According to the literary humanist, works of imaginative literature have an objective meaning which is fixed at the time of their production and which is the same for all readers, then and thereafter, not subject to the vagaries of individual readers' responses.
The Aesthetic Mind breaks new ground in bringing together empirical sciences and philosophy to enhance our understanding of aesthetics and the experience of art.
Musical Understandings presents an engaging collection of essays on the philosophy of music, written by Stephen Davies--one of the most distinguished philosophers in the field.
In works of literary fiction, it is a part of the fiction that the words of the text are being recounted by some work-internal 'voice': the literary narrator.
Empathy has for a long time, at least since the eighteenth century, been seen as centrally important in relation to our capacity to gain a grasp of the content of other people's minds, and predict and explain what they will think, feel, and do; and in relation to our capacity to respond to others ethically.
The Architecture of Theology presents a fresh reading of Christian theology, re-interpreting discussions of theological method and considering them in light of contemporary philosophical debates.
This is a long-awaited reissue of Jerrold Levinson's 1990 book Music, Art, and Metaphysics, which gathers together the writings that made him a leading figure in contemporary aesthetics.
This is a long-awaited reissue of Jerrold Levinson's 1990 book Music, Art, and Metaphysics, which gathers together the writings that made him a leading figure in contemporary aesthetics.
Philosophers on Music: Experience, Meaning, and Work presents significant new contributions to central issues in the philosophy of music, written by leading philosophers working in the analytic tradition.
Artworld Metaphysics turns a critical eye upon aspects of the artworld, and articulates some of the problems, principles, and norms implicit in the actual practices of artistic creation, interpretation, evaluation, and commodification.
Diotima's Children is a re-examination of the rationalist tradition of aesthetics which prevailed in Germany in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century.
'beauty has purport and significance only for human beings, for beings at once animal and rational' In the Critique of Judgement (1790) Kant offers a penetrating analysis of our experience of the beautiful and the sublime, discussing the objectivity of taste, aesthetic disinterestedness, the relation of art and nature, the role of imagination, genius and originality, the limits of representation and the connection between morality and the aesthetic.
Narratives are artefacts of a special kind: they are intentionally crafted devices which fulfil their story-telling function by manifesting the intentions of their makers.
Diotima's Children is a re-examination of the rationalist tradition of aesthetics which prevailed in Germany in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century.
