Monroe Curtis Beardsley

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

After studying at Yale University , Beardsley taught philosophy and aesthetics at Mount Holyoke College and Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania from 1947 to 1969 . From 1969 to 1985 he taught at Temple University . In 1976 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

In addition to his main philosophical work and numerous essays, in which he primarily deals 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 ), numerous papers on questions of philosophical thought and an important treatise on the theory of action ( Practical Logic ).

Art theory

Beardsley's major work Aesthetics. Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism deals primarily with the question of the characteristic features of a work of art and the essence of art. Beardsley initially defines works of art as the perceivable product of human activity. The most important criterion for a work of art is its relationship between the whole and its parts. For Beardsley, three aspects are important: the organic unity of the work of art, which is characterized by completeness and coherence, the complexity of its parts and the intensity of the interaction of these parts with the whole they form. Beardsley compares works of art with linguistic metaphors. Like these, they have meaning but are neither true nor false. Nevertheless, every work of art has a relationship to reality and presents a more or less comprehensive view of the world.

Aesthetic experience

According to Beardsley, because of the danger of a naturalistic fallacy, aesthetic value judgments cannot be justified by empirical judgments. Aesthetic value judgments relate to aesthetic experiences, which in turn are triggered by the aesthetic properties of a work of art. The higher the aesthetic value of a work of art, the better (more pleasant, more edifying) our aesthetic experience of it is.

reception

Beardsley is considered the most important American aesthet after John Dewey and Susanne Langer . His work was and is of great influence on American philosophical aesthetics. Since the 1990s, Beardsley's work has again received increased attention in analytical philosophy.

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. by MJ Wreen / DM Callen, Ithaca, London 1982.

literature

• Christel Fricke: Monroe C. Beardsley . In: Monika Betzler, Mara-Daria Cojocaru , Julian Nida-Rümelin (eds.): Aesthetics and philosophy of art. From antiquity to the present in individual representations (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 375). 2nd, updated and supplemented edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-520-37502-5 , pp. 96-104.
• Karlheinz Lüdeking : Analytical Philosophy of Art. An introduction. Munich, UTB 1998, pp. 160-166

Web links

• Michael Wreen:  Beardsley's Aesthetics. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .