A Return to Aesthetics
Autonomy, Indifference, and Postmodernism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4159471 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Julia Jansen (0000-0003-1353-4282, University College Cork, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 438-440 |
| Publication date | 2006-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| 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/ayl029 |
| OpenAlex | W1968468107 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
LOESBERG'S title might suggest a backwards turn. On the contrary, however, this is a forward-looking and vital contribution to aesthetics. In a convincing account, which masterfully links careful historical analysis with contemporary debate, Loesberg offers what is badly needed: a way out and beyond the ideological impasse between the alleged foundationalism of aesthetics and the supposed anti-aesthetics of postmodernism. Most remarkably, Loesberg manages to do this without renouncing his belief in the Enlightenment concepts of aesthetic value and autonomy and without giving up his endorsement of postmodern social and political critique. Above all, he reminds us that ‘the value of aesthetics... is that it offers ways of apprehending and interpreting things in the world’ (p. 74). The book has four chapters. In the first two, Loesberg revisits the Kantian origins of the aesthetic concepts of autonomy, indifference, and sensuous embodiment, and demonstrates their unchanged use for evaluating art. However, Loesberg is adamant that the significance of aesthetics goes far beyond the scope of art. He wants to re-establish aesthetics' critical function for critique and resistance, which he sees as being opened up by the activity of aesthetic apprehension. In his view, these first two chapters stand by themselves as, in effect, a return to aesthetics, a return to these classic concepts to see them as far more challenging and charges with possibilitites than the usual definitions of them make them seem. The chapters attempt to explicate them as worth employing in order to evaluate art on its own terms rather than as disguised ideology. (p. 8
Aesthetics · Apprehension · Autonomy · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Everyday Aesthetics · Ideology · Politics · Postmodernism · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,27 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2022 (8) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |