The aesthetic attitude

British Journal of Aesthetics

Volumn 39, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 392-399

  Kemp, Gary ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 63149097271     PISSN: 00070904     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/bjaesthetics/39.4.392     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. George Dickie, American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. I (1964), pp. 54-64.
2. There is a good book on the subject, The Aesthetic Attitude, by David Fenner (Humanities Press, 1996); for discussion of Dickie, see pp. 98-110. Fenner is reviewed by Nick McAdoo in this journal, vol. 37, no. 4 (October 1097).
3. J. Stolnitz, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Criticism (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), pp. 32-42.
4. Cf. Fenner, Aesthetic Attitude, p. 104.
5. On this point see also Dickie's exchange with Elmer Duncan in the letters section of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. XXIII, no. 4 (1965), pp. 517-518,
6. and Dickie's Aesthetics: An Introduction (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1971), pp. 48-61.
7. The 1966 exchange between Dickie and Virgil Aldrich on this issue is frustrating because it is framed entirely in terms of perception. See Aldrich, 'Back to Aesthetic Experience', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. XXIV, no. 3 (1966), pp. 365-371
8. and Dickie, reply to Aldrich, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. XXV, no. 1 (1967), pp. 89-91.
9. Nick Zangwill, in 'UnKantian Notions of Disinterestedness', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 32, no. 1 (January 1992), points out that Kant's claim is that aesthetic judgement is based upon disinterested pleasure, not upon a disinterested attitude or experience. Aesthetic experience might be defined simply as that in which disinterested pleasure takes place, but it is not clear that Kant's account actually delivers the concept of an aesthetic attitude, if by an attitude we mean not a type of experience but something like a stance, something which can be activated at will. I think that the philosophically most important aspect of the aesthetic attitude theory is independent of the volitional question: the philosophically most important question is whether there is a specially aesthetic type of experience, and if so, whether it should be explained entirely from the subjective side, and not in terms of the distinctive sorts of objects or properties apprehended in aesthetic experience. The cogent substance of the aesthetic attitude theory consists in its affirmative answers to both questions.
10. R. Scruton, Art and Imagination (London: Routledge, 1974), p. 148.
11. Recent treatments of the issue within the framework of Kant's aesthetics include: P. Crowther, 'The Significance of Kant's Pure Aesthetic Judgements', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 36, no. 2 (April 1996);
12. C. Janaway, 'Kant's Aesthetics and the Empty Cognitive Stock', Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 189 (October 1997);
13. N. Zangwill, 'UnKantian Notions of Disinterestedness'
14. N. Zangwill, 'Kant on Pleasure in the Agreeable', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 53, no. 2 (Spring 1995);
15. P. Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1997);
16. S. Kemal, Kant's Aesthetic Theory (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992).
17. For a recent historical treatment of the concept of disinterestedness which includes further references to the issue considered historically, see A. Berleant, 'Beyond Disinterestedness', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 36, no. 3 (July 1994).
18. For an excellent discussion of the importance of explanation in aesthetic theory, as opposed to mere extensional adequacy, see Nick Zangwill, 'Groundrules in the Philosophy of Art', Philosophy, vol. 70 (1995).