En el presente artículo me propongo, en primer lugar, exponer los aspectos que determinan una polaridad y un contraste entre lo bello y lo sublime a lo largo del siglo XVIII. En segundo lugar, mostrar que esa tensión constante no implicó una oclusión, contradicción, o superación de una estética respecto de otra. Por último, intentaré dar cuenta de los alcances éticos que fue adquiriendo lo sublime, lo cual permite pensar esta noción como un sentimiento espiritual-moral de reunificación y elevación que (...) trasciende las fronteras del gusto y lo meramente bello. In this paper, firstly, I propose to show the aspects that determine a polarity and a contrast between the beautiful and the sublime throughout the 18th century. Secondly, I will maintain that this constant tension did not mean an occlusion, contradiction, or overcoming of an aesthetic on the other. Finally, I will try to account of the ethical scope was acquiring the sublime, which suggests this notion as a spiritual-moral feeling of reunification and elevation beyond the boundaries of taste and the merely beautiful. (shrink)

This paper argues against evolutionary accounts of aesthetics by defending the idea that our fundamental aesthetic categories have undergone great changes in the last two millennia, in particular, during an “artistic revolution” that lasted from 1680 to 1830. This revolution was made possible by the development of a number of technologies of art that created a separate cultural space for this new invention. The attempt to extend this revolution to include the aesthetic appreciation of the natural environment is aided by (...) a new set of technologies that help make an aesthetic object out of natural environments. This even morerecent development is further evidence against an evolutionary explanation of art. (shrink)

The theory presented in my book, Natural Beauty , is syncretic in that it denies the exclusivity of any one model of aesthetic appreciation of natural objects and instead insists: (1) that there is a tight, reciprocating connection between talents of perception that we develop in relation to arts and to natural objects; and (2) that the appreciation of natural beauty is intimately connected to the appreciation of other social values, including ethical values. In this paper, I respond to criticisms (...) of my syncretic approach---chiefly that it fails to reconcile objective and subjective elements in aesthetic judgment, that it fails to marshal its many modes of judgment into rational consistency, and that it fails to take proper stock of the role of scientific knowledge in these judgments---offered by Arnold Berleant, Stephanie Ross, and Glenn Parsons. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Aesthetics of Representation:Dramatic Texts and Dramatic EngagementKathleen Gallagher (bio)Staking the TerritoryThere are several ways in which aesthetic discourses might be positioned in the field of drama education. While some might locate "aesthetics" in the cognitive or interpretive realm of learning, and others the affective or philosophical realm, I have chosen to speak of the discourses of aesthetics as they relate to both cognitive and embodied responses to the (...) (extra)ordinary events of a drama classroom. I am already unsatisfied with the recognizable distinctions implied in this binary, but I persist in the hope that the relationship between these learning functions will become clear as I proceed with what I have termed the sociology of aesthetics in drama practice. In drama, we attempt—collectively—to represent our lives through art as we come to know the world and our sensuous responses to it.Fenner's brief history of aesthetic experience and aesthetic analysis will further help stake the territory about which we are speaking in a drama classroom.1 Calling aesthetic experiences the "raw data" that aesthetics is meant to explain, he helpfully distinguishes between Kantian understandings of the conditions of aesthetic judgment and the emergence of those thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who began to focus on the psychology of aesthetic experience. Following these thinkers and further developments in the early part of the twentieth century, the work of John Dewey explored the psychological nature of what he called "an experience" in the field of education more generally.2 This article will also privilege the notion of aesthetic experience but will, more specifically, focus on an exploration of ideas borne out of aesthetic experiences that cultivate sociological questions about representation and the nature of cognitive and embodied engagement in classroom drama. Key to my view of dramatic representation is the notion of a provoked imagination. [End Page 82]In the nineteenth century, Archibald Allison claimed that it was the imagination that was responsible for what we term "aesthetic experiences."3 Earlier philosophers of aesthetics had determined that the mere presence of beauty could create an aesthetic experience, but Allison insisted upon the "exercises of the imagination" in his understanding of aesthetic experiences. Contemporary writers in the field of arts education have also favored this more active conception of aesthetic responses, such as the formidable Madeleine Grumet and Maxine Greene. They and others will be cited here in support of a conception of "aesthetic experiences" in the drama classroom as active, selective, and highly framed experiences.Dramatic Texts and Aesthetic Knowing: Framing the ExperiencesOne can hardly discuss the idea of aesthetic exploration without first engaging with the rather unwieldy idea of "creativity." Radford, citing Margaret Boden, puts forward a very helpful notion of creativity as "conceptual space."4 This "conceptual space" is what I will refer to as "the frame" carefully placed around dramatic learning, usually by a highly skilled teacher. Frequently because of this frame, something entirely forgettable to students is shaped into something worth considering. The "frame," therefore, consists of both careful pedagogical planning and, in many cases, a piece of text that ignites the conceptual space and inspires a deliberate probing. This deliberate probing, or what Radford might call creative thought, invites co-creators to "play at the boundaries of sense."5 Bruner speaks about the "creative act" as bringing about a "shock of recognition,"6 or what Radford equally describes as something speaking to something "within us." This idea is particularly helpful in deconstructing what is often at work in a collaborative piece of improvised drama activity in a classroom of young people.To this end, I would like to offer three brief episodes as examples of textual and improvised drama engagement that speak to Bruner's and Radford's ideas of "recognition," or resonance with "something within us," and to my own understanding of how ideas of representation or mimesis are operating in moments of aesthetic knowing for young people. The other principle at work, seemingly at odds with these ideas, is the notion of distance or alienation from an event, in effect a dis-identification. What I would especially hope to demonstrate in the following brief, empirical... (shrink)