AESTHETIC REASON by Alan Singer ( 9780271024585 ) - Books & Audio Books at Pickabook.co.uk

Item Details

Title:

AESTHETIC REASON
ARTWORKS AND THE DELIBERATIVE ETHOS

By:

Alan Singer

Format:

Paperback

List price:

£37.95

Our price:

£36.81

Discount:

3% off

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£1.14

ISBN 10:

0271024585

ISBN 13:

9780271024585

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Publisher:

PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

11 January, 2005

Series:

Literature and Philosophy

Pages:

312

Synopsis:

In recent years the category of the aesthetic has been judged inadequate to the tasks of literary criticism. It has been attacked for promoting class-based ideologies of distinction, for cultivating political apathy, and for indulging irrational sensuous decadence. Aesthetic Reason reexamines the history of aesthetic theorizing that has led to this critical alienation from works of art and proposes an alternative view. The book is a defense of the relevance and usefulness of the aesthetic as a cognitive resource of human experience. It challenges the contemporary critical tendency to treat aesthetic value as separate from the realms of human agency and sociopolitical change. The argument unfolds through a review of the cognitivist traditions in post-Enlightenment aesthetic theory and through Singer's own articulation of a model of ethical subjectivity that is derived from the Greek concept of akrasia, which recognizes the intrinsic fallibility of human action. His focus on akratic subjectivity is aimed at revealing how the artwork has the potential to enhance human development by cultivating habits of self-transformation.Along these lines, he shows that the aesthetic has affinities with the logic of reversal/recognition in Greek tragedy and with theories of subject formation based on intersubjective recognition. The marking of these affinities sets up a discussion of how the aesthetic can serve protocols of rational choice-making. Within this perspective, aesthetic practice is revealed to be a meaningful social enterprise rather than an effete refuge from the conflicts of social existence.

Illustrations:

5 Halftones, black and white

Publication:

Imprint:

Pennsylvania State University Press

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

AESTHETIC REASON (HB)

ARTHUR SINGER, THE WILDLIFE ART OF AN AMERICAN MASTER (HB)

ATTENDING TO THE LITERARY

ATTENDING TO THE LITERARY (HB)