Sensitivity, sensibility, and aesthetic realism

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 59, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 73-83

  Bender, John W ^a  

^a OHIO UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949276991     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0021-8529.00008     Document Type: Review

References (18)

1. There is, of course, considerable debate whether aesthetic terms are often inherently value-laden, whether such ladenness is defeasible or not, and whether it is best to conceive of the normativity of such terms as a matter of logic or a matter of conversational implicature. See, e.g., Frank Sibley, "Particularity, Art, and Evaluation," Philosophical Review 74 (1965): 137-193,
2. and "General Criteria and Reasons in Aesthetics," from Essays on Aesthetics, ed. John Fisher (Temple University Press, 1983)
3. reprinted in John W. Bender and H. Gene Blocker, eds., Contemporary Philosophy of Art: Readings in Analytic Aesthetics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993);
4. Jerrold Levinson, "Aesthetic Supervenience," in Music, Art, and Metaphysics (Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 134-158,
5. and "Being Realistic about Aesthetic Properties," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52 (1994): 351-354;
6. Alan Goldman, Aesthetic Value (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995);
7. and Nick Zangwill, "The Beautiful, The Dainty, and The Dumpy," The British Journal of Aesthetics 35 (1995): 317-329.
8. There has also been debate about whether one can distinguish aesthetic and nonaesthetic properties or predicates at all. Although I admit that there may be unclear cases, I take a roughly Siblean position that aesthetic properties are those that function in at least implicitly normative or evaluative ways that connect up to our standards of judgment. (This is why their recognition requires an "exercise of taste," as Sibley puts it.) Aesthetic properties are potential value-making properties of artworks. Some such properties are denoted by terms that are obviously evaluatively suggestive (e.g., "bombastic"), but some are denoted by relatively neutral terms (e.g., "sad"), yet can still be potentially value-making properties. But see Ted Cohen's "A Critique of Sibley's Position: Aesthetics/ Nonaesthetics and the Concept of Taste," in G. Dickie, R. Sclafani, and R. Roblin, eds.,Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989),
9. and Marcia Muelder Eaton's "The Intrinsic, Non-supervenient Nature of Aesthetic Properties," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52 (1994): 383-397 for skepticism over the aesthetic/nonaesthetic distinction.
10. A recent article by Iuliana Corina Vaida in this journal does a fine job of discussing these problems. See "The Quest for Objectivity: Secondary Qualities and Aesthetic Qualities," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 283-297.
11. John W. Bender, "Realism, Supervenience, and Irresolvable Aesthetic Disputes," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54 (1996): 371-381.
12. See Levinson, "Being Realistic about Aesthetic Properties."
13. For a discussion of the underdetermination of interpretation, see Robert J. Matthews, "Describing and Interpreting a Work of Art," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 36 (1977): 5-14,
14. reprinted in Bender and Blocker, eds., Contemporary Philosophy of Art, pp. 444-454.
15. Reported in Alan R. Hirsch, MD, review of Smell: The Secret Seducer, by Piet Vroon, Anton van Amerongen, and H. de Vries, The Journal of the American Medical Association 279 (1998): 1840.
16. Maynard A. Amerine and Edward B. Roessler, Wines: Their Sensory Evaluation, rev. ed. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1983), p. 58.
17. Levinson, "Aesthetic Properties, Evaluative Force, and Differences in Sensibility," in Aesthetic Concepts: Essays after Sibley (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
18. Levinson, "Aesthetic Properties."