Online research in philosophy

My primary aim in this paper is to outline a quasi-realist theory of aesthetic judgement. Robert Hopkins has recently argued against the plausibility of this project because he claims that quasi-realism cannot explain a central component of any expressivist understanding of aesthetic judgements, namely their supposed ‘autonomy’. I argue against Hopkins’s claims by contending that Roger Scruton’s aesthetic attitude theory, centred on his account of the imagination, provides us with the means to develop a plausible quasi-realist account of aesthetic judgement. Finally, I respond to two recent attempts to discredit the validity of the notion of aesthetic autonomy. I claim that both fail adequately to address the underlying non-realist motivations and justifications for maintaining the principle.

When Kant is explaining how aesthetic judgments are made, he contrasts them with cognitive judgments in which the imagination is, as he puts it, "in the service" of the understanding. In effect, he thinks of cognitive judgments as tasks in which the imagination is attempting to see whether some given item falls under a concept or rule provided by the understanding. If the rule is reasonably specific-separate the cubes from the spheres-there is not much room for the imagination to determine whether a particular shape falls under the rule: it either does or it doesn't and we simply have to work at the task which is, therefore, not much fun.

Discusses the different ways in which the concept of imagination has been construed, and provides fascinating glimpses of the role of imagination in the creation and management of Modernity.

The five interlocked essays, based on material from Adorno's "aesthetic writings," take up such issues as subjective aesthetic experience, the historicity of ...

One issue for theory is to account convincingly for the value of art and the significance of its specifically aesthetic character. Appeal to imagination, understood along Kantian lines as functioning to construct ‘a second nature from the material supplied by actual nature’, generates suggestive answers to both aspects of the task. The second nature that the artist inventively constructs in fine representation is one in which themes central to the inner life are revealed in ways as unestranging to us as their nature permits; then, in their aesthetic realization we take them into ourselves directly in experience, with concomitant affect. Thereby the values they convey are liable either to become our own or else to modify established ones. Whether they do so stably or not may depend on our having achieved a firmly enough rooted sense of self. Imagination has traditionally been seen as contributing aesthetically to that too in the elaboration of the sublime, as much within the realm of art as in nature itself. Forms of art resisting such modes of reflection will need to look to theory to put something no less vital in their place.

: Activist and political art works, particularly feminist ones, are frequently either dismissed for their illegitimate combination of the aesthetic and the political, or embraced as chiefly political works. Flawed conceptions of politics and the imagination are responsible for that dismissal. An understanding of the imagination is developed that allows us to see how political work and political explorations may inform the artistic imagination.

Introduction -- An introduction to the crisis of spirit : technology and the Fichtean imagination -- Technology and truth : representation and the problem of the third term -- Spirit and the technology of the letter -- The spatial imagination : affect, image, and the critique of representational consciousness -- Subtle matter and the ground of intersubjectivity -- The aesthetic of influence -- The first displacement : from subjectivity to being -- The second displacement : from a metaphysical to a technological imagination.

This paper explores the significance of Adam Smith's ideas for defending non-cognitivist theories of aesthetic appreciation of nature. Objections to non-cognitivism argue that the exercise of emotion and imagination in aesthetic judgement potentially sentimentalizes and trivializes nature. I argue that although directed at moral judgement, Smith's views also find a place in addressing this problem. First, sympathetic imagination may afford a deeper and more sensitive type of aesthetic engagement. Second, in taking up the position of the impartial spectator, aesthetic judgements may originate in a type of self-regulated response where we stand outside ourselves to check those overly humanizing tendencies which might lead to a failure in appreciating nature as nature.