The Aesthetics of the Scottish Enlightenment, and Beyond

FAIN: FS-50103-07

Northwestern University (Evanston, IL 60208-0001)
Rachel E. Zuckert (Project Director: March 2006 to February 2009)

A three-week summer seminar for fifteen college and university teachers on the aesthetic ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment and their influence on near-contemporary German philosophers, to be held at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

This three week seminar for college teachers, led by Professors Paul Guyer of the University of Pennsylvania and Rachel Zuckert of Rice University, is designed to afford participants an opportunity to study central works in philosophical aesthetics by figures of the Socttish Enlightenment, and their (near) contemporary reception in German enlightenment aesthetics. The seminar sessions will investigate not only philosophical theories concerning the nature of genius and of taste, and the varieties of aesthetic experience, but also the way in which these considerations inform, expand, and qualify broader Enlightenment political and scientific projects. The seminar will be based at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, which will allow participants to use the archives at the National Library of Scotland, the world's foremost collection of Scottish Enlightenment works. This seminar should be of interest to applicants in philosophy, history, art history, and literary studies.

Associated Products

“Kames’ Naturalist Aesthetics, and the Case of Tragedy” (Article)
Title: “Kames’ Naturalist Aesthetics, and the Case of Tragedy”
Author: Rachel Zuckert
Abstract: I discuss Kames’ aesthetics, as presented in his essay on tragedy and Elements of Criticism. I argue that Kames presents a novel response to the problem of tragedy, which exemplifies his sophisticated version of naturalist aesthetics.
Year: 2009
Primary URL: http://www.scottishphilosophy.org/journalofscottishphilosophy.html
Primary URL Description: Journal of Scottish Philosophy
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Scottish Philosophy
Publisher: International Association for Scottish Philosophy

The Sublime (Book)
Title: The Sublime
Editor: Timothy Costelloe
Abstract: This volume offers readers a unique and comprehensive overview of theoretical perspectives on "the sublime," the singular aesthetic response elicited by phenomena that move viewers by transcending and overwhelming them. The book consists of an editor's introduction and fifteen chapters written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Part One examines philosophical approaches advanced historically to account for the phenomenon, beginning with Longinus, moving through eighteenth and nineteenth century writers in Britain, France, and Germany, and concluding with developments in contemporary continental philosophy. Part Two explores the sublime with respect to particular disciplines and areas of study, including Dutch literature, early modern America, the environment, religion, British Romanticism, the fine arts, and architecture. Each chapter is both accessible for nonspecialists and offers an original contribution to its respective field of inquiry.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item6687507/The%20Sublime/?site_locale=en_US
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9780521143677

The Associative Sublime: Gerard, Kames, Alison, and Stewart (Article)
Title: The Associative Sublime: Gerard, Kames, Alison, and Stewart
Author: Rachel Zuckert
Abstract: This article traces the debates among late eighteenth-century British philosophers concerning how to define the sublime.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item6687507/The%20Sublime/?site_locale=en_US
Format: Other
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Enlightenment Aesthetics and Beyond (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Enlightenment Aesthetics and Beyond
Author: Emily Brady
Abstract: A conference organized on Scottish and German aesthetics as a follow-up conference to the NEH seminar.
Date Range: 12/15/11-12/16/11
Location: School of Geography, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, Scotland
Primary URL: http://www.ppls.ed.ac.uk/philosophy/events/view/enlightenment-aesthetics-and-beyond
Primary URL Description: Event description and program.

“Adam Smith’s ‘Sympathetic Imagination’ and Aesthetic Appreciation of Environment”, (Article)
Title: “Adam Smith’s ‘Sympathetic Imagination’ and Aesthetic Appreciation of Environment”,
Author: Emily Brady
Abstract: This paper explores the significance of Adam Smith's ideas for defending non-cognitivist theories of aesthetic appreciation of nature. Objections to non-cognitivism argue that the exercise of emotion and imagination in aesthetic judgement potentially sentimentalizes and trivializes nature. I argue that although directed at moral judgement, Smith's views also find a place in addressing this problem. First, sympathetic imagination may afford a deeper and more sensitive type of aesthetic engagement. Second, in taking up the position of the impartial spectator, aesthetic judgements may originate in a type of self-regulated response where we stand outside ourselves to check those overly humanizing tendencies which might lead to a failure in appreciating nature as nature.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.scottishphilosophy.org/journalofscottishphilosophy.html
Primary URL Description: Journal of Scottish Philosophy
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Scottish Philosophy
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Editorial: A Dialogue concerning Aesthetics and Apolaustics (Article)
Title: Editorial: A Dialogue concerning Aesthetics and Apolaustics
Author: Timothy Costelloe
Author: Andrew Chignell
Abstract: The editors' introduction to a special issue on Scottish and German aesthetics, which presents the major tendencies of and disagreements between these two schools of thought.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.scottishphilosophy.org/journalofscottishphilosophy.html
Primary URL Description: Journal of Scottish Philosophy
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Scottish Philosophy
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Mirrors to One Another: Emotion and Value in Jane Austen and David Hume (Book)
Title: Mirrors to One Another: Emotion and Value in Jane Austen and David Hume
Author: Eva Dadlez
Abstract: A compelling exploration of the convergence of Jane Austen’s literary themes and characters with David Hume’s views on morality and human nature. Argues that the normative perspectives endorsed in Jane Austen's novels are best characterized in terms of a Humean approach, and that the merits of Hume's account of ethical, aesthetic and epistemic virtue are vividly illustrated by Austen's writing. Illustrates how Hume and Austen complement one another, each providing a lens that allows us to expand and elaborate on the ideas of the other Proposes that literature may serve as a thought experiment, articulating hypothetical cases which allow the reader to test her moral intuitions Contributes to ongoing debates on the philosophy of literature, ethics, and emotion
Year: 2009
Primary URL: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405193484.html
Primary URL Description: Wiley Blackwell listing
Publisher: Blackwell publishing
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-1-4051-934

Gerard and Kant: Influence and Opposition (Article)
Title: Gerard and Kant: Influence and Opposition
Author: Paul Guyer
Abstract: In his notes and lectures on anthropology, Kant explicitly refers to Alexander Gerard’s 1774 Essay on Genius, and his own position that genius is necessary for art but not for science is clearly a response to Gerard. Kant does not explicitly mention Gerard’s 1759 Essay on Taste, but it was probably an influence on his own conception of free play, and in any case a comparison of the two theories of aesthetic response is instructive. Gerard’s development of a version of the theory of free play without Kant’s assumptions that aesthetic judgments must be independent of concepts and yet always intersubjectively valid allows him to accommodate a variety of facts about aesthetic experience in general and our experience of the fine arts in particular more readily and more fully than Kant can, especially those concerning the affective dimension of our experience of art.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.scottishphilosophy.org/journalofscottishphilosophy.html
Primary URL Description: Journal of Scottish Philosophy
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Scottish Philosophy
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Ideal Presence: How Kames Solved the Problem of Fiction and Emotion (Article)
Title: Ideal Presence: How Kames Solved the Problem of Fiction and Emotion
Author: Eva Dadlez
Abstract: PDF plus The problem of fiction and emotion is the problem of how we can be moved by the contemplation of fictional events and the plight of fictional characters when we know that the former have not occurred and the latter do not exist. I will give a general sketch of the philosophical treatment of the issue in the present day, and then turn to the eighteenth century for a solution as effective as the best that are presently on offer. The solution is to be found in the account of ideal presence given by Henry Home, Lord Kames.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.scottishphilosophy.org/journalofscottishphilosophy.html
Primary URL Description: Journal of Scottish Philosophy, vol. 9
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Scottish Philosophy
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

THOMAS REID ON THE PERCEPTION OF AESTHETIC QUALITIES (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: THOMAS REID ON THE PERCEPTION OF AESTHETIC QUALITIES
Author: Rebecca Copenhaver
Abstract: Thomas Reid’s account of the faculty of taste uses a perceptual model to explain how normal humans apprehend aesthetic qualities. Reid’s aesthetics is most well known for being an example of an expression theory of art. On Reid’s view, material objects possess aesthetic qualities in a merely derivative sense: they possess qualities that signify – and thus express – excellences of mind. The secondary literature on Reid’s aesthetics has focused a great deal on Reid’s expression theory, in particular on whether it is inconsistent with his anti-subjectivism about aesthetic qualities. The controversy surrounding this putative inconsistency has centered around the issue of whether Reid holds that aesthetic qualities are primary or secondary qualities. I argue that Reid’s views about the ontology of aesthetic qualities are unlikely to solve the puzzles that arise from the combination of an expression theory with anti-subjectivism. They are unlikely to do so for three reasons. First, Reid devotes little attention to the primary/secondary quality distinction, and the superficiality with which he treats it indicates how poorly suited the traditional distinction is to his overall views. Second, one need not appeal to the distinction in order to resolve the tension between expression theory and anti-subjectivism. Beauty and grandeur are properties of subjects, but this does not entail that they are subjective properties. Third, one need not appeal to the distinction in order to explain Reid’s account of the perception of aesthetic properties, the expressive powers of material objects or the objective status of beauty and grandeur. To do this, one must appeal to the details of Reid theory of perception, including his anti-sensationalism and direct realism.
Date: 4/22/11
Conference Name: American Philosophical Association

The Moral Answer to the Question “Can Color Be Beautiful?” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Moral Answer to the Question “Can Color Be Beautiful?”
Author: Brian Soucek
Abstract: Eighteenth-century philosophers were split on the question of whether brute color can be beautiful. Some, such as Addison and Burke, explicitly included color within the realm of beauty while others, including Hutcheson and Kames, succumbed to what George Dickie has derided as “the great, eighteenth-century, philosophical, color-blindness plague.” This paper asks what reasons could ever be offered to adjudicate this conflict. On what basis might we decide that colors either can or cannot be beautiful? I argue that eighteenth-century authors often drew their boundaries around beauty with one thought in mind: how the resulting category of the beautiful would affect morality. Lacking this kind of extrinsic rationale, recent accounts of aesthetic experience have struggled to offer principled reasons for drawing the boundaries of the aesthetic where they do.
Date: 10/25/10
Conference Name: American Society for Aesthetics National Conference

Hume and the Value of the Beautiful (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Hume and the Value of the Beautiful
Author: James Shelley
Abstract: Hume is plausibly interpreted as asserting that an artwork is beautiful if and only if it pleases ideal critics. Jerrold Levinson maintains that Hume’s commitment to this biconditional gives rise to a problem that neither Hume nor his any of his interpreters considers: the problem of explaining why you should care what pleases ideal critics if you are not one yourself. I argue: (a) that this problem arises only if you hold an empiricist theory of aesthetic value (i.e., a theory that reduces the aesthetic value of a work to the value of the experience it affords), as Levinson does; (b) that Levinson’s own solution to the problem cannot succeed; (c) that Hume’s commitment to the biconditional is not a commitment to an empiricist theory of aesthetic value but to an empiricist theory of aesthetic evaluation; and (d) that Hume does not consider Levinson’s problem because it does not arise for him, given that his theory of aesthetic value is not empirical (in the present-day sense) but primitivist.
Date: 10/25/10
Conference Name: American Society for Aesthetics National Conference

“Reid’s Expressivist Aesthetics,” (Book Section)
Title: “Reid’s Expressivist Aesthetics,”
Author: Rachel Zuckert
Editor: Rebecca Copenhaver and Todd Buras
Abstract: This paper treats Reid’s claim that beauty consists in expression of mental excellence. I reconstruct his two major arguments for this claim: an inductive survey of objects actually found beautiful and an argument that only in this way can one satisfy the demands of aesthetic realism, the grounds for which are also discussed. I argue further that Reid’s expressivism (like his realism itself) also attempts to capture the phenomenology of experiences of beauty: as of a value beyond ourselves, which leads us to investigate the object further or to aspire to attain that value ourselves.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/thomas-reid-on-mind-knowledge-and-value-9780198733676?q=rebecca%20copenhaver&lang=en&cc=us
Primary URL Description: publisher web catalog
Access Model: print book
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Book Title: Mind, Knowledge, and Action: Essays in Honor of Thomas Reid’s Tercentenary
ISBN: 9780198733676

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