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In chapters ranging from "The Beautiful, the Dainty, and the Dumpy" to "Skin-deep or In the Eye of the Beholder?" Nick Zangwill investigates the nature of beauty as we conceive it, and as it is in itself. The notion of beauty is currently attracting increased interest, particularly in philosophical aesthetics and in discussions of our experiences and judgments about art. In The Metaphysics of Beauty, Zangwill argues that it is essential to beauty that it depends on the ordinary features of things. He uses this principle to defend the notion of the aesthetic, to call for a version of aesthetic formalism, and to reconsider the reality of beauty. The Metaphysics of Beauty brings beauty to the center of intellectual consciousness in a manner informed by contemporary metaphysics and engages with beauty as an enduring object of human thought and experience.
In this volume, Zangwill develops a view of the nature of music and our experience of music that foregrounds the aesthetic properties of music. He focuses on metaphysical issues about aesthetic properties of music, psychological issues about the nature of musical experience, and philosophy of language issues about the metaphorical nature of aesthetic descriptions of music. Among the innovations of this book, Zangwill addresses the limits of literal description, generally, and in the aesthetic case. He also explores the social and political issues about musical listening, which tend to be addressed more in continental traditions.
What is the purpose of art? What drives us to make it? Why do we value it? Nick Zangwill argues that the function of art is to have certain aesthetic properties in virtue of its non-aesthetic properties, and this function arises because of the artist's insight into the nature of these dependence relations and her intention to bring them about.
'The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics' has assembled 48 brand-new essays, making this a comprehensive guide available to the theory, application, history, and future of the field.
Includes twelve of the most important modern critical discussions of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, written by the leading Kant scholars and aestheticians of the twentieth century. Visit our website for sample chapters!
In thirteen new essays and an introduction, Motivational Internalism collects a structured overview of current debates about motivational internalism and examines the nature of and evidence for forms of internalism, internalism's relevance for moral psychology and moral semantics, and ways of bridging the gap between internalist and externalist positions.
An international team of experts explores the distinction between 'thin' concepts (general, evaluative terms like 'good' and 'bad') and 'thick' concepts (more specific concepts, such as 'brave', or 'rude'). Their essays touch on key debates in metaethics about the evaluative and normative, and raise fascinating questions about how language works.
Aesthetic Concepts is an exploration of key topics in contemporary aesthetics that arise from the seminal work of Frank Sibley (1923-1996). Sibley developed a distinctive aesthetic theory through a number of papers published between 1955 and 1995 (a selection of which, entitled Approach toAesthetics, is also published by OUP). Sibley's theory is grounded in the important and influential distinction he made between aesthetic and non-aesthetic concepts in his ground-breaking paper, 'Aesthetic Concepts'. Thirteen specially written essays by British and American philosophical aestheticians bring Sibley's insight into a contemporary framework, exploring the ways his ideas give rise to important new discussion about issues in aesthetics that greatly interested him. These include: the differences andrelationships between aesthetic concepts and other types of concepts, aesthetic realism and objectivity, methods of aesthetic evaluation in practice and in theory, the boundaries of aesthetics, and aesthetics of nature versus aesthetics of art. This collection will be of interest to scholars inphilosophy, art theory, and art criticism.
If you just can't decide what to wear, this enlightening guide will lead you through the diverse and sometimes contradictory aspects of fashion in a series of lively, entertaining and thoughtful essays from prominent philosophers and writers. A unique and enlightening insight into the underlying philosophy behind the power of fashion Contributions address issues in fashion from a variety of viewpoints, including aesthetics, the nature of fashion and fashionability, ethics, gender and identity politics, and design Includes a foreword by Jennifer Baumgardner, feminist author, activist and cultural critic, editor of Ms magazine (1993-7) and regular contributor to major women's magazines including Glamour and Marie-Claire
This open access book is about exploring interesting borderline cases of art. It discusses the cases of gustatory and olfactory artworks (focusing on food), proprioceptive artworks (dance, martial arts, and rock climbing qua proprioceptive experiences), intellectual artworks (philosophical and scientific theories), as well as the vague limits between painting and photography. The book focuses on the author’s research about what counts as art and what does not, as well as on the nature of these limits. Overall, the author defends a very inclusive view, 'extending' the limits of art, and he argues for its virtues. Some of the limits discussed concern our senses (our different perceptual modalities), some concern vagueness and fuzzy boundaries between different types of works of art, some concern the amount of human intention and intervention in the process of creation of an artwork, and some concern the border between art and science. In these various ways, by understanding better such borderline cases, Benovsky suggests that we get a better grip on an understanding of the nature of art.