The British Journal of Aesthetics articles from January 1998

The British Journal of Aesthetics archives from January 1998

Natural beauty. (Delight in the Natural World: Kant on the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature, part 1) (Immanuel Kant)
January 1, 1998... I A theory of the aesthetic appreciation of nature will be well-founded only if it is based on a conception of what it is for appreciation to be aesthetic. If appreciation is understood as consisting in, or at least as being informed...

Art by another name.
January 1, 1998... When Juliet asks `What's in a name?', and says `That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet', it is difficult to disagree with her. Roses are natural kinds, and there are natural facts that give roses their properties...

Weitz reconsidered: a clearer view of why theories of art fail. (Morris Weitz)
January 1, 1998... I. THE LEGACY OF WEITZ'S ARGUMENT In 1956, Morris Weitz wrote in `The Role of Theory in Aesthetics' that `aesthetic theory--all of it--is wrong in principle in thinking that a correct theory [and definition of art] is possible'.(1)...

Is tragedy paradoxical?
January 1, 1998... Philosophers have sometimes felt that the satisfaction we take in tragedy presents a challenge to reflection, an explanatory challenge that other sources of aesthetic enjoyment--comedy or horror, for instance--also present.(1) The idea is that...

The ontological limbo of spirits.
January 1, 1998... Every narrative is told for a purpose. It always evokes human experience, the suspense of what happens to an adventurer, or the pains and pleasures when particular individuals, be it Madame Bovary or Hamlet, face a problem to be solved. The...

Aesthetic/sensory dependence.
January 1, 1998... Is the aesthetic tied to the sensory? Are lovers of beauty `lovers of sights and sounds'? In this paper I shall defend a weak dependence thesis: Aesthetic properties depend in part on sensory properties, such as colours and...

The arousal theory again? (music)
January 1, 1998... The arousal theory of musical expression is undergoing something of a revival. Although most philosophers reject its `old' or `strong' version',(1) the theory has reappeared in a more palatable guise. Some philosophers responsible for...

Is There Truth in Art?
January 1, 1998... By Herman Rapaport. Cornell U.P. 1997. 35 [pounds sterling] hardback; 13.95 [pounds sterling] paperback. What we mean when we talk about truth in art cannot be detached from what we mean when we use the word `truth' elsewhere. It follows...

Kant's Theory of the Imagination.
January 1, 1998... By Sarah Gibbons. Clarendon Press. 1994. Aestheticians should be interested in two books on Kant's critical philosophy that have appeared recently, both of which try to construct this philosophy's infamous `architectonic'--by locating what...

The Crisis of Judgment in Kan't Three Critiques: In Search of a Science of Aesthetics.
January 1, 1998... By Irmgard Scherer. New Studies in Aesthetics, 16. Peter Lang. 1995. Aestheticians should be interested in two books on Kant's critical philosophy that have appeared recently, both of which try to construct this philosophy's infamous...

The Gift of Beauty: The Good as Art.
January 1, 1998... By Stephen David Ross. State University of New York Press. 1996, pp. 348 + ix. $24-95. Stephen David Ross's The Gift of Beauty is his recent contribution to a growing number of works on the concept of gift and gift-exchange. From Marcel...

Plato on Poetry.
January 1, 1998... Edited by Penelope Murray. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge U.P. 1996, pp. 250, 37.50 [pounds sterling] hardback, 13.95 [pounds sterling] paperback. The history of Western aesthetics has its origin in classical Greece, but the...

Victorian Contexts: Literature and the Visual Arts.
January 1, 1998... By Murray Roston. Macmillan. 1996. 40 [pounds sterling]. Professor Roston's purpose in this study is to explore several works of art of the Victorian age as expressions of parallel concerns and impulses. By juxtaposing paintings and literary...

On the Aesthetics of Architecture: A Psychological Approach to the Structure and the Order of Perceived Architectural Space.
January 1, 1998... By Ralf Weber. Avebury. 1995. 39.95 [pounds sterling]. To ask for surprises is to ask for trouble, but to find none is rather disappointing. Ralf Weber's book On the Aesthetics of Architecture is very reasonable and well considered, but it...

Vaughn Williams Studies.
January 1, 1998... Edited by Alain Frogley. Cambridge U.P. 1996, pp. 241. 2 plates, 37.50 [pounds sterling]. During World War I, Ralph Vaughan Williams served as a wagon orderly with the Royal Army Medical Corps in France and on the Salonika front. He carried...

Semiotic Investigations: Towards an Effective Semiotics.
January 1, 1998... By Alec McHoul. University of Nebraska Press. 1996. $32.95. Crick and Watson, the discoverers of DNA, considered that their scientific research should only explore the `big problems' of science. Alec McHoul's ambitious book is motivated by...

Living in the Landscape: Toward an Aesthetics of Environment.
January 1, 1998... By Arnold Berleant. University Press of Kansas. 1997. 200 pp. In his introduction Arnold Berleant makes it clear that he is addressing not only his fellow-philosophers but also that wider public which he says is increasingly concerned with...

Art and Magic in the Court of the Stuarts.
January 1, 1998... By Vaughan Hart. Routledge. 1994. pp. xiv + 266, 50.00 [pounds sterling]. Hart's study ranges widely over the artistic production of the Stuart court in the early part of the seventeenth century. Its dominating figure is Inigo Jones, and its...

The Beribboned Bomb: The Image of Woman in Male Surrealist Art.
January 1, 1998... By Robert J. Belton. University of Calgary Press. 1995, pp. 316. No price given. In this study, Robert J. Belton describes his perspective on surrealism as that of `a male heterosexual who rejects the stereotypy of hegemonic masculinity' (p....

Entertaining the Third Reich: Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema.
January 1, 1998... By Linda Schulte-sasse. Duke U.P. 1996. 17.95 [pounds sterling] paperback. Linda Schulte-Sasse confesses to an `epistemological reversal' in the course of writing this book. Ah, we might think, looking at the films themselves made her amend...

About Modern Art: Critical Essays 1948-96.
January 1, 1998... By David Sylvester. Chatto & Windus. 1996, pp. i + 448. Sylvester organizes his essays by placing them in ten groupings as if the reader were moving through different sections of a museum--a kind of `retrospective exhibition', the items...