Hidden Bibliographic Details
| ISBN: | 9781782846789
1782846786
9781845199562
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| Notes: | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Peter Lamarque is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York and was Editor of the British Journal of Aesthetics (1994-2008). He works principally in aesthetics and the philosophy of literature. His books include Truth, Fiction, and Literature (Clarendon Press, 1994) (with Stein Haugom Olsen); Fictional Points of View (Cornell UP, 1996); The Philosophy of Literature (Blackwell, 2008); Work and Object: Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art (Oxford UP, 2010); and The Opacity of Narrative (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2014).
Print version record.
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| Summary: | Oscar Wilde's famous quip "All art is quite useless" might not be as outrageous or demonstrably false as is often supposed. No-one denies that much art begins life with practical aims in mind: religious, moral, political, propagandistic, or the aggrandising of its subjects. But those works that survive the test of time will move into contexts where for new audiences any initial instrumental values recede and the works come to be valued for their own sake. The book explores this idea and its ramifications. Must aesthetics in its pursuit of art and beauty inevitably be culture-bound? Or can it transcend cultural differences and speak meaningfully of universal values: timelessly human not merely historically relative? The case of literature or film puts further pressure on the idea of art valued for its own sake. Characters in works of literature and film or finely-honed emotions in poetry often give pleasure precisely because they resonate with our own lives and seem (in the great works) to say something profound about human existence. Is not this kind of insight why we value such works? Yet the conclusion is not quite as clear-cut as it might seem and the idea of valuing something for its own sake never quite goes away.--
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| Other form: | Print version: Lamarque, Peter. Uselessness of art. Brighton ; Chicago : Sussex Academic Press, [2020] 1845199561
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