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Aesthetics and the Theory of Criticism

Selected Essays of Arnold Isenberg

Edited by William Callaghan, Leigh Cauman, Carl G. Hempel, Sidney Morgenbesser, Mary Mothersill, Ernest Nagel, and Theodore Norman
"These sixteen essays by Arnold Isenberg "bring wide-ranging connoiseurship, intricate analysis, and epigrammatic literacy to bear on a number of glib and fuzzy oppositions between form and content, description and interpretation, perception and meaning, technique and substance, and belief and expression, articulating provocative strategies for illuminating the canon of the arts and the organ of criticism. . . . Any thoughtful lover of the arts could read this book with profit and inspiration."—Choice

362 pages | 1 halftone | 6.00 x 9.00 | © 1973

Art: Art Criticism

Philosophy: Aesthetics

Table of Contents

Arnold Isenberg: Some Recollections, by William Callaghan
Introduction by Mary Mothersill
Part I. Aesthetics
1. Music and Ideas
2. Formalism
3. Perception, Meaning, and the Subject Matter of Art
4. The Technical Factor in Art
5. The Aesthetic Function of Language
6. The Problem of Belief
7. On Defining Metaphor
Part II. Criticism
8. Cordelia Absent
9. A Poem by Frost and Some Principles of Criticism
10. Critical Communication
11. ’Pretentious’ as an Aesthetic Predicate
12. Superlatives
13. Some Problems of Interpretation
Part III. Ethics and Moral Psychology
14. Natural Pride and Natural Shame
15. Deontology and the Ethics of Lying
16. Ethical and Aesthetic Criticism
Appendix A: Analytical Philosophy and the Study of Art
Appendix B: Notebooks and Letters
Index

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