This paper contends that art can critique a philosophical claim about the world. Artist imagination can envision how an idea can live and whether the idea is attractive to our living. Cormac McCarthy's novel, "Blood Meridian," narratively illustrates a certain idea of divine determinism and shows that, in terms of war and human cruelty, the idea…

Technological media catapults our perception into what Marshall McLuhan called "new transforming vision and awareness." As our lives become more and more immersed in such technologies as television, film, and interactive computers, we find ourselves inundated with a heightened sense of mindfulness--an aesthetic experience made possible through…

In this article, the author discusses Richard Shusterman's defense of popular culture and intends to show that the entertainment industry has a dark side which Shusterman tends to ignore. Richard Shusterman is a pragmatist aesthetician who promotes art as an integral part of the ever-changing stream of life, believing that popular culture provides…

Since the early nineties, David Novitz and the author have been engaged in an ongoing debate about mass art. The latest installment in that exchange is Novitz's article "The Difficulty with Difficulty" which represents a sustained attack on the conception of mass art advanced in the author's book "A Philosophy of Mass Art." In this article, the…

Article demonstrates that metaphors thrive in film, despite the denials that have been made by both literary critics and some film directors. (Author/CB)

Can there be an aesthetic difference between an original painting and its forgery if they are visually indistinguishable? Answers of different philosophers are critically examined with the conclusion that none of them is satisfactory. Although their "solutions" stem from different views of the nature of art, they have one thing in common: They all…

Richard Shusterman's idea in his latest book, "Performing Live"--to make available a set of essays that sum up and tie together some of his central concerns during the last decade--is excellent and welcome. Readers of the book get a complex blend of essays from one of the most interesting and interdisciplinary philosophers writing in the United…

The author contends that by reclaiming their own valuable connection to reflective artistic experience and reception, aesthetic theory and art education can contribute to a reconceptualization of autonomy and critique and, perhaps more importantly, to a reorientation of educational practice. Adorno's aesthetics is exceptionally relevant to this…

Recent work examining and expanding traditional accounts of a virtue has been used as the foundation for a virtue-based approach to epistemology. A similar approach to aesthetics yields some striking features, which coincide with contemporary philosophical concerns about the nature and definition of art. Those writing on virtue-based epistemology…

Describes how the Aristotelian model of causality can be used to help college students systematically analyze the components, point of view, organization, and purpose of a literary theory. The literary theories of Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Sidney, Pope, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley are analyzed, using this model. (AM)