The Subject of Aesthetics: A psychology of art and experience

by Tone Roald

Overview

How does art influence us? In The Subject of Aesthetics, Tone Roald approaches aesthetics as a psychological discipline, showing how works of art challenge our habitual ways of perceiving the world. While aesthetics has traditionally been a philosophical discipline, Roald discusses how it is very much alive in the realm of psychology – a qualitative psychology of lived experience. But what actually constitutes an aesthetics of lived experience? The book answers that question by analyzing people’s own engagement with visual art. What emerges is that the object of aesthetics is indeed the subject.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789004308718
Publisher:	Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/04/2015
Series:	Consciousness, Literature and the Arts , #45
Pages:	174
Product dimensions:	0.63(w) x 0.94(h) x (d)

About the Author

Tone Roald, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology at University of Copenhagen. She has published and edited several books and articles on aesthetics, including Art and Identity. Essays on the Aesthetic Creation of Mind (Rodopi, 2013).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 7

Preface Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht 9

Introduction: Toward a Psychological Enfranchisement of Art 17

1 The Framework of the Book 22

Chapter 1 Objects of Aesthetics. Philosophical and Psychological Explorations 27

1 Philosophical Aesthetics 28

2 Psychological Aesthetics 46

Chapter 2 Subjectivity. Pre-reflection, Affect, Reason, and Understanding 59

1 Aspects of Pre-Reflection 59

2 Aspects of Affect, Feeling, and Emotion 72

3 Aspects of Reason, Reflection, and Self-Understanding 77

Chapter 3 Methodological Considerations. From Singular Descriptions to General Explanations 83

1 General Concerns in Regard to Method 83

2 The Methods of the Empirical Study 96

Chapter 4 Stories of Art. Aesthetic Experience as Intrapellation 99

1 The First Aesthetic Encounter 102

2 The Retrospective Aesthetic Interpretation 118

3 Horizons of Expectations 127

4 Art as Intrapellation 131

Chapter 5 Aesthetic Experience as a Challenge to Subjectivity and Aesthetic Theory 137

1 Aesthetic Experience and Structures of Subjectivity 143

2 Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Theory 148

3 Beyond Classification Language 151

Conclusion: The Subject of Aesthetics 155

Bibliography 163

Index 169