Is there such a subject as aesthetics? The lack of any pre-philosophical route to its subject matter, the historicity of its favoured concepts and artefacts, and the ideological character of its inception all suggest that the aesthetic is an invented category, which identifies no stable or universal feature of the human condition. Against this I argue that ordinary practical reasoning leads of its own accord to aesthetic judgement, and that the experience in which this judgement is founded is rooted in (...) our nature as rational beings. I go on to give a partial characterization of the experience, and to argue that our inherited concept of art, in which pictures, poems, works of music, and works of imaginative prose all count as works of art, can be vindicated, once we see art as a functional kind, whose function is to elicit aesthetic experiences. (shrink)

David E. Cooper; I*—The Presidential Address: Analytical and Continental Philosophy, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, P.

This chapter contains sections titled: A Range of Views Criteria of Assessment The Road to a Solution.

New and distinctive approaches to five central topics in musical aesthetics are provided in this outstanding book. The topics are: understanding, representation, expression, performance and profundity.

Divided into three essays, this title offers an investigation into the origins of our moral values, or as the author calls them 'moral prejudices'. It addresses the concept of guilt and its role in the development of civilization and religion. It also considers suffering and its role in human existence.

Aesthetics and Music is a rich and interesting study. Hamilton's approach is innovative. He interleaves chapters on the history of philosophical thought about music with more theoretical discussions of music, sound, rhythm and improvisation, but does not cover the work–performance relation, depiction or expression. He draws on an atypically broad range of examples, including avant-garde, medieval, non-Western and jazz. The assumptions are humanist: ‘I wish to argue for an aesthetic conception of music as an art … according to which music (...) is a human activity grounded in the body and bodily movement and interfused with human life’.The historical chapters are valuable and not without analysis and criticism. Hamilton shows how the ancient Greek theorists were more interested in music's mathematical properties as reflecting the underlying harmony of relations between cosmic bodies than in the practice of musicians. While they equated the value of art with its contribution to an education for citizenship and while their concept of the arts differed …. (shrink)