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.

About the Author
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.

Reviews
All topics addressed in the collection are dealt with with unmitigated rigour, and every scholar writing on them should take good note of what Budd has to say. * Paloma Atencia-Linares, Mind *
This important collection by the prominent aesthetician Malcolm Budd brings together fourteen papers on the nature of aesthetics judgement and value, expression and movement in music, and depiction. In addition, there is a masterly analysis of and exposition of Kant's account of the pure judgement of taste and another of Wittgenstein's view of aesthetics ... Related chapters complement each other nicely without excessive overlap ... Philosophers of art will admire the unfussy care and insight with which Budd probes these intriguing topics, many of which lie at the 'abstract heart of aesthetics', as he rightly observes. I strongly recommend his book. * Stephen Davies, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199596263
Author Malcolm Budd
Format Paperback
Page Count 290
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 426g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 157mm * 16mm