Papers by Jerrold Levinson
Aesthetic Pursuits
Let me begin with a quote: "The universal organum of philosophy-the ground stone of its entire ar... more Let me begin with a quote: "The universal organum of philosophy-the ground stone of its entire architecture-is the philosophy of art." 1 This statement, made in 1800 by the German Idealist philosopher Friedrich Schelling, is rather striking, not only because of its grandiosity, but also because it contrasts with what the majority of contemporary philosophers would be prepared to say on the subject. There is nevertheless a grain of truth in the claim that there is a peculiar connection between art and philosophy and in the claim that aesthetics is a central area of philosophy. First of all, it is worth noting that, even if the philosophy of art has not played a role in the systems of all the indisputably great philosophers, or even of most of them, it has occupied an important place in the thought of quite a few, among them Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hegel and Sartre. And a good number of philosophers of lesser rank-including Croce, Collingwood, Dewey, Bergson, Santayana, Gadamer and, evidently, Schelling, also had a philosophy of art; one finds them perhaps more interested in it than in, say, ethics. Why this natural, even if not inevitable, link between philosophy and art? Well, both art and philosophy are concerned with ultimate value, with what makes life worth living. In both art and philosophy, expression, clarification, and formulation are important, though whether the content of what is expressed, clarified and formulated in art and in philosophy is the same is another matter. Both domains are singularly and significantly products of mind, products rooted in cultures that 1 Schelling (1800), p. 544. JERROLD LEVINSON 2 testify to the nature of those cultures perhaps more loudly and clearly than anything else in them. But that philosophy should interest itself in art cannot rest merely on the similarities between them. Rather more likely, it rests on the fact that art is such a pervasive phenomenon, occupying an important place in all cultures, and that it both, on the one hand, offers a unique window into the workings of the human mind, and on the other hand, promises to reveal aspects of the world in which that mind is embedded, ones that remain resistant to other modes of inquiry or exploration.
Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2000
... philosophy and critical disciplines that deal with the his-tory of art, literature, film, mus... more ... philosophy and critical disciplines that deal with the his-tory of art, literature, film, music, and drama. ... 161 GREGORY CURRIE 7 The ethical criticism of art berys gaut 182 8 How bad can ... Without their generous contributions the book you have before you would not have come to ...
The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2005
The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics looks at a fascinating theme in philosophy and the arts. Leadin... more The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics looks at a fascinating theme in philosophy and the arts. Leading figures in the field contribute forty-eight articles which detail the theory, application, history, and future of philosophy and all branches of the arts. The first article of the book gives a general overview of the field of philosophical aesthetics in two parts: the first is a quick sketch of the lay of the land, and the second an account of five central problems over the past fifty years. The second article gives an extensive survey of recent work in the history of modern aesthetics, or aesthetic thought from the seventeenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. There are three main parts to the book. The first part comprises sections dealing with problems in aesthetics, such as expression, fiction or aesthetic experience, considered apart from any particular artform. The second part contains articles on problems in aesthetics as they arise in connection with particular artforms, such as ...
Peter Kivy, The Corded Shell
Philosophy in review, 1981
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2019
Aesthetic pursuits is my fifth collection of essays in aesthetics, and complements my fourth coll... more Aesthetic pursuits is my fifth collection of essays in aesthetics, and complements my fourth collection, Musical concerns (2015), consisting exclusively of essays focusing on music. Aesthetic pursuits, by contrast, contains essays treating matters other than music, such as literature, film, painting, humor, beauty, artistic value, and aesthetic experience. With one exception, the essays contained in the book were composed between 2006 and 2015. Most of the essays in Aesthetic pursuits were previously unpublished, though early versions of two of them, Immoral jokes and Artistic achievement and artistic value, appeared in French, while an early version of another, Toward an adequate conception of aesthetic experience, appeared in German, and a version of yet another, Farewell to the aesthetician?, appeared in Italian. And though the essays in Aesthetic pursuits might profitably be read in almost any order, one rationale for the order decided on is the placement of essays with overlapping concerns in proximity to one another, so that a given essay almost always has some concern, whether a theme or an artform, with either the preceding or the succeeding essay. Farewell to the aesthetician? was composed for a special issue of the Italian journal "Aesthetica Preprint Supplementa" on the topic
Music, Art, and Metaphysics: Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1992
PART ONE: ART AND HISTORY 1. Defining Art Historically 2. Hybrid Art Forms 3. Refining Art Histor... more PART ONE: ART AND HISTORY 1. Defining Art Historically 2. Hybrid Art Forms 3. Refining Art Historically PART TWO: METAPHYSICS OF ART 4. What a Musical Work Is 5. Autographic and Allographic Art Revisited 6. Aesthetic Uniqueness 7. Aesthetic Supervenience 8. Titles 9. Artworks and the Future 10. What a Musical Work Is, Again PART THREE: MUSICAL MATTERS 11. The Concept of Music 12. Truth in Music 13. Music and Negative Emotion 14. Hope in The Hebrides 15. Evaluationg Musical Performance 16. Authentic Performance and Performance Means
Universals: An Opinionated Introduction
The Philosophical Review, Jul 1, 1992
Aesthetic pursuits is my fifth collection of essays in aesthetics, and complements my fourth coll... more Aesthetic pursuits is my fifth collection of essays in aesthetics, and complements my fourth collection, Musical concerns (2015), consisting exclusively of essays focusing on music. Aesthetic pursuits, by contrast, contains essays treating matters other than music, such as literature, film, painting, humor, beauty, artistic value, and aesthetic experience. With one exception, the essays contained in the book were composed between 2006 and 2015. Most of the essays in Aesthetic pursuits were previously unpublished, though early versions of two of them, Immoral jokes and Artistic achievement and artistic value, appeared in French, while an early version of another, Toward an adequate conception of aesthetic experience, appeared in German, and a version of yet another, Farewell to the aesthetician?, appeared in Italian. And though the essays in Aesthetic pursuits might profitably be read in almost any order, one rationale for the order decided on is the placement of essays with overlapping concerns in proximity to one another, so that a given essay almost always has some concern, whether a theme or an artform, with either the preceding or the succeeding essay. Farewell to the aesthetician? was composed for a special issue of the Italian journal "Aesthetica Preprint Supplementa" on the topic
Film, Art, and the Third Culture, 2017
We live in a world teeming with insights and innovations borne out of scientifi c discovery; comi... more We live in a world teeming with insights and innovations borne out of scientifi c discovery; coming to terms with and understanding such a world is a critical task.
Contemplating Art
This book is a compendium of writings from the last ten years by one of the leading figures in ae... more This book is a compendium of writings from the last ten years by one of the leading figures in aesthetics, Jerrold Levinson. It contains twenty-four essays and is divided into seven parts. The first is about issues relating to art in general, not specific to one art form. The second is about philosophical problems specific to music. The third part focuses on pictorial art, and the fourth on interpretation, in particular, the interpretation of literature. The remaining parts of the book discuss aesthetic properties, issues in historical aesthetics, humor, and intrinsic value.
Titles
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1985
Prolegomenon to a Morality of Music
Wittgenstein and Aesthetics, 2012
Being Realistic about Aesthetic Properties
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1994
... CAROL S. GOULD Department of ... Aristotle's Metaphysics book gamma: Even if we deny tha... more ... CAROL S. GOULD Department of ... Aristotle's Metaphysics book gamma: Even if we deny that the simplest, most elegant theory is best, we must accept the existence of aesthetic properties, because in assessing arguments as well as theories we employ aesthetic criteria. ...
Hypothetical Intentionalism: Statement, Objections, and Replies
Contemplating Art, 2006
Falling in love with a book
Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 1990
If you wanted students to ignore the work of major figures in crlmlnal justice, how would you go ... more If you wanted students to ignore the work of major figures in crlmlnal justice, how would you go about it? One thing you might do is to assign a textbook that contains dry summaries of "key ideas" drawn from their writings. You then could amplify these summaries in lecture, ...
Intention and Interpretation in Literature
The British Journal of Aesthetics, 1974
Two Notions of Interpretation
Contemplating Art, 2006
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 2012
In a recent paper devoted to my topic, music and morality, my fellow philosopher of music Peter K... more In a recent paper devoted to my topic, music and morality, my fellow philosopher of music Peter Kivy makes a helpful tripartite distinction among ways in which music could be said to have moral force. 1 The first is by embodying and conveying moral insight; Kivy labels that epistemic moral force. The second is by having a positive moral effect on behavior; Kivy labels that behavioral moral force. And the third is by impacting positively on character so as to make someone a better human being; Kivy labels that character-building moral force. Kivy is decidedly skeptical about the prospects of pure instrumental music, or what he calls 'music alone', to possess the first or second sort of moral force, and only slightly less so for its prospects to possess the third sort. But he rightly points out that that third sort of moral forcewhat might alternatively be described as music's power to shape for the better, albeit in subtle ways, what kind of person one isis largely, if not wholly, independent of the first two sorts, the epistemic and the behavioral, and might be manifest where they are absent. Before returning to Kivy's three sorts of moral force, however, I want to underline a fourth way in which music can be moral. This fourth way is through music's having moral quality, whether or not it possesses, in consequence, moral force. What I mean by moral quality is a matter of the mind or spirit reflected in the music, and most particularly, in the nature of its expression, both what it expresses and how it expresses that. Moral quality in music is not a function simply of what emotions, attitudes, or states of mind are expressed, but of how they are expressedwith what fineness, subtlety, depth, honesty, originality and so on. Music can surely display moral quality whether it is optimisticas for instance, the first movement of Dvorak's 'American' Quartetor pessimisticas 1