Artistic expression

By Davies, Stephen

Many kinds of psychological state can be expressed in or by works of art. But it is the artistic expression of emotion that has figured most prominently in ...

Artistic expression

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Emotion

By Richardson, Louise

As befits the variety of roles that emotion plays in our lives, emotion is a topic of consideration in a variety of areas of philosophy and this is ...

Senghor, Léopold Sédar (1906–2001)

By Taoua, Phyllis

Léopold Sédar Senghor is one of the most influential African poets of the modern era. He also left his mark as a controversial cultural theorist and president of ...

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’ ...

Poetry

By Shusterman, Richard M.

Though poetry today seems a relatively marginal topic in philosophy, it was crucial for philosophy’s own initial self-definition. In ancient Greece, poetry was revered as the authoritative expression ...

Croce, Benedetto (1866–1952)

By Bellamy, Richard

The leading Italian philosopher of his day, Croce presented his philosophy as a humanist alternative to the consolations of religion. A Hegelian idealist, he argued that all human ...

Langer, Susanne Katherina Knauth (1895–1985)

By Brand, Peg

With roots in logic, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, Susanne Langer sought to explicate the meaning and cognitive import of art works by developing a theory ...

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), ...

Aesthetics, Chinese

By Goldberg, Stephen J.

In China, poetry, painting and calligraphy are traditionally known as the ‘Three Perfections’ of the cultivated scholar. They are construed as ethico-aesthetic acts of self-signification and are evaluated ...

African philosophy, Francophone

By Irele, F. Abiola

The imaginative and intellectual writings that have come out of French-speaking Africa have tended to be associated exclusively with the négritude movement and its global postulation of ...

Aesthetics

By Budd, Malcolm

Aesthetics owes its name to Alexander Baumgarten who derived it from the Greek aisthanomai, which means perception by means of the senses (see Baumgarten, A.G.). As the ...

Art and knowledge

By Young, James O.

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Language, philosophy of

By Crimmins, Mark

Philosophical interest in language, while ancient and enduring (see Language, ancient philosophy of; Language, medieval theories of; Language, Renaissance philosophy of; Language, early modern philosophy of), has blossomed ...

Literature, philosophy in Latin American

By Gomez-Martinez, Jose Luis

Within the Latin American intellectual community, the relationship between philosophy and literature constitutes one of the most interesting chapters in its development. Much Latin American literature is characterized ...

Music, aesthetics of

By Levinson, Jerrold

The aesthetics of music comprises philosophical reflection on the origin, nature, power, purpose, creation, performance, reception, meaning and value of music. Some of its problems are general problems ...

Gurney, Edmund (1847–88)

By Levinson, Jerrold

Edmund Gurney was an English psychologist and musician. His major work, The Power of Sound, is a vast treatise on musical aesthetics, ranging from issues in the physiology ...

Hanslick, Eduard (1825–1904)

By Kivy, Peter

Eduard Hanslick, a music critic for the popular Viennese press, is principally known as the author of Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854). This is probably the most widely read work ...

Artistic style

Style in art is typically described as how one describes or depicts something, rather than what is described or depicted. Style is thus often identified with ...

Artistic taste

By Cohen, Ted

Taste has been variously understood as (1) the capacity to take pleasure in certain artistic and natural objects, (2) the capacity to identify the constituent elements in such ...

Artist’s intention

By Taylor, Paul

W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley’s famous paper ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ (1946) began one of the central debates in aesthetics and literary theory of the last half-century. By ...

Aesthetics, Japanese

By Viswanathan, Meera

While the terms ‘aesthetics’ and ‘philosophy’ were only introduced into Japan during the Meiji Period (post 1868), Japanese culture has nevertheless witnessed the proliferation of various arts and ...

Wagner, Richard (1813–83)

By Tanner, Michael

Wagner has no stature as a writer on philosophical subjects independently of his music dramas. But since those dramas themselves deal with deep, often broadly philosophical issues, his ...

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 ...

Russian Empiriocriticism

By Joravsky, David

Russian empiriocriticism was an ephemeral movement within Russian Marxism of the early twentieth century. Its brief existence and deep involvement in politics invite the judgment, ’of historic interest ...