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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Reflections On The Aesthetics Of Violence, Arnold Berleant
Reflections On The Aesthetics Of Violence, Arnold Berleant
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Violence has long been a factor in human life and has been widely depicted in the arts. This essay explores how the artistic and appreciative responses to violence have been practiced, understood, and valued. It emphasizes the difference between the aesthetics of distant, disinterested appreciation and the engaged appreciative experience of violence in the arts, and insists on the relevance of their behavioral and ethical implications.
Ordinary Monsters: Ethical Criticism And The Lives Of Artists, Christopher Bartel
Ordinary Monsters: Ethical Criticism And The Lives Of Artists, Christopher Bartel
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Should we take into account an artist’s personal moral failings when appreciating or evaluating the work? In this essay, I seek to expand Berys Gaut’s account of ethicism by showing how moral judgment of an artist’s private moral actions can figure in one’s overall evaluation of their work. To expand Gaut’s view, I argue that the artist’s personal morality is relevant to our evaluation of their work because we may only come to understand the point of view of the work, and therefore the work’s prescribed attitude, by examining the values, attitudes, and behaviors of the artist. This view is …
Art By Jerks, Bernard Wills, Jason Holt
Art By Jerks, Bernard Wills, Jason Holt
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Is it wrong to enjoy art created by immoral people? Some people express discomfort with listening to or reading the works of artists who have been abusive to others in their personal lives. In this paper, the authors argue that, generally speaking, moral and aesthetic judgment should be kept distinct, as authors and their works formally differ. Indeed, works by morally dubious artists may well contain crucial acts of moral imagination we should not deprive ourselves of as ethical beings. Nonetheless, the authors argue there are limits to how far the ethical and aesthetic can be divorced. Art that is …
The Difference That Art Makes, Mariana Ortega
The Difference That Art Makes, Mariana Ortega
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
In the following essay I discuss Monique Roelofs’s The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic. I show that Roelofs’s rich and complex notion of the aesthetic, informed by promises, modes of address, and aesthetic relationality, offers an important and novel way of understanding the aesthetic within a context attuned to questions of difference. I point out that Roelofs’s analysis may be enhanced by notions theorized by Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and María Lugones. Moreover, I raise a question regarding the intricate link between Roelofs’s notion of the aesthetic and morality
The Color Of The Sublime Is White, Jeffrey Downard
The Color Of The Sublime Is White, Jeffrey Downard
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
In this paper, I examine Melville's discussion in Moby Dick of the whiteness of the whale from the perspective of a Kantian account of the sublime. My aim, in the first instance, is to see if the comparison helps to shed light on Melville's puzzling discussion of the color white and why this color serves to heighten the feeling of being overwhelmed by terror when confronted with something extremely large or powerful. In turn, I intend to use Melville's discussion of whiteness to put pressure on some of the philosophical assumptions behind a Kantian analysis of the sublime. In particular, …
Carrying The Jade Tablet: A Consideration Of Confucian Artistry, Eric C. Mullis
Carrying The Jade Tablet: A Consideration Of Confucian Artistry, Eric C. Mullis
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
In this paper I discuss the aesthetic dimension of ritual action. In order to demonstrate how the rites render action aesthetically expressive, I draw on the notion of an "art of context" and further detail the Confucian understanding of artistic practice as an essential component for moral cultivation. In turn, I use John Dewey's account of aesthetic form in order to support and further demonstrate the ability of the rituals and arts to organize action and to thereby render it aesthetically significant. However, Dewey's account entails that we question either conceptual or institutional limitations of aesthetic form as such limitations …