Critical Rationalist Aesthetics, A

Description: This book is a first attempt to cover the whole area of aesthetics from the point of view of critical rationalism. It takes up and expands upon the more narrowly focused work of E. H. Gombrich, Sheldon Richmond, and Raphael Sassower and Louis Ciccotello. The authors integrate the arts into the scientific world view and acknowledge that there is an aesthetic aspect to anything whatsoever. They pay close attention to the social situatedness of the arts. Their aesthetics treats art as emerging from craft in the form of luxurious and playful challenge to the audience. In developing it they place emphasis on the number of questions and claims that can be settled by appeal to empirical facts; on the historical character of aesthetic judgements; and on the connection of aesthetic truth to true love and true friendship, i.e. fidelity and integrity, not to informative truth. Contents: Preface Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: The Arts in Our World Chapter 3: Marxist Aesthetics, or, the Politics and Morals of Art Chapter 4: Aesthetics and Its Relation to Other Fields Chapter 5: Reason, Truth, Metaphysics Chapter 6: The Varieties of Aesthetic Experience Chapter 7: The Rational Unity of Art, Aesthetics, and Art Appreciation Bibliography of Works cited Index of Artworks Index of Names Index of Subjects