Art and Its Messages: Meaning, Morality, and Society

by Stephen Davies (Editor)

Overview

This volume brings together essays by leading philosophers of art who consider what can be learned from the meaning of art about society, morality, and life in general. This subject inevitably leads to discussion of other issues. Is art distinct from life? Is a concern with art's messages consistent with an appropriately aesthetic appreciation of its works? Is there anything distinctive about the manner in which art communicates its messages, or about the messages it conveys? The topic of art's social and moral importance has always been a central one in aesthetics. However, whereas Plato and Schiller, for instance, viewed art as intimately implicated in a person's moral and social education, modernist theories have argued for art's autonomy and separation from worldly matters. The essays presented here provide a contemporary perspective on this long-standing debate and reveal the recent revitalization of humanist concerns in describing art and its significance.

Contributors are Stephen Davies, Susan L. Feagin, T. J. Diffey, Jenefer Robinson, Gregory Currie, Peter Lamarque, Jerrold Levinson, David Novitz, Ismay Barwell, Göran Hermerén, and Richard Shusterman.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780271016832
Publisher:	Penn State University Press
Publication date:	02/01/1997
Pages:	136
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.38(d)

About the Author

Stephen Davies is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	1
1	Paintings and Their Places	17
2	What Can We Learn from Art?	26
3	L'Education Sentimentale	34
4	The Moral Psychology of Fiction	49
5	Tragedy and Moral Value	59
6	Messages in Art	70
7	Messages 'in' and Messages 'through' Art	84
8	Who's Telling This Story, Anyway? Or, How to Tell the Gender of a Storyteller	89
9	Art and Life: Models for Understanding Music	101
10	Art Infraction: Goodman, Rap, Pragmatism	114
	Index	125

Editorial Reviews

If any one theme emerges from this [discussion] it is the resurgence of interest in and defense of humanistic concerns with art. Such a development is to be welcomed, and perhaps analytic aesthetics, given the way it has developed, is best placed to defend the distinctive and significant values of art. For such a defense is surely needed in the face of the critical sophistry and nihilism that threatens the humanities.”

—British Journal of Aesthetics

From the Publisher