Search

This paper defends a 'noetic' conception of aesthetic experience whereby such experience is best conceived as a kind of explorative thought process. Although not directly aimed at acquiring knowledge, this process often leads to an enhanced understanding or improved epistemic grasp of the object of appreciation itself and the world. On this conception, aesthetic value acts as an invitation to engage in a series of contemplative and reflective processes during which we rely not only on the perceptual, imaginative, and affective abilities which have occupied such a central role in aesthetic theory, but also on our capacities for sense-making, problem-solving and theory-building. Cases of intelligible beauty or aesthetic value should thus lie at the heart of accounts of aesthetic experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way we think about disagreement is shaped by the systematic emphasizing of its adversarial, non-cooperative aspects. This is due to a perspective on arguing and disagreeing. Perspectives enable some thoughts and occlude others. We claim that the way some issues are thought of in aesthetics is conditioned by a similar phenomenon we call 'the Received Image' (RI), which parallels the influence on ethics of what Bernard Williams called 'systems of morality'. Peter Kivy argued that disagreements in aesthetics, if genuine, presuppose that contenders are tacit realists about 'art-relevant properties': the motivation for arguing lies in making the adversary acknowledge (epistemic) defeat (in pursuing agreement from others). He draws this conclusion from what he sees as a fundamental difference between aesthetics and ethics. However, in our view, Kivy and his opponents in the semantic meta-debate on disagreement think under the aegis of the RI. We look at disagreements about art from a neo-cognitivist perspective, and argue that heuristic similarities between aesthetics and ethics stand out with an understanding-based epistemology coupled with an adequate theory of artistic form: form as a perspective-generating device whose grasping involves 'infinitely fine adjustments'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity loss is an immense ecological crisis of our time. But while "biodiversity" has become a buzzword in media and policy, conservationists have found it difficult to build a common understanding on the nature and severity of biodiversity loss and the means to tackle it. Perhaps surprisingly, many biologists and philosophers have proposed that biodiversity might be best defended with reference to its aesthetic value. This article explores whether aesthetic values could provide strong support for biodiversity conservation. By exploring the question from the viewpoints of species diversity, ecosystem diversity, and genetic diversity, we argue that there is a mismatch between apparent and real biodiversity and that aesthetics can, at best, give only limited support for biodiversity conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I offer an analysis of the role of aesthetic value in the formation of cultural memory. More specifically, I examine how cultural memory is formed through cultural artifacts that embody a connection to the past via aesthetic means. My approach is motivated by artifacts from small-scale preindustrial societies, which make it apparent that aesthetic values, rather than being pursued for their own sake alone, enhance other functions, such as maintaining cultural identity and bringing the past into the present. I focus on rock art painting from the Kimberley, Australia, and effigies animated during rituals in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea to argue that, to play a significant role in the formation of cultural memory, aesthetic value must be aligned with implicit conceptions of time which inform the production of artifacts mediating cultural memory. This argument has implications for understanding differences in apprehending memory values and aesthetic values across cultural domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that Kant has a far more communitarian theory of aesthetic life than is usually acknowledged. I focus on two aspects of Kant's theory that might otherwise be taken to support an individualist reading, namely, Kant's emphasis on aesthetic autonomy and his characterization of judgments of taste as involving demands for agreement. I argue that the full expression of autonomy in fact requires being a member of an aesthetic community and that within such a community, judgments of taste are issued as invitations to others to engage their faculties towards the goal of shared aesthetic appreciation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offering aesthetic judgments of gardens is common. These judgments follow an evidentiary structure that is common to the evaluation of other aesthetic objects: summary judgments evidenced by the attribution of narrow formal aesthetic properties, "formal-adjacent" aesthetic properties, and relevant contextual relations. Yet, in a garden, these evidencing properties and relations take on forms that are different from those of other aesthetic and/or art objects. In this article, I consider these differences and consider whether aesthetic analyses of gardens rest on one or more conceptual mistakes. In the end, I conclude that we can meet all challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

§49 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment concludes with a striking claim regarding the freedom required for artistic expression. Kant classifies Mannerism as aping, but considers manner the only valid means of artistic expression. These opposed uses of maniera echo a historical controversy, which finds reconciliation in Kant in what I call artistic autonomy. For Kant, artistic expression of genuine originality requires autonomous action, the individual manner in which an artist selects, transforms and applies given academic rules, in a way that renders an aesthetic vision meaningful. His grave concern is that artists, in their aspiration to innovate, might make the freedom to modify and transform rules into the very aim of their artistic endeavor. In order to grasp the full significance of Kant's view, I examine the contradictory attitudes towards maniera articulated by Vasari and Bellori. Kant's account of artistic autonomy offers an understanding of artistic succession, different from that of his predecessors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artists rarely shy away from a drink and other psychoactive substances, yet it seems that there has never been much discussion on what aesthetic or artistic relevance this has to their works and their reception. I outline the scale of the phenomenon focusing on some prominent examples and distinguish a subset of what I call 'high artworks'. In such artworks, I argue, drug experiences are encoded: their drug-related contextual and intrinsic properties or content are aesthetically or artistically relevant and should be mentioned in any in-depth analysis. I then further argue that it is impossible or at least very difficult to fully appreciate or produce optimal evaluations of a high artwork, unless one has oneself had drug-induced experiences of the kind encoded in the work. This is because such experiences afford one the relevant phenomenal knowledge that is otherwise inaccessible, yet required to gain an adequate level of competence allowing one to fully grasp the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates over the metaphysical status of aesthetic properties have persisted for decades in Aesthetics. One question that consistently arises in any discussion of aesthetic properties is whether they are fundamentally evaluative or descriptive in character. Aesthetic properties are often treated as parallel to moral properties which means many philosophers take it for granted that aesthetic properties are fundamentally evaluative. There are some philosophers, like Frank Sibley and Jerrold Levinson, who take the road less traveled and treat aesthetic properties as primarily descriptive in character. In this paper, I outline Levinson's intriguing view that the evaluative aspect of an aesthetic property can be canceled leaving us with the descriptive essence of the property. I refer to this as the separability thesis. It contends that evaluative reactions to aesthetic properties can be separated from the objective, perceptual content of an aesthetic experience thereby leaving us with the non-evaluative core of the property. I go on to defend the separability thesis from a powerful challenge developed by Rafael De Clercq. Ultimately, I contend that while De Clercq's argument is clever and insightful it fails to undermine the separability thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The arrival of image-making generative artificial intelligence (AI) programs has been met with a broad rebuke: to many, it feels inherently wrong to regard images made using generative AI programs as artworks. I am skeptical of this sentiment, and in what follows I aim to demonstrate why. I suspect AI generated images can be considered artworks; more specifically, that generative AI programs are, in many cases, just another tool artists can use to realize their creative intent. I begin with an overview of how generative AI programs, like OpenAI's DALL-E 2, work. Then, leveraging work by Claire Anscomb, I argue that generative AI programs are a new technique of automatic image-making that affords creative agency to its users, thereby qualifying the images they create as artworks. Finally, I show many of the objections brought against AI artworks—including accusations of plagiarism and artistic devaluation—are due to the social backdrop in which we currently find them, rather than the technology itself. In the end, I aim to open the door to further aesthetic debate concerning AI generated images and art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes debates and dialectical conflicts on culinary norms. Two conditions of social practices that govern actions and attitudes are attribution of aesthetic value properties to the objects they are concerned with and aiming for aesthetic values. Some culinary practices are claimed to qualify as aesthetic practices. However, there are practice-internal norms which are expected to be followed according to tradition. It is argued that appealing to practice-internal norms justifies individual attitudes toward occurrences in food practices. Conflict about practice-internal norms are evident in the domain of signature cuisine, where the creations of a chef intersect with traditional dishes. Traditionalists, modernists and liberalists have different views on culinary norms.

The author responds to the comments made by Peter Alward to his article "Musical Works, Types and Modal Flexibility Reconsidered," published in a 2022 issue of "The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism." Topics discussed include the arguments he raised about the extrinsic properties of musical works, the application of the nested types theory (NTT) in the composition of the "Tempest Sonata," by Ludwig van Beethoven, and the heir line account (HLA) theory proposed by Alward which may be considered as an alternative to NTT with regard to the ontological feature of musical compositions.

An essay is presented which responds to Nemesio García-Carril Puy's article "Musical Works, Types and Modal Flexibility Reconsidered," published in a 2022 issue of "The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism." Topics discussed include the arguments raised by Puy regarding the extrinsic properties of musical compositions and the advantages of the type-token model of musical works, the modal flexibility being demonstrated by some compositions, and the identification of musical works by higher order types based on the nested types theory.

The author presents a response to Gregory Currie and Jon Robson's article "Authenticity and Implicature," published within the issue, which addresses the arguments about authenticity in art that she raised in her 2019 book "Things: In Touch With the Past." Topics discussed include the availability of replication techniques which allow reproduction of various objects, the significant value and aesthetic response to original artworks, the use of the terms "authentic" and "genuine" in the validation of the provenance of an artwork, and the difference between replicas and originals based on the notion of exemplification of philosopher Nelson Goodman.

The author responds to the comments made by Tiago Sousa to his article "Kant's Musical Antiformalism," published in a 2020 issue of "The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism." Topics discussed include the concessions he made about the beliefs of philosopher Immanuel Kant regarding the aesthetics of instrumental music and music appreciation, the observed similarities in the way Kant and philosopher René Descartes acknowledge music, and the influence of developments in the philosophy of music on the antiformalist views of Kant.

Strong comic immoralism maintains that every time a humorous demonstration (for example, a joke) involves a moral defect, it is enhanced aesthetically in virtue of having this moral defect. I want to show that strong comic immoralism is a coherent position, that it is possible to defend, and that there is, in fact, some reason to defend it. By doing this, my hope is that, moving forward, those who are interested in questions about the relationship between immorality and the aesthetic value of jokes will take more seriously the objections that may be presented against their views by the strong comic immoralist, rather than claiming that "no one on this side of Satan" would be one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which explores the employment of musical notation by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in conveying his philosophical ideas. Topics discussed include the role of aesthetics in the development of his philosophy, the theme of "Leidenschaftlich," one of the five musical fragments composed by Wittgenstein from 1929 to 1936, the graphic representations he utilized in composing these musical fragments, and the philosophical context for the musical experimentation demonstrated by Wittgenstein.

An essay is presented which explores the aesthetics of popular music radio stations and programs. Topics discussed include the reported impact of digital media on terrestrial radio broadcasting, the role of radio disc jockeys (DJ) as both performer and curator, the structure of the radio show "Theme Time Radio Hour," hosted by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan which aired from 2006 to 2009, the musicians that served as radio DJ such as Jarvis Cocker, Iggy Pop, and Cerys Matthews, and the way radio programs provide educational information on songs to their audience.

The article explores the concept of cosmopolitanism, political aesthetics, and creative activism of public art. Topics discussed include the political ontology and public art criterion proposed to determine qualities of political ethics and aesthetics, the ethics observed in monuments built during the reign of Nazi Germany, the aesthetic response evoked by photographic images of the cosmos, the distinction between cosmopolitan mind and cosmopolitan democracy with regard to political ethics, and the sense of otherness brought by the interaction between man and nonhuman beings.

The article explores theories of art and aesthetics related to social activism and political representation. Topics discussed include the interpretation of creative activism as a transformative experience by its audience, the contribution of contemporary art practices to the dissociation between art and philosophy, the pictorial elements and conflicting spaces observed in the abstract paintings of artist Wassily Kandinsky, and the phenomenology of action formulated by literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin in his book "Toward a Philosophy of the Act."

The article explores the possible use of beauty and anger in artistic activism. Topics discussed include the reactionary value of beauty acknowledged by art critic Arthur Danto, the ideological connection between beauty and political power noted by avant-garde art movements such as Dadaism and Surrealism, the capability of anger to inspire political activism for social change, the arguments raised by professor Kathleen Marie Higgins regarding the emotions associated with beauty, and the stereotypical image of anger often used to incite violence.

The article explores the creation and use of cheap art for creative activism. Topics discussed include the impact of cheap art on the relationship of artists with the audience and the legislation of aesthetic standards by art critics, the perspective offered by artist Adrian Piper on the accessibility of cheap art, highlights of the cheap art manifesto written by theatre director Peter Schumann, the characteristics of cheap art acknowledged by art critics Arthur Danto, George Dickie, and Catherine Abell, and the social and political impact of cheap art which contributes to its goal of achieving social change.

The article explores radical aesthetic theories concerning colonialism, feminism, and the notion of whiteness. Topics discussed include the argument presented by philosopher María del Rosario Acosta López regarding aesthetics as a philosophical activity, the aesthetics of the Black Lives Matter movement acknowledged by podcasters Brendane Tynes and Alyssa A. L. James, the criticism offered by professor Nadiya N. Ali to the objectification of Muslim subjects in an art exhibition that feature Muslim women, and the public intervention performance "I Have Been There," presented by multimedia artist Chun Hua Catherine Dong which aims to address the global migrant crisis.

The article explores art and aesthetic principles concerning iconoclasm, sympathetic magic, and speculative realism. Topics discussed include the beliefs that art objects may represent diving beings such as the sculptural representations of Egyptian rulers, the embodiment of history and human qualities by Confederate public monuments and memorials, the symbolic destruction of the monument of Confederate Army General Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis, Tennessee during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protest movements, and the distinction between iconoclasm and vandalism of artworks.

The article explores the concept of aesthetic disobedience proposed by philosopher Jonathan Neufeld based on the definition of civil disobedience presented by philosopher John Rawls in his book "A Theory of Justice." Topics discussed include the involvement of both artists and audience members in acts of aesthetic disobedience, the violation of relevant artistic norms observed in the 1989 protest artwork "Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum?," by anonymous artist collective Guerilla Girls, and the activism demonstrated by performers in Peter Handke's play "Publikumbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience)."

An introduction to the journal is presented which discusses the mechanisms associated with the aesthetics of creative activism which include documentation, recognition, and imagination.

In this article, I defend the cognitive value of certain generic television series. Unlike media and television scholars, who have been appreciative of the informative capacity of television fiction, philosophers have been less willing to acknowledge the way in which these works contribute to our understanding of our social reality. My aim here is to provide one such account, grounded in aesthetic cognitivism, that is, the view that fiction is a source of knowledge. Focusing on crime and courtroom dramas, I start by offering some examples of the cognitive benefits available in some of these series and I argue that the more beneficial cases establish superior mimetic relations with reality, enhancing their capacity to present ethically challenging issues. I then examine whether the fictional dimension of these works presents an obstacle to their informative potential and I conclude that it does not. A central aspect of my account is the claim that the degree of cognitive benefit depends on the underlying narrative strategy of the series. Specifically, there are clues in any given show, including the treatment of ongoing characters, which signal the extent to which it can be taken as mimetically reliable and thus, cognitively valuable. I complete my account by addressing anti-cognitivists' arguments which call to doubt the informative aspect of television series and their capacity to address ethical concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poems are not the only things we sometimes call poetic. We experience as poetic also prose passages, as well as films, music, visual art, and even occurrences in daily life. But what is it exactly for something to be poetic in this wider sense? Discussion of the poetic in this sense is virtually nonexistent in the extant analytic literature. The aim of this article is to get a start on trying to come to grips with this phenomenon—the poetic as an aesthetic category that outruns poetry as an art form. It proposes an initial sketch of an account in terms of the fittingness of certain affective reactions to artworks and other things, reactions featuring notably elements of tenderness and elevation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What responsibilities do audiences have in engaging with artworks? Certain audience responses seem quite clear: for example, audiences should not vandalize or destroy artworks; they should not disrupt performances. This paper examines other kinds of resisting responses that audiences sometimes engage in, including petitioning the artist to change their works, altering copies of artworks, and creating new artworks in another artist's fictional world. I argue for five claims: (1) while these actions can sometimes infringe on the rights of artists, the rights of artists are not absolute; (2) the fact that such actions are based on mistaken interpretations of the artworks has no normative weight; (3) there can be reason to object to additions and alterations whose conception of the artwork is morally worse than the original (and so, there can be reason to support additions and alterations whose conception is morally better); (4) petitioning raises special moral problems; and, most important, (5) some of these actions are valuable because they involve creative and aesthetic activity. Those acts of audience resistance that are creative, morally improve on the original work, and that minimize the infringement of the artists' rights are good, and should be encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some visual artworks constitute hate speech because they can perform oppressive illocutionary acts. This illocution-based analysis of art reveals how responsive curation and artmaking undermines and manages problematic art. Drawing on the notion of counterspeech as an alternative tool to censorship to handle art-based hate speech, this article proposes aesthetic blocking and aesthetic spotlighting. I then show that under certain conditions, this can lead to eventual metaphysical destruction of the artwork; a way to destroy harmful art without physically destroying it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As aesthetic appreciators of the environment, we often encounter cases where our environmental commitments and our aesthetic responses do not seem to match. Some highly altered or contaminated environments may occasion powerful and insightful aesthetic experiences. In this article, I discuss some arguments that have been offered in favor of the view that this mismatch is not possible when we appreciate a particular environment with full awareness of its damaged or altered condition. I show that these arguments are not conclusive and that there is room for valuable experiences of damaged or highly altered environments. Our knowledge of the damaged condition of an environment, while perceptually significant, does not necessarily make the resulting aesthetic experience to be negative. Finally, I show that these cases do not necessarily diminish the role that aesthetics can play in shaping our environmental sensibility and commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Ted Nannicelli, ethical disputes about art today often concern not the controversial attitudes expressed by the works but the ways in which they have been created, that is, as well as interpretation-oriented ethical criticism of art, we find production-oriented ethical criticism. The main question that I explore in this article is: are the interpretation- and production-oriented approaches to ethical art criticism essentially disconnected or can there be a connection between them? I argue that in the disjunctivist view, the two approaches are disconnected, for ethical flaws in the production of artworks are never conditioned by ethical flaws in the attitudes expressed by those works and vice versa. I show that disjunctivism is mistaken and defend what I call contextual conjunctivism. In this view, the two approaches can be connected since attitudinal ethical flaws in artworks can indeed cause ethical flaws in their production and vice versa depending on context. I support this view using several examples of controversies about contemporary art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What distinguishes middle, low, and high art? In this article, I give an ameliorative analysis of these concepts. On what I call the Capacity View, the distinction between low, middle, and high art depends on the relation between an artwork's perceiver (specifically her aesthetic responsive capacities) and the perceived artwork. Though the Capacity View may not align perfectly with folk usage, the view is worth our attention due to three attractive upshots. First, it explains how an artwork's status level can be elevated or lowered over time and why biases can lead to mistaken judgments about such statuses. Second, it sheds light on the idea of cultural inheritance and why certain forms of aesthetic deference may be justified. Finally, it explains how high, middle, and low art each make distinctive contributions to the good life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genre of fable tends to be overlooked in the study of Korean literary history on the ground that the genre seems too archaic to reflect the aesthetic standards established in the modern European novel, in which the focus lies in the realistic representation of the individual or contemporary society. However, the genre was not completely abandoned by modern Korean writers. Few critics have noted the continuing role played by the rich Korean fable tradition, which eventually made the reinvention of the genre in the mass media possible. In particular, it is worth noting that there was the emergence of a new subgenre of fable in the late nineteenth century: that is, fabulous court case fiction, which is quite distinct from the Chinese literary tradition that had underprivileged imaginative narrative texts under the absolute domination of Confucian historiography. The genre of fabulous court case fiction makes us reconsider the plurality of narrative forms and various narrative functions. In this study, I examine how imaginative narrative texts such as fables simultaneously pursue the pleasure of storytelling and the purposes of both moral and specialized (legal) education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Korean art and music have a long history, but aesthetic research on them has only been around for a little over a hundred years. Critiques and discourses on traditional arts such as poetry, calligraphy, and painting can be traced back to the Joseon or even Goryeo dynasties, but the modern discussion on the common features of Korean aesthetics was conducted much later than that in Western Europe, where the field of aesthetics was established in the mid to late eighteenth century. Early aestheticists who tried to explain aesthetic consciousness in Korean culture and art converged on the concept of Jayeon , which can be translated provisionally as "nature," seemingly diverging from western aesthetics' focus on the concept of "beauty." Jayeon shares the same Chinese characters as ziran (自然), an early Daoist concept, but jayeon in a Korean aesthetic context does not appear to be limited to the connotation of its Chinese origin. This article unpacks the different ways in which jayeon captures the key characteristics of Korean art and aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When we evaluate artworks, we often point to what an artist could have done or what a work could have been in order to say something about the work as it actually is. Call this counterfactual reasoning in art criticism. On my account, counterfactual claims about artworks involve comparative aesthetic judgments between actual artworks and hypothetical variations of those works. The practice of imagining what an artwork could have been is critically useful because it can help us understand how artworks achieve specific aesthetic effects. I conclude by responding to an objection to my account on the basis that it violates the widely accepted acquaintance principle in aesthetics, on which aesthetic judgments must be based on firsthand perceptual encounters with their objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of what I propose to call "existential aesthetics" is to investigate the various ways in which art and certain kinds of aesthetic practice or aesthetic experience can be of existential importance to people. Section I provides a definition of existential aesthetics, while Section II delineates this emerging field from cognate areas of research. Sections III and IV explore various subcategories and examples of existential aesthetics. Section V seeks to identify important avenues for future research and Section VI presents some concluding thoughts about the potential of existential aesthetics and why philosophers should be encouraged to fulfill this potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author discusses the engagement account of aesthetic value and the aesthetic judgments through inference. Other topics include the metaphysics of aesthetic properties, how aesthetic appreciation can become a constructed social practice to establish a particular kind of activity, how aesthetic appreciation is a constructed social practice that avoid the use of inference and testimony, the engagement account of aesthetic value, and how aesthetic appreciation can have similar motivational structure to a game.

The article presents an answer to the aesthetic-value question (AVQ), including the genus-differentia definition of AV. Other topics include the reason why AV is perceptual as seen in the perception of objects as having AV, the things that make aesthetic value aesthetic and valuable, how the species aesthetic value is different from other forms of value, the ontological relationship between differentia aesthetic and species aesthetic value, and why the eighteenth-century theory that aesthetic value and aesthetic judgment are a conceptual pair.

A literary criticism of the book "Herder's Naturalist Aesthetics," by Rachel Zuckert is presented. It examines the things accomplished by Zuckert's book, philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder's historical relativism about aesthetic cultures, ways in which Herder seems more contemporary than others thought, and Zucker's argument on Herder's conception of touch.

The author responds to comments on her book "Herder's Naturalistic Aesthetics," which focuses on philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder's thinking in aesthetics. She discusses her attempt to reconstruct Herder's naturalist aesthetics, her hopes to bring attention to Herder's work as a resource for contemporary thinking, Herder's endorsement of cultural diversity and Herder's thoughts on cultural expression as a value of artwork. Also, she explores the tension within Herder's thought on taste as identified by author Gregg Horowitz.

The author examines the two kinds of naturalist expansions to the aesthetics of philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder explicated by author Rachel Zuckert. He explores the core of Herder's account of sensory beauty, his proposal of attending to the computational outputs that is designed to achieve by vision, Herder's account of the artistic value of great artworks across cultures, his argument for the existence of transcendent works, and the similarities between Herder and writer Ralph Waldo Emerson in terms of their work.

The author examines the study of philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder's aesthetics by author Rachel Zuckert. He explores the difficulty in explaining the normative power of canons in every cultural practice that wields orientational force, the claim that Herder is a naturalist in aesthetics, the comparison of counter-canonical streams of culture to the tale of Sleeping Beauty, and the representation of anti-Hegelian streams in aesthetic theory by the commitment to the equal validity of antithetical tastes.

A literary criticism of the book "Herder's Naturalist Aesthetics," by Rachel Zuckert is presented. It examines Zucker's attribution of explanatory naturalism to philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder wherein she argues that Herder appeals to God in explanation, the indication that Herder rejects explanatory naturalism, the requirements of Herder's aesthetics, and the type of naturalism that is compatible with the normativity of Herder's aesthetics.

Paintings of music are a significant presence in modern art. They are cross-modal representations , aimed at representing music, say, musical works or forms, using colors, lines, and shapes in the visual modality. This article aims to provide a conceptual framework for understanding paintings of music. Using examples from modern art, the article addresses the question of what a painting of music is. Implications for the aesthetic appreciation of paintings of music are also drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, Song-Ming Ang initiated Guilty Pleasures , a series of listening parties dedicated to sharing beloved "bad songs" and facilitating critical discussions about complex desires and hierarchies of taste. In this article, I extend on these discussions and offer a theory of guilty pleasures. Informed by queer and critical approaches to affect and minor aesthetic categories, I argue that guilty pleasures are characterized not by a specific medium or style, but rather by their ability to evoke pleasure interrupted by a meta-response of guilt. This experience is activated by the outmoded, saccharine, or naff qualities of an object. I contrast guilty pleasures with good-bad art, painful art, and objects that foster akrasia , and provide an extended examination of naff, another minor aesthetic category with roots in Polari (a once-secret queer dialect) that intersects aspects of camp, heteronormativity, and Lauren Berlant's notion of "cruel optimism." I ultimately argue that guilty pleasures are far from a simplistic category of low art enjoyed with indifference. Instead, I perceive guilty pleasures as always enjoyed with a degree of criticality or skepticism that is tethered to the beholder's taste, life experiences, and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Culinary products have culinary value. That is, they have value qua culinary products. However, what is the nature of culinary value and what elements determine it? In the light of the central and universal role that culinary products play in our lives, offering a philosophical analysis of culinary value is a matter of interest. This article attempts to do just this. It develops three different possible models of culinary value, two rather restricted ones and a third more encompassing one, rejects the first two, and defends the third one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on concepts from cognitive psychology to explore the significance of the narrative climax, focusing on the final climax of the series The Americans as a case study. Two aspects of the aesthetic experience are considered: the special intensity that climaxes elicit, and the diversity of the cognitive content they generate, which can include both aesthetic and non-aesthetic properties. The climax is experienced in a state of absorption triggered by a set of strategies of temporal prolongation related to the main suspenseful moments and plotlines, to character engagement, and to the multiplot structure, involving the content of the narrative itself (narrative absorption) and the aesthetic qualities that define it (artifact absorption). The source of this absorption during the climax lies in the interplay between emotion and cognition in a temporal process that may last for a whole series. To demonstrate this idea, this study identifies key narrative comprehension processes, drawing on the explanatory potential of mental model theory to clarify the importance of memory and interrelated inferential processes. The aim of this research is to contribute to explanations of the role of the climax in serialized television and other artistic works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alongside the direct parallels and contrasts between traditional narrative fiction and games, there lie certain partial analogies that provide their own insights. This article begins by examining a direct parallel between narrative fiction and games—the role of fictional reliefs and reality checks in shaping aesthetic engagement—before arguing that from this a partial analogy can be developed stemming from a feature that distinguishes most games from most traditional fictions: the presence of rules. The relation between rules and fiction in games has heretofore been acknowledged but not examined in detail, giving an impression of a tension that is constant. However, the paired concepts of formal reliefs and representation checks , once introduced, allow us to explain how rules and fiction interact to alter the ways in which players engage with games in a dynamic but limited way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]