{"title":"The Complex Art of Murder","authors":"R. McGregor","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.3.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.3.04","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article demonstrates the literary value of hardboiled detective fiction. I consider two different arguments for literary value, one based on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of art and the other on the tradition of form-content inseparability in literary aesthetics and literary criticism. The former is reliant on the genre’s combination of formal complexity with substantive superficiality and the latter on the combination of formal complexity with substantive complexity. I employ Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1939) and Nelson DeMille’s Plum Island (1997) as examples, focusing on the question of whether they have thematic content. I demonstrate that the novels instantiate substantive themes—about corruption, alienation, and moral amnesia—in consequence of which the argument for form-content inseparability is more compelling. I conclude by suggesting that form-content inseparability underpins both the literary value of hardboiled detective fiction and the genre’s capacity for aesthetic education.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":"56 1","pages":"63 - 80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42512752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Pedagogical Primacy of Language in Mental Imagery: Pictorialism vs. Descriptionalism","authors":"E. Luft","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.3.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.3.01","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper argues for the primacy of language over vision as a means of communication. Words convey information more clearly, accurately, reliably, and profoundly than images do. Images by themselves give only impressions; they do not denote, unless accompanied by some sort or level of description. Also, any visual image, whether physical or mental, unless it is eidetic, must involve some degree of interpretation, interpolation, or description for it to be capable of conveying information, having meaning, or even being intelligible. Pictorialism is the theory that mental imagery is visual, while descriptionalism holds that mental imagery is nonvisual. As an epistemology, pictorialism supports representationalism as a philosophy of art. The poverty and limitations of representational theories of art militate against pictorialism. Descriptionalism as an epistemology supports several versions of symbolist theories of art. The richness and versatility of symbolic interpretations of art works support descriptionalism. Pictorialism fails the test of consistency unless eidetic imagery exists. Any pictorialism that claims support from noneidetic imagery or invokes the photographic fallacy is in fact a crypto- or quasi-descriptionalism. Since the photographic fallacy denies eidetic imagery, it is invalid and misbegotten as a defense of pictorialism. The interplay between the richness of visual images and the precision of verbal descriptions is a key element in developing a comprehensive pedagogy of aesthetics.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":"56 1","pages":"1 - 24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44871719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What Do We Look At When We Look at Art? The Bible, Visual Art, and the Redemption of Existence","authors":"J. Hoult, A. Kulak","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.3.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.3.02","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This study is dedicated to examining how the principles and values that mark the difference between the ancient Greco-Roman and biblical traditions help us to think about what (and who) we look at when we look at art. We begin with the Bible’s self-reflexive communication to its readers regarding the status of its own images and then consider works by Michelangelo, Tejo Remy, and Charles White—while also calling on Shakespeare, Hegel, and Kierkegaard—to show that art in the biblical tradition presupposes and expresses love as the transformation of life’s finite immediacies, the transformation of its finite givens, into the gift. We argue, overall, that the art of the biblical tradition demands that viewers pose the question of whether, where, and how deeply they find in those works—and in themselves—the principle of love as the redemption of finitude, the redemption of existence.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":"56 1","pages":"25 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48007131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Deep Interdisciplinarity: Team-Teaching and Critical Thinking about Art","authors":"Mavis Biss, K. Boeye","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.3.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.3.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay discusses an interdisciplinary art history/philosophy course cotaught by a professor from each discipline. Fundamental questions about how we experience, understand, and communicate about art can be answered more effectively through such interdisciplinary collaboration than through each discipline alone. Students in the course tended to think of art either in purely subjective terms, in which art was simply an expression of personal taste, or entirely essentialist ones, in which the artness of a work resided completely within the object. Readings and class discussions helped students articulate these extreme viewpoints and challenge them. As a result, many of the students developed more sophisticated understandings of art and the experiences of art that avoided the pitfalls of subjectivism and essentialism. Insights from selected student papers are presented to demonstrate the kinds of thinking fostered by the course. In sum, the essay argues for the importance and success of interdisciplinary approaches to teaching art, art history, and the philosophy of art.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":"56 1","pages":"106 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45508872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rechoreographing Homonymous Partners: Rancière’s Dance Education from Loïe Fuller","authors":"Joshua M. Hall","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.3.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.3.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Contemporary philosopher Jacques Rancière has been criticized for a conception of “politics” that is insensitive to the diminished agency of the corporeally oppressed. In a recent article, Dana Mills locates a solution to this alleged problem in the most recent Rancière book translated into English, Aisthesis, in its chapter on Mallarmé’s writings on modern dancer Loïe Fuller. My first section argues that Mills’s reading exacerbates an “homonymy” (Rancière’s term) in Rancière’s use of the word “inscription,” which means for him either a vicious literal carving on living bodies or else a virtuous figurative carving on nonliving bodies. The former, I call “bodily carving,” while the latter is the “corporeal writing” that I take Mallarmé to affirm in Fuller. My second section observes that Rancière himself misses a homonymy in Mallarmé on Fuller, namely, “dance,” meaning either “ballet” or dance in general (including Fuller’s). My third section concludes that Rancière’s chapter on Fuller includes another “dance” homonymy, meaning either “concert dance” or what I term a new “art of meta-movement” in Fuller. The latter art, I conclude, is equivalent to Mallarmé’s “corporeal writing” and can be understood as a new form of dance education, in pursuit of a worker-dancer utopia.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":"56 1","pages":"44 - 62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45930939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Novel Reading as Aesthetic: The Nesting of Aesthetic Experiences and Reproduction of Aesthetic Perception","authors":"Zhaoming Li","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.3.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.3.06","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article discusses the nesting of the individual aesthetic experience and the reproduction process of aesthetic perception when an individual reads a novel. The essence of the “boundary” of the novelistic space is discussed first. This aesthetic process examines the relationship with the boundary of novelistic space. Next, I discuss two cognitive and dynamic outcomes that arise from the stimulation of “intervention” during the nesting of aesthetic experiences inside and outside the boundary. Finally, I argue that the reproduction process of aesthetic perception usually comes in the form of the “co-construction of opposites” due to the nesting of aesthetic experiences. This structure will make each individual’s aesthetic experience distinctive and unique. In this research, a new viewpoint for reference will also be provided to research the arts’ aesthetic process in other forms.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":"56 1","pages":"107 - 118"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46368947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Moral Education through Literary Aesthetic Experience: A Moral Study of the Harry Potter Series","authors":"N. Mishra, Rupkatha Ghosh","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.2.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.2.06","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper attempts to unravel how a reader embraces the idea of moral education while enjoying the aesthetic pleasure of the Harry Potter series. It develops a view on moral education through literary experience, which is intrinsically intertwined with aesthetic experience. The amalgamation of reality and fantasy in the Harry Potter novels creates an authenticity that can easily capture the moral attention of a reader by which his/her self-realized valuable emotional intelligence takes place. The well-knit plot encourages reader’s self-efficacy (“I” reactive attitude) that triggers the sui-generis, first-personal sense of morality and gradually develops the third-personal “we” attitude. Finally, based on an empirical study, the article explains how the Harry Potter series is productive in building the reader’s positive moral psychology through different applications like moral agency, moral point of view, and moral judgment.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":"56 1","pages":"101 - 119"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47181176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Art Education and the Investment of Attention","authors":"D. Fenner","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.2.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.2.02","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper is written for students of art and for teachers who are working to introduce students to art. It offers a practical answer to a practical question: how much time and attention should be directed toward a work of art that does not seem to be rewarding such an investment before deciding to give up and/or move on to an investment of time and attention in a different work of art? Reductionist tests such as “After fifteen minutes in a cinema where reward seems unlikely, walk out” are clearly unsatisfactory as there are many counterexamples. The answer offered by this paper focuses on a twelve-point calculus of contextual factors: object-focused factors (artform categorization of the artwork, genre categorization of the artwork, genetics, instantiation/performance), collective subject-focused factors (recommendations, strength of venue, provenance, community consensus), and particular subject-focused factors (psychic preparation, engagement, information, interpretation).","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":"56 1","pages":"23 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47213072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Aesthetics in the Eugenics Movement: A Critical Examination","authors":"Peter J. Woods","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.2.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.2.04","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Although multiple scholars have pushed music education to embrace the aesthetic as a curricular and pedagogical touchstone, research surrounding this aesthetic turn has largely framed aesthetics as a sensory experience rather than a social technology (one that can both liberate and oppress). In response, I address the following question: how do uncritical aesthetic philosophies and the experiences they engender act as a means of oppression within music education? By way of example, I approach this question through a text analysis of writings on aesthetics from The Eugenics Review, a long-running publication that disseminated eugenics news and research. In doing so, I construct a eugenical theory of aesthetics that illuminates how eugenicists used aesthetics to enact what Foucault defines as pastoral power and assert control of bodies and populations through education. I then frame the writings of Carl Seashore (a pioneering music education researcher and avowed eugenicist) within this eugenical theory of aesthetics, revealing the ways that Seashore used aesthetic theory to forward eugenical arguments. I conclude with implications for contemporary educators and researchers, sounding a call for a deep and critical examination of all aesthetic formations within music education.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":"56 1","pages":"56 - 77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45093292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nietzsche on Aesthetic Education: A Fictional Narrative","authors":"Steven A. Stolz","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.2.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.2.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Drawing from Nietzsche, I explore the topic of aesthetic education. Even though Nietzsche never formally uses the term “aesthetic education” in his works, this is a novel initiative of my own doing based on what I think he would have to say on the topic. Just as Nietzsche adopted his own experimental approach or style, in a sense, my intention is to experiment with a narrative, which takes the form of a fictional dialogue between Nietzsche and a student. To make sense of what Nietzsche has to say on the topic, I examine certain aspects of his thought as they relate to art, aesthetics, creative activity, creativity, the important role of Bildung (self-cultivation), and other associated areas of interest. This essay critically discusses and analyzes the narrative in relation to Nietzsche’s appropriation of the mythical figure of Dionysus, as well as the tragic wisdom it is supposed to incarnate. As such, I argue that Dionysian wisdom is an exposition of the paradoxical characteristics of the creative life that has significant ramifications for aesthetic education.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":"56 1","pages":"37 - 55"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41869755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}