popularity Re-ExaminedHolt N. Parker Ich seh’, die Philologen, sie haben dich, so wie sich selbst betrogen.—Goethe, Faust II, 7426–27The cliché that Plautus was boffo at the box office while Terence was an aesthetic snob kept alive only through a series of NEA grants seems ineradicable. Since the most recent book on Plautus once again bases much of its argument on this old chestnut, (...) it seems necessary to correct the widespread myth. 1 The ancient testimonia are unambiguous and will, I trust, put an end once and for all to this false picture.I. PlautusThere is exactly one piece of direct evidence about Plautus’ popularity during his lifetime. The prologue for the revival of Casina 2 states that this is a play (14): quam vos probastis qui estis in senioribus and (17): haec cum primum acta est, vicit omnis fabulas. 3 Admittedly, this is not necessarily first-person testimony, but it certainly implies that Casina, at least, had been a hit at its original performance. That is it. The endlessly repeated statements calling Plautus “the most successful comic writer of antiquity” 4 rest on nothing else. [End Page 585]Career and BackersOther than this single passage, the following have been used as evidence of Plautus’ success:Plautus wrote at least twenty-one plays, almost certainly those we now have, which were held to be his consensu omnium (Gell. 3.3.3). 5 There were probably some others which we do not have. 6 This implies a career with some degree of popularity, although over how long a period we do not know. 7 However, applying the same criterion (number of plays) with the same uncertainty (length of time), we have thirty-four titles of comedies for Naevius, forty-two for Caecilius, the same number of fabulae togatae from Afranius, and forty-three mimes from Laberius.Plautus was associated with T. Publilius Pellio for Stichus (didasc.; 200 B.C.), Menaechmi (404), 8 Epidicus (Bacch. 214–15), and probably Bacchides itself. 9 Though we have no idea how long the association lasted, Pellio’s presence in at least three plays seems to imply some form of standing relation. This in turn implies that Pellio had faith in Plautus’ popularity and that, if Pellio stuck with him for a while, his faith was justified. This association, however, allows us to infer no more about his popularity from play to play than does the steady backing of L. Ambivius Turpio for Caecilius and Terence (Hec. 14–27; see below).The only other didascalic notice for Plautus says that Pseudolus was presented at the Ludi Megalenses in 191 B.C. under M. Junius Brutus (cos. 178, RE 48), the city praetor. These were the games at which the temple of the Magna Mater was dedicated. 10 E. Fraenkel argues that [End Page 586] Plautus’ selection for such an event means that he, “a quell’epoca era considerato da giudici competenti il migliore commediografo di Roma.” 11 Rather, it means that Plautus was considered one of the best. 12 Plautus was not the only playwright presented. 13Revivals and ReputationThere is also evidence from the period after Plautus: Great stress has been laid on the fact that Plautus’ plays were given revivals. The problem lies in the word “revival,” which is used anachronistically to invoke an image of modern long runs, usually assumed to have taken place during the poet’s lifetime. 14 The best evidence for these revivals is Cas. 5–22. 15 Careful reading, however, reveals several things (11–15):nos postquam populi rumore intelleximus studiose expetere vos Plautinas fabulas, antiquam eius edimus comoediam, quam vos probastis qui estis in senioribus; nam iuniorum qui sunt non norunt, scio.After we learned from the talk of the people that you were eagerly longing for plays by Plautus, we have produced an old play of his, [End Page 587] which you approved, you who are in the older generation, for those who are younger don’t know it, I’m sure.Not only is there no evidence for any repetition during the poet’s lifetime, the passage states explicitly that Plautus, far from having... (shrink)

Peter Kivy has said that the power of purely instrumental music remains an unexplained wonder. With this larger question in mind, I will consider: the issues in musical aesthetics that led to what Kivy termed his enhanced formalism, his conception of expressive properties in music and how a distinction between having and understanding an emotion can help clarify this issues here, and, most importantly for Kivy’s larger mystery, the way that counterpoint, in an often unrecognized way, can present mimetic (...) content of a kind that can explain the sense of musical profundity that it often awakens. It may turn out that absolute music’s profundity can be explained by the resonances this kind of layered and complex music has with the living, the ordering, the making sense, of a life. (shrink)

Confusion abounds in Jonathan Kramer’s attempt, in “Can Modernism Survive George Rochberg?” , to reply to the issues I raised in my essay “Can the Arts Survive Modernism? ” . Besides the endemic disarray of his thought process, he confutes and contradicts himself at every turn—either out of his own mouth or out of the mouths of those he quotes to support his position. He is incapable of following his own line of argument either because he doesn’t remember in one (...) part of his paper what he’s said in another or because he doesn’t grasp the logical implications of his own statements sufficiently follow through. Thus he constantly cuts the ground out from under his own feet.Some specific illustrations are in order. First, let me deal with how he “thinks.” To write prose we perforce must use words; and when we use words, it behooves us to know what they mean. All too often Kramer appears not to know what key words he uses do mean—but he marches blindly on through his own jungle of tangled thoughts. For instance, when he says, “A far better example of reductionism in musical scholarship than Schenker’s multilayered theory is Rochberg’s own article,” he reveals a total lack of understanding his key word, “reductionism” . “Reductionism” is the distilled or diminished content left after removing, stripping away, all alternative ways of understanding a situation or problem. That, of course, is what Schenker did in promulgating his theory of tonal practice, and it is clear Kramer understands that much. “Reductionism,” however, hardly describes the presentation of an overview of the impact of modernism on the life of the twentieth century which is what my article does. George Rochberg is the composer of a large body of musical works and the author of a recently published collection of essays, The Aesthetics of Survival, a Composer’s View of Twentieth-Century Music. He recently completed his fifth symphony, on commission from the Chicago Symphony. In 1983 he retired from the University of Pennsylvania as Emeritus Annenberg Professor of the Humanities. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, “Can the Arts Survive Modernism? ,” appeared in the December 1984 issue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.2 (2004) 7-19 [Access article in PDF] Evaluating a Performance - Ideal vs. Great Performance Gilead Bar-Elli Two Notions of Performance Music, as everybody knows, is a performing art. Not only are musical works performed, but they are also designed, by their very nature, to be performed. The notion of a performance of a musical composition is therefore part and parcel of our (...) conception of music. And yet the relationships between a composition and its performances give rise to many difficult problems, some of which will be touched on later. For the present I want to stress two more specific issues in which the significance of the notion of performance for music lies. The first is that a musical composition is constituted by concepts and properties intrinsically connected to performance. In fact, I believe that the very meaning of these concepts and properties is rooted in the ways they are manifested in performance. Hence, even if a certain composition has never and will never be performed, it is still constituted by concepts and properties whose meaning lies in the ways they should be manifested in performance.The second point is that since music is in fact a performing art, since weperform music, and listen to various performances of the same compositions, and conceive of them and evaluate them as music, notions of performance are an integral part of the conceptual repertoire in which we conceive of music. Hence questions pertaining to the nature of performance, and to the relationship between a composition and its performances are inescapable in any philosophical investigation of music. And around these general questions a host of others suggest themselves: What makes a particular performance (even if faulty) a performance of a particular work? Can there be different equally good performances of the same work? In what terms should performances be evaluated (and graded) and how? Can a composition be individuated apart from its performances and how?On many of these problems and the issues surrounding them, a distinction between two conceptions of performance seems helpful, and sometimes [End Page 7] necessary. On the one hand we may conceive of a performance as a musical entity in itself, independently of the composition whose performance it in fact is. A performance thus conceived can be aesthetically evaluated "on its own" so to speak, or in and of itself, with no regard to our having an independent access to the composition whose performance it is. Sometimes, to push it to an extreme, we may not even know that it is a performance of a particular composition, and may not care if it is. Let us call this the"autonomousconception of a performance."On the other hand we often think of a performance as being essentially a performance of a particular composition, and we thus conceive of it and evaluate it. Here knowing which composition the performance is a performance of is essential. It is arguable that on this conception we must also have (in principle at least) an independent access to the composition, by being able to read its score, for example.1 Being a performance of a particular composition is, on this view, part of the very nature and identity of the performance. There can yet be various different performances of the same composition, and they may be compared and evaluated as such. In light of this essential relationship between the performance and "its" composition (the work whose performance it is) let us call this the "intentionalisticconception of a performance."There is a great difference between these two conceptions, and they imply important differences for the nature of music and of musical composition. I am not committing myself here to any particular view of the ontic nature of a composition — whether it is a class of performances, or a kind (in Nicholas Wolterstorff's sense) or a design (in Roger Scruton's).2 I shall exemplify the pertinence of the above distinction for one case. Many people think that music resides only in performances (some would add, actual and possible... (shrink)

Scientific cognitivists argue formalist aesthetics of nature are (i) inadequate for appreciating the full range of nature’s aesthetic values and (ii) too subjective to be useful for defending nature conservation. I argue that (i) is false because moderate formalists can appreciate nature for its performances, not merely objects and vistas. I argue (ii) is false because moderate formalists can argue that appreciation of beauty (including natural beauty) is a constitutive good of human flourishing, whose realization relies on access (...) to a rich and diverse array of aesthetically rewarding experiences throughout a lifetime. On these grounds, moderate formalists (among others) can justify conserving distinctive natural entities and environs for our own and future generations’ good. (shrink)

It has sometimes been held that instrumental music on its own, without text or program, is a kind of ‘pure’ or ‘absolute’ music, having no significant truck with extra-musical reality. While bird calls and canon shots might get countenanced, nothing in the vein of a philosophical worldview, a rich narrative, or a socio-political subtext is going to make the formalist’s strict cut. There has been considerable discussion in the analytic aesthetics of music about these issues and about closely-related (...) ones concerning musical expression and representation. But the discussion has focused almost exclusively on music’s *capacities* as a medium, or on our perceptual or imaginative capacities as listeners, in an effort to see how all of this might transpire. But as I will be arguing in this paper, this sort of approach, despite all its illuminating work, does not directly address one of the most important questions on the table between the partisans on different sides of the ‘pure’ music debate. And this question is the fundamentally normative one concerning *how this allegedly ‘pure’ instrumental music is to be appropriately appreciated.* When we appreciate this sort of instrumental music in content-involving ways, where our thoughts go beyond its basic and fairly uncontroversial expressive or representational features, is our mode of musical appreciation thereby deficient, or somehow ‘in the wrong,’ aesthetically-speaking? I argue that it needn’t be, and I further argue to the surprising conclusion that the answer to this normative question doesn’t crucially turn on whether music *possesses* the relevant content. Once we get this normative question in view, we should recognize a broader range of appropriate ways to engage with instrumental music, beyond the restrictive ideal of ‘pure’ listening that has thus far been championed by musical formalists. Then, in the final part of the paper, I shift gears to consider whether the sort of extra-musical content at issue is really as far-fetched as opponents can make it seem. I argue that it isn’t, and that this can be seen by looking to comparable sorts of content in the paradigmatically representational arts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.2 (2004) 80-87 [Access article in PDF] The Beauty of Henri Matisse David Carrier Because beauty has for a long time now been politically incorrect (at least among certain influential critics and academic historians) the art of Henri Matisse has recently suffered from a kind of benign neglect. His goals were luxury, calm, and voluptuousness, not social critique. He painted female nudes, and (...) was preoccupied with artistic tradition. Celebrated in his own lifetime, he died a rich man. Matisse's famous identification of the work of art with a good armchair is another provocation. His paintings, after all, are very expensive armchairs. Liberated from any vital connection with everyday life, they often seem merely escapist. In her recent book, On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry remarks, "Matisse never hoped to save lives. But he repeatedly said that he wanted to make paintings so serenely beautiful that when one came upon them, suddenly all problems would subside."1 That some of Matisse's paintings succeed in being serenely beautiful seems self-evident to Scarry, to me, and to a great many other art lovers. What is perhaps worth exploring at greater length, however, is precisely how Matisse's paintings succeed in achieving their unfashionable goal. What is it that makes the work of Matisse so serenely beautiful?To start, consider The Painter and His Model (1918-1921), made just after his move from Paris to Nice. Like other works from this period of his career, this picture raises special problems, even for many commentators who admire his earlier experimentation. At the left, we see the painter working on a canvas of a nude. "Expression, for me," Matisse wrote, "does not reside in passions glowing in a human face."2 Like most of his models, this one appears expressionless. She poses at the center of the picture, beneath a window that admits the light filling the room. A flowering palm, a symbol of fertility, is the only object visible from the world outside the studio.Leaving behind his family and the luxury of his Paris home, Matisse lived and worked in a small room like this one. The entire picture is filled [End Page 80] with patterns — a red tablecloth on the left, orange wallpaper on the right, blue stripes on the painter's shirt, a red grid on the floor. A dark painting hangs above flowers on the table. The Painter and His Model shows the artist hard at work, but the composition appears effortlessly spontaneous. Matisse, who lived only to paint during his time in Nice, concealed the endless effort required to make his beautiful pictures. A man from North France, he discovered the power of light. There is nothing special about this room, but under the spell of his model Matisse makes it appear ravishing. Intense Mediterranean sunlight transforms ordinary patterns into a world of visual luxury.We know that The Painter and His Model is beautiful because we get great pleasure seeing the model in the golden room. Her skin is close in tone to, or in harmony with the colors of the walls; her curves harmonize with the two vases, and play against the spreading linear grids. As we move our eyes easily from the model to the entire picture, we experience a kind of sublimated erotic pleasure. In "Notes of a Painter," Matisse gave an apt description of his approach in The Painter and His Model. Suppose I want to paint a woman's body: first of all I imbue it with grace and charm, but I know that I must give something more. I will condense the meaning of this body by seeking its essential lines. The charm will be less apparent at first glance, but it must eventually emerge from the new image which will have a broader meaning, one more fully human. (MA, 36) He does not use the word "beauty," but speaks instead about expression and harmony. When he published this manifesto, Matisse was painting very different sorts of pictures — portraits, scenes of nudes in utopian settings, and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Painting in Tongues:Faith-Based Languages of Formalist ArtKevin Z. Moore (bio)A philosophical problem is created by the incoherence between the earlier state and the later one.—Ian Hacking, Historical OntologyWhatever is happening to evidence-based treatment? When the facts contravene conventional wisdom, go with the anecdotes?—New York Times, "Science Times," February 14, 2006Cephalopods have a visual language that may be considered artful; humans have written and vocalized languages that are (...) sometimes artful; but it is doubtful that there is such a thing as a "language of art," particularly in the sense that twentieth-century formalists and their critics carelessly speak of one or many. Cephalopods flash color-forms on their hides to communicate intents and emotions, maybe even to project plans. They speak in tattooed tongues through neurologically embossed patterns and color field designs displayed on the skin. The large-eyed sea creatures communicate voicelessly in a visual language of pure color-forms, each species perhaps having its own dialect. Though not a full or official language by any means, their color-forms display the ideal that twentieth-century formalist artists sought to graphically realize (referential and conceptual immediacy, emotional coloring, communication via pure, that is, nonpictorial, form). Formalist inspired artists and their critic-expositors describe abstract pattern-painting as though it were a visual language equal to that of the cephalopod. Yet [End Page 40] although we can reasonably imagine cephalopods getting the correct message by observation, we cannot reasonably imagine observers getting any message at all, let alone the intended message, from abstractionist painting. This casts suspicion on the formalists' claims about visual language. Observers cannot and famously do not get anything "out" of formalist pattern paintings, though they do project quite a lot "into" them. The telling difference between octopus and artist? Cephalopods communicate visually—their survival depends on it. Formalists do not, though the survival and flourishing of their art depends upon the belief that they do.Notably, explanations of what exactly a formalist language of art is goes missing from accounts of sense and reference in the relevant literature, where we learn that this or that painting exhibits this or that language of art but never how this or that painting functions as a language of any sort. The "language of art" phrase, it seems, has the same force as mentioning truth or existence: it explains nothing. Talk of a language of art suggests merely that a painting exhibits a communicative intent; it does not explain how that intent is linguistically mediated. The phrase is ostensive and nominal, not descriptive and expository.Prior to the twentieth century there may have been some justification for this language since art was shaped by objective reference, identifiable codes (sign and symbol systems), and recognizable scenes (compositions) that made painting a language-like public media. Observers could see immediately or "read" paintings by observation as though they were reading a language. Images were shaped by observation; reference was fixed by convention. The formalist revolution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries dismantled the public character of representation in painting. After the revolution, the new art that appeared was a sort of visual humpty-dumptyism, to invoke a language metaphor. Formalist imagery functioned the way words did for Mr. Carroll's Mr. Dumpty: they meant what the artist intended them to mean and not what observation or convention constrained them to mean. Reference and meaning were as arbitrary as the visual forms chosen to bear them. Once a communicative medium, painting became an expressive medium, the values of the latter superseding those of the former wholly or in part. Even when a formalist painting alluded to a conventional arrangement (a landscape or portrait, for example), the composition was as visually parodic of genre as Mr. Carroll's Jabberwocky was verbally parodic of narrative poetry, preserving syntax (form) but not the integrity of the formal agents of communication. Both are forms of nonsense, yet only one intentionally so.Styles of formalism do not facilitate the observation of intended reference; they are not effective forms of communication because they are not languages. If the basic function of a visual art is to communicate a specific... (shrink)

A central topic in Cohen’s Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls is the artistic representation of the human figure; in Cohen’s reflections on this topic, the nude has a fundamental importance. The first aim of this paper is to examine Cohen’s theses on the role of the nude in figurative arts, as well as his comments about sculptural and pictorial works representing nude figures. This will bring us to take into consideration Cohen’s judgement about eroticism in art. Some brief considerations about the (...) nude in contemporary art, and above all in photography, will be expressed in order to evaluate the topicality of Cohen’s aesthetics concerning this theme. These considerations, however, will make it necessary to rethink Cohen’s judgement regarding eroticism in art. (shrink)

In a concert hall, the attitude of the audience focusses on the formalistic aspects of music. In religious rituals, music is a means of leading the hearer to a spiritual experience. What happens when music, meant originally for a liturgical purpose, is played in a concert setting? Gadamer shows, with his conception of Verwandlung ins Gebilde, that an art work is never static, but carries a depth in itself, which is connected to an artistic ingenuity throughout centuries. In this ‘depth’ (...) lies the connection to the listener, which is broader than a mere aesthetical one. On the other hand, music in itself has a strong ‘theatrical’ side, which can easily surpass its contemplative aspect in consumer culture. It appears that this aspect, in combination with the formalistic-aesthetic approach of modern museum culture, of which concert culture is a part, made the hearer become almost ‘deaf ’ to the religious content; because a concert practice focusses primarily on entertaining the hearer, s/he is not able to engage in the music as a source of spiritual edification of the soul. Nevertheless, Gadamer’s conception of play makes us be aware that there will always be new, unexpected ways in which the truth comes into being in the interaction of a piece of music and its hearer. In order to create such a reality, it is necessary to turn to new and renewing hearing practices, where the play between music and the hearer has a wider range of musical experience than the mere formalistic aspect. (shrink)

The rule books, though they claimed to heed only the call of logic, were nonetheless bound by their historical context: punctuation guidelines have been heavily indebted to intellectual, cultural, and aesthetic trends. No matter what analytical authority rule books claimed, their codifications had at least as much to do with their historical context as with syntax. When punctuation is properly contextualized, it can yield insight into problems that transcend disciplinary boundaries: it asks us to consider how we communicate within the (...) disciplines and beyond them and how disciplines create and maintain interpretive norms. It is this account of punctuation that I begin to develop here.I want to track the much-maligned semicolon and its fellow punctuation marks as rules for their usage were established and evolved. I consider the consequences of the nineteenth-century explosion of systems of grammar rules by way of the story of a semicolon in a statute that deprived Bostonians of late-night liquor from 1900–1906. The “Semicolon Law,” as it came to be known, exemplifies problems of interpretation still live in legal theory. I contrast the demands of legal formalism with the expectations of close reading in the humanities and social sciences. I conclude by attending to the inheritance left to us by nineteenth-century grammarians' impassioned attempts to bring order to English: The Chicago Manual of Style. I raise some critical questions about our attitudes towards rules, and consider how those attitudes influence our approach to punctuation and our passions about semicolons. (shrink)

Patrick Fessenbecker is Assistant Professor in Cultures, Civilizations, and Ideas at Bilkent University in Ankara. Reading Ideas in Victorian Literature is his first monograph and constitutes a substantial development of the argument he introduced in ‘In Defense of Paraphrase’, the essay that won New Literary History’s Ralph W. Cohen Prize in 2013. The purpose of the book is twofold: to problematize the formalist approach that has achieved hegemony in contemporary literary studies and to offer an alternative way of approaching (...) literary theory and literary criticism, which can be conceived as ‘content formalism’ (p. 29). Fessenbecker provides a humorous but nonetheless accurate summary of his aim as defending the ‘meaning-mongers’ (Joshua Landy’s term) from the ‘form-fetishists’ (p. 17) in order to promote the marginalized tradition of ‘thoughtful reading’ (p. 18). The monograph consists of six chapters bookended by a long introduction and a short epilogue and although it is not divided into parts, two chapters each are devoted to a particular problem with the formalist hegemony in literary studies. The problems are framed in terms of three assumptions that the discipline takes for granted, presented as: form is what makes literature distinctive; the history relevant to literary criticism is the history of form; and aesthetic experience is a property of form. Fessenbecker addresses each of these assumptions by first providing a literary theoretical argument that promotes an alternative approach (Chapters 1, 3, and 5) and then exemplifying that approach by literary critical practice on the novels of Anthony Trollope (Chapter 2) and George Eliot (Chapter 4) and the poetry of Robert Browning and Augusta Webster (Chapter 6). (shrink)

Peter Kivy presents a fascinating critical examination of the two rival ways of understanding instrumental music. He argues against 'literary' interpretation in terms of representational or narrative content, and defends musical formalism. Along the way he discusses interpretations of a range of works in the canon of absolute music.

This paper questions the apparent silenc of Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms on the unconscious, in its double sense of the psychic structure and of the description of the imperceptible. Although Cassirer is engaged in a very fine phenomenological analysis of our experience of the world, under the prism of a critic of culture, and although he does not believe in the evidence of the self, the absence of the unconscious from his account shows precisely the force of his conceptualization (...) of the symbolic. Why and how does the theme of the unconscious absorb that of the symbolic? The article argues that the question has to be analyzed through “symbolic pregnance” (symbolische Prägnanz) and “concrescence” (Konkreszenz). Nonetheless, here, the concepts of “subject,” “reason,” and “representation” are considerably re-semantized and, therefore, displaced by the key concept of “symbol.” To analyze this problem, the prism of aesthetics will be fundamentally privileged. Symbolic aesthetics crystallizes these questions of perceptive phenomenology with a rare intensity, articulating the personal and the impersonal dimensions in a focusedway. The texts of Langer will help us to explain the field that Cassirer explored only in a discontinuous and fragmentary way. Our hypothesis is the following: when the double dimension (personal and impersonal) of the experience is intensified, not only does symbolic aesthetics go beyond the classical opposition between conscious and unconscious, but it also goes beyond the distinctions between form and affect, form and content, and formalism and expression. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 40-53 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Analysis David E. W. Fenner The "raw data" that aesthetics is meant to explain is the aesthetic experience. People have experiences that they class off from other experiences and label, as a class, the aesthetic ones. Aesthetic experience is basic, and allother things aesthetic — aesthetic properties, aesthetic objects, aesthetic attitudes (...) — are secondary in their importance to aesthetic experiences. 1Considering aesthetic experience as the raw data that philosophical aesthetics seeks to explain is a relatively recent phenomenon. This was certainly not the focus in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Aesthetic judgment was the focus of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Kant: "How do we make meaningful judgments (hopefully real ones) about the aesthetic quality of (certain) objects and events?" But with George Santayana, John Dewey, and Jerome Stolnitz, the focus changes. Now the interest is in the aesthetic experience: what makes those experiences we label "aesthetic" special? Why do we separate those experiences from others?The movement from the Taste Theories to those focused on aesthetic experience is not a movement that is over and done with — far from it. There is still (and I think there will always be) a tension between these two very basic aspects of philosophical aesthetics. And, although I claim that aesthetic experience is the most basic thing that aesthetics studies, I recognize that this is challengeable and only true from a certain temporal viewpoint.I recently taught the most rewarding undergraduate course in aesthetics. The reason that it was so rewarding was that the students carried the class with deep and insightful discussions, and they were not shy about challenging what was coming out of my mouth. One of the challenges that informed our entire semester focused on the tension between experience and judgment. I lectured comfortably about aesthetic experience as our "raw data," and I lectured equally comfortably about how taking an aesthetic view of an object or event meant focusing primarily, if not exclusively, on [End Page 40] what is available to us through simple sensory acquaintanceship with the object. "Aesthetics," I said, "is about the sensuous aspects of our experiences." And so we could, for instance, take an aesthetic view of a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph which precluded our experiences being mired in the themes that the more famous Mapplethorpe photos take as their content. "Mapplethorpe is a great photographer," I argued, "and one can see this if one is willing to focus strictly on what meets your eye when you look at the picture." In short, I held the position that the aesthetic view is the formal one.Without saying more, what I did was conflate two different things. On the one hand, I argued that aesthetic experience is a natural part of life that aesthetics seeks to explore. On the other, I argued that appreciating something aesthetically was to appreciate its formal qualities, those qualities that one could access simply through looking, hearing, touching, for example. But these really are two different things.Aesthetic experiences, if we are to treat them as "raw data," must be explored without pre-conception, prejudice, or limitation. And, truly enough, the vast majority of aesthetic experiences are not focused exclusively, in terms of their contents, on formal or simple-sensory matters. Aesthetic experiences are, first, experiences. They are complex things, having to do with things as tidy as the formal qualities of the object under consideration and with things as messy as whether one had enough sleep the night before, whether one just had a fight with his roommate, whether one is carrying psychological baggage that is brought to consciousness by this particular aesthetic object. Later in this essay, I want to explore some of this complexity.The other side of what was happening in my class, the formal focus on the sensory as the basis for an aesthetic viewing, is not the substance of "aesthetic experience" per se. It is rather the basis of what we might call "aesthetic analysis." Aesthetic analysis has to do with separating out from our... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aesthetics and Humean Aesthetic Norms in the Novels of Jane AustenEva M. Dadlez (bio)IntroductionThe eighteenth century, Paul Oskar Kristeller tells us, in addition to crystallizing what we now call the fine arts, is also marked by an increased lay interest both in the arts and in criticism.1 Amateurs as well as philosophers ventured critical commentary on the arts. Talk concerning taste or beauty or the sublime was (...) so much a part of general discourse that even novelists of that era incorporated such subjects in their work. Henry Fielding "was able to construct a novel on the true and false sublime in art," according to Samuel Monk, "and to draw an analogy between the sublime in art and the sublime in character."2 So we shouldn't find it surprising that perspectives on aesthetics are sometimes presented in the novels of Jane Austen.3 This subject matter ranges from descriptions of skill in the execution and sensitivity in the appreciation of particular arts to general observations about beauty and taste and what is requisite for the apprehension of the former and the possession of the latter.Consider the following catalog of arts and beauties. Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey contain many references to the beauties of nature, both cultivated and wild. Taste in music is a topic in Persuasion, Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, and Lady Susan. A taste for poetry and literature is the lot of the heroines of Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility. Taste and talent for drawing is exhibited by characters in Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Northanger Abbey. Both Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park contain discussions of the merits of effective reading, that is, reading well aloud. Mansfield Park even comments on [End Page 46] acting ability, albeit rather disapprovingly. More general reflections on taste and beauty, as well as their connection to morality, are equally typical.It is possible to venture several different arguments about the philosophical perspective into which such observations best fit. Kantian analyses have already been ventured in the literature. Anne Crippen Ruderman calls our attention to the Kantian flavor of the connection Austen draws between a sensitivity to natural beauty and one's moral disposition, for instance, and David Kaufman compares Austen to Kant, though primarily in regard to ethics.4 Nonetheless, in this article I will argue that the strongest correlations and correspondences are in fact between Austen's and Hume's positions on aesthetics. Evidence in support of a Kantian analysis will first be canvassed and later compared with claims in favor of a Humean alternative.I will establish that the positions on taste and beauty and delicacy that are explicitly stated in or can be inferred from Austen's novels fit a Humean model—and fit it with a fair degree of precision. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate a correspondence strong enough to serve as the staging area for the further speculations that constitute the second thesis of this article. A great deal has already been said by philosophers about the capacity of literature to elicit moral reactions from the reader. Fictions can present ethical endorsements and invite us to adopt ethical perspectives by making it true in the world of the work that some course of action is right or some character is laudable. They can do this not by telling us that an act is right or a person meritorious but by showing us the rightness of the action and the commendability of the individual—by asking us to imagine traits that call forth our own approval and commendation. I will contend that aesthetic norms can be treated in much the same way as moral norms. That is, I will claim that the fiction of Jane Austen, in addition to evidencing the conscription of a Humean aesthetic, so engages and educates us that we are led imaginatively to adopt certain aesthetic perspectives in the course of its contemplation: not just by being told what is aesthetically pleasing or commendable, but by being made to feel pleasure and to experience commendation; not just by being told what constitutes discriminating taste, but by being led... (shrink)

This serves as an introduction to this section on Beck and as a standalone essay. In it we see that the writers in this section understand Beck's risk as modernity itself. And in this context risk's reflexive modernity is understood as ‘indeterminate modernity’. The essay thematizes a radically subjectivist reading of Beck's risk. It sees reflexivity as opposed to the objectivism and positivism of Kant's (first) critique of pure reason, and instead in terms of the subjectivity of Kant's third aesthetic (...) critique. Thus, Beck's subjectivist risk and indeterminate modernity focuses not on Kantian and positivist first-modernity ‘cause’ but instead on second and indeterminate-modernity ‘consequence’. This entails significant levels of (Kierkegaardian) anxiety on the part of individuals as well as the possibility of enhanced happiness. The latter is understood in terms of, again, the subjectivist psychology of Daniel Kahneman's behaviouralist economics. This is a substantivist (and not formalist) economics and dovetails with Weber's Methodenstreit between the substantivism of the Historical School and the formalism of neoclassical economics. The essay closes with a look at how this radically subjectivist and substantivist reflexivity is the basis for a panoply of non-normative institutions in Beck's vision of global cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

Defined as vicarious sensorimotor experiencing, mental imagery is a powerful source of aesthetic enjoyment in everyday life and, reportedly, one of the commonest things readers remember about literary narratives in the long term. Furthermore, it is positively correlated with other dimensions of reader response, most notably with emotion. Until recent decades, however, the phenomenon of mental imagery has been largely overlooked by modern literary scholarship. As an attempt to strengthen the status of mental imagery within the literary and, more generally, (...) aesthetic discipline, this dissertation proposes an analysis positioned at a confluence of literary theory and the cognitive sciences, especially the emergent research framework of embodied cognition. Questions asked throughout the dissertation include the following: a) What are the basic varieties of mental imagery in the reading of literary narrative? b) By what contents or narrative strategies are they most likely to be prompted? c) What is it like to experience a mental image of a particular variety? d) What are its psychophysiological underpinnings? e) How does a mental image of a particular variety relate to perception? f) How does it relate to higher-order meaning-making? Four prototypical imagery varieties are distinguished on the basis of two variables with two values each (referential vs. verbal domain; inner vs. outer stance). Gradual transitions and in-between imagery varieties are acknowledged. The imagery typology and related hypotheses are grounded in introspection but carefully supported with indirect empirical evidence and, whenever possible, formulated so as to facilitate direct validation. (shrink)

Aesthetic Formalism has fallen on hard times. At best it receives unsympathetic discussion and swift rejection. At worst it is the object of abuse and derision. But I think that there is something to be said for it. In this paper, I shall try to find and secure the truth in formalism. I shall not try to defend formalism against all of the objections to it.1 Instead I shall articulate a moderate formalist view that draws on aesthetic0nonaesthetic determination and (...) Kant’s distinction between free and dependent beauty. I shall examine four central art forms—painting, sculpture, lit-. (shrink)

In a narrow sense, the formalistic conception of art cannot range and explain a wide variety of contemporary art phenomena. In a wide sense, formalism – rejecting the reductionist definition of the essence of art, involving the conceptual dimension of the artwork, and expanding the dimension of sensibility – becomes a productive philosophical art theory allowing one to explain and investigate some part of the contemporary art (modern and postmodern) phenomena. In the expanded conception, the basic principles of aesthetic formalism (...) include a wide scale of the principles of the creation and comprehension of the artwork – from an abstract form (perceived by senses) to a conceptual form. The article gives an illustration of these principles discussing abstractionism and surrealism as two different types of the contemporary formalistic visual art. (shrink)

I offer a meta-level analysis of realist arguments for the reliability of ampliative reasoning about the unobservable. We can distinguish form-driven and content-driven arguments for realism: form-driven arguments appeal to the form of inductive inferences, whilst content-driven arguments appeal to their specific content. After regimenting the realism debate in these terms, I will argue that the content-driven arguments are preferable. Along the way I will discuss how my analysis relates to John Norton’s recent, more general thesis (...) that the grounds for licit induction are always material. (shrink)