Encyclopedia of Aesthetics

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Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, published in 1998 by Oxford University Press, [1] is an encyclopedia that covers philosophical, historical, sociological, and biographical aspects of Art and Aesthetics worldwide. The second edition (2014) is now available online as part of Oxford Art Online. [2] [3]

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Many prominent aesthetics scholars contributed. [4] The encyclopedia aimed to provide "a genealogy of aesthetics sufficient to integrate its philosophical and cultural roles, and that it contributes to a discursive public sphere in which multiple perspectives are articulated, dialogue fostered, and common ground constructed." [4]

The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics is considered to be the first reference work to survey artistic theory and art history from classical philosophy to contemporary critical theory, featuring over 600 articles that focus on many topics of art history including painting, sculpture, and the artistic and cultural aesthetics of world nations. [5]

The only comparable work is 25 years older: The Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas (New York, NY: Scribner, 1973–74), which had articles on aesthetics and other key topics, written from an interdisciplinary approach. [6] There are other contemporary works that deal with the aesthetics universe, but "from within their respective disciplinary frameworks"; [6] they are: The Dictionary of Art (New York, NY: Grove's Dictionaries, 1996) and Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London, England: Routledge, 1998).

The Encyclopedia was written from a comparative perspective, with the traditions of non western societies in view, and re-thought the critical assumptions of western aesthetics. [7] Examples of such perspective are the entries: grotesque; Black Aesthetic, African Aesthetics, Caribbean Aesthetics, Chinese Aesthetics, Indian Aesthetics, Japanese Aesthetics, Islamic Aesthetics, Latin American Aesthetics; Tribal art; [8] Jokes, Camp, Play; Anti-art, Situationist Aesthetics; Gay Aesthetics, Lesbian Aesthetics; Law and Art, Moral Rights of Arts, Cultural Property, Obscenity, Politics and Aesthetics, Morality and Aesthetics. [7] The longest entry, 35 pages, is for Immanuel Kant. [6]

Notes

  1. Kelly, 1998.
  2. Oxford Reference: Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, second edition.
  3. "About" at the Oxford Art Online website.
  4. 1 2 Silvers, 2000.
  5. "Oxford-Reference"
  6. 1 2 3 Riedel, 1999.
  7. 1 2 Review by Giuseppe Patella
  8. Dutton, Denis Tribal Art Archived 2020-05-17 at the Wayback Machine in Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, edited by Michael Kelly (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Related Research Articles

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and the nature of taste; and functions as the philosophy of art. Aesthetics examines the philosophy of aesthetic value, which is determined by critical judgements of artistic taste; thus, the function of aesthetics is the "critical reflection on art, culture and nature".

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In ethics, casuistry is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending abstract rules from a particular case, and reapplying those rules to new instances. This method occurs in applied ethics and jurisprudence. The term is also used pejoratively to criticise the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions. It has been defined as follows:

Study of cases of conscience and a method of solving conflicts of obligations by applying general principles of ethics, religion, and moral theology to particular and concrete cases of human conduct. This frequently demands an extensive knowledge of natural law and equity, civil law, ecclesiastical precepts, and an exceptional skill in interpreting these various norms of conduct....

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Gregory Paul Currie FAHA is a British philosopher and academic, known for his work on philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of mind. Currie is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York and Executive Editor of Mind & Language.

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Richard Shusterman is an American pragmatist philosopher. Known for his contributions to philosophical aesthetics and the emerging field of somaesthetics, currently he is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University.

Philosophy of music is the study of "fundamental questions about the nature and value of music and our experience of it". The philosophical study of music has many connections with philosophical questions in metaphysics and aesthetics. The expression was born in the 19th century and has been used especially as the name of a discipline since the 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philosophy</span> Study of general and fundamental questions

Philosophy is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions.

Douglas Lane Patey is an American academic and professor of English at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. His area of expertise is 18th-century British literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susanne Langer</span> American philosopher, known for theories on the influences of art on the mind

Susanne Katherina Langer was an American philosopher, writer, and educator known for her theories on the influences of art on the mind. She was one of the earliest American women to achieve an academic career in philosophy and the first woman to be professionally recognized as an American philosopher. Langer is best remembered for her 1942 book Philosophy in a New Key which was followed by a sequel Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art in 1953. In 1960, Langer was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Yuriko Saito is a retired Japanese-American philosopher specializing in aesthetics, including wabi-sabi, the Japanese philosophy of appreciating transience and imperfection. She is a professor emeritus of philosophy at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arnold Berleant</span> American scholar and author

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Peter Vaudreuil Lamarque is a British aesthethician and philosopher of art, working in the analytic tradition. Since 2000, he has been a professor of philosophy at the University of York. He is known primarily for his work in philosophy of literature and on the role of emotions in fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aesthetics of nature</span> Subfield of philosophical ethics

Aesthetics of nature is a sub-field of philosophical ethics, and refers to the study of natural objects from their aesthetical perspective.

Feminist aesthetics first emerged in the 1970s and refers not to a particular aesthetic or style but to perspectives that question assumptions in art and aesthetics concerning gender-role stereotypes, or gender. Feminist aesthetics has a relationship to philosophy. The historical philosophical views of what beauty, the arts, and sensory experiences are, relate to the idea of aesthetics. Aesthetics looks at styles of production. In particular, feminists argue that despite seeming neutral or inclusive, the way people think about art and aesthetics is influenced by gender roles. Feminist aesthetics is a tool for analyzing how art is understood using gendered issues. A person's gender identity affects the ways in which they perceive art and aesthetics because of their subject position and that perception is influenced by power. The ways in which people see art is also influenced by social values such as class and race. One's subject position in life changes the way art is perceived because of people's different knowledge's about life and experiences. In the way that feminist history unsettles traditional history, feminist aesthetics challenge philosophies of beauty, the arts and sensory experience.

The following is a list of works by philosopher Graham Priest.

Cynthia A. Freeland is an American philosopher of art. She has published three monographs, over two dozen articles, and edited several books. She is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Houston. She was the president of the American Society of Aesthetics until 2017. She has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2003 for a research project on Fakes and Forgeries. Her book But is it Art? (2001) has been translated into fourteen languages and was republished as part of the Oxford Very Short Introductions series. She talked about her book Portraits&Persons with Nigel Warburton on the Philosophy Bites podcast. She was interviewed by Hans Maes for the book Conversations on Art and Aesthetics (2017) which includes a photograph of her by American photographer Steve Pyke.

Jenefer Mary Robinson is an American philosopher, author and emerita professor of philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. She writes on aesthetics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind and theory of emotions. She has published two monographs, one edited collection, and numerous peer reviewed articles. She is on the editorial Board for the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and was on the editorial board for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. She was president of the American Society of Aesthetics from 2009 until 2013. In 2007 she was a Leverhulme visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Nottingham and in 2006 she received a Rieveschl Award for Scholarly and/or Creative Works. She received the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in September 2002. She was interviewed by Hans Maes for his book Conversations on Art and Aesthetics, which also contains her portrait by American photographer Steve Pyke. Debates in Aesthetics, an open access journal published by the British Society of Aesthetics, dedicated Vol. 14 No. 1 to her work.

Mitchell Green is a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, where he sits on the steering committee of the Cognitive Science program and the executive committee of the Graduate School. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Philosophia.

Aaron Ridley is a British philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton. He is known for his works on aesthetics, particularly the philosophy of music, and on Nietzsche.

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