Stecker - Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art

One of the major themes of this book is that aesthetics and the philosophy of art are two distinct, though overlapping fields. The former was launched in the eighteenth century as the study of beauty and sublimity, art and nature. As the categories of beauty and sublimity proved too constricting, a more wide-ranging and variously defined category of the aesthetic emerged. Aesthetics is the study of a certain kind of value. This value derives from certain kinds of experience, and is identified in judgments that an object possesses this value in virtue of its capacity to deliver the experience. The philosophy of art, for the most part, developed from aesthetics, but is distinct from it in two important ways. First, the philosophy of art deals with a much wider array of questions; not just those about value, but issues in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the philosophy of language and symbols in general. Second, art is too complex and diverse to be explicable in terms of a single category such as the aesthetic. Artistic value is constituted by a set of different kinds of value. The modes of appreciating art, the means to understanding art, the kinds of objects that are artworks are also all plural.

For this reason, the present work has two parts, each devoted to one of these fields. Part I is about the aesthetic. Part II attempts to give a sense of the range of issues addressed in the philosophy of art.

The aim of this book is to give an overview of the current state of the debate on numerous issues within these two broad main topics. In addition, it takes a stand on each issue it addresses, arguing for certain resolutions and against others. In doing this, my goal is not just to present a controversy but help to advance it toward a solution. I hope the reader will enter into the debates set out in each chapter, taking his or her own stand which may well be different from the authors.

There is one more aim that should be mentioned. Many individual issues are addressed in the following pages, and it is easy to ignore, or become confused about, how they fit together. This work sets out several ways they might fit together, and once again argues that some offer a better approach than others. Regarding Part I, there are two main messages. First, that the aesthetic should first and foremost be understood in terms of a certain type of experience; second, that there are no privileged providers of the experience, such as art. The aesthetic is something that can pervade our experience, because virtually every compartment of life contains objects that have aesthetic value. Regarding Part II, there are also two main messages. One is the pluralism about value, understanding, and appreciation mentioned above. The other is that one approach to the philosophy of artcontextualismworks better than its rivals in resolving issue after issue.

Material from several chapters appeared previously in the form of journal articles or book chapters. Chapter 2 greatly expands material found in The Correct and the Appropriate in the Appreciation of Nature, British Journal of Aesthetics , 37, no. 4, 1997, 393402. Chapter 5 is a revised and expanded version of Definition of Art in the Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics , edited by Jerrold Levinson (Oxford, 2003), 13654. Chapter 6 is based on The Ontology of Art Interpretation, in Art and Essence , edited by Stephen Davies and Ananta Sukla (Greenwood Press, 2003), 17791. Chapter 7 is a revised version of Interpretation and the Problem of the Relevant Intention, in Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics , edited by Matthew Kieran (Blackwell, 2006, 269281). Chapter 10 includes material from Expressiveness and Expression in Music and Poetry, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , 59, no. 1 (2001), 8596. Chapter 12 contains material from Immoralism and the Anti-theoretical View, British Journal of Aesthetics , 48, no. 2 (2008), 14561. Chapter 13 includes material from Reflections on Architecture: Buildings as Environments, as Aesthetic Objects, and as Artworks, Architecture and Civilization , edited by Michael Mitias (Rodopi, 1999), 8193. I am grateful to the publishers of these pieces for permission to reprint material from them.

I am also grateful to several people who read parts of the book. Allen Carlson provided very useful feedback on chapter 2. Berys Gaut offered valuable comments on chapters 3 and 4. Paul Guyer gave helpful advice on the material on Kant in chapter 3. Parts of chapter 7 were read at conferences in Manchester, England (2003) and Pasadena, California (2004). I thank the audience at the conferences for their questions and am especially grateful to Kent Bach, my commentator at Pasadena. Stephen Davies and Ted Gracyk provided helpful comments on Chapter 8. Last, but not least, I am grateful to an anonymous referee for many good suggestions for improving this book.