The Soft Side of Stone: Notes for a Phenomenology of Stone

Stone represents the firmness and intransigence of the world within which we live and act. But beyond the perception and appropriations of stone, diverse meanings lie hidden between the hardness of stone and its uses. At the same time meaning must be grounded in the stabilizing presence of a common world. Yet if all that can be said is not about stone simpliciter but only an aesthetics of its perception, uses, and meanings, have we not gained the whole world but lost its reality? The underlying issue is therefore not aesthetic but ontological

Some Questions for Ecological Aesthetics

Ecology has become a popular conceptual model in numerous fields of inquiry and it seems especially appropriate for environmental philosophy. Apart from its literal employment in biology, ecology has served as a useful metaphor that captures the interdependence of factors in a field of research. At the same time as ecology is suggestive, it cannot be followed literally or blindly. This paper considers the appropriateness of the uses to which ecology has been put in some recent discussions of architectural and environmental aesthetics, and develops a critique of the differing ecological aesthetics of Jusuck Koh and Xiangzhan Cheng

Aesthetic Embodiment

Discusses the body in aesthetic activity and appreciation. Different kinds of 'embodiment.

Paleolithic Flints: Is an Aesthetics of Stone Tools Possible?1

This paper asks whether an aesthetics of Paleolithic tools is possible, and if so, what it might be. The application of our own aesthetic sensibilities to artifacts of prehistory is not difficult. We easily recognize and appreciate their visual and tactile qualities. The more complicated questions that the paper explores are whether we can uncover the aesthetic sensibilities of their makers and, if we cannot, whether aesthetic examination of prehistoric tools from our own perspectives is adequate or useful. The paper is based on study of Paleolithic flints from French archaeological sites dating from about 500,000 years ago to about 11,000 years ago. The stone tools are held in the collections of the Wilson Museum (Castine, Maine, U.S.A.), and the paper is illustrated from these collections

What is Aesthetic Engagement?

Aesthetic engagement is the central concept of an aesthetic theory that came as an alternative to the aesthetic disinterestedness of traditional aesthetics. It emerged in response to developments in the contemporary arts that emphasized the direct involvement of an active appreciator in the art object, overcoming the customary separation between them. Aesthetic engagement thus rejects the dualism inherent in customary accounts of aesthetic appreciation and epitomized in Kantian aesthetics, which treats aesthetic experience as the subjective appreciation of a beautiful object. Instead, aesthetic engagement emphasizes the holistic, contextual character of aesthetic appreciation, the primacy of sensible experience, and active participation. Aesthetic engagement is a valuable concept not only for understanding and appreciating recent developments in the arts; it can also reinvigorate our experience of the traditional arts

Aesthetic Engagement in Video Dance

This essay discusses dance film and video dance. The first was born of the manifold possibilities of chemical technology, while the second exploits the rich resources of digital technology and its freedom from material constraints. Now wholly in digital form, both technologies offer new possibilities for the dance arts by developing and enhancing the possibilities and powers of dance experience. This essay describes those possibilities and their contribution to dance appreciation

Further Ruminations on Music

This article examines the implications for aesthetic theory of using music as a model. It pursues the question of what would follow from using music as the paradigm of art in general. How would we project an aesthetics, so to say, if we used music as our model by beginning and ending with the perceptual experience of music? This would lead to rejecting an object-oriented aesthetics that joins with the subjectivity of experience and emphasizing, in contrast, music's performative and embodied character, the ephemeral nature of the musical object, and engagement with music as a field experience that joins creative, focusing, appreciative, and performative features in a complex perceptual whole

What is Aesthetic Engagement?

Developments in the arts associated with modernism began in the latter part of the nineteenth century with Impressionism and Post-impressionism. These movements were followed by a succession of stylistic innovations that came to a head in the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1960s and ‘70s, a proliferation of artistic practices emerged that trespassed conventional boundaries. Innovative practices gave rise to new perceptual features in the arts, breaking out of the frame of the canvas and extruding from its flat surface, descending from the proscenium stage into the audience, and other such modifications of appreciative experience that discarded the traditional separation of audience and art object. Not only did the arts incorporate new materials and practices; they reached out to incorporate surprising subject-matters. All the arts began to intrude on the formerly safe space of the spectator by demanding active involvement in the appreciative process. Audience participation became overt and necessary for the fulfillment of the art, not only in the visual arts but in theater, fiction, sculpture, and other art forms. The traditional separation between the sequestered, contemplative experience of art and the world of ordinary experience was deliberately breached

Ethics and Science: Some Normative Facts and a Conclusion

The assessment of normative issues must begin by examining basic human needs. Judgments do not create values but only recognize them. Such factual knowledge enables us to determine policy and guide actions, and the human sciences can contribute by identifying such structural universals. This can underlie efforts to establish moral beliefs and practices in addition to social institutions that promote fulfilling those needs