philosophy of art dissertation

Introduction: What Is Philosophy of Art?

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Over the past few decades, the philosophy of art has enjoyed a remarkable revival. More and more studies are being devoted to the philosophical or theoretical probing into questions about the meaning of art. This gradual but steady expansion in the field also suggests a broadening group of potential readers. Indeed, the present situation may perhaps be characterized as not simply a revival but as an unprecedented breakthrough. There are three major developments that help explain this. Firstly, today's increased importance of philosophy of art is due to modern art itself. Revolutionary avant-garde movements, attempting to transcend existing norms in art as early as around 1910, unleashed a process that has challenged any supposedly self-evident notions of art ever since. This process still continues today. Modern art is constantly pushing the boundaries of the “artistic”, seeking and providing new answers to the question of what art really is. Not surprisingly, every new movement is accompanied by a theoretical discourse to justify its premises. In the art world, the permanent drive for renewal has urged more and more artists to turn to philosophy to support their concepts of art. Artists have sometimes taken this approach to such extremes as to identify thinking about art with art itself, as has happened in conceptual art. In any case, this explains the growing significance of art philosophy to the development of art.

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In the recent boom of anthologies the following threefold project deserves to be mentioned separately:

Charles Harrison, Paul Wood, Jason Gaiger (ed.), Art in theory 1648–1815: an anthology of changing ideas , London: Blackwell, 2000.

Charles Harrison, Paul Wood, Jason Gaiger (ed.), Art in theory 1815–1900: an anthology of changing idea, London: Blackwell, 2000.

Charles Harrison, Paul Wood, Jason Gaiger (ed.), Art in theory 1900–2000: an anthology of changing ideas , London: Blackwell, 2002.

Quite old, already classical but still interesting readers are:

Melvin Rader (ed.), Modern book of aesthetics: an anthology , New York: Dryden Press, 1979 (Originally published in 1935).

Joseph Margolis (ed.), Philosophy looks at the arts. Contemporary readings in aesthetics . Temple: Temple University Press, 1987 (Originally published in 1962).

W.E. Kennick (ed.), Art and philosophy: reading in aesthetics , New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979 (Originally published in 1964).

In the seventies and the eighties two excellent readers saw the light:

George Dickie and Richard J. Sclafani (eds.), Aesthetics: a critical anthology , New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989 (Originally published 1977).

Patricia H. Werhane (ed.), Philosophical issues in art , Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1984.

During the last decade a lot of introductions into philosophy of art have been published. Some older, almost classical introductions are:

Arthur Weiss, Introduction to the philosophy of art , Berkeley, CA: Berkeley University Press, 1910.

Edward Bullough, Aesthetics: lectures and essays , Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977 (Originally published by Stanford University Press, 1957).

Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics. Problems in the philosophy of criticism , New York: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1981 (Originally published in 1958).

George Dickie, Introduction to aesthetics: an analytical approach , Oxford, 1997. (Originally published in 1971 under the title: Aesthetics: an introduction ).

Anne Sheppard, Aesthetics; an introduction to the philosophy of art , New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Some excellent, more recent introductions are:

Gordon Graham and Richard Eldridge, An introduction to the philosophy of art , New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Standard works on the history of aesthetics:

Katherine E. Gilbert and Helmut Kuhn, History of aesthetics , Westport, Conn., Greenwood, 1972 (Originally published in 1939).

Wladislaw Tatarkiewicz, History of aesthetics , 3 Vols, Den Haag: Mouton, 1970–74.

On Aesthetics in the Middle-Ages:

Umberto Eco, Art and beauty in the Middle-Ages , (transl. by H. Bredin), New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986.

Specific on American aesthetics:

Rufus L. Anderson, American muse: anthropological excursions into art and aesthetics , Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.

For the quotes on Luc Tuymans in 1,4, see:

Bernard Dewulf, “De Zuivering” (Purification), Nieuw Wereldtijdschrift , Vol. 16, 1999, nr. 6, 55–60.

Bianca Stifter, “Ik wil schilderen zonder deemoed.; Schilder Tuymans over weerstand en geweld”(I want to paint without humility. Painter Tuymans on resistance and violence), in: NRC Handelsblad , 01-09-1995, p. 5.

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(2009). Introduction: What Is Philosophy of Art?. In: Thinking Art. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5638-3_1

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The Concept of the Aesthetic

Introduced into the philosophical lexicon during the Eighteenth Century, the term ‘aesthetic’ has come to designate, among other things, a kind of object, a kind of judgment, a kind of attitude, a kind of experience, and a kind of value. For the most part, aesthetic theories have divided over questions particular to one or another of these designations: whether artworks are necessarily aesthetic objects; how to square the allegedly perceptual basis of aesthetic judgments with the fact that we give reasons in support of them; how best to capture the elusive contrast between an aesthetic attitude and a practical one; whether to define aesthetic experience according to its phenomenological or representational content; how best to understand the relation between aesthetic value and aesthetic experience. But questions of more general nature have lately arisen, and these have tended to have a skeptical cast: whether any use of ‘aesthetic’ may be explicated without appeal to some other; whether agreement respecting any use is sufficient to ground meaningful theoretical agreement or disagreement; whether the term ultimately answers to any legitimate philosophical purpose that justifies its inclusion in the lexicon. The skepticism expressed by such general questions did not begin to take hold until the later part of the 20th century, and this fact prompts the question whether (a) the concept of the aesthetic is inherently problematic and it is only recently that we have managed to see that it is, or (b) the concept is fine and it is only recently that we have become muddled enough to imagine otherwise. Adjudicating between these possibilities requires a vantage from which to take in both early and late theorizing on aesthetic matters.

1.1 Immediacy

1.2 disinterest, 2.1 aesthetic objects, 2.2 aesthetic judgment, 2.3 the aesthetic attitude, 2.4 aesthetic experience, 2.5.1 the aesthetic question, 2.5.2 the normative question, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the concept of taste.

The concept of the aesthetic descends from the concept of taste. Why the concept of taste commanded so much philosophical attention during the 18th century is a complicated matter, but this much is clear: the eighteenth-century theory of taste emerged, in part, as a corrective to the rise of rationalism, particularly as applied to beauty, and to the rise of egoism, particularly as applied to virtue. Against rationalism about beauty, the eighteenth-century theory of taste held the judgment of beauty to be immediate; against egoism about virtue, it held the pleasure of beauty to be disinterested.

Rationalism about beauty is the view that judgments of beauty are judgments of reason, i.e., that we judge things to be beautiful by reasoning it out, where reasoning it out typically involves inferring from principles or applying concepts. At the beginning of the 18th century, rationalism about beauty had achieved dominance on the continent, and was being pushed to new extremes by “les géomètres,” a group of literary theorists who aimed to bring to literary criticism the mathematical rigor that Descartes had brought to physics. As one such theorist put it:

The way to think about a literary problem is that pointed out by Descartes for problems of physical science. A critic who tries any other way is not worthy to be living in the present century. There is nothing better than mathematics as propaedeutic for literary criticism. (Terrasson 1715, Preface, 65; quoted in Wimsatt and Brooks 1957, 258)

It was against this, and against more moderate forms of rationalism about beauty, that mainly British philosophers working mainly within an empiricist framework began to develop theories of taste. The fundamental idea behind any such theory—which we may call the immediacy thesis —is that judgments of beauty are not (or at least not canonically) mediated by inferences from principles or applications of concepts, but rather have all the immediacy of straightforwardly sensory judgments. It is the idea, in other words, that we do not reason to the conclusion that things are beautiful, but rather “sense” that they are. Here is an early expression of the thesis, from Jean-Baptiste Dubos’s Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting, and Music , which first appeared in 1719:

Do we ever reason, in order to know whether a ragoo be good or bad; and has it ever entered into any body’s head, after having settled the geometrical principles of taste, and defined the qualities of each ingredient that enters into the composition of those messes, to examine into the proportion observed in their mixture, in order to decide whether it be good or bad? No, this is never practiced. We have a sense given us by nature to distinguish whether the cook acted according to the rules of his art. People taste the ragoo, and tho’ unacquainted with those rules, they are able to tell whether it be good or no. The same may be said in some respect of the productions of the mind, and of pictures made to please and move us. (Dubos 1748, vol. II, 238–239)

And here is a late expression, from Kant’s 1790 Critique of the Power of Judgment :

If someone reads me his poem or takes me to a play that in the end fails to please my taste, then he can adduce Batteux or Lessing, or even older and more famous critics of taste, and adduce all the rules they established as proofs that his poem is beautiful… . I will stop my ears, listen to no reasons and arguments, and would rather believe that those rules of the critics are false … than allow that my judgment should be determined by means of a priori grounds of proof, since it is supposed to be a judgment of taste and not of the understanding of reason. (Kant 1790, 165)

But the theory of taste would not have enjoyed its eighteenth-century run, nor would it continue now to exert its influence, had it been without resources to counter an obvious rationalist objection. There is a wide difference—so goes the objection—between judging the excellence of a ragout and judging the excellence of a poem or a play. More often than not, poems and plays are objects of great complication. But taking in all that complication requires a lot of cognitive work, including the application of concepts and the drawing of inferences. Judging the beauty of poems and plays, then, is evidently not immediate and so evidently not a matter of taste.

The chief way of meeting this objection was first to distinguish between the act of grasping the object preparatory to judging it and the act of judging the object once grasped, and then to allow the former, but not the latter, to be as concept- and inference-mediated as any rationalist might wish. Here is Hume, with characteristic clarity:

[I]n order to pave the way for [a judgment of taste], and give a proper discernment of its object, it is often necessary, we find, that much reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be made, just conclusions drawn, distant comparisons formed, complicated relations examined, and general facts fixed and ascertained. Some species of beauty, especially the natural kinds, on their first appearance command our affection and approbation; and where they fail of this effect, it is impossible for any reasoning to redress their influence, or adapt them better to our taste and sentiment. But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the fine arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment. (Hume, 1751, Section I)

Hume—like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson before him, and Reid after him (Cooper 1711, 17, 231; Hutcheson 1725, 16–24; Reid 1785, 760–761)—regarded the faculty of taste as a kind of “internal sense.” Unlike the five “external” or “direct” senses, an “internal” (or “reflex” or “secondary”) sense is one that depends for its objects on the antecedent operation of some other mental faculty or faculties. Reid characterizes internal sense as follows:

Beauty or deformity in an object, results from its nature or structure. To perceive the beauty therefore, we must perceive the nature or structure from which it results. In this the internal sense differs from the external. Our external senses may discover qualities which do not depend upon any antecedent perception… . But it is impossible to perceive the beauty of an object, without perceiving the object, or at least conceiving it. (Reid 1785, 760–761)

Because of the highly complex natures or structures of many beautiful objects, there will have to be a role for reason in their perception. But perceiving the nature or structure of an object is one thing. Perceiving its beauty is another.

Egoism about virtue is the view that to judge an action or trait virtuous is to take pleasure in it because you believe it to serve some interest of yours. Its central instance is the Hobbesian view—still very much on early eighteenth-century minds—that to judge an action or trait virtuous is to take pleasure in it because you believe it to promote your safety. Against Hobbesian egoism a number of British moralists—preeminently Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume—argued that, while a judgment of virtue is a matter of taking pleasure in response to an action or trait, the pleasure is disinterested, by which they meant that it is not self-interested (Cooper 1711, 220–223; Hutcheson 1725, 9, 25–26; Hume 1751, 218–232, 295–302). One argument went roughly as follows. That we judge virtue by means of an immediate sensation of pleasure means that judgments of virtue are judgments of taste, no less than judgments of beauty. But pleasure in the beautiful is not self-interested: we judge objects to be beautiful whether or not we believe them to serve our interests. But if pleasure in the beautiful is disinterested, there is no reason to think that pleasure in the virtuous cannot also be (Hutcheson 1725, 9–10).

The eighteenth-century view that judgments of virtue are judgments of taste highlights a difference between the eighteenth-century concept of taste and our concept of the aesthetic, since for us the concepts aesthetic and moral tend oppose one another such that a judgment’s falling under one typically precludes its falling under the other. Kant is chiefly responsible for introducing this difference. He brought the moral and the aesthetic into opposition by re-interpreting what we might call the disinterest thesis —the thesis that pleasure in the beautiful is disinterested (though see Cooper 1711, 222 and Home 2005, 36–38 for anticipations of Kant’s re-interpretation).

According to Kant, to say that a pleasure is interested is not to say that it is self-interested in the Hobbesian sense, but rather that it stands in a certain relation to the faculty of desire. The pleasure involved in judging an action to be morally good is interested because such a judgment issues in a desire to bring the action into existence, i.e., to perform it. To judge an action to be morally good is to become aware that one has a duty to perform the action, and to become so aware is to gain a desire to perform it. By contrast, the pleasure involved in judging an object to be beautiful is disinterested because such a judgment issues in no desire to do anything in particular. If we can be said to have a duty with regard to beautiful things, it appears to be exhausted in our judging them aesthetically to be beautiful. That is what Kant means when he says that the judgment of taste is not practical but rather “merely contemplative” (Kant 1790, 95).

By thus re-orienting the notion of disinterest, Kant brought the concept of taste into opposition with the concept of morality, and so into line, more or less, with the present concept of the aesthetic. But if the Kantian concept of taste is continuous, more or less, with the present-day concept of the aesthetic, why the terminological discontinuity? Why have we come to prefer the term ‘aesthetic’ to the term ‘taste’? The not very interesting answer appears to be that we have preferred an adjective to a noun. The term ‘aesthetic’ derives from the Greek term for sensory perception, and so preserves the implication of immediacy carried by the term ‘taste.’ Kant employed both terms, though not equivalently: according to his usage, ‘aesthetic’ is broader, picking out a class of judgments that includes both the normative judgment of taste and the non-normative, though equally immediate, judgment of the agreeable. Though Kant was not the first modern to use ‘aesthetic’ (Baumgarten had used it as early as 1735), the term became widespread only, though quickly, after his employment of it in the third Critique. Yet the employment that became widespread was not exactly Kant’s, but a narrower one according to which ‘aesthetic’ simply functions as an adjective corresponding to the noun “taste.” So for example we find Coleridge, in 1821, expressing the wish that he “could find a more familiar word than aesthetic for works of taste and criticism,” before going on to argue:

As our language … contains no other useable adjective, to express coincidence of form, feeling, and intellect, that something, which, confirming the inner and the outward senses, becomes a new sense in itself … there is reason to hope, that the term aesthetic , will be brought into common use. (Coleridge 1821, 254)

The availability of an adjective corresponding to “taste” has allowed for the retiring of a series of awkward expressions: the expressions “judgment of taste,” “emotion of taste” and “quality of taste” have given way to the arguably less offensive ‘aesthetic judgment,’ ‘aesthetic emotion,’ and ‘aesthetic quality.’ However, as the noun ‘taste’ phased out, we became saddled with other perhaps equally awkward expressions, including the one that names this entry.

2. The Concept of the Aesthetic

Much of the history of more recent thinking about the concept of the aesthetic can be seen as the history of the development of the immediacy and disinterest theses.

Artistic formalism is the view that the artistically relevant properties of an artwork—the properties in virtue of which it is an artwork and in virtue of which it is a good or bad one—are formal merely, where formal properties are typically regarded as properties graspable by sight or by hearing merely. Artistic formalism has been taken to follow from both the immediacy and the disinterest theses (Binkley 1970, 266–267; Carroll 2001, 20–40). If you take the immediacy thesis to imply the artistic irrelevance of all properties whose grasping requires the use of reason, and you include representational properties in that class, then you are apt to think that the immediacy thesis implies artistic formalism. If you take the disinterest thesis to imply the artistic irrelevance of all properties capable of practical import, and you include representational properties in that class, then you are apt to think that the disinterest thesis implies artistic formalism.

This is not to suggest that the popularity enjoyed by artistic formalism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries owed mainly to its inference from the immediacy or disinterest theses. The most influential advocates of formalism during this period were professional critics, and their formalism derived, at least in part, from the artistic developments with which they were concerned. As a critic Eduard Hanslick advocated for the pure music of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and later Brahms, and against the dramatically impure music of Wagner; as a theorist he urged that music has no content but “tonally moving forms” (Hanslick 1986, 29). As a critic Clive Bell was an early champion of the post-Impressionists, especially Cezanne; as a theorist he maintained that the formal properties of painting—“relations and combinations of lines and colours”—alone have artistic relevance (Bell 1958, 17–18). As a critic Clement Greenberg was abstract expressionism’s ablest defender; as a theorist he held painting’s “proper area of competence” to be exhausted by flatness, pigment, and shape (Greenberg 1986, 86–87).

Not every influential defender of formalism has also been a professional critic. Monroe Beardsley, who arguably gave formalism its most sophisticated articulation, was not (Beardsley 1958). Nor is Nick Zangwill, who recently has mounted a spirited and resourceful defense of a moderate version of formalism (Zangwill 2001). But formalism has always been sufficiently motivated by art-critical data that once Arthur Danto made the case that the data no longer supported it, and perhaps never really had, formalism’s heyday came to an end. Inspired in particular by Warhol’s Brillo Boxes , which are (more or less) perceptually indistinguishable from the brand-printed cartons in which boxes of Brillo were delivered to supermarkets, Danto observed that for most any artwork it is possible to imagine both (a) another object that is perceptually indiscernible from it but which is not an artwork, and (b) another artwork that is perceptually indiscernible from it but which differs in artistic value. From these observations he concluded that form alone neither makes an artwork nor gives it whatever value it has (Danto 1981, 94–95; Danto 1986, 30–31; Danto 1997, 91).

But Danto has taken the possibility of such perceptual indiscernibles to show the limitations not merely of form but also of aesthetics, and he has done so on the grounds, apparently, that the formal and the aesthetic are co-extensive. Regarding a urinal Duchamp once exhibited and a perceptual indiscernible ordinary urinal, Danto maintains that

aesthetics could not explain why one was a work of fine art and the other not, since for all practical purposes they were aesthetically indiscernible: if one was beautiful, the other one had to be beautiful, since they looked just alike. (Danto 2003, 7)

But the inference from the limits of the artistically formal to the limits of the artistically aesthetic is presumably only as strong as the inferences from the immediacy and disinterest theses to artistic formalism, and these are not beyond question. The inference from the disinterest thesis appears to go through only if you employ a stronger notion of disinterest than the one Kant understands himself to be employing: Kant, it is worth recalling, regards poetry as the highest of the fine arts precisely because of its capacity to employ representational content in the expression of what he calls ‘aesthetic ideas’ (Kant 1790, 191–194; see Costello 2008 and 2013 for extended treatment of the capacity of Kantian aesthetics to accommodate conceptual art). The inference from the immediacy thesis appears to go through only if you employ a notion of immediacy stronger than the one Hume, for example, takes himself to be defending when he claims (in a passage quoted in section1.1) that “in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the fine arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment” (Hume 1751, 173). It may be that artistic formalism results if you push either of the tendencies embodied in the immediacy and disinterest theses to extremes. It may be that the history of aesthetics from the 18th century to the mid-Twentieth is largely the history of pushing those two tendencies to extremes. It does not follow that those tendencies must be so pushed.

Consider Warhol’s Brillo Boxes . Danto is right to maintain that the eighteenth-century theorist of taste would not know how to regard it as an artwork. But this is because the eighteenth-century theorist of taste lives in the 18th century, and so would be unable to situate that work in its twentieth-century art-historical context, and not because the kind of theory she holds forbids her from situating a work in its art-historical context. When Hume, for instance, observes that artists address their works to particular, historically-situated audiences, and that a critic therefore “must place herself in the same situation as the audience” to whom a work is addressed (Hume 1757, 239), he is allowing that artworks are cultural products, and that the properties that works have as the cultural products they are are among the “ingredients of the composition” that a critic must grasp if she is to feel the proper sentiment. Nor does there seem to be anything in the celebrated conceptuality of Brillo Boxes , nor of any other conceptual work, that ought to give the eighteenth-century theorist pause. Francis Hutcheson asserts that mathematical and scientific theorems are objects of taste (Hutcheson 1725, 36–41). Alexander Gerard asserts that scientific discoveries and philosophical theories are objects of taste (Gerard 1757, 6). Neither argues for his assertion. Both regard it as commonplace that objects of intellect may be objects of taste as readily as objects of sight and hearing may be. Why should the present-day aesthetic theorist think otherwise? If an object is conceptual in nature, grasping its nature will require intellectual work. If grasping an object’s conceptual nature requires situating it art-historically, then the intellectual work required to grasp its nature will include situating it art-historically. But—as Hume and Reid held (see section 1.1)—grasping the nature of an object preparatory to aesthetically judging it is one thing; aesthetically judging the object once grasped is another.

Though Danto has been the most influential and persistent critic of formalism, his criticisms are no more decisive than those advanced by Kendall Walton in his essay “Categories of Art.” Walton’s anti-formalist argument hinges on two main theses, one psychological and one philosophical. According to the psychological thesis, which aesthetic properties we perceive a work as having depends on which category we perceive the work as belonging to. Perceived as belonging to the category of painting, Picasso’s Guernica will be perceived as “violent, dynamic, vital, disturbing” (Walton 1970, 347). But perceived as belonging to the category of “guernicas”—where guernicas are works with “surfaces with the colors and shapes of Picasso’s Guernica , but the surfaces are molded to protrude from the wall like relief maps of different kinds of terrain”—Picasso’s Guernica will be perceived not as violent and dynamic, but as “cold, stark, lifeless, or serene and restful, or perhaps bland, dull, boring” (Walton 1970, 347). That Picasso’s Guernica can be perceived both as violent and dynamic and as not violent and not dynamic might be thought to imply that there is no fact of the matter whether it is violent and dynamic. But this implication holds only on the assumption that there is no fact of the matter which category Picasso’s Guernica actually belongs to, and this assumption appears to be false given that Picasso intended that Guernica be a painting and did not intend that it be a guernica, and that the category of paintings was well-established in the society in which Picasso painted it while the category of guernicas was not. Hence the philosophical thesis, according to which the aesthetic properties a work actually has are those it is perceived as having when perceived as belonging to the category (or categories) it actually belongs to. Since the properties of having been intended to be a painting and having been created in a society in which painting is well-established category are artistically relevant though not graspable merely by seeing (or hearing) the work, it seems that artistic formalism cannot be true. “I do not deny,” Walton concludes, “that paintings and sonatas are to be judged solely on what can be seen or heard in them—when they are perceived correctly. But examining a work with the senses can by itself reveal neither how it is correct to perceive it, nor how to perceive it that way” (Walton 1970, 367).

But if we cannot judge which aesthetic properties paintings and sonatas have without consulting the intentions and the societies of the artists who created them, what of the aesthetic properties of natural items? With respect to them it may appear as if there is nothing to consult except the way they look and sound, so that an aesthetic formalism about nature must be true. Allen Carlson, a central figure in the burgeoning field of the aesthetics of nature, argues against this appearance. Carlson observes that Walton’s psychological thesis readily transfers from works of art to natural items: that we perceive Shetland ponies as cute and charming and Clydesdales as lumbering surely owes to our perceiving them as belonging to the category of horses (Carlson 1981, 19). He also maintains that the philosophical thesis transfers: whales actually have the aesthetic properties we perceive them as having when we perceive them as mammals, and do not actually have any contrasting aesthetic properties we might perceive them to have when we perceive them as fish. If we ask what determines which category or categories natural items actually belong to, the answer, according to Carlson, is their natural histories as discovered by natural science (Carlson 1981, 21–22). Inasmuch as a natural item’s natural history will tend not to be graspable by merely seeing or hearing it, formalism is no truer of natural items than it is of works of art.

The claim that Walton’s psychological thesis transfers to natural items has been widely accepted (and was in fact anticipated, as Carlson acknowledges, by Ronald Hepburn (Hepburn 1966 and 1968)). The claim that Walton’s philosophical thesis transfers to natural items has proven more controversial. Carlson is surely right that aesthetic judgments about natural items are prone to be mistaken insofar as they result from perceptions of those items as belonging to categories to which they do not belong, and, insofar as determining which categories natural items actually belong to requires scientific investigation, this point seems sufficient to undercut the plausibility of any very strong formalism about nature (see Carlson 1979 for independent objections against such formalism). Carlson, however, also wishes to establish that aesthetic judgments about natural items have whatever objectivity aesthetic judgments about works of art do, and it is controversial whether Walton’s philosophical claim transfers sufficiently to support such a claim. One difficulty, raised by Malcolm Budd (Budd 2002 and 2003) and Robert Stecker (Stecker1997c), is that since there are many categories in which a given natural item may correctly be perceived, it is unclear which correct category is the one in which the item is perceived as having the aesthetic properties it actually has. Perceived as belonging to the category of Shetland ponies, a large Shetland pony may be perceived as lumbering; perceived as belonging to the category of horses, the same pony may be perceived as cute and charming but certainly not lumbering. If the Shetland pony were a work of art, we might appeal to the intentions (or society) of its creator to determine which correct category is the one that fixes its aesthetic character. But as natural items are not human creations they can give us no basis for deciding between equally correct but aesthetically contrasting categorizations. It follows, according to Budd, “the aesthetic appreciation of nature is endowed with a freedom denied to the appreciation of art” (Budd 2003, 34), though this is perhaps merely another way of saying that the aesthetic appreciation of art is endowed with an objectivity denied to the appreciation of nature.

The eighteenth-century debate between rationalists and theorists of taste (or sentimentalists) was primarily a debate over the immediacy thesis, i.e., over whether we judge objects to be beautiful by applying principles of beauty to them. It was not primarily a debate over the existence of principles of beauty, a matter over which theorists of taste might disagree. Kant denied that there are any such principles (Kant 1790, 101), but both Hutcheson and Hume affirmed their existence: they maintained that although judgments of beauty are judgments of taste and not of reason, taste nevertheless operates according to general principles, which might be discovered through empirical investigation (Hutcheson 1725, 28–35; Hume 1757, 231–233).

It is tempting to think of recent debate in aesthetics between particularists and generalists as a revival of the eighteenth-century debate between rationalists and theorists of taste. But the accuracy of this thought is difficult to gauge. One reason is that it is often unclear whether particularists and generalists take themselves merely to be debating the existence of aesthetic principles or to be debating their employment in aesthetic judgment. Another is that, to the degree particularists and generalists take themselves to be debating the employment of aesthetic principles in aesthetic judgment, it is hard to know what they can be meaning by ‘aesthetic judgment.’ If ‘aesthetic’ still carries its eighteenth-century implication of immediacy, then the question under debate is whether judgment that is immediate is immediate. If ‘aesthetic’ no longer carries that implication, then it is hard to know what question is under debate because it is hard to know what aesthetic judgment could be. It may be tempting to think that we can simply re-define ‘aesthetic judgment’ such that it refers to any judgment in which an aesthetic property is predicated of an object. But this requires being able to say what an aesthetic property is without reference to its being immediately graspable, something no one seems to have done. It may seem that we can simply re-define ‘aesthetic judgment’ such that it refers to any judgment in which any property of the class exemplified by beauty is predicated of an object. But which class is this? The classes exemplified by beauty are presumably endless, and the difficulty is to specify the relevant class without reference to the immediate graspability of its members, and that is what no one seems to have done.

However we are to sort out the particularist/generalist debate, important contributions to it include, on the side of particularism, Arnold Isenberg’s “Critical Communication” (1949) Frank Sibley’s “Aesthetic Concepts” (in Sibley 2001) and Mary Mothersill’s Beauty Restored (1984) and, on the side of generalism, Monroe Beardsley’s Aesthetics (1958) and “On the Generality of Critical Reasons” (1962), Sibley’s “General Reasons and Criteria in Aesthetics” (in Sibley 2001), George Dickie’s Evaluating Art (1987), Stephen Davies’s “Replies to Arguments Suggesting that Critics’ Strong Evaluations Could not be Soundly Deduced” (1995), and John Bender’s “General but Defeasible Reasons in Aesthetic Evaluation: The Generalist/Particularist Dispute” (1995). Of these, the papers by Isenberg and Sibley have arguably enjoyed the greatest influence.

Isenberg concedes that we often appeal to descriptive features of works in support of our judgments of their value, and he allows that this may make it seem as if we must be appealing to principles in making those judgments. If in support of a favorable judgment of some painting a critic appeals to the wavelike contour formed by the figures clustered in its foreground, it may seem as if his judgment must involve tacit appeal to the principle that any painting having such a contour is so much the better. But Isenberg argues that this cannot be, since no one agrees to any such principle:

There is not in all the world’s criticism a single purely descriptive statement concerning which one is prepared to say beforehand, ‘If it is true, I shall like that work so much the better’ (Isenberg 1949, 338).

But if in appealing to the descriptive features of a work we are not acknowledging tacit appeals to principles linking those features to aesthetic value, what are we doing? Isenberg believes we are offering “directions for perceiving” the work, i.e., by singling out certain its features, we are “narrow[ing] down the field of possible visual orientations” and thereby guiding others in “the discrimination of details, the organization of parts, the grouping of discrete objects into patterns” (Isenberg 1949, 336). In this way we get others to see what we have seen, rather than getting them to infer what we have inferred.

That Sibley advances a variety of particularism in one paper and a variety of generalism in another will give the appearance of inconsistency where there is none: Sibley is a particularist of one sort, and with respect to one distinction, and a generalist of another sort with respect to another distinction. Isenberg, as noted, is a particularist with respect to the distinction between descriptions and verdicts, i.e., he maintains that there are no principles by which we may infer from value-neutral descriptions of works to judgments of their overall value. Sibley’s particularism and generalism, by contrast, both have to do with judgments falling in between descriptions and verdicts. With respect to a distinction between descriptions and a set of judgments intermediate between descriptions and verdicts, Sibley is straightforwardly particularist. With respect to a distinction between a set of judgments intermediate between descriptions and verdicts and verdicts, Sibley is a kind of generalist and describes himself as such.

Sibley’s generalism, as set forth in “General Reasons and Criteria in Aesthetics,” begins with the observation that the properties to which we appeal in justification of favorable verdicts are not all descriptive or value-neutral. We also appeal to properties that are inherently positive, such as grace, balance, dramatic intensity, or comicality. To say that a property is inherently positive is not to say that any work having it is so much the better, but rather that its tout court attribution implies value. So although a work may be made worse on account of its comical elements, the simple claim that a work is good because comical is intelligible in a way that the simple claims that a work is good because yellow, or because it lasts twelve minutes, or because it contains many puns, are not. But if the simple claim that a work is good because comical is thus intelligible, comicality is a general criterion for aesthetic value, and the principle that articulates that generality is true. But none of this casts any doubt on the immediacy thesis, as Sibley himself observes:

I have argued elsewhere that there are no sure-fire rules by which, referring to the neutral and non-aesthetic qualities of things, one can infer that something is balanced, tragic, comic, joyous, and so on. One has to look and see. Here, equally, at a different level, I am saying that there are no sure-fire mechanical rules or procedures for deciding which qualities are actual defects in the work; one has to judge for oneself. (Sibley 2001, 107–108)

The “elsewhere” referred to in the first sentence is Sibley’s earlier paper, “Aesthetic Concepts,” which argues that the application of concepts such as ‘balanced,’ ‘tragic,’ ‘comic,’ or ‘joyous’ is not a matter of determining whether the descriptive (i.e., non-aesthetic) conditions for their application are met, but is rather a matter of taste. Hence aesthetic judgments are immediate in something like the way that judgments of color, or of flavor, are:

We see that a book is red by looking, just as we tell that the tea is sweet by tasting it. So too, it might be said, we just see (or fail to see) that things are delicate, balanced, and the like. This kind of comparison between the exercise of taste and the use of the five senses is indeed familiar; our use of the word ‘taste’ itself shows that the comparison is age-old and very natural (Sibley 2001, 13–14).

But Sibley recognizes—as his eighteenth-century forebears did and his formalist contemporaries did not—that important differences remain between the exercise of taste and the use of the five senses. Central among these is that we offer reasons, or something like them, in support of our aesthetic judgments: by talking—in particular, by appealing to the descriptive properties on which the aesthetic properties depend—we justify aesthetic judgments by bringing others to see what we have seen (Sibley 2001, 14–19).

It is unclear to what degree Sibley, beyond seeking to establish that the application of aesthetic concepts is not condition-governed, seeks also to define the term ‘aesthetic’ in terms of their not being so. It is clearer, perhaps, that he does not succeed in defining the term this way, whatever his intentions. Aesthetic concepts are not alone in being non-condition-governed, as Sibley himself recognizes in comparing them with color concepts. But there is also no reason to think them alone in being non-condition-governed while also being reason-supportable, since moral concepts, to give one example, at least arguably also have both these features. Isolating the aesthetic requires something more than immediacy, as Kant saw. It requires something like the Kantian notion of disinterest, or at least something to play the role played by that notion in Kant’s theory.

Given the degree to which Kant and Hume continue to influence thinking about aesthetic judgment (or critical judgment, more broadly), given the degree to which Sibley and Isenberg continue to abet that influence, it is not surprising that the immediacy thesis is now very widely received. The thesis, however, has come under attack, notably by Davies (1990) and Bender (1995). (See also Carroll (2009), who follows closely after Davies (1990), and Dorsch (2013) for further discussion.)

Isenberg, it will be recalled, maintains that if the critic is arguing for her verdict, her argumentation must go something as follows:

Artworks having p are better for having p .
W is an artwork having p .
Therefore, W is so much the better for having p .

Since the critical principle expressed in premise 1 is open to counter-example, no matter what property we substitute for p, Isenberg concludes that we cannot plausibly interpret the critic as arguing for her verdict. Rather than defend the principle expressed in premise 1, Davies and Bender both posit alternative principles, consistent with the fact that no property is good-making in all artworks, which they ascribe to the critic. Davies proposes that we interpret the critic as arguing deductively from principles relativized to artistic type, that is, from principles holding that artworks of a specific types or categories—Italian Renaissance paintings, romantic symphonies, Hollywood Westerns, etc.—having p are better for having it (Davies 1990, 174). Bender proposes that we interpret the critic as arguing inductively from principles expressing mere tendencies that hold between certain properties and artworks—principles, in other words, holding that artworks having p tend to be better for having it (Bender 1995, 386).

Each proposal has its own weaknesses and strengths. A problem with Bender’s approach is that critics do not seem to couch their verdicts in probabilistic terms. Were a critic to say that a work is likely to be good, or almost certainly good, or even that she has the highest confidence that it must be good, her language would suggest that she had not herself experienced the work, perhaps that she had judged the work on the basis of someone else’s testimony, hence that she is no critic at all. We would therefore have good reason to prefer Davies’s deductive approach if only we had good reason for thinking that relativizing critical principles to artistic type removed the original threat of counterexample. Though it is clear that such relativizing reduces the relative number of counterexamples, we need good reason for thinking that it reduces that number to zero, and Davies provides no such reason. Bender’s inductive approach, by contrast, cannot be refuted by counterexample, but only by counter-tendency.

If the critic argues from the truth of a principle to the truth of a verdict—as Davies and Bender both contend—it must be possible for her to establish the truth of the principle before establishing the truth of the verdict. How might she do this? It seems unlikely that mere reflection on the nature of art, or on the natures of types of art, could yield up the relevant lists of good- and bad-making properties. At least the literature has yet to produce a promising account as to how this might be done. Observation therefore seems the most promising answer. To say that the critic establishes the truth of critical principles on the basis of observation, however, is to say that she establishes a correlation between certain artworks she has already established to be good and certain properties she has already established those works to have. But then any capacity to establish that works are good by inference from principles evidently depends on some capacity to establish that works are good without any such inference, and the question arises why the critic should prefer to do by inference what she can do perfectly well without. The answer cannot be that judging by inference from principle yields epistemically better results, since a principle based on observations can be no more epistemically sound than the observations on which it is based.

None of this shows that aesthetic or critical judgment could never be inferred from principles. It does however suggest that such judgment is first and foremost non-inferential, which is what the immediacy thesis holds.

The Kantian notion of disinterest has its most direct recent descendents in the aesthetic-attitude theories that flourished from the early to mid 20th century. Though Kant followed the British in applying the term ‘disinterested’ strictly to pleasures, its migration to attitudes is not difficult to explain. For Kant the pleasure involved in a judgment of taste is disinterested because such a judgment does not issue in a motive to do anything in particular. For this reason Kant refers to the judgment of taste as contemplative rather than practical (Kant 1790, 95). But if the judgment of taste is not practical, then the attitude we bear toward its object is presumably also not practical: when we judge an object aesthetically we are unconcerned with whether and how it may further our practical aims. Hence it is natural to speak of our attitude toward the object as disinterested.

To say, however, that the migration of disinterest from pleasures to attitudes is natural is not to say that it is inconsequential. Consider the difference between Kant’s aesthetic theory, the last great theory of taste, and Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory, the first great aesthetic-attitude theory. Whereas for Kant disinterested pleasure is the means by which we discover things to bear aesthetic value, for Schopenhauer disinterested attention (or “will-less contemplation”) is itself the locus of aesthetic value. According to Schopenhauer, we lead our ordinary, practical lives in a kind of bondage to our own desires (Schopenhauer 1819, 196). This bondage is a source not merely of pain but also of cognitive distortion in that it restricts our attention to those aspects of things relevant to the fulfilling or thwarting of our desires. Aesthetic contemplation, being will-less, is therefore both epistemically and hedonically valuable, allowing us a desire-free glimpse into the essences of things as well as a respite from desire-induced pain:

When, however, an external cause or inward disposition suddenly raises us out of the endless stream of willing, and snatches knowledge from the thralldom of the will, the attention is now no longer directed to the motives of willing, but comprehends things free from their relation to the will … Then all at once the peace, always sought but always escaping us … comes to us of its own accord, and all is well with us. (Schopenhauer 1819, 196)

The two most influential aesthetic-attitude theories of the 20th century are those of Edward Bullough and Jerome Stolnitz. According to Stolnitz’s theory, which is the more straightforward of the two, bearing an aesthetic attitude toward an object is a matter of attending to it disinterestedly and sympathetically, where to attend to it disinterestedly is to attend to it with no purpose beyond that of attending to it, and to attend to it sympathetically is to “accept it on its own terms,” allowing it, and not one’s own preconceptions, to guide one’s attention of it (Stolnitz 1960, 32–36). The result of such attention is a comparatively richer experience of the object, i.e., an experience taking in comparatively many of the object’s features. Whereas a practical attitude limits and fragments the object of our experience, allowing us to “see only those of its features which are relevant to our purposes,…. By contrast, the aesthetic attitude ‘isolates’ the object and focuses upon it—the ‘look’ of the rocks, the sound of the ocean, the colors in the painting.” (Stolnitz 1960, 33, 35).

Bullough, who prefers to speak of “psychical distance” rather than disinterest, characterizes aesthetic appreciation as something achieved

by putting the phenomenon, so to speak, out of gear with our actual practical self; by allowing it to stand outside the context of our personal needs and ends—in short, by looking at it ‘objectively’ … by permitting only such reactions on our part as emphasise the ‘objective features of the experience, and by interpreting even our ‘subjective’ affections not as modes of our being but rather as characteristics of the phenomenon. (Bullough 1995, 298–299; emphasis in original).

Bullough has been criticized for claiming that aesthetic appreciation requires dispassionate detachment:

Bullough’s characterization of the aesthetic attitude is the easiest to attack. When we cry at a tragedy, jump in fear at a horror movie, or lose ourselves in the plot of a complex novel, we cannot be said to be detached, although we may be appreciating the aesthetic qualities of these works to the fullest… . And we can appreciate the aesthetic properties of the fog or storm while fearing the dangers they present. (Goldman 2005, 264)

But such a criticism seems to overlook a subtlety of Bullough’s view. While Bullough does hold that aesthetic appreciation requires distance “between our own self and its affections” (Bullough 1995, 298), he does not take this to require that we not undergo affections but quite the opposite: only if we undergo affections have we affections from which to be distanced. So, for example, the properly distanced spectator of a well-constructed tragedy is not the “over-distanced” spectator who feels no pity or fear, nor the “under-distanced” spectator who feels pity and fear as she would to an actual, present catastrophe, but the spectator who interprets the pity and fear she feels “not as modes of [her] being but rather as characteristics of the phenomenon” (Bullough 1995, 299). The properly distanced spectator of a tragedy, we might say, understands her fear and pity to be part of what tragedy is about.

The notion of the aesthetic attitude has been attacked from all corners and has very few remaining sympathizers. George Dickie is widely regarded as having delivered the decisive blow in his essay “The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude” (Dickie 1964) by arguing that all purported examples of interested attention are really just examples of inattention. So consider the case of the spectator at a performance of Othello who becomes increasingly suspicious of his own wife as the action proceeds, or the case of the impresario who sits gauging the size of the audience, or the case of the father who sits taking pride in his daughter’s performance, or the case of the moralist who sits gauging the moral effects the play is apt to produce in its audience. These and all such cases will be regarded by the attitude theorist as cases of interested attention to the performance, when they are actually nothing but cases of inattention to the performance: the jealous husband is attending to his wife, the impresario to the till, the father to his daughter, the moralist to the effects of the play. But if none of them is attending to the performance, then none of them is attending to it interestedly (Dickie 1964, 57–59).

The attitude theorist, however, can plausibly resist Dickie’s interpretation of such examples. Clearly the impresario is not attending to the performance, but there is no reason to regard the attitude theorist as committed to thinking otherwise. As for the others, it might be argued that they are all attending. The jealous husband must be attending to the performance, since it is the action of the play, as presented by the performance, that is making him suspicious. The proud father must be attending to the performance, since he is attending to his daughter’s performance, which is an element of it. The moralist must be attending to the performance, since he otherwise would have no basis by which to gauge its moral effects on the audience. It may be that none of these spectators is giving the performance the attention it demands, but that is precisely the attitude theorist’s point.

But perhaps another of Dickie’s criticisms, one lesser known, ultimately poses a greater threat to the ambitions of the attitude theorist. Stolnitz, it will be recalled, distinguishes between disinterested and interested attention according to the purpose governing the attention: to attend disinterestedly is to attend with no purpose beyond that of attending; to attend interestedly is to attend with some purpose beyond that of attending. But Dickie objects that a difference in purpose does not imply a difference in attention:

Suppose Jones listens to a piece of music for the purpose of being able to analyze and describe it on an examination the next day and Smith listens to the same music with no such ulterior purpose. There is certainly a difference in the motives and intentions of the two men: Jones has an ulterior purpose and Smith does not, but this does not mean Jones’s listening differs from Smith’s … . There is only one way to listen to (to attend to) music, although there may be a variety of motives, intentions, and reasons for doing so and a variety of ways of being distracted from the music. (Dickie 1964, 58).

There is again much here that the attitude theorist can resist. The idea that listening is a species of attending can be resisted: the question at hand, strictly speaking, is not whether Jones and Smith listen to the music in the same way, but whether they attend in the same way to the music they are listening to. The contention that Jones and Smith are attending in the same way appears to be question-begging, as it evidently depends on a principle of individuation that the attitude theorist rejects: if Jones’s attention is governed by some ulterior purpose and Smith’s is not, and we individuate attention according to the purpose that governs it, their attention is not the same. Finally, even if we reject the attitude theorist’s principle of individuation, the claim that there is but one way to attend to music is doubtful: one can seemingly attend to music in myriad ways—as historical document, as cultural artifact, as aural wallpaper, as sonic disturbance—depending on which of the music’s features one attends to in listening to it. But Dickie is nevertheless onto something crucial to the degree he urges that a difference in purpose need not imply a relevant difference in attention. Disinterest plausibly figures in the definition of the aesthetic attitude only to the degree that it, and it alone, focuses attention on the features of the object that matter aesthetically. The possibility that there are interests that focus attention on just those same features implies that disinterest has no place in such a definition, which in turn implies that neither it nor the notion of the aesthetic attitude is likely to be of any use in fixing the meaning of the term ‘aesthetic.’ If to take the aesthetic attitude toward an object simply is to attend to its aesthetically relevant properties, whether the attention is interested or disinterested, then determining whether an attitude is aesthetic apparently requires first determining which properties are the aesthetically relevant ones. And this task seems always to result either in claims about the immediate graspability of aesthetic properties, which are arguably insufficient to the task, or in claims about the essentially formal nature of aesthetic properties, which are arguably groundless.

But that the notions of disinterest and psychical distance prove unhelpful in fixing the meaning of the term ‘aesthetic’ does not imply that they are mythic. At times we seem unable to get by without them. Consider the case of The Fall of Miletus —a tragedy written by the Greek dramatist Phrynicus and staged in Athens barely two years after the violent Persian capture of the Greek city of Miletus in 494 BC. Herodotus records that

[the Athenians] found many ways to express their sorrow at the fall of Miletus, and in particular, when Phrynicus composed and produced a play called The Fall of Miletus , the audience burst into tears and fined him a thousand drachmas for reminding them of a disaster that was so close to home; future productions of the play were also banned. (Herodotus, The Histories , 359)

How are we to explain the Athenian reaction to this play without recourse to something like interest or lack of distance? How, in particular, are we to explain the difference between the sorrow elicited by a successful tragedy and the sorrow elicited in this case? The distinction between attention and inattention is of no use here. The difference is not that the Athenians could not attend to The Fall whereas they could attend to other plays. The difference is that they could not attend to The Fall as they could attend to other plays, and this because of their too intimate connection to what attending to The Fall required their attending to.

Theories of aesthetic experience may be divided into two kinds according to the kind of feature appealed to in explanation of what makes experience aesthetic: internalist theories appeal to features internal to experience, typically to phenomenological features, whereas externalist theories appeal to features external to the experience, typically to features of the object experienced. (The distinction between internalist and externalist theories of aesthetic experience is similar, though not identical, to the distinction between phenomenal and epistemic conceptions of aesthetic experience drawn by Gary Iseminger (Iseminger 2003, 100, and Iseminger 2004, 27, 36)). Though internalist theories—particularly John Dewey’s (1934) and Monroe Beardsley’s (1958)—predominated during the early and middle parts of the 20th century, externalist theories—including Beardsley’s (1982) and George Dickie’s (1988)—have been in the ascendance since. Beardsley’s views on aesthetic experience make a strong claim on our attention, given that Beardsley might be said to have authored the culminating internalist theory as well as the founding externalist one. Dickie’s criticisms of Beardsley’s internalism make an equally strong claim, since they moved Beardsley—and with him most everyone else—from internalism toward externalism.

According to the version of internalism Beardsley advances in his  Aesthetics  (1958), all aesthetic experiences have in common three or four (depending on how you count) features, which “some writers have [discovered] through acute introspection, and which each of us can test in his own experience” (Beardsley 1958, 527). These are focus (“an aesthetic experience is one in which attention is firmly fixed upon [its object]”), intensity, and unity, where unity is a matter of coherence and of completeness (Beardsley 1958, 527). Coherence, in turn, is a matter of having elements that are properly connected one to another such that

[o]ne thing leads to another; continuity of development, without gaps or dead spaces, a sense of overall providential pattern of guidance, an orderly cumulation of energy toward a climax, are present to an unusual degree. (Beardsley 1958, 528)

Completeness, by contrast, is a matter having elements that “counterbalance” or “resolve” one another such that the whole stands apart from elements without it:

The impulses and expectations aroused by elements within the experience are felt to be counterbalanced or resolved by other elements within the experience, so that some degree of equilibrium or finality is achieved and enjoyed. The experience detaches itself, and even insulates itself, from the intrusion of alien elements. (Beardsley 1958, 528)

Dickie’s most consequential criticism of Beardsley’s theory is that Beardsley, in describing the phenomenology of aesthetic experience, has failed to distinguish between the features we experience aesthetic objects as having and the features aesthetic experiences themselves have. So while every feature mentioned in Beardsley’s description of the coherence of aesthetic experience—continuity of development, the absence of gaps, the mounting of energy toward a climax—surely is a feature we experience aesthetic objects as having, there is no reason to think of aesthetic experience itself as having any such features:

Note that everything referred to [in Beardsley’s description of coherence] is a perceptual characteristic … and not an effect of perceptual characteristics. Thus, no ground is furnished for concluding that experience can be unified in the sense of being coherent. What is actually argued for is that aesthetic objects are coherent, a conclusion which must be granted, but not the one which is relevant. (Dickie 1965, 131)

Dickie raises a similar worry about Beardsley’s description of the completeness of aesthetic experience:

One can speak of elements being counterbalanced  in the painting  and say that the painting is stable, balanced and so on, but what does it mean to say the  experience  of the spectator of the painting is stable or balanced? … Looking at a painting in some cases might aid some persons in coming to feel stable because it might distract them from whatever is unsettling them, but such cases are atypical of aesthetic appreciation and not relevant to aesthetic theory. Aren’t characteristics attributable to the painting simply being mistakenly shifted to the spectator? (Dickie 1965, 132)

Though these objections turned out to be only the beginning of the debate between Dickie and Beardsley on the nature of aesthetic experience (See Beardsley 1969, Dickie 1974, Beardsley 1970, and Dickie 1987; see also Iseminger 2003 for a helpful overview of the Beardsley-Dickie debate), they nevertheless went a long way toward shaping that debate, which taken as whole might be seen as the working out of an answer to the question “What can a theory of aesthetic experience be that takes seriously the distinction between the experience of features and the features of experience?” The answer turned out to be an externalist theory of the sort that Beardsley advances in the 1970 essay “The Aesthetic Point of View” and that many others have advanced since: a theory according to which an aesthetic experience just is an experience having aesthetic content, i.e., an experience of an object as having the aesthetic features that it has.

The shift from internalism to externalism has meant that one central ambition of internalism—that of tying the meaning of ‘aesthetic’ to features internal to aesthetic experience—has had to be given up. But a second, equally central, ambition—that of accounting for aesthetic value by grounding it in the value of aesthetic experience—has been retained. The following section takes up the development and prospects of such accounts.

2.5 Aesthetic Value

To count as complete a theory of aesthetic value must answer two questions:

What makes aesthetic value aesthetic?
What makes aesthetic value value?

The literature refers to the first question sometimes as the aesthetic question (Lopes 2018, 41–43; Shelley 2019, 1) and sometimes as the demarcation question (van der Berg 2020, 2; Matherne 2020, 315; Peacocke 2021, 165). It refers to the second as the normative question (Lopes 2018, 41–43; Shelley 2019, 1; Matherne 2020, 315).

The prevailing answer to the aesthetic question is aesthetic formalism , the view that aesthetic value is aesthetic because objects bear it in virtue of their perceptual properties, where these encompass visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile properties. Aesthetic formalism rose to prominence when and because artistic formalism did, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see Section 5.1). Because everyone then took artistic value to be a species of aesthetic value, artistic formalism could gain prominence only by dragging aesthetic formalism in its train. But whereas artistic formalism has since fallen from favor, aesthetic formalism has held its ground. The explanation, arguably, has to do with the way aesthetic formalism honors the conceptual link between the aesthetic and the perceptual. Any adequate answer to the aesthetic question must meet what we may call the perceptual constraint , that is, it must plausibly articulate the sense in which aesthetic value is perceptual. Aesthetic formalism does this in the clearest possible terms.

Versions of aesthetic formalism come in varying strengths. Its strongest versions hold objects to have aesthetic value strictly in virtue of their perceptual properties (Bell 1958/1914; Danto 2003, 92). Weaker versions either allow objects to have aesthetic value in virtue of their non-perceptual content so long as that content expresses itself perpetually (Zangwill 1998, 71–72) or require merely that objects paradigmatically have aesthetic value in virtue of their perceptual properties (Levinson 1996, 6). All versions of aesthetic formalism struggle, one way or another, to accommodate our long-standing practice of ascribing aesthetic value to objects that do not address themselves primarily to the five bodily senses. Consider works of literature. We have been ascribing aesthetic value to them for as long as we have been ascribing aesthetic value to artworks of any kind. How might the aesthetic theorist square her theory with this practice? A first approach is simply to dismiss that practice, regarding its participants as linguistically confused, as applying terms of aesthetic praise to objects constitutionally incapable of meriting it (Danto 2003, 92). But given how extremely revisionist this approach is, we ought to wait on an argument of proportionately extreme strength before adopting it. A second approach allows that literary works bear aesthetic value, but only in virtue of their sensory properties, such as properties associated with assonance, consonance, rhythm, and imagery (Urmson 1957, 85–86, 88; Zangwill 2001, 135–140). But this approach accounts for a mere fraction of the aesthetic value we routinely ascribe to works of literature. Suppose you praise a short story for the eloquence of its prose and the beauty of its plot-structure. It seems arbitrary to count only the eloquence as a genuine instance of aesthetic value. A third approach treats literary works as exceptional, allowing them, alone among works of art, to bear aesthetic value in virtue of their non-perceptual properties (Binkley 1970, 269; Levinson 1996, 6 n.9). The difficulty here is to explain literature’s exceptionality. If literary works somehow bear aesthetic value in virtue of non-perceptual properties, what prevents non-literary works from doing the same? Moreover, to whatever degree we allow things to have aesthetic value in virtue of their non-perceptual properties, to that degree we sever the connection the formalist asserts between the aesthetic and the perceptual and so undermine our reason for adopting aesthetic formalism in the first place.

We might be forced to choose from among these three formalist approaches to literature if aesthetic formalism constituted the only plausible articulation of the sense in which aesthetic value is perceptual, but it doesn’t. Instead of holding that aesthetic value is perceptual because things have it in virtue of their perpetual properties, one might hold that aesthetic value is perceptual because we perceive things as having it. This would be a corollary of the immediacy thesis as defined in Section 1.1. If, as that thesis holds, aesthetic judgment is perceptual, having all the immediacy of any standard perceptual judgment, then aesthetic properties are perceptual, grasped with all the immediacy of standard perceptual properties. That aesthetic properties are thus perceptual is Sibley’s point in the following:

It is of importance to note first that, broadly speaking, aesthetics deals with a kind of perception. People have to see the grace or unity of a work, hear the plaintiveness or frenzy in the music, notice the gaudiness of a colour scheme, feel the power of a novel, its mood, or its uncertainty of tone. (Sibley 2001, 34, emphasis in original)

Sibley says that people have to see the grace or unity of a work and they have to feel the power of a novel. He doesn’t say that they have to see the properties in virtue of which a work has grace or unity or feel the properties in virtue of which a novel has power: the properties in virtue of which a work has grace or unity need not be perceptual and the properties in virtue of which a novel has power presumably will not be. Thus the literature problem, over which formalism stumbles, does not arise for Sibley, nor for anyone else committed to the immediacy thesis, including Shaftesbury (Cooper 1711, 17, 231), Hutcheson (1725, 16–24), Hume (1751, Section I), and Reid (1785, 760–761), among others. For the immediacy theorist, the aesthetic value we ascribe to literary works is aesthetic because we perceive literary works as bearing it.

The prevailing answer to the normative question is aesthetic hedonism , the view that aesthetic value is value because things having it give pleasure when experienced. Aesthetic hedonism achieved prominence in the 19th century, roughly when aesthetic formalism did. Schopenhauer played a pivotal role in bringing it to prominence by reassigning disinterested pleasure from the role it had been playing in aesthetic judgment to the role of grounding aesthetic value (Schopenhauer 1818 [1969], 195–200). Bentham (1789, ch. 4) and Mill (1863 [2001]; ch. 2) arguably played larger roles by popularizing value hedonism, that is, the view that pleasure is the ground of all value. But whereas value hedonism no longer holds much sway in ethics, and Schopenhauer no longer exerts much influence in aesthetics, aesthetic hedonism has held its ground. The explanation presumably has to do with the apparent ease with which aesthetic hedonism explains why we seek out objects of aesthetic value. Any adequate answer to the normative question must meet what we may call the normative constraint , that is, it must plausibly identify what a thing’s having aesthetic value gives us reason to do. Aesthetic hedonism, locating that reason in the pleasure taken in experiencing aesthetically valuable objects, does this in the clearest possible terms.

Advocates of aesthetic hedonism include Schopenhauer 1818 [1969], Clive Bell 1914 [1958], C. I. Lewis 1946, Monroe Beardsley 1982, George Dickie 1988, Alan Goldman 1990, Kendall Walton 1993, Malcolm Budd 1995, Jerrold Levinson 1996, 2002, Gary Iseminger 2004, Robert Stecker 2006, 2019, Nick Stang 2010 and Mohan Matthen 2017. It is only quite recently that any sustained opposition to hedonism has arisen, a fact that may go some way toward explaining why hedonists, as a rule, see no need to argue for their view, opting instead to develop it in light of objections an imagined opposition might make.

Beardsley, for instance, leads with this simple formulation of hedonism:

The aesthetic value of an object is the value it possesses in virtue of its capacity to provide aesthetic gratification. (Beardsley 1982, 21).

But he then anticipates a fatal objection. Sometimes we undervalue aesthetic objects, finding them to have less value than they actually have; other times we overvalue aesthetic objects, finding them to have greater value than they actually have. The simple formulation above is consistent with undervaluation, since it is possible to take less aesthetic pleasure from an object than it has the capacity to provide, but inconsistent with overvaluation, since it is impossible to take greater aesthetic pleasure from an object than it has the capacity to provide (Beardsley 1982, 26–27). To remedy this problem, Beardsley appends a rider:

The aesthetic value of [an object] is the value [it] possesses in virtue of its capacity to provide aesthetic gratification when correctly and completely experienced (Beardsley 1982, 27, italics in original).

Suppose we refer to the italicized portion of this formulation as the epistemic qualification and the non-italicized portion as the hedonic thesis . The epistemic qualification renders the hedonic thesis consistent with overvaluation, given that you can misapprehend an object such that you take greater aesthetic pleasure from it than it has the capacity to provide when apprehended correctly and completely.

Beardsley’s version of aesthetic hedonism has served as a model for subsequent versions (Levinson 2002, n. 23); at least all subsequent versions consist of an epistemically qualified hedonic thesis in some form. Beardsley’s version, however, seems open to counter-example. Consider Tony Morrison’s Beloved , for instance, or Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Taking pleasure from works designed to cause shock, horror, despair, or moral revulsion may seem perverse; surely, it may seem, such works do not have whatever aesthetic value they have in virtue of any pleasure they give. One way to accommodate such cases is to cast aesthetic pleasure as a higher-order response, that is, a response that depends on lower-order responses, which in some cases might include shock, horror, despair, and moral revulsion (Walton 1993, 508; Levinson 1992, 18). Another way is to broaden the field of experiences that may ground aesthetic value. Though pleasure as a rule grounds aesthetic value, in exceptional cases certain non-hedonic yet intrinsically valuable experiences—which may include horror, shock, despair, and revulsion—may also do so (Levinson 1992, 12; Stecker 2005, 12). The literature refers to this latter, broadened variety of hedonism as aesthetic empiricism ; it hasn’t settled on a name for the former variety, but we may call it tiered hedonism , given the varying levels of response it takes aesthetic experience to comprise.

Yet another objection, anticipated by hedonists, holds hedonism to imply the heresy of the separable experience (Budd 1985, 125). It is a commonplace that for any object bearing aesthetic value nothing other than it can have just the particular value it has, excepting the improbable case in which something other than it has just its particular aesthetic character. The worry is that hedonism, given that it regards aesthetic value as instrumental to the value of experience, implies that for any object bearing aesthetic value something wholly other from it, such as a drug, might induce the same experience and so serve up the same value. The hedonist’s usual reply is to assert that aesthetic experience is inseparable from its object, such that for any aesthetic experience, that experience is just the particular experience it is because it has just the particular aesthetic object it has (Levinson 1996, 22–23; Budd 1985, 123–124; S. Davies 1994: 315–16; Stang 2012, 271–272).

Actual opposition to hedonism did not materialize until the present century (Sharpe 2000, Davies 2004), and most all of that during the past decade or so (Shelley 2010, 2011, 2019; Wolf 2011; Lopes 2015, 2018; Gorodeisky 2021a, 2021b). Why the opposition took so long to show up is a good question. It is tempting to think its answer resides in the obvious truth of the hedonist’s central premise, namely, that aesthetically valuable objects please us, at least in general. Anti-hedonists, however, have taken no interest in denying this premise. One useful way to think of the dialectic between hedonists and their opponents is to regard each as grasping one horn of an aesthetic version of the Euthyphro dilemma, where hedonists hold things to have aesthetic value because they please and anti-hedonists hold things to please because they have aesthetic value (Augustine 2005/389–391, De vera religione §59; Gorodeisky 2012a, 201 and 2021b, 262). Seen this way, the fact that aesthetically valuable things please tells not at all in favor of the hedonist; indeed, it is precisely this fact that the anti-hedonist thinks the hedonist cannot explain.

For instance, Wolf, in the context of an extended, nuanced case against value welfarism, argues that aesthetic hedonism cannot account for the fact that Middlemarch is a better novel than the Da Vinci Code ,given that most people apparently like the latter better, presumably because it gives them greater pleasure (Wolf 2011, 54–55; see also Sharpe 2000, 326). The hedonist has a ready reply in the claim that all standard versions of hedonism are now epistemically qualified, that while most people may derive greater pleasure from the Da Vinci Code , a fully informed reader—that is, a reader who gives both texts a correct and complete reading—will not, assuming Middlemarch to be the better novel. But it’s not clear how much appeal to the epistemic qualification ultimately helps the hedonist. The anti-hedonist will want to know what best explains the fact that a fully informed reader will derive greater pleasure from Middlemarch (Wolf 2011, 55; D. Davies 2004, 258–259; Sharpe 2000, 325). Suppose we say that it owes to the fully informed reader’s grasping the superiority of Middlemarch’s structure, the higher quality of its prose, the greater subtlety and depth of its character development, and the greater penetration of the insights it affords (Wolf 2011, 55). Wouldn’t we then be saying that it owes to her grasping the greater aesthetic value of Middlemarch ? Wouldn’t that be part of what a fully informed reader is fully informed about?

Of course, the hedonist may allow Middlemarch to be aesthetically better because of its superior structure, prose, character development, and insight; to allow this, from her point of view, is simply to allow that these are the elements in virtue of which a fully informed reader will derive greater pleasure. But here it would be good if the hedonist had an argument. Otherwise, the anti-hedonist will rightly wonder how it is that a correct and complete experience of Middlemarch will be an experience of every value-conferring feature of Middlemarch yet not an experience of the value conferred by those features. She will rightly wonder whether the hedonist fails to honor her own commitment to externalism about aesthetic value; she will rightly wonder, in other words, whether the hedonist fails to distinguish between a valuable experience and an experience of value, just as the internalist about aesthetic value fails to distinguish between a coherent and complete experience and an experience of coherence and completeness.

Earlier we attributed the appeal of hedonism to the apparent ease with which it explains our seeking out objects of aesthetic value. Anti-hedonists take that ease to be apparent merely. Some anti-hedonists, for instance, argue that at least some aesthetically valuable objects offer up pleasure only on condition that we do not seek it (Lopes 2018, 84–86; Ven der Berg 2020, 5–6; see also Elster 1983, 77–85). Lopes puts the point this way:

Sometimes an agent has an aesthetic reason to act and yet they could not be motivated to act out of a hedonic desire that would be satisfied by their so acting. To get any pleasure, they must act out of non-hedonic motives. Strolling through the Louvre, they happen upon the Chardins, and they look at them. So long as they do not look seeking pleasure, they get the pleasure that the paintings afford (Lopes 2018, 85–86).

Lopes’s choice of example is not arbitrary. There are particular art-critical reasons for thinking that Chardins will frustrate the hedonically motivated viewer (Fried 1980, 92; cited in Lopes 2018, 85), and Lopes is careful to claim that only “some aesthetic pleasures are essential by-products of acts motivated by other considerations” (Lopes 2018, 85). But it’s not as if Lopes’s claim is specific to Chardins. Consider again Wolf’s assertation that most readers take greater pleasure from The Da Vinci Code than from Middlemarch . If that assertion is correct, as it plausibly is, perhaps this is because (a) most readers read for pleasure, and (b) The Da Vinci Code affords pleasure to readers who read for it, whereas (c) Middlemarch withholds pleasure from such readers, affording pleasure instead on readers who read in pursuit of some non-hedonic good.

There is an apparent tension, moreover, between the hedonist’s reliance on the epistemic qualification and her claim that pleasure rationalizes our aesthetic pursuits. Consider the less-than-fully-informed reader who overvalues The Da Vinci Code and undervalues Middlemarch . The epistemic qualification is designed to allow the hedonist to explain how this might occur: such a reader takes greater pleasure from The Da Vinci Code , and less (or lesser) pleasure from Middlemarch , than she would were she fully informed. The epistemic qualification, moreover, allows the hedonist to explain why the uninformed reader has aesthetic reason not to undervalue Middlemarch: she is missing out on pleasure that would be hers if only she gave Middlemarch a fully informed reading. But the hedonist struggles to explain why the uninformed reader has reason not to overvalue the Da Vinci Code . If The Da Vinci Code gives the reader greater pleasure when she overvalues it, not only has she no aesthetic reason to be fully informed, she has aesthetic reason not to be. It therefore seems that if pleasure rationalized our hedonic pursuits, we would take ourselves to have reason to experience aesthetic objects in whatever way maximizes our pleasure. To the degree that we instead take ourselves to have reason to experience aesthetic objects completely and correctly—to the degree that we instead take ourselves to have reason to experience aesthetic objects as having the aesthetic values they in fact have—suggests that pleasure is not the aesthetic good we’re after (Shelley 2011).

But if pleasure is not the aesthetic good we’re after, what is? Part of hedonism’s perceived inevitability over the past century or so has owed to our inability even to imagine alternatives to it. If opposition to hedonism has been slow to materialize, alternatives have been slower still. To date, the only fully realized alternative to hedonism is Lopes’s network theory of aesthetic normativity, articulated and defended in his ground-breaking Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value (2018).

Earlier we noted how Lopes challenges the hedonist on her own terms, objecting that she cannot adequately explain why we seek out objects of aesthetic value, given that aesthetic pleasure is at least sometimes an essential by-product of our seeking after something else (2018, 84–86). Lopes’s deeper challenge, however, targets the hedonist’s very terms. Aesthetic considerations rationalize a very great variety of aesthetic acts, according to Lopes: appreciating objects of aesthetic value is one such act, but so too is hanging a poster one way rather than another, selecting this book rather than that one for a book club, building out a garden this way rather than that, conserving one video game rather than another, pairing this dish with this wine rather than that one, and so on ad infinitum (2018, 32–36). If a theory of aesthetic value is to accommodate such a vast range of aesthetic acts, without singling out any one as more central than the others, it will have to conceive of aesthetic normativity as a species of some very general kind of normativity. Lopes, accordingly, conceives of aesthetic normativity as a species of the most generic form of practical normativity; that aesthetic acts ought to be performed well follows from the premise that all acts ought to be performed well for the simple reason that they are acts (2018, 135–137). As Lopes puts it: “Aesthetic values inherit their practical normativity from a basic condition of all agency—agents must use what they have to perform successfully” (2018, 135). Just which competencies an aesthetic agent may call upon to perform successfully on any given occasion depends on the particular role they happen to be playing in the particular social practice in which they happen to be performing (2018, 135). It is from the fact that all aesthetic activity necessarily takes place within the domain of some particular social practice that the network theory of aesthetic value takes its name (2018, 119).

In holding aesthetic agents to be performing the greatest variety of aesthetic acts on the greatest variety of items in coordination with one another, the network theory departs radically from hedonism. But, as Lopes himself observes, the network theory follows after hedonism in one fundamental way: inasmuch as both theories “answer the normative question but offer nothing in answer to the aesthetic question,” both “are consistent with any stand-alone answer to the aesthetic question” (2018, 48). The claim that the normative and aesthetic questions admit of stand-alone answers implies that aesthetic value is a species of the genus value in a standard species-genus relation, such that what makes aesthetic value value has no bearing on what makes it aesthetic and vice-versa. It therefore also implies that aesthetic value is not a determinate of the determinable value , such that what makes aesthetic value aesthetic is very thing that makes it value.

Do answers to the normative and aesthetic questions stand alone or stand together? If we have not yet registered the urgency of this question, perhaps that is because no one has yet fully articulated, let alone defended, a theory of aesthetic value according to which aesthetic value is a determinate form of value. Such a theory appears to be implicit, however, in Shelley 2011, Watkins and Shelley 2012, Gorodeisky and Marcus 2018, Gorodeisky 2021a, and Shelley 2022. The position common to these authors has been dubbed the Auburn view (Van der Berg 2020, 11). It answers the aesthetic question, and therein the value question, by holding an item’s having aesthetic value to rationalize its appreciation in a distinctively self-reflexive way, such that part of what you perceive when you appreciate an aesthetically valuable item is that it ought to be appreciated as you appreciating it (Shelley 2011, 220–222; Watkins and Shelley 2012, 348–350; Gorodeisky and Marcus 2018, 117–119; Gorodeisky 2021a, 200, 207; Shelley 2022, 12). The network theorist may object that the Auburn view privileges acts of appreciation as surely as hedonism does, but such an objection, from the Auburn perspective, begs the question. It is in assuming that the normative and aesthetic questions admit of stand-alone answers that the network theorist grants herself the freedom of passing on the aesthetic question, and it is in passing on the aesthetic question that she grants herself the freedom of treating each of a very great variety of aesthetic acts as equally central. It is in assuming that aesthetic value is a determinate of the determinable value , meanwhile, that the Auburnite places herself under the necessity of answering the aesthetic question, and it is in seeking an answer to the aesthetic question that she places herself under the necessity of singling out appreciation as aesthetically central. The network theorist and the Auburnite agree that the aesthetic question deserves an answer sooner or later (Lopes 2018, 46). They disagree, crucially, about whether it deserves an answer sooner rather than later.

The network theory and the Auburn view hardly exhaust the options for non-hedonic theories of aesthetic normativity: Nguyen 2019, Matherne 2020, Peacocke 2021, Kubala 2021, and Riggle 2022 all represent promising new directions. Yet every new theory of aesthetic value, hedonic or not, must follow after the network theory or the Auburn view in regarding answers to the normative and aesthetic questions as stand-alone or stand-together. A lot hangs on the decision to follow one path rather than the other. Perhaps it’s time we attend to it.

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Article Contents

I . introduction, ii . the bold thesis, iii . the problem of paraphrase, iv . doing philosophy, v . film as philosophy, vi . an additional example of cinematic philosophy, vii . conclusion.

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Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold Thesis

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AARON SMUTS, Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold Thesis, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Volume 67, Issue 4, November 2009, Pages 409–420, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2009.01370.x

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The philosophy of film is the discussion of philosophical problems related to film, its nature, effects, and value. 1 But what of philosophy in film? We say that certain filmmakers, such as Ingmar Bergman, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean‐Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Wim Wenders, and Richard Linklater, are philosophical, meaning that they grapple with philosophical questions in their work. 2 Likewise, we describe many films as philosophical, as in some sense doing philosophy. 3 However, it is not altogether clear how a film could “do philosophy.” Of course, it all depends on exactly what we mean by “doing philosophy.” And it is plausible that doing philosophy is something along the lines of offering arguments related to a philosophical question. 4 If so, then we must ask: How can a film argue? Or, how can a filmmaker argue using a film?

I think film can do philosophy, and in this article I defend a position close to what Paisley Livingston calls the bold thesis of cinema as philosophy. 5 My goal is not to merely play gadfly to Livingston, but to defend a well‐articulated, strong thesis about the philosophical abilities of film; the bold thesis fits the bill. As described by Livingston, the bold thesis is that some films can make innovative, independent philosophical contributions by cinematic means. In the abstract, the idea is simply that film can do philosophy in an interesting way. And it is certainly not interesting to point out that a film could be philosophical by simply presenting a philosopher reading a paper. If the film as philosophy thesis has any significance, it must hold that film can do philosophy in a way more “cinematic” than merely recording a talk. In addition, if film can do first‐rate philosophy, it must be able to make original contributions to the field. The central problem with the bold thesis is that it runs into what Livingston calls the problem of paraphrase . Before exploring this problem and my solution, it will be useful to tighten up the version of the bold thesis that I intend to defend.

The bold thesis that film can do philosophy has two major parts—an epistemic criterion and an artistic criterion. Livingston states the thesis, roughly, as follows: films can make innovative, independent contributions to philosophy through means that are exclusive to cinema. In order to understand the thesis, we will need to explain the epistemic criterion—what it means for a philosophical contribution to be innovative and independent. We will also need to expand the notion of “means that are exclusive to cinema”—the artistic criterion. I will begin with the latter.

i. The Artistic Criterion

Livingston may have a couple of different ideas in mind when he says that the bold thesis holds that film can contribute to philosophy by “means exclusive to cinema.” As mentioned above, the general spirit of this qualification is to distinguish between filmed presentations of philosophical debates, discussions, or arguments, and other more interesting candidates. For instance, Jean‐Luc Godard's Weekend (1967) features several actors reading from revered Marxist texts, but the film is not philosophical (in the relevant way) because of these bits of Marxist thought. The philosophy, as Noël Carroll puts it, has simply been “downloaded onto the sound track.” 6 Similarly, in Waking Life (2001), Richard Linklater shows Robert Solomon discussing existentialism. Professor Solomon also features in The Teaching Company's “Great Courses” series, where he delivers lectures on existentialism and Nietzsche. The videos in the “Great Courses” series are certainly doing philosophy, but not in a relevant way. The tapes merely present a philosopher giving a lecture; it is not the film doing philosophy, but the professor. Although The Teaching Company's tapes tell us about someone doing philosophy, they do not actually do any philosophy. A transcription of the tape would have the same philosophical content; if the film was doing philosophy, most plausibly, this could not be the case. It should be clear that Solomon is doing philosophy, not the technician behind the curtain in The Teaching Company studios.

Livingston suggests that we try to distinguish between these mere presentations of philosophy and the kind of cinematic philosophical achievements that we are looking for by requiring the defender of the bold thesis to show how a film could make a philosophical contribution through means exclusive to cinema. Unfortunately, the phrase ‘exclusive to cinema’ is ambiguous. It could mean at least two things. It could be a claim either about the putative philosophical contributions or merely about the means. This important difference requires careful elaboration, since it marks the distinction between a super bold and a merely bold thesis.

First, exclusive to cinema could mean that the contributions can only be made by means unique to the medium. If so, the idea would be that film—the medium or art form—could make philosophical contributions that could not be made in other media. That is, no works in any other media could make similar contributions to philosophy. The claim would be that some special features of the cinematic medium endow works in the art form with a unique ability to make philosophical contributions. This can be given a trivial or an ambitious elaboration, depending on how precisely one specifies the contributions. In one sense, every particular philosophical contribution made by films is made by means that are necessarily unique to cinema, since no other art form is cinema. This amounts to a mere tautology. The more ambitious claim would be that through means available only to cinema, films are able to make philosophical contributions that cannot be roughly approximated in other media. This would be a claim about the unique philosophical abilities of the cinematic art form. I will call this the super bold thesis . But this is not a claim that I wish to defend here.

Of course, some theorists, such as Daniel Frampton, make highly ambitious pronouncements about the unique philosophical abilities of film. 7 Much contemporary film theory, under the influence of Gilles Deleuze, is concerned with whether film has unique abilities to alter the ways in which we conceptualize time and movement, a process that is philosophical in an expansive sense of the term. 8 Although this might raise interesting questions, it does not track the core of the active debate in which I am interested—that is, whether or not film can do philosophy, in the most mundane sense of what it is to do philosophy. If uniqueness is what Livingston intends, then I am presenting a different bold thesis. In any case, it is important to note that by defending what I am calling the bold thesis, I am not offering support for the Deleuzean position—the super bold thesis. 9

The problem, as I understand it, is to explain how it is that a film could make an original (not unique) contribution to philosophy by using what we might call its cinematic means. Such means include montage, camera angles and movement, and the juxtaposition of word and image. It is not clear that there are means that are exclusive to cinema, but there are means that are typical of cinema that make sense of why we want to exclude the filmed philosophy lecture. It is often said of such filmmakers as Eric Rohmer that they are not cinematic. For instance, the discussion of Pascal's Wager in My Night at Maud’s (1969) is not particularly cinematic. With long shots and almost no camera movement, the movie is much like a filmed conversation, and in that sense, perhaps the philosophical contribution it makes, if any, is not what we are looking for.

The bold thesis that I intend to defend is that some films can make philosophical contributions by way of paradigmatic cinematic means. My position is much more intimately tied to the question of whether narrative artworks can do philosophy, rather than if film as a medium has some unique abilities, unavailable to other media, whereby it can do philosophy. Although the uniqueness claim raises difficult questions, it does not seem to be a question that we should care about, principally because medium specificity claims are likely specious. 10 So, by “exclusive cinematic means” I mean something much closer to “by means that are significantly more cinematic than merely presenting a philosophical lecture.” I do not mean to attribute unique philosophical abilities to film; I simply claim that films can do philosophy through what we might loosely call cinematic means.

ii. The Epistemic Criterion

The epistemic criterion of the bold thesis is more substantial. As Livingston explains it, the epistemic criterion involves both innovation and independence. Just what Livingston has in mind by “independence” is a bit obscure, so I will first describe the other condition. By “innovative” he simply means that the philosophical contribution could be unique in human history. 11 The purpose of this criterion is to help distinguish between the mere illustration of a preexisting philosophical concept and the presentation of a new idea. If films are incapable of making innovative philosophical contributions, then they are extremely limited. The requirement is not that all philosophical contributions made by films must be innovative, but that in principle films should be capable of innovation. Noël Carroll accepts a similar originality requirement for any claim that film can do philosophy. He argues that in order for us to say that a filmmaker could do philosophy through film, it would have to be possible to make an original contribution to the field. Otherwise, the philosophy we might find in a film would most plausibly be mere illustration. In order to do philosophy at this level, one must be able to do more than illustrate a preexisting idea. 12

By “independent” Livingston means that the philosophical contribution made by a film is not grossly dependent on some interpretation or imported, preexisting philosophical context. Imagine a filmed philosophy lecture where some of the examples were dramatized on film. For instance, consider the parable of the cave, shown, rather than told, by Plato. All philosophical work that the cinematic dramatization could perform would be dependent on the un‐cinematic, linguistic elements. I take it that the basic motivation behind this criterion is to force the contributions to be more than supplementary. That is, if film is robustly able to make philosophical contributions, these contributions should be more than mere teachers’s supplements to philosophical texts. The independence condition also rules out a certain form of shameful interpretive dependence—that is, the independence condition forces films to be able to make their own way philosophically.

To repeat, the bold thesis I intend to defend is as follows: films can make innovative, independent contributions to philosophy through paradigmatic cinematic means. It pays to note that as a standard of what is required to do philosophy, the innovative condition of the bold thesis is far too strong. Very little philosophy is innovative in this strong sense of the term. Hence, we should not think of the bold thesis as setting a minimal standard of what counts as doing philosophy. Rather, we should see the bold thesis as a claim about the philosophical potential of film. If we are able to show that film can satisfy the conditions of the bold thesis, then we have good reason to think that film is indeed a powerful medium in which one can do first‐rate philosophy. The bold thesis does not imply that for a film to do philosophy its contribution must be innovative.

Now that we have a clearer idea of the thesis that I want to defend, we can examine the most damning criticism that has been leveled against it, namely, the problem of paraphrase . The problem of paraphrase rests on the noncontroversial premise that if we claim that a film makes a philosophical contribution, then we ought to be able to state what the contribution is. 13 If we cannot say what the philosophical work amounts to, then we have no reason to think that any philosophical contribution was made. However, if we can say what the philosophical contribution of a film is, then we need reason to think that the contribution is not wholly dependent on the linguistic medium. This last condition is a bit confusing, but it can be clarified. Livingston's worry seems to be twofold. First, if we can state the philosophical contribution, then it might become difficult to divorce the contribution from the interpretive statement. What reason do we have to think that the film made the contribution and not the interpretation, which might import a philosophical problematic? Second, if the philosophical contribution is not the sole product of an interpretation but it can still be stated, then why should we think that the contribution was made by cinematic means and not simply the linguistic means available to the film?

The problem of paraphrase is essentially a demand that anyone claiming that film can do philosophy needs to give us a solid basis for thinking that a film could make an independent contribution—to demonstrate how a film could present a new idea or argument that is not grossly dependent on textual sources, non‐cinematic devices, or interpretations. To meet the challenge, it will not do to claim, as do the defenders of “filmosophy,” that there is some obscure source of philosophical knowledge contained in the film, accessible through some experiential but ultimately inexpressible means. 14 Without adopting a radically expansive notion of what it is to do philosophy, a notion nearly as broad as to elicit an experience, the defender of the bold thesis will have to be semi‐articulate about the content of the independent contributions putatively made by film. Livingston does not think that this can be done. And he is not alone in this regard. 15 For instance, G. W. F. Hegel expresses a similar worry in his claim that art is inferior to philosophy because art is confined to “picture thinking,” which cannot achieve the level of abstraction available to language and hence philosophy. 16 Similarly, Monroe Beardsley argues that images cannot be true or false as can propositions: pictures can merely show, they can never tell, at least not independent from a host of specific conventions. 17

Although the challenge is daunting, I think that the problem of paraphrase can be solved. The solution that I have in mind will become apparent if we unpack the notion of a “philosophical contribution.” So far, I have avoided expanding the concept as to limit the specificity of the position. Livingston does not spend much time unpacking the notion; instead, he expands it in a couple of appositives: “new idea or argument” and “philosophical knowledge.” 18 He contrasts what it means to make an innovative philosophical contribution with more limited goals that he thinks films can achieve, such as helping us appreciate the significance of an idea, prompting us to come up with new ideas, renewing our motivation and interest in a problem, or “merely illustrating previously published ideas.” 19

One important question that must again be raised is whether or not innovation amounts to an adequate criterion of philosophical significance. Thomas Wartenberg, for instance, does not agree. 20 He argues that illustrating a previously published idea, by helping us see its philosophical significance, should be considered doing philosophy. Although convincing, Wartenberg's criticisms are irrelevant to the bold thesis. We can agree that illustrations could be valuable but still not consider them innovative philosophical contributions of the highest kind. That is, the bold thesis may be false, but some more limited thesis, a not‐so‐bold thesis, such as Wartenberg's, might be correct. In fact, this is what Livingston thinks. The disagreement is about the limits of the philosophical abilities of cinema, not about what it takes to do philosophy.

My solution to the problem of paraphrase also involves a criticism of the criterion of what constitutes an innovative philosophical contribution, but I do not think that my subtle modification lessens the stringency of the bold thesis; in fact, my solution helps keep the bold thesis from sliding into a tautology. My argument, in brief, is that Livingston's informal suggestions, “new idea or argument” and “philosophical knowledge,” should be refined. For starters, philosophical knowledge is clearly too high of a standard, since no philosophical argument for any significant position has ever achieved positive results that we could noncontroversially call knowledge. The only philosophical knowledge that we seem to have is along the lines of simple negative theses, such as “Whatever the concept of knowledge might amount to it is more than simply justified, true belief.” 21 However, the notion of philosophical knowledge does point to a way of clarifying the criterion, namely, via belief: one can make a significant contribution to philosophy by providing an innovative reason to believe some philosophical claim. Rather than merely counting a “new idea or argument,” if we say that an innovative philosophical contribution is one that provides a new idea or “reason” to believe a philosophical claim, then we can solve the problem of paraphrase.

There are two reasons why “reason to believe,” although not perfect, is a better alternative than “argument.” The first is easy to show. The notion of a reason to believe helps the bold thesis avoid a tautological formulation. Under most interpretations, an argument is the proffering of premises in support of a conclusion. Although there may be nonlinguistic thoughts, the notion of premises implies linguistic means. But it is not interesting to point out that a film could not offer an argument by means other than language if the only way to present an argument is via language. There is no reason to offer a problem of paraphrase to reach such a conclusion. One would merely need to define an argument as linguistic and construct a thesis that requires the impossible—that films be able to offer (linguistic) arguments nonlinguistically. However, under a more generous notion of what constitutes an argument, say, reasons in support of a conclusion, the criterion might be acceptable. To avoid confusion, I will simply refer to reasons. Hedging my bets, I will, however, argue that films can present arguments. Either way, my argument for the bold thesis cannot be dismissed in the same way as Wartenberg's defense of illustration.

The second reason to think that “reason to believe” is an acceptable alternative to “argument” will require some discussion of what we are up to when we do philosophy.

In order to answer the question of whether or not a film can do innovative philosophy by cinematic means, we must first step back and explain just what it is to do philosophy. For the purposes of this article, we do not need to develop a precise answer to this question; a largely noncontroversial gloss will do. Perhaps a good way to determine what it is to do philosophy is to figure out just what we are trying to accomplish when we do it. In order to explain what it is to do philosophy, we could look at the various ways that we do it, find some commonalities, and then try to figure out what, if anything, distinguishes these activities from others. Rather than describe the way we do philosophy, it might be easier to figure out why we do it. What is the goal of philosophy? What are we trying to accomplish when we do philosophy? Rather than start with the means, the practice of philosophy as it occurs in books, journals, and conversations, I will first look to the ends.

An initial answer to this question is that when we do philosophy we are trying to convince an opponent that our stance on a philosophical problem is correct. However, there are immediate problems with this suggestion. Ignoring the circularity, the chief problem is that philosophical arguments seldom convince opponents; at best they may shake an opponent's conviction. Most of us engaged in philosophy are cognizant of the relative powerlessness of our discourse, and, as such, neither expect to nor intend to convert our dialectical opponents to our position. As a standard for evaluating the success of a philosophical argument, Peter van Inwagen suggests that we consider the ability to persuade an idealized, neutral observer who is committed to neither side of an issue that our position is more compelling than that of our opponent. 22 Although van Inwagen is concerned with the success of philosophical arguments, we can take his suggestion as relevant to specifying what goal we are trying to achieve when we do philosophy. 23

If we can accept something along the lines of van Inwagen's suggestion, then the question arises as to what kind of neutral observer we have in mind. It would not be enough to convince a child or a mentally handicapped person of our position. That would set the bar too low. Instead, we would hope to convince an idealized, rational audience. This too is problematic, since an idealized audience might be too high of a standard, especially if they had knowledge of the philosophy of the future. A supremely patient, rational, and neutral audience of our contemporaries is more reasonable.

This sounds more plausible, but it is not specific enough for the purposes of specifying what it means to do philosophy. To see why, we merely need to ask: does any attempt to convince a neutral observer of a position on any issue count as a philosophical goal? Clearly not all issues are philosophical and not all attempts to convince are philosophical. Assuming that we could specify what constitutes a philosophical issue, we need to distinguish between philosophical and other means of persuasion. Imagine a future pharmacology where a drug could be designed to inculcate any belief. Pouring a dose of non‐naturalist‐moral‐realism into someone's drink would not count as doing philosophy. Similarly, whipping a crowd into a fearful panic in order to get them to consent to torturing suspects would not be considered a philosophical argument for the moral justification of torture. Nor should a film filled with subliminal messages be considered philosophical even if it could convince us of the truth of some philosophical claim. Hence, the goal is not sufficient to differentiate the practice, even if we could specify the subject matter of philosophy.

In order to specify what it is to do philosophy, we must not only describe the end but also the means. As the preceding discussion indicates, philosophy is not pharmacology, nor is it merely rhetoric. This is not to deny that there are ineliminable rhetorical elements to philosophical works, or that they have no impact on what positions are accepted. One plausible solution is that our idealized audience would not be persuaded by mere rhetorical strategies, but by reasons. Perhaps the most obvious way to explain this would be to say that our arguments or reasons persuade and not merely our rhetoric. That is, we want to encourage rationally justified beliefs. Saying this, I certainly do not want to digress into a debate about the rationality of the emotions, or whether or not our emotional reactions give us reason to believe. 24

My modest claim is that, assuming that we can identify what constitutes philosophical subject matter, to do philosophy is, stated crudely, to attempt to provide reasons to believe some philosophical claim. 25 To offer an innovative philosophical contribution is to provide an historically novel reason to believe some position on a philosophical issue. Although most philosophy will fail to achieve this goal, it sets a high bar, in the spirit of Livingston's epistemic criterion for the bold thesis of film as philosophy that I want to defend. Since a rough characterization of the goals of philosophical activity will satisfy present purposes, we need not pursue any further refinement. I now show how film can meet this criterion through paradigmatic cinematic means.

The most popular argument for the film‐as‐philosophy thesis is that some films can function as a typical element in philosophical discourse, namely, thought experiments. There are two principal ways in which thought experiments are used in philosophy. First, thought experiments are used as “intuition pumps,” particularly in moral philosophy. An intuition pump can be used as a form of analogous reasoning or as a counterexample to a claim. Consider the abortion debate and the role of vivid thought scenarios: we do not treat acorns as we do venerable oaks, so why should we afford a fetus the rights of an adult person. A woman who is accidentally hooked up to a violinist and acts as a dialysis machine for him has no obligation to him; neither should a fetus be able to claim the womb of a pregnant woman. 26

Thought experiments can also be used as counterexamples to claims. You may think that you could not be wrong about the existence of the external world, but consider the possibility of the situation of the characters in the Wachowski brothers’s The Matrix (1999). The problem with the thought experiment argument for film as philosophy is that it does not show how films could do philosophy, much less innovative philosophy, only how we could do philosophy with a film. 27 No one denies that you can use a fictional scenario in a philosophical argument; the question is how can the fiction itself, independently, do philosophy?

I argue that there is at least one form of argument that can be made by cinematic means, namely, analogical arguments. We can find an exemplary case of film doing philosophy via an analogical argument in the “For God and Country” sequence of Sergei Eisenstein's October (1928). Before looking at this cinematic example of a possibly innovative philosophical contribution, I would like to set up the basis of a comparison with an innovative philosophical text—Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality (1887).

Nietzsche offers a genealogy of our moral concepts; that is, he traces the sources of our current moral practice (the ethics of pity), locating the original motivations in base resentment. But, to what purpose does he offer the genealogy? Why should we care about the origins of the current practice of morality? The central interpretive problem is to explain how Nietzsche's text might escape the genealogical fallacy. In a general sense, to commit the genealogical fallacy is to assume that the contemporary meaning of a practice is determined by its origination or historical meaning. Awareness of the fallacy guides much of contemporary anthropology and folklore, where the search for the origins of a cultural practice is seldom treated as relevant to its current significance. Consider the practice of saying “bless you” when someone sneezes. Suppose we dug into the history of the practice and discovered that people started saying “bless you” out of a belief that a demon left the body in each sneeze and that the person needed to be blessed to prevent the demon from returning to its host. Although this discovery might be of historical interest, it would tell us nothing about the current function of the practice, which is simply politeness. No one I know says “bless you” to ward off demons.

Nietzsche was most likely perfectly aware of the problems associated with the genealogical fallacy, which raises the question of his purpose in writing On the Genealogy of Morality . According to Brian Leiter, Nietzsche is not offering an argument to the effect that current moral practice is inherently flawed because of its lowly origins; instead, Nietzsche is trying to disabuse certain “higher types” from their perceived obligation to the norms of “Christian slave morality.” 28 On this interpretation, Nietzsche is attempting to rhetorically disparage Christian morality by exposing its soiled roots. That is, Nietzsche does not commit the genealogical fallacy, but, most plausibly, he invites his readers to do so. Although Nietzsche seems to have a largely rhetorical goal, this does not cause us to doubt that the Genealogy is a work that makes great philosophical contributions.

Of course, the Genealogy gives us additional reasons to be suspicious of “slave morality.” Knowing the origin of a practice may help us detect similar motivating factors in its continuance—that is, it directs our attention by arousing suspicion. Further, if slave morality is genuinely the product of resentment, then a host of meta‐ethical theories, most notably intuitionism, are put into question. Hence, although it has a largely rhetorical structure, the philosophical contribution made by the Genealogy is not confined to the rhetorical goals Leiter plausibly identifies.

There is good reason to think that there are numerous films that engage in similar techniques. For instance, the “For God and Country” sequence in Eisenstein's October (1928) also makes use of argument by analogy. 29 We often talk about the “argument” of a work of art, but this is typically a metaphorical term. We use this term when we are discussing the rhetorical structure of a work—how the work gets us to feel a certain way. However, Eisenstein thought that the montage in this sequence functions dialectically, just like an indisputable philosophical argument:

Step by step, by a process of comparing each new image with the common denotation, power is accumulated behind a process that can be formally identified with that of logical deduction. The decision to release these ideas, as well as the method used, is already intellectually conceived. The conventional descriptive form for film leads to the formal possibility of a kind of filmic reasoning. While the conventional film directs the emotions , this suggests an opportunity to encourage and direct the whole thought process , as well. 30

Do not quickly chalk this up to hyperbolic self‐promotion. Many of Eisenstein's most prominent commentators agree that the sequence is best described as a form of argument. For instance, Vance Kepley argues:

The montage of the sequence links one icon with another in rapid succession and ultimately mocks whatever reverence might be associated with them. What emerges from the passage is an intellectual argument against religion and nationalism, positing that they are, finally, empty concepts. … [T]he montage in the “God and Country” sequence engages the viewer in a complex intellectual activity. The spectator must trace out an elaborate set of associations and arrive at a logical conclusion about the emptiness of religion and nationalism. 31

And Noël Carroll has described this sequence as an argument: “Whether or not the deduction described is true is irrelevant. What is important is that it is a logically valid argument form. That is, it seems that there is a set of inferences that we may propose in order to explain the juxtaposition or relation of shots in the ‘God and Country’ sequence that suggest a logically valid (though possibly false) atheological argument.” 32 Although I am skeptical of the specifics of Eisenstein's claim, the sequence can indeed plausibly be taken as offering an analogical argument.

A standard analogical argument suggests that because two things are alike in some ways they are probably alike in other important ways. The “For God and Country” sequence functions in exactly this way. Eisenstein describes the sequence this way: “Maintaining the denotation of ‘God,’ the images increasingly disagree with our concept of God, inevitably leading to individual conclusions about the true nature of all deities. In this case, too, a chain of images attempted to achieve a purely intellectual resolution, resulting from a conflict between a preconception and a gradual discrediting of it in purposeful steps .” 33 The sequence begins with displays of religious artifacts in the Christian tradition that Eisenstein's audience would have been familiar with. Images of Christian statuary, cathedrals, and artworks alternate, slowly becoming interspersed with pagan statuary, much of it almost comically demonic. What the sequence offers is a comparison between the familiar, respected Christian artifacts and the artifacts of suspect religions that one might consider the base products of primitive fear and ignorance.

Eisenstein is offering a genealogy of sorts, comparing Christianity to its supposed precursors. The viewer understands that the two classes of artifacts are being compared, and that the overall suggestion is that the Christian artifacts are no better than pagan statuary. The procession of images traces a path through time. The earliest images are of complex artifacts, cathedrals and elaborate sculptures. As the sequence progresses, the icons become increasingly crude. The final image is of a primitive human‐like icon with very little detail—a crude stone bobblehead. It is as if Eisenstein says to the viewer, “Look at these products of Christianity and notice the similarities with these animistic icons. The practices arise from the same motivations and are both equally false.” Even if one rejects my claim that the sequence presents an analogical argument, if one is led to see some similarity between the two classes of artifacts, the sequence certainly provides a reason to believe its conclusion. The visual similarity between the artifacts lends support for the atheist conclusion, much like the way comparative anatomy supports evolutionary theory.

October thereby provides a philosophical contribution, but it is questionable whether or not the contribution should be considered innovative. Yes, Eisenstein is furthering the Marxist critique of religion, which counts against its originality, but he does provide a somewhat novel analogical argument. Since I have insufficient knowledge of the history of the philosophy of religion, I do not want to claim that his achievement is historically unique, but this is beside the point. For our purposes, we simply need to note that there is no reason why it could not have been original. There is no principled reason to think that the analogical argument offered in the “For God and Country” sequence must have been less original than any other similar argument. Other than the fact that so much philosophy was done prior to the advent of cinema, we have no reason to think that there is anything about the nature of cinema that curbs originality. 34

October offers a philosophical contribution that could have been original, but is it independent? Again, there is reason to doubt the independence of the sequence, since it depends on a general Marxist critique of religion and nationalism. One may argue that the sequence is highly dependent on the importation of this problematic and that no conceivable philosophical contribution could be made without it. However, I see no reason to think that the sequence would not have been comprehensible in a climate not so steeped in Marxism. The general pejorative analogy is readily apparent. Plausibly, the particular critique of religion offered in the sequence is as independent as most critiques that were historically possible at the time of its production. Although the “For God and Country” sequence might not be innovative, it does offer an independent reason to believe a philosophical thesis.

In response to this claim, the critic of the bold thesis may reassert the problem of paraphrase. There is an additional reason to doubt the independence of the philosophical work done by the “For God and Country” sequence: most plausibly, arguments have to be linguistic, but the sequence under consideration is a mute collection of images. What reason do we have to think that the analogical argument that I attribute to the sequence is not wholly dependent on my interpretation? Where exactly is the argument if not in my interpretation?

The simple answer is that the argument is in the film. Just because I can paraphrase the argument does not mean that I am making the argument. Any such claim would be absurd. I paraphrase Nietzsche's argument above, but my paraphrase is not the source of the philosophical contribution. No, Nietzsche makes it in the Genealogy . In order to be a paraphrase of something, there must be something to be a paraphrase of. The worry seems to be that paraphrases of the philosophical content of films are not paraphrase, but original philosophy. But this worry is unfounded. There is no denying that one can paraphrase the semantic content of a picture: this is a picture of my cat rubbing its face on the wall‐mounted scratching post. Similarly, Wartenberg argues, “Indeed, it would be paradoxical, for example, to say that it is I, rather than Guernica , that expresses outrage against the atrocity perpetuated by Franco, because I have to see that this is what the painting expresses.” 35 Why would films be any different? We have no reason to think that the situation with October is any different from a picture of my cat, Guernica , or the Genealogy . 36 I can paraphrase the philosophical contribution of the “For God and Country” sequence, but I am not the one doing the philosophy.

Yes, it is true that I cannot state the argument without using language, but this does not mean that the philosophical work done is exhausted by my statement. Through the means of montage the film articulates its analogical argument—that is, it provides reasons to believe its conclusion. Although the support can be adequately described, it cannot be completely reduced to language. Any mere description will lack the force of the original, nonlinguistic presentation. 37 I am not suggesting October makes a philosophical contribution in mysterious ways that are ultimately inexpressible; rather, I am arguing that although we can express the ultimate philosophical contribution in language, this does not mean that the engine of the philosophical work is necessarily linguistic. In the case of October , the engine is clearly montage.

Hence, the sequence also meets the third criterion of the bold thesis I defend. The philosophical contribution of the “For God and Country” sequence is made by nothing less than paradigmatic cinematic means, namely montage. The early Soviet montage theorists, such as Kuleshov and Vertov, thought that editing, or montage, was the defining characteristic of cinema. 38 The “For God and Country” sequence presents an argument through pure montage, independent of any linguistic means other than the intertitle that introduces the sequence. Although the viewer must use language to say what the argument amounts to, the sequence provides the evidence—the reasons—to believe its evident conclusion. Thus, we are safe in saying that the sequence presents an independent, analogical argument by paradigmatic cinematic means. That is, we can boldly assert that October does philosophy.

The “For God and Country” montage sequence in October is a pure instance of a film doing philosophy through paradigmatic cinematic means. Since this is a fairly unusual case, it will be useful to support my conclusion with an additional example. I will briefly describe the less independent but relatively more complex philosophical contribution made by a narrative fiction film—an episode of The Twilight Zone called “The Little People” (William F. Claxton, 1962). Given limitations of scope, I will not attempt to provide a complete interpretation of the episode; instead, I will simply attempt to sketch the philosophical contributions it makes.

Although philosophers and social scientists have explored religious rituals and the phenomenology of worship, there has been very little discussion of what makes something worthy of worship. 39 Fortunately, we find a sophisticated examination of the issue by Rod Serling in “The Little People,” which he wrote. In this episode, Serling presents a powerful argument to the effect that people can indeed be wrong about their choice in objects of worship—that is, people can worship things that do not warrant the response. More particularly, the episode supports the claim that power is not sufficient to make something worthy of worship, or what we can call “worshipable.”

“The Little People” opens on a planet where two spacemen, Peter Craig (Joe Maross) and William Fletcher (Claude Akins), have made an emergency landing in hopes of repairing their ship. The required repairs are extensive and the spacemen have been toiling away on the planet for days, if not weeks. During the interval, Craig discovers a race of tiny people, perhaps 1/100 th his size. By waging a campaign of terror, the immoral psychopath, Craig, demands that the natives worship him and him alone. Through what we can only imagine would be a tremendous effort, the natives erect a life‐size effigy of their jealous god. Drunk on power, the self‐declared deity refuses to leave when the ship is finally repaired. While forcing his partner off at gunpoint, Craig declares that there is only enough room for one god on the planet. Luckily for the natives, Craig's reign is short. A second group of spacemen, 100 times the size of the previous, arrives on the planet. While looking around, one of the giants accidentally crushes Craig between his fingers. The little people celebrate by tearing down the idol of their fallen god.

To determine what would make something worthy of worship would be to say what makes the complex set of emotions, attitudes, and desires fitting, or appropriate, to an object. “The Little People” shows fairly clearly that having powers like ours—even if they exceed our most fanciful exaggerations—is not sufficient to make something worthy of worship. This is not to say that it would be inadvisable to capitulate to great power. If the options were either to suffer a fate far worse than the Milians at the hands of the Athenian hoplites or to feign worship of a powerful giant such as spaceman Craig, we would all be well advised to fall to our knees and sing his praises. Clearly, if something is far stronger than you, it might be prudent to obey its commands. Periodically, you might even want to publicly acknowledge that you know it is stronger—that is, if it likes this kind of thing. But an advantage in strength would not make a bully worthy of worship, no matter its province—earthly, extraterrestrial, or heavenly.

Spaceman Craig towers over the little people, much like the giant in Goya's painting The Colossus (1808). 40 Similarly, most of the Greek gods are formidable forces, much stronger and often smarter than their subjects. From the point of view of mere mortals, the powers of the gods of Olympus are nothing less than awe inspiring. Certainly it would be prudent to court their favor and to take measures to avoid their wrath, but no Greek god is worshipable. To the last one, they are extremely flawed, if not petty, deities, just like spaceman Craig. Neither are worthy of the special kind of love, admiration, reverence, and respect that is worship. But what if spaceman Craig had powers dwarfing that of a thousand Zeuses—the power to create and destroy universes, the power to create life?

Again, “The Little People” provides an answer. It clearly shows that something with unlimited powers, including power to create and destroy universes, would not necessarily be worthy of worship. No amount of power could make something worthy of worship if it had the moral character of a megalomaniac spaceman. Imagine a demon that created us for the purpose of torture—not to torture us, but to torture others. He might treat us well, but at the same time use us as a means of inflicting even greater torment on others whom he tortures. Perhaps he has secretly placed us on the far side of a one‐way mirror of sorts, dividing our opulent suite from the chamber of horrors where our counterparts suffer unspeakable agonies. Despite its vast powers, such a being would not be worthy of worship. If power alone were sufficient to make something worthy of worship, this hypothetical demon would deserve our most sincere love, admiration, and respect. But it should be clear that it would be inappropriate to feel anything but disgust at such arrant evil, no matter how powerful it might be. Hence, not even the powers of a creator god are sufficient to make something worshipable. So, in answer to the question, we can safely reply: power is not sufficient to make something worthy of worship.

This is to merely scratch the surface of the philosophical contributions made by this episode. What is important to note is that it would be impossible to develop an adequate interpretation of “The Little People” without explaining the position it takes on the role of power in worship. Not only does the episode make philosophical claims, but it also provides reasons for us to believe these claims. For instance, although spaceman Craig's powers are awe inspiring to the little people, his moral depravity invalidates any suggestion that he is a worthy object of worship. This gives us a compelling reason to believe that power is not sufficient to make something worthy of worship. The episode does not simply come out and tell us that power is insufficient; it actually leads us to this conclusion via the example of a megalomaniac spaceman. And frequently it does it in ways that are cinematic, such as adopting contrasting point‐of‐view shots: Craig towering above the little people versus Craig looking up at the even bigger people who crush him in the end. 41 Since Serling provides support for his conclusion, I would not hesitate to say that “The Little People” does philosophy, in the most conventional, widely accepted sense of what it means to “do philosophy.” 42

There is no denying that movies constrain the range of acceptable interpretations. Not just anything goes when we attempt to say what a movie is about. Movies do not merely constrain; they also frequently encourage certain interpretations. Many movies are undeniably about certain things. For instance, I argue that “The Little People” is about the nature of worship. And many movies are not just about things: they make points. Although we can express these points in language, this does not mean that the expression makes the point and not the movie. If movies can make points and restrict and suggest interpretations, then they can give us reason to believe certain claims. For example: power is never sufficient to make something worthy of worship; or, pagan and Christian religious expression are not so different. Hence, film can do philosophy.

The common philosophical contributions that films make are more like the typical contributions made in the philosophical literature: they may help illustrate a position, an objection, or explore the significance of a claim, but they are rarely historically unique. 43 Although there may have never been a film that has made an innovative and independent philosophical contribution, and it is certain that few have, there is no reason to think that films cannot do philosophy. This is not to say that there are no limitations on the philosophical abilities of film or that film is a philosophical equal in every way to language. In fact, I think that neither of these claims is true. My goal in this essay is merely to defend the bold thesis of film as philosophy, but I am sure that one can come up with an even bolder thesis that cannot be defended, such as the super bold thesis.

By way of the example of October , I argue that films can offer analogical arguments that can be both innovative and independent. Eisenstein's commentators are not speaking metaphorically when they find an argument in the “For God and Country” sequence, and I am not being an obscurantist in pinpointing the argument. Nor is the argument in the sequence any more dependent on interpretations than many linguistic philosophical texts. There is ample reason to think that the film is able to do philosophy independent of linguistic means, and, further, that the means employed, namely, the means of montage, are as cinematic as can be. So, yes, film can make innovative and independent philosophical contributions through paradigmatic cinematic means. 44

For ease of expression, I use the terms ‘film’ and ‘movie’ to refer to what Noël Carroll calls the art of the moving image, which includes all cinematic art forms. I take it that ‘film’ no longer implies celluloid to many readers, and that possibly distracting neologisms can be avoided.

For instance, the claim that Bergman's work is somehow philosophical is embedded in the very title of Irving Singer's book Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher (MIT Press, 2007).

Stephen Mulhall argues that some “films are not philosophy's raw material, nor a source for its ornamentation; they are philosophical exercises, philosophy in action—film as philosophizing.” Stephen Mulhall, On Film (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 2.

Murray Smith notes that it is extremely difficult to say what it is to do philosophy without recourse to the notion of an argument, but that it is difficult to see how films could be said to provide an argument, at least in the style of what is generally considered to be philosophy. Murray Smith, “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 33–43. The essays in this special JAAC volume have been published as a book: Murray Smith and Thomas E. Wartenberg, eds., Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006).

Paisley Livingston, “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy,” in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 11–19.

Noël Carroll, “Introduction to Part VIII,” in Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), p. 381. It might be better to say that it has been “uploaded.”

Daniel Frampton defends the strong claim that film has unique philosophical abilities. See Daniel Frampton, Filmosophy (London: Wallflower, 2006).

Gilles Deleuze, Cinema I: The Movement Image , trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (University of Minnesota Press, 1986), and Cinema II: The Time Image , trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (University of Minnesota Press, 1989). Key excerpts are included in “Philosophy of Film as the Creation of Concepts,” in The Philosophy of Film , ed. Thomas Wartenberg and Angela Curran (Malden, MA: Wiley‐Blackwell, 2005), pp. 33–39. For criticism of Deleuze's unquestioning reliance on Bazin's view of film history, see David Bordwell, The History of Film Style (Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 116–117.

Livingston likely has uniqueness claims in mind. But, to be clear, I have no intention of defending here the idea that film has unique philosophical abilities. There also might be an in‐between position. One might argue that although the philosophical content can be approximated in other media, film is better at presenting it. The claim would be that film has a rhetorical advantage in some circumstances. This does not amount to a super bold thesis, but it is still stronger than the claim I intend to defend here.

See Noël Carroll, “Medium Specificity Arguments and the Self‐Consciously Invented Arts: Film, Video, and Photography,” in Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge University Press, 1996): 3–25, and “Forget the Medium!” in Engaging the Moving Image (Yale University Press, 2003): 1–9.

We must be careful in how strictly we enforce the originality condition. If there are limitations on what is possible in a given historical period, there might be reason to doubt the absolute originality of any innovation. For the purposes of this article, it is merely necessary to show that cinema can be roughly as innovative as any other form of philosophy.

Noël Carroll, “Philosophizing Through the Moving Image: The Case of Serene Velocity ,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 173–187.

Frampton, following Deleuze, prefers a more expansive notion of what counts as doing philosophy. He would deny that a philosophical contribution would have to be expressible in language. For an instructive overview of the approaches to the philosophy of film, see Murray Smith, “Philosophy of Film,” in The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed. Donald M. Borchert (New York: Macmillan, 2006), pp. 381–386.

See Frampton, Filmosophy , pp. 192, 197, 199.

Murray Smith discusses the historical company of the problem of paraphrase in his excellent survey article “Film and Philosophy,” in Sage Handbook of Film Studies , ed. James Donald and Michael Renov (London: Sage, 2008), pp. 147–163.

G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit , trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 410–478.

Monroe Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), pp. 367–376.

Livingston, “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy,” p. 13. Bruce Russell also proposes that the production of philosophical knowledge should be considered a criterion of doing philosophy. See Bruce Russell, “The Philosophical Limits of Film,” Film and Philosophy 4 (Special Edition on Woody Allen, 2000): 163–167.

Livingston, “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy,” pp. 12, 16, respectively.

Thomas E. Wartenberg, “Beyond Mere Illustration: How Films Can Be Philosophy,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 19–33. Wartenberg further develops his claim in Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2007). Robert Yanal makes a similar claim in his Hitchcock as Philosopher (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006). For criticism of Yanal's argument, see Aaron Smuts, review of Hitchcock as Philosopher , by Robert J. Yanal, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65 (2007): 339–341.

Bruce Russell argues that the ability of film to do philosophy is seriously limited, since film cannot offer knowledge of necessary or even probable truths. It cannot provide philosophical knowledge in the right way, because, according to Russell, it cannot provide argumentative support for its claims. However, if the criterion for doing philosophy is not philosophical knowledge, as I think it should not be, then Russell's argument, although interesting in its own right, is orthogonal to the film as philosophy debate.

Peter van Inwagen, “Philosophical Failure,” in The Problem of Evil: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews in 2003 (Oxford University Press, 2006): pp. 37–55.

John Martin Fischer suspects that van Inwagen's standard is too ambitious. Van Inwagen's chapter and Fischer's comments were discussed on this blog: http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2007/01/so_a_mysteriani.html .

The literature on this topic is vast and highly controversial. Readers looking for an extended discussion of the relationship of reason and the emotions should see Ronald de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion (MIT Press, 1987). For a more general discussion of the role of emotions and knowledge, see Robert Solomon, True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions Are Really Telling Us (Oxford University Press, 2006). Relatedly, for a discussion of the apparent evidential import of desire, see Dennis Stampe, “The Authority of Desire,” The Philosophical Review 96 (1987): 335–381.

One worry is that any claim might be philosophical depending on the approach. But this is clearly not the case. Consider the claim that an egg will be hardboiled after six minutes of sitting in water after one minute of boiling. There is nothing philosophical about it. One way to begin to differentiate might be to say that philosophical claims do not admit of empirical verification. This is a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient.

Judith Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971): 357–369.

Bruce Russell, a critic of the film as philosophy thesis, thinks that film can do little more than present counterexamples. Contra Russell, I offer examples that demonstrate how one can argue with a film. Volume 12 of Film and Philosophy features an exchange between Russell, Carroll, and Wartenberg. See Bruce Russell, “Film's Limits: The Sequel,” Film and Philosophy 12 (2008): 1–16, and “Replies to Carroll and Wartenberg,” Film and Philosophy 12 (2008): 35–40; Noël Carroll, “Philosophy in the Moving Image: Response to Bruce Russell,” Film and Philosophy 12 (2008): 17–26; Thomas E. Wartenberg, “What Else Films Can Do: A Response to Bruce Russell,” Film and Philosophy 12 (2008): 27–34.

See Brian Leiter's Nietzsche on Morality (New York: Routledge, 2002) and “Nietzsche and the Morality Critics,” Ethics 11 (1997): 250–285.

For an excellent interpretation of the film, see David Bordwell, The Cinema of Eisenstein (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 79–96.

Sergei Eisenstein, “A Dialectical Approach to Film Form,” in Film Form , trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1977), p. 62.

Vance Kepley, Jr., “Eisenstein and Soviet Cinema,” in Defining Cinema , ed. Peter Lehman (Rutgers University Press, 1997), p. 43.

Noël Carroll, “For God and Country,” in Interpreting the Moving Image (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 88.

Sergei Eisenstein, “A Dialectical Approach to Film Form,” p. 61. I thank Dan Shaw for pointing out that my interpretation of the sequence is highly similar to Eisenstein's in this passage.

I thank Paisley Livingston for pointing out that cinema may have actual limitations on what contributions it could make that would be historically unique.

Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen , p. 19.

Similarly, Murray Smith compares Guernica with another silent film by Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin (1925): “By definition neither work is verbally articulate, but it would be hard to deny the expressive and imaginative ‘articulacy’ of the painting or the film.” See Murray Smith, “Film and Philosophy,” p. 153.

I thank Thomas Wartenberg for pointing out that a linguistic rendering would lose the force of the original.

Lev Kuleshov, Kuleshov on Film , trans. Ronald Levaco (University of California Press, 1975). Dziga Vertov, Kino‐Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov , trans. Kevin O’Brien (University of California Press, 1985).

For example, Rudolph Otto's The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine (1917), describes what it is like to experience the presence of what one takes to be awe‐inspiring greatness.

Whether Goya is responsible for The Colossus is in dispute.

This shows that Bruce Russell's claim is wrong.

For a more thorough examination of “The Little People,” see my “‘The Little People’: Power and the Worshipable,” in The Twilight Zone and Philosophy , ed. Lester Hunt and Noël Carroll (New York: Blackwell, 2009), p. 155–170.

Here, I am echoing a point made by Wartenberg in “Beyond Mere Illustration,” pp. 27–30.

I thank Heidi Bollich, Noël Carroll, Cynthia Freeland, Paisley Livingston, Dan Shaw, and Thomas Wartenberg for their comments on previous drafts of this article. I thank Murray Smith for making many extremely helpful suggestions. In addition, I thank my commentator, Phil Jenkins, at the ASA Eastern Meeting in 2007, and several members of the audience (in particular Alex Neill and Joseph Margolis) for their thoughtful comments and criticisms.

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Lafferty, Michael Gerald. "Arthur Danto's philosophy of art." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2006. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/42211/.

Gustafsson, Daniel. "A philosophy of Christian art." Thesis, University of York, 2014. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/8052/.

Peters, Julia Helene. "Art and philosophy in Hegel's system." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2009. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/18022/.

Thompson, Seth Aaron. "Art Unfettered: Bergson and a Fluid Conception of Art." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2018. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1248388/.

McGuiggan, James Camien. "This is art : a defence of R.G. Collingwood's philosophy of art." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2017. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/407958/.

Al-Obaid, Hanan. "Philosophy of Islamic ornament in Islamic art." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2005. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/55634/.

Engstrom, Timothy Hildreth. "Pragmatic rhetoric and the art of philosophy." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/18866.

Rampley, Matthew. "Dialectics of contingency : Nietzsche's philosophy of art." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14775.

Fidalgo, Christopher J. "Art, Gaut and Games: the Case for Why Some Video Games Are Art." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2012. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/philosophy_hontheses/5.

Millsop, Rebecca Victoria. "Precisifying art pluralism." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/107093.

Hanson, Louise Mary. "Conceptual art : what is it?" Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:1ce65d49-6864-4a29-8600-5c54e405ef5e.

Farrelly-Jackson, Steven. "Universalism, morality, and art." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.333323.

Weis, Kristin K. "Art as Negation: A Defense of Conceptual Art as Art." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1461602608.

Thomas, Christopher. "The place of art in Spinoza's naturalist philosophy." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2017. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=237177.

Nickels, Zachary. "The Art of Loneliness." Kent State University Honors College / OhioLINK, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ksuhonors1462549085.

Buydens, Mireille. "Formalisme et aformalisme: essai sur le statut de la forme et du regard au travers d'une analyse du maniérisme." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/212664.

Rinaldi, Juan. "Art and geopolitics : politics and autonomy in Argentine contemporary art." Thesis, Kingston University, 2013. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/26287/.

North, John Harry. "Wincklemann's philosophy of art : a prelude to German classicism." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.538667.

Hernandez, Brian. "Nihilism and the Formulation of a Philosophy of Art." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2011. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67991/.

Clancy, Catherine. "Poiesis and obstruction in art practice." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2015. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/7842/.

Bresnahan, Aili. "Dance As Art: A Studio-Based Account." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2012. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/173544.

Walsh, Dale. "Art and secular spirituality." Thesis, McGill University, 2001. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=33946.

Weh, Michael. "Being art - a study in ontology." Thesis, St Andrews, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/213.

Andersson, Asa K. "Intimations of intimacy : phenomenological encounters between contemporary art and philosophy." Thesis, Staffordshire University, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.299938.

Bartlett, Mark. "Chronotopology and the scientific-aesthetic in philosophy, literature and art /." Diss., Digital Dissertations Database. Restricted to UC campuses, 2005. http://uclibs.org/PID/11984.

Lynch, Liam Joseph. "Complex truth from simple beauty: Oscar Wilde’s philosophy of art." Thesis, Curtin University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/195.

Willis, Gary C. "Contemporary art: the key issues: art, philosophy and politics in the context of contemporary cultural production." Connect to thesis, 2007. http://repository.unimelb.edu.au/10187/2245.

Lopez, Noelle Regina. "The art of Platonic love." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5e9b2d70-49d9-4e75-b445-fcb0bfecdcef.

Griffin, Daniel. "The Role of Poetry and Language in Hegel's Philosophy of Art." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2011. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/philosophy_theses/90.

Aldous, Veronica. "An exploration of the transcending experience in the art-making process." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2002. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/744.

Kopsiafti, Ioanna. "Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms and the problem of pictorial art." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.297363.

Thomson, Katherine J. M. "The art museum at the end of art, Arthur C. Danto's Philosophy of art and its implications for the posthistorical museum." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0010/MQ31259.pdf.

Palucci, Piera. "Emergence of an art education philosophy through a personal narrative inquiry." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape3/PQDD_0020/MQ47867.pdf.

Kim, Byoungjae. "Sympathy and reflection in Hume's philosophy : mind, morals, art and politics." Thesis, Durham University, 2018. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12958/.

Kieran, Matthew Laurence. "The nature and value of art." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14807.

House, Theresa L. "Making authentic connections between art and life an evolution of student engagement in the process of learning art in an elementary classroom /." Ohio : Ohio University, 2009. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?ohiou1213021116.

Miyoshi, Akihiko. "Art and authenticity /." Link to online version, 2005. https://ritdml.rit.edu/dspace/handle/1850/1106.

Allen, Rika. "The anthropology of art and the art of anthropology : a complex relationship." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/2304.

Rausch, Juliana Adele. "The New Journalism as Avant-Garde Art." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2017. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/443068.

Martel, Marie D. "L'oeuvre comme interaction : anti-textualisme, actionnalisme et ontologie écologique." Thesis, McGill University, 2004. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=85187.

Machado, Oscar A. "A Philosophy of Architecture." Scholarly Repository, 2009. http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/oa_theses/205.

Jackson, Myles Wayne. "Goethe's law and order : nature and art in Elective Affinities." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.386168.

Nogues, Rosa. "The body of sexuation : feminist art practice in the 1990s." Thesis, Kingston University, 2013. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/27842/.

Matuk, Nyla Jean. "Charles Taylor on art and moral sources : a pragmatist re-evaluation." Thesis, McGill University, 1994. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26296.

Morton, Luise H. "Theories of three conceptual artists : a critique and comparison." Virtual Press, 1985. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/425069.

Boda, Lena. "Facebook goes philosophy : Facebook - ett modernistiskt eller postmodernistiskt projekt?" Thesis, Konstfack, Institutionen för Bildpedagogik (BI), 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:konstfack:diva-515.

Welchman, Alistair. "'Wild above rule or art' : creation and critique." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1995. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4458/.

Kauffman, Elizabeth. "Adrian Piper and Immanuel Kant toward a synthesis of art and philosophy /." Cincinnati, Ohio : University of Cincinnati, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view.cgi?acc_num=ucin1259076570.

Kambalu, Samson. "Nyau philosophy : contemporary art and the problematic of the gift : a panegyric." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2016. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/12398/.

Meloni, Gabriele. "Plato on establishing poetry as art." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/9752.

Philosophy of Art in an Intercultural Perspective

Deepen your knowledge on and discuss topics related to the philosophy of art involving intercultural perspectives on aesthetics in an interdisciplinary group

Art, Design and Media
Social Science and humanities
Blended Intensive Programmes (BIP)
Practical details

The blended course is part of a PhD-network that we are about to establish amongst CIVIS-Universities in the broader field of "Intercultural Philosophy and Global Epistemologies". The course brings together some 24 PhD-students from all CIVIS-universities. This year, participants have the chance to work with lecturers of 6 different CIVIS-universities (plus one African partner university) on the topic of "Philosophy of Art in an Intercultural Perspective" during the year. During the workshop each participant presents a paper on parts of her/his dissertation project related to the topic.

The program is structured interdisciplinary. PhD-students are accepted from a broad range of subjects. Course elements will comprise lectures as well as plenary discussions and student's work in small groups of fellow students.

Is it possible to argue about taste? According to the beginnings of philosophical aesthetics in Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, taste is a (lower) faculty of cognition, and according to Kant, aesthetic judgment explicitly refers to an a priori structure. Such a faculty of judgment must be ready to be trained and practiced. But how is it then that the taste for art changes historically and that each artistic epoch develops its own style? Doesn't aesthetics always say something about how the world is experienced? The phenomenology of the 20th century therefore prefers to speak of aesthetic experience rather than of aesthetic judgments. With this, it draws attention to the fact that aesthetics does not make judgments, but continually discovers new spaces of perception and meaning. Works of art then may be interpreted as being expressions of such perceptual experiences. While in everyday life we move, as it were, on the surface of the perceptible, artists explore the "deep life" (Husserl) of everyday life worlds. Their discoveries in turn have an effect on the concrete form of the respective lifeworld and help to animate it anew.

Insofar as artists try in their work to put their deeper digging/reaching perceptual experiences into practice, the recipients of works of art are also offered the possibility of immersing themselves in a multitude of such perceptual experiences and, with their help, of discovering the various layers of meaning that interact in a lifeworld. This is why intercultural comparison of art and aesthetics becomes as necessary as exciting in current times. First, today we need to decolonize aesthetics, i.e., we have to become aware of a plurality of ways to perceive and to form meaning. Second, there may be a chance to more easily encounter non-Western life-worlds on an aesthetic level than on the conceptual level. Can we succeed in gaining a more vivid understanding of the various spaces of perceptual experience and the different layers of meaning connected to other cultural life-worlds by re-enacting aesthetic experiences?

In the seminar, various texts on philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of art from both European and non-Western traditions will be read. Also, images of different cultural provenance will be consulted. In addition to a critical appraisal of European philosophies of art, the focus will be laid on art and aesthetics in the Arabic-Islamic region, in Sub-Saharan Africa and in East Asia (Japan, China).

The program aims at providing PhD-students the opportunity to discuss topics related to their own dissertation projects with fellow students as well as faculty from different departments and even different subjects. This should help PhD-students to (1) gain a better overview of their area of research and (2) to network in an internationally appealing environment. Since at most universities there is not that many faculty-people in the field of the course’s topic the international exchange will foster the student’s dissertation projects.

In addition, we intend to connect participants with the alumni of three earlier editions of a blended CIVIS-course we pursued in 2020/21, 2021/22, and 2022/23. Since we intend to further develop the program in the years to come this will establish an alumni-network of more than one-hundred PhD-students amongst CIVIS-universities within the next few years.

Main topics addressed

Recent developments and perspectives in the philosophy of art
Different concepts related to aesthetics, experience of art, and its relations to the philosophy of perception as well as the philosophy of action
Intercultural critique of Western philosophy of art and aesthetics
Intercultural philosophies of art
The political dimension of art with particular respect to its intercultural aspects

Learning outcomes

Results with regard to at least some of the research questions students formulated in the beginning
Ability to work in an interdisciplinary group and to exchange cross-disciplinary
Ability to present own research
In addition, the course is meant to provide opportunities to network amongst different CIVIS-universities
Therefore, one expected outcome is the establishment of a PhD-network amongst participants (and alumni of earlier classes)

*Recognition of ECTS depends on your home university.

Physical mobility

1 to 5 July 2024

The workshop runs for five days in July 2024 at Tuebingen university. It combines lectures given by all six professors from six different CIVIS-universities with presentations given by participants. All lecturers attend the entire workshop and provide feedback to all participant’s presentations. In addition, there will be guest lectures by international research fellows of the College of Fellows, Tuebingen University, during evening sessions.

In addition to the academic program, the workshop includes some social program: Tuebingen University on-campus tour, dinner, punting trip on river Neckar, guided city-tour, and Biergarten-visit.

Virtual part

14 March to 13 June 2024 - Thursdays, 4-6 pm.

The course will be offered online (via Zoom) and consists of 12 units and provides different perspectives on the general topic:

Each one of the six lecturers will be responsible for two sessions during the semester. Students will be provided relevant literature that they have to prepare for each session. On the basis of the literature different perspectives will be discussed during the sessions. All literature will be provided in English.

In addition to lectures and plenary discussions there will be working-phases in small groups of fellow students.

Requirements

This course is open to PhD students at CIVIS member universities .

Partcipants need to have language proficiency in English at C1-level
The class is interdisciplinary with a focus on philosophy, art-history, anthropology, sociology, and psychology; students should come from one of these or related subjects
Participants should pursue their PhD
The dissertation projects of applicants should be related to the topic of the class
Willingness to work and exchange interdisciplinary

Applications are welcome from philosophy, art history, literature, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, psychology, Global South studies, and neighboring subjects. Applicants should be doctoral students at one of the universities of the CIVIS-network (exceptionally master students may be accepted). Applicants must be willing to pursue the entire course programme and attend the in-person workshop in July 2024 with a presentation of their own research project.

A C1 level of English is required.

NB: Visiting Students - Erasmus Funding Eligibility

To be eligible for your selected CIVIS programme, you must be a fully enrolled student at your CIVIS home university at the time you will be undertaking the programme. Click here to learn more about the eligibility criteria .

This course is also open to students with the same academic profile, who are enrolled at a CIVIS strategic partner university in Africa. Please check here , if you can apply and this particular course is open to applications from your university. Successful applicants will receive an Erasmus+ grant covering travel and subsistence costs during their stay. Applicants should be willing to extend their stay at the host university for 1-3 weeks for additional research and/or training purposes.

Application process

Interested students should apply by filling in the online application form by 7 November 2023.

Applications will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

Motivation letter
Level of English (according to the CEFR)
Research project outlines
If necessary, proportional representation with a view to equal participation of students from all CIVIS universities

Participants will be granted 6 ECTS.

They have to prepare the literature dealt with during the online-phase of the program weekly. In adition, they will give a presentation during the in-person workshop.

Lecturers will assess student's committment to the class by:

Noting their attendance
Checking whether they have prepared for the respective session
Assessing the willingness to contribute to discussion as well as the quality of their contributions.

The main assessment, however, will be during the in-person workshop. Participants present part of their PhD-projects and all six lecturers will comment on the presentations and provide feedback.

Feedback may even be provided all year long in case PhD-students ask for it.

Blended Intensive Programme

This CIVIS course is a Blended Intensive Programme (BIP): a new format of Erasmus+ mobility which combines online teaching with a short trip to another campus to learn alongside students and professors across Europe. Click here to learn more about CIVIS BIPs.

GDPR Consent

The CIVIS alliance and its member universities will treat the information you provide with respect. Please refer to our privacy policy for more information on our privacy practices. By applying to this course you agree that we may process your information in accordance with these terms.

Mohamed ech-Cheikh Full Professor, Faculty of Letters / Department of Philosophy, Université Hassan II de Casablanca (Morocco)
Filomena Diodato Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Sapienza Universitè die Roma
Guiseppe Di Liberti Assistant Professor/Maître de conférences, Department of Philosophy / Centre Gilles Gaston Granger, Aix-Marseille Université, see more
Gerasimos Kakoliris Associate Professor, Department School of Philosophy / Department of Philosophy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, see more
Bogdan Minca Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, see more
Marina De Palo Professor, coordinator of PhD-program, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia / Department of Philosophy, Sapienza Università di Roma, see more
Anna Petronella Foultier Teaching Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University, see more
Niels Weidtmann Academic Director of the College of Fellows - Center for Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities / College of Fellows, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, see more

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PhD Dissertation: Architecture in Philosophy; the understanding of architecture as a contemporary art form in structuralism and phenomenology

It is a widely accepted fact that architecture functions in the space as fixation, condensation, exclamation mark. In its individual realizations, architecture is a point of coalescence of the knowledge of the time and space, of art and technique, of social and economic system. As a specific artistic expression, it employs principles, and to actualize them in the space, it always requires sensitivity of a designer. Its expressivity, inscribed in stone, wood, metal or another building material, can be read in its totality only if we know, beside individual tectonics, the code or the context of an architectural expression. Contemporary architecture is essentially defined by a radical cut brought in the space by modernist architecture in the first half of the 20th century. Because modernist architecture is so deeply related to prior epochs, it is difficult to understand this sharp change without a delineation of the historical semantic levelling of architecture. The first part of the dissertation thus offers a theoretical trajectory of the term architecture from the Antiquity to the present, arguing that modernist architecture finds its origins in the time of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment in architecture is a specifically formative period considering that architecture's fundamental demands were redefined and its essence radically reconceptualised. Modernist architecture offers solutions in space that enable a fast, economical and rational rebuilding of either demolished or increasingly over‐populated and fast growing cities. Among the paradigms of modernist architecture, rationalism is perhaps the most dominating, since it always functions through two parallel tendencies: through abstraction at the level of form with the primacy of pure geometrical lines and through technique and technological innovation. The purpose of architectural modernism, which brings the tendencies of this rationalisation into the space, is a creation of a new, open space, one that is bright, hygienic, clean, and logically and efficiently designed. These gestures can also be read as implementation of scientific technological achievements of the Enlightenment, which is the focus of the second part of the dissertation, in which the paradigms of modernist architecture are analysed. Our hypothesis is that the answers given by modernist architecture to specific symptoms of the time can be understood as indicators of the predominance of the structure das Unheimliche.

Related Papers

Gareth Griffiths

Architecture is the most public and political of the arts, one generally encountered in a mood of digression and complicit in social control. It could even be argued that the success of the city may have less to do with its aesthetic accomplishments and more to do with the countless emergent factors taking place in such an interface as the street: thus one learns to see buildings as good when they make possible the good lives of their users, as if ethics and aesthetics have a common root. The following article traces different current approaches to avant-gardism in architecture, but relating them to the questions of progress and estrangement so central to modernism.

Borbála Jász

The most dominant dialectical succession of architectural thinking during the 20 th Century was between form and function. The latter of these two modern ways of architectural thinking is based on the results of Carnapian Neopositivism. The keywords of this philosophical school, that are empiricism, logic, verification, unity of language and science, could still be applied to interpreting modern architecture. I will explain the antecedents and the first connection between analytic philosophy and architecture, and some characteristic points of their influence during the 20 th Century: the triumph of function over form as analogous to triumph of analytic philosophy over metaphysics. After the theoretic grounding of the form-function debate, I am going to focus first on the characteristic appearance of form: the Facadism of Socialist Realism in the architecture of East-Central Europe. Second, I will explain that architectural tendencies of classical modernism did not disappear in this ...

Laura Martínez de Guereñu

hugues henri

This idea of the universality of modernity in architecture, as in any other field, had to be put into perspective. For all that, the idea of modernity in architecture in the 19th century must be approached on both sides of the Atlantic, in a dialectical manner and aim to bring to light features of modernity, whether specific or not, rather than a monolithic and dogmatically defined modernity. In order to do this, it was necessary to avoid any teleological and linear vision of the idea of modernity between the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 20th century. In this study, it is reasonable to speak of a proto-modernity in architecture and town planning that was born in France at the end of the 18th century, on the eve of the French Revolution and in the wake of the Enlightenment. After 1945, American leadership in the cultural sphere accompanied American hegemony in the economic, political, strategic and other fields. There is a match between the International Style and the triumphant American modernity: the graft has taken hold, inventories have no place as long as there is no questioning of this modernity. The situation changed rapidly and radically with the postmodern context as early as the 1970s. More recently, deconstructivism has emerged in the United States as a movement of refoundation, of questioning the presuppositions of modernity and postmodernity, as a project for resolving the urban chaos resulting from the impasses generated by both modernity and its avatar, postmodernity.

Mine Tunçok Sarıberberoğlu , Zeynep Tarçın Turgay

The notion of "being" is known as one of the initial problems of philosophy. Depending on its structure and existence, the architectural object has a convenient position to be reviewed in this context. From Plato to present, the question of existence has changed its focus from the universe to the individual, and the attempt to define the answers continues in a dynamic way. Architecture can carry existential concerns within itself as an object produced by a subject in the current philosophical system in which the acquisition of knowledge evolved from mental processes to bodily processes in the period between Kant and Merlau-Ponty. From this point of view, it is possible to talk about the concept of body in philosophical foundation as existentially as well as the body of architectural structure. This paper searches the possibility to make an existential reading through the reviewing of architectural products. The basis of the study is the assumption that the architect's design decisions and the architectural object itself can create an existential posture and this phenomenon can resist in time with the awareness of the architect. In this regard, this paper attempts to discuss the selected works of Carlo Scarpa as an architectural discourse through phenomenological approaches. INTRODUCTION Philosophy and architecture have been in a strong relationship since the beginning of searching the meanings of self and the universe. Due to its natural structure, the architectural act is fed physically and conceptually from all other fields of knowledge and art. In this manner philosophical discourses are continuous tools for the forms of expression in architectural production. With the help of philosophical texts, the conceptual and intellectual approaches can be taken from the process of comprehension and interpretation of the architectural work by the state of the architect at the stage of production and the position of the experienced individual against the space or structure.

Za krásnější svět: Tradicionalismus v architektuře 20. a 21. století / Toward a More Beautiful World: Traditionalism in Architecture of the 20th and 21st Centuries

Martin Horáček

TOWARD A MORE BEAUTIFUL WORLD (Brno: Barrister & Principal – VUTIUM 2013, 448 pp., 760 ill., an extensive English summary) uses innovative methodology to look at the traditionalist attitude in architecture and in the formation of architectural environment. In the five parts, the book (I) analyzes the professional debate around the history of architecture and the diversity of aesthetic preferences within this debate, (II) clarifies a theory that uses results of neuroscience to explain the attractiveness of traditional buildings, (III) based on this theory, sums up the history of twentieth- and twenty-first-century traditionalist architecture around the world and (IV) in the Czech Lands (the present Czech Republic), and (V) uses two specific examples to illustrate current variations in the relationship between heritage protection, musealization of art and the creation of an aesthetically valuable environment. The scope of the publication and its comprehensiveness make this book the first of its kind in the field of architectural history. The text is in Czech, nevertheless, international readers find all captions in English and an extensive English summary. The methodology of this book builds upon the architectural theory of the American scientist Nikos Salingaros, the impulses of world art studies, and the idea that there is a direct relationship between personal preference for a specific artistic morphology and the manner of its (art-historical) interpretation. The findings of brain science help specify the meaning of the words beauty and traditionalism. Even an untrained viewer can feel the contrast between traditional and modern architecture, while neighboring buildings in two different traditional styles (for example a baroque palace and a Gothic church) do not create the same impression of contrast or disharmony. The book explains the difference in aesthetic effect through Salingaros’s term structural order. This concept understands traditional architecture as an architecture designed according to the principles of structural order and modernist architecture as an architecture, where structural order is weak or non-existent. The concept put forward in this book is that architectural traditionalism strives to express structural order, while architectural modernism, which exists simultaneously, does not aim for this kind of order, neither consciously nor intuitively. Art-historical conceptions are also referred to as either traditionalist or modernist, according to which approach to artistic creation they prefer. The struggle toward a more beautiful world is considered a leitmotif of traditionalism – hence the title of the book. The book’s five parts and fifty chapters address themes such as: the aesthetic theory of empathy as elaborated by Heinrich Wölfflin and Geoffrey Scott; the scientific theory of architecture according to Christopher Alexander and Nikos Salingaros; American renaissance and the City Beautiful movement; city building according to artistic principles in the work of Camillo Sitte, Werner Hegemann and Gustavo Giovannoni; the Heimatschutz movement and Paul Schultze-Naumburg; the destruction and reconstruction of old cities and the Venice Charter; the New Tradition, New Urbanism and the vision of harmonious building according to Prince Charles. The chapters on the Czech Lands describe architectural works by Friedrich Ohmann, Jan Vejrych, Kamil Hilbert, Ladislav Skřivánek and Dušan Jurkovič and analyze texts by Václav Wagner, Břetislav Štorm, Josef Karel Říha, Ladislav Žák and Jiří Kroha. These chapters also discuss cubism and socialist realism in Czech architecture, new development and heritage conservation during the communist era and after the regime change in 1989, and public interest in the fate of old buildings and in the appearance of towns, villages and landscapes.

tomasz drewniak

Abstract: Philosophy, just as it does with other phenomena, conceptualizes architectonic work each time selecting a definite architectonic object symbolizing a supersensory principle of the world. The examples of such objects, which were analyzed, are temple (Plato), edifice (Kant) and farmhouse (Heidegger). This paper presents how philosophy takes over from architecture the interrelationships, and through them, it articulates its own domain of problems. On the basis of architectonic metaphor, philosophy constructs notional framework enabling presenting the world as an entity: project, work, Demiurg, matter. This paper aims to reconstruct the inherent relationship between the architectonic of philosophy and metaphysics (in the Heideggerian notion). It shows the connection between the metaphysical project thinking and poetic project one- the connection which is a condition of architectonic existence of philosophy.

Sezin Sarıca

Architecture as a media, covers the plurality of languages. Being architectural is not only ‘relating to the art or practice of designing and constructing buildings’ but also relating to constructing the textu(r)al, graphic, photo-graphic and urban space; from the canvas to the city, as an architectural object. The analysis and discussion on how the evolutions affected the perception, position and historical understanding of ‘architectural’ object, will be based on the resolution above. The relationship between media and architectural object that I defined as various ‘spaces’ are almost overlapped as thinking is ‘architectural’. Due to cultural and temporal changes, ‘space’ of text, texture, graphic and photograph has been defined, transformed, fragmented, pluralized, destructed, reproduced. Throughout the essay, spatial transformation of each language/media will be discussed through some examples in historical evolution of media and position of artist and architect, in an accumulative approach.

International Journal of Architecture, Engineering and Construction

Sayed Ahmed

The consequential philosophical yearning and classical architecture had acquired an exceptional significance during the culmination of ancient Greek world despite all their conflicts and crisis; which creations are still contextual. In this interdisciplinary study, an estimated ‗theory' and ‗hypothesizing' took the major motivating tributary to descend a relation between the modalities of classical philosophy and theory of aesthetics associated with ancient Greek architecture. Thus discourses from philosophy, humanities and art theories regarding Greek architectural features are brought within reach. For that, Visual, material, construction and stylistic analysis of Greek architecture have constructed the ‗What and How' of the discourse while the iconographic discussions will lead us to the answers of ‗Why'. Some supportive analyses of socio-political history, text and biographies are also deliberated to correlate and prove the evidences. Who knows, Architecture might be the memento of Greek metaphysical manifestation: where the then Greek religion, patronization form power, economy, cultural exchange, humane thought and overall, their philosophy translated into hoary stones-something which is still a mystery. Such hypotheses will distillate that how influential were these deep-sighted thoughts and made them able to constituent all these white carving-stone poetry. The philosophical responsiveness might have sprouted from the immanent interrogations in architecture through form, function and space; as a speculation of external and transcendental questions to search the ‗Ideal'. The possible coherence of architecture with philosophy without any distinct horizon in-between, which is less focused earlier, designates the originality of this dissertation.

Theoretical Perspectives, Centre for Research on Politics; University of Dhaka

Zebun Nasreen Ahmed

Modernism in the arts is a general term used to describe various tendencies in the first three quarters of the twentieth century. It refers mainly to a conscious attempt to break away from the artistic traditions of the nineteenth century, and also to a concern with form and the exploration of technique as opposed to content and narrative. Le Corbusier, probably the greatest proponent of Modernism, in a series of theoretical discourses on the subject laid down the ground rules which subsequent generations of architects have painstakingly followed. The structure of the artistic world, like that of the political world, reflects the nature of contemporary society . As in other fields, modernism in architecture addressed the social issues first and foremost and was aimed at providing an environment which could be enjoyed by a far wider user-group than could be imagined under the classed society of the nineteenth century. Technology and communication were given their due importance as the prime forces shaping the new world, free from the inhibitions of the nineteenth century. The theory was gradually put into practice by architects first all over the western world by the first half of the century, and with increased communication and need into the hither-to neglected third world by the sixties and seventies. Modernism through its sub-theme of internationalism proclaimed the universality and world-wide applicability of certain values of architecture and over the past 60 years, almost totally discarded all 'regional' building activity. In fact, it has been said about the architects of the time that " for them it mattered not at all whether a building bore any relation to its setting or to established cultural traditions. Indeed the less integrated it was, the more impact it would have, and the more effective it would be as an aesthetic manifesto" . This paper does not criticize the modern movement in architecture, for the 'style-lessness' of the modern movement was an indispensable necessity for its time, it was a movement for the general masses to make architecture accessible to all, rather than a chosen few. Society and values however are not static and the last quarter of the present century has seen discontent with the rigidity and plainness of previous generations. Various new movements have been born out of the residue of the modern phase. Now is the opportune moment to attempt a re-understanding of the principles behind the modern movement and to examine the reasons that alternatives to that purist movement are being sought. This paper also explores the present search that is being conducted for new directions in architecture at the thresh-hold of the new century, and comments on their validity in the context of third world urban centres.

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Student profiles

History and Philosophy of Art

With modules covering art from the medieval period to the present day, this MA provides a structured introduction to the postgraduate study of the history and philosophy of art. You share your year between our Canterbury campus and Kent’s Paris School of Arts and Culture

Key information

Duration 1 year
Start date September
Location Canterbury, Paris

The programme offers particular focuses on contemporary art, photography, Renaissance art, medieval art, 18th-century British painting, 19th-century French painting, modernism, aesthetics and the philosophy of art and film. You may elect to take a Philosophy of Art & Aesthetics pathway, which draws on the expertise of our Aesthetics Research Group.

A cross-cultural, interdisciplinary programme, you spend your first term at our Canterbury campus with full access to its excellent academic and recreational facilities. In the spring term, you relocate to the Paris School of Arts and Culture where you study at the Columbia Global Center (known as Reid Hall) in a historic corner of Montparnasse.

This programme can also be studied in Paris only or Canterbury only.

The programme is intended for graduates in art history, philosophy and cognate subjects, such as fine art. It gives you the opportunity to pursue your interest in visual art at advanced level, to develop a high level of expertise in topics in history and philosophy of art and to prepare for doctoral research in history of art or philosophy of art.

To find out more about History of Art at Kent, follow our blog, Artistry.

Studying at the Paris School of Arts and Culture

The Paris School of Arts and Culture is a specialist, postgraduate centre located in the heart of Paris. We offer interdisciplinary, flexible programmes, taught in English, which take full advantage of all the cultural resources Paris offers. Study trips to the city’s museums, art exhibitions, archives, cinemas and architectural riches are an integral part of your studies.

The interdisciplinary nature of the School means you can choose modules from outside your subject area, broadening your view of your subject. As part of our international community of students and staff, you can take part in regular seminars and talks, write for the student-run literary magazine or help to organise our annual student conference.

About the Department of History & Philosophy of Art

The History & Philosophy of Art Department within the School of Arts, provides opportunities for graduate study with well-established researchers in the fields of art history, philosophy of art and aesthetics. Staff research covers contemporary art and aesthetics, modernism, theories of art, the historiography of art and the Cold War; biographical monographs, the photograph (in its historical, contemporary and critical contexts), and the historical interplay of image, theory and institutions from the Renaissance to the present (especially European and North American).

Developing areas of interest include the cultural and historical significance of the print, and the role of performance and new media in contemporary art practices, which draw upon our links with other subjects within the School of Arts and the Faculty of Humanities. In particular, postgraduates have the opportunity to participate in the activities of the multidisciplinary Aesthetics Research Centre and the Art History and Visual Cultures Research Centre. There is also a full programme of visiting speakers from across the constituent subject areas within the School of Arts, which includes Film and Drama.

Everything you need to know about our History and Philosophy of Art course

Entry requirements, course structure, how you'll study.

A first or second class honours degree in a relevant subject (or equivalent)

All applicants are considered on an individual basis and additional qualifications, professional qualifications and relevant experience may also be taken into account when considering applications.

Please see our International Student website for entry requirements by country and other relevant information. Due to visa restrictions, students who require a student visa to study cannot study part-time unless undertaking a distance or blended-learning programme with no on-campus provision.

English language entry requirements

This course requires a Good level of English language, equivalent to B2 on CEFR.

Details on how to meet this requirement can be found on our English Language requirements webpage .

Examples:

IELTS 6.0 with a minimum of 5.5 in each component

PTE Academic 63 with a minimum of 59 in each sub-test

A degree from a UK university

A degree from a Majority English Speaking Country

Need help with English?

Please note that if you are required to meet an English language condition, we offer a number of pre-sessional courses in English for Academic Purposes through Kent International Pathways .

The following modules are indicative of those offered on this programme. This list is based on the current curriculum and may change year to year in response to new curriculum developments and innovation. Most programmes will require you to study a combination of compulsory and optional modules. You may also have the option to take modules from other programmes so that you may customise your programme and explore other subject areas that interest you.

Key Concepts and Classic Texts in History and Philosophy of Art

This module will introduce you to key concepts that are central to understand fundamental debates in history and philosophy of art as well as art criticism. Some examples of key concepts are the notion of originality, influence, race, the aesthetic, fiction, beauty, gender and taste. The key concepts discussed in the seminars are subject to change.

Find out more

Modern Art in Paris

The module will focus on Paris as a centre of artistic experimentation. The city served as the launch pad for key artistic movements from the mid-19th century through to the period after the Second World War (Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, etc.), and as a magnet for budding and established artists from all around the world. The module will take advantage of the great museum collections that encapsulate such developments (Musées d'Arte Moderne and d’Orsay, Rodin and Picasso Museums, Beaubourg, Quai Branly, etc.) and also of the major exhibitions on show in Paris in any given year.

Paris: Portfolio

'Paris: Portfolio' contributes to the MA in Creative Writing in Paris. The objective of ‘Paris: Portfolio’ is to produce work inspired by the cultural, historical and aesthetic location of the city, taking regular writing exercises, field trips and prompts as a starting point. This module aims to enable students to develop their practice of writing through both the study of a range of contemporary examples and practices, and constructive feedback on their own work. Each week, students read a selection of work, in a variety of forms (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, prose poetry, hybrid texts; as well as artworks, TV, film and other media). Students will work on a specific exercise and submit it for workshopping each week, which they will draw upon to produce a portfolio of creative work for the main assessment. They will be encouraged to read as independent writers, to apply appropriate writing techniques to their own practice and to experiment with voice, form and content. The approach to the exemplary texts will be technical as well as historical. At every point in the module, priority will be given to students’ own development as writers. It is an assumption of the module that students will already have a basic competence in the writing of poetry or prose, including a grasp of essential craft and techniques. The purpose of this module will be to stimulate students towards development and honing of their emerging voices and styles through engaging with various literary texts and techniques, and to consider how their work can develop with large chunks of time for independent study, reflection and exploration of a city like Paris.

Paris Workshop

In this module students will focus on generating material, understanding their own writing process through practice and identifying their strengths and interests (literary and otherwise), with an emphasis on workshopping each week. They will work towards a fully realised and developed piece of writing, which may be self-contained or a part of a longer project. They may be continuing to work on an existing project, or starting something new. In seminar/workshops, they will give and receive constructive criticism, and work on editorial exercises to revise and refine their writing. Seminars will focus on reading selected extracts, process- and craft-focused texts, and reflective essays as a basis for class discussion. Seminar leaders will identify recommended reading tailored to individual students' interests and development.

Film and Modernity (Paris)

The module is conceived as open to all Humanities MA students in Paris. It examines the medium of film, considering its specific qualities as an art and industrial form and the particular ways in which it is influenced by and influences other artistic and cultural forms in turn of the 20th century Paris. The emphasis of the course varies from year to year, responding to current research and scholarship, but it maintains as its focus the aesthetic strategies of film in contrast with other arts, technological developments, and historical change, particularly as they are developed in the growth of Paris as a city. The course also addresses the strategies used by the cinema to communicate with its historical audience. The course explores both the historical place of the cinema within the development of twentieth-century urban culture in Paris as well as how this historical definition informs the development of the cinema.

Drawing: History and Practice

This module will pursue three interrelated aims through the use and study of drawing:

Firstly, it will introduce students to the range of drawing techniques used by artists, the different types of drawings they produce and their function in the process of designing and executing works of art. It will equip students with the tools for analysing and identifying drawings, and provide foundations for effective connoisseurship.

Secondly, it will equip students with a practice-based understanding of the role of drawing in artistic training and of its importance as a tool for creative work. Students will participate in drawing seminars where they will carry out exercises modelled on artistic practice. To give some indicative examples, these may begin with rudimentary conventions for drawing eyes and ears, through copy drawings to mechanical drawing methods like perspective and shadow projection, tracing and the use of the grid. The exercises may then build on these simple beginnings and develop towards portrait drawing informed by anatomical analysis of the skull, drawing from sculptural casts, from the draped and nude figure, sketching the landscape, and finally working towards the compositional drawing and methods for enlarging it. Drawing exercises will clarify for students the processes of artistic visualization and design, and make available to them an important tool of visual and art historical analysis.

Finally, the module will enable students to relate the analysis of historical drawings and the practice of making drawings to the theory of drawing and its significance in western culture generally.

History and Theory of Curating

This module will introduce students to the history and theory of curating through a series of detailed case studies from the early modern period to the present day. These will focus on how collections have been formed and maintained, the nature of key institutions in the art world like museums and galleries, and in particular it will examine the phenomenon of the exhibition. Different approaches to curating exhibitions will be examined, and the responsibilities of the curator towards artists, collections, and towards the public will be analysed. Broad themes in the theory of curating and museology will be examined. Wherever possible the case studies chosen will draw on the resources and expertise of partner organisations, such as Canterbury Museums and the Institute for Contemporary Art.

Gothic Art and Architecture, c. 1100-1350

This module explores the dynamic relationship between the cult of relics and Gothic art. It will begin by retracing the aesthetics of devotion across Western Christendom, culminating in the creation of towering Gothic cathedrals. Throughout history, the design of cult images could reveal sacred presence, testify to miracle-working powers, and explicate the significance of a holy place using visual narratives. Through pilgrimage, gift-giving, and even theft, people acquired relics and 'invented' new cults. The success of a relic cult would benefit from the design of a magnificent reliquary, the depiction of pictorial programmes (in glass, sculpture, and painting), and the placement of the relic within a spectacular architectural setting. Together we will explore the development of Gothic art in light of changing devotional needs. Using a number of diverse case studies, students will acquire a wealth of historical information and develop a variety of intellectual approaches to function and significance of visual culture. Beginning with Paris and its surrounding cathedrals, we will extend our analysis to Gothic Canterbury, London, Castile, Prague, Siena, and Florence. Above all, this course will encourage students to think critically about the influence of art in the religious imagination.

History & Philosophy of Art Dissertation

This module gives students the opportunity to write a dissertation of 14,000 words on a topic of their choosing relating to history of art or philosophy of art and aesthetics. It enhances students' research, writing and presentation skills, and allows them to gain specialised knowledge thus advancing both their academic and professional development. The process of defining a topic and writing the dissertation is closely supported through meetings during the Autumn and Spring Term, and by the student’s dissertation supervisor. Supervision is usually by staff with direct research expertise in the student’s chosen topic.

Teaching and assessment

Assessment is by two assignments per module and the dissertation.

Programme aims

This programme aims to:

provide you with a focused programme of taught postgraduate study in history and philosophy of art
provide you with a taught foundation for subsequent postgraduate research
enable you to acquire or deepen your knowledge and understanding of the historical and contemporary topics within the history of art and philosophy of art
enable you to develop your art historical and philosophical skills beyond that expected of an undergraduate
enable you to develop, articulate and defend art historical and philosophical ideas as they relate to art
enable you to engage with historical and contemporary theoretical thought about the arts from art historical and philosophical perspectives.

Learning outcomes

Knowledge and understanding.

You will gain knowledge and understanding of:

aspects of the historical development of art, movements, styles and genres, especially from the Renaissance to the present day
the works of a range of significant artists of different periods and cultures
a range of different visual art forms and techniques, such as painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, installation and video
the cultural, social and historical contexts in which artworks are produced, used and understood
art historical methods and theories used to study art
substantive areas of current research in art history
the impact of philosophies of art and aesthetics on the visual arts
aspects of the history of aesthetics and the philosophy of art in the western tradition
aspects of contemporary aesthetic theory and issues in the philosophy of art
various positions taken on key issues in contemporary aesthetics and philosophy of art
the range of philosophical issues arising in relation to a particular medium of fine art
primary and secondary philosophical writings on art and aesthetics relevant to contemporary philosophy of art.

Intellectual skills

You develop intellectual skills in:

a high degree of independent thinking, particularly in relation to the ideas, issues and debates within art history and the philosophy of art
advanced research skills relevant to the preparation of essays, dissertations and seminar assignments.
an advanced ability to evaluate a range of both primary and secondary sources and conceptual frameworks appropriate to research in the history and philosophy of art
a highly developed ability to synthesise diverse materials and ideas to further a specific art historical or art philosophical position
an ability to analyse and interpret texts and arguments in a manner that demonstrates advanced skills of critical evaluation
an ability to critically reflect at an advanced level upon both one’s own ideas and positions.

Subject-specific skills

You gain subject-specific skills in:

advanced skills of observation, analysis and interpretation of visual artworks, drawing on your knowledge of visual traditions and conventions
the use of concepts and methods specific to the history and theory of art
the capacity to locate and evaluate evidence from relevant visual and textual sources, and interpret it in relation to art historical enquiries
the ability to construct highly effective arguments to defend or challenge a position held by yourself or others
the ability to critically engage at an advanced level with some major thinkers and intellectual traditions within art history and the philosophy of art
advanced skills of constructive debate and defence of ideas
a high degree of critical reflectiveness upon assumptions and beliefs
advanced skills of oral presentation and defence of ideas and positions.

Transferable skills

You will gain the following transferable skills:

the ability, at an advanced level, to organise information clearly, respond to written sources, present information orally, adapt style for different audiences, use images as a communication tool, present arguments cogently and effectively in written or spoken form
the ability, at an advanced level, to identify and access relevant materials and synthesise them into a broader piece of work
the ability to produce written documents, undertake online research, communicate using email and process information using databases
the ability to listen effectively and so to learn from and participate constructively in discussion
the ability to organise and manage supervised, self-directed work
the ability to work in flexible and independently minded ways, showing self-discipline and self-direction
problem-solving: the ability to identify and define problems, explore alternative solutions and discriminate between them
focus and attentiveness to detail: the ability to work diligently, to fulfil briefs and deadlines, and to take responsibility for your own work.
The ability to gather, organise and deploy ideas in order to formulate arguments cogently and express them effectively orally and in written form.

Study support

Language support .

As a student on a split Canterbury/Paris programme you will be able to study French for free with our online Language Express modules. The module covers French for beginners, so you can get up to speed before moving to Paris in your second term, with the option to continue developing your language skills alongside your studies in Paris.

If you are interested in joining the French Language Express modules, please email: [email protected]

Postgraduate resources

There is a large and wide-ranging library holding for History & Philosophy of Art, covering the fields of painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, aesthetics and contemporary visual communications. There is a substantial stock of periodicals, online access to e-journals and a slide library with well over 100,000 images, covering areas such as contemporary art, visual cultures, garden history and the film still, as well as traditional media. Kent is ideally located for access to galleries in London and on the continent.

In 2010, we moved into the purpose-built, and RIBA award-winning, Jarman Building located at the centre of the Canterbury campus. The new building is home to the Studio 3 Gallery and a range of teaching and social spaces as well as a dedicated postgraduate centre.

All postgraduate students are offered research skills training and the opportunity to take part in reading groups and research seminars at departmental, school and faculty level. Research students have the added opportunity for funded conference attendance. There is also a dedicated student support office at our Canterbury campus, which can offer support and guidance throughout your studies, in addition to an office in Paris.

In recent years, several members of the History & Philosophy of Art Department, both full-time and part-time, have been awarded University prizes for excellence in student support, curriculum innovation and research-based teaching – an ethos which we seek to extend to the postgraduate community.

Dynamic publishing culture

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Philosophy Dissertation Topics

Published by Grace Graffin at January 9th, 2023 , Revised On January 9, 2023

Introduction

The choice of dissertation topic is crucial for research as it will facilitate the process and makes it an exciting and manageable process. Several dissertation ideas exist in philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, logic, aesthetics, deontology, absurdum, and existentialism. Philosophy dissertations can be based on either primary research or secondary research.

Primary data dissertations incorporate the collection and analysis of data obtained through questionnaires and surveys. On the other hand, secondary data dissertations make use of existing literature to test the research hypothesis . To help you get started with philosophy topic selection for your dissertation, a list is developed by our experts.

These philosophy dissertation topics have been developed by PhD qualified writers of our team , so you can trust to use these topics for drafting your dissertation.

You may also want to start your dissertation by requesting a brief research proposal from our writers on any of these topics, which includes an introduction to the topic, research question , aim and objectives , literature review along with the proposed methodology of research to be conducted. Let us know if you need any help in getting started.

Check our dissertation examples to get an idea of how to structure your dissertation .

Review the full list of dissertation topics for 2022 here.

Philosophy Dissertation Topics of Research

Topic 1: an examination of women's perspective on feminist philosophy..

Research Aim: This study aims to look into the importance of feminism in a philosophical context. It will also identify the factors that lead to postmodernism and liberal feminism from women’s perspectives and will also focus on the impact of feminist philosophy on the development of modern society.

Topic 2: Sociological Functionalism- Investigating the Development and Beliefs

Research Aim: This research study will focus on new types of functionalism and get a deeper understanding of inner and outer circumstances in which different approaches take place. This study will also investigate how the researchers use social theory to acquire a better understanding of the environment in which these concepts are used. It will also promote sociology through informing and inspiring practices and research.

Topic 3: Assessing the History and Development of Philosophical Work from the 15th to 21st Century.

Research Aim: This study aims to find the history and development of philosophical work from the 15th and 21st Centuries. It will examine the theoretical foundations of the practice, applications, and social consequences. This study will also focus on different factors of how philosophy has evolved in these centuries and what changes have occurred.

Topic 4: A Comprehensive View of Social Development of Loneliness.

Research Aim: This study will comprehend how various theoretical points of view are connected or linked r to loneliness. This study will also present an argument for an interpretative social point of view by dissembling the sense of loneliness into key components. It will also focus on the problems and different behaviours of people.

Topic 5: What does it mean to live in an Ideal Society- Discuss using Plato's Philosophies.

Research Aim: Plato is well known for his monologue known as the Republic; he was also the classical political philosopher whose views influenced future political thoughts. Plato’s ideal society was created during a time when Plato was exceedingly optimistic about human nature and its ability to absorb knowledge. This study will conduct a deep analysis of Plato’s ideologies and his views and their impact on the western political world.

Topic 2: Should people always obey the rules? A closer look at the line between breaking rules and rebellion.

Research Aim: Rules are developed to maintain a balance in society and ensure discipline, which helps an individual in every sphere of their lives. But specific rules are created only for serving a group and not for the whole society’s best interest. This research aims at finding pieces of evidence where rule-breaking is a rebellion and for the upliftment of humanity and not in personal interest.

Topic 3: Loneliness: Reconstructing its meaning

Research Aim: This research aims at finding the meaning of loneliness, what it is to feel lonely, why some people are reclusive, isolate themselves. Loneliness is not always related to sadness, and some people feel better in isolation due to their bitter experiences of life.

Topic 4: Understanding why religion is paramount above anything else for many people around the globe.

Research Aim: Religion forms the basis of life and way of living for many people around the globe. People often get confused with religion and spiritualism, and the grandeur associated with religion becomes more important. The lack of knowledge and education forces blind faith. This research aims to find the reason for dependency on religion and how it negatively affects human lives.

Topic 5: What is the best way to boost a person’s creativity?

Research Aim: This research aims at finding the best possible way to boost a person’s creativity. The most important way is to motivate, inspire, and support them in their process of exploring innovative ideas. Recognition of talent can be the most effective method, which the research will investigate.

Topic 6: Morality and religion: Why are they different, yet they talk about the same thing?

Research Aim: The fundamental essence of religion is compassion and empathy for humans and ensures morality and ethics as a way of life. This research emphasises the primary aim of a religion and how people are getting disoriented and making rituals of religion the prime concern.

Topic 7: Wealth: Is it possible to be rich without having a lot of money?

Research Aim: Wealth and money are co-related as lots of money gives the power to buy anything. But a wealth of human life lies in their moral values, love, affection, proper health and wellbeing, and money cannot accept them. This research topic will speak about becoming wealthy, even with limited monetary wealth.

Topic 8: How can the custom of dowry be eliminated from people’s minds?

Research Aim: Dowry is a social parasite, and it is now a punishable offence by the law. But rules alone cannot change society. The research aims at eradicating the practice of dowry from people’s minds in the light of education.

Topic 9: To love or to be loved: Which is more important?

Research Aim: Love is the feeling of intense desire or deep affection. The most beautiful feeling gives a sense of satisfaction and grows through exchange between two individuals. To love and be loved are two co-related aspects as human expects love in return. The research focuses on the more critical dilemma, being on the giving or receiving side of love.

Topic 10: Why social behaviour and ethics cannot be separated?

Research Aim: The research aims to evaluate the importance of ethics in social behaviour and why they cannot be separated. An ethical society is a proper place to thrive for every individual.

Topic 11: A more in-depth look at things that make human life meaningful.

Research Aim: Money, power does not always buy happiness. The research lays the foundation for the importance of care, compassion, empathy. Love and affection as the more essential aspects that make human life meaningful.

Topic 12: Is it possible to create an ideal society?

Research Aim: An ideal society is free from any crime and economic disparities where everyone is treated equally. This research will discuss whether a perfect community is attainable; it is practically possible or not.

Topic 13: A closer look at modern life values.

Research Aim: The research aims to focus on the change in values in modern times. The research’s primary purpose is to provide a comparative study of how modern people’s mindset has changed over time.

Topic 14: Euthanasia: Is it ethical?

Research Aim: A long time debate exists regarding the ethical side of euthanasia. Ending someone’s life can be considered unlawful as we do not have the right to end something we did not create. This research aims at providing evidence in favour of euthanasia and also the negative aspects.

Topic 15: What is the value of truth? Are there instances when lying is good?

Research Aim: The research aims to provide evidence where lying is not unethical. The study will give an example from Bhagwat Gita, where Lord Krishna lied to safeguard humanity.

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Further Reading

In the recent boom of anthologies the following threefold project deserves to be mentioned separately:

Quite old, already classical but still interesting readers are:

In the seventies and the eighties two excellent readers saw the light:

During the last decade a lot of introductions into philosophy of art have been published. Some older, almost classical introductions are:

Some excellent, more recent introductions are:

Standard works on the history of aesthetics:

On Aesthetics in the Middle-Ages:

Specific on American aesthetics:

For the quotes on Luc Tuymans in 1,4, see:

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