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2 THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO AESTHETICS The third edition of the acclaimed Routledge Companion to Aesthetics contains over sixty chapters written by leading international scholars covering all aspects of aesthetics. This Companion opens with a historical overview of aesthetics, including entries on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault, Goodman and Wollheim. The second part covers the central concepts and theories of aesthetics, including definitions of art, taste, the value of art, beauty, imagination, fiction, narrative, metaphor and pictorial representation. Part III is devoted to issues and challanges in aesthetics, including art and ethics, art and religion, creativity, environmental aesthetics and feminist aesthetics. The final part addresses the individual arts, including music, photography, film, videogames, literature, theater, dance, architecture and design. With ten new entries, and revisions and updated suggestions for further reading throughout, The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics is essential for anyone interested in aesthetics, art, literature and visual studies. Berys Gaut is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and President of the British Society of Aesthetics. He is the author of Art, Emotion and Ethics and A Philosophy of Cinematic Art, and coauthor, with Morag Gaut, of Philosophy for Young Children: A Practical Guide (Routledge, 2011). Dominic McIver Lopes is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and President of the American Society of Aesthetics. He is the author of Understanding Pictures, Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures, A Philosophy of Computer Art (Routledge, 2009) and Beyond Art.

3 ROUTLEDGE PHILOSOPHY COMPANIONS Routledge Philosophy Companions offer thorough, high-quality surveys and assessments of the major topics and periods in philosophy. Covering key problems, themes and thinkers, all entries are specially commissioned for each volume and written by leading scholars in the field. Clear, accessible and carefully edited and organized, Routledge Philosophy Companions are indispensable for anyone coming to a major topic or period in philosophy, as well as for the more advanced reader. The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Science Edited by Stathis Psillos and Martin Curd The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy Edited by Dermot Moran The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film Edited by Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology Edited by John Symons and Paco Calvo The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics Edited by Robin Le Poidevin, Peter Simons, Andrew McGonigal and Ross Cameron The Routledge Companion to Nineteenth Century Philosophy Edited by Dean Moyar The Routledge Companion to Ethics Edited by John Skorupski The Routledge Companion to Epistemology Edited by Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music Edited by Theodore Gracyk and Andrew Kania The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology Edited by Sebastian Luft and Søren Overgaard The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language Edited by Gillian Russell and Delia Graff Fara

4 The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law Edited by Andrei Marmor The Routledge Companion to Theism Edited by Charles Taliaferro, Victoria Harrison and Stewart Goetz The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Second Edition Edited by Chad Meister and Paul Copan The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy Edited by Gerald Gaus and Fred D Agostino Forthcoming: The Routledge Companion to Seventeenth Century Philosophy Edited by Dan Kaufman The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth Century Philosophy Edited by Aaron Garrett The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science, Second Edition Edited by Stathis Psillos and Martin Curd The Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy Edited by Richard C. Taylor and Luis Xavier López-Farjeat The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature Edited by Noël Carroll and John Gibson The Routledge Companion to Bioethics Edited by John Arras, Rebecca Kukla and Elizabeth Fenton The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy Edited by Frisbee Sheffield and James Warren The Routledge Companion to Medieval Philosophy Edited by J. T. Paasch and Richard Cross The Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics Edited by Jeff Malpas and Hans-Helmuth Gander

5 PRAISE FOR THE SERIES The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics This is an immensely useful book that belongs in every college library and on the bookshelves of all serious students of aesthetics. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism The succinctness and clarity of the essays will make this a source that individuals not familiar with aesthetics will find extremely helpful. The Philosophical Quarterly An outstanding resource in aesthetics this text will not only serve as a handy reference source for students and faculty alike, but it could also be used as a text for a course in the philosophy of art. Australasian Journal of Philosophy Attests to the richness of modern aesthetics the essays in central topics many of which are written by well-known figures succeed in being informative, balanced and intelligent without being too difficult. British Journal of Aesthetics This handsome reference volume belongs in every library. CHOICE The Routledge Companions to Philosophy have proved to be a useful series of highquality surveys of major philosophical topics and this volume is worthy enough to sit with the others on a reference library shelf. Philosophy and Religion The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion a very valuable resource for libraries and serious scholars. CHOICE The work is sure to be an academic standard for years to come I shall heartily recommend The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion to my students and colleagues and hope that libraries around the country add it to their collections. Philosophia Christi

6 The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2008 With a distinguished list of internationally renowned contributors, an excellent choice of topics in the field, and well-written, well-edited essays throughout, this compendium is an excellent resource. Highly recommended. CHOICE Highly recommended for history of science and philosophy collections. Library Journal This well-conceived companion, which brings together an impressive collection of distinguished authors, will be invaluable to novices and experienced readers alike. Metascience The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy To describe this volume as ambitious would be a serious understatement. full of scholarly rigor, including detailed notes and bibliographies of interest to professional philosophers. Summing up: Essential. CHOICE The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film A fascinating, rich volume offering dazzling insights and incisive commentary on every page Every serious student of film will want this book Summing Up: Highly recommended. CHOICE The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology This work should serve as the standard reference for those interested in gaining a reliable overview of the burgeoning field of philosophical psychology. Summing Up: Essential. CHOICE The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics The Routledge Philosophy Companions series has a deserved reputation for impressive scope and scholarly value. This volume is no exception Summing Up: Highly recommended. CHOICE

7 The Routledge Companion to Nineteenth Century Philosophy A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2010 This is a crucial resource for advanced undergraduates and faculty of any discipline who are interested in the 19th-century roots of contemporary philosophical problems. Summing Up: Essential. CHOICE The Routledge Companion to Ethics This fine collection merits a place in every university, college, and high school library for its invaluable articles covering a very broad range of topics in ethics With its remarkable clarity of writing and its very highly qualified contributors, this volume is must reading for anyone interested in the latest developments in these important areas of thought and practice. Summing Up: Highly recommended. CHOICE The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music Comprehensive and authoritative readers will discover many excellent articles in this well-organized addition to a growing interdisciplinary field. Summing Up: Highly recommended. CHOICE succeeds well in catching the wide-ranging strands of musical theorising and thinking, and performance, and an understanding of the various contexts in which all this takes place. Reference Reviews The Routledge Companion to Epistemology A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2011 As a series, the Routledge Philosophy Companions has met with near universal acclaim. The expansive volume not only continues the trend but quite possibly sets a new standard. Indeed, this is a definitive resource that will continue to prove its value for a long time to come. Summing Up: Essential. CHOICE

8 THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO AESTHETICS Third Edition Edited by Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes

9 First published 2000 by Routledge Second edition published 2005 by Routledge This edition published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Ave., New York City, NY Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 2000, 2005, 2013 Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes, editorial and selection matter; individual chapters, the contributors The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The Routledge companion to aesthetics / edited by Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes. Third Edition. pages cm. (Routledge philosophy companions) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Aesthetics. I. Gaut, Berys Nigel. II. Lopes, Dominic. BH39.R dc ISBN: (hbk) ISBN: (pbk) ISBN: (ebk) Typeset in Goudy by Taylor & Francis Books

10 CONTENTS Notes on contributors Preface xiii xx PART I History of aesthetics 1 1 Plato 3 CHRISTOPHER JANAWAY 2 Aristotle 13 NICKOLAS PAPPAS 3 Medieval aesthetics 25 JOHN HALDANE 4 Empiricism: Hutcheson and Hume 36 JAMES SHELLEY 5 Kant 46 DONALD W. CRAWFORD 6 Hegel 56 MICHAEL INWOOD 7 Idealism: Schopenhauer, Schiller and Schelling 66 DALE JACQUETTE 8 Nietzsche 77 RUBEN BERRIOS AND AARON RIDLEY 9 Formalism 87 NOËL CARROLL 10 Pragmatism 96 RICHARD SHUSTERMAN 11 Expressivism: Croce and Collingwood 106 GORDON GRAHAM 12 Heidegger 116 THOMAS E. WARTENBERG ix

11 CONTENTS 13 Phenomenology: Merleau-Ponty and Sartre 126 ADRIENNE DENGERINK CHAPLIN 14 Adorno 137 THEODORE GRACYK 15 Benjamin 148 MARTIN DONOUGHO 16 Foucault 159 ROBERT WICKS 17 Postmodernism: Barthes and Derrida 170 DAVID NOVITZ 18 Goodman 179 JENEFER ROBINSON 19 Sibley 190 COLIN LYAS 20 Wollheim 200 DEREK MATRAVERS PART II Aesthetic theory Definitions of art 213 STEPHEN DAVIES 22 Categories of art 224 DAVID DAVIES 23 Ontology of art 235 GUY ROHRBAUGH 24 The aesthetic 246 JAMES SHELLEY 25 Taste 257 CAROLYN KORSMEYER 26 Aesthetic universals 267 DENIS DUTTON 27 Art and evolution 278 MOHAN MATTHEN 28 Value of art 289 MATTHEW KIERAN 29 Beauty 299 RAFAEL DE CLERCQ x

12 CONTENTS 30 Interpretation 309 ROBERT STECKER 31 Imagination and make-believe 320 GREGORY CURRIE AND ANNA ICHINO 32 Fiction 330 DAVID DAVIES 33 Narrative 340 PAISLEY LIVINGSTON 34 Metaphor 351 GARRY L. HAGBERG 35 Depiction 362 CATHARINE ABELL PART III Issues and challenges Criticism 375 JONATHAN GILMORE 37 Art and knowledge 384 EILEEN JOHN 38 Art and ethics 394 BERYS GAUT 39 Art, expression and emotion 404 DEREK MATRAVERS 40 Tragedy 415 ALEX NEILL 41 Humor 425 TED COHEN 42 Creativity 432 MARGARET A. BODEN 43 Style 442 AARON MESKIN 44 Authenticity in performance 452 JAMES O. YOUNG 45 Fakes and forgeries 462 NAN STALNAKER 46 High art versus low art 473 JOHN A. FISHER xi

13 CONTENTS 47 Environmental aesthetics 485 ALLEN CARLSON 48 Feminist aesthetics 499 KAREN HANSON 49 Art and religion 509 GORDON GRAHAM PART IV The individual arts Literature 521 PETER LAMARQUE 51 Poetry 532 PETER LAMARQUE 52 Theater 543 JAMES R. HAMILTON 53 Film 554 MURRAY SMITH 54 Videogames 565 GRANT TAVINOR 55 Comics 575 AARON MESKIN 56 Photography 585 DAWN M. WILSON 57 Painting 596 DOMINIC MCIVER LOPES 58 Sculpture 606 SHERRI IRVIN 59 Design 616 GLENN PARSONS 60 Architecture 627 EDWARD WINTERS 61 Music 639 ANDREW KANIA 62 Dance 649 GRAHAM MCFEE Index 661 xii

14 CONTRIBUTORS Catharine Abell is Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester, UK. She works on a variety of topics in aesthetics, including depiction, expression, the nature of art, the nature of fiction and truth in fiction. Ruben Berrios completed a doctorate on Nietzsche s aesthetics at the University of Southampton, UK, in Margaret A. Boden OBE ScD FBA is Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex, UK. Her most recent books are Creativity and Art: Three Roads to Surprise, Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science (2 vols) and The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms (2nd edn). She is currently preparing a book on computer art coauthored with Ernest Edmonds. Allen Carlson is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alberta, Canada. His research interests include environmental philosophy, aesthetics and especially the aesthetics of nature and landscapes. He has published numerous articles and several books, including Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture and, with Glenn Parsons, Functional Beauty. Noël Carroll is Professor of Philosophy at Graduate Center, the City University of New York, USA. He is the author of several books and articles in aesthetics, including, most recently, Art in Three Dimensions. Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin is an independent scholar living in Cambridge, UK. She taught philosophical aesthetics at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, Canada, and is past president of the Canadian Society for Aesthetics. Her publications include essays on art and meaning, art and embodiment, and the interface between aesthetics and theology. Ted Cohen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, USA, and past President of the American Society for Aesthetics. He is coeditor of Essays in Kant s Aesthetics and among his recent publications are the books Jokes and Thinking of Others, and the essays, Identifying with Metaphor, Metaphor, Feeling, and Narrative, Three Problems in Kant s Aesthetics and At Play in the Fields of Metaphor. xiii

15 CONTRIBUTORS Donald W. Crawford is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He is the author of Kant s Aesthetic Theory and numerous articles on Kant and aesthetics. He is also a past editor of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Gregory Currie teaches philosophy at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and an editor of Mind & Language. His most recent book is Narratives and Narrators and he is now writing a book on literature and the mind. David Davies is Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, Canada. He works mainly on metaphysical and epistemological questions in the philosophy of art, and has published widely on issues relating to the ontology of art, literature, film, photography, painting and the performing arts. He is the author of Art as Performance, Aesthetics and Literature and Philosophy of the Performing Arts, and the editor of The Thin Red Line. Stephen Davies teaches philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His recent books are The Philosophy of Art, Philosophical Perspectives on Art, Musical Understandings and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Music and The Artful Species. He is a former President of the American Society for Aesthetics. Rafael De Clercq is Assistant Professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong SAR, where he is affiliated with the departments of Visual Studies and Philosophy. He has published on a range of topics in aesthetics and metaphysics, including aesthetic properties, modern architecture and criteria of identity. Martin Donougho is Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina Columbia, USA, where he taught philosophy and comparative literature. He has published widely, on Hegel, European thought and philosophy of art. His current project is a genealogy of discourse about art. Denis Dutton taught philosophy at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, until his death in He wrote The Art Instinct, and edited Philosophy and Literature and the Arts and Letters Daily website. He studied the sitar under Pandarung Parate and did fieldwork on wood carvers of the Sepik River region of New Guinea. John A. Fisher is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. He is the author of Reflecting on Art and articles on various themes in the contemporary arts, including the ontology of rock music, mass art as art, the nature of songs and of popular music, technology and art, as well as articles on the aesthetics of nature. Berys Gaut is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and President of the British Society of Aesthetics. He is the author of Art, Emotion and Ethics and A Philosophy of Cinematic Art, and coauthor, with Morag Gaut, of Philosophy for Young Children: A Practical Guide. His next book will be on the philosophy of creativity. Jonathan Gilmore is a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow and a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, USA. He is the author of The Life of a Style, xiv

16 CONTRIBUTORS articles in aesthetics and legal theory, and numerous reviews for such publications as Art in America, Artforum and Modern Painters. Theodore Gracyk is Professor of Philosophy at Minnesota State University Moorhead, USA. He is the coeditor of The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music. He is the author of three philosophical books on music (Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock Music, I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identity and Listening to Popular Music) and many articles on aesthetics and its history. His most recent book is The Philosophy of Art: An Introduction. Gordon Graham is Henry Luce III Professor of Philosophy and the Arts at Princeton Theological Seminary, USA. He has written extensively on topics in aesthetics and is the author of Philosophy of the Arts (3rd edn) and The Re-enchantment of the World: Art Versus Religion. Garry L. Hagberg is the James H. Ottaway Jr Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at Bard College, USA. He is author of Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein and Autobiographical Consciousness and Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic Theory, among other books and numerous articles. He is editor of Art and Ethical Criticism, coeditor of the Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Literature and editor of the journal Philosophy and Literature. John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy in the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and Consultor to the Pontifical Council for Culture, Rome, Italy. He writes widely in philosophy and art, and is the author of several books, including Faithful Reason, Reasonable Faith and Arts and Minds. James R. Hamilton teaches philosophy at Kansas State University, USA. He has published The Art of Theater and articles on theater and other performance arts in the British Journal of Aesthetics, the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism and the Journal of Aesthetic Education, and an entry on Brecht in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Karen Hanson is Senior Vice-president for Academic Affairs and Provost of the University of Minnesota, USA. She writes mainly on topics at the intersection of aesthetics, ethics and the philosophy of mind. Anna Ichino is a doctoral candidate at both the Universities of Milan, Italy, and Nottingham, UK, working on motivational and other aspects of the imagination. With Gregory Currie she has written on alief, and she is currently writing on the influences of fiction on belief and other mental attitudes. Michael Inwood was formerly Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, Oxford, UK, and is now an Emeritus Fellow of the college. In addition to several publications on Hegel, he is also the author of Heidegger and A Heidegger Dictionary. Sherri Irvin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma, USA, and aesthetics and philosophy of art editor of Philosophy Compass. She has published numerous articles on the philosophy of contemporary art and the nature of aesthetic experience and has a strong research interest in feminist aesthetics. She is working on a book, Immaterial: A Philosophy of Contemporary Art. xv

17 CONTRIBUTORS Dale Jacquette is ordentlicher Professor für Philosophie, Abteilung Logik und theoretische Philosophie (Senior Professorial Chair in Philosophy, Division for Logic and Theoretical Philosophy), Universität Bern, Switzerland. He is the author, among other recent works, of Philosophy of Mind: The Metaphysics of Consciousness (2nd edn), Wittgenstein s Thought in Transition, Ontology, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer and Logic and How It Gets That Way. Christopher Janaway is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton, UK. He is the author of Images of Excellence: Plato s Critique of the Arts and of various articles in aesthetics. He has also published widely on the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, including Self and World in Schopenhauer s Philosophy and Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche s Genealogy. Eileen John is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, UK. Her research is in aesthetics and philosophy of literature, with publications on artistic and ethical value, poetry and imaginative thought, literature and conceptual knowledge, and engagement with fictional characters. Andrew Kania is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Trinity University in San Antonio, USA. His principal research is in the philosophy of music, literature and film. He is the editor of Memento,inRoutledge s series Philosophers on Film, and coeditor, with Theodore Gracyk, of The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music. Matthew Kieran is Professor of Philosophy and the Arts at the University of Leeds, UK. He is the author of Revealing Art, numerous articles on aesthetics, ethics and philosophical psychology and coauthor of Media and Values. He is editor of Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art and coeditor of Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts and Knowing Art. Carolyn Korsmeyer is Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo, USA. In her book Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy, she investigated aesthetic and gustatory taste. Her most recent book is Savoring Disgust: The Foul and the Fair in Aesthetics. Peter Lamarque is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York, UK. He coauthored, with Stein Haugom Olsen, Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective. Other books include: Fictional Points of View, The Philosophy of Literature and Work and Object: Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art. He is a former editor of the British Journal of Aesthetics. Paisley Livingston is Chair Professor of Philosophy and Head of the Department of Philosophy at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. His books include Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy and Art and Intention: A Philosophical Study. With Berys Gaut, he coedited The Creation of Art, and with Carl Plantinga, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Dominic McIver Lopes is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and President of the American Society of Aesthetics. He is the author of Understanding Pictures, Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures, A Philosophy of Computer Art and Beyond Art. xvi

18 CONTRIBUTORS Colin Lyas was formerly Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Lancaster, UK. He held the Cowling Professorship at Carleton College and the Visiting Research Professorship at the Bolton Institute. Derek Matravers is Professor of Philosophy at the Open University in England. He is the author of Art and Emotion and many articles in aesthetics, ethics and the philosophy of mind. He is currently working on a book on narrative and fiction. Mohan Matthen is a senior Canada Research Chair in Philosophy at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He works on philosophy of perception and the philosophy of biology. He is the author of Seeing, Doing, and Knowing and he is currently editing the Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception. Graham McFee was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Brighton, UK, and is presently at California State University Fullerton, USA. His primary interests are in the philosophy of Wittgenstein, philosophical aesthetics (especially of dance) and philosophy of sport. His books include Understanding Dance; Free Will; Sport, Rules and Values; Ethics, Knowledge and Truth in Sport Research; Artistic Judgement and The Philosophical Aesthetics of Dance. Aaron Meskin is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Leeds, UK. He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on aesthetics and other philosophical subjects. He coedited Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology and The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach. Alex Neill is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton, UK. He works mainly on topics in the history of philosophical aesthetics, and is coeditor of Arguing About Art, The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and Modern and Better Consciousness: Schopenhauer s Philosophy of Value. David Novitz taught at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand until his death in He wrote Pictures and Their Use in Communication, Knowledge Fiction and Imagination and The Boundaries of Art,aswellasmanyarticlesinthephilosophyof art. Nickolas Pappas is Professor of Philosophy at City College and the Graduate Center, the City University of New York, USA. He is the author of the Routledge Guidebook to Plato and the Republic, now in its third edition, The Nietzsche Disappointment and articles mainly in aesthetics and ancient philosophy. Glenn Parsons is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of two books, Aesthetics and Nature and (with Allen Carlson) Functional Beauty. His main interests are in environmental aesthetics. Aaron Ridley is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton, UK. His books include The Philosophy of Music: Theme and Variations; Music, Value and the Passions; Nietzsche s Conscience: Six Character Studies from the Genealogy and Nietzsche on Art. Jenefer Robinson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, USA, author of Deeper Than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music and Art, xvii

19 CONTRIBUTORS editor of Music and Meaning, area editor for aesthetics, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and past President of the American Society for Aesthetics. Guy Rohrbaugh is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University, USA. He works primarily in metaphysics, on ontology and modality, but his interests include aesthetics, epistemology, mind, language and practical reason. James Shelley is Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University, USA. His work applies the history of philosophical aesthetics, particularly that of the eighteenth century, to questions about the nature of aesthetic value, the aesthetic status of artworks and the value of tragedy. Richard Shusterman is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities at Florida Atlantic University, USA, and directs its Center for Body, Mind and Culture. His recent books include Body Consciousness and Thinking Through the Body; his Pragmatist Aesthetics has been translated into fourteen languages. Murray Smith is Professor of Film Studies and Director of the Aesthetics Research Centre at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. His publications include Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema; Film Theory and Philosophy (coedited with Richard Allen); and Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy (coedited with Thomas Wartenberg). Nan Stalnaker has taught writing at Harvard University and philosophy at Connecticut College, USA. She has written essays of art criticism and articles on theoretical aspects of the paintings of Édouard Manet. Robert Stecker is Professor of Philosophy at Central Michigan University, USA. Among his recent publications are Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, 2nd edn, and Aesthetics Today: A Reader. Grant Tavinor is Lecturer in Philosophy at Lincoln University, in Christchurch, New Zealand. He is the author of The Art of Videogames and other papers on aesthetics and gaming. Thomas E. Wartenberg is Professor of Philosophy at Mount Holyoke College, USA. His most recent book is A Sneetch Is a Sneetch and Other Philosophical Discoveries: Finding Wisdom in Children s Literature. Among his other publications are Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy; The Nature of Art; Existentialism: A Beginner s Guide and Big Ideas for Little Kids: Teaching Philosophy Through Children s Literature. Robert Wicks is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is the author of seven books, including Modern French Philosophy and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and of articles on aesthetics and the history of philosophy. Dawn M. Wilson (née Phillips) is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Hull, UK. Her publications on photography address topics such as time, causation, automatism and self-portraiture. She is currently preparing a book on Aesthetics and Photography. xviii

20 CONTRIBUTORS Edward Winters is an artist and writer. He studied painting at the Slade School of Fine Art and took a PhD in philosophy at University College London. He is the author of Aesthetics and Architecture. He has published widely in aesthetics and also writes art and architectural criticism. James O. Young is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Victoria, Canada. He is the author of Global Anti-realism, Art and Knowledge, Cultural Appropriation and the Arts, a forthcoming book on philosophy of music and more than fifty articles in refereed journals. xix

21 PREFACE You are now looking at the third edition of The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. That we have attained such a grand age for an anthology is testament to the considerable success of the first (2001) and second (2005) editions, which have been widely used in teaching and consulted by innumerable researchers interested in aesthetics. But if any laurels were on offer for reaching a third edition, we have not rested on them. The first edition comprised forty-six entries, the second fifty-two, and this edition adds a further ten to bring the grand total to sixty-two (we may have to offer a free wheelbarrow with the next edition). In the historical section there are new entries on Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, which further strengthen our coverage of continental aesthetics, and on Richard Wollheim. To the aesthetic theory section are added chapters on categories of art and on art and evolution. In the third section there is a new chapter on art and religion. The final section on the individual arts has new chapters on poetry, videogames, comics and design, reflecting philosophers increased attention to individual art forms. Almost all the chapters carried over from earlier editions have been revised, many substantially so, to reflect recent developments in the subject, and in some cases we have invited new authors to contribute entries. The result is a wide-ranging and up-to-date survey of the rich variety of work being done in philosophical aesthetics. Both the success of the earlier editions and the need for a new one bear witness to the fact that philosophical aesthetics today is a vibrant field. Thirty or forty years ago, it was not uncommon for philosophers to claim that there was nothing much of philosophical interest to be said about the arts. Nonphilosophers interested in the arts used to complain that contemporary philosophers had indeed said nothing of interest to them. As the painter Barnett Newman quipped, aesthetics is for artists like ornithology is for the birds. Even at the time, this unhappy convergence of views was badly grounded. Today, it is entirely without justification. Philosophy has rediscovered aesthetics, and this volume bears the fruits of philosophers newfound interest in art. Partly this has arisen from philosophers increased attention to the practice, history and criticism of the individual arts including literature, music, painting, architecture, film and videogames and from an awareness that philosophical problems are raised by the particularities of the individual arts. Understanding art as a whole depends on an appreciation of the arts individually and what makes each of xx

22 PREFACE them unique. Some philosophers have begun to write about individual novels, poems, symphonies and films with an attention to detail and a level of insight rivaling that of literary critics, musicologists, art critics and film critics. Renewed philosophical interest in aesthetics also comes from a recognition that many topics of general philosophical importance the nature of representation, imagination, emotion and expression, to name a few cannot be adequately understood unless their roles in the arts and artistic appreciation are examined, for here they find some of their most interesting and complex applications. Interest in aesthetics also gets a boost from increased pluralism within analytic philosophy itself, which has advanced outwards from its heartlands of the philosophy of language and metaphysics to conquer new areas, such as applied ethics, political philosophy, cognitive science and aesthetics. The present volume is broadly within the tradition of analytic philosophy and shares that tradition s commitment to clarity of expression and precision of argument. It also shares and aspires to advance the increasing pluralism of the analytic approach, and attends to thinkers outside the analytic tradition, showing what analytic aesthetics can learn from them. The Companion provides an introduction to many of the most important topics and thinkers in philosophical aesthetics. As such, it should prove its worth as a textbook for university courses in philosophy of art. It is also a snapshot representing some of the best work being done in aesthetics today. Numbered among its authors are both distinguished senior scholars and outstanding young researchers. We have asked them to provide not just a survey of the area, but also something of their own views. The results will be of interest not just to students of aesthetics, but also to specialists in the area. The first part of this volume is historical, covering many of the classic writers on aesthetics, as well as some more recent and influential thinkers from within the analytic and continental traditions. Our criterion for inclusion within this section is that the writer s body of work should be substantially complete. Major figures who are still developing their views are discussed elsewhere in the volume, in the chapters dealing with the subjects on which they have written. The second part covers central concepts and theories within aesthetics, dealing with basic issues such as the definition of art, the nature of the aesthetic and the standards of correct interpretation. The third part covers more specific issues, such as art and knowledge and art and emotion, and also examines challenges to traditional aesthetics posed by feminism, environmental aesthetics and popular art. The final part addresses the individual arts of music, painting, photography, film, videogames, comics, literature, poetry, theater, dance, architecture, sculpture and design. The volume works well as a guide to aesthetics approached historically, or by focusing on theories of art and the aesthetic, or by centering on issues in aesthetics, or by examining the individual arts. While the Companion gives a wide-ranging and up-to-date overview of the field, it obviously cannot, within the compass of a single volume, cover everything of interest and importance in aesthetics. Each reader is likely to have his or her own view on what might have been usefully included, and we would probably agree with many of these suggestions. Nevertheless, the volume captures the sheer diversity, liveliness and interest of current aesthetics. Instead of short dictionary-style entries, we have xxi

23 PREFACE asked our authors to produce chapters of around 5,000 words each long enough to explore the debates about their topic in some detail, but short enough to be read at one sitting, and to allow for a wide range of articles within a single volume. Each chapter has cross-references to other chapters which are germane to the topic, a list of references to works discussed and, where useful, suggestions for further reading. The reader will thus find plenty of scope for following up points of interest in any of the topics covered. The Companion might well be viewed as an invitation to aesthetics. When the credits roll, they should list more than the names of the contributors and editors. We are grateful to all those who have had a hand in the publication of this volume: To our contributors, for their enthusiasm and their ability to produce work of high quality within tight deadlines and tighter word limits, some putting up with our demands through several editions. To the many scholars we consulted in the course of planning the volume, including those who told us not to do it (we enjoy being proven right). To those who wrote reviews of the earlier editions we have (usually) taken their criticisms constructively (though they may not believe it if they review the third edition). To Tony Bruce and his team at Routledge, for their unstinting enthusiasm and support for the volume, not once but thrice over. Berys Gaut Dominic McIver Lopes xxii

24 Part I HISTORY OF AESTHETICS

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26 1 PLATO Christopher Janaway Plato s writings about the arts play a foundational role in the history of aesthetics, not simply because they are the earliest substantial contribution to the subject. The arts are a central, rather than a marginal topic for Plato, and for him the whole of culture must reflect and inculcate the values that concern him. His philosophy of art (as we would call it) is closely integrated with his metaphysics, ethics and politics. From a modern point of view two features are perhaps most striking. First, the arguments Plato gives to the characters in his dialogues contest the autonomous value that we might expect from what we call art, and in the most prominent cases refuse it such value altogether. For Plato the philosophical task is to uncover a metaphysical and ethical order to the world, and the arts can have true worth only if they correctly represent this order or help in aligning us with it. Yet at the same Plato the author often proceeds in an artistic manner: his language and imagery are frequently beautiful and expressive, he writes elaborate myths, and distances himself in sophisticated ways from the dramatic characters he portrays. Long ago Sir Philip Sidney called Plato of all philosophers the most poetical (Sidney 1973: 107), to emphasize the urgency of understanding why he portrays poetry in such an antagonistic fashion. We shall examine in outline the major issues that a reading of Plato is likely to raise for modern aesthetics. The arts in Republic 2 and 3 In the Republic Plato has his character Socrates construct a picture of the ideally just individual and the ideally just city state, in which he gives an account of the nature of knowledge and education, culminating in the proposal that the rulers of the ideal state would be philosophers, those uniquely in possession of methods for attaining knowledge of the eternally existing Forms that constitute absolute values in Plato s universe. Quite early in the discussion Socrates considers the role of the arts in education. The young, especially those who will be the Guardians responsible for the city s well-being, must receive an education that properly forms their characters. Since the young soul is impressionable and will be molded by any material that comes its way, the productive arts and crafts will be regulated so that they pursue what is fine and graceful in their work, so that our young people will live in a 3

27 CHRISTOPHER JANAWAY healthy place and be benefited on all sides, and so that something of those fine works will strike their eyes and ears like a breeze that brings health from a good place, leading them unwittingly, from childhood on, to resemblance, friendship, and harmony with the beauty of reason (Republic 401c d). Much of Books 2 and 3 concerns the scenes and characters poetry contains. Plato assumes that fictional tales and poetic representations will play a dominant role in education a conventional assumption, as we see from remarks in the dialogue Protagoras: they are given the works of good poets to read at their desks and have to learn them by heart, works that contain numerous exhortations, many passages describing in glowing terms good men of old, so that the child is inspired to imitate them and become like them (Protagoras 325e 326a). But it is not sufficient that the young read the works of good poets. While Plato consistently praises Homer as a fine poet, in the Republic he proposes ruthless censorship of Homer s works. Gods and heroes must not be represented as cowardly, despairing, deceitful, ruled by their appetites, or committing crimes: hence the excision of many well-known scenes from the Iliad and Odyssey. A good fiction is one which (though false or invented) correctly represents reality and impresses a good character on its audience. Plato seems untroubled by the thought that an accurate representation of the way human beings behave in battle or in love could fail to impress the best character on its recipients. Is truthful representation or ethical effect the higher criterion? At one point Plato suggests it is the latter: some violent mythical tales are not true, and should not be told to the young even if they were (Republic 378a). The other main topic for discussion is mimesis, which here should be taken as impersonation or dramatic characterization. There are two modes of poetic discourse: one where the poet speaks in his own voice, the other (mimesis) where he hides himself, makes his language as like as possible to that of whatever person he has told us is about to speak, and at the beginning of the Iliad tries to make us think that the speaker is not Homer, but the priest, an old man (393a c). Hiding oneself behind a pretend character is implicitly deceitful and dubious. But Plato s objection to mimesis here is more sophisticated. He claims that to enact a dramatic part by making oneself resemble some character (and perhaps even to be the composer of a drama in which diverse persons appear; see Burnyeat 1999: ) causes one to become like such persons in real life. Given a prior argument that all members of the ideal community, and a fortiori its Guardians, should be specialists who exercise only one role, it follows that the city will produce better Guardians if it restricts the extent to which they indulge in dramatic art. Those whose dominant aim is the production of mimesis are ingenious and versatile individuals, but the ideal state will not tolerate them. The Guardians should use mimesis as little as possible, and be restricted to enacting the parts of noble, self-controlled and virtuous individuals, thus assimilating themselves to the kind of human being the state requires them to become. The arts in Republic 10 Republic Book 10 contains Plato s most prominent criticisms of the arts. Mimesis is the chief topic, but now, arguably, we must understand this term in a different sense, as image-making: making something that is not a real thing, but merely an image of a 4

28 PLATO thing. Both poets and visual artists are practitioners of mimesis in this sense, but the aim of this passage is to justify the banishment of mimetic poetry from the ideal city. The grounds are that mimesis is far removed from truth, though easy to mistake for the work of someone with knowledge, and that mimetic poetry appeals to an inferior part of the soul and thereby helps to subvert the rule of intellect and reason. While promising cognitive gain, poetry delivers only psychological and ethical damage to individual and community. Socrates here invokes the theory of Forms to explain the nature of mimesis as such. Whereas an ordinary object, such as a bed, is an imitation of the single and ultimately real Form of Bed, a painted picture of a bed is an imitation merely of the way some bed would appear from a certain angle. The use of the theory of Forms here is in some respects anomalous. Plato has a god bring Forms into existence, though elsewhere they exist eternally and no one creates them. Earlier in the Republic it seemed that philosophers alone have knowledge of Forms; here the ordinary craftsman looks to the Form for guidance in constructing a physical bed. Plato disparages mimesis in the visual arts by comparing it with holding up a mirror in which the world mechanically reproduces itself. The point of the comparison is arguably that the painter makes no real thing, only an image. His product, when compared with the bed and the Form of Bed, is thus at two moves from reality. To make such an image requires no genuine knowledge: no knowledge of the real things of which one makes an image. By a slightly strained analogy, Plato argues that a poet makes only images and is distant from knowledge: all poetic imitators, beginning with Homer, imitate images of virtue and all the other things they write about and have no grasp of the truth (600e). They produce only images of human life, and to do so requires no knowledge of the truth about what is good and bad in life. There is moreover no evidence, Plato suggests, of any good poet s manifesting ethical or political competence. Why does it matter that poetic image-making entails no genuine knowledge? Because there are people who hold the opposite view: they say that if a good poet produces fine poetry, he must have knowledge of the things he writes about, or else he wouldn t be able to produce it at all, on which grounds they claim poets know all crafts, all human affairs concerned with virtue and vice, and all about the gods as well (598d e). Plato aims to refute these claims. Fine poetry consists of image-making, and as such is compatible with the poet s ignorance of truths about what is real. Plato also undertakes to show which part of the human psyche mimetic poetry appeals to. The higher part of the soul uses reasoning in pursuit of its essential drive to understand the overall good. But the images of mimetic poetry are gratifying to a distinct inferior part, which is childish, unruly and emotional, and reacts in an unmeasured fashion to events in real life and in fiction. For example, when someone close to us dies, part of us considers what is for the best and desires restraint in feeling and outward behavior. At the same time another part tends towards indulgence in unbounded lamentation. There is a conflict of attitudes towards the same object, analogous to the phenomenon of visual illusion, where part of the mind calculates that a stick in water is straight, while another part persists in seeing it as bent. Poetry affects us emotionally below the level of rational desire and judgment. The kinds of event that provide the most successful content for mimetic poetry (and tragedy 5

29 CHRISTOPHER JANAWAY especially) involve extreme emotions and actions driven by emotion. So mimetic poetry naturally addresses and gratifies the inferior, lamenting part of us and fosters it at the expense of the rational and good-seeking part that should rule in a healthy soul. Plato s most serious charge against mimetic poetry (605c) also concerns its effects on the psyche. It is that with a few rare exceptions it is able to corrupt even decent people. Plato imagines such a decent person being powerfully affected by the experience of one of the heroes sorrowing and making a long lamenting speech or singing and beating his breast we enjoy it, give ourselves up to following it, sympathize with the hero, take his sufferings seriously, and praise as a good poet the one who affects us most in this way. The distancing provided by the artistic context insidiously lulls us into a positive evaluation of responses which we should avoid in real life. We relax our guard and allow the rule of the rational part of ourselves to lapse only a few are able to figure out that enjoyment of other people s sufferings is necessarily transferred to our own and that the pitying part, if it is nourished and strengthened on the sufferings of others, won t be easily held in check when we ourselves suffer (606b). The positive evaluation of our sympathetic feelings for the hero s sufferings rests on the fact that to see them brings us pleasure. So instead of regarding as valuable that which we judge to be best, we begin to value responses that happen to please us, and, Plato argues, this habit can corrode our attachment to the rational and the good in real life. Plato makes many assumptions here, but perhaps most notable is one that has featured in recent debates about the psychological effects of television and films (for the comparison see Nehamas 1988): that if we enjoy seeing the image of something enacted in a dramatic narrative, this causes in us an increased disposition to act or react similarly in real life. It is as if mimesis is transparent in a particular way: to enjoy or approve of a poetic image of X is not really different from enjoying or approving of X itself. Aristotle s remark in the Poetics that the enjoyment of mimesis is both natural for human beings and a source of learning (Aristotle 1987: 34) is the beginning of a reply to this assumption. On the grounds that it falsely masquerades as knowledge and is detrimental to the human mind, Plato banishes poetry from his ideal city. We may wonder how much of poetry this affects. At the beginning of the discussion poetry that is mimetic is to be excluded, but by the end it appears that all poetry is meant, and the intervening argument seems to tell us that all poetry is indeed mimetic, although Homer and the tragic poets (seen as a single tradition) provide the most focused target. Plato proposes to retain some poetry, namely hymns to the gods and eulogies to good people (607a). Given the earlier comments about beauty and grace, these works need not be dull and worthy, but clearly Plato prefers them because they will present a correct ethical view of the world and be a means to instilling the right character in the citizens. In his concluding remarks Plato mentions an ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy (607b). Poetry (of the kind excluded) aims at pleasure and mimesis, but if it can satisfy philosophy by producing an argument that it is beneficial to the community and to human life, then it can reclaim its place. If philosophers hear no such ajustification, they will use the argument of Republic Book 10 like an incantation so as to preserve ourselves from slipping back into that childish passion for poetry (608a). 6