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13Aesthetic Pursuits: Essays in Philosophy of ArtOxford University Press. 2016.Aesthetic Pursuits is a new collection of essays from Jerrold Levinson, one of the most prominent philosophers of art today, focusing on literature, film, and visual art, while addressing issues of humour, beauty, and the emotions. More than half of the essays in the volume are previously unpublished.
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90The irreducible historicality of the concept of artBritish Journal of Aesthetics 42 (4): 367-379. 2002.In this short paper I begin by underlining the sense in which my intentional-historical theory of art, first proposed in 1979, attributes to art a certain irreducible historicality. I next defend the theory, in broad outline, against a number of objections that have been raised against it in the past ten years. I conclude with some remarks on the similarities and differences between ordinary artefact concepts and the concept of an artwork.
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Philosophical aesthetics: An overviewIn The Oxford handbook of aesthetics, Oxford University Press. pp. 3--24. 2003.
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6About aboutness: poema pazzo pour ArturoRivista di Estetica 35 (2): 397-398. 2007.“What’s it all about?”,on a demandé, il y a cinquante ans,d’un certain Alfie, incarnò mémorablement par Michael Caine.Mais c’est pas clair quii a jamais su répondre. Tuttavia, è venuto, un po’ dopo,un filosofo, che si chiama Danto, Arturo.Lui sapeva assai bene rispondervi,cambiando, però, la domanda. Perché Danto s’è domandato, non“What’s it all about?”, ma piuttostoWhat is always about something?” E a questa domanda, ha risposto,in parte, “L’arte”. But other things are about other things,...
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410Defending hypothetical intentionalismBritish Journal of Aesthetics 50 (2): 139-150. 2010.I here defend hypothetical intentionalism, the view of literary and cinematic interpretation that I endorse, from some recent criticisms, and then illustrate the appeal of the view in connection with a recent film of enigmatic cast
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149Messages in artAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 73 (2). 1995.This Article does not have an abstract
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161Contemplating art: essays in aestheticsOxford University Press. 2006.Contemplating Art is a compendium of writings from the last ten years by one of the leading figures in aesthetics, Jerrold Levinson. The twenty-four essays range over issues in general aesthetics and those relating to specific arts--in particular music, film, and literature. It will appeal not only to philosophers but also to musicologists, literary theorists, art critics, and reflective lovers of the arts.
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163Music as narrative and music as dramaMind and Language 19 (4). 2004.In this paper I address the issue of narrativity in music. The central question is the extent to which pure instrumental music in the classical tradition can or should be understood as narrative, that is, as narrating a story of some kind. I am interested in the varying potential and aptness for narrative construal of different sorts of instrumental music, and in what the content of such narratives might plausibly be thought to be. But ultimately I explore, at greater length, an alternative way …Read more
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15A thousand entities: Comments on Haugeland's ontological supervenience'Southern Journal of Philosophy 22 (S1): 13-17. 1984.
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281Wollheim on pictorial representationJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (3): 227-233. 1998.
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4Book Reviews (review)Metaphilosophy 9 (2): 163-180. 2007.Book reviewed in this article: JohnKing‐FarlowandWilliamNielsChristensen. Faith and the Life of Reason. CharlesTravis. Saying and Understanding (A Generative Theory of Illocutions). MichaelOakeshott. On Human Conduct.
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101The particularisation of attributesAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 58 (2). 1980.This Article does not have an abstract
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92A note on categorical properties and contingent identityJournal of Philosophy 85 (12): 718-722. 1988.Stephen Yablo has attempted recently to revive the notion of contingent identity, identifying this with a relation of L coincidence between objects that are "distinct by nature but the same in the circumstances" (296). Yablo argues convincingly for the need of essentialist metaphysics to recognize some relation of this sort, a relation of "intimate identity-like connections between things" (296) if it is to acknowledge properly the intuitive difference between (i) the nonidentity of a bust B and…Read more
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33The Aesthetics of Music (review)Philosophical Review 109 (4): 608-614. 2000.As readers of this book will discover, from several disputes with me contained in its pages, Scruton and I are not in accord on a number of matters in the philosophy of music. Notwithstanding that, and more generally the fact that the book is controlled by a phenomenological-idealist perspective on music that I regard as fundamentally misplaced, in my estimation The Aesthetics of Music is the most valuable work to date on the subject of its title, one that addresses that subject in its full rang…Read more
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1Eduard Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful, trans. Geoffrey Payzant (review)Philosophy in Review 7 405-408. 1987.
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1Artworks as artifactsIn Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence (eds.), Creations of the Mind: Theories of Artifacts and Their Representaion, Oxford University Press. pp. 74--82. 2007.
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6Comment l'art pourrait-il rendre possibles certaines émotionsNouvelle Revue d'Esthétique 14 (2): 9-16. 2015.Je voudrais ici réfléchir, de façon provisoire et exploratoire, à la question de savoir en quels sens il est possible de dire que certaines émotions ne pouvaient pas exister avant que certaines œuvres d’art ou certains genres artistiques n’existent, ou qu’elles ne pourraient pas exister s’ils n’existaient pas. Mon but est donc de mieux comprendre le rôle que les arts peuvent jouer, à la fois dans la construction, dans la conception et dans la communication de certaines émotions – émotions qu’on …Read more
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7Reply to Riggle: Aesthetic History, Personality, and ProfileJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71 (3): 281-282. 2013.
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391What Are Aesthetic Properties?Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 79. 2005.[Derek Matravers] Jerrold 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 …Read more
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