" "The Particulars of Rapture proposes treating affects in adverbial rather than in adjectival terms, emphasizing the way in which text and paintings shape ...

One striking feature of On the Genealogy of Morals concerns how it is written. Nietzsche utilizes a literary style that provokes his readers’ emotions. Recently, Christopher Janaway has argued that this approach is integral to Nietzsche’s philosophical goals: feeling the emotions Nietzsche’s style arouses is necessary for understanding the views he defends. This paper shows that Janaway’s position is tempting but mistaken. The temptation exists because our emotions often function as “tools of discovery.” They bring things into focus we otherwise (...) could not see. However, once we grasp what they reveal, we can communicate it to others without first having to arouse their emotions. Thus there may be truths none of us would know unless one of us consulted his or her emotions. But it is not the case that each of us must consult his or her emotions in order to understand these truths. (shrink)

I agree with Uzi Awret that Diego Velasquez's seminal painting, Las Meninas, is an expression of self-consciousness in many different ways. But my first response was to the feeling tone Velasquez evokes in his work, which felt dark and rather grim to me. I think this painting may be a meditation on the mortification of the flesh, a theme that was surely familiar to Velasquez. It is a contemplation of human vanity. Self-consciousness is not just a cognitive act. The so-called (...) 'self conscious emotions' include pride, vanity, shame and guilt; their cognitive components are self-aggrandizement, perfectionism, and self- criticism. The self-consciousness emotions are enormously powerful motivators in life. Pride and self-celebration can be seen in three-year olds. Starting in middle childhood, children can feel so intensely embarrassed at times that they want to sink into the ground. Mutual ridicule emerges in social play, a game of shaming others and avoiding self-shame. In adults, severe mental disorders like paranoia and depression are thought to be evoked by intense feelings of shame and constant self-criticism. Self-consciousness is a great force in human lives. (shrink)

The tears of Odysseus -- History : music gives voice to the ineffable -- Tears, chills, and broken bones -- The music itself -- Explaining strong emotional responses to music I -- Explaining strong emotional responses to music II -- The sublime, revisited -- Conclusion : values.

1. I start with the observation that we often respond to a musical performance with emotion -- even if it is just the performance of a piece of absolute music, unaccompanied by text, title or programme. We can be exhilarated after a Rossini overture brought off with subtlety and panache; somber and melancholy after Furtlanger’s performance of the slow movement of the Eroica. And so forth. These emotions feel like the real thing to me – or anyway very close to (...) the real thing. When one experiences them, it takes time for them to wear off, and one gets irritated with the companion who, because not similarly moved, wants immediately to start discussing where to go for dinner. Like many others, I am drawn to the philosophy of music by a need to understand how such emotional responses are possible. How can absolute music move us in the way that it does, and to the extent that it does? (shrink)

Why do people respond emotionally to works of fiction they know are make-believe? Boruah tackles this question, which is fundamental aesthetics and literary studies, from a totally new perspective. Bringing together the various answers that have been offered by philosophers from Aristotle to Roger Scruton, he shows that while some philosophers have denied any rational basis to our emotional responses to fiction, others have argued that the emotions evoked by fiction are not real emotions at all. In response to this, (...) Boruah contends that fictional emotions are rational because they are based on the same sorts of beliefs that we form about real situations and real people. He illustrates this argument with literary examples ranging from Shakespeare to Tolstoy. (shrink)

In this article, we want to show the relevance and importance of melancholy as an aesthetic emotion. Melancholy often plays a role in our encounters with art works, and it is also present in some of our aesthetic responses to the natural environment. Melancholy invites aesthetic considerations to come into play not only in well-defined aesthetic contexts but also in everyday situations that give reason for melancholy to arise. But the complexity of melancholy, the fact that it is fascinating in (...) itself, suggests the further thought that it may be considered as an aesthetic emotion per se. To this end, we argue that it is the distinctive character of melancholy, its dual character and its differences from sadness and depression, which distinguishes it as an aesthetic emotion. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Many philosophers suggest (1) that our emotional engagement with fiction involves participation in a game of make-believe, and (2) that what distinguishes an emotional game from a dispassionate game is the fact that the former activity alone involves sensations of physiological and visceral disturbances caused by our participation in the game. In this paper I argue that philosophers who accept (1) should reject (2). I then illustrate how this conclusion illuminates various puzzles in aesthetics and the philosophy of mind.

The major claims of this dissertation are that there is a discrete mode of action that we can identify as spontaneity, that spontaneity in this sense is fundamentally based on affectivity, and that it is most accurately described as aesthetic spontaneity. Aesthetic spontaneity is a mode of action overlooked in Western philosophy but prized and cultivated in Far Eastern thought and lately described in detail by psychologists. The qualifier "aesthetic" is added to "spontaneity" to distinguish it from the spontaneity often (...) referred to in Western metaphysics, particularly in reference to free will. -/- In contemporary philosophy, action has most often been analyzed in relation to intention in an attempt to uncover its factors of incipience, with relatively little attention given to modes of action. This dissertation will address such issues as intention and free will but in a peripheral way as they pertain to particular historical topics under discussion. The focus instead will be on understanding the modality of spontaneity. -/- The earliest extensive account of aesthetic spontaneity is found in the early Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, roughly contemporaneous with Plato. In order to understand Zhuangzi's account, however, on must first confront two outstanding issues in his work, both of which bear on his understanding of affectivity. Zhuangzi's terminology can often be opaque, and one of his most notoriously difficult terms is translated by A. C. Graham as "essential" and by Victor Mair as "emotion." The term in Chinese is qing 情, which in later Chinese thought unequivocally bears the meaning of emotion but at this early date means something more akin to an environmental affectivity. In Chapter 1, I delineate this meaning in some detail by looking at the uses of qing in a range of early Chinese works, with the aim of demonstrating definitively that the term does, contra Graham, have affective connotations and that they are essential to understanding Zhuangzi's notion of aesthetic spontaneity. On the whole, Zhuangzi's attitude toward affectivity appears ambiguous, which is the second issue I approach. On the one hand, he advocates an open acceptance, even an active fascination, with all natural transformations, including those of an individual's body, but on the other hand, he appears to suggest that affective transformations should be dampened or overcome. In order to speak authoritatively about Zhuangzi's notion of affectivity, this apparent contradiction requires elucidation. -/- In the second chapter, I begin a fuller exploration of affectivity, beginning with a neglected side of Plato. First, drawing on the work of Suzanne Langer, Alfred North Whitehead, and Robert Solomon, I expand the notion of affectivity to include all cognitive activity in an attempt to reintegrate the Platonic body and mind. At first glance, this may appear to be an impossible task, but I find a significant amount of evidence in works other than the Republic (the work usually chosen for examination of his psychology) to support this claim, and by delineating a notion of aesthetic affectivity going back to the original meaning of aesthetics in Baumgarten that includes all sensibilities of the human being, I am able to reconstruct a notion of an integrated self in Plato that contradicts Charles Taylor's divided Platonic self. After coming to a physiological understanding of aesthetic affectivity in Plato, I turn to Aristotle for an understanding of the need for cultivated aesthetic affectivity. While the integrated body and mind is receiving quite a bit of attention in contemporary philosophy, the notion of self-cultivation is not. After reviewing the evidence for such a need in Aristotle, I turn to Richard Schusterman's pragmatic aesthetics to demonstrate how the notion of self-cultivation can still contribute to a robust contemporary philosophical anthropology, and this understanding will contribute to the notion of cultivating aesthetic spontaneity in Chapter 5. -/- In Chapter 3, I undertake a nuanced definition of "spontaneity" by going back to Zhuangzi. I analyze a significant number of passages of Zhuangzi that center on descriptions of spontaneous activity and distill out aspects that may serve as a heuristic definition of "spontaneity", namely, holistic fluency. I identify wholeness as entailing processes of collection (calm focus) and shedding (of distractions, consideration of rewards, discursive knowledge, selfishness, the external form of an object, etc.). Fluency involves responsiveness and ease and is derivative of wholeness. The purpose of delineating a definition of spontaneity is to be able to work with it as a useful philosophical concept, something that has not been possible up to now. In this chapter, I engage the work of Angus Graham, who has done the most with the notion of spontaneity, and of Hans Georg Gadamer, comparing his work on ease with a Zhuangzian notion. After defining spontaneity, I canvass the history of Western philosophy in an attempt to find terms of our tradition that may be useful in incorporating a Zhuangzian notion of spontaneity into contemporary philosophy. There is also the need to clear the air of other uses of the term "spontaneity" that could create confusion. I begin with notions of automaton, physis, and hexis in Aristotle, move on to Chryssipus and Epicurus, then because talk of spontaneity is dominated by the free will vs. determinism debate for the next 1,500 or more years, I skip to Rousseau. With Rousseau, and later Mill, I demonstrate how an early paradox of spontaneity persists, suggesting that this paradox rests on certain metaphysical assumptions and how one cannot speak of Zhuangzian spontaneity under those assumptions. I also entertain Kant and McDowell's notions of cognitive spontaneity and a related notion in Sartre. Schiller's and Gadamer's notions of play are also considered. Most important in all these considerations, perhaps, is grasping the contemporary, scientific understanding of emergent order. By understanding spontaneity in thoroughly naturalistic terms and by clearing the air of the roadblock of free-will, I pave the way for a viable theoretic understanding of aesthetic spontaneity. -/- Unlike popular notions of spontaneity, Daoist spontaneity involves more than impulsiveness. In Chapter 4, I explain that the aesthetic of spontaneity relies on a notion of experience that arises out of complex interaction with our environment that is conceptualized by Daoists as the chaos of the inchoate, a primal disorder that is the seat of potent creativity. Through the Daoists Laozi and Zhuangzi, and drawing on John Dewey's theory of experience, I show how aesthetic experience relies on a reservoir of inchoate potential in achieving spontaneous action. I also draw on John Dewey in formulating the role of habit in spontaneity. Habit can be conceived as a trigger or spring that releases spontaneous actions, but Dewey also says that there must be more to spontaneous action than habit. I clarify this issue and take preliminary steps to providing a resolution. -/- Continuing with the issue the theory of spontaneous action from earlier chapters, in chapter 5, I offer a fully conceptualized account of spontaneous action. First, I reiterate the relationship of spontaneity to affectivity by explaining how affectivity understood as responsiveness culminates in an ideal that we call spontaneity. I then offer a new categorization of the arts into "active" and "non-active", a distinction that brings into focus the fact that the aesthetic value of some arts relies on the actions in the process of the creation or performance of a work. These works cannot be experienced apart from actions, and it is the spontaneity of the actions, I argue, that contributes to the success of the works. -/- . (shrink)

Introduction -- Aesthetic judgements, aesthetic principles, and aesthetic properties -- Aesthetic essence -- The acquaintance principle -- The intersubjective validity of aesthetic judgements -- The pure judgement of taste as an aesthetic reflective judgement -- Understanding music -- The characterization of aesthetic qualities by essential metaphors and quasi-metaphors -- Musical movement and aesthetic metaphors -- Aesthetic realism and emotional qualities of music -- On looking at a picture -- The look of a picture -- Wollheim on correspondence, projective properties, and (...) expressive perception -- Wittgenstein on aesthetics. (shrink)

Roger Scruton appears to have been the first to argue for and articulate an anti-realist theory of aesthetic properties. In the case of emotional qualities of music, his principal argument against realism is unsound and cannot, I believe, be repaired. Nevertheless an anti-realist view of emotional qualities of music is in my view correct and I defend Scruton's insight against a rival realist conception. However, I prefer a rather different form of anti-realism to Scruton's.

The most fundamental debate in the philosophy of music involves the question of whether there is an artistically important connection between music and the ...

“What is appreciation?” is a basic question in the philosophy of art, and the analogy between appreciating a work of art and getting a joke can help us answer it. We first propose a subjective account of aesthetic appreciation (I). Then we consider jokes (II). The difference between getting a joke and not, or what it is to get it right, can often be objectively articulated. Such explanations cannot substitute for the joke itself, and indeed may undermine the very power (...) of the joke to evoke an appropriate response. Sometimes the discourse of art critics can have a similar effect. We therefore explore the analogy between getting jokes and appreciating works of art (III), and find it unexpectedly strong. Finally (IV), we consider Wittgensteinian grounds for thinking as we do, considering the language game of joke-telling, the relevance of seeing aspects, and giving reasons. (shrink)

Cognitive theories of emotions have provided us with explanations of how we emotionally engage with fiction, when we are aware that what is depicted is fictional. However, these theories left an important question unanswered: namely, what kinds of emotional responses to fiction are warranted responses. The main focus of this paper is how our emotional responses to fiction can be aesthetically warranted—that is, how emotions directed to fiction can be warranted given the fact that its object is an artwork. I (...) consider three possible explanations of this phenomenon: the real-life principle, a correspondence model, and a functional model. I argue that the real-life principle and the correspondence model fall short of explaining how our emotional responses to film are aesthetically warranted, and instead I argue that a functional model provides such an explanation. In this paper, I will primarily focus on fiction films, although I will address novels and other art forms where necessary. (shrink)

The literature on the venerable aesthetic category of the sublime often provides us with lists of sublime phenomena — mountains, storms, deserts, volcanoes, oceans, the starry sky, and so on. But it has long been recognized that what matters is the experience of such objects. We then find that one of the most consistent claims about this experience is that it involves an element of fear. Meanwhile, the recognition of the sublime as a category of aesthetic appreciation implies that attraction, (...) admiration or pleasure is also present.1However, there is also a sense of fear and attraction when we watch car chases or fights. Neither of these is an occasion for the sublime so much as a visceral sort of excitement.2 As .. (shrink)

This paper examines the causal basis of our ability to attribute emotions to music, developing and synthesizing the existing arousal, resemblance and persona theories of musical expressivity to do so. The principal claim is that music hijacks the simulation mechanism of the brain, a mechanism which has evolved to detect one's own and other people's emotions.

This article reviews some of the ways in which philosophical problems concerning music can be informed by approaches from the cognitive sciences (principally psychology and neuroscience). Focusing on the issues of musical expressiveness and the arousal of emotions by music, the key philosophical problems and their alternative solutions are outlined. There is room for optimism that while current experimental data does not always unambiguously satisfy philosophical scrutiny, it can potentially support one theory over another, and in some cases allow us (...) to synthesize or reject traditional philosophical differences. (shrink)

I argue for the possibility of an extremely intimate connection between the emotional content of the music and the emotional state of the person who produces that music. Under certain specified conditions, the music may not just influence, but also partially constitute the musician’s emotional state.

First published in 1959, this original study argues that the main characteristic of music is that it expresses and evokes emotion, and that all composers whose music has a tonal basis have used the same, or closely similar, melodic phrases, harmonies, and rhythms to affect the listener in the same ways. He supports this view with hundreds of musical examples, ranging from plainsong to Stravinsky, and contends that music is a language in the specific sense that we can identify idioms (...) and draw up a list of meanings. The book's final section analyzes two symphonies, Mozart's Fortieth and Vaughan Williams's Sixth, to explore the nature of musical inspiration and the process whereby the notes actually convey emotion from composer to listener. (shrink)

Comparatively speaking, philosophy has not been especially long-winded in attempting to answer questions about what is funny and why we should think so. There is the standard debate of many centuries’ standing between superiority and incongruity accounts of humor, which for the most part attempt to identify the intentional objects of our amusement.1 There is the more recent debate about humor and morality, about whether jokes themselves may be regarded as immoral or about whether it can in certain circumstances be (...) wrong to laugh.2 There is even apparently some disagreement about whether amusement is an emotion proper or a different kind of psychological attitude altogether. While I have almost despite myself taken .. (shrink)

The problem of fiction and emotion is the problem of how we can be moved by the contemplation of fictional events and the plight of fictional characters when we know that the former have not occurred and the latter do not exist. I will give a general sketch of the philosophical treatment of the issue in the present day, and then turn to the eighteenth century for a solution as effective as the best that are presently on offer. The solution (...) is to be found in the account of ideal presence given by Henry Home, Lord Kames. (shrink)

In its narrative, dramatic, and representational genres, art regularly depicts contexts for human emotions and their expressions. It is not surprising, then, that these artforms are often about emotional experiences and displays, and that they are also concerned with the expression of emotion. What is more interesting is that abstract art genres may also include examples that are highly expressive of human emotion. Pure music – that is, stand-alone music played on musical instruments excluding the human voice, and without words, (...) literary titles, or associated texts connected to it by its composer – is often characterized as the expressive art par excellence. Yet how could that be possible, given that such music lacks semantic or representational content? Pure music presents the hardest and most vivid philosophical challenge to any account of expressiveness in the arts, which is why it is crucial to consider the musical case for the light it sheds on the underlying principles and issues. (shrink)

I have long been interested in the expression of emotion in music and in the response this calls forth from the listener. One such response is a mirroring or echoing one; sad music tends to make (some) listeners feel sad and happy music to make them happy. This mirroring reaction is brought about by what I have called emotional contagion. We tend to resonate with the emotional tenor of the music, much as we catch the emotional ambience emanating from other (...) people. Reflecting on the musical case not only enhances understanding of the listener’s response, it provides a novel objection to the cognitive theory of the emotions favored by many philosophers and invites critical consideration of the models for human-to-human emotional contagion proposed by psychologists. As I try to show, the most common accounts of emotional contagion should be developed and refined in light of analysis of emotional contagion in the musical case, which recommends, for example, that we distinguish attention from non-attentional modes of emotional transmission and, in general, avoid defining the phenomenon reductively in terms of the routes and mechanisms of communication. (shrink)

It is widely held that there is a paradox in the fact that we respond emotionally to characters, situations, or events that we know to be fictional, or in other words, when they do not exist. To take a familiar example.

In its narrative, dramatic, and representational genres, art regularly depicts contexts for human emotions and their expressions. It is not surprising, then, that these artforms are often about emotional experiences and displays, and that they are also concerned with the expression of emotion. What is more interesting is that abstract art genres may also include examples that are highly expressive of human emotion. Pure music – that is, stand-alone music played on musical instruments excluding the human voice, and without words, (...) literary titles, or associated texts connected to it by its composer – is often characterized as the expressive art par excellence. Yet how could that be possible, given that such music lacks semantic or representational content? Pure music presents the hardest and most vivid philosophical challenge to any account of expressiveness in the arts, which is why it is crucial to consider the musical case for the light it sheds on the underlying principles and issues. In this chapter I consider two accounts of expressiveness in pure music. Both regard expressiveness as an objective property of such music. I argue for the position I call appearance emotionalism and against the alternative, which I label hypothetical emo- tionalism. But before I get to that, there is a different mode of musical expression to be acknowledged. Even instrumental music comes charged with associations. Some of these are private to the listener, but many are widely shared. The latter may be included in a piece by accident but are, more often, deliberately placed for their effects. For instance, when a song is quoted in an instrumental work, its title or words may be brought to mind. Certain melodies (e.g., “Ode to Joy”), styles (e.g., tarantella), idioms (e.g., fanfares), forms (e.g., minuet), modalities (e.g., church modes), and instruments (e.g., fifes and snare drums) recall particular social events, geocultural regions, historical periods, ideas, and sensibilities, and in this way can hook up with affective life-experiences. Though it is music’s associative ties that are likely to be referred to when most people are asked about music’s significance, philosophers say little about them.. (shrink)

According to Peter Kivy, to be profound, music would have to be about a profound subject that is treated in an exemplary way. Instrumental music does not satisfy this definition; usually it is not about anything humanly important, and when it is, it can convey no more than banalities. Like others, I argue against the propositional character of Kivy's ‘aboutness’ criterion; profundity can be revealed or displayed other than via statements and descriptions. I am less inclined than some of Kivy's (...) critics to argue that music conveys profound insights into the emotions or abstract metaphysical ideas, such as unity and identity. Instead, I draw a parallel with great chess, which illustrates the fecundity, flexibility, insight, vitality, subtlety, complexity, and analytical far-reachingness of which the human mind is capable. That demonstration is of deep significance, given the wider importance of an appreciation of our intellectual and imaginative powers, even if chess says nothing about the skills to which it draws attention. My thesis is that some instrumental music is profound in a similar way; namely, for what it exemplifies and thereby reveals about the capacities of the human mind. (shrink)

But what does music mean, and how does it mean?Stephen Davies addresses these questions in this sophisticated and knowledgeable overview of current theories in ...

An examination of Cassirer’s conception of symbolizing, which is born in his critique of Kant, will show that objectifying human experience without external absolutes is grounded in affect, not cognition. When there is no external absolute to guide objectifying, then the roots of objectifying begin with how we are affected by experience and led to reflect. Affect formulates how we become conscious of what there is and express this consciousness so as to objectify it. Affect thus has an indirect influence (...) on consciousness and objectifying. Cassirer expands the scope of the free play of the imagination, which Kant restricted to aesthetic judgments, to account for how order arises through any modality when a rule is not given. He anchors this generative source in human expression itself, and thereby prevents objectifying from sinking into relativism. Affect is thus shown to play a regulative role in consciousness when we objectify human experience without external absolutes. (shrink)

Literary ontology is essentially a phenomenological issue rather than one of epistemology, sociology, or psychology. It is a theory of the phenomenological essence intuited from a sense of beauty, based on the phenomenological ontology of beauty, which puts into brackets the sociohistorical premises and material conditions of aesthetic phenomena. Beauty is the objectified emotion. This is the phenomenological definition of the essence of beauty, which manifests itself on three levels, namely emotion qua selfconsciousness, sense of beauty qua emotion, and sentiment (...) qua sense of beauty. Art on the other hand is the objectification of emotion whose most general and closest manner to humanity is literature and poetry. Poetry is the origin of language and the linguistic essence is a metaphor. Language as the house of being is both thinking and poetry. Literature expresses the essence of art in the most direct way and, in traditional Chinese aesthetic terminology, literature is the language of emotion conveyed by the writer based on his own emotion towards the language of scene. (shrink)

According to R. G. Collingwood in The Principles of Art, art is the expression of emotion--a much-criticized view. I attempt to provide some groundwork for a defensible modern version of such a theory via some novel further criticisms of Collingwood, including the exposure of multiple ambiguities in his main concept of expression of emotion, and a demonstration that, surprisingly enough, his view is unable to account for genuinely creative artistic activities. A key factor in the reconstruction is a replacement of (...) the concept of expression with that of interpretation: what artists do is to interpret, rather than express, their initial emotions, in creative ways that may go far beyond their initial impulses. Thus more broadly the paper attempts to show that the concept of interpretation is just as central to understanding artistic creativity as it is in the analysis of the critical appreciation of artworks. (shrink)

One of the central concerns of Moran's essay The Expression of Feeling in Imagination1 is to address the problem of fictional emotions - that is, of our emotional responses towards fictional characters, situations or events – and to clarify whether it is essentially related to some form of imagining or another.2 Moran's specific aim is thereby to criticise Walton's solution to the problem in terms of (as it seems) propositional imagining, and to present his own alternative account in terms (...) of emotional imagining. In this paper, I will primarily be concerned with the question of whether he has succeeded in this aim. But I intend also to briefly introduce and discuss towards the end a third approach to the problem and, especially, to the issue of whether imagining plays a central role in the occurrence of fictional emotions. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present the disagreement between Moran and Walton on the nature of our affective responses to fiction and to defend a view on the issue which is opposed to Moran's account and improves on Walton's. Moran takes imagination-based affective responses to be instances of genuine emotion and treats them as episodes with an emotional attitude towards their contents. I argue against the existence of such attitudes, and that the affective element of such responses should (...) rather be taken to be part of what is imagined. In this respect, I follow Walton; and I also agree with the latter that our affective responses to fiction are, as a consequence, not instances of real emotion. However, this gives rise to the challenge to be more specific about the nature of our responses and explain how they can still involve a phenomenologically salient affective element, given that propositionally imagining that one feels a certain emotion is ruled out because it may be done in a dispassionate way. The answer - already suggested, but not properly spelled out by Walton - is that affectively responding to some fictional element consists in imaginatively re- presenting an experience of emotional feeling towards it. The central thought is that the conscious and imaginative representation of the affective character of an instance of genuine emotion itself involves the respective phenomenologically salient affective element, despite not instantiating it. (shrink)

Within the debate on the epistemology of aesthetic appreciation, it has a long tradition, and is still very common, to endorse the sentimentalist view that our aesthetic evaluations are rationally grounded on, or even constituted by, certain of our emotional responses to the objects concerned. Such a view faces, however, the serious challenge to satisfactorily deal with the seeming possibility of faultless disagreement among emotionally based and epistemically appropriate verdicts. I will argue that the sentimentalist approach to aesthetic epistemology cannot (...) accept and accommodate this possibility without thereby undermining the assumed capacity of emotions to justify corresponding aesthetic evaluations – that is, without undermining the very sentimentalist idea at the core of its account. And I will also try to show that sentimentalists can hope to deny the possibility of faultless disagreement only by giving up the further view that aesthetic assessments are intersubjective – a view which is almost as traditional and widely held in aesthetics as sentimentalism, and which is indeed often enough combined with the latter. My ultimate conclusion is therefore that this popular combination of views should better be avoided: either sentimentalism or intersubjectivism has to make way. (shrink)

Viewers have a way of using their somatosensory system to create temporary boundary changes that bring them into intimate relationships with art objects. Spectators experience this imaginary fusion when simultaneously attending to their own somatosensory sensations, which occur inside the body, and to qualities of the artwork, which exist in the external world. At such moments viewers reinterpret their somatosensory sensations as a quality of the artwork. When inside and outside are reinterpreted, viewers cross the conventional boundary between self and (...) object. This effect can be illustrated in first person reports and supported by current research in the neurosciences and the humanities. (shrink)

It is a widespread view that affective and emotional responses to many works of literature are often components of an appreciation of literature that is richer than it would be without them. In this paper, I raise three points designed to show that Lamarque does not give emotional and other affective responses their due. First, I propose that he does not sufficiently distinguish emotion and imagination from concerns about knowledge and truth. Second, he does not sufficiently distinguish appreciation, and the (...) role of emotions within it, from criticism. And third, there is a conflation of accounts of the value of individual works with accounts of the value of having literature as an institution around. (shrink)

Against the consensus that Aristotle in the "Poetics" sets out to give tragedy a role in exercising or improving the mature citizen's moral sensibilities, I argue that his aim is rather to analyse what makes a work of literature successful in its own terms, and in particular how a tragic drama can achieve the effect of suspense. The proper pleasure of tragedy is produced by the plotting and eventual dispelling of the play's suspense. Aristotle claims that poetry 'says what is (...) universal' not in order to suggest that poetry achieves anything of the effect of philosophy, but to explain how in creating his plots the poet takes into consideration what, in general, could be expected to happen. Chapter 4 of the "Poetics" is not a theory of mimesis but an analysis of the lowest common denominator of the pleasure we take in fictions. The inevitability or likelihood by which events in the tragic plot are to be connected has an aesthetic rather than a moral function. Doing away with the irrationality of chance and increasing the human intelligibility of the action is not its point; the point is to furnish the plot with the second half of the formula for successful suspense: that events in the plot should happen 'against expectation because of one another'. The first half of the formula is examined under the rubric of peripety or reversal. The formula as a whole describes the pivotal moment when the pieces of the plot suddenly fit with a configuration that only in retrospect can we see to have been falling into place all along. Pity and fear are the emotions on which Aristotle focusses because they are the emotions engaged by the tightening-towards-release of literary suspense. And the pleasure of catharsis is the pleasure of that release. (shrink)

One of the more striking aspects of Adam Smith's moral theory is the degree to which it depends on and appeals to aesthetic norms. By considering what Smith says about judgments of propriety – the foundational type of judgment in his system – and by tying what he says in The Theory of Moral Sentiments to certain of his other writings, I argue that Smith ultimately defends an aesthetic morality. Among the challenges that any aesthetic morality faces is that it (...) seems to entail moral relativism. This problem is magnified by Smith's reliance on the judgments of the impartial spectator, which also seems to make his theory more vulnerable to a Euthyphro-type objection. I suggest that Smith can potentially get around these problems, given his presumption of aesthetic naturalism. While there is certainly some variation in our aesthetic judgments, Smith claims that we naturally find certain actions and sentiments odious, while others we find agreeable. The reason, he argues, is that any society that judged otherwise would not survive. (shrink)

Book description: Art and Morality is a collection of groundbreaking new papers on the theme of aesthetics and ethics, and the link between the two subjects. A group of distinguished contributors tackle the important questions that arise when one thinks about the moral dimensions of art and the aesthetic dimension of moral life. The volume is a significant contribution to philosophical literature, opening up unexplored questions and shedding new light on more traditional debates in aesthetics. The topics explored include: the (...) relation of aesthetic to ethical judgement; the relation of artistic experience to moral consciousness; the moral status of fiction; the concepts of sentimentality and decadence; the moral dimension of critical practice, pictorial art and music; the moral significance of tragedy; and the connections between artistic and moral issues elaborated in the writings of central figures in modern philosophy, such as Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The contributors share the view that progress in aesthetics requires detailed study of the practice of criticism. This volume will appeal both to the philosophical community and to researchers in areas such as literary theory, musicology and the theory of art. (shrink)

The long debate -- Aesthetics and ethics : basic concepts -- A conceptual map -- Autonomism -- Artistic and critical practices -- Questions of character -- The cognitive argument : the epistemic claim -- The cognitive argument : the aesthetic claim -- Emotion and imagination -- The merited response argument.

Regarding certain fictional characters (and situations) F, it is simultaneously true that: (1) We have genuine and rational emotional responses towards F (2) We believe that F is purely fictional At the same time, it is also true that: (3) In order for us to have genuine and rational emotional responses towards a character (or situation), we must not believe that the character (or situation) is purely fictional.

While narrative has been one of liveliest and most productive areas of research in literary theory, discussions of the nature of emotional responses to art and of the cognitive value of art tend to concentrate almost exclusively on the problem of fiction: How can we emote over or learn from fictions? Narrative, Emotion, and Insight explores what would happen if aestheticians framed the matter differently, having narratives—rather than fictional characters and events—as the object of emotional and cognitive attention. The book (...) thus opens up new possibilities for approaching questions about the ethical, educative, and cultural value of art. The nine essays in this volume introduce the study of narrative to contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

Many philosophical accounts of the emotions conceive of them as susceptible to assessments of rationality, fittingness, or some other notion of aptness. Analogous assumptions apply in cases of emotions directed at what are taken to be only fictional or only imagined. My question is whether the criteria governing the aptness of emotions we have toward what we take to be real things apply invariantly to those emotions we have toward what we take to be only fictional or imagined. I argue (...) that what counts as a reason justifying an emotion can differ across real, fictional, and imagined domains. (shrink)

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I reply to the main criticisms and suggestions for further clarification made by the contributors to this symposium on my book, Self-Expression . These replies are organized into the following sections: (1) What's in the name?, (2) Showing, expressing and indicating, (3) Expressing and signaling, (4) Perceiving emotions, (5) Voluntary/involuntary, (6) Expression and handicaps, (7) Expression and aesthetics, and (8) Looking ahead.