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Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art
'Place in garden, lawn, to beautify landscape.'When Don Featherstone's plastic pink flamingos were first advertised in the 1957 Sears catalogue, these were the instructions. The flamingos are placed on the cover of this book for another to start us asking questions. That's where philosophy always begins.Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art is written to introduce students to a broad array of questions that have occupied philosophers since antiquity, and which continue to bother us today-questions - Is there something special about something's being art? Can a mass-produced plastic bird have that special something? - If someone likes plastic pink flamingos, does that mean they have bad taste? Is bad taste a bad thing? - Do Featherstone's pink flamingos mean anything? If so, does that depend on what Featherstone meant in designing them?Each chapter opens using a real world example - such as Marcel Duchamp's signed urinal, The Exorcist, and the ugliest animal in the world - to introduce and illustrate the issues under discussion. These case studies serve as touchstones throughout the chapter, keeping the concepts grounded and relatable.With its trademark conversational style, clear explanations, and wealth of supporting features, Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art is the ideal introduction to the major problems, issues, and debates in the field. Now expanded and revised for its second edition, Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art is designed to give readers the background and the tools necessary to begin asking and answering the most intriguing questions about art and beauty, even when those questions are about pink plastic flamingos.
- GenresPhilosophyArtNonfiction
454 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 8, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 22, 2023
"If one is having an aesthetic experience, one is absorbed in the sensory experience itself afforded by the object of one’s attention."
‘The painting and the music invite us to do what we would seldom do in ordinary life – pay attention only to what we are seeing or hearing, and ignore everything else.’ And hasn’t each of us, at one point or another, become ‘lost’ in an artwork? At a concert, lying back, closing your eyes and experiencing only the music? At the cinema, paying such close attention to the film that you become oblivious to your surroundings? Reading a book, and becoming so entrenched that you completely lose track of time? Each of these, and many others beside, are what aestheticians would call aesthetic experiences."
"In his major work on aesthetics, The Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant suggests that producing great art requires genius, which Kant characterizes broadly as an innate talent for art.6 Art, Kant argues, does not follow determinate rules – rules that can simply be explained to, and followed by, anyone else – and so genius cannot be taught."
"Why is it, then, that we find significant form in Cézanne, but not, say, in a sunset? Bell isn’t entirely sure, but proposes what he calls the ‘metaphysical hypothesis’ as a possibility. Although the mechanism by which it does so is mysterious, Bell suggests, significant form moves us as it does because it expresses the aesthetic emotion of its creator. This would seem to explain why aesthetic emotion is provoked by art, but not by natural objects, which may have beautiful form but not significant form."
"The nature of art, Margolis notes, is a strange one indeed. Artworks consist in abstract objects (types), which are always tied to instances (tokens), which are themselves embodied in physical objects (printed books, performances, prints and so on). However, Margolis further notes, tokens are not themselves identical with the physical objects that embody them, for the same sorts of reasons that Michelangelo’s David is not identical with the physical object in the Accademia Gallery."
"Emotion and art have been suggested to intertwine in a number of ways. It seems a hallmark of the arts that they are so able to capture, communicate and evoke emotions – indeed, many would argue that this is one of their chief values."
"A poet like Homer is inspired by the gods to compose his works: he does not work from skill – he cannot write at will, but only when ‘possessed’, when he is ‘not in his right mind’."
"Why is it that, so often, the more tragic the work, the greater its artistic value?"
"In his first published book, The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche suggests that the pleasure of tragedy arises from something else. The ancient Greeks, Nietzsche theorizes, lived a dichotomous existence, constantly pulled at by two opposite poles: the ‘Apollonian’ (named for the Greek god Apollo) and its opposite, the ‘Dionysian’ (named for the Greek god Dionysus). Where Apollo served as a symbol of light, order and civilization, Dionysus was a symbol of darkness, chaos and the savagery of nature. Apollo was, among other things, god of the plastic arts – sculpture, painting and architecture – while Dionysus was associated with the revelry of music and dance. These two poles, Nietzsche contends, are brought to a head in Greek tragedy, with the Dionysian aspect being embodied in the music of the chorus and the Apollonian in the play’s dialogue. Further, the audience bears witness to the tragic protagonist trying to make sense – to find order – in the chaos befalling him. As such, the theatre-goer was able to experience in one setting both poles battling over humanity. The audience (here, Nietzsche speaks of the ancient Greeks, but this could as well apply to us) does not stand apart from the events onstage, but enters a ‘dream-state’ and becomes fully engulfed in the story. And although Apollo ruled over dreams, once in this state, the audience could now access the more primordial Dionysian nature flowing within mankind and society. Through tragedy, the audience could directly experience Dionysian revelry within ordered Apollonian form – allowing for a balanced appreciation of both aspects of humanity. In doing so, theatre-goers were thus offered a glimpse of what Nietzsche refers to as the ‘Dionysian abyss’ of humanity, and so return to their civilized Apollonian lives with renewed insight and self-affirmation."
"Nature, Kant contends, can also give rise to feelings of the sublime – what we might think of as a pronounced awe: where something is sublime, it is quite literally awesome. We have this feeling when something is so large or powerful as to overwhelm the imagination. Consider the feeling had when standing before the Rocky Mountains or Alps, when viewing the endlessness of the Sahara desert or Australian outback, or simply when watching an approaching thundercloud overtake the landscape. The sublime, Kant says, is not to be sought in art, nor even in natural things, but only in the vastness and unboundedness of ‘crude nature’. This feeling, he notes, is at one and the same time both positive and negative. It is negative in the sense of inadequacy or powerlessness that it gives rise to, threatening to overwhelm the self and the imagination. But, Kant says, provided we are viewing such vistas from a safe vantage point, we find the ability in ourselves to resist being overwhelmed. And so, as the imagination is expanded, we find the experience pleasurable as well. In this, Kant argues, we find an awareness that we are not mere natural organisms, but that we stand outside nature – that we transcend it. Specifically, he suggests, we find that however overwhelming nature may seem, it is nothing compared with the awesomeness of man’s reason and intellect. Our humanity, Kant suggests, is what is truly sublime."
‘The painting and the music invite us to do what we would seldom do in ordinary life – pay attention only to what we are seeing or hearing, and ignore everything else.’ And hasn’t each of us, at one point or another, become ‘lost’ in an artwork? At a concert, lying back, closing your eyes and experiencing only the music? At the cinema, paying such close attention to the film that you become oblivious to your surroundings? Reading a book, and becoming so entrenched that you completely lose track of time? Each of these, and many others beside, are what aestheticians would call aesthetic experiences."
"In his major work on aesthetics, The Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant suggests that producing great art requires genius, which Kant characterizes broadly as an innate talent for art.6 Art, Kant argues, does not follow determinate rules – rules that can simply be explained to, and followed by, anyone else – and so genius cannot be taught."
"Why is it, then, that we find significant form in Cézanne, but not, say, in a sunset? Bell isn’t entirely sure, but proposes what he calls the ‘metaphysical hypothesis’ as a possibility. Although the mechanism by which it does so is mysterious, Bell suggests, significant form moves us as it does because it expresses the aesthetic emotion of its creator. This would seem to explain why aesthetic emotion is provoked by art, but not by natural objects, which may have beautiful form but not significant form."
"The nature of art, Margolis notes, is a strange one indeed. Artworks consist in abstract objects (types), which are always tied to instances (tokens), which are themselves embodied in physical objects (printed books, performances, prints and so on). However, Margolis further notes, tokens are not themselves identical with the physical objects that embody them, for the same sorts of reasons that Michelangelo’s David is not identical with the physical object in the Accademia Gallery."
"Emotion and art have been suggested to intertwine in a number of ways. It seems a hallmark of the arts that they are so able to capture, communicate and evoke emotions – indeed, many would argue that this is one of their chief values."
"A poet like Homer is inspired by the gods to compose his works: he does not work from skill – he cannot write at will, but only when ‘possessed’, when he is ‘not in his right mind’."
"Why is it that, so often, the more tragic the work, the greater its artistic value?"
"In his first published book, The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche suggests that the pleasure of tragedy arises from something else. The ancient Greeks, Nietzsche theorizes, lived a dichotomous existence, constantly pulled at by two opposite poles: the ‘Apollonian’ (named for the Greek god Apollo) and its opposite, the ‘Dionysian’ (named for the Greek god Dionysus). Where Apollo served as a symbol of light, order and civilization, Dionysus was a symbol of darkness, chaos and the savagery of nature. Apollo was, among other things, god of the plastic arts – sculpture, painting and architecture – while Dionysus was associated with the revelry of music and dance. These two poles, Nietzsche contends, are brought to a head in Greek tragedy, with the Dionysian aspect being embodied in the music of the chorus and the Apollonian in the play’s dialogue. Further, the audience bears witness to the tragic protagonist trying to make sense – to find order – in the chaos befalling him. As such, the theatre-goer was able to experience in one setting both poles battling over humanity. The audience (here, Nietzsche speaks of the ancient Greeks, but this could as well apply to us) does not stand apart from the events onstage, but enters a ‘dream-state’ and becomes fully engulfed in the story. And although Apollo ruled over dreams, once in this state, the audience could now access the more primordial Dionysian nature flowing within mankind and society. Through tragedy, the audience could directly experience Dionysian revelry within ordered Apollonian form – allowing for a balanced appreciation of both aspects of humanity. In doing so, theatre-goers were thus offered a glimpse of what Nietzsche refers to as the ‘Dionysian abyss’ of humanity, and so return to their civilized Apollonian lives with renewed insight and self-affirmation."
"Nature, Kant contends, can also give rise to feelings of the sublime – what we might think of as a pronounced awe: where something is sublime, it is quite literally awesome. We have this feeling when something is so large or powerful as to overwhelm the imagination. Consider the feeling had when standing before the Rocky Mountains or Alps, when viewing the endlessness of the Sahara desert or Australian outback, or simply when watching an approaching thundercloud overtake the landscape. The sublime, Kant says, is not to be sought in art, nor even in natural things, but only in the vastness and unboundedness of ‘crude nature’. This feeling, he notes, is at one and the same time both positive and negative. It is negative in the sense of inadequacy or powerlessness that it gives rise to, threatening to overwhelm the self and the imagination. But, Kant says, provided we are viewing such vistas from a safe vantage point, we find the ability in ourselves to resist being overwhelmed. And so, as the imagination is expanded, we find the experience pleasurable as well. In this, Kant argues, we find an awareness that we are not mere natural organisms, but that we stand outside nature – that we transcend it. Specifically, he suggests, we find that however overwhelming nature may seem, it is nothing compared with the awesomeness of man’s reason and intellect. Our humanity, Kant suggests, is what is truly sublime."
May 27, 2025
(Clarification: I read the Second Edition) Probably one of my favorite textbooks ever! I had never studied the subject and was not excited for what I was sure would be really boring reading, but this was anything but. In fact, I think the farther you get into the book the more entertaining/interesting it gets. Totally recommend for anyone interested in this subject!
November 15, 2018
Required reading for my Aesthetics class, I liked the way Hick brought current culture into centuries of philosophy of art. Intellectual yet accessible to anyone wanting to think deeper.
July 5, 2022
For being a literal textbook, actually pretty interesting.
April 12, 2024
Van GOOOOOGGGHHH
January 5, 2025
Read for a class. The author does a great job breaking down concepts for laymen.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews