Overview
"The twelve essays by Kendall Walton in this volume address a broad range of theoretical issues concerning the arts. Many of them apply to the arts generally-to literature, theater, film, music, and the visual arts-but several focus primarily on pictorial representation or photography. In ""'How Marvelous!': Toward a Theory of Aesthetic Value"" Walton introduces an innovative account of aesthetic value, and in this and other essays he explores relations between aesthetic value and values of other kinds, especially moral values. Two of the essays take on what has come to be called imaginative resistance-a cluster of puzzles that arise when works of fiction ask us to imagine or to accept as true in a fiction moral propositions that we find reprehensible in real life. ""Transparent Pictures"", Walton's classic and controversial account of what is special about photographic pictures, is included, along with a new essay on a curious but rarely noticed feature of photographs and other still pictures-the fact that a depiction of a momentary state of an object in motion allows viewers to observe that state, in imagination, for an extended period of time. Two older essays round out the collection-another classic, ""Categories of Art"", and a less well known essay, ""Style and the Products and Processes of Art"", which examines the role of appreciators' impressions of how a work of art came about, in understanding and appreciation. None of the reprinted essays is abridged, and new postscripts have been added to several of them."
Full Product Details
Author: Kendall Walton (Charles Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Philosophy, Charles Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Philosophy, University of Michigan)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 23.60cm
, Height: 2.00cm
, Length: 15.70cm
Weight: 0.519kg
ISBN: 9780195177947
ISBN 10: 0195177940
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 24 April 2008
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
The collection is indeed a joy to read... Each essay gives the tangible impression hearing an outstanding philosopher in direct engagement with the issues... For all the freshness and directness of style, there is an extraordinary level of subtle nuance and fine distinction... It is a principal conclusion of the opening chapter, which gives the collection its title, that a distinctive mark of aesthetic pleasure is the fact we take pleasure, not just in the object itself, but also in our admiration for the object. Just such a pleasure will be occasioned by this admirable volume. Marvelous indeed. Ian Ground, Philosophy
Author Information
Kendall Walton turned to philosophy as an undergraduate at Berkeley, after considering a career in music. He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1967, and has taught at the University of Michigan since then. His extensive writings on aesthetics include the groundbreaking, Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a past president of the American Society for Aesthetics.
