<P>While there are many books on the romantics, and many books on Heidegger, there has been no book exploring the connection between the two. Pol Vandevelde’s new study forges this important link. </P> <P>Vandevelde begins by analyzing two models that have addressed the interaction between literature and philosophy: early German romanticism (especially Schlegel and Novalis), and Heidegger’s work with poetry in the 1930s. Both models offer an alternative to the paradigm of mimesis, as exemplified by Aristotle’s and Plato’s discussion of (...) poetry, and both German romanticism and Heidegger owe a deep debt to Plato. The study goes on to defend the view that Heidegger was influenced by romanticism. The author’s project is thus both historical, showing the specificity of the romantic and Heideggerean works, and systematic, defending aspects of their alternative mode of thinking while also pointing to their weaknesses. </P>. (shrink)

Supposing that talk of a distinctively artistic type of value is warranted, what separates it from other sorts of value? Any plausible answer must explain both what is of value and what is artistic about artistically valuable properties. Flaws with extant accounts stem from neglect of one component or the other; the account offered here, based on careful attention to actual art-critical practices, brings both together. The “value” component depends on the capacity of artworks to provide subjectively valuable experiences, while (...) the “artistic” component relies on the specific norms constitutive of artworld institutions. Understanding artistic value in this way allows for progress on several persistent problems, including the ethical value of art, relativism in artistic value, and the proper boundaries of philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

Theoria , the international Swedish philosophy journal, was founded in 1935. Its contributors in the first 75 years include the major Swedish philosophers from this period and in addition a long list of international philosophers, including A. J. Ayer, C. D. Broad, Ernst Cassirer, Hector Neri Castañeda, Arthur C. Danto, Donald Davidson, Nelson Goodman, R. M. Hare, Carl G. Hempel, Jaakko Hintikka, Saul Kripke, Henry E. Kyburg, Keith Lehrer, Isaac Levi, David Lewis, Gerald MacCallum, Richard Montague, Otto Neurath, Arthur N. (...) Prior, W. V. Quine, Nicholas Rescher, Ernest Sosa, Robert C. Stalnaker, P. F. Strawson, Patrick Suppes, Johan van Benthem, Georg Henrik von Wright and many others. Hempel's confirmation paradoxes, Ross's deontic paradox, Montague's universal grammar and Lindström's theorem are among the contributions to philosophy that were first published in Theoria. (shrink)

Prominent philosophical accounts of artistic forgery have neglected a central aspect of the aesthetic harm it perpetrates. To be properly understood, forgery must be seen in the context of our ongoing attempts to augment our aesthetic understanding in conditions of uncertainty. The bootstrapping necessary under these conditions requires a highly refined comprehension of historical context. By creating artificial associations among aesthetically relevant qualities and misrepresenting historical relationships, undetected forgeries stunt or distort aesthetic understanding. The effect of this may be quite (...) pervasive, and removing known forgeries from museum walls will be insufficient to eradicate it. Continued attention to forgeries, once exposed, can in fact serve us by increasing our understanding of how aesthetic understanding is formed and by helping us to repair the damage they have inflicted. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of art and aesthetics is the application of the methods of experimental philosophy to questions about art and aesthetics. By taking a scientific approach to experiences with art and aesthetic phenomena, it is continuous with the longstanding research program in psychology called empirical aesthetics. However, it is also continuous with traditional research in philosophy of art and aesthetics because it is centered on many of the same timeless questions. Like other branches of experimental philosophy, such as experimental moral (...) philosophy, it involves gathering data using empirical methods and bringing analyses of the data to bear on theorizing on a wide range of topics in philosophy of art and aesthetics: definition of art, ontology of art, aesthetic properties, aesthetic judgments, aesthetic adjectives, morality and aesthetics, and emotion and art. In this entry, we briefly examine the history prior to the current movement’s emergence in the 2010s, extensively survey extant works in this movement on each of the topics, and consider methodological debates regarding this movement. (shrink)

I offer an analysis of the role played by consideration of an item's functions when it is judged aesthetically. The account applies also to artworks, of which some serve extrinsic functions (such as the glorification of God and the communication of religious lore) and others have the function of being contemplated for their own sake alone. Along the way, I deny that aesthetic judgements fit the model of judgements either of free beauty or of dependent beauty, given how these two (...) came to be described in the early twentieth century. (shrink)

Seeing art is not as easy as it looks, because there is more to seeing art than meets the eye. This essay examines some of the presuppositions involved in seeing something as art. In opposition to the view of A.C. Danto that to see something as art is merely to identify it as art, I shall suggest that to see something as art is to appreciate it in a specifiable way. In addition, I shall argue that considerations sometimes deemed adventitious (...) are in fact inescapably involved in the appreciation of all works of art, and in particular, that it is impossible to entirely eliminate intentional and genetic considerations from our critical Judgments. (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)

Danto’s interpretation about Plato’s original condemnation of art doesn’t ground in a rigorous and accurate exegesis of the Platonic text. This contributed to making the interpreters doubtful (e.g. Halliwell), since Danto seems to conceive the philosophical genesis of mimesis attributing to it an excessively univocal meaning as compared to Platonic theses. However, interesting topics about the dangers of poetry and the moral and political implications of the “philosophical disenfranchisement of art” arise from the few Danto’s mentions about Plato’s psychological arguments (...) on mimetic art. The article focuses on these psychological aspects suggesting to Danto the ethical reason why art, tragedy in particular, is considered by Plato to be “dangerous”. The analysis will point out that, with regard to a philosophical consideration of the mimesis, dramatic poetry (specifically, Greek theatre) is a perspicuous clue to clarify the control function exerted by art over the sphere of emotions. This will also allow us to recognize Danto’s debt to Nietzsche, with whom he shares the intention to overthrow Platonism. (shrink)

The question of whether food is art depends primarily on the definition of art that we agree to accept. The article proposes a model that helps us to focus our mind on what could be, and how we should understand the art of food, if we accept, having applied a fairly liberal theory of art, that food can actually be art. It is argued that there are no methodological or factual constraints indicating that food could not, under some circumstances, be (...) high art. This hypothetical form of art is called ‘edible art’. (shrink)

Arthur Danto is one of the best Anglophone philosophers of art of the second half of the 20th century. His unique methodology of indiscernibility and provocative claim about the end of art have bee...

Panagiotis Kanellopoulos explores children's talk about musical thinking through the study of their reflections on their own improvised music. He accepts the possibility that children's discourse on music is the beginning of their philosophizing about music, an idea that is related to the larger issue of how to develop a music education perspective that gives voice to the learners and welcomes experimentation, constantly questioning the assumptions we bring as music educators. Based on particular examples of discussions with eight-year old children (...) he explores the development of their discourse, interpreting the meaning of their thinking, and illustrating how they put forward issues that although they begin from concrete particulars point to issues usually confined to abstract philosophical concerns. Children's reflective potential as well as their particular views has important educational implications. Discussions with the children about their work highlight interpretation and meaning-formation at the center of their experience as artists. And musical improvisation emerges as a source of genuine musical experiences and a core means for the creation of communities of practice, dialogue, and reflection. (shrink)

Può un’opera d’arte non avere proprietà estetiche? Può l’arte essere definita, e compresa, senza alcun riferimento all’estetico? Fino a qualche tempo fa, una riposta affermativa a queste due domande sembrava inevitabile: le cosiddette Teorie Estetiche dell’arte, per le quali le opere d’arte sono prodotte con l’intenzione di suscitare esperienze estetiche (soprattutto per il tramite delle proprietà estetiche), mostravano tutti i loro limiti di fronte alle nuove tendenze artistiche, come ad ese...

Arthur C. Danto ha insegnato che l’identità e il contenuto di un’opera d’arte dipendono da «l’atmosfera di una teoria che l’occhio non può percepire». Per “teoria” egli non intende le idee elaborate dai filosofi dell’arte. La sua tesi consiste nell’affermazione che un’opera d’arte può essere riconosciuta e apprezzata adeguatamente solo quando venga vista in relazione con la tradizione delle opere, gli scritti, le pratiche, i generi e le convenzioni che formano lo sfondo dal quale emerge come...

All’inizio degli anni Sessanta Frank Sibley pubblicava un articolo dal titolo inequivocabile, Aesthetic and Non Aesthetic; in esso, riprendendo alcuni spunti presenti in un altro suo celebre articolo, precedente di pochi anni, il filosofo americano affrontava esplicitamente il problema del rapporto tra giudizi, qualità, descrizioni e concetti estetici e non estetici. Aveva così inizio un dibattito tra i più fecondi sviluppatisi in seno all’estetica analitica, dibattito che ancora oggi è al ce...