Jerrold Levinson

Roughly thirty years ago, as part of an exploration into the ontology of art, Jerrold Levinson suggested that musical works—and implicitly, also literary works—were not pure, _abstract_ structures, like mathematical objects, but instead impure, _indicated_ structures. (See ‘What a Musical Work Is’ and ‘What a Musical Work Is, Again’, reprinted in _Music, Art, and Metaphysics_, 2nd edn (Oxford University Press), 2011). However, what exactly does that mean? In this chapter the author revisits that old idea of his in the hope of clarifying it, before then using it as a springboard to discussion of the distinctiveness of _artistic_ indication as a singular psychological act, of the _individuation_ of indicated objects that results from artistic indication, of the relation between artistic indication and actions of _simple_ indication, and finally, of the indication that musical and literary artworks _effect_, as opposed to the indication by which they are _created_.

The heart of this chapter's reply to the previous chapter's is that the analogy the previous chapter offers between, on the one hand, putative pornographic art and, on the other hand, religious or other art possessing a primary non-aesthetic function, is simply overdrawn, and that the ease of fulfilling an aesthetic and a non-aesthetic function at the same time is significantly overestimated in the former case as compared to the latter case. This chapter also outlines some differences with the previous chapter as to how the concept of regarding something as an artwork is to be understood, emphasizing a divergence between how the concept might function in a definition of art and how it functions in modern criticism and evaluation. This chapter's reply to the previous chapter concludes with a few reasons why we may yet be justified in maintaining a fairly sharp division between art and pornography, despite strong briefs offered to the contrary by Davies, Maes, Kania, and others.

The notion of authentic, or historically informed, performance, which had many champions in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, seems to have become rather suspect beginning in the 90s and continuing into the present, especially in some musicological circles. But one of the strongest briefs against such performance has been lodged by someone from my own circle, that of philosophical aesthetics, namely Peter Kivy, in his excellent book Authenticities (1995). In this essay, I attempt to defend authentic performance from Kivy’s critique, seeking to establish both the coherence of the concept of historically authentic performance and the value of the practice of historically authentic performance. The starting point of my essay is a survey of plausible goals of performing music in this way, with an eye to identifying those that are appropriate, realizable, and defensible, and setting aside those that are inappropriate, unrealizable, or indefensible. Historically authentic performance, properly construed, is a reasonable and desirable form of musical activity, and achieves a kind of value that no other mode of performance can. However this is not to deny that there are other values achieved by other modes of performance, nor that historical authenticity has to be understood in a flexible manner, nor that our epistemic access to it is in many cases highly circumscribed.

The goal of this essay is to identify the species of music that is most justifiably denominated sublime and to characterize it as fully as possible, in part through a suggested taxonomy of the species, illustrated by a wide range of musical examples. After a general discussion of sublimity in its original sphere of application—the natural world—I go on to consider the nature of sublime musical experience. I propose that categorizing music as some species of sublime is at base a matter of what it is most like or most resembles among natural phenomena. This results in a scheme which recognizes five distinguishable kinds of sublime music: negatively transcendent, positively transcendent, mixedly transcendent, energizing, and transcendent-energizing. I distinguish sublime music from other valuable music kinds and finish by pointing to some rewards that come with the experience of sublime music.

One is tempted to think that, although beauty comes in many forms, and although the objects that exhibit beauty are of diverse sorts, that beauty is essentially the same thingBthe same property, as it wereBwherever it is found and whatever possesses it. In this paper, which is confined to the most central domain of beauty, that is, visual beauty, I oppose the idea that beauty is one, suggesting instead that visual beauty is irreducibly multiple, that the types thereof are essentially different and not reducible or assimilable to one another. I articulate this multiplicity in seven categories, which represent the minimum degree of differentiation the domain of visual beauty seems to require: abstract beauty, artifactual beauty, artistic beauty, natural beauty, physical beauty, moral beauty, and accidental beauty. In the latter part of the paper I explore some dimensions of difference among these beauties, and weigh rationales for affirming the real divergence among them with respect to the dimensions of difference highlighted.

Jerrold Levinson’s Contemplating Art provides the readers with a variety of heterogeneous topics and issues. The discussants who took part in the Forum about Levinson’s book chose four different “tracks” dealt with, offering four different reflections. The main topics of the debate are: music, historicity, aesthetic properties and aesthetic contextualism. Starting on the fact that music is one of the main fields of Contamplating Art Alessandro Bertinetto focus his paper on the ‘musical’ chapters of the book that 1) defend the theory of musical expressivity presented by Levinson in his previous books ; 2. articulate it in reference to particular aspects of musical experience, and 3. examine its contribution for the understanding of the narrative and dramatic dimension of music as well as 4., in general, for its artistic value. Michele Di Monte’s aim is to focus on the questions raised by the alleged essential historicality of the concept of art and the formal definition of the concept itself. He discusses, in particular, the epistemic basis and status of what Levinson calls ‘our present concept of art’, the logical outcomes of its role in defining and identifying the art of the past and the problematic relationship between a universality requirement and the theory’s pretension to historicality. Filippo Focosi discusses in the first place the passages of Levinson’s book where his paradigmatic aesthetic principle explicitly occurs; secondly, he shows how such a principle, as is there articulated, can disclose interest perspectives on other aspects of Levinson’s theories about art and aesthetic properties. The paper by Lisa Giombini focuses on on the role of context in Levinson’s definition of art.Afterdefining Levinson’s version of aesthetic contextualism, Giombiniunderlines how Levinson’s intentional-historical definition may provide fertile ground for a peculiar form of contextualism where the relevant context is constituted by the history of art and the practice of art alone. Finally she inquires whether Levinson’s identifying works of art with wholly relational intentionally-historically defined concepts may interfere with his adhesion to aesthetic realism.

Exploring key topics in contemporary aesthetics, this work analyzes the issues that arise from the unique works of Frank Sibley (1923-1996), who developed a distinctive aesthetic theory through a number of papers published between 1955 and 1995. Here, thirteen philosophical aestheticians bring Sibley's insight into a contemporary framework, exploring the ways his ideas foster important new discussion about issues in aesthetics. This collection will interest anyone interested in philosophy, art theory, and art criticism.

In this essay I try to identify what is specific to jazz – or at least, mainstream or core jazz – from the point of view of its expression. Along the way I address the vexing question of the essence of jazz, and briefly explicate the concept of musical expression of emotion that I am working with. I next postulate a Gestalt of jazz, which I attempt to circumscribe both through its underlying musical characteristics and the use of paradigm examples, and suggest that such a Gestalt comports well with the expression of certain emotions and comports ill with the expression of other emotions. Before concluding I discuss the question of the expressive specificity of all genres of music.

We identify a strategy for getting beliefs from fiction via three assumptions: a certain causal generality holds in the fiction and does so because causal generalities in fiction are carried over from what the author takes to be fact; the author is reliable on this topic, so what the author takes to be fact is fact. We do not question. While will, in particular cases, be doubtful, the strategy is vulnerable more generally to the worry that what looks like a causal generality may be instead an authorial intervention of a kind from which no causal connection can be inferred; in such cases turns out to be false though it may seem at first sight to be true. In consequence we have extra reason for being careful in forming beliefs based on fictions.