TY - JOUR
T1 - Review of Robert Stecker’s “Intersections of Value: Art, Nature, and The Everyday""
AU - Tenen, Levi
AU - Tenen, Levi
N1 - As the title suggests, Robert Stecker explores the ways in which various values-aesthetic, artistic, moral, cognitive, and instrumental-intersect and interact with one another in a variety of different kinds of objects. The book is split into three main sections. In the first, Stecker distinguishes aesthetic and artistic values, providing an account of each.
PY - 2020/2/4
Y1 - 2020/2/4
N2 - As the title suggests, Robert Stecker explores the ways in which various values—aesthetic, artistic, moral, cognitive, and instrumental—intersect and interact with one another in a variety of different kinds of objects. The book is split into three main sections. In the first, Stecker distinguishes aesthetic and artistic values, providing an account of each. In the second, he explores how aesthetic and artistic values, as well as moral and cognitive values, interact in art. He pays special attention to cases of “inversion,” where a normally good‐making feature turns out to be bad‐making in a particular work, and he argues against immoralism, or the view that ethical defects in artworks can be aesthetic merits. Stecker also argues for a moderate position on the cognitive value of literature, holding that literature has cognitive value insofar as it provides us “new conceptions and hypotheses” that we “test in the actual world” (p. 81). In the third section of the book, Stecker explores values in nature and everyday objects. He offers a pluralistic account of the ways one can appropriately aesthetically appreciate nature, and he explores implications of this view. Regarding functional objects, he argues that the aesthetic features contributing to an object's functional beauty need not enhance that object's primary function and instead may just enhance certain secondary functions. Toward the end of the book, Stecker considers how the aesthetic appreciation of art differs from the aesthetic appreciation of functional objects.
AB - As the title suggests, Robert Stecker explores the ways in which various values—aesthetic, artistic, moral, cognitive, and instrumental—intersect and interact with one another in a variety of different kinds of objects. The book is split into three main sections. In the first, Stecker distinguishes aesthetic and artistic values, providing an account of each. In the second, he explores how aesthetic and artistic values, as well as moral and cognitive values, interact in art. He pays special attention to cases of “inversion,” where a normally good‐making feature turns out to be bad‐making in a particular work, and he argues against immoralism, or the view that ethical defects in artworks can be aesthetic merits. Stecker also argues for a moderate position on the cognitive value of literature, holding that literature has cognitive value insofar as it provides us “new conceptions and hypotheses” that we “test in the actual world” (p. 81). In the third section of the book, Stecker explores values in nature and everyday objects. He offers a pluralistic account of the ways one can appropriately aesthetically appreciate nature, and he explores implications of this view. Regarding functional objects, he argues that the aesthetic features contributing to an object's functional beauty need not enhance that object's primary function and instead may just enhance certain secondary functions. Toward the end of the book, Stecker considers how the aesthetic appreciation of art differs from the aesthetic appreciation of functional objects.
KW - Aesthetic
KW - Artistic
KW - Moral
KW - Cognitive
KW - Instrumental
UR - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jaac.12694
U2 - 10.1111/jaac.12694
DO - 10.1111/jaac.12694
M3 - Article
VL - 78
JO - The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
JF - The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
ER -