Aesthetic Essays

The book brings together a selection of Malcolm Budd's essays in aesthetics. A number of the essays are aimed at the abstract heart of aesthetics, attempting to solve a cluster of the most important issues in aesthetics which are not specific to particular art forms. These include the nature and proper scope of the aesthetic, the intersubjective validity of aesthetic judgements, the correct understanding of aesthetic judgements expressed through metaphors, aesthetic realism versus anti-realism, the character of aesthetic pleasure and aesthetic value, the aim of art and the artistic expression of emotion. Other essays are focussed on central issues in the aesthetics of particular art forms: two engage with the most fundamental issue in the aesthetics of music, the question of the correct conception of the phenomenology of the experience of listening to music with understanding; and two consider the nature of pictorial representation, one examining certain well-known views, the other articulating an alternative conception of seeing a picture as a depiction of a certain state of affairs. The final essay in the volume is a comprehensive reconstruction and critical examination of Wittgenstein's aesthetics, both early and late.

Introduction. 1. Aesthetic Judgements, Aesthetic Principles and Aesthetic Properties. 2. Aesthetic Essence. 3. The Acquaintance Principle. 4. The Intersubjective Validity of Aesthetic Judgements. 5. The Pure Judgement of Taste as an Aesthetic Reflective Judgement. 6. Understanding Music. 7. The Characterization of Aesthetic Qualities by Essential Metaphors and Quasi-Metaphors. 8. Musical Movement and Aesthetic Metaphors. 9. Aesthetic Realism and Emotional Qualities of Music. 10. On Looking at a Picture. 11. The Look of a Picture. 12. Wollheim on Correspondence, Projective Properties and Expressive Perception. 13. Wittgenstein on Aesthetics. Index.

Malcolm Budd taught philosophy at University College London for more than thirty years before taking early retirement from the Grote chair to concentrate on his writing. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1995 and became President of the British Society of Aesthetics in 2004.