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Aaron Ridley presents a series of twelve essays, half of them appearing here for the first time, about the two key singularities that Kant identified in aesthetics: artistic creativity and aesthetic judgement. He explores how the one-off character of creativity and judgement defy our ordinary expectations of what an explanation should be like.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Part 1: Creativity
- 1: R.G. Collingwood: a Philosophy of Art
- 2: Against Musical Ontology
- 3: Pieces of Music and Pinches of Salt
- 4: Why Ethics and Aesthetics are Practically the Same
- 5: Making Art, Making Craft
- 6: Kant's Aesthetic Ideas
- Part 2: Judgement
- 7: On the Musically Possible
- 8: Song as a Whole
- 9: Bad Art
- 10: Alex Neill, University of Southampton: Critical Conversions
- 11: Religious Music for Godless Ears
- 12: Art Works: on Functional Beauty
- References
- Index
About the author
Educated at the universities of York (BA) and Cambridge (PhD), Aaron Ridley has taught at UCNW Bangor, Ithaca College, NY, and, since 1994, the University of Southampton. His chief research interests are aesthetics, especially musical aesthetics, and the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Summary
These essays, half of them appearing here for the first time, address issues concerning the two key singularities that Kant identified in aesthetics: artistic creativity and aesthetic judgement. Ranging from Kant himself to contemporary debates, from song to conceptual art, from ethics to atheism, from function to failure, Aaron Ridley explores the ways in which the one-off character of creativity and judgement may defy our ordinary expectations of what an explanation should be like. Intended equally for specialists and students, this collection offers a distinctive approach to aesthetics that will be of interest to any reader concerned with philosophical reflection upon the arts.
Additional text
Aaron Ridley's Singularities is an enjoyable collection of fourteen essays that deal with a wide variety of topics in the philosophy of art or rather, as Aaron Ridley prefers to say, "aesthetics."
