Monroe Beardsley

Monroe Curtis Beardsley ( born December 10, 1915 in Connecticut; † 18 September 1985 in Philadelphia ) was an American philosopher. His principal work, published in 1958 Aesthetics. Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism is one of the most important American contributions to philosophical aesthetics in the 20th century. With him he brought the aesthetics as a philosophical discipline in analytic philosophy. Beardsley is also considered an important theorist of literary theory of the " New Criticism ".

After studying at Yale University Beardsley taught from 1947 to 1969 Philosophy and Aesthetics at Mount Holyoke College and at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. From 1969 to 1985 he taught at Temple University.

In addition to his major philosophical work ( Aesthetics. problem in the Philosophy of Criticism ), and numerous articles in which he deals mainly with his critics, Beardsley has among other things a history of philosophical aesthetics ( Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present. A Short History ), a treatise on problems of art criticism ( the Possibility of Criticism ), written numerous papers on questions of philosophical thought and an important treatise on the theory of action (Practical Logic).

Art Theory

Beardsley's main plant Aesthetics. Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism is mainly concerned with the question of the characteristic feature of a work of art and the nature of art. Beardsley determined works of art first as a perceptible products of human activity. The most important criterion for a work of art is its relationship between the whole and its parts. It comes for Beardsley on three aspects of: the organic unity of the artwork, which is characterized by completeness and consistency, the complexity of its parts, and the intensity of the interaction of these parts with the whole formed by them. Beardsley compares art with linguistic metaphors. Like these, they have a meaning, but are neither true nor false. However, each work of art has a relationship to reality and presents a more or less comprehensive picture of the world.

Aesthetic Experience

According to Beardsley, because of the danger of the naturalistic fallacy not be justified by empirical judgments aesthetic value judgments. Aesthetic value judgments relating to aesthetic experiences, which in turn triggered by the aesthetic properties of a work of art. The higher the aesthetic value of a work of art, the better ( enjoyable and uplifting ) is also our aesthetic experience of it.

Reception

Beardsley was the most important American esthetician by John Dewey and Susanne Langer. His work was and is of great influence on the American philosophical aesthetics. Since the 1990s, Beardsley's work experiences in analytic philosophy again increased attention.

Works

• Practical logic, New York, Prentice-Hall 1950
• Aesthetics. Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism, New York 1958.
• Philosophical Thinking. An Introduction ( with EL Beardsley ), Englewood Cliffs 1963
• Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present. A Short History, New York 1966
• The Possibility of Criticism, Detroit 1970
• The Aesthetic Point of View. Selected Essays, ed. M. J. Wreen / D. M. Callen, Ithaca, London 1982.