ABSTRACTThe ideological and methodological oppositions that divide philosophy generally into realisms and idealisms, objectivisms and subjectivisms, also pervade aesthetic theory. The question arises whether there was beauty in the world prior to the emergence of intelligent perceivers like ourselves, or whether beauty itself comes into existence only through the perceptual idiosyncrasies with which we happen to encounter the objects we happen to consider beautiful. The experience of beauty and its opposites under this description can easily seem to be an altogether (...) subjective phenomenon, available at most only to those psychological subjects conditioned or predisposed to recognize certain features as possessing specific aesthetic properties. The article examines topics related to the intentionality of expression in art. Intention is often rejected as a basis for aesthetic judgment. The present discussion, by focusing on the role of perception in art production and appreciation, considers ways of addressing those objections to restore an intuitive sense of the intentional expressiveness of art. The proposed solution also helps uphold an approach toward answering the question of whether aesthetic value generally is only subjective or also has a distinctively objective element. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is one more alluded to than actually studied, both in current philosophy of art and in the theory of criticism. There is a reason for this, which both clarifies the issue and suggests how it is to be approached. To suppose that the person responsible for a work of art has at least something interesting to say about it is only natural, and even commonplace. But granted this, the qualifications to be put on that assumption (...) in individual and particular cases become of much greater interest. The major question would not then be whether or not, in an absolute sense, the artist is in a position to talk definitively about his own work, but rather on what basis or criteria a claim to that effect can be made to rest, and how far it extends in its implications. (shrink)