Mojca Kuplen connects 18th-century German aesthetics to contemporary theories of self-knowledge in order to highlight the unique cognitive value of art. She does this through revisiting Kant’s account of aesthetic ideas, and demonstrating how works of art can increase our understanding of abstract concepts whilst promoting self-knowledge.
Addressing some of the most fundamental questions in contemporary aesthetics and philosophy of art, this study covers the value and importance of art, the relationship between art and beauty, the role of knowledge in art and the criteria for artistic excellence. It offers an insight into problems related to the apprehension of meaning and the cognitive processing of abstract representations that have been of interest to contemporary cognitive science. Kant's Aesthetic Cognitivism presents these arguments in a lucid and wide-ranging engagement with the history of aesthetics and current academic debates to understand what art is and why it is valuable.
Author(s): Mojca Kuplen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 206
City: London
Cover
Contents
Abbreviations of Kant’s Works
Introduction
1 Aesthetic cognitivism in the arts
2 Kant and art as expression of aesthetic ideas
3 Artistic expression of aesthetic ideas and therapeutic self-knowledge
4 Cognitive value of representational and non-representational art
5 The aesthetic thesis of Kant’s cognitivism
6 Kant and aesthetic cognition
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
