Social Appearances
A Philosophy of Display and Prestige
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4159200 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert Buch (0000-0001-6809-2800, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 138-141 |
| Publication date | 2023-03-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Aesthetics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0904 • E-ISSN: 1468-2842 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/aesthj/ayab057 |
| OpenAlex | W4234846789 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
The field of aesthetics has long left behind the boundaries that once delimited its territory. Its scope has widened, and its spectrum has become remarkably diverse, both in terms of theoretical approaches and subject areas. Work in aesthetics takes inspiration from different disciplines and sciences, from phenomenology to cognitive science to evolutionary biology, and engages with a vast array of phenomena: from various genres (and subgenres); different media and art forms, both high and low; historical periods and cultures to individual artists or specific works. Aesthetics thus appears to have become quite catholic—catholic in the sense of all-encompassing, universal—and it seems unlikely that there is much uncharted territory left. And yet there is. The principal contribution of Barbara Carnevali’s study is to draw attention to an area of aesthetics that is at once all-too-familiar and, perhaps for that very reason, still underappreciated and underexplored; although the lack of appreciation and interest is also due, as Carnevali argues, to long-standing resistance. She calls the field she seeks to delineate ‘social aesthetics’, and develops a philosophy of social appearances to account for it. At first glance, it seems to go without saying that everyday life has an aesthetic dimension and that social reality, more broadly, is informed by this dimension. However, as much as we might intuitively agree with such a claim—not least in view of recent scholarship on the aesthetics of the everyday—the dimension Carnevali’s book fleshes out is far more consequential and ubiquitous, more ‘catholic’, than we might initially assume
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Everyday Aesthetics · Everyday life · Field (mathematics · Object (grammar · Phenomenology (philosophy · Prestige · Scholarship · Sociology · Subject (documents · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Visual Culture and Art Theory
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |