Abstract
Although artistic activity has been a major social phenomenon in the western world, aesthetics has not always reflected the changes in techniques, processes, themes and uses through which the arts have developed and had their effect. Theory most often comes after the fact, and properly so. Yet aesthetics in its history has not only displayed an unfitting hubris, with thinkers attempting to legislate about style, suitablity and materials to the artist; aesthetics has also lagged far behind the living edge of artistic activity and discussed it in anachronistic terms.
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References
Jerome Stolnitz “On the Origin of ‘Aesthetic Disinterestedness’,” Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism XX, 1961; p.131–143.
P.O. Kristeller “The Modern System of the Arts,” Renaissance Thought II (N.Y. Harper 1965). pp.207, 215, 222–225.
Shaftesbury Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711); repr. New York 1900, Vol.I, p.94.
Ibid. Vol.II, p.136–7.
Ibid. Vol.II, p. 130–1.
Stolnitz op.cit. Cf. also the critique of this notion in V. Tejera Art and Human Intelligence Chapters 1 and 2 on “The Nature of Aesthetics,” and “The Subject Matter of the Philosophy of Art” (N.Y. Appleton 1965).
“A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules” (1712), quoted by M. Fried Absorption and Theatricality (U. of Calif. 1980), p.89.
J. Stolnitz Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Criticism (Boston: Houghton 1960), p.35.
The second discussion has been under way for some time. Cf. G. Morpurgo-Tagliabue L’Esthetique Contemporaine, 1960
A. Hofstadter Truth and Art, 1964
V. Tejera Art and Human Intelligence, 1965
R. Arnheim Visual Thinking, 1969
A. Berleant “Aesthetics and the Contemporary Arts,” JAAC XXIX (1970), and The Aesthetic Field, 1970 V. Tejera “Contemporary Trends in Aesthetics,” JVI VIII (1974)
J. Buchler The Main of Light, 1974. It is the first of these issues that will concern me here. The development of a reflective account that is responsive to the changed modalities of creation, action and experience that have emerged in the last century can also be found to be under way in the above-mentioned and other works. Some, like Tejera’s Art and Human Intelligence, locate the origin of these ideas more specifically in the theoreticist and neoclassicist misunderstanding of Aristotle’s Poetics.
R. Wollheim’s detailed but inconclusive discussion of the question is the subject of his book Art and Its Objects (Cambridge U.P. 1980). The usefully critical discussion of this question in Tejera’s Art and Human Intelligence, in Chapter 1 and throughout the book, is not taken account of or even cited by Wollheim. This seems to say something about the inattention of the Anglo-analytic tradition to relevant works in other traditions. J. Buchler’s Main of Light should be cited for the way in which it sees art as a product and locates it in the order of exhibitive judgment.
M. Weitz “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics,” JAAC XV (1956), p.27 ff.
M. Beardsley “The Defintion of the Arts,” JAAC XX (1961), p.175.
N. Goodman Languages of Art (N.Y. Bobbs-Merrill 1968), pp.210, 217, 221, 245, 252–255.
A. Danto The Transformation of the Commonplace. A Philosophy of Art (Harvard U.P. 1981).
C. Brooks “New Criticism,” in Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry, ed. A. Preminger (Princeton U.P. 1974), p.568. I am indebted to Prof. Victorino Tejera for noting the marked difference between Brooks and the poets who were the originators of the New Criticism. His association with them as their spokesman has misrepresented their cultural and formative concerns as a formalist concern rather than the concern that it was with the design and deep meaningfulness of the individual poem-in-the-making.
Roger Fry Vision and Design, 1920 (N.Y. World 1956), pp. 12, 33–35, 37f.
C. Bell Art, 1913 (N.Y. Capricorn 1958), p.l7f.
J. Dewey’s Art as Experience (N.Y. Minton 1934)
A. Berleant The Aesthetic Field, 1970
V. Tejera Art and Human Intelligence, 1965 are among Americans who have questioned the separateness of art. Among Europeans are E. Véron Aesthetics transl. (Philadelphia: Lippincott 1879)
B. Croce Aesthetic as the Science of Expression transl. (London: Macmillan 1922).
S. Hampshire “Logic and Appreciation,” in W. Elton ed. Aesthetics and Language (Blackwell: 1954), p. 165.
F. Sibley “Aesthetic Concepts,” in J. Margolis ed. Philosophy Looks at the Arts, (Temple U.P. 1978), p.64.
Ibid, pp.65, 70, 74.
J. Margolis “The Ontological Peculiarity of Works of Art,” in J. Margolis ed. Philosophy Looks at the Arts,(Temple U.P. 1978).213–220.
Ruby Meager “The Uniqueness of a Work of Art,” in Levich Philosophy Looks at the Arts(Temple U.P. 1978) pp.520–540.
“Anything which, when attended to in the proper way…can be an aesthetic object.” R.L. Zimmerman “Can Anything be an Aesthetic Object?” JAAC XXV (1966) p.186.
See also H.S. Langfeld The Aesthetic Attitude (N.Y. Harcourt 1920).
E. Bullough “‘Psychical Distance’ as a Factor in Art and an Esthetic Principle,” British Journal of Psychology V (1913), repr. in M. Rader ed. (N.Y. Holt 1960) p.394–411.
J. Ortega y Gasset The Dehumanization of Art (Garden City: Doubleday 1956) p.16.
C. I. Lewis An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle: Open Court 1946) p.437, 444.
J. Stolnitz “The Artistic and the Aesthetic ‘In Interesting Times’,” JAAC XXXVII 4 (1979) p.411f.
V. C. Aldrich Philosophy of Art (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall 1963) p.19f.
M. C. Beardsley “The Aesthetic Point of View,” in Contemporary Philosophic Thought Vol.3, ed. Kiefer and Munitz (SUNY Press 1970) p.219–237.
Igor Stravinsky Poetics of Music (N.Y. Vintage 1956) p.p.137, 140.
J. Stolnitz op.cit. p.411f.
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Berleant, A. (1989). The Eighteenth Century Assumptions of Analytic Aesthetics. In: Lavine, T.Z., Tejera, V. (eds) History and Anti-History in Philosophy. Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2466-6_10
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