| Summary: | <p><span style="font-size: medium;">Jerrold Levinson’s </span><em><span style="font-size: medium;">Contemplating Art </span></em><span style="font-size: medium;">provides the readers with a variety of heterogeneous topics and issues.</span> <span style="font-size: medium;">The discussants who took part in the Forum about Levinson’s book chose four different “tracks” dealt with, offering four different reflections. The main topics of the debate are: music, </span><span style="font-size: medium;">historicity, </span><span style="font-size: medium;">aesthetic properties and </span><span style="font-size: medium;">aesthetic contextualism.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Starting on the fact that music is one of the main fields of </span><em><span style="font-size: medium;">Contamplating Art</span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"> Alessandro Bertinetto focus his paper on the ‘musical’ chapters of the book that 1) defend the theory of musical expressivity presented by Levinson in his previous books (the </span><span style="font-size: medium;">‘</span><span style="font-size: medium;">theory of musical </span><em><span style="font-size: medium;">persona</span></em><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span><span style="font-size: medium;">); 2. articulate it in reference to particular aspects of musical experience, and 3. examine its contribution for the understanding of the narrative and dramatic dimension of music as well as 4., in general, for its artistic value. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Michele Di Monte’s aim is to focus on the questions raised by the alleged essential historicality of the concept of art and the formal definition of the concept itself. He discusses, in particular, the epistemic basis and status of what Levinson calls ‘our present concept of art’, the logical outcomes of its role in defining and identifying the art of the past and the problematic relationship between a universality requirement and the theory’s pretension to historicality. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Filippo Focosi </span><span style="font-size: medium;">discusses</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> in the first place the passages of Levinson’s book where his paradigmatic aesthetic principle explicitly occurs; secondly, he shows how such a principle, as is there articulated, can disclose interest perspectives on other aspects of Levinson’s theories about art and aesthetic properties. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The paper by Lisa Giombini </span><span style="font-size: medium;">focuses on on the role of context in Levinson’s definition of art.</span><strong></strong><span style="font-size: medium;">After</span><span style="font-size: medium;">defining </span><span style="font-size: medium;">Levinson’s version of aesthetic contextualism, </span><span style="font-size: medium;">Giombini</span><span style="font-size: medium;">underlines how Levinson’s intentional-historical definition may provide fertile ground for a peculiar form of contextualism where the relevant context is constituted by the history of art and the practice of art alone. Finally</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> she inquires </span><span style="font-size: medium;">whether Levinson’s </span><span style="font-size: medium;">identifying works of art with wholly relational intentionally-historically defined concepts may interfere with his adhesion to aesthetic realism.</span></p>
|
|---|