Aesthetics and Material Beauty: Aesthetics Naturalized (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy) - Softcover

McMahon, Jennifer A. A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415874254 ISBN 13: 9780415874250

Publisher: Routledge, 2009

Synopsis

In Aesthetics and Material Beauty, Jennifer A. McMahon develops a new aesthetic theory she terms Critical Aesthetic Realism - taking Kantian aesthetics as a starting point and drawing upon contemporary theories of mind from philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. The creative process does not proceed by a set of rules. Yet the fact that its objects can be understood or appreciated by others suggests that the creative process is constrained by principles to which others have access. According to her update of Kantian aesthetics, beauty is grounded in indeterminate yet systematic principles of perception and cognition. However, Kant’s aesthetic theory rested on a notion of indeterminacy whose consequences for understanding the nature of art were implausible.

McMahon conceptualizes "indeterminacy" in terms of contemporary philosophical, psychological, and computational theories of mind. In doing so, she develops an aesthetic theory that reconciles the apparent dichotomies which stem from the tension between the determinacy of communication and the indeterminacy of creativity. Dichotomies such as universality and subjectivity, objectivity and autonomy, cognitivism and non-cognitivism, and truth and beauty are revealed as complementary features of an aesthetic judgment.

About this title

About the Author

Jennifer A. McMahon is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415874254
• ISBN 13: 9780415874250
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248