If one understands “aesthetic object” as a “work of art”, the underlying ontology is not at all a meaning-date ontology, nor an ontology of mixed categories. A number of postulates – 2, 4 and 6; Perhaps 3 and 7 – are actually prima facie incompatible with a meaning-date ontology. On the contrary, what 1-7 strongly suggests is that a work of art is a physical object: it is perceptible, public or intersubjectively available both in time and space, can appear differently from different angles and at different times, cannot be understood exhaustively on a given occasion, has characteristics that can be perceived correctly or incorrectly, and is, therefore, that the attributions attributed to them obey the law of the excluded center. Beardsley is best known for his work in aesthetics – and this article will deal exclusively with his work in the field – but he was an extremely intellectually curious man and published papers in a number of fields, including the philosophy of history, the theory of action, and the history of modern philosophy. In aesthetics, Beardsley develops a philosophy of art that is sensitive to three things: (i) art itself and people`s pre-philosophical interest and opinions in art, (ii) critics` statements about art, and (iii) developments in philosophy, in particular, but not exclusively, those of the analytic tradition. To further explain each of these elements: (i) In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the period when Beardsley developed his philosophy of art, there were developments in the arts – new forms of music, painting and literature had appeared and appeared – but there was also a well-established and relatively large canon of works that were considered aesthetically superior and remarkable. almost everywhere. (ii) Art criticism had become an industry in which great schools of all kinds flourished: Marxist, formalist, psychoanalytic, semiotic, historical, biographical. (iii) And the philosophy had changed quickly and unexpectedly.
Analytic philosophy, with its emphasis on language and strong empiricist tendencies, had gained prominence in American universities in just over 20 years and dominated the philosophical scene. (Detailed coverage of the arts, including their definition.) But why accept the definition? For a number of reasons, Beardsley said. First, a definition “chosen for a role in aesthetic theory” should mark a distinction that. important for aesthetic theory” (p. 299), and Beardsleys does so. Second, “In choosing key terms for aesthetic theory, we should remain as close as possible to ordinary usage” (p. 300). The use of a term by everyone does not need to be taken into account in the design of a definition, which would be impossible anyway with a term as elastic and tendentious as a “work of art”. Beardsley`s definition has the merit of “capturing quite well a usage that has been important for several centuries and is still quite widespread today.
apart from speaking and writing by or about the avant-garde” (p. 300). Third, a definition of the term “work of art” should be “of maximum benefit to applicants in areas other than aesthetics – areas where aesthetics itself should (sometimes) be seen as support and foundation” (p. 304). The areas Beardsley has in mind are more than any other art history and anthropology. Fourth and finally, a definition of “work of art” should be “conceptually. Kunst und Ästhetik” (p. 312). Beardsley`s does this in spades and defines art directly in terms of aesthetics. Not all the arts could be covered in detail in a book as long as Aesthetics – it`s over 600 pages long – so Beardsley had to settle for focusing on three relatively different arts: literature, music, and painting. In accordance with the conception of the aforementioned philosophy, aesthetics was considered a meta-criticism.
“There wouldn`t be any aesthetic problems,” Beardsley says, “if no one ever talked about works of art. We cannot do aesthetics until we have some critical statements to work on” (pp. 1:4). Aesthetics deals with “the essence and basis of criticism, . Just as criticism itself has to do with works of art” (p. 6). The then-current and still widespread view that philosophy is a secondary, meta-level, and essentially linguistic activity that takes statements of first-rate activities such as chemistry, religion, or history as a subject of study is reflected in Beardsley`s view of the nature of aesthetics. The last of the books, The Aesthetic Point of View, is a collection of papers, most old, some new. Fourteen articles, mainly on the nature of aesthetic and artistic criticism, will be reprinted and six new pieces will be added. The new works are particularly interesting because they represent Beardsley`s final say on the topics addressed and the themes themselves are central: aesthetic experience, definition of art, value judgments, reasons in art criticism, intentions and interpretations of artists, art and culture. The second part of the definition includes objects that are certainly works of art, but were created mechanically, almost as an assembly line or simply as another instance of their kind.
Some beautiful vases can fall in the first class and many medieval icons in the second. To ensure that the extension of the definition coincides with that of the definiendum, Beardsley argues, the second disjunction of the definition is necessary. As mentioned above, Beardsley “conscientiously avoided” (p. 59) the term “work of art” as much as possible in aesthetics. Later, however, he proposed a definition, and somewhat surprisingly a neo-romantic and intentionalist definition. A work of art, he says, is “either an arrangement of conditions designed to permit an experience with a distinct aesthetic character, or (by the way) an arrangement that belongs to a class or type of arrangement generally designed to have that ability” (The Aesthetic Point of View, p. 299). The first disjunction is the most important; He asserts that something is a work, if it is an artifact, “an arrangement of conditions” intended by its creator to provide an experience of a significant aesthetic character.