Robbins Library Notes

Well, this post isn’t a Question of the Week per se, but it arises from a conversation that I had with a patron several days ago. In the course of our speaking about the patron’s interests, the patron mentioned one in aesthetics, and was curious to learn more about the subject.This field is one about which I know very little — though I’ve lately become intrigued by the sub-field of film as philosophy through reading Stanley Cavell and others. Hence, I should learn a bit more about the field, so that I can have a deeper understanding of the concepts and ideas being bandied about. Also, I wanted to learn what sort of basic resources might be out there, in case my patron comes back and wants to explore the topic in greater depth.

Basic Resources & Persons

So — what resources are out there?

Journals

Off of the top of my head, I mentioned to the patron that we have subscriptions to two journals in this field at Robbins:

• The British Journal of Aesthetics
• The Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism

These journals are highly respected, and cover a wide range of topics, from the plastic arts to film and other media, aesthetic perception and experience, and the like. The patron might also want to look at journals focusing on psychology or philosophy of mind for discussions of aesthetic perception, creativity, arts & the emotions, and the like.

Encyclopedias

After thinking about this topic over the last several days, I decided to follow my practice of applying Ockham’s Razor when narrowing down where to look initially for answers. I began looking in some of the most obvious places — viz., encyclopedias of philosophy.

After an hour or so of searching in their pages, I’ve found three encyclopedias that may be of help for getting a basic understanding of aesthetics:

• The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) has a good many entries on various aspects of aesthetics, all of which should probably be examined.
• Likewise, the entries in volume 1 of both the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy and volume 1 of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition, are also very illuminating. Not only do they cover the field in general and in several aspects, but they also give a history of aesthetics.

For those who have forgotten, or for those who are new to this blog, I have written about all of these encyclopedias in an earlier post.

Philosophers

From my own study of philosophy, I know that many philosophers have been interested in aesthetics. In no particular order, one could study:

• Immanuel Kant (especially in the Critique of Judgement)
• G.W.F. Hegel
• Monroe Beardsley
• John Dewey
• Theodor W. Adorno
• Nelson Goodman
• Hans-Georg Gadamer
• Arthur Danto
• R.G. Collingwood
• Plato
• Aristotle (for example, in the Poetics)
• Plotinus
• St. Thomas Aquinas

There are many other figures whom one could explore, e.g., some of the 18th German philosophers such as Baumgarten, Schiller, and Herder.

In the list above, I have linked to relevant SEP articles or books that cover the various views of aesthetics of these authors — unfortunately, there are no entries on the aesthetics of Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel, though these are planned, according to the SEP Table of Contents.

Books

Checking the entries in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Encyclopedia of Philosophy reveals a plethora of introductory texts, broken down by historical period or sub-field. I would have to learn more about where my patron’s interests lie before making any recommendations. Also, I would direct my patron to the primary texts on aesthetics written by the philosophers above, e.g., Kant’s Critique of Judgement, or Hegel’s Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics.

Other Resources?

I haven’t looked for any journal articles on aesthetics, because I’m suspecting that there will likely be many. I would probably wait and see if my patron comes back to look for more information before doing a search. If so, I’d likely go to Philosopher’s Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index first, in order to generate a bibliography, then follow the links therein to Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, and other databases to troll for articles.

There are a number of Web sites on aesthetics — my patron might want to check out:

• American Society for Aesthetics
• Google’s directory of aesthetics
• Open Directory Project’s listing of online resources of aesthetics

Philosophy and Film: An Excursus

I mentioned above my own interest in film and philosophy sparked by reading Stanley Cavell and others. For those interested in this area:

• The podcast from Stephen Mulhall about which I wrote a post a few days ago — on film as philosophy — might be worth listening to.
• The online journal, Film-Philosophy, takes a Continental approach to studying film.
• SEP has an entry, “Philosophy of Film,” which also looks fascinating.
• Finally, the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64(1), Winter 2006, is entirely devoted to film and philosophy. I especially enjoyed Christopher Grau’s article from this issue, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Morality of Memory” — you’ll need a Harvard ID and PIN to access the article.

These items are what I have come up with so far. Are there other basic resources that I might have missed and should mention?