Philosophy of the Arts: An Introduction to Aesthetics

by Gordon Graham

Philosophy of the Arts presents a comprehensive and accessible introduction to those coming to aesthetics and the philosophy of art for the first time. The third edition is greatly enhanced by new sections on art and beauty, modern art, Aristotle and katharsis, and Hegel. Each chapter has been thoroughly revised with fresh material and extended discussions. As with previous editions, the

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Nonfiction, Art Design

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Gordon Graham is Director of the Edinburgh Sacred Arts Festival. He previously taught philosophy at the University of St Andrews, University of Aberdeen, and Princeton Theological Seminary. The author of twenty books on a wide range of subjects in aesthetics, politics and moral philosophy, he has also published extensively on the Scottish philosophical tradition. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and winner of an Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society Lifetime Achievement Award, he was founding editor of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy and general editor of the Oxford History of Scottish Philosophy. His books include Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).

Reviews

[Mohammad Mahdi Fallah]

کتاب با بخش‌های فلسفی در اوایل کتاب، شروع درخشانی دارد و حقیقتاً ذهن را درگیر می‌کند. ولی در بخش‌های مصادیقی به درازگویی دچار می‌شود و نقدهای دم‌دستی غیرقابل اعتنایی طرح می‌کند که کل کار کتاب رو زیر سوال می‌بره. در کل می‌توان گفت که کتاب برای آشنایی فلسفه نخوانده‌ها با فلسفه هنر کتاب مناسبی است، ولی برای آنانی که ترجیح می‌دهند یا با دقت بیشتری روبرو شوند یا با نظرات متنوع‌تر، جزئی‌نگری نویسنده و دیالوگ با افرادی که شاید صرفاً در فضایی دیگر شأنیت داشته باشد، باعث تکدر خاطر می‌شود.

[Maria]

One must find a place to start. This book is quite an interesting beginning to a life of research!

[Velvet Jane]

While there is some wonderfully amazing aesthetic principles explored in this book, ultimately, Graham spends the majority of the text explicating on the theories of Hume, Gadamer, Collingwood, Kant, Hospers and others, of which Graham himself will support or dispel; however, by the end of each chapter Graham will reverse his support or his rejection. It seems to be a book of contradictions, and would have been better served to be labeled "An exploration of other people's ideas and why I will say they are right, provide evidence, and then completely change my mind at the chapter's close and negate everything I said with contradictory evidence" by Gordon Graham.

Or, "I am a very smart man who cannot make up my mind" by Gordon Graham.

[Lama Hussein]

3.5

[Gabby McWethy]

I had a serious love-hate relationship with this book and its author. On one hand I found it incredibly rewarding, and I will probably be returning several times to reread it; I think Graham's view of aesthetics is going to have a huge impact on how I view art. On the other hand, Graham was extremely Eurocentric and just plain close-minded, which made it pretty difficult to hear most of his arguments. I loved his approach to art, which was to understand why we appreciate art, rather than trying to reach some arbitrary definition of art, because finding the value of art allows us to understand art from other cultures and times, where things that we might not consider art here are considered art there, and vice versa. However, Graham seems to miss this universal application of his endeavor, and only understands art as it exists in the Western world, namely as something done by a solitary man and appreciated on its own, disconnected from the rest of reality. Luckily, Graham's narrowmindedness is only a detail of his argument, and by the end of the book I had begrudgingly learned to live with his weaknesses so that I could hear the wonderful things he had to say about art. The only thing I found really disappointing was his treatment of music, which was especially annoying since I came to this book as a music-lover. However, I was able to see where he went wrong (surprise, it was his Western chauvinism), and I still found his discussion of music rewarding. In the end, I think I am going to largely adopt his view of art: we appreciate art for the way experiencing others' imagination enhances our understanding of reality, closely followed by the pleasure it gives us, closely followed by its expressiveness of emotion. I also loved the way he substituted "imagination" for "creativity." I strongly recommend this book, just be ready for a bunch of eyerolling.

[Amin Dashti]

کتابی خوشخوان و نسبتا جامع درباب مسائل اصلی فلسفه هنر که با این پرسش آغاز میشود که : ارزش هنر در چیست؟ آنگاه به بررسی تک تک هنرهای نقاشی ، موسیقی ، ادبیات ، فیلم و عکاسی و معماری می پردازد و در نهایت با بحث در مورد نظریه های مختلف نقد هنری پایان می گیرد

[سعيد عبدالغنى]

أسلوبه ولغتة صعبة أقرب للغة المتخصصين , رغم أن مؤلفة ذكر فى مقدمته أنه يستهدف أن يكتب كتاباً يكون جمهورة من غير المتخصصين!

[Maryam Hosseini]

خوبی [وجه تمایز] کتاب اینه که از نظریه‌ها شروع نکرده. از هنرها شروع کرده. میشه به عنوان یه تکست خوب برای خیلی از رشته‌ها مثل نقاشی و معماری و اینها ازش استفاده کرد.

[Juniper Shore]

I'm not a fan of abstract philosophy in general, but I can tolerate it if it's well-written. (Yes, it is possible to write philosophy well. C.S. Lewis could do it, though he may have been the only one.) Unfortunately, Philosophy of the Arts displays all the characteristics that make philosophical writing so unpleasant to read.

The prose is agonizing. Graham's sentences ramble all over the page, frequently doubling back on themselves, often using twelve words where three would do. I once spent ninety minutes slogging through ten pages, only to realize that everything I had read was covered in the chapter-end summary with no real loss of substance. My professor freely admitted the book reads like a graduate thesis which was heavily padded to reach the necessary page-count.

The author has a strong personal bias. (Hint: he hates expressivism.) Over and over we encounter proclamations that such-and-such philosophy is rubbish because the author says so. (For example: some philosophers consider sport to be a form of art akin to dancing or theater. Graham tells us this is not so. He doesn't say why, he just announces that sport is obviously not art and moves on.) If this actually were a graduate thesis such a bias might be forgivable, but it's out of place in an introductory textbook. Also, even in a thesis, "because I say so" cuts no ice.

One star for all around insufferable smugness and abysmally bad writing.

[Jeong Heum Kim]

It is a great inroduction to the general theory of art.

Can be recommanded to students who are starting to learn the theory of art. One of the best standard textbook in this area. Five stars!

[Marcus Rosen]

In an attempt to summarize the arguments at the heart of aesthetics, the author puts forth simple-minded premises and assumes their truth. Readers will tire quickly of words like "obviously" and "patently"; an introduction doesn't necessitate a rejection of critical thought.

[A. B.]

What a book. Only 250 pages but feels like a tome. I get the feeling I will be revisiting this quite often and Graham's views will be quite influential on me. A wonderful overview of the theories of aesthetics as well as a closer look at some of the arts. The only criticism I would make is the author's rambling prose style with repeated summaries and resumes.

In the first four chapters, the author discusses the theories of art as pleasure, beauty and emotion, before discussing his own theory of aesthetic cognitivism (similar to Nelson Goodman). The next five chapters are devoted to a closer look at the sonic arts, the visual arts, the literary arts, the performing arts, and architecture. The last three chapters are on the aesthetics of nature, modern art and the avant-garde, and the various theories of art from analytic attempts to define art to Marxist, structuralist and deconstructionist accounts.

Aesthetic cognitivism is a compelling theory- where art enriches our understanding not just provides pleasure or beauty or emotional content. The author draws an interesting distinction between being an expression of something versus being expressive of something. The artist's own emotions need not be what makes its way into a work of art, but their imagination can. The chapter on music and the sonic arts was especially interesting, exploring as it did the foregrounding of aural experience as the prime characteristic of music. There are lots of interesting anecdotes, examples and distinctions in the book. Worthy of being revisited often.

[Francisca]

since i was only looking for to build up my knowledge on a more general basis regarding the theoretical side of aesthetics, i did not read every single chapter on this book. to be honest, i didn't see the point in reading about architecture at the moment.

the chapters i did read were:
1. Art and Pleasure
2. Art and Beauty
3. Art and Emotion
4. Art and Understanding
11. The Aesthetics of Nature
12. Theories of Art

despite this being a highly accessible academic work (the author does make the effort of explaining everything in rather simple terms for your sake), i would recommend not picking this book without some vague grasp of basic philosophical terms (some knowledge on plato wouldn't be amiss here) and by the end some actual interest in linguistics (even though, if you have studied linguistics before, you will probably want to run away from yet another summary of saussure's theory). with such considerations, this book was both helpful and concise, something much appreciated today.

[Amirmasoud]

کتاب فوق‌العاده‌ای در زمینۀ فلسفۀ هنر بود. از زوایای گوناگون مسئلۀ هنر و ارزش کار هنری را بررسی کرده، نظرات و تفکرات مختلف را پیرامون موضوع بررسی می‌کند و با ارائۀ استدلال‌های منطقی مشکلات هر یک را توضیح داده و در نهایت نظر خود را نیز بیان می‌کند.
بیان کتاب گیراست و پیچیدگی خاصی ندارد و برای عموم خوانندگان حتی با دانش کم در زمینه هنر و فلسفه نیز کاربردی است.
ترجمۀ جناب مسعود علیا نیز که نیازی به تعریف ندارد، پاورقی‌ها و اطلاعات آخر کتاب نیز به بهترین شکل اطلاعات را در اختیار خوانندگان قرار می‌دهد.

[Liecie.]

Great Read.

This book introduced many theories from multiple philosophers all of which were interesting to read through the different topics discussed. It was also nice to have Graham's take in the book as well, though some many find it irrational, I looked at it as another view/theory. Overall this was a good in-depth read.

[Chester J.]

8.2
A very interesting defence and explanation of normative theory of art that at the same time glosses many of the important theorists who have influenced thought on art. Also very accessibly and engagingly set out.

[Steen Ledet]

Decent introduction to aesthetics, especially the first four chapters. The specific art form chapters are cursory.

[Ahmed Obaid]

Beautiful book, ironically.

[Rehab]

رائع

[Rinnei]

My brain is mush, but educated mush.

[Danial Khalili]

پاییز و زمستان ۱۴۰۳، ترم هفتم، زیبایی‌شناسی و فلسفه هنر، (پنج بخش اول.)

[Lama]

3.5

[Muhammed Yahia]

 

كتاب جيد، لكنى  واجهت صعوبات في فهمه وبعض الامثلة عن أعمال فنية أجهلها، عموماً انتهيت ولازلت لا اعلم ما هو الفن؟ هل له معايير واضحة و سمات كامنه فيه او جوهر افلاطوني يجعلنا نطلق على عملاً ما فناً؟ ام يكتسب تعريفه من خلال تأثيرات إجتماعية متغيرة أي انه بلاجوهر محدد؟

 

أتضح لي من خلال الكتاب تفسير الفن/العمل الفني اكثر تعقيداً وصعوبة مما توقعت. 

 

[ع]

ماهو الفن؟ وماقيمته؟ سؤال بدأ به هذا الكتاب وأنتهى بأفضل وصف للفن كما أراه ألا وهو وصف الناقد الفني البريطاني Clive Bell. حيث يقول "إن كافة أعمال الفنون المرئية بينها صفة مشتركة." وبالنسبة لسؤال عن ماهية الفن فقد أجاب أنه "الشكل ذو الدلالة".

أعتقد أن هذا ماكنت أبحث عنه قبل قرائتي لهذا الكتاب.

[علي علي]

كتاب جميل

[Ahmed Fathy]

القيمة المميزة للمتعه الجمالية تكمن في هذا: أن تكون
منزهة عن الغرض ؛بمعنييه المعرفي والعملي