The philosophy of art, including the theory of interpretation, has been among the most generative branches of philosophy in the latter half of the twentieth century. Remarkable, interesting, and important work has emerged on both sides of the Atlantic, from all the major sources of philosophic thought. For the first time, Stephen David Ross brings together the best of recent writing with the major historical texts and the most influential works of the past century to provide valuable insight into the nature of art and how we are to understand it.
The selections in this collection comprise a remarkably wide array of positions on the nature and importance of art in human experience. A wealth of material is divided into four parts. Part I from the history of philosophy includes selections by the essential writers: Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche. In Part II there are significant selections from Dewey, Langer, Goodman, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. The major selections in Part III are from Hirsch and Gadamer on the nature of interpretation, supplemented by selections from Pepper, Derrida, and Foucault. Selections in Part IV sharpen the issues that emerge from the more theoretical discussions in the preceeding sections. Part IV includes important psychological theories, seminal proclamations by twentieth century artists, and selections from Bullough on aesthetic distance, as well as from Marcuse, who develops an important variation on the Marxist view of art.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I. Historical Background
Republic, III, X
Plato
Ion (complete)
Plato
Symposium
Plato
Poetics
Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle
Of the Standard of Taste (complete)
Hume
Critique of Judgment
Kant
Philosophy of Fine Art (Introduction)
Hegel
The Birth of Tragedy
Nietzsche
Attempt At a Self-Criticism (complete)
Nietzsche
What is Art?
Tolstoy
II. Recent Systematic Theories
Art
Bell
Principles of Art
Collingwood
Art as Experience
Dewey
Feeling and Form
Langer
When is Art? (complete)
Goodman
Languages of Art
Goodman
The Origin of the Work of Art
Heidegger
Eye and Mind
Merleau-Ponty
A Theory of Art: Inexhaustibility by Contrast
Ross
III. Interpretation and Criticism
The Work of Art
Pepper
Validity in Interpretation
Hirsch
Truth and Method
Gadamer
The Problem of Double Meaning as Hermeneutic Problem and as Semantic Problem (complete)
Ricoeur
Differance (complete)
Derrida
The Order of Things (Preface)
Foucault
Las Meninas (complete)
Foucault
IV. Discussions
'Psychical Distance' as a Factor in Art and as an Aesthetic Principle
Bullough
The Artworld (complete)
Danto
The Ontological Peculiarity of Works of Art (complete)
Margolis
Freud, Jung, Vygotsky
The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming (complete)
Freud
Psychology and Literature (complete)
Jung
The Psychology of Art
Vygotsky
The Aesthetic Dimension
Marcuse
Artists' Declarations
Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto (complete)
Marinetti
Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture (complete)
