Art criticism

By Lyas, Colin

To criticize a work of art is to make a judgment of its overall merit or demerit and to support that judgment by reference to features it possesses. ...

Nature, aesthetic appreciation of

By Carlson, Allen

In the Western world, aesthetic appreciation of nature and its philosophical investigation came to fruition in the eighteenth century. During that time, aestheticians made nature the ideal object ...

Benjamin, Walter (1892–1940)

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was an influential German intellectual, whose activity spanned the late years of the German empire and the volatile Weimar period, culminating in a tragic ...

Aesthetic issues in jazz

By Kania, Andrew

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Improvisation in the arts

By Ravasio, Matteo

Broadly defined as extemporaneous decision-making, improvisation has until recently been given scant attention by philosophers of art. The reasons for this are hard to pin down, but it ...

Benjamin, Walter (1892–1940)

By Roberts, Julian

Walter Benjamin was one of the most influential twentieth-century philosophers of culture. His work combines formal analysis of art works with social theory to generate an approach which ...

Ducasse, Curt John (1881–1969)

By Madden, Edward H.

Ducasse was a highly systematic philosopher and scarcely any field or topic escaped his attention. He criticized Hume’s account of causality, advocated ‘soft determinism’ and developed an ‘adverbial’ ...

Nature, aesthetic appreciation of

In the Western world, aesthetic appreciation of nature and its philosophical investigation came to maturity in the eighteenth century. During that time, aestheticians found in nature an ideal ...

Nature, aesthetic appreciation of

In the Western world, aesthetic appreciation of nature and its philosophical investigation came to maturity in the eighteenth century. During that time, aestheticians found in nature an ideal ...

Aesthetics and the philosophy of language

By Green, Mitchell

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Aesthetic concepts

By Eaton, Marcia

Aesthetic concepts are the concepts associated with the terms that pick out aesthetic properties referred to in descriptions and evaluations of experiences involving artistic and aesthetic objects and ...

Marxist aesthetics

By Carroll, Noël

‘Marxist Aesthetics’ reviews several Marxist approaches to the analysis of art, including the basic or traditional Marxist approach as well as approaches by Lukács, Benjamin, Adorno, Marcuse, and ...

Emotion in response to art

By Levinson, Jerrold

The main philosophical questions concerning emotion in response to art are as follows. (1) What kind or type of emotions are had in response to works of art? ...

Dance, aesthetics of

By McFee, Graham

The aesthetics of dance is the philosophical investigation of the nature of dance, of our interest in it, especially as an art form, and of the variety of ...

De Sanctis, Francesco (1817–83)

By Henry, Barbara

Francesco De Sanctis was a literary critic and historian of Italian literature. He is best remembered for his major work, Storia della letteratura italiana (History of Italian Literature), ...

Rancière, Jacques (1940–)

By Davis, Oliver

Jacques Rancière was born in Algiers in 1940 and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he participated in French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser’s seminar reading ...

Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb (1714–62)

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Photography, aesthetics of

Photography and painting are sometimes thought of as different processes with a common goal: the creation of a depiction of an object or scene. One way to characterize ...

Environmental aesthetics

Environmental aesthetics is one of the major new areas of aesthetics to have emerged in the last part of the twentieth century. It focuses on philosophical issues concerning ...

Environmental aesthetics

Environmental aesthetics is one of the major new areas of aesthetics that emerged in the last part of the twentieth century. It focuses on philosophical issues concerning appreciation ...

Art, definition of

By Davies, Stephen

Many of the earliest definitions of art were probably intended to emphasize salient or important features for an audience already familiar with the concept, rather than to analyse ...

Aesthetic attitude

By Budd, Malcolm

It is undeniable that there are aesthetic and non-aesthetic attitudes. But is there such a thing as the aesthetic attitude? What is meant by the aesthetic attitude ...

Popular music

By Gracyk, Theodore

Popular music is a neglected topic in philosophy, and only recently have philosophers examined it sympathetically and with concern for its positive attributes. The distinction of some music ...

Art, performing

By Davies, Stephen

Some works, such as plays and pieces of classical music, are created as instructions (either notated or implicit in an exemplar) for performers; performances of such pieces arise ...

Surrealism

This entry contains two parts. The first and larger section is devoted to an account of Surrealism as an artistic/philosophical movement that emerged in the early twentieth century ...