Monroe Beardsley's "Aesthetics" was published the year the author was a junior philosophy major at the University of California, Berkeley, and by the end of that academic year, the author had completed semester courses in the history of ancient as well as modern philosophy, logic, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. The requirements remaining…

Drama/theater education lives in the tension of being a discipline rooted in the fine arts and humanities that has been transplanted into the social science of education. This paper suggests that a more aesthetic and philosophical reflection on what drama/theater does and can do in educational settings frees us from the scientized and instrumental…

The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is known for his interest in the problem of "biopower," arguing that political political and philosophical questions of the moment concern the connections between life and power. He is diametrically opposed to Alain Badiou, a leading French intellectual, for whom the central question concerns not so much…

In this article I attempt to redefine the role of a music teacher as being more than a director, the more traditional term ascribed to this position. I do this by using descriptions of the role of "writer" and "producer" of student lives borrowed from music education philosophy, screenwriting, and professional music producers. This vision is…

Beardsley's "Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism" continues to provide a valuable resource for those of one who takes questions about value and evaluation to be central to the philosophical enterprise, even if one chooses to focus on the philosophy of art more or less independently of the aesthetic. Nevertheless, Beardsley's…

Empirical psycho-aesthetics is approached in this two-part article from two directions. Part I, which appeared in the Winter 2012 issue of "JAE," addressed definitional and organizational issues, including the field's origins, its relation to "sister" disciplines (experimental philosophy, cognitive neuroscience of art, and neuroaesthetics), and…

The year 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of John Dewey's birth and also the 75th anniversary of the publication of his aesthetic masterpiece "Art as Experience"--a book that has been extremely influential within the field of aesthetics, not only in philosophical aesthetics and aesthetic education but also in the arts themselves. In this essay,…

Often when the author is teaching philosophy of education, his students begin the process of inquiry by prefacing their questions with something along the lines of "I'm just curious, but ...." Why do teachers and students feel compelled to express their curiosity as "just" curiosity? Perhaps there is a slight embarrassment in proclaiming their…

Empirical psycho-aesthetics--an interdisciplinary field with a long tradition--is approached in this two-part article from two directions, in each case with several objectives. Part I, in this issue of "JAE", is devoted to the first direction, which is mainly definitional and organizational: the objectives are to present an outline of the field's…

Ludwig Wittgenstein gave priority to aesthetics over other disciplines due to its invaluable capacities for revealing certain aspects of the nature of human understanding and for guiding our actions toward an ethical life. Although Wittgenstein did not focus on these issues in a systematic way, these worries were present in his philosophy during…

This is a critical response to the papers by Shusterman, Sartwell, and Stroud. I claim that Shusterman has missed the inter-human moral aesthetics of Confucianism, that Sartwell has misunderstood Taoism's idea of "receptivity," confusing it with anarchist "passivity," and Stroud has not overcome the "Gita's" injunction to sacrifice the self,…

In this article is presented the first translation into English of Lev Vygotsky's text entitled "Contemporary Psychology and Art: Toward a Debate." This text was published in the influential monthly journal Sovietskoe Iskusstvo (Soviet Art) in 1927-1928. Therefore, the translated text presents some of the Vygotsky's seminal thought on aesthetics…

Is there an aesthetics of philosophy? Does philosophical discourse have a foundation in sense and sensibility? If the answer to these questions is affirmative and there is in some sense a philosophical aesthetics, what conclusions might be drawn for philosophical education? Put another way: Does philosophy require the power of the imagination…

Maintains that current research, literature, and discussion on the need for arts in education reveal a lack of sound philosophical foundations. Describes the nature of the problem and offers a sounder basis for building a stronger case for including the arts in education. (JDH)

According to Arthur Danto, the crisis of modern art is not the abandonment of representation, nor an attempt at intentional "uglification," but a struggle to escape the aesthetic objectification of artworks. This attempt at escape has led modern artists to hold an indifferent attitude toward beauty, an attitude that has resulted in the readymade:…