The British Journal of Aesthetics articles from October 1993

The British Journal of Aesthetics archives from October 1993

A modest proposal for defining a work of art.
October 1, 1993... I THE NATURE AND LIMITS OF THIS PROPOSAL THE DEFINITION I propose is intended to capture the classificatory use of 'art' and 'work of art'. What makes my proposal modest is that it does not attempt to reform the way that people talk...

Beauty in nature, beauty in art.
October 1, 1993... IN THIS paper I want to examine a claim which has received some attention recently, namely the claim that the term 'beauty' stands for a single, generic concept of aesthetic value, which has application both to natural objects and to art....

The paradox of horror.
October 1, 1993... 'IT SEEMS an unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions, that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy.'[1] Thus did Hume open his classic discussion of...

Aquinas on the aesthetic relevance of tastes and smells.
October 1, 1993... INTRODUCTION THIS PAPER falls into four main parts. First, there is a brief account of Saint Thomas Aquinas's views about the nature of beauty. Secondly, I consider an argument of his to the conclusion that the tastes and smells of...

Walter Benjamin and the mechanical reproducibility of art works revisited.
October 1, 1993... THERE ARE essays which seem to have a perennial life; they are quoted again and again in spite of their questionable premises. 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility'[1] by Walter Benjamin is one of them. This is hard to...

Film, ideology and Bourdieu's critique of public taste. (Pierre Bourdieu)
October 1, 1993... BOURDIEU'S WORK on poblic taste and aesthetic judgement complements the growing body of work on media literacy and cultural reproduction. His ideas are not always systematic or readily accessible but they do offer some interesting...

Icons, plots and identity.
October 1, 1993... IN THIS article I should like to address certain points that arise from Peter Lamarque's title-question: 'How can we Fear and Pity Fictions?'. My argument will propose a possible solution to the nature of these 'fiction' he cites, and...

Art historically defined: reply to Oppy. (Graham Oppy, British Journal of Aesthetics, April 1992, p. 153)
October 1, 1993... GRAHAM OPPY, in the pages of this journal, has recently subjected my attempt to define art in intentional-historical terms to intense criticism.[1] Of the various critiques I have so far received, Oppy's came closest to persuading me that I...

Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art.
October 1, 1993... RICHARD SHUSTERMAN is not one to shrink the larger issues, no matter how contentious they may be. Not only does he set out to enlarge our concept of art so as to include the best of popular culture, he attempts to show also how ethics can,...

Art and Engagement.
October 1, 1993... THE INFLUENCE of the aesthetic of disinterestedness has been persuasive and pervasive, according to Berleant, and in this book he presents a good case for not believing what our forbears told us aesthetics was well about: 'Distinterested...

Psychoanalysis, Mind and Art: Perspectives on Richard Wollheim.
October 1, 1993... DAN DENNETT'S scurrilous Philosopher's Lexicon, in which the names of philosophers provide nouns, verbs, etc., defines a wollheim as 'in. A leisurely investigation, well-intentioned to return home to the point, but always wandering off...

Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics.
October 1, 1993... THE FACT that one's taste in art is relative to the society in which one lives has had consequnces for aesthetics, both in discouraging a strong realism concerning taste, and in inspiring questions pertinent to the artist, galllery-goer and...

Beauty and Revelation in the Thought of Saint Augustine.
October 1, 1993... CAROL HARRISON has done us a great service by drawing together the aesthetic strands of Augustine's thought in a simulating examination of original sources. It is, therefore, primarily a theological work before an esthetic one and is...

The Genesis of Kant's 'Critique of Judgment.'
October 1, 1993... THOUGH NEARLY twenty years have passed since the first appearance of book-length studies in English on Kant's Critique of Judgment, in fifteen or twenty volumes published in the last two decades may be divided--and one need not even quality...

Adorno's Aesthetic Theory: The Redemption of Illusion.
October 1, 1993... ADORNO'S WORKS on aesthetic are among the most profound contributions yet made to the discipline. Their influence in the English-speaking world, however, has not been of a magnitude to match this profundity. The reasons for this are...

Pierre Bourdieu.
October 1, 1993... PIERRE BOURDIEU emerges from this introductory text as being primarily a sociologist though not essentially one. Like other prestigous French academics, and here Michel Foucault springs readily to mind, Bourdieu is part sociologist, part...

Artists Under Vichy: A Case of Prejudice and Persecution.
October 1, 1993... WHETHER CONSCIOUSLY or not, everyone working on Occupied France is influenced by Le Silence de la Mer. The sound of silence that speaks volumes in its refusal of Nazism, echoes across the decades of scholarly analysis which followed the...

Architect's Choice: Art in Architecture in Great Britain Since 1945.
October 1, 1993... THIS BOOK is based on research and archive material collected by architect Eugene Rosenberg, who believed that modern art and architecture were mutually complementary. It contains over two hundred photographs of art and sculpture, designed...

Sentimental Education: Schooling, Popular Culture and the Regulation of Liberty.
October 1, 1993... SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION is an interesting example of what I take to be the 'New Left' approach to cultural studies. Gone are the 'instant answers' of structuralist Marxism and psychoanalysis with their often insensitive 'sociologizing of the...

Foucault and Literature: Towards a Genealogy of Writing.
October 1, 1993... SIMON DURING introduces his book as 'an interpretation of Foucault's analysis of modern society and cuture for students of literature' (p. 2) As such, he sets himself a dual task: on the one hand of providing an introductory commentary, and...

Illustration.
October 1, 1993... BECAUSE THE objects of cultural studies are now found in a wide range of media--including film, television, illustrated books, captioned pictures and advertising -- new techniques are needed to read them. This is the gist of Illustration, the...

Intimate Conflict: Contradiction in Literary and Philosophical Discourse, a Collection of Essays by Diverse Hands.
October 1, 1993... AN EDITOR'S life is not without its problems. Some of them, however, can be self-inflicted. As regards the present volume, it seems that the contributors have been issued with a brief of such flexibility that it is difficult to determine what...

Music and Text: Critical Inquiries.
October 1, 1993... THIS BOOK arose out of a symposium at Dartmouth College (New Hampshire) in 1988. Five of the fourteen contributors were professors of comparative literature which, according to a book quoted by the editor in his Preface, demands an...