This book argues that the philosophical significance of Kant's aesthetics lies not in its explicit account of beauty but in its implicit account of intentionality. Kant's account is distinct in that feeling, affect, or mood must be operative within the way the mind receives the world. Moreover, these modes of receptivity fall within the normative domain so that we can hold each other responsible for how we are "struck" by an object or scene. Joseph Tinguely composes a series of investigations into the philosophically rich but regrettably neglected topics at the intersection of Kant's aesthetics and epistemology, such as how we orient ourselves in the world, whether tonality is a property of the subject or object, and what we hope to accomplish when we quarrel about taste. Taken together, these investigations offer a robust and defensible picture of mind, which not only resolves tensions in a Kantian account of intentionality but also offers a timely intervention into contemporary debates about the "aesthetic" nature of the way the mind is in touch with the world. Kant and the Reorientation of Aesthetics will appeal to scholars and students of Kant, as well as those working at the intersection of aesthetics and philosophy of mind.

This book re-examines Adorno's aesthetics, developing a new literary approach that aims to unveil hidden elements of Adorno's thought. Farina proposes to read Adorno's aesthetics as a literary theory of art, showing its efficacy in its comprehension of the most advanced trends of contemporary literature. As a result, this book provides an image of Adorno's aesthetics as a complete, satisfying and consistent philosophy of literature, a robust theory which is able to stand its ground in contemporary aesthetic debate. Challenging the prevalent prejudice that defines Adorno's thought, and especially his aesthetics, as 'modernist', Farina argues that Adorno's philosophy of literature shows its value precisely in its application to and comprehension of postmodern literature, such as the works of Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. Precise and compelling, this book provides a new paradigm for understanding Adorno's theory of artwork, serving as an essential reference for researches investigating the relation between classical critical theory and contemporary art.

Soccer has long been known as 'the beautiful game'. This multi-disciplinary volume explores soccer, soccer culture, and the representation of soccer in art, film, and literature, using the critical tools of aesthetics, poetics, and rhetoric. Including international contributions from scholars of philosophy, literary and cultural studies, linguistics, art history, and the creative arts, this book begins by investigating the relationship between beauty and soccer and asks what criteria should be used to judge the sport's aesthetic value. Covering topics as diverse as humor, national identity, style, celebrity, and social media, its chapters examine the nature of fandom, the role of language, and the significance of soccer in contemporary popular culture. It also discusses what one might call the 'stylistics' of soccer, analyzing how players, fans, and commentators communicate on and off the pitch, in the press, on social media, and in wider public discourse. The Aesthetics, Poetics, and Rhetoric of Soccer makes for fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in sport, culture, literature, philosophy, linguistics, and society.

Werner Herzog has produced some of the most powerful, haunting, and memorable images ever captured on film. Both his fiction films and his documentaries address fundamental issues about nature, selfhood, and history in ways that engage with but also criticize and qualify the best philosophical thinking about these topics. In focusing on figures from Aguirre, Kasper Hauser, and Stroszek to Timothy Treadwell, Graham Dorrington, Dieter Dengler, and Walter Steiner, among many others, Herzog investigates the nature of human life in time and the possibilities of meaning that might be available within it. His films demonstrate the importance of the image in coming to terms with the plights of contemporary industrial and commercial culture. Eldridge unpacks and develops Herzog's achievement by bringing his work into engagement with the thinking of Freud, Merleau-Ponty, Nietzsche, Hegel, Cavell, and Benjamin, but more importantly also by attending closely to the logic and development of the films themselves and to Herzog's own extensive writings about filmmaking.

This title was first published in 2001: Tolstoy's view of art is discussed in most courses in aesthetics, particularly his main text What is Art? He believed that the importance of art lies not in its purely aesthetic qualities but in its connection with life, and that art becomes decadent where this connection is lost. This view has often been misconceived and its strength overlooked. This book presents a clear exposition of Tolstoy's What is Art?, highlighting the value and importance of Tolstoy's views in relation to aesthetics. Mounce considers the problems which exercised Tolstoy and explains their fundamental importance in contemporary disputes. Having viewed these problems of aesthetics as they arise in a classic work, Howard Mounce affords readers fresh insights not simply into the problems of aesthetics themselves, but also into their contemporary treatment. Students and interested readers of aesthetics and philosophy, as well as those exploring the works of Tolstoy in literature, will find this book of particular interest and will discover that reading What is Art? with attention, affords something of the excitement found in removing the grime from an oil painting - gradually from underneath there appears an authentic masterpiece.

Underground rap is largely a subversive, grassroots, and revolutionary movement in underground hip-hop, tending to privilege creative freedom as well as progressive and liberating thoughts and actions. This book contends that many practitioners of underground rap have absorbed religious traditions and ideas, and implement, critique, or abandon them in their writings. This in turn creates processural mutations of God that coincide with and speak to the particular context from which they originate. Utilising the work of scholars like Monica Miller and Alfred North Whitehead, Gill uses a secular religious methodology to put forward an aesthetic philosophy of religion for the rap portion of underground hip-hop. Drawing from Whiteheadian process thought, a theopoetic argument is made. Namely, that it is not simply the case that is God the "poet of the world", but rather rap can, in fact, be the poet (creator) of its own form of quasi-religion. This is a unique look at the religious workings and implications of underground rap and hip hop. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Hip-Hop Studies and Process Philosophy and Theology.

Fred Orton's teaching and writing has always combined theoretical and formal-which is to say structural-analysis with historical research and reflection. This collection of essays brings together some of his most decisive contributions to thinking about fine art practice and rethinking the theory and methods of the social history of art. In this collection Orton brilliantly moves from Paul Cezanne to Jasper Johns, from the American cultural critic Harold Rosenberg to a discussion of Marx and Engels' notion of ideology. What emerges is more than an anthology, this collection offers a vivid demonstration of the way theory can work to generate new interpretations and unsettle old ones.

This title was first published in 2000. This is an interdisciplinary and international collection on aesthetics with contributions from artists and philosophers and the range of thinkers about art in between. It aims to provide a forum for the kinds of question that used to be addressed within traditional aesthetics, but which have until recently been sidelined in critical writing about art and indeed in many of the most important art practices. The collection as a whole is situated in relation to feminists' approaches, but the editors hope that it will not be read as limited to them.

This book is an introduction to the history of the concept and the institution of (fine) art, from its ancient Southern European roots to the establishment of the modern system of the arts in eighteenth century Central Europe. It highlights the way the concept and institution of (fine) art, through colonialism and diaspora, conquered the world. Ryynanen presents globally competing frameworks from India to Japan but also describes how the art system debased local European artistic cultures (by women, members of the working class, etc) and how art with the capital A appropriated not just non-Western but also Western alternatives to art (popular culture). The book discusses alternative art forms such as sport, kitsch, and rap music as pockets of resistance and resources for future concepts of art. Ultimately, the book introduces nobrow as an alternative to high and low, a new concept that sheds light on the democratic potentials of the field of art and invites reader to rethink the nature of art.

In this selection of recent essays, Pollock insightfully engages all major areas of contemporary theory, especially focusing on sexed subjectivities, post-colonialism and Marxist-informed history. In her commentary, Penny Florence places Pollock's critique of modernism, art history, and criticism within the context of the social, political, and ideological developments that have taken place since the 1970s. Florence recognizes in Pollock's work a critical model that moves beyond the contradictions that take place within the history of art. Pollock's own essays and Florence's commentary elaborate the complexities in evaluating this prominent theorist and feminist, whose work demands a capacity to sustain contradiction.

In this selection of essays, Griselda Pollock engages all areas of contemporary theory, especially focusing on sexed subjectivities, post-colonialism and Marxist-informed history. In her commentary, Penny Florence places Pollock's critique of modernism, art history, and criticism within the context of the social, political and ideological developments that have taken place since the 1970s. Florence recognizes in Pollock's work a critical model that moves beyond the contradictions that take place within the history of art. Pollock's own essays and Florence's commentary elaborate the complexities in evaluating this prominent theorist and feminist, whose work demands a capacity to sustain contradiction.

In response to the question "What is art?", today's arts establishment has a simple answer: "anything" is art if a reputed artist or expert says it is. Many people are sceptical about the alleged new art forms that have proliferated during the 20th century - from "abstract art" and "performance art" to "Hyperfiction" and "chance music". Yet today's "experts" claim that all such work, however incomprehensible, is art. An alternative to this view is provided by philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand (1905-1982). Although best known as the author of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged", Rand created an original and illuminating philosophy of art, which not only offers a profound analysis of the cognitive and emotional function of art but also confirms the widespread view that much of today's purported art is really not art at all. In "What Art Is", Torres and Kamhi present the first in-depth examination and critique of Rand's aesthetic theory. Contrasting her ideas with those of other thinkers, they conclude that, despite shortcomings in detail, Rand's account is compelling. Moreover, they demonstrate that it is supported by evidence from anthropology, neurology, cognitive science and psychology. The authors apply Rand's theory to a debunking of prominent modernist and postmodernist "artists". Finally, they explore its implications for such fields as arts education, law and public policy. Fifteen years after Ayn Rand's death, interest in her life and ideas is booming. All her published works remain in print, and hitherto unpublished writings continue to appear. In 1998 the Showtime cable TV channel will air a movie adaptation of Barbara Branden's biography "The Passion of Ayn Rand", starring Helen Mirren as Rand.

Elements of Criticism (1762) is a philosophical work by Henry Home, Lord Kames. Published at the height of his career as a leading legal and cultural figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, Elements of Criticism has been credited as a crucial academic work in the development of modern English literary studies. "The science of criticism tends to improve the heart not less than the understanding...A just taste in the fine arts, by sweetening and harmonizing the temper, is a strong antidote to the turbulence of passion and violence of pursuit. Elegance of taste procures to a man so much enjoyment at home, or easily within reach, that in order to be occupied, he is, in youth, under no temptation to precipitate into hunting, gaming, drinking; nor, in middle age, to deliver himself over to ambition; nor, in old age, to avarice." Although he is largely unheard of today, Henry Home was an integral figure in the elevation of the art of literary criticism as a subject in universities around Britain and the world. His central thesis is that criticism itself stems from the senses and directly relates to humanity's capacity for reason. Through art, Home believed, humanity could live both morally and in harmony with the natural world, thereby creating a civilization rooted in virtue and creativity. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Henry Home, Lord Kames' Elements of Criticism is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) is a philosophical treatise published in pamphlet form by Irish statesman and thinker Edmund Burke. Following in the footsteps of generations of philosophers, especially Aristotle and Hume, Burke sought to describe the inherent difference between beauty and sublimity as emotional responses rooted in human perception. His work was incredibly influential for the growth of Romanticism in Europe and Britain especially, which sought to capture the sublime in both visual art, music, and literature. Burke begins with a section on the senses in relation to human individuality and society in order to illuminate the collective nature of passions-for which we may read emotions-and to argue that the power of the arts is to shape and effect those emotions. In the second part, Burke observes the passions caused by the sublime, including terror, as well as records the effects of certain sensory perceptions-of sound, light, color, and smell-on creating sublime feelings in the mind. Part three follows the same trajectory but describes the beautiful instead before ultimately comparing the two, and part four attempts to ascertain their causes in nature. Burke concludes his treatise with a brief section on the sublime and beautiful in poetry, laying the groundwork for Romanticism's use of language, among other things, to purposefully invoke feeling in the reader or observer. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is a classic of philosophy reimagined for modern readers.

How do our engagements with fictions and other products of the imagination compare to our experiences of the real world? Are the feelings we have about a novel's characters modelled on our thoughts about actual people? If it is wrong to feel pleasure over certain situations in real life, can it nonetheless be right to take pleasure in analogous scenarios represented in a fantasy or film? Should the desires we have for what goes on in a make-believe story cohere with what we want to happen in the actual world? Such queries have animated philosophical and psychological theorizing about art and life from Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Poetics to contemporary debates over freedom of expression, ethics and aesthetics, the cognitive value of thought experiments, and the effects on audiences of exposure to violent entertainment. In Apt Imaginings, Jonathan Gilmore develops a new framework to pursue these questions, marshalling a wide range of research in aesthetics, the science of the emotions, moral philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and film and literary theory. Gilmore argues that, while there is a substantial empirical continuity in our feelings across art and life, the norms that govern the appropriateness of those responses across the divide are discontinuous. In this view, the evaluative criteria that determine the fit, correctness, or rationality of our emotions and desires for what is internal to a fiction can be contrary to those that govern our affective attitudes toward analogous things in the real world. In short, it can be right to embrace within a story what one would condemn in real life. The theory Gilmore defends in this volume helps to explain our complex and sometimes conflicted attitudes toward works of the imagination; challenges the popular view that fictions serve to refine our moral sensibilities; and exposes a kind of autonomy of the imagination that can render our responses to art immune to standard real-world epistemic, practical, and affective kinds of criticism.

Hume's Aesthetic Theory examines the neglected area of the development of aesthetics in empiricist thinking, exploring the link between the empiricist background of aesthetics in the eighteenth century and the work of David Hume.
This is a major contribution to our understanding of Hume's general philosophy and provides fresh insights into the history of aesthetics.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203186079

First published in 2000. This is Volume VII of ten in the International Library of Philosophy in a series on Ancient Philosophy. Written around 1953, this book looks at Plato and his ideas on art based on his 'Dialogues'.

First published in 2000. This is Volume III of seven in the Library of Philosophy series on Philosophy of Religion and General Philosophy. Written in 1924, this is a collection of essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art by Thomas Hulme who published five poems as well as commentary and various articles. The current volume has been collated from his daily notebooks and unpublished manuscripts as well as his introduction to Sorel's Reflections on Violence.

In this original and iconoclastic book, Julian Dodd argues for what he terms the simple view of the ontological nature of works of pure, instrumental music. This account is the conjunction of two theses: the type/token theory and sonicism. The type/token theory addresses the question of which ontological category musical works fall under, and its answer is that such works are types whose tokens are sound-sequence-events. Sonicism, meanwhile, addresses the question of how works of music are individuated, and it tells us that works of music are identical just in case they sound exactly alike. Both conjuncts of the simple view are highly controversial, and Dodd defends them vigorously and with ingenuity. Even though the simple view is favoured by very few writers in the philosophy of music, Dodd maintains that it is the default position given our ordinary intuitions about musical works, that it can answer the sorts of objections that have led other philosophers to dismiss it, and that it is, on reflection, the most promising ontology of music on offer. Specifically, Dodd argues that the type/token theory offers the best explanation of the repeatability of works of music: the fact that such works admit of multiple occurrence. Furthermore, he goes on to claim that the theory's most striking consequence - namely, that musical works are eternal existents and, hence, that composers discover rather than create their works - is minimally disruptive of our intuitions concerning the nature of composition and our appreciation of works of music. When it comes to sonicism, Dodd argues both that this way of individuating works of music is prima facie correct, and that the putative counter-examples it faces - most notably, those propounded by Jerrold Levinson - can be harmlessly explained away. In the ontology of music, simplicity rules.

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) is a philosophical treatise published in pamphlet form by Irish statesman and thinker Edmund Burke. Following in the footsteps of generations of philosophers, especially Aristotle and Hume, Burke sought to describe the inherent difference between beauty and sublimity as emotional responses rooted in human perception. His work was incredibly influential for the growth of Romanticism in Europe and Britain especially, which sought to capture the sublime in both visual art, music, and literature. Burke begins with a section on the senses in relation to human individuality and society in order to illuminate the collective nature of passions-for which we may read emotions-and to argue that the power of the arts is to shape and effect those emotions. In the second part, Burke observes the passions caused by the sublime, including terror, as well as records the effects of certain sensory perceptions-of sound, light, color, and smell-on creating sublime feelings in the mind. Part three follows the same trajectory but describes the beautiful instead before ultimately comparing the two, and part four attempts to ascertain their causes in nature. Burke concludes his treatise with a brief section on the sublime and beautiful in poetry, laying the groundwork for Romanticism's use of language, among other things, to purposefully invoke feeling in the reader or observer. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is a classic of philosophy reimagined for modern readers.

Elements of Criticism (1762) is a philosophical work by Henry Home, Lord Kames. Published at the height of his career as a leading legal and cultural figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, Elements of Criticism has been credited as a crucial academic work in the development of modern English literary studies. "The science of criticism tends to improve the heart not less than the understanding...A just taste in the fine arts, by sweetening and harmonizing the temper, is a strong antidote to the turbulence of passion and violence of pursuit. Elegance of taste procures to a man so much enjoyment at home, or easily within reach, that in order to be occupied, he is, in youth, under no temptation to precipitate into hunting, gaming, drinking; nor, in middle age, to deliver himself over to ambition; nor, in old age, to avarice." Although he is largely unheard of today, Henry Home was an integral figure in the elevation of the art of literary criticism as a subject in universities around Britain and the world. His central thesis is that criticism itself stems from the senses and directly relates to humanity's capacity for reason. Through art, Home believed, humanity could live both morally and in harmony with the natural world, thereby creating a civilization rooted in virtue and creativity. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Henry Home, Lord Kames' Elements of Criticism is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

Love and depression are key elements in the cultural script of emotions or affectual life within contemporary Western society, and the two have become intertwined to such an extent that it is informative to talk about depressive love. Indeed, the most common source of depression is intimate relationships, in which one partner is not recognised by the other as being in need or worthy of loving care. This book addresses the question of how it is possible for opposite emotional experiences such as love and depression to appear simultaneously, empirically documenting the phenomenon of depressive love and its implications through studies of art, including music, literature and photography, and the experiences of everyday life, by way of interviews and the analysis of e-mail-, sms-, messenger-correspondence, and other new media spaces. Engaging with a range of sociological, psychoanalytic and philosophical theories of love, depression and emotion, including the work of Simmel, Alberoni, Barthes, Hochschild, Giddens, Luhmann, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, Illouz, Bauman, Hegel, Honneth, Ehrenberg, Han, Levinas, Sartre, Freud, Lacan, and Kristeva, to name but a few, the author examines the ways in which depressive love is expressed in modern society, asking whether it is a new phenomenon and confined to the West and if not, what is distinctive about depressive love and its associated (dys)functions in contemporary Western society. An empirically rich and theoretically broad study of depressive love as a sign of our times, this book will appeal to scholars and students of social theory and the sociology and philosophy of emotion and interpersonal relationships.

Semiotics of Musical Time investigates the link between musical time and the world of signs and symbols. It examines the extent to which musical time is a product of signs, sign systems, and sign-oriented behavior. Sound is discussed as a potential sign of time and of musical time. Inherent and recognizable temporal features are identified in a number of musical works. Time as a compositional concern is examined in the case of Igor Stravinsky and Karlheinz Stockhausen. A principal distinction between hearing associated with perception and listening associated with cognition provides the basis for the proposition that musical time is both unheard and imperceptible. The role of concepts, and their designations, is investigated to demonstrate that consciousness of musical time involves semiotic processes.

The Space that Separates: A Realist Theory of Art radically challenges our assumptions about what art is, what art does, who is doing it, and why it matters. Rejecting the modernist and market-driven misconception that art is only what artists do, Wilson instead presents a realist case for living artfully. Art is defined as the skilled practice of giving shareable form to our experiences of being-in-relation with the real; that is to say, the causally generative domain of the world that extends beyond our direct observation, comprising relations, structures, mechanisms, possibilities, powers, processes, systems, forces, values, ways of being. In communicating such aesthetic experience we behold life's betweenness - "the space that separates", so coming to know ourselves as connected. Providing the first dedicated and comprehensive account of art and aesthetics from a critical realist perspective - Aesthetic Critical Realism (ACR), Wilson argues for a profound paradigm shift in how we understand and care for culture in terms of our system(s) of value recognition. Fortunately, we have just the right tool to help us achieve this transformation - and it's called art. Offering novel explanatory accounts of art, aesthetic experience, value, play, culture, creativity, artistic truth and beauty, this book will appeal to a wide audience of students and scholars of art, aesthetics, human development, philosophy and critical realism, as well as cultural practitioners and policy-makers.

Traditional aesthetics is often associated with the appreciation of art, Allen Carlson shows how much of our aesthetic experience does not encompass art but nature, in our response to sunsets, mountains or horizons or more mundane surroundings, like gardens or the view from our window.
He argues that knowledge of what it is we are appreciating is essential to having an appropriate aesthetic experience and that scientific understanding of nature can enhance our appreciation of it, rather than denigrate it.