Aesthetic Value

In this paper, I attempt to formulate an Ingardenian conception of the literary work’s aesthetic value. Following Mitscherling’s lead, I attempt to place Ingarden’s aesthetics within his overall phenomenological-ontological project. That is, I argue that Ingarden’s aesthetics can only be properly fathomed in the context of his ontological deliberations, since, as he himself often enunciated, all his philosophical investigations constitute a realist rejoinder to Husserl’s turn toward transcendental idealism. To this end, I bring together insights from his aesthetics and ontology (...) to establish a coherent account of values, where artistic and aesthetic values are analyzed as they manifest themselves in the literary work of art. By attending to the ontology of its aesthetic (and artistic) values, I argue, the literary work’s stratified formation becomes more explicit. Keywords: Roman Ingarden, aesthetic value, artistic value, the literary work of art, ontology, aesthetics. (shrink)

As aesthetic beings, we are receptive to and engaged with the sensuous phenomena of life while also knowing that we are targets of others’ awareness: we are both aesthetic agents and aesthetic objects. Our psychological health, our standing within our communities, and our overall wellbeing can be profoundly affected by our aesthetic surroundings and by whether and how we receive aesthetic recognition from others. Being aware of and responsive to how others aesthetically experience us shapes our sense of self and (...) our ability to function in a world with others who are also both agents and objects. When our embodied selves and our cultural products are valued, and when we have rich opportunities for aesthetic experience and for the exercise of aesthetic agency, the aesthetic can foster and sustain wellbeing and help to make our lives worthwhile. But when we are subjected to aesthetic blight, restriction of our aesthetic agency, and aesthetic devaluing of our embodied selves and our communities’ cultural products, the aesthetic can do great harm. This essay explores the notions of aesthetic objects and aesthetic agents, their relations with each other, and the unique affordances of persons’ status as simultaneously aesthetic objects and aesthetic agents. It examines the prospects for bodily aesthetic experience to promote wellbeing and, at the end, considers how the aesthetic might play a role in establishing forms of mutual vulnerability and recognition to combat oppressive social hierarchies. (shrink)

Contrary to the received view according to which the value of works of art consists exclusively or primarily in their aesthetic value I argue that the importance of aesthetic value has been grossly overrated. In earlier publications I have shown that the assumption stipulating that the value of artworks consists exclusively in their aesthetic value is demonstrably wrong. I have suggested a conceptual distinction between the aesthetic and the artistic value arguing that when it comes to evaluation the artistic value, (...) which reflects the significance of innovations exemplified by the work, is no less important than the aesthetic value. Here I take the argument a step further by suggesting that the aesthetic value is considerably less important than the artistic value. To show this I draw attention to a neglected aspect of art evaluation, namely to the monetary value of artworks. Although there is no necessary connection between monetary value of works of art and their aesthetic value or their artistic value, it can nevertheless tell us something important not only about the overall value of works of art but also about the relative importance of the two component values. I show that the enormous differences between monetary values of different artworks cannot be accounted for by the corresponding differences in their aesthetic value but can be explained by the differences in their artistic value. (shrink)

Our paradigms of aesthetic value condition the philosophical questions we pose and hope to answer about it. Theories of aesthetic value are typically individualistic, in the sense that the paradigms they are designed to capture, and the questions to which they are offered as answers, center the individual’s engagement with aesthetic value. Here I offer some considerations that suggest that such individualism is a mistake and sketch a communitarian way of posing and answering questions about the nature of aesthetic value.

Arthur Danto argued from the premise that artworks are essentially cognitive to the conclusion that they are incidentally aesthetic. I wonder why Danto, and the very many of us he persuaded, came to believe that the cognitive and the aesthetic oppose one another. I argue, contrary to Danto’s historical claims, that the cognitive and the aesthetic did not come into opposition until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and that they were brought into opposition for reasons of art-critical expediency (...) rather than philosophical necessity. I conclude that a robustly cognitive notion of the aesthetic remains an option for us. (shrink)

(Fully open access book, free to download at the UCL press site) -/- How do people make sense of works of art? And how do they write to make others see the same way? There are many guides to looking at art, histories of art history and art criticism, and accounts of various ‘theories’ and ‘methods’, but this book offers something very unlike the normal search for difference and division: it examines the general and largely unspoken norms shared by interpreters (...) of many kinds. -/- Ranging widely, though taking writing within the Western tradition of art history as its primary focus, Interpreting Art highlights the norms, premises, and patterns that tend to guide interpretation along the way. Why, for example, is the concept of artistic ‘intention’ at once so reviled and yet so hard to let go of? What does it really involve when an interpretation appeals to an artwork’s ‘reception’? How can ‘context’ be used by some to keep things under control and by others to make the interpretation of art seem limitless? And how is it that artworks only seem to grow in complexity over time? -/- Interpreting Art reveals subtle features of art writing central to the often unnoticed interpretative practices through which we understand works of art. In doing so, the book also sheds light on possible alternatives, pointing to how writers on art might choose to operate differently in the future. (shrink)

This article explores the compatibility of posing and authenticity in portraiture. Often understood as a source of inauthenticity, I propose that posing in fact functions as an artistic tool that can support a truthful portrayal. My argument first discusses authenticity in relation to portraiture through the lens of Bernard Williams’s idea of “truthfulness,” which relies on his notions of “accuracy” and “sincerity.” Second, I introduce a phenomenology of posing. I identify two aspects of posing that can be present in the (...) portrait; these are the “posing sitter,” who holds the actual physical pose, but also point out the use of a “posing effect” in the image, which I call the “posed sitter.” Third, I address the worry of posing as a source of inauthenticity and demonstrate how this can be reframed in order to lay bare its capacity for enhancing truthfulness. The pose then need not be regarded with suspicion of artifice that clouds the authenticity of the sitter; instead, it can offer an approach to truthfully portray the sitter. (shrink)

This reference essay surveys recent work in the emerging sub-discipline of everyday aesthetics, which builds on the work of John Dewey to resist sharp distinctions between art and non-art domains and argue that aesthetic concepts are properly applied to ordinary domains of experience.

This paper argues for several claims about the moral relevance of the aesthetic: that attention to aesthetic values may promote moral motivation; that aesthetic values should be regarded as constraining moral demands; and that the pursuit of aesthetic satisfactions may itself have positive moral value. These arguments suggest that moral thinking should be aesthetically informed to a much greater degree than has been typical. The aesthetic is a central dimension of a good life, and a life’s being good for the (...) person living it has considerable moral weight, both in itself and because of the positive consequences for others that stem from it. Moral thinking that neglects aesthetic considerations, then, is likely to result in theories that are deficient not only from an aesthetic but from a moral point of view. (shrink)

Discussions of aesthetic reasons and normativity are becoming increasingly popular. This piece outlines six basic questions about aesthetic reasons, normativity, and value and discusses the space of possible answers to these questions. I divide the terrain into two groups of three questions each. First are questions about the shape of aesthetic reasons: what they favour, how strong they are, and where they come from. Second are relational questions about how aesthetic reasons fit into the wider normative landscape: whether they are (...) distinctive, what their normative status is, and how they interact with each other and with non-aesthetic reasons. This piece aims to provide a taxonomy to clarify and organise the burgeoning literature and to make a few concrete suggestions for avenues of future research. (shrink)

Why is there a long-standing debate about paraphrase in poetry? Everyone agrees that paraphrase can be useful; everyone agrees that paraphrase is no substitute for the poem itself. What is there to disagree about? Perhaps this: whether paraphrase can specify everything that counts as a contribution to the meaning of a poem. There are, we say, two ways to take the question; on one way of taking it, the answer is that paraphrase cannot. Does this entail that there is meaning (...) mysteriously locked in a poem, meaning that cannot be represented in any way other than via the poem itself? If that were so it would have profound implications for poetry’s capacity to convey insight. We suggest reasons for thinking that the entailment does not hold. Throughout, we connect the traditional debate over paraphrase, which has largely been conducted within the fields of philosophy and literary theory, with recent empirically oriented thinking about the communicability of meaning, represented by work in pragmatics. We end with a suggestion about what is to count as belonging to meaning, and what as merely among the things that determine meaning. (shrink)

This paper seeks to refute the claim that architectural value is one and the same value as the artistic value of architecture. As few scholars explicitly endorse this claim, instead tacitly holding it, I term it the implicit claim. Three potential motivations for the implicit claim are offered before it is shown that, contrary to supporting the claim, they set the foundations for considering architectural value and the artistic value of architecture to be distinct. After refuting the potential motivations and (...) offering some counterexamples to the claim, I provide some comments upon the interaction(s) between aesthetic, artistic, and architectural values, which are benefitted and supported by Louise Hanson’s discussion of attributive value in the artistic domain. (shrink)

Aesthetic hedonism is the default theory of aesthetic value. Some of its critics share with it a pair of unquestioned assumptions, namely, that any theory of aesthetic value should make special appeal to its being the case that the canonical form of aesthetic evaluation is a state of pleasure and to its being the case that the canonical purpose of aesthetic acts is to access pleasure. This paper argues that there is reason to doubt both assumptions. Doubting both assumptions suggests (...) a wider range of alternatives to aesthetic hedonism and primitivist inversions of aesthetic hedonism. (shrink)

Engaging with the philosophical writings of Iris Murdoch, we submit that there are difficulties associated with providing a good description of morality that are intimately connected with difficulties in understanding other human beings. We suggest three senses in which moral philosophical reflection needs to account for our understanding of others: the failure to understand someone is not merely an intellectual failure, but also engages us morally; the moral question of understanding is not limited to the extent to which we understand (...) a particular person, but also presents itself in how we picture difficulties in understanding people; and “philosophical pictures of morality” fundamentally shape the conceptual framework we use to investigate morality, as well as the analysis of morality we find illuminative and satisfactory. Exploring the implications of these claims, we ask what it means to think of others as the same, or as different, from ourselves. We then consider the ethical significance of finding, or not finding, our feet in our encounters with others, dwelling on how the metaphor of movement reveals one way in which we are never at peace in the exploration of morality. (shrink)

This is my reply to commentators in the symposium on my book, GAMES: AGENCY AS ART. The symposium features commentary by Thomas Hurka, Quill Kukla, and Alva Noe, and originally appeared in Analysis 81 (2).

This article relates the ideas of Stanisław Brzozowski (1878-1911) with those of Bernard Stiegler (1952-2020), both of whom problematize the "work" of art understood as a labor practice. Through the conceptual analysis of epigenetics and epiphylogenetics for aesthetic theory, I claim that both thinkers develop practical concepts relevant to contemporary art philosophy. First, I present an overview of Brzozowski's aesthetics, for whom literature and the arts are linked with ethics, and aesthetic form is tied with moral judgment. Then, I continue (...) with an outline of Stiegler's, for whom the role of artists is to sculpt a new culture and historical epoch called the Neganthropocene. Finally, the notion of "work" as a type of memory practice is analyzed. The comparison shows that Stiegler develops epigenetics phenomenologically via memory ("tertiary retentions") and phylogenetics to epiphylogenetics. Both philosophers argue against determinism. This study suggests that their key ideas advance and complement each other. (shrink)

In “Sideways Music”, Ned Markosian presents the aesthetic value variance of sideways music as a case against what the Spacetime Thesis—the thesis that time is one of four similar dimensions that make up spacetime. Critics have already raised worries about the premises of his argument. In this paper, I focus on Markosian’s assumed aesthetic realism. I argue that there is a version of aesthetic realism—a version that admits aesthetic value gluts—that is consistent with both the Spacetime Thesis and the aesthetic (...) variance of sideways music. If this is right, then sideways music may simply be a non-issue for proponents of the Spacetime Thesis. (shrink)

The role of judgments of beauty in scientific theory evaluation is the subject of significant debate in contemporary philosophy of science. This book advances that debate by broadening its scope. In Judgments of Beauty in Theory Evaluation, the author argues that judgments of beauty are a justified part of theory evaluation of all sorts: not only scientific theory evaluation, but also philosophical theory evaluation. The author argues for this thesis by providing an account of beauty—inherited from Kant and Mothersill—on which (...) the distinctive nature of judgments of beauty is that they are unprincipled, yet possible. The author then analyzes two important methods of theory evaluation—reflective equilibrium and simplicity—and argues that these methods require making judgments of beauty so understood. Finally, the author argues that these methods of theory evaluation are not anomalies, but that they point to a deeper lesson about the nature of theorizing and the necessity of using judgments of beauty to evaluate systems, like theories. This conclusion has implications for the debate in philosophy of science over judgments of beauty, but also prompts a reckoning in philosophy itself over the use of judgments of beauty in philosophical theory evaluation. (shrink)

El filósofo checo Jan Mukarovsky (1891-1975) fue uno de los fundadores del Círculo de Praga. Fue el primero en intentar desarrollar una estética semiológica, cuya herramienta metodológica fundamental es el signo. Él está consciente de que el fenómeno estético no es igual ni reductible al lingüístico, por lo que procura una definición del signo mucho más amplia de la que es habitual en los medios lingüísticos. Por ese camino se topa con el tema de los valores estéticos. Su enfoque de (...) la estética, totalmente original en su momento, le permite adelantar fecundas ideas sobre los valores estéticos. (shrink)

3500 word interview with Tom Cochrane discussing his philosophical background, the nature of aesthetic value, the benefits of art, and aestheticism.

I offer the first sustained defence of the claim that ugliness is constituted by the disposition to disgust. I advance three main lines of argument in support of this thesis. First, ugliness and disgustingness tend to lie in the same kinds of things and properties (the argument from ostensions). Second, the thesis is better placed than all existing accounts to accommodate the following facts: ugliness is narrowly and systematically distributed in a heterogenous set of things, ugliness is sometimes enjoyed, and (...) ugliness sits opposed to beauty across a neutral midpoint (the argument from proposed intensions). And third, ugliness and disgustingness function in the same way in both giving rise to representations of contamination (the argument from the law of contagion). In making these arguments, I show why prominent objections to the thesis do not succeed, cast light on some of the artistic functions of ugliness, and, in addition, demonstrate why a dispositional account of disgustingness is correct, and present a novel problem for warrant-based accounts of disgustingness (the ‘too many reasons’ problem). (shrink)

This essay responds to John McDermott’s diagnosis of politics and religious life in the U.S.: “[B]oth traditional political and religious institutions are no longer an adequate let alone rich resource for a celebratory language.” I present a new celebratory language by reading William James’s description of saintliness in Varieties of Religious Experience. James gives me the resources to naturalize and democratize saintliness. Distinguished not by her transcendent miracles but by her this-worldly energies and experiments, the pragmatic saint remakes the experience (...) of her community through celebration, a form of appreciation and criticism exemplified in engaged art. My ethical and aesthetic description of the saint thus builds on E. Paul Colella’s recent political description of the saint as the “strenuous citizen.”. (shrink)

"C.E. Emmer’s article addresses the ongoing debates over how to classify and understand kitsch, from the inception of postmodern culture onwards. It is suggested that the lack of clear distinction between fine art and popular culture generates 'approaches to kitsch – what we might call 'deflationary' approaches – that conspire to create the impression that, ultimately, either 'kitsch' should be abandoned as a concept altogether, or we should simply abandon ourselves to enjoying kitschy objects as kitsch.' The author offers critical (...) insight into 'kitschy' items made in response to 9/11 and tries to examine the reception of these products through scrutinizing a selection of remarks posted by the Internet commentators." Editor Justyna Stępień's summary from her introduction to Redefining Kitsch and Camp in Literature and Culture (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), p. 2. The final pages of the chapter analyze the seemingly sweet landscape paintings of Thomas Kinkade to show the spirit of revenge their Christian coding can conceal. (shrink)

This paper argues that certain literary works can only be fully appreciated if the reader is able to experience through empathy the character’s values. I call it "the axiological account" because it makes the grasping of aesthetic values dependent on the experience of other values embodied in the work. I develop my argument in three stages. First, I argue that in empathy we not only apprehend but also experience something similar to what the target is going through. Next, I show (...) how this experience is necessary to extract the aesthetic values of certain works. The final section addresses two challenges to the proposed account. (shrink)

Markosian presents an argument against certain theories of time based on the aesthetic value of music. He argues that turning a piece of music sideways in time destroys its intrinsic value, which would not be possible if the Spacetime Thesis were true. In this paper I show that sideways music poses no problems for any theory of time by demonstrating that turning a piece of music sideways does not affect its intrinsic value. I do this by appealing to spatial analogies (...) that highlight the similarities between spatial and temporal rotations. (shrink)

This essay takes a synthetic and critical approach to the scattered pieces of art criticism and aesthetic theory authored by Louis Althusser. Connecting these texts to his larger philosophical and political project, we argue that these reflections make an independent contribution to its worth and that they offer different perspectives on lingering theoretical problems. We piece together the insights that form the core of the Althusserian approach to aesthetics and show how these are formulated (in connection with the work of (...) Pierre Macherey as well as the dominant controversies of the time) and trace how their formulations take shape in relation to the work of different authors and artists. In addition to helping us better understand his overall project, Althusser’s aesthetic theory is, we argue, a powerful and original contribution to Marxist aesthetics. Specifically, it points us to the idea that we need to take aesthetic production seriously as a practice with its own specificity - one that has its own logics of determination, rituals of production, circulation, and consumption, one that commands effects that need to be theorized on their own terms. (shrink)

La identidad, el cuerpo y los imaginarios, en su vínculo con el arte y la cultura, son los conceptos básicos presentes en este libro. La asociación entre ellos no es nada casual. Responde a importantes necesidades epistemológicas y prácticas en la comprensión de lo que somos, de la medida en que el arte y la cultura nos constituyen y del modo en que lo corporal y lo imaginario se convierten en depositarios de los atributos que nos identifican. Esta sexta entrega (...) de La Fuente nace como iniciativa para el trabajo conjunto del Cuerpo Académico “Estética y Arte” de la BUAP y extiende su concepción y realización a otros cuerpos, asociados, junto al primero, en la Red de Investigaciones en Arte (RIA). Participan en el libro, de esta forma, investigadores de las universidades Autónoma de Puebla, Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, Autónoma de Querétaro y de Barcelona. Se compone de tres secciones, precedidas cada una de ellas por Mesas Redondas dedicadas, respectivamente, al vínculo entre identidad y universalidad, a la estética del cuerpo femenino y a los imaginarios como depositarios de las identidades promovidas por el arte. Las secciones se completan con trabajos en torno a los mismos temas, realizados por integrantes de diferentes cuerpos académicos de la RIA o que colaboran con ella. (shrink)

This is an exciting, but difficult, season for the practice of medicine. The effects of corporate transformation on the practice are part of a larger cultural crisis. The arena of medicine is a proving ground for our responses to this crisis, because it is so intimately and immediately related to our bodies. Our answers to contemporary challenges in the practice of medicine will depend on, and probably shape, our answers to philosophical questions at the core of our existence: How do (...) we inhabit our unpredictable and limited lives in a way that allows us to flourish, and how can the deep practice of medicine help? -/- Time is the condition for all human experience, but for mortals like us, time is limited. This limit gives our lives the arc of a story, with a beginning, middle, and end. Unfortunately, many of us in the modern world avoid thinking about limits in our lives—especially the limit on our time called death. The practice of medicine serves people who are facing limits in their lives brought on by the threats of disease and death. Because good doctoring is so intimately related to the complex impact these threats have on our limited lives, this book argues that the significance and meaning of the practice of medicine is inextricably bound to existence in time. (shrink)

Howard Phillips Lovecraft can be viewed as a Romantic based on his lifelong relationship with wonder. This short essay gathers further evidence of Lovecraft’s Romanticism, beginning with a brief exploration of what Romanticism is and then moving on to highlight elements of Romanticism in Lovecraft’s poem “Fact and Fancy” (1917). The essay concludes that, as much as Lovecraft can be labelled a Romantic based on his affinity with wonder, he can also be classified as such based on his aversion to (...) the cold light of reason, which to him was an insufficient antidote to the otherwise dreary world in which he found himself. (shrink)

While the idea of art as self-expression can sound old-fashioned, it remains widespread—especially if the relevant ‘selves’ can be social collectives, not just individual artists. But self-expression can collapse into individualistic or anthropocentric self-involvement. And compelling successor ideals for artists are not obvious. In this light, I develop a counter-ideal of creative receptivity to basic features of the external world, or artistic objectivity. Objective artists are not trying to express themselves or reach collective self-knowledge. However, they are also not disinterested (...) or emotionless. They can be unmoved by personal feelings and human concerns, but they are still receptive—just attuned to the more elemental forces that creatively inspire them. I elaborate this ideal in dialogue with John Ruskin’s influential critique of the pathetic fallacy. By contextualizing Ruskin’s view vis-à-vis Romantic and Modernist poetics, post-Kantian aesthetics, modern environmental art, and contemporary theories of expressiveness, I show how it indirectly motivates my account. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to reassess the prospects of a widely neglected affective conception of the aesthetic evaluation and appreciation of art. On the proposed picture, the aesthetic evaluation and appreciation of art are non-contingently constituted by a particular kind of pleasure. Artworks that are valuable qua artworks merit, deserve, and call for a certain pleasure, the same pleasure that reveals (or at least purports to reveal) them to be valuable in the way that they are, and constitutes (...) their aesthetic evaluation and appreciation. This is why and how art is non-contingently related to pleasure. Call this, the Affective View. While I don’t advance conclusive arguments for the Affective View in this paper, I aim to reassess its prospects by (1) undermining central objections against it, (2) dissociating it from hedonism about the value of artworks (the view that this value is grounded in, and explained by, its possessors’ power to please), and (3) introducing some observations on the practice of art in support of it. Given that the objections I discuss miss their target, and given the observations in support of it, I conclude that the Affective View is worth serious reconsideration. (shrink)

Dieses Kapitel handelt von der Empathie in der Kunst. Ich beginne mit einer Reflexion über die Ursprünge des Begriffes und seine Verwendung in der Ästhetik. Es folgt eine Analyse der Empathie im Vergleich zu anderen Formen der Anteilnahme an Kunstwerken. Im dritten Teil untersuche ich die Mechanismen der Empathie in der Kunst und die Funktion der Imagination. Der vierte Teil widmet sich der Bedeutung der Gefühle bei der Empathie für Kunstfiguren. Schließlich thematisiere ich den epistemischen, moralischen und ästhetischen Wert der (...) Empathie für die Kunst. (shrink)

Kantian disinterest is the view that aesthetic judgement is constituted (at least in part) by a form of perceptual contemplation that is divorced from concerns of practical action. That view, which continues to be defended to this day, is challenged here on the basis that it is unduly spectator-focussed, ignoring important facets of art-making and its motivations. Beauty moves us, not necessarily to tears or rapt contemplation, but to practical action; crucially, it may do so as part and parcel of (...) its appreciation. This claim is defended via reflection on (i) the art of photography, (ii) the concepts of ‘attentional salience’ and ‘experienced mandates’, and (iii) a virtue-based account of aesthetic value. (shrink)

El cine de Jim Jarmusch es reconocible por captar momentos de quietud en los que la acción y el drama son secundarios. Es por ello que su film Only Lovers Left Alive ha sido tan destacado por críticos y académicos. Esta película ha llevado a la pantalla la estética ruinosa de Detroit. Este artículo amplía esas recientes investigaciones, para postular que la Detroit de Jarmusch es una ciudad estéticamente inorgánica. Siguiendo a grandes rasgos los lineamientos de Wilhelm Worringer, se analiza (...) el estilo postindustrial de la arquitectura de Detroit y la figura del vampiro. Esto permite concluir que lo inorgánico —Detroit— tiene capacidades estéticas propias, las cuales son exaltadas por el particular estilo de Jarmusch. (shrink)

Mitä tiedollista hyötyä tieteilijöille voi olla tutkimusyhteistyöstä taiteilijoiden kanssa? Taiteilijoiden kanssa työskennelleet tieteilijät usein kyllä pitävät kokemusta kiehtovana, mutta sen hyötyjen tarkka kuvaaminen vaikuttaa vaikealta. Monialaisen yhteistyön odotetaan usein lisäävän tutkimuksen yhteiskunnallista vaikuttavuutta, mutta odotus ei sovellu juuri tieteilijöiden ja taiteilijoiden yhteistyöhön kovinkaan hyvin. Selkeytän sosiaalisessa epistemologiassa ja feministisessä tieteenfilosofiassa esitettyjen ajatusten ja argumenttien sekä kahden tapausesimerkin avulla tapoja, joilla tieteilijöiden yhteistyö taiteilijoiden kanssa voi olla tiedollisesti hedelmällistä. Taiteen ja taiteellisen tutkimuksen keinoin voi joskus tuottaa tietoa. Tiedollisesti tärkeämpänä pidän kuitenkin (...) sitä, miten taide voi tarjota huomaamatta jääneitä näkökulmia sekä tutkimuskohteeseen että tutkimuksen tekemisen tapaan, ja tiedollisesti hyödyllistä kritiikkiä. (shrink)

Theorists have recently been exploring the prospects for a virtue-centred approach to aesthetics. Virtue aesthetics encourages a re-focusing of philosophical attention onto the aesthetic character traits of agents, in the same way that virtue ethics and virtue epistemology have encouraged us to focus on moral and intellectual traits. In this paper, I aim to contribute to the development of virtue aesthetics by discussing aesthetic courage, the aesthetic analogue of one of the most widely acknowledged moral virtues. In addition to proposing (...) an account of the nature of this trait, I also argue that aesthetic courage is vital for any sort of aesthetically virtuous life. It is not possible to possess any aesthetic virtue without possessing aesthetic courage. It is important, therefore, for any future development of virtue aesthetics to acknowledge the central importance of aesthetic courage. (shrink)

Se trata de un estudio aproximativo al tema de la naturaleza axiológica del arte y la relación dentro de él entre valores estéticos y otros valores.

For cognitivist accounts of aesthetic appreciation, appreciation requires an agent (1) to perceptually respond to the relevant aesthetic features of an object o on good evidential grounds, (2) to have an autonomous grasp of the reasons that make the claim about the aesthetic features of o true by pointing out the connection between non-aesthetic features and the aesthetic features of o, (3) to be able to provide an explanation of why those features contribute to the overall aesthetic value of o. (...) In this framework, aesthetic emotions have traditionally been confined to the level of aesthetic perception (1) and dismissed from the process of reason-giving (2, 3). I argue that this dismissal is due, firstly, to a questionable perceptual reading of the connection between emotional experience and value, and, secondly, to a narrow focus on the basic emotions. My argument will reveal that the non-standard or ‘intellectual’ emotions, the emotions which are in fact most important to appreciation, can play a significant epistemic role in our appreciative practices. They can do this because they (a) help us to deliberately focus our attention and (b) place the appreciator in a state of second-order awareness of their mental states. I conclude the paper by showing how these two epistemic tools (a, b) can help the appreciator to meet the explanatory/justificatory conditions (2) and (3). (shrink)

El trabajo cuestiona críticamente cierta visión extrema y unilateral apreciable en Adorno y Horkheimer al juzgar la relación de la industria cultural con la música. Es cierto que hoy prácticamente toda actividad humana se encuentra condiciona¬da por el mercado y que la música no es una excepción. Ella también es portadora de valor de cambio que tiende a ser dominante en los marcos de la industrial cultural. Pero es plausible que dentro de las industrias culturales mismas se empezara a hacer (...) una distinción entre los bienes culturales producidos por razones meramente comerciales y aquellos producidos por razones más artísticas. Un público demandante de obras de valor artístico, aun cuando pueda ser minoritario y estar inmerso también él en el mercado, condiciona de cierta manera la propia producción cultural, o, al menos, un segmento de ella. Esta posibilidad real no era muy reconocida por los autores de la “La industria cultural”. Según su lógica, como nada puede sustraerse a la industria cultural y como ésta compulsa a la prevalencia del valor de cambio o comercial y a la casi supresión de cualquier otro valor, entonces el arte, el verdadero arte, terminaría por desaparecer, sucumbiendo ante una lógica no interesada en su conservación o crecimiento, sino sólo en la maximización de ganancias a toda costa. Los hechos han contradicho esta conclusión. La relación de la música con la industria cultural, igual que las monedas, tiene dos caras. No basta con reconocer sólo la parte negativa, la que busca alienar las obras con tal de convertirlas en sólo mercancías. Es imprescindible tomar en cuenta también la posibilidad más que comprobable de que piezas con excelente factura estética surjan también en los marcos de esta industria. El asunto radicaría en develar las condiciones que lo posibilitan. El mercado, si bien puede favorecer la generación de productos pseudoculturales de escaso o nulo valor artístico, también se constituye en la única vía, dentro de la sociedad de consumo, por medio de la cual lo genuinamente valioso se convierte en patrimonio común. (shrink)

Este libro inaugura la serie Homenaje de la Colección La Fuente. Con él se busca reconocer, de manera particular, al pensador, dramaturgo y director brasileño Augusto Boal (1931-2009), creador del teatro y la estética del oprimido, genuina aportación cultural latinoamericana que mucho tiene que ver con ese particular lugar de enunciación que es Nuestra América y sus siempre actuales expectativas emancipadoras. El libro fue precedido y nutrido por un Coloquio que en mayo de 2014 reunió a importantes especialistas y seguidores (...) del legado teórico-práctico de Boal y que tuvo como tema principal el del rescate y la continuación de su obra. Incluye los más importantes trabajos allí presentados, junto a un estudio biográfico, una contribución enviada por su hijo, una entrevista a su esposa y dos obras del propio Boal que (una parcialmente y la otra de manera completa) se publican por primera vez. (shrink)

El artículo busca acercarse a la comprensión de los rasgos particulares de los valores estéticos, fundamentalmente en las obras de arte. Para ello parte de la premisa de que el valor estético no es en sí mismo un atributo del objeto artístico, ni el resultado exclusivo de la plasmación en él de cierto ideal estético. Para que un objeto sea portador de valor estético ha de funcionar precisamente como tal, lo cual presupone la presencia y participación de otros sujetos que (...) así lo perciban y un contexto social que favorezca esa percepción. Asociar el valor estético a la función social del objeto, particularmente a su capacidad de enriquecer espiritualmente a su público receptor, permite comprenderlo dinámicamente y resolver muchas dificultades generadas por diferentes concepciones unilaterales del valor artístico. (shrink)

El texto sirve como capítulo introductorio y de presentación del libro Teatro y Estética del Oprimido. Homenaje a Augusto Boal. Se reflexiona y evalúa críticamente sobre los diferentes "usos" que se hacen del legado teórico-práctico de Augusto Boal, lo que se hace y lo que, ajuicio de los autores, se debe hacer con él. Se describe además las fuentes y el contenido capitular del libro en cuestión.

An increasingly popular view in the philosophy of art is that some artworks are good artworks at least partly because they are achievements. This view was introduced to explain why two works that look the same, such as an original painting and a perfect copy, can differ in artistic merit. An achievement theory can say that the original is better because it is a greater achievement. Achievement theories have since been used to answer other questions, and they are now a (...) serious alternative to traditional theories of artistic merit. This paper has three aims. The first is to articulate the achievement theory more fully and explicitly than its advocates have. The second is to show that the achievement theory should be rejected, by raising five problems for it. The third is to show that appealing solely to the excellence, aptitude, and ineptitude a work manifests yields a better theory of artistic merit. (shrink)

Classical authors were generally artistic realists. The predominant aesthetic theory was mimesis, which saw the truth of art as its successful representation of reality. High modernists rejected this aesthetic theory as lifeless, seeing the truth of art as its subjective expression. This impasse has serious consequences for both the Church and the public square. Moving forward requires both, first, an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of the high modernist critique of classical mimetic theory, and, second, a theory of truth (...) which makes adequate reference to both subject and object. This paper argues that Lonergan offers just such an account of truth, and so cashes out the high modernist rejection of classical mimesis in Lonergan’s terms, thereby creating the opportunity for a synthesis of the two views. (shrink)

Reflective equilibrium is a powerful and popular method of theory evaluation. This article argues that the judgments of coherence required by the method are unexplained by the going accounts of reflective equilibrium and that they are best understood as a species of judgments of beauty. It argues that the distinctive feature of judgments of beauty is that they are unprincipled and yet nevertheless possible and that judgments of coherence share this distinctive feature. This conclusion entails that reflective equilibrium is a (...) partially aesthetic method of theory evaluation and that part of using the method is evaluating candidate theories by their beauty. (shrink)

Proceeding on the basis of reports of a proposal in 2011 to criminalize public flatulence in Malawi, the normative significance of flatulence is considered from the respective standpoints of aesthetics, etiquette, and ethics, and it is indicated how aesthetics and etiquette may themselves also have ethical significance. It is concluded that etiquette and ethics may both require that certain violations of etiquette and ethics should sometimes be ignored.