Aesthetics is one of the most vital and wide-ranging fields of philosophical inquiry.
This four volume set brings together both classic and contemporary writings to provide a comprehensive collection of the most important essays on the subject. All of the various artistic genres are addressed, with sections on film, dance and architecture as well as music, literature and the visual arts.
With a new introduction by the editor to guide the reader through the volumes, this major new work will provide student and researcher alike with key writings on aesthetics in one convenient, unique resource.
Volume I: History of Aesthetics
Origins of Modern Aesthetics
Joseph Addison, ‘Pleasures of the Imagination’, originally published in The Spectator, nos. 411-21 (21 June 1712-3 July 1712).
Francis Hutcheson, ‘Of Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design’, from An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, London, 1738.
David Hume, ‘Of the Standard of Taste’, Four Dissertations, London, 1757.
David Hume, ‘Of Tragedy’, Four Dissertations, London, 1757.
Henry Home, Lord Kames, ‘Standard of Taste’, in Elements of Criticism, London: B. Blake, 1839, pp. 448-56.
Alexander Gerard, ‘Of the Standard of Taste’, in An Essay on Taste, 3rd edn., Edinburgh: J. Bell, 1780, pp. 197-274.
Thomas Reid, ‘On Taste’, in Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Edinburgh: J. Bell, 1785, pp. 713-66.
Edmund Burke. ‘On Taste’, originally published as the introduction to the second edition of A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, London: Robert and James Dodsley, 1759.
Essays on the History of Aesthetics
Julia Annas, ‘Plato on the Triviality of Literature’, in Plato on Beauty, Wisdom, and the Arts, Julius Moravcsik and P. Temko (eds.), Totowa, N.J., Rowman and Littlefield, 1982, pp. 1-28.
Julius Moravcsik, ‘On Correcting the Poets’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 4, 1, 1986, pp. 35-47.
Jonathan Lear, ‘Kartharsis’, Phronesis, 33, 3, 1988, pp. 297-326.
Paul Woodruff, ‘Aristotle on Mimesis’ in Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, pp. 73-95.
Peter Kivy, ‘Hume’s Standard of Taste: Breaking the Circle’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 7, 1,1967, pp. 57-66.
Alex Neill, ‘"An Unaccountable Pleasure": Hume on Tragedy and the Passions’, Hume Studies, 24, 2, 1998, pp. 335-54. B1450 H8
Paul Guyer, ‘Formalism and the Theory of Expression in Kant’s Aesthetics’, Kant-Studien, 68, 1,1977, pp. 46-70.
Karl Ameriks, ‘Kant and the Objectivity of Taste’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 23, 1, 1983, pp. 3-17.
Julian Young, ‘The Birth of Tragedy’, from his Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 25-57.
Richard Schacht, ‘Nietzsche’s Second Thoughts About Art’, Monist, 64, 2, 1981, pp. 231-46.
Estimated page count: 377
Volume II: Aesthetic Theory
Definitions of Art
Morris Weitz, ‘The Role of Theory in Aesthetics’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 15, 1, 1956, pp. 27-35.
Arthur Danto, ‘The Artworld’, Journal of Philosophy, 61, 19, 1964, pp. 571-84.
Maurice Mandelbaum, ‘Family Resemblances and Generalizations Concerning the Arts’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 2, 3, 1965, pp. 219-28.
T.J. Diffey, ‘The Republic of Art’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 9, 2,1969, pp. 145-56.
Jerrold Levinson, ‘Defining Art Historically’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 19, 3,1979, pp. 232-50.
George Dickie ‘The New Institutional Theory of Art’, in Aesthetics: Proceedings of the 8th International Wittgenstein Symposium, Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1984, pp. 57-64.
Stephen Davies, ‘Functional and Procedural Definitions of Art’, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 24, 2, 1990, pp. 99-106.
Fiction
John Searle, ‘The Logical Status of Fictional Discourses’, New Literary History, 6, 1975, pp. 319-32.
David Lewis, ‘Truth in Fiction’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 15, 1, 1978, pp. 37-46.
Richard Rorty, ‘Is There a Problem about Fictional Discourse?’ in Consequences of Pragmatism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982, pp. 110-38.
Kendall Walton, ‘Fiction, Fiction-Making, and Styles of Fictionality’, Philosophy and Literature, 7, 1, 1983, pp. 78-88.
Gregory Currie, ‘What is Fiction?’ Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 43, 4,1985, pp. 385-92.
Aesthetic Concepts and Interpretation
Arnold Isenberg, ‘Critical Communication’, Philosophical Review, 57, 3, 1949, pp. 330-44.
William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, ‘The Intentional Fallacy’, Sewanee Review, 54, 3, 1946, pp. 468-88.
Frank Sibley, ‘Aesthetic Concepts’, Philosophical Review, 68, 4, 1959, pp. 421- 50.
Kendall Walton. ‘Categories of Art’, Philosophical Review, 79, 3, 1970, pp. 334-67.
Jerrold Levinson ‘Intention and Interpretation: A Last Look’, in Gary Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992, 221-56.
Robert A. Stecker, ‘Art Interpretation’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 52, 2, 1994, pp. 193-206.
Gary Iseminger, ‘Actual Intentionalism vs. Hypothetical Intentionalism’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 54, 4, 1996, pp. 319-26.
Metaphysics and aesthetic value
Philip Pettit, ‘The possibility of aesthetic realism’, in Eva Schaper (ed.), Pleasure, preference and value, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 17-38.
Alan Goldman, ‘Aesthetic Qualities and Aesthetic Value’, The Journal of Philosophy, 87, 1, 1990, pp. 23-37.
John W. Bender, ‘Realism, Supervenience and Irresolvable Aesthetic Disputes’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 54, 4, 1996, pp. 371-81.
Nick Zangwill, ‘Skin Deep or In the Eye of the Beholder?: Metaphysics of Aesthetic and Sensory Properties’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 61, 3, 2000, pp. 595-618.
Estimated page count: 399
Volume III: Issues and Challenges
Ontology of Art
Jerrold Levinson, ‘What a Musical Work Is’, Journal of Philosophy, 77, 1, 1980, pp. 5-28.
Julian Dodd, ‘Musical Works as Eternal Types’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 40, 4, 2000, pp. 424-40.
Robert Howell, ‘Types, Indicated and Initiated’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 42, 2, 2002, pp. 105-27.
Art and Ethics
Noël Carroll, ‘Moderate Moralism’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 36, 3, 1996, pp. 223-38.
Mary Devereaux, ‘Beauty and evil: The case of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will’, in Jerrold Levinson (ed.), Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 227-56.
Mathew Kieran, ‘In Defence of the Ethical Evaluation of Narrative Art’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 41, 1, 2001, pp. 26-38.
Art and Knowledge
Catherine Wilson, ‘Literature and Knowledge’, Philosophy 58, 4, 1983, pp. 489-96.
Hilary Putnam, ‘Literature, Science and Reflection’, in Meaning and the Moral Sciences, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978, pp. 83-94.
Jenefer Robinson, ‘L’Éducation Setimentale’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 73, 2, 1995, pp. 212-26.
Peter Lamarque, ‘Learning from Literature’, Dalhousie Review, 77, 1, 1997, pp. 7-21.
Feminist Aesthetics
Linda Nochlin. ‘Why Are There No Great Women Artists?’, in Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran (eds.), Woman in Sexist Society, New York: Basic Books, 1971, pp. 344-66.
Carolyn Korsmeyer, ‘Perceptions, Pleasures, Arts: Considering Aesthetics’, in J. Kourany (ed.), Philosophy in a Feminist Voice: Critiques and Reconstructions, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. 145-72
Rita Felski, ‘Why Feminism Doesn’t Need an Aesthetic (And Why it Can’t Ignore Aesthetics)’, in Peg Zeglin Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.), Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995, pp. 431-45.
A.W. Eaton, ‘Where Ethics and Aesthetics Meet: Titian’s Rape of Europa’, Hypatia, 18, 4, 2003, pp.159-88.
Art and Emotion
Colin Radford, ‘How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?’ Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 49, 1975, pp. 67-80.
Susan Feagin, ‘The Pleasures of Tragedy’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 20, 1, 1983, pp. 95-104.
Marcia Eaton, ‘Laughing at the Death of Little Nell: Sentimental Art and Sentimental People’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 26, 4, 1989, pp. 269-82.
Robert J. Yanal, ‘The Paradox of Emotion and Fiction’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 75, 1, 1994, pp. 54-75.
Aesthetics and the Natural World
Ronald Hepburn, ‘Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty’, in Bernard Williams and A. Montefiore (eds.) British Analytical Philosophy, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, pp. 285-310. B1614 W5
Allen Carlson, ‘Appreciation and the Natural Environment’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 37, 3, 1979, pp. 267-76.
Arnold Berleant, ‘The Aesthetics of Art and Nature’ in The Aesthetics of Environment, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992, pp. 160-75.
Malcolm Budd, ‘The Aesthetics of Nature’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 100, 2000, pp. 137-57.
Estimated page count: 411
Volume IV: The Individual Arts
Music
Stephen Davies, ‘The Expression of Emotion in Music’, Mind, 89, 1, 1980, pp. 67-86.
Peter Kivy, ‘How Music Moves’, in What is Music? Philip Alperson (ed.), University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987, pp. 149-63.
Colin Radford, ‘Emotions and Music: A Reply to the Cognitivists’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 47, 1, 1989, pp. 69-76.
Jenefer Robinson, ‘The Expression and Arousal of Emotion in Music’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 52, 1, 1994, pp. 13-22.
Pictures and Paintings
E. H. Gombrich, ‘Meditations on a Hobby Horse or the Roots of Artistic Form’, in Aspects of Form, Lancelot Law Whyte (ed.), London: Lund Humphries, 1951, pp. 209-28.
Nelson Goodman. ‘Reality Remade’, in his Languages of Art, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976, pp. 3-43.
Richard Wollheim, ‘Seeing-in, seeing-as, and pictorial representation’, in Art and its Objects, 2nd edn., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980, pp. 205-26.
Robert Hopkins, ‘Explaining Depiction’, Philosophical Review 104, 3, 1995, pp. 425-55.
Film
Alexander Sesonske, ‘Aesthetics of Film, Or a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Movies’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 33, 1, 1974, pp. 51-7.
Arthur Danto, ‘Moving Pictures,’ Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 4, 1, 1979, pp. 1-21.
Stanley Cavell, ‘The Thought of Movies’, The Yale Review, 72, 2, 1983, pp. 181-200.
Berys Gaut, ‘Cinematic Art’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 60, 4, 2002, pp. 299-312.
Photography
Roger Scruton, ‘Photography and Representation’, in The Aesthetic Understanding, London: Routledge, 1983, pp. 102-26.
Kendall Walton, ‘Transparent Pictures: on the Nature of Photographic Realism’, Critical Inquiry 11, 2, 1984, pp. 246-77. AP2 C76
Dominic M. McIver Lopes, ‘The Aesthetics of Photographic Transparency’, Mind, 112, 2003, pp. 433-48.
Architecture
Roger Scruton, ‘Architectural Aesthetics’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 13, 4, 1973, pp. 327-45.
Allen Carlson, ‘Reconsidering the Aesthetics of Architecture’, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 20, 1, 1986, pp. 21-7.
Stephen Davies, ‘Is Architecture Art?’ in Philosophy and Architecture, Michael H. Mitias (ed.), Rodopi: Amsterdam, 1994, pp. 31-47.
Dance
Selma Jeanne Cohen, ‘A Prolegomenon to an Aesthetics of Dance’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 21, 1,1962, pp. 19-26.
Monroe C. Beardsley, ‘What is Going on in a Dance’, Dance Research Journal, 15, 1, 1982, pp. 31-37.
Noël Carroll and Sally Banes, ‘A Response to Monroe Beardsley’s ‘What is Going On in a Dance?’’, Dance Research Journal, 15, 1, 1982, pp. 37-42.
