Why do we value music? Many people report that listening to music is one of life's most rewarding activities. In Critique of Pure Music, James O. Young seeks to explain why this is so. Formalists tell us that music is appreciated as pure, contentless form. On this view, listeners receive pleasure, or a pleasurable 'musical' emotion, when they explore the abstract patterns found in music. Music, formalists believe, does not arouse ordinary emotions such as joy, melancholy or fear, nor can it represent emotion or provide psychological insight. Young holds that formalists are wrong on all counts. Drawing upon the latest psychological research, he argues that music is expressive of emotion by resembling human expressive behaviour. By resembling human expressive behaviour, music is able to arouse ordinary emotions in listeners. This, in turn, makes possible the representation of emotion by music. The representation of emotion in music gives music the capacity to provide psychological insight-into the emotional lives of composers, and the emotional lives of individuals from a variety of times and places. And it is this capacity of music to provide psychological insight which explains a good deal of the value of music, both vocal and purely instrumental. Without it, music could not be experienced as profound. Philosophers, psychologists, musicians, musicologists, and music lovers will all find something of interest in this book.

Author Biography:
James O. Young is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Victoria. He is author of Global Anti-Realism

Art and Knowledge argues that the experience of art is so rewarding because it can be an important source of knowledge about ourselves and our relation to each other and to the world. Young reflects on the essence of art and argues that it ought to provide insight as well as pleasure. He argues that all the arts, including music, are importantly representational. This kind of representation is fundamentally different from that found in the sciences, but it can provide insights as important and profound as available from the sciences. Art and Knowledge is an exceptionally clear and interesting, as well as controversial, exploration of what art is and why it is valuable. It will be of interest to all philosophers of art, artists and art critics.

The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation undertakes a comprehensive and systematic investigation of the moral and aesthetic questions that arise from the practice of cultural appropriation. * Explores cultural appropriation in a wide variety of contexts, among them the arts and archaeology, museums, and religion * Questions whether cultural appropriation is always morally objectionable * Includes research that is equally informed by empirical knowledge and general normative theory * Provides a coherent and authoritative perspective gained by the collaboration of philosophers and specialists in the field who all participated in this unique research project

This book presents a comprehensive, accessible survey of Western philosophy of music from Pythagoras to the present. Its narrative traces themes and schools through history, in a sequence of five chapters that survey the ancient, medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary periods. Its wide-ranging coverage includes medieval Islamic thinkers, Continental and analytic thinkers, and neglected female thinkers such as Vernon Lee (Violet Paget). All aspects of the philosophy of music are discussed, including music and the cosmos, music's value, music's relation to the other arts, the problem of opera, the origins of musical genius, music's emotional impact, the moral effects of music, the ontology of musical works, and the relevance of music's historical context. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars in philosophy and musicology, and all who are interested in the ways in which philosophers throughout history have thought about music.

The question of whether aesthetic judgements are simply statements about subjective preferences or whether they have some non-subjective basis is one of the most important questions of aesthetics, and, indeed, of philosophy. In recent years, philosophers of language have discussed aesthetic judgements, but have assumed that aesthetic judgements are similar to judgements that employ predicates of personal taste such as 'tasty' and 'delicious.' A speaker's judgement that an item of food is tasty is a report about the speaker's subjective response to that item of food. If aesthetic judgements are like judgements that employ predicates of personal taste, to judge that the St. Matthew Passion is glorious is also a report about what some listener likes. If two people disagree about whether the St. Matthew Passion is glorious, neither has made a mistake. Philosophers of art have tended to disagree with this view. They have distinguished aesthetic predicates such as 'serene,' 'balanced,' and 'glorious' from predicates such as 'tasty.' On this view, the judgement that some artwork is serene or even that it is beautiful is a report about the work, not a report about how a person responds to the work. Aesthetic judgements are not just statements about personal preferences. This volume brings together some of the leading contemporary philosophers of art and philosophers of language to debate the status of aesthetic judgements. Are they simply expressions of personal preference? Is there more basis for saying that a painting is beautiful or serene than there is for saying that a cake is tasty? Is disagreement about aesthetic judgements faultless or can someone be mistaken about the aesthetic value of an artwork?

The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle (1746) by Charles Batteux was arguably the most influential work on aesthetics published in the eighteenth century. It influenced every major aesthetician in the second half of the century: Diderot, Herder, Hume, Kant, Lessing, Mendelssohn, and others either adopted his views or reacted against them. It is the work generally credited with establishing the modern system of the arts: poetry, painting, music, sculpture and dance. Batteux's book is also an invaluable aid to the interpretation of the arts of eighteenth century. And yet there has never been a complete or reliable translation of The Fine Arts into English. Now James O. Young, a leading contemporary philosopher of art, has provided an eminently readable and accurate translation. It is fully annotated and comes with a comprehensive introduction that identifies the figures who influenced Batteux and the writers who were, in turn, influenced by him. The introduction also discusses the ways in which The Fine Arts has continuing philosophical interest. In particular, Young demonstrates that Batteux's work is an important contribution to aesthetic cognitivism (the view that works of art contribute importantly to knowledge) and that Batteux made a significant contribution to understanding the expressiveness of music. This book will be of interest to everyone interested in the arts of the eighteenth century, French studies, the history of European ideas, and philosophy of art.