Review by Choice Review
This rigorous, lively, and interesting book by Iseminger, the 40-year Carleton College professor of philosophy and editor of the 1992 collection Intention and Interpretation, is written in the style and tradition of analytic philosophy. Iseminger describes it as "the outcome of my protracted attempt to come to terms with the multifaceted conflict between Beardsleyan aestheticism and Dickiean institutionalism." Over the years the author wrote papers disagreeing with both sides, and the seven chapters here present his argument for an alternative "new aestheticism." He acknowledges a heavy debt to Larry Shiner's recent major work, The Invention of Art (CH, Apr'02, 39-4364) and to the many historical reflections on aesthetics by the late Paul Kristeller. But this book goes beyond these and beyond Monroe Beardsley and George Dickie to propose a "new aestheticism" based on seeing artwork as artifact and on the "aesthetic communication" that takes place between an artist and his/her viewers/audience. A limitation of the volume is that, although it takes account of European aesthetics in its earlier stages, it (perhaps necessarily) does not engage the complicated currents of European aesthetics in the 20th century but remains comfortably within the limits of the American debate in aesthetics. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and above; general readers. R. E. Palmer emeritus, MacMurray College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
