ASAGE - American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal
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The Soviet Aesthetics of Aleksandr Voronsky: A Brief Exposition
No full textThis paper presents a concise exposition of the aesthetic theory of the early Soviet literary critic Aleksandr Voronsky, the editor of Red Virgin Soil who was executed in Josef Stalin?s Great Purge. Despite an anthology of Voronsky?s writings, published for the first time in English in 1998, no English-language scholarly attention has been paid to this work of non-Stalinist Soviet aesthetics. The author focuses on Voronsky?s Marxism-Plekhanovism, his understanding of art and the unconscious, and his method of aesthetic evaluation
A Beautiful Piece of Property: Toward a New Definition of Aesthetic Properties
No full text?Aesthetic valuism? maintains that aesthetic properties harbor an ineliminable evaluative component, and that to correctly and sincerely apply an aesthetic predicate to a thing just is to give an appraisal of its aesthetic goodness or badness. Anti-valuism denies this, and holds that even in the identification and ascription of evaluatively-loaded aesthetic properties, such as beautiful or graceful, we may identify a non-evaluative, purely descriptive, and patently aesthetic form of judgment or discrimination. In this essay, I formulate a new definition of aesthetic properties that is consistent with anti-valuism, in order to see how well it serves us, in comparison with a valuist definition that appears in the published philosophical literature. If my definition is at least as intuitively plausible as the valuist?s, it should be preferred. This is because the most complicated concept my definition asks you to understand is perceptual resemblance (a concept I spend a fair amount of time explaining). Value is harder to understand, and we don?t make it very easy on ourselves if we use one mystery (value) to define another (aesthetic properties). I end by reflecting on how my definition fits into wider aesthetic concerns
The Fifth Avenue Anti-Stuffed Shirt and Flying Trapeze Club: A Reading of George Cukor's HOLIDAY
No full textoai:ojs.pkp.sfu.ca:article/74The aim of this paper is to situate George Cukor?s 1938 film Holiday within an ongoing conversation about the perennial American tension between Romantic longings for self-authorship and the cold pragmatics of wealth accumulation. The aesthetic interest in Holiday is fundamentally an interest in the questions that American art and philosophy (early Hollywood film and Stanley Cavell as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson, respectively) pose to America about America. This paper is specifically motivated by Cavell?s conception of the remarriage comedy genre (as detailed in his Pursuits of Happiness) and his understanding of early-American cinema as an inheritance of American transcendentalism. Herein, I argue that Holiday fulfills the requirements of Cavell?s genre study and is thoroughly saturated by Emerson?s philosophical attitudes. I argue for Holiday?s inclusion under the rubric of Cavell?s genre, and I unpack the film?s enduring thematic commentary upon an American tension that unwisely pits fiscal obligations against the pursuit of self-knowledge
From Individuality to Universality: the Role of Aesthetic Education in Kant
No full textIn this paper I make a reconstruction of Kant?s idea of aesthetic education and show the peculiarity of this idea in comparison with more familiar projects of Schiller and the German Romantics. In the first section I briefly outline those features of Kant?s ethics which are relevant for this problem, namely its universalistic character. In the second section I show how aesthetic experience, according to Kant, could help to make an individual less sensitive to the demands of particular interests and motives. In particular, I discuss the roles of the beautiful and of the sublime. In the conclusion I briefly compare Kant?s idea of aesthetic education with Schiller?s idea of the same
Music and Motion
No full textThis paper explores the simultaneous occurrence and sometimes partnership of music and motion in the field of dance, within which motion and music are repeatedly linked and displayed. At the outset of the paper, I ask: How have simultaneous occurrences of and partnerships between music and motion been discussed? Are the conclusions of these discussions well grounded? Do they provide a complete account of the relations between music and motion? In addressing these questions, I argue for six main theses. First, music is partly constituted by motion in the sense that the constitutive element?in this case, motion?gives rise to the constituted element?in this case, music. Second, there are abstract motion-blueprints for motion, which are potential, and there is concrete motion, which is actual. Third, abstract motion-blueprints involve a reference to rhythm but are not rhythmic themselves, while concrete motion in music is quite often, if not always, rhythmic? where ?rhythm? is understood to mean recurring stress, release, and other repeated functions of entities. Fourth, music often involves concrete motion, and it is quite often, if not always, rhythmic. Fifth, abstract motion-blueprints and concrete motion can be and often are involved in music performance. Sixth, and finally, the relation between concrete motion and music is not uni-directional but bi-directional?i.e., the two do not exist in isolation from each other, but instead co-exist interactively. I call this a constitutive relation. I close the paper with discussion of this relation and why it is a more plausible and useful understanding of the relationship between music and movement