Explanation and Value in the Arts

Explanation and Value in the Arts offers penetrating studies by art historians, literary theorists and philosophers, of issues central to explaining works of literature and painting. The first chapters look at the sources of interest in the fine arts and point to the intimate relation between aesthetic and other values. The following contributions develop the interaction between value and explanation by examining the construction of value in the study of the arts, including considerations of the nature of creativity and the principles for the explanations of works. A final section takes up questions of the role of ideology and the determining role of power.

• European and American theorists and cultural critics contribute to a volume which questions the history and basis of our aesthetic judgements • The study and assessment of fine art and literature are compared • This book (and the series as a whole) applies philosophical rigour to the practice of art criticsm

List of contributors; Editor\'s acknowledgements; 1. Interests, values and explanations Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell; 2. Fiction and reality in painting Michael Podro; 3. Franz Kafka: the necessity for a philosophical interpretation of his work Walter Biemel; 4. On relocating ethical criticism Wayne C. Booth; 5. Explanation and value: what makes the visual arts so different, so appealing? Mark Roskill; 6. Is art history? Svetlana Alpers; 7. Objectivity and valuation in contemporary art history Gregg Horowitz; 8. Fullness and parsimony: notes on creativity in the arts Jon Elster; 9. Principles of a sociology of cultural works Pierre Bourdieu; 10. Althusser and ideological criticism of the arts Richard Eldridge; 11. Film, rhetoric, and ideology Noël Carroll; Index.