An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art

Half-title......Page 3
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Contents......Page 7
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Who needs a theory of art?......Page 13
Philosophy as articulation......Page 16
Art as a natural social practice......Page 17
Action, gesture, and expressive freedom......Page 19
Schiller on art, life, and modernity......Page 24
Identification versus elucidation......Page 29
What may we hope for from the philosophy of art?......Page 33
Representation and aboutness......Page 37
Aristotle on imitation......Page 38
Visual depiction, resemblance, and game-playing......Page 43
Representing as natural, human, world-responsive activity......Page 49
Functions of artistic representation......Page 53
Beauty, absorption, and pleasure......Page 59
Kant on natural and artistic beauty......Page 63
General versus individual form......Page 68
Beardsley’s theory of individual form......Page 69
Criticisms of formalist-aesthetic theories of art......Page 72
Defenses of the aesthetic interest of art......Page 75
Feelings about subject matters in life: Wordsworth, Tolstoy, and Collingwood......Page 80
What is expressed in art? Hegel versus Danto......Page 86
Collingwood’s psychodynamic theory......Page 96
Physiognomic similarity theories......Page 101
‘‘Working-through” theories......Page 106
Why does artistic expression matter?......Page 108
Genius and the pursuit of the new: Kant......Page 114
Hegel’s criticisms of subjectivism......Page 119
Why originality matters: Adorno on free meaning-making......Page 121
Criticisms of the pursuit of originality: postmodernism and feminism......Page 126
Originality and imagination within common life......Page 131
Creativity: Scruton and Coleridge on artistic imagination......Page 134
Six strategies for understanding art......Page 140
The natures of thought and action: Hegel, Baxandall, and others......Page 143
Pluralism and constraint in interpretation: Abrams, Fish, and Derrida......Page 147
The special importance of elucidation of formal-semantic elements......Page 154
The possibility of agreement in understanding......Page 158
Why we go on arguing about which works are good......Page 162
Subjectivism and the sociology of taste: Smith and Bourdieu......Page 165
Dickie’s institutional theory......Page 168
Historical and narrative identifications: Levinson and Carroll......Page 171
Objectivism: Mothersill and Savile......Page 173
Hume on feeling and judgment......Page 176
Kant on feeling and judgment......Page 182
Personal and/versus discussable: Isenberg, Scruton, and Cohen on taste......Page 190
Some varieties of emotional response......Page 195
The paradox of fiction......Page 197
Hume on tragedy......Page 199
Making-believe and quasi-emotions: Walton, Levinson, and Feagin......Page 202
Metaphorical identification: Danto and Cohen......Page 207
Aristotle on catharsis......Page 210
Artistic making and the ‘‘working through” of emotion......Page 212
Some controversial cases: Mapplethorpe, Serrano, Finley, and others......Page 217
Autonomism and experimentalism......Page 219
Moralism and the clarification of thought and feeling......Page 226
Art, propaganda, advertising, and cliché......Page 234
Ethical understanding and working through puzzlement......Page 237
The reproduction of social life vis-à-vis ‘‘infinite satisfaction”......Page 243
Art and modernity: Schiller and others......Page 245
Lukács, Marcuse, and Adorno......Page 251
Structuralism and structural opposition in social life: Lévi Strauss and Althusser......Page 253
Foster’s postmodern sociocultural criticism......Page 257
Can artistic beauty still matter? What about fun?......Page 258
Art and social aspiration......Page 260
Some contemporary practices of art: primitivism, avant-gardism, vernacularism, and constructivism......Page 261
11 Epilogue: the evidence of things not seen......Page 271
Bibliography......Page 276
INDEX......Page 289