184 research outputs found
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Empathy, the Aesthetic Emotion, and Expression in the Visual Arts
No full textIn the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a great deal of work by German thinkers (it is not quite clear how to classify them) working on the psychological and physiological bases of our judgements of beauty and ugliness. A key term for them was ‘Einfühlung’ – literally, ‘feeling into’ and later translated as ‘empathy’. This was picked up by Vernon Lee, the pen name of the English writer Violet Paget (now better known for her light Gothic fiction). This chapter follows Lee's development of ‘empathy theory’. This falls into two phases: when our aesthetic judgements are grounded in physical reactions and when they are grounded in psychological reactions. Part of this, it is argued, involves both the attribution of ‘the aesthetic emotion’ to artworks and ‘common or garden’ emotions. Although Lee never developed a full-fledged theory, her work can still be mined for insight, and the problems she faced remain unsolved
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What is the Object of an Empathetic Emotion?
No full textThis paper poses a problem for the standard model of empathy: what is the object of the empathic emotion? It seems it can be neither the target of empathy (the emotion is not felt for him or her) nor the object of the target's emotion
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Film, literature and non-cognitive affect
No full textAmy Coplan argues that recent work in the philosophy of the emotions suggests that film is more effective that literature in inducing non-cognitive affect. Derek Matravers replies to this, and suggests reasons for scepticism
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Aesthetic properties 1 - Derek Matravers
No full textJerrold Levinson maintains that he is a realist about aesthetic properties. This paper considers his positive arguments for such a view. An argument from Roger Scruton, that aesthetic realism would entail the absurd claim that many aesthetic predicates were ambiguous, is also considered and it is argued that Levinson is in no worse position with respect to this argument than anyone else. However, Levinson cannot account for the phenomenon of aesthetic autonomy: namely, that we cannot be put in a position to make an aesthetic judgement by testimony alone. Finally, Levinson's views on the ontology of aesthetic properties are considered and found wanting
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Art and Emotion
No full textDerek Matravers examines how emotions form a bridge between our experience of art and of life. We often find that a particular poem, painting, or piece of music carries an emotional charge; and we may experience emotions towards, or on behalf of, a particular fictional character. These experiences are philosophically puzzling, for their causes seem quite different from the causes of emotion in the rest of our lives. Matravers shows that what these experiences have in common, and what links them to the expression of emotion in non-artistic cases, is the role played by feeling. He carries out a critical survey of various accounts of the nature of fiction, attacks contemporary cognitivist accounts of expression, and offers an uncompromising defence of a controversial view about musical expression: that music expresses the emotions it causes its listeners to feel
Conflict and Cultural Heritage: A Moral Analysis of the Challenges of Heritage Protection
No full textIn the third issue of the J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy series, authors Helen Frowe and Derek Matravers pivot from the earlier tone of the series in discussing the appropriate response to attacks on cultural heritage with their paper
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Conflicts in Heritage Protection
No full textThe Inseparability Thesis holds that protecting heritage is inseparable from protecting people and therefore cannot conflict with protecting people. This chapter argues that we ought to reject this thesis. Conflicts between protecting heritage and protecting people are rife, both within and without war. Most obviously, these conflicts occur in cases of scarce resources. But they also occur when we distribute the risks of war. Protecting heritage can require combatants to impose risks on civilians and to incur risks to themselves. Judging the permissibility of imposing such risks and ordering combatants to incur them demands not only that we recognise conflicts between protecting heritage and protecting people but also that we develop a rubric for comparing the moral significance of harms to each. Implementing the provisions of the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in Times of Armed Conflict also demands the use of such a rubric
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Introducing Philosophy of Art: Eight Case Studies
No full textDerek Matravers introduces students to the philosophy of art through a close examination of eight famous works of twentieth-century art. Each work has been selected in order to best illustrate and illuminate a particular problem in aesthetics. Each artwork forms a basis for a single chapter and readers are introduced to such issues as artistic value, intention, interpretation, and expression through a careful analysis of the artwork. Questions considered include what does art mean in contemporary art practice? Is the artistic value of a painting the same as how much you like it? If a painting isn't of anything, then how do we understand it? Can art be immoral? By grounding abstract and theoretical discussion in real examples the book provides an excellent way into the subject for readers new to the philosophical dimension of art appreciation
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