Après un bref survol de l’esthétique britannique au xxe siècle, les objections de Wollheim à la théorie « idéelle » de l’art, qu’il attribue à Croce et à Collingwood, sont présentées. Dans une deuxième partie, les critiques de Bosanquet à l’endroit de la théorie de Croce sont examinées, pour en conclure qu’on ne peut pas lui attribuer la théorie « idéelle ». Il en va de même pour Collingwood, dont les grandes lignes de son esthétique sont présentées dans la troisième (...) partie, dont le but accessoire est de montrer que sa théorie est par ailleurs plus satisfaisante que celle de Bosanquet ; elle est en réalité très proche de celle de Wollheim, malgré les dires de ce dernier. Dans la conclusion, on revient sur le motif des théories de l’art des idéalistes britanniques, à savoir le rôle social que doit jouer l’oeuvre d’art, pour montrer toute l’actualité de la théorie de Collingwood, pour qui l’oeuvre d’art est le produit non pas de l’artiste seul, mais de l’artiste et de son audience.After a brief survey of British aesthetics in the XXth century, Wollheim’s objections to the ‘ideal’ theory, which he imputes to Croce and Collingwood, are presented. In the second part, Bosanquet’s critique of Croce’s theory is presented in order to show that one cannot attribute to him the ‘ideal’ theory. The same goes for Collingwood, whose aesthetic theory is sketched in the third part, which argues accessorily that it is more satisfactory than Bosanquet’s ; it is in fact, his own claims to the contrary notwithstanding, rather close to Wollheim’s. The conclusion comes back to the central motivation for British Idealist theories of art, namely that the work of art has a social role to play, in order to show the actuality of Collingwood, who viewed the work of art not as the product of the artist alone, but from the artist and the audience alike. (shrink)

Videogames are one of the most striking developments in recent popular arts. Many of the issues traditional to philosophical aesthetics find a new setting in videogames, and often take on a dramatic new form. Little has been written specifically on videogames in the philosophy of the arts, although they are often discussed in non-philosophical disciplines, such as media studies. A number of issues seem prominent, particularly those following from the interactive nature of videogames. This article is a survey of the (...) issues concerning videogames most likely to interest philosophers of the arts. (shrink)

American History X (hereafter AHX) has been accused by numerous critics of a morally dangerous cinematic seduction: using stylish cinematography, editing, and sound, the film manipulates the viewer through glamorizing an immoral and hate-filled neo-nazi protagonist. In addition, there’s the disturbing fact that the film seems to accomplish this manipulation through methods commonly grouped under the category of “fascist aesthetics.” More specifically, AHX promotes its neo-nazi hero through the use of several filmic techniques made famous by Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. (...) Now most critics admit that, in the end, the film claims to denounce racism and attempts to show us the conversion of the protagonist to the path of righteousness, but they complain that nonetheless the film (perhaps unintentionally) ends up implicitly promoting the immoral worldview it rather superficially professes to reject in its final act. This charge of hypocrisy is connected to another worry: the moral conversion in the film is said to fall flat because the intellectual resources on display to support the character’s racism are not counterbalanced by equally explicit (but superior) arguments for the anti-racist position ultimately embraced by the character. In other words, just as the devil is said to get all the good lines in Milton’s Paradise Lost, in AHX the racists get all the arguments. This has been taken to be a morally problematic flaw of the film. Critics lament that Derek’s conversion seems to result not from relevant logical inferences and valid rational argumentation but from overly simplistic and arguably egoistic insights (e.g., “has anything you've done made your life better?”) combined, perhaps, with a hackneyed cliché (in prison, one of his best friends is a black person!) In this paper I’ll attempt to rebut these charges and defend the film as a powerful, and powerfully moral, work of art. I’ll be suggesting that the seductive techniques employed allow for many viewers a degree of sympathy towards the protagonist that is crucial, both for making that character’s more horrific actions especially unsettling, and also for making his eventual conversion plausible and ultimately compelling. I’ll also argue that the manner in which his conversion is presented is in fact subtler than many critics have allowed: Derek’s transformation is not artificial or implausible but is depicted as resulting from a cumulative series of emotionally powerful life events and personal engagements. It is certainly true that it is not represented in the way some would seemingly have preferred, i.e. as straightforwardly resulting from a process of gradual intellectual improvement in Derek’s reasoning on questions of race and politics. However, I’ll argue that the decidedly emotional basis of his moral evolution is both refreshingly realistic and no hindrance to accepting his conversion as rational. Finally, properly understanding the legitimacy of the emotional foundations of much moral thought will also allow us to appreciate the ways in which our initial worries about this film’s (not insignificant) ability to persuade viewers through the engagement of emotions need not, in itself, be seen as a barrier to endorsing the film as a morally praiseworthy work. (shrink)

This essay is a survey of positions on the relation between texts and performances in theater. It proposes a simple framework within which to compare and evaluate these positions. The framework also allows us to see a pattern of thinking that reflects the historical fact of the importance of the literary tradition in theater. The essay points out certain challenges facing the positions surveyed and concludes with a brief sketch of the most recent views that have been put on offer. (...) The latest positions re-situate the literary theater as a species of the more general phenomena of theatrical performance. (shrink)

En este artículo se intenta demostrar que los argumentos esgrimidos para negar que la publicidad creativa pueda ser considerada como artística descansan sobre falsos fundamentos, lo que relativiza su verdad. Ni el argumento de la fórmula, ni el de la pasividad del espectador, ni el de la inutilidad del arte, como los ha caracterizado en otro contexto Noël Carroll, resultan válidos para lograr dicho propósito. A ello hay que sumar que carecemos de un concepto definitivo y universal de “obra de (...) arte”, por lo que resulta imposible negar con él el carácter artístico de la publicidad. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is good reason to believe that we can be influenced by fictions in ways that matter morally, and some of the time we will be unaware that we have been so influenced. These arguments fall short of proving a clear causal link between fictions and specific changes in the audience, but they do reveal rather interesting and complex features of the moral psychology of fiction. In particular, they reveal that some Platonic worries about (...) the dangers of art cannot be dismissed lightly. (shrink)

A content theory of art would identify an artwork with the meaningful or representational content of some concrete artistic vehicle, such as the intentional, expressive, stylistic, and subject matter-related content embodied in, or resulting from, acts of intentional artistic expression by artists. Perhaps surprisingly, the resultant view that an artwork is nothing but content seems to have been without theoretical defenders until very recently, leaving a significant theoretical gap in the literature. I present some basic arguments in defence of such (...) a view, including the following. Content views of linguistic communication are ubiquitous, so why should they not be applicable in artistic cases as well? Also, propositional accounts of language involve two kinds of content (the proposition expressed by a sentence, plus the worldly state of affairs it represents), both of which kinds can be used in explaining artworks. In addition, the differing modal properties of artworks and concrete artefacts can be used to show that artworks could not be, or include, such physical artefacts. (shrink)

Contributions to the philosophical genre of popular culture and philosophy aim to popularize philosophical ideas with the help of references to the products of popular culture with TV series like The Simpsons, Hollywood blockbusters like The Matrix and Jurassic Park, or popular music groups like Metallica. While being commercially successful, books in this comparatively new genre are often criticized for lacking scientific rigor, providing a shallow cultural commentary, and having little didactic value to foster philosophical understanding. This paper discusses some (...) of these methodological and didactic objections and seeks to encourage a constructive discussion of concerns with the genre. It shows how the genre similar to previous attempts to foster public understanding of philosophy and that it is a methodologically viable approach to reach a broad range of readers with diverse informational preferences and educational backgrounds. Considering what makes this approach to the popularization of philosophical thinking successful will shed light on some of the criteria for popularization of philosophy in general. (shrink)

Country music has not gotten much attention in philosophy. I introduce two philosophical issues that country music raises. First, country music is simple. Some people might think that its simplicity makes country music worse; I argue that simplicity is aesthetically valuable. The second issue is country music’s ideal of authenticity; fans and performers think that country should be real or genuine in a particular way. But country music scholars have debunked the idea that country authenticity gets at anything real; widespread (...) ideas about country authenticity are rooted in a racist and fabricated picture of country music. In discussing these two issues, I highlight the importance of community in country music. (shrink)

There is a traditional debate in analytic aesthetics that surrounds the classification of film as Art. While much philosophy devoted to considering film has now moved beyond this debate and accepts film as a mass art, a subcategory of Art proper, it is worth reconsidering the criticism of film pre-Deleuze. Much of the criticism of film as pseudo-art is expressed in moral terms. Adorno, for example, critiques film as ‘mass-cult’, mass-produced culture which presents a ‘flattened’ version of reality. Adorno worries (...) about the passivity encouraged in viewers. Films are narrative artworks, received by an audience in a context, making the focus on the reception of the work important. The dialogue held between Adorno and Walter Benjamin post-Second World War is interesting because, between them, they consider both the possible positive emancipatory and negative politicization effects of film as a mass produced and distributed storytelling medium. Reading Adorno alongside Benjamin is a way to highlight the role of the critical thinker who receives the film. Arguing that the critical thinker is a valuable citizen, this paper focuses on the value of critical thinking in the reception of cinematic artworks. It achieves this by reconsidering Adorno and Benjamin’s theories of mass art. (shrink)

According to the amoralist, computer games cannot be subject to moral evaluation because morality applies to reality only, and games are not real but “just games”. This challenges our everyday moralist intuition that some games are to be met with moral criticism. I discuss and reject the two most common answers to the amoralist challenge and argue that the amoralist is right in claiming that there is nothing intrinsically wrong in simply playing a game. I go on to argue for (...) the so-called “endorsement view” according to which there is nevertheless a sense in which games themselves can be morally problematic, viz. when they do not only represent immoral actions but endorse a morally problematic worldview. Based on the endorsement view, I argue against full blown amoralism by claiming that gamers do have a moral obligation when playing certain games even if their moral obligation is not categorically different from that of readers and moviegoers. (shrink)

El ámbito de la cultura popular ha privilegiado una visión técnica de sus objetos en el sentido que Aristóteles dio al término téchne. Este enfoque ha prevalecido hasta hoy en la forma de un determinismo económico y tecnológico que enfatiza la estructura social frente a la acción cultural. Se trata de un presupuesto racionalista que comparten las teorías sociológicas y culturales dominantes en el área: la teoría crítica, los análisis de economía política y, en menor medida, los estudios culturales. Este (...) trabajo profundiza en los presupuestos filosóficos de estas corrientes con el objetivo de advertir la misma explicación racionalista, extrínseca, que definió la crítica de Adorno y Horkheimer a la cultura de masas mediado el siglo XX. Este concepto de cultura de masas suscitó una reflexión diferente en Hannah Arendt, coincidiendo con el periodo en el que los teóricos de Frankfurt asentaron el juicio dominante acerca de la cultura de masas. Esta otra visión de Arendt ofrece, a nuestro juicio, un presupuesto no-racionalista e intrínseco, que permite una teorización adecuada al carácter cultural de los objetos que conforman el campo de la popular culture. The field of popular culture has privileged a technical view of its objects in the sense that Aristotle gave to the term téchne. This approach has prevailed until today in the form of an economic and technological determinism that emphasizes the social structure in front of cultural activity. It is a rationalist presupposition which it is shared by the cultural and sociological theories dominant in the area: critical theory, political economy analysis and, to some extent, cultural studies. This study examines the philosophical assumptions of these current theories in order to understand how they incorporate the same rational and extrinsic explanation which defined the criticism of Adorno and Horkheimer to mass culture at mid-twentieth century. This phenomenon of mass culture gave rise to Hannah Arendt’s alternative reflection, coinciding with the period in which the Frankfurt’s theorists settled the dominant view of contemporary culture. In our view, Arendt offers a non-rationalist and intrinsic perspective that allows an adequate understanding of the cultural and symbolical character of the objects that shape the field of popular culture. (shrink)

L’idéalisme britannique est un mouvement qui a dominé les universités britanniques pendant une cinquantaine d’années à la fin du xixe siècle et au début du xxe siècle, mais qui est passé presque totalement inaperçu dans le monde francophone. Rejetés en bloc par les philosophes analytiques, ces auteurs ont aussi été ignorés pendant longtemps dans leur pays, mais certains d’entre eux, notamment Bradley et Collingwood, jouissent d’un regain d’intérêt à la faveur d’un renouveau des études sur les origines de la philosophie (...) analytique. Ce texte est une introduction à l’idéalisme britannique, qui retrace, dans une première partie plus historique, les grandes lignes de sa genèse, son développement et son déclin. Dans une deuxième partie, nous donnons quelques arguments en faveur d’une étude plus approfondie de ce mouvement.British Idealism is a philosophical movement that dominated British universities , for fifty years around the turn from the XIXth to the XXth century, but it went largely unnoticed in the French-speaking world. Condemned by analytic philosophers, these authors were also ignored in their own country, but some of them, notably Bradley and Collingwood, are now enjoying a newly found popularity within the larger trend towards a study of the origins of analytic philosophy. This text is an introduction to British Idealism that plots, in an historical first part, the outlines of its rise, development and decline. In the second part, we provide reasons for further studies of this movement. (shrink)

The bulk of the literature on the relationship between art and morality is principally concerned with an aesthetic question: Do moral flaws with works of art constitute aesthetic flaws?1 Much less attention has been paid to the ways in which artworks can be morally flawed. There are at least three promising contenders that concern aesthetic education: Artworks can be morally flawed by endorsing immorality, corrupting audiences, and encouraging responses that are bad to have. When it comes to works of fiction, (...) the third suggestion requires what Allan Hazlett calls response moralism—the position that audience reactions to artworks can be morally bad.2 Here, I will put aside issues of aesthetic.. (shrink)

Is it ever bad to take pleasure in the suffering of fictional characters? I think so. I attempt to show when and why. I begin with two powerful objections to my view: (1) engaging with fiction is akin to morally unproblematic autonomous fantasy, and (2) since no one is harmed, it is morally unproblematic. I reply to the objections and defend a Moorean view on the issue: It is intrinsically bad to enjoy evil, actual (past, present, or future) and merely (...) imagined. In support, I offer four examples. Then I argue against Moore's claim that it is equally bad to delight in fictional suffering as it is to enjoy actual suffering. Finally, I argue that even though it is bad to enjoy imagined suffering, the power of fiction is often mitigating. The moral problems are more often with the works of fiction than with the audience. (shrink)

Comics have been around since the 19th century, but it is only just recently that they have begun to receive philosophical attention as an art form in their own right. This essay begins by exploring the reasons for their comparative neglect by philosophers of art and then provides an overview of extant work on the philosophy of comics. The primary issues discussed are the definition of comics, the ontology of comics, the relationship between comics and other art forms, the relationship (...) between text and image in comics, and the connection between comics and cartooning. (shrink)

Heidegger’s essays “The Origin of the Work of Art” and “The Question Concerning Technology” provide a revealing insight into the importance of exemplarity to artworks. Originally the notion that exemplarity is essential to art is Kantian: As Kant puts it, since originality can produce “original nonsense, [beautiful art’s] products must be models, i.e. exemplary.” However, what Heidegger recognizes is that even if exemplarity allows us to take art seriously in spite of its excesses, it exposes the artwork to new dangers: (...) on the one hand, to the “world withdrawal of the work” as occurs in consignment to the museum shelf, and on the other, to the conditions of Enframing as “challenging-forth,” under which art is taken as a means to an end—dangers which point to the division of artworks between “fine” art and “popular” art. Since Heidegger’s approach favors the former, we will try to gain new critical insight by considering his arguments in the light of a “popular” work that allows us to formulate an exemplarity of popular art as the necessary complement to that of traditional art. By means of an understanding of the exemplarities (in the plural) of artworks, we will be able to reconsider the significance of Heidegger’s notions of reliability, Enframing, and poiesis for our current technological conditions. (shrink)

Philosophy of art presupposes differences between art and other cultural activity. Philosophers have recently paid more attention to this excluded activity, particularly to the range of cultural production known as popular art. Three issues have dominated these discussions. First, there is debate about the basis of the distinction. Some philosophers contend that fine art is essentially different from popular art, but others hold that the distinction is entirely social in origin. Second, philosophers disagree on the degree of continuity or discontinuity (...) that holds between fine and popular art. Third, there is controversy about the relative value of the two, and about the basis for the supposed superiority of fine art. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Stand-up so closely resembles-and is meant to resemble-the styles and expectations of everyday speech that the idea of technique and technical mastery we typically associate with art is almost rendered invisible. Technique and technical mastery is as much about the understanding and development of audiences as collaborators as it is the generation of material. Doing so requires encountering audiences in places that by custom or design encourage ludic and vernacular talk-social spaces and third spaces such as bars, coffee houses, (...) and clubs. Cultivating uncultivated speech and cultivating real audiences in found settings form the background of developing the stand-up comedian, neither of which lend themselves to the conservatory tradition we think of when we think of the development of artists. This article addresses two areas of the overall question of stand-up as art, starting with the ontological question of stand-up comedy: if it is an art where is it located, and what we may mean by “artworks” and “artworld” in stand-up comedy? Then I consider whether stand-up comedy as practiced can be reconciled with several recent definitions for art and note some of the special conditions and contexts for stand-up. (shrink)

Most philosophers of art assume that there are three categories with regard to arthood, namely ‘art’, ‘artful’ and ‘non-art’ and that, therefore, a definition must be able to account for ‘artful items’, also called ‘borderline cases of art’. This article, however, defends the thesis that, since there is no agreement over which items fall under the category ‘artful’, the ability to account for borderline cases of art should not be used as a criterion for evaluating definitions of art. The defended (...) thesis is important, not merely because it reveals that virtually all alleged descriptive definitions of art have strong recommendatory consequences, but also because the thesis has implications for the artefacts that are considered to be borderline cases of art. (shrink)

La distinción entre arte culto y arte popular, como un caso particular de la distinción entre alta cultura y cultura popular, forma parte de los principios de la teoría estética. En este artículo tratamos de ver cuál es el fundamento de la misma, así como de analizar el trasfondo estético de las críticas al arte popular, para, desde ahí, emprender una defensa del mismo en el ámbito de la teoría del arte, con la intención de situarla en paridad con el (...) arte culto, es decir, como un producto que puede no sólo satisfacer los criterios de la tradición estética, sino que, además, puede enriquecer el concepto tradicional de lo estético y aspirar al mismo valor que el arte consagrado. (shrink)

Lopes (2010) offers an account of computer art, which he argues is a new art form. Part of what makes computer art distinctive, according to Lopes, is its interactivity, a quality found in few non-computer artworks. Given the rise in prominence of such artworks, most notably videogames, they are surely worthy of philosophical inquiry. I believe their ontology and properties are particularly worthy of study, as an understanding of these will prove crucial to critical understanding and evaluation of the works (...) themselves. Lopes’ account of interactive art is novel and important, but flawed, and in this essay I will discuss its flaws and suggest a better account of the properties of interactive art that builds on his work, providing a partial account of the ontology of interactive art. In Section 1, I discuss Lopes’ definition and ontology of interactive art; in Section 2, I argue that he only accounts for the properties of displays, neglecting the properties of interactive artworks themselves. In Section 3, I discuss several possible solutions for Lopes and why they are inadequate before Section 4 presents my view, that interactive artworks possess all of the properties of their varying displays because each possible display is part of the artwork. This is compatible with Lopes’ definition of interactive art, and so much of his account can be preserved, but with a refined account of the properties of interactive artworks. What I present is by no means a complete ontological study of interactive art, but hopefully lays the groundwork for future work on this ontology. (shrink)

The ‘music appreciation as contemplation’ paradigm of traditional aesthetics and music education assumes that music exists to be contemplated for itself. The resulting distantiation of music and music education from life creates a legitimation crisis for music education. Failing to make a noteworthy musical difference for society, a politics of advocacy attempts to justify music education. Praxial theories of music, instead, see music as pragmatically social in origin, meaning, and value. A praxial approach to music education stresses that appreciation is (...) seen in use; thus, it seeks to ‘make a difference’ that students and society find musically noteworthy. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the relations between musical works, performances, and recordings, are significantly different in the three traditions of Western classical, rock, and jazz music. In classical music the work of art – the enduring primary focus of critical attention – is a piece that receives various different performances. Classical recordings are best conceived of as giving the listener access to performances of works, or perhaps as performances in their own right. In rock, however, recordings are at (...) the centre of the tradition. The work of art in rock is not a piece for performance, but the track itself, as in classical electronic music. Tracks do manifest songs which may be performed live, but these are not the primary focus of critical attention in rock. In jazz, there are no works of art. This is because the primary focus of critical attention in jazz is the performance, and the relation between standard on which the performance is based and the performance itself is too dissimilar from the model of classical work-performance. Jazz recordings, however, like classical recordings, are best thought of as providing access to performances. These ontological issues are important in part because of their implications for evaluation and musical practice. If rock works are ontologically like classical electronic works, then criticism of them should focus not just on their formal harmonic structures, but on their use of timbral and spatial effects. Since classical recordings endure, but live performances do not, performers should ideally take a different attitude to work-interpretation in those two spheres. (shrink)

This paper begins with an appreciation and critique of the remarkable work of Peter Sloterdijk which makes it possible to open up a number of issues concerning philosophy and its relation to the social sciences and humanities, most particularly concerning the role of evidence and the pervasiveness of Eurocentrism. In particular, the paper argues that it is possible to think of different ways of raising the spectre of space which are as plausible as the account provided by Sloterdijk’s spatial philosophy/philosophy (...) of space. Navigating by the compass of classical Chinese civilisation, I proceed to sketch out a different diagnosis from that of Sloterdijk of how space is being materialised in contemporary Euro-American cultures. Drawing on logographic traditions of writing the world, I argue that, rather than describing what is now being produced by capitalism and other actors as a warehoused world full of lost souls, it is possible to think of different means of describing how the future is being scripted. (shrink)

The consensus is that novels can be fully appreciated only through an experiential engagement with their well-formed instances. But what are the entities that serve as such instances? According to the orthodox view, these entities are primarily inscriptions—concrete texts written or printed on something or displayed on the screen of some electronic device. In this paper, I argue that this view is misguided, since well-formed instances of a novel must manifest certain sonic properties, but such properties cannot be manifested by (...) inscriptions. As an alternative, I put forward the view that the entities that serve as well-formed instances of novels are readings and sums of readings and graphic elements. (shrink)

The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife. By Eric Rentschler (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996) xviii + 456 pp. $60.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

Popular culture could be understood as a political battleground where conflicting meanings are inscribed into the “ordinary objects” that constitute that public sphere. This is also true for science fiction television series. This article critically examines how political matters and ethical agencies are represented within The Expanse, a series that takes place within a speculative twenty-fourth century milky way. Firstly, I will situate The Expanse within its generic “system of reference.” Then, I will illustrate how political matters are represented as (...) conjoined with the ethical. While the ethical refers to actions of persons, politics refers to fictional conceptions of what Tristan Garcia’s terms we-ourselves, understood as conflicting and overlapping conceptions of “we.” The conjunction between the political and the ethical in The Expanse is spatiotemporal: the characters, the events they are entangled in, and the spaces that connect discrete events develop through fictional and literal time. I argue that the science fictional representations of “we-ourselves,” and the specific spatiotemporal representational capacities of the television series format, can be understood through the application of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of the chronotope and the dialogic. That is, The Expanse’s we-representations are chronotopic and the refractive rhetoric of television is dialogic. (shrink)

To claim that there is a politics to or expressed within media technology is of course by no means new, but it remains controversial and not always well understood. Walter Benjamin’s (1986b) essay from 1936 on the political import of media technology is often regarded as the starting point of such discussions, since it foregrounds a key theme in critical theory, namely the politics of perception. In what follows, I would like to review the importance of the politics of perception (...) by first outlining Benjamin’s political analysis of cinema and then engaging with a critique of Benjamin by recent American cognitivist philosophy. This will allow a consideration of the competing phenomenological cognitive science of embodied cognition that I argue offers a better account of the mind and cognition than cognitivism. As a result of this analysis of cognition, I conclude that the philosophy of embodied cognition supports Benjamin's political theory of media technology. (shrink)

In particular, as we shall see, Collingwood is often dismissed as having held an indefensible, outmoded ‘ideal’ theory, according to which the work of art is primarily ‘mental’, while his potential role in current debates is simply ignored. I will argue that this view is largely mistaken.