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427Aesthetic RelativismPostgraduate Journal of Aesthetics 7 (2): 1-12. 2010.As Hume remarks, the view that aesthetic evaluations are ‘subjective’ is part of common sense—one certainly meets it often enough in conversation. As philosophers, we can distinguish the one sense of the claim (‘aesthetic evaluations are mind- dependent’) from another (‘aesthetic evaluations are relative’). A plausible reading of the former claim (‘some of the grounds of some aesthetic evaluations are response- dependent’) is true. This paper concerns the latter claim. It is not unknown, or even…Read more
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241Art and the feelings and emotionsBritish Journal of Aesthetics 31 (4): 322-331. 1991.Many of the judgements we make of particular works of art employ the vocabulary of feelings or emotions. Typically, the critic uses terms such as 'sad', 'joyful', 'optimistic', 'gloomy', 'angry', 'lusty', 'exuberant' and so forth to describe aspects of works of art. Such descriptions generate one of the most intractable problems in aesthetics: that of specifying the relation between art and the feelings and emotions thus ascribed to them
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240This paper argues that the role of the negative emotions in the appreciation of art is misunderstood. Usually taken to generate the 'paradox of tragedy', in fact the negative emotions play an essential role in creativity, and hence in art appreciation
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237Art and emotionOxford University Press. 1998.Matravers examines how emotions form the bridge between our experience of art and of life. We often find that a particular poem, painting, or piece of music carries an emotional charge; and we may experience emotions toward, or on behalf of, a particular fictional character. Matravers shows that what these experiences have in common, and what links them to the expression of emotion in non-artistic cases, is the role played by feeling. He carries out a critical survey of various accounts of the n…Read more
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218Fictional assent and the (so-called) `puzzle of imaginative resistance'In Matthew Kieran & Dominic McIver Lopes (eds.), Imagination, Philosophy, and the Arts, Routledge. pp. 91-106. 2003.This article criticises existing solutions to the 'puzzle of imaginative resistance', reconstrues it, and offers a solution of its own. About the Book : Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts is the first comprehensive collection of papers by philosophers examining the nature of imagination and its role in understanding and making art. Imagination is a central concept in aesthetics with close ties to issues in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language, yet it has not received the kind …Read more
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202The aesthetic experienceBritish Journal of Aesthetics 43 (2): 158-174. 2003.This paper joins recent attempts to defend a notion of aesthetic experience. It argues that phenomenological facts and facts about aesthetic value support the Kantian notion that aesthetic experience lies between, but differs from, pleasures of the agreeable and pleasures stemming from cognitions. It then shows that accounts by Beardsley, Levinson, and Savile fail to resolve clear tensions that surface in attempting to characterize such an experience. An account of aesthetic experience—as involv…Read more
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191Art, expression and emotionIn Berys Nigel Gaut & Dominic Lopes (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, Routledge. 2000.The primary use of such terms as "sadness" and "joy" is to refer to the mental states of people. In such cases, the claim that someone is sad is equivalent to the claim that they feel sad. However, our use of emotion terms is broader than this; a funeral is a sad occasion, a wedding is a happy event. In such cases, a justification can be given for the use of the word. For example, it is part of what is meant by "sadness" that events such as funerals are an appropriate object for such emotions an…Read more
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138Why We Should Give Up on the ImaginationMidwest Studies in Philosophy 34 (1): 190-199. 2010.This paper criticises the current orthodoxy that people who engage with fiction fils are exercising their imagination
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135Aesthetic concepts and aesthetic experiencesBritish Journal of Aesthetics 36 (3): 265-279. 1996.In this paper I want to return to some well-worn ideas; specifically, the attempt to show that there is a distinctive subject-matter of the aesthetic via consideration of the difference between aesthetic and non-aesthetic concepts. The classic exposition of this distinction is Frank Sibley's 'Aesthetic Concepts'. Sibley claimed that, given a set of relevant terms, there will be widespread non-collusive agreement as to which are aesthetic and which non-aesthetic. Non-aesthetic terms include _'red…Read more
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124Beliefs and Fictional NarratorsAnalysis 55 (2). 1995.In his book _The Nature of Fiction_ Greg Currie makes the following proposal concerning the contents of works of fiction: 'Fs' is an abbreviation of 'P is true in fiction S', where P is some proposition and S is some work of fiction. 'Fs' is true iff it is reasonable for the informed reader to infer that the fictional author of S believes that P. In reading a fiction we engage in a make-believe, and the fictional author is that fictional character constructed within our make-believe whom we take…Read more
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123Debates in Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology (edited book)Routledge. 2002.This textbook reflects the buoyant state of contemporary political philosophy, and the development of the subject in the past two decades. It includes seminal papers on fundamental philosophical issues such as: the nature of social explanation distributive justice liberalism and communitarianism citizenship and multiculturalism nationalism democracy criminal justice. A range of views is represented, demonstrating the richness of the philosophical contribution to some of the most contested areas …Read more
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118Jerrold 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…Read more
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113Fiction and NarrativeOxford University Press. 2014.Do fictions depend upon imagination? Derek Matravers argues against the mainstream view that they do, and offers an original account of what it is to read, listen to, or watch a narrative. He downgrades the divide between fiction and non-fiction, largely dispenses with the imagination, and in doing so illuminates a succession of related issues
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100The institutional theory: A protean creatureBritish Journal of Aesthetics 40 (2): 242-250. 2000.In 1987 Jerrold Levinson wrote, in a review of George Dickie's _The Art Circle_, that in reading it he felt 'caught in a kind of aesthetic time warp'. I had the same feeling, and indeed have the same feeling when I read papers published since on Dickie's theory. A recent criticism in this journal by Oswald Hanfling is a case in point. To be fair, Hanfling explicit states that he is discussing the 1974 version of the theory rather than Dickie's current views. However, this weakens the paper as a …Read more
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93Empathy as a Route to KnowledgeIn Amy Coplan & Peter Goldie (eds.), Empathy. Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, Oxford University Pres. pp. 19. 2011.Is it epistemologically better to feel an emotion that someone is having, rather than just believing he or she is having the emotion? This is the question that Derek Matravers is raising.
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93Truth in fiction: A reply to newJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (4): 423-425. 1997.This paper is a response to that of Christopher New. It argues that New has no alternative to an earlier solution I proposed to the problem of specifying the content of a fiction fails, as his solution is in terms of facts external to the game of make-believe being played, while mine was internal. It argues that understanding fiction is only a special case of understanding representation, which can be given a Gricean analysis. It proposes that the inferences crucial to our understanding should b…Read more
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91Musical expressivenessPhilosophy Compass 2 (3). 2007.This article assesses the current state of the philosophical debate regarding the expression of emotion in music, or expressive properties of music. It defines the question, explores a few false‐starts and then considers the solution that expressive properties are a matter of a certain ‘way of appearing’ of the music. This solution is associated with Stephen Davies and Jerrold Levinson, whose work is discussed. It is argued that work in this area has reached an impasse, and it is not clear where…Read more
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85The experience of emotion in musicJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 61 (4). 2003.No abstract available
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84Is Boring art just Boring?Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (4): 425-426. 1995.Recent articles in this journal by Frances Colpitt and Richard Lind have attempted to defend some works of minimal and conceptual art against the charge of being boring. I am skeptical about both of these attempts
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71Expression in MusicIn Kathleen Stock (ed.), Philosophers on Music: Experience, Meaning, and Work, Oxford University Press. 2007.This is a critical review of the current state of the debate in the philosophy of music, and defends the author's view as the phenomenology of the experience
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63About the book: Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art features pairs of newly commissioned essays by some of the leading theorists working in the field today. Brings together fresh debates on eleven of the most controversial issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of art Topics addressed include the nature of beauty, aesthetic experience, artistic value, and the nature of our emotional responses to art. Each question is treated by a pair of opposing essays written by emine…Read more
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55True to our feelings: What our emotions are really telling us – Robert C. SolomonPhilosophical Quarterly 58 (233): 751-753. 2008.No Abstract
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54Arousal theoriesIn Theodore Gracyk & Andrew Kania (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music, Routledge. 2011.This survey article looks at various arousal theories which aim to illuminate the connection between music and the emotions
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51Two comments and a problem for David Davies' performance theoryActa Analytica 20 (4): 32-40. 2005.This paper considers the view, recently put forward by David Davies in Art and Performance , that works of art should be identified with the generative performances that result in the object, rather than with the object. It attempts to disarm two of Davies arguments by, first, providing a criterion by which the contextualist can accommodate all and only the relevant generative properties as properties of the work, and, second, providing an alternative explanation for his modal intuitions. Finall…Read more
Israel
Areas of Specialization
Aesthetics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Value Theory, Miscellaneous |
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
Meta-Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Value Theory, Miscellaneous |