Papers by Jerrold Levinson
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2005
The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics looks at a fascinating theme in philosophy and the arts. Leadin... more The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics looks at a fascinating theme in philosophy and the arts. Leading figures in the field contribute forty-eight articles which detail the theory, application, history, and future of philosophy and all branches of the arts. The first article of the book gives a general overview of the field of philosophical aesthetics in two parts: the first is a quick sketch of the lay of the land, and the second an account of five central problems over the past fifty years. The second article gives an extensive survey of recent work in the history of modern aesthetics, or aesthetic thought from the seventeenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. There are three main parts to the book. The first part comprises sections dealing with problems in aesthetics, such as expression, fiction or aesthetic experience, considered apart from any particular artform. The second part contains articles on problems in aesthetics as they arise in connection with particular artforms, such as ...
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2017
We identify a strategy for getting beliefs from fiction via three assumptions: (1) a certain caus... more We identify a strategy for getting beliefs from fiction via three assumptions: (1) a certain causal generality holds in the fiction, and does so because (2) causal generalities in fiction are (with noted exceptions) carried over from what the author takes to be fact; (3) the author is reliable on this topic, so what the author takes to be fact is fact. We do not question (2). While (3) will, in particular cases, be doubtful, the strategy is vulnerable more generally to the worry that what looks like a causal generality may be instead an authorial intervention of a kind from which no causal connection can be inferred; in such cases (1) turns out to be false though it may seem at first sight to be true. In consequence we have extra reason for being careful in forming beliefs based on fictions. Eden WarwickÕs book, Nasology, or hints towards a classification of noses, appeared in 1848. Its thesis, that a personÕs character can be read from the shape of their nose, was supported by examples taken from, among other things, Oliver Twist. DickensÕ Òcorrect observation and delineation of characterÓ gave us the Òhawk-noseÓ of Fagin, the Òfine Greek noseÓ of Oliver, the snub nose of the Artful Dodger, and so on. 1 Warwick was as wrong as one could be in thinking there is a connection between nose and character. Our concern is only briefly and towards the end with that error and its sinister associations. It is mostly with the idea that a theory can find support in fictional cases. We say this need be no error. True, if Warwick thought that Fagin, Oliver and the Dodger were confirmatory instances of his thesis he was mistaken, for there are no such people; they and their nonexistent noses are not evidence for anything and fictional stories
The British Journal of Aesthetics, 1992
Aesthetic Pursuits
AESTHETIC CONTEXTUALISM JERROLD LEVINSON UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND Let me begin with a quote: "The u... more AESTHETIC CONTEXTUALISM JERROLD LEVINSON UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND Let me begin with a quote: "The universal organum of philosophy-the ground stone of its entire architecture-is the philosophy of art." 1 This statement, made in 1800 by the German Idealist philosopher Friedrich Schelling, is rather striking, not only because of its grandiosity, but also because it contrasts with what the majority of contemporary philosophers would be prepared to say on the subject. There is nevertheless a grain of truth in the claim that there is a peculiar connection between art and philosophy and in the claim that aesthetics is a central area of philosophy. First of all, it is worth noting that, even if the philosophy of art has not played a role in the systems of all the indisputably great philosophers, or even of most of them, it has occupied an important place in the thought of quite a few, among them Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hegel and Sartre. And a good number of philosophers of lesser rank-including Croce, Collingwood, Dewey, Bergson, Santayana, Gadamer and, evidently, Schelling, also had a philosophy of art; one finds them perhaps more interested in it than in, say, ethics. Why this natural, even if not inevitable, link between philosophy and art? Well, both art and philosophy are concerned with ultimate value, with what makes life worth living. In both art and philosophy, expression, clarification, and formulation are important, though whether the content of what is expressed, clarified and formulated in art and in philosophy is the same is another matter. Both domains are singularly and significantly products of mind, products rooted in cultures that 1 Schelling (1800), p. 544. JERROLD LEVINSON 2 testify to the nature of those cultures perhaps more loudly and clearly than anything else in them. But that philosophy should interest itself in art cannot rest merely on the similarities between them. Rather more likely, it rests on the fact that art is such a pervasive phenomenon, occupying an important place in all cultures, and that it both, on the one hand, offers a unique window into the workings of the human mind, and on the other hand, promises to reveal aspects of the world in which that mind is embedded, ones that remain resistant to other modes of inquiry or exploration. Let us consider for a moment this revelatory dimension of art. It is quite possible
Aesthetic pursuits is my fifth collection of essays in aesthetics, and complements my fourth coll... more Aesthetic pursuits is my fifth collection of essays in aesthetics, and complements my fourth collection, Musical concerns (2015), consisting exclusively of essays focusing on music. Aesthetic pursuits, by contrast, contains essays treating matters other than music, such as literature, film, painting, humor, beauty, artistic value, and aesthetic experience. With one exception, the essays contained in the book were composed between 2006 and 2015. Most of the essays in Aesthetic pursuits were previously unpublished, though early versions of two of them, Immoral jokes and Artistic achievement and artistic value, appeared in French, while an early version of another, Toward an adequate conception of aesthetic experience, appeared in German, and a version of yet another, Farewell to the aesthetician?, appeared in Italian. And though the essays in Aesthetic pursuits might profitably be read in almost any order, one rationale for the order decided on is the placement of essays with overlapping concerns in proximity to one another, so that a given essay almost always has some concern, whether a theme or an artform, with either the preceding or the succeeding essay. Farewell to the aesthetician? was composed for a special issue of the Italian journal "Aesthetica Preprint Supplementa" on the topic
Journal of Aesthetic Education, 1987
Perspectives from Economics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology, 2015
Philosophy in Review, 1981
Essays at the Intersection, 1998
The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1984
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1978
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2013
Attention is drawn to the distinction between the actual (or factual) and the apparent (or ostens... more Attention is drawn to the distinction between the actual (or factual) and the apparent (or ostensible) causal history of a work of art, and how the authors' recommendation “to assume the design stance” in the name of understanding works of art blurs that distinction, thus inadvertently reinforcing the hoary idea, against which the authors otherwise rightly battle, that what one needs to properly appreciate an artwork can be found in even suitably framed observation of the work alone.
Contemplating Art, 2006
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Oxford Handbooks Online, 2005
This article focuses on the domain of aesthetics and various problems and issues associated with ... more This article focuses on the domain of aesthetics and various problems and issues associated with aesthetics. Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy devoted to conceptual and theoretical inquiry into art and aesthetic experience. This article offers first an outline of the structure of philosophical aesthetics as a whole, and then a selective sketch of the development of Anglo-American aesthetics over the past fifty years, focusing on five central topics: the concept of the aesthetic, the definition of art, the ontology of art, representation in art, and expression in art. The three foci of aesthetics are labeled as art, aesthetic property, and aesthetic experience.
Journal of Aesthetic Education, 1990
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Papers by Jerrold Levinson