tailieunhanh - Aesthetics—What?Why? andWherefore?

As discussed earlier, the idea that human experience involves elements beyond our intentional control has been an overshadowed perspective in philosophy, psychology, and Western culture. Of the diverse perspectives within this tradition, Dewey’s aesthetic philosophy, as expressed in “Art as Experience,” is useful for developing the idea that worthwhile experi- ences require more than just control and rationality. For Dewey, there must be receptive undergoing in addition to active doing and thinking. . | KENDALL WALTON Aesthetics What Why and Wherefore It is a very great honor to address my friends and colleagues as president of the American Society for Aesthetics an organization that plays a unique role in a field that is at once a major traditional branch of philosophy and also central to disciplines often regarded as remote from philosophy as well as depending crucially on their contributions. I will follow the lead of one of my distinguished predecessors in this office Peter Kivy who used the occasion of his own presidential address twelve years ago to step back and reflect on the state of the discipline and the nature of i. what is aesthetics Aesthetics is a strange field in some ways a confused one. Yet among the issues it is charged with treating are some of the most fascinating and profound ones that philosophy has to offer. I take aesthetics to be largely a branch of philosophy although with absolutely crucial links to other disciplines. Philosophy as I understand it is not the private preserve of professional philosophers. Art historians music theorists and literary scholars frequently engage in philosophy as do psychologists cognitive scientists and linguists. And many informal reflections outside of academic contexts are philosophical in character. As an institutionally recognized branch of philosophy aesthetics is very young. At a mere two-and-a-half centuries in a family whose elders are more like twenty-five it does not qualify for a midlife identity crisis. Its confusion is that of an adolescent trying to find itself wondering what to do when it grows up and indeed whether there is a place for it in the adult world. Aesthetics is not the baby of the clan business ethics and the philosophy of quantum physics are younger. But these are clearly subcategories of traditional well-established areas of philosophy ethics and philosophy of science and they inherit much of their identity and sense of purpose from their parents. Aesthetics is not