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Title American aesthetics : theory and practice / edited by Walter B. Gulick and Gary Slater
Published Albany : State University of New York Press, [2020]

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 414 pages) : illustrations
Series SUNY series in American philosophy and cultural thought
SUNY series in American philosophy and cultural thought.
Contents Intro -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- I. Introduction -- 1. Toward an American Aesthetics -- Aesthetics-A Definition -- The American Background -- Classic American Philosophers -- The Kantian Framework and First Domain of Aesthetic Judgment -- The Second Domain of Aesthetic Judgment -- The Third Domain of Aesthetic Judgment -- The Felt Aspect of Aesthetic Judgment -- Characteristics of American Aesthetics -- New Criticism as Overly Constrained -- High-Art Analysis -- Postmodernism -- Conclusion -- Notes
II. Philosophical Contributions to American Aesthetics from the Past -- 2 The Primacy of Aesthetic Judgments: Emerson's Deontological-Transcendentalist Account of Tragedy -- Introduction -- Emerson's Tragic Sense -- Terror and Tragedy in the Twenty-first Century -- Tragedy after Emerson? -- Notes -- 3 Peirce and Edwards on the Argument from Beauty -- I -- II -- III -- IV -- Notes -- 4 A Semeiotic Account of Paintings as Pure Icons that Communicate Beautiful Feelings -- Paintings as Pure Icons Interpretable Via Emotional Interpretants
The Process of Painting and the Endowment of Paintings with Beautiful Feelings -- Beautiful Paintings and the Norms that Ground Aesthetic Inquiry -- Notes -- 5 The Pragmatist Aesthetics of William James -- II -- III -- IV -- Notes -- 6 Between Nature and Art: Some Analytical Exemplifications of Dewey's Aesthetics -- Nature as Matrix and Medium -- The Scroll and the Smile: Experience Has No Edges -- Paradigms of Painting: On Representation, Expression, and Abstraction -- Shaping Nature: Qualities of Space-Time in Art and Life -- A Final Word Connecting Us to the Beginning -- Notes
III. American Aesthetics: Contemporary Theoretical Contributions -- 7 Axiological Landscape Theory: Uniting Aesthetics, Ethics, and Inquiry -- Introduction -- Summary of the Hypothesis: Basic Answers to Basic Questions -- Background: Fitness Landscapes, Axiological Pluralism, Determinate Histories, Appraisal Dimensions -- Key Concepts: Value, Possibility, Virtuality, Potential, Landscape, Affordance, Engagement, Determination, Realization, Foreclos -- Applications of Axiological Landscape Theory -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 8 Experience and Signs: Toward a Pragmatist Literary Criticism
Aesthetics, Quality, Possibility -- Literature, Sensation, Relations -- Criticism, Theory, Philosophy -- Notes -- 9 Music, Time, and the Egress of Possibility -- Part I: Possibility in Time and Music, and Being toward Death -- Part II: Being toward Life as the Art of Being toward Death -- Part III: The Hiatus as the Ground of Person -- Notes -- 10 Harmony, Existence, and the Aesthetic -- Harmony -- Goodness in Harmony -- Beauty and Existence in Harmony -- The Situation of Appreciating Beauty -- Beauty in Art -- Conclusion -- Notes
Summary "Although there are distinctly American artists-Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Grandma Moses, Thomas Hart Benton, and Andy Warhol, for example-very little attention has been devoted to formulating any distinctively American characteristics of aesthetic judgment and practice. This volume takes a step in this direction, presenting an introductory essay on the possibility of such a distinctly American tradition, and a collection of essays exploring particular examples from a variety of angles. Some of the essays in this collection extend pragmatist and process insights about the important place aesthetics has in molding and assessing experience. Other essays examine the place of American aesthetics in relation to such particular forms of art as painting, literature, music, and film. Three essays attend to the aesthetic aspects of a flourishing life. In each of the essays, American aesthetics is understood to arise out of deeply felt personal, historical, and cultural backgrounds. Consequently, not only are such relatively abstract notions as harmony, fit, elegance, proportion, and the like involved in aesthetic judgment, but also religious, political, and social factors become embroiled in aesthetic discernment. Thus the ongoing pattern of American aesthetics is shown to be distinguishable from such other varieties of aesthetic thought as analytic aesthetics, New Criticism, and postmodern approaches to aesthetics"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on August 07, 2020)
Subject Aesthetics, American.
Aesthetics, American
Form Electronic book
Author Gulick, Walter B., 1938- editor.
Slater, Gary, 1983- editor.
LC no. 2019049096
ISBN 9781438478593
1438478593