Derek Matravers

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Oxford Handbook of AestheticsDerek MatraversThe Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, edited by Jerrold Levinson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, 821pp., $99.00 Hardback.The aesthetics community has much for which to thank Jerrold Levinson. His papers are required reading on a number of topics in aesthetics, and he is renowned as a generous commentator and critic. The considerable labor he must have expended in editing this book is yet another reason to be grateful for his industry. As well as a useful Preface, which lays out the editor's rationale for the content, the book contains two survey articles and thenforty-six individual articles that, according to the Preface, cover "virtually all the major issues in philosophical aesthetics that are active topics of discussion and research" (p. v). I shall begin this review with a brief overview of the book. I shall then comment on the extent to which it fulfils it stated purpose, on its usefulness in teaching, and what it might show us about the current state of our discipline. Finally, I shall compare it with similar books that are currently available.The first of four parts consists of the two overview articles: the first covering debates on contemporary aesthetics, and the second an account of recent work in the history of aesthetics. The first, by Levinson himself, usefully demarcates the subject before organizing the discussion into three foci of aesthetics (art, the aesthetic property, and the aesthetic experience) and then five problems (the concept of the aesthetic, the definition of art, the ontology of art, representation in art, and expression in art). The piece is skillfully organized, and Levinson's grasp of the details of the various topics is unsurpassed. It is very much a teaser, however, as thebrevity means that only the bare outlines of the various problems get discussed. The second article, by Paul Guyer (once again, it is difficult to think of anyone more suitable to the task) does not attempt to give an overview of the history of aesthetics, but rather an overview of the recent work in the history of modern aesthetics. Although descriptive, this is informed by Guyer's view that the Anglo-American tradition has been unduly restricted in both the history it has studied and in the range of its current concerns. The article aims to be comprehensive: the bibliography takes up eight of its thirty-five pages.The second part, which is the most extensive, consists of twenty-five essays of general issues in aesthetics. It begins with two essays on aesthetic realism. The first, by Nick Zangwill, advocating the position and the second, by John Bender, opposing it. This is the only instance of such a debate: the other twenty-three essays cover all the general issues currently being discussed (at least, this reviewer could not see any obvious gaps). The third part covers aesthetic issues of specific artforms including, it is nice to see, Architecture, Sculpture, Dance, Theatre,Poetry, Photography, and Film as well as Music, Painting, and Literature. [End Page 104] The final part certainly has the most intriguing heading: "Further Directions in Aesthetics." This pushes out the boundaries, including articles that relate aesthetics to evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, the everyday, postmodernism, cultural studies, and the avant-garde.One function of a handbook (or companion) is to offer readers a one-stop place from which to learn what the main issues are in a particular area, what is the orthodox mainstream view, and what are the main points for and against. It is an intriguing matter that fifteen years ago there were few introductions to philosophical aesthetics, and ever fewer handbooks or companions such as this one. I imagine that there are many people who, like me, make use of such books (I look on my shelves and see, as well as the book I am reviewing, six introductions to aesthetics and two Companions) yet who feel that the notion of a philosophical textbook is problematic. It is difficult to be precise about this feeling of unease although, were I to do so, I would point to two issues. The first worry is that presenting a synoptic view of an area...

This clear and thorough introduction provides students with the skills necessary to understand the main thinkers, texts and arguments of political philosophy and thought. Each chapter comprises a brief overview of a major political thinker, followed by an introduction to one or more of their most influential works and an introduction to key secondary readings. Key features include: * exercises * reading notes * guides for further reading The book introduces and assesses: Machiavelli's _Prince_; Hobbes' _Leviathan_; Locke's _Second Treatise on Government_; Rousseau's _Social Contract_; Marx and Engels' _German Ideology_ ; Mill's _On Liberty and The Subjection of Women_. _Reading Political Philosophy_ requires no previous knowledge of philosophy or politics and is ideal for newcomers to political philosophy and political thought.

This paper starts from the fact that the study of narrative in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy is almost exclusively the study of fictional narrative. It returns to an earlier debate in which Hayden White argued that “historiography is a form of fiction-making.” Although White’s claims are hyperbolical, the paper argues that he was correct to stress the importance of the claim that fiction and non-fiction use “the same techniques and strategies.” A distinction is drawn between properties of narratives that are simply properties of narratives and properties of narratives that play a role in forming readers’ beliefs about the world. Using this distinction, it is shown that it is an important feature of non-fictions that they are narratives; it is salutary to recognise non-fictions as being more like fictions than they are like the events they represent.

The destruction of cultural heritage in war is currently attracting considerable attention. ISIS’s campaign of deliberate destruction across the Middle East was met with widespread horror and calls for some kind of international response. The United States attracted criticism for both its accidental damaging of Ancient Babylon in 2015 and its failure to protect the Mosul Museum from looters in 2003. In 2016, the International Criminal Court prosecuted its first case of the destruction of heritage as a war crime. While the destruction of heritage is widely condemned, there has also been condemnation of calls to mobilize our resources for the sake of heritage protection when human beings face threats to life and limb. Such issues are both philosophically rich and personally significant to a wide range of people. And yet they have been largely neglected by academic philosophers. This book makes a substantial contribution to developing this new philosophical territory. The contributors are a mixture of internationally recognized authorities in their fields and early-career researchers working in this area. Their eleven original essays investigate a variety of philosophical and ethical issues arising from the phenomenon of heritage destruction in war, including conflicts between protecting heritage and protecting people, how we ought to respond to heritage that is damaged in war, the nature of the harm caused by such damage, and the morally appropriate treatment of sites of war and conflict that have themselves become heritage sites.

The recent exhibition at the Hayward must surely have prompted anyone who paid £5 to see it to ask whether some of what they were being shown was worth looking at. This is not simply the 'But is it art?' question all over again, but something more specific. do we have a reason to _see_ these things, as opposed to hearing about them, reading about them or appreciating them in some other way? One would expect the answer to be 'yes'. Art, like malt whisky, is made to be experienced. That is, one can look forward to it, talk about it, collect it, buy it or sell it but ultimately what gives its existence point is that it provides a worthwhile experience for people who try it. There would be no point in making malt whisky just to put vitriol into it and there would seem to be no point in exhibiting works of art which are not worth looking at

This study asserts that philosophical interest in the connection between music and the emotions lies in the light it could throw on the nature of expression. Expression in turn is interesting because of the light it could throw on the nature of understanding and of value. Three different sorts of theory are considered: those that rely on experienced resemblance, those that rely on some imaginative state and those that rely on an aroused feeling. It is suggested, following Malcolm Budd, that room might be found for all these accounts

There are several interconnected themes in Roger Scruton’s The Aesthetics of Architecture, including an account of aesthetic experience, a criticism of reductive theories of architecture, and an account of the self. Through each of these themes Scruton spins a web of argument which supports some manner of conservatism about architecture, and, even more broadly, a conservatism about culture. In this paper I want, from a broadly Scrutonian perspective, to discuss whether it would be appropriate to use architecture in the same way as some have used the visual arts this century, particularly in 1950s and 60s New York, as a vehicle for criticising certain ingrained habits of seeing. By this I mean art which deliberately frustrates prior expectations of what would be something pleasing to look at. I shall work with an example, which I take to be only a placeholder for any number of candidates, of architecture which pays no regard to symmetry and what I will broadly call ‘laws of proportion’

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 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. /// [Jerrold Levinson] Being an aesthetic realist is hard work. Derek Matravers has raised a number of concerns for the brand of aesthetic realism that I have defended in the past, and that I continue to defend, albeit with modification. Much turns on the nature of aesthetic properties, and on the reasons for acknowledging their existence. I here try to provide further illumination on both scores, suggesting in particular that many aesthetic properties can be viewed as manifest higher-order ways of appearing. Toward the end of my discussion the question of whether or not aesthetic properties are response-dependent is addressed, and I offer the tentative conclusion that some are, and some are not

To write Narrative Justice, one would need to be expert in the philosophy of fiction, in criminology, in crime, and in military history. Hence, possibly only someone with exactly Rafe McGregor's background could have done it. Aside from the truly interdisciplinary nature of the book, several other virtues stand out. I will mention in particular the rigorous argumentation and the clarity of the writing. McGregor does not shelter behind obfuscation; everything is there in plain sight. Indeed, his occasional glosses of some of the rather more self-indulgent writing of his interlocutors are most welcome.There is much in the book that is...

The relation between art and morality is one of the vexed issues of aesthetics; it has a history at least from Plato and has been written about, or commented on, by most if not all the luminaries in aesthetics—it is not coincidence that one of the most influential papers on these debates is also one of the most cited papers of this journal. Also, the (im)pertinence of moral concerns for the assessment of artworks is arguably one of the most discussed philosophical issues in the public opinion (albeit not always informed by philosophical insights). The prompt for this Special Issue was the publication, over a short space of time, of four books in the area: James Harold’s Dangerous Art: On Moral Criticisms of Artwork (2020), Erich Hatala Matthes’s Drawing the Line: What to Do with the Work of Immoral Artists from Museums to Movies (2022), Ted Nannicelli’s Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism (2020), and Mary Beth Willard’s Why It’s OK to Enjoy the Art of Immoral Artists (2021). In this issue, each of these authors provides a précis of their own book, a criticism of one of the other books, and then a defence of their own work against this criticism. Although each book is, obviously, very different, there are some overlapping concerns that make for an especially productive interaction. In particular, one thread that runs through is the current vexed issue of what attitude an audience should take on a work of art in the light of facts about the moral character of its creator. With the wars over ‘cancel culture’ raging in the popular discourse, it is important to subject this issue to detailed philosophical examination.

Empathy--our capacity to cognitively or affectively connect with other people's thoughts and feelings--is a concept whose definition and meaning varies widely within philosophy and other disciplines. Philosophical Perspectives on Empathy advances research on the nature and function of empathy by exploring and challenging different theoretical approaches to this phenomenon. The first section of the book explores empathy as a historiographical method, presenting a number of rich and interesting arguments that have influenced the debate from the Nineteenth Century to the present day. The next group of essays broadly accepts the centrality of perspective-taking in empathy. Here the authors attempt to refine and improve this particular conception of empathy by clarifying the intentionality of the perspective taker's emotion, the perspective taker's meta-cognitive capacities, and the nature of central imagining itself. Finally, the concluding section argues for the re-evaluation, or even rejection, of empathy. These essays advance alternative theories that are relevant to current debates, such as narrative engagement and competence, attunement or the sharing of mental states, and the "second-person" model of empathy. This book features a wide range of perspectives on empathy written by experts across several different areas of philosophy. It will be of interest to researchers and upper-level students working on the philosophy of emotions across ethics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and the history of philosophy.