Thomas Leddy

• PhD
• San Jose State University

Clive Bell’s Art, published in 1913, is widely seen as a founding document in contemporary aesthetics. Yet his formalism and his attendant definition of art as “significant form” is widely rejected in contemporary art discourse and in the philosophy of art. In this paper I argue for a reconsideration of his thought in connection with current discus...

A diferencia de Melchionne (2013) y Naukkarinen (2013), abogo por una definición expansiva de la estética cotidiana que, además de las experiencias más comunes y cotidianas, incluya los festivales, el turismo y un sinnúmero de actividades llevadas a cabo diariamente por artistas y profesionales de diversas áreas. Establezco continuidades entre las...

Most of John Dewey’s early work on educational theory was directed to K-12 education, and his later ground-breaking work in aesthetics, particularly in Art as Experience, never directly discusses liberal arts education. However, he did sometimes address the nature of liberal arts education: in his discussion of Aristotle’s concept of “liberal” in D...

How does Richard Shusterman’s Thinking Through the Bodyapply to the issues of everyday aesthetics? As it turns out, many chapters contribute significantly to everyday aesthetics, in particular the work on architecture, self-styling, the body as background, lovemaking, and the process of making a photographic portrait. Shusterman’s concentration on...

As opposed to Melchionne and Naukkarinen, I defend an expansive definition of everyday aesthetics, one that includes festivals, tourism, and many daily activities of artists and other professionals, along with most ordinary and common experiences. I argue for continuities between aesthetics of everyday life and the aesthetics of art and nature. Loo...

The paper defends everyday aesthetics against critiques inspired by Kant’s distinction between the agreeable and the beautiful, such as that of Christopher Dowling. It does this by focusing on analysis of the concept of the pretty. Following Carolyn Korsmeyer and A. C. Bradley, I posit a continuum for the aesthetic, from the pretty to the beautiful...

A little more than thirty years ago, Allen Carlson argued that although the concept of "Camp" would seem to allow for the aesthetic redemption of roadside clutter and junkyards, it does not.[1] He opposes those who claim that if one takes the right attitude to roadside clutter it can be seen as aesthetic. In this essay I argue that that there is no...

Late 20th century philosophy has been deeply involved in a debate between realism and anti-realism. My particular area of interest is aesthetics/philosophy of art (henceforth “aesthetics”). The debate between realists and anti-realists has raged for many years through the various problem-areas of aesthetics: evaluation, interpretation, representati...

The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 31 (2006) 66-68 Linda Williams provides a valuable aid to the reader who wishes to explore the concept of "will to power" in Nietzsche. She hopes to "write the kind of book that I would have wanted to read when I first was taken with Nietzsche's famous phrase." Her book also takes a position in the continuing debate...

In a pluralist and pragmatist view of aesthetic appreciation of nature, nature is validly appreciated through various cultural media including science, technology, mythology, and, in particular, the arts. Those who attack arts-based appreciation mainly think about the arts of the nineteenth century: traditional landscape painting and sculptures on...

The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 16.1 (2002) 10-16 I should admit from the start that I am deeply sympathetic to Shusterman'sperspective. I, like Shusterman, consider myself a pragmatist committed to a critique of analytic aesthetics from a revived Deweyan perspective. I, too, favor Hegelian themes of holism, historicism, and organicism, but w...

(I) The psycho-physical approach: formal beauty and aesthetic pleasure image and idea in visual art. (II) The cognitive approach: art and mind art and visual perception. (III) The psychoanalytic approach: visual art and the unconscious the great experience in art. (IV) The existential-phenomenological approach: art and aesthetic experience art and...

Dans le cadre du debat opposant A. Danto et J. Margolis, l'A. examine l'idee d'aura esthetique dans la perception de l'oeuvre d'art. En reference au concept de vision chez Wittgenstein, l'A. distingue les proprietes relationnelles et les proprietes inherentes de la peinture.

Philosophy and Literature 20.2 (1996) 511-514 Spirits Hovering Over the Ashes: Legacies of Postmodern Theory, by H. L. Hix; x & 208 pp. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995, $16.95 paper. This intriguing, rich and witty book is a collection of twelve mainly previously published essays each of which is titled "Postmodern" something. "Postmodern Grief," which fi...

Drawing on the experientialism of Lakoff and Johnson, I develop some metaphysical implications of metaphor theory. Not only do we understand the world in terms of conceptual metaphors, but fundamental constituents of our experienced world are metaphoric. I call these structures of experience essences. However, by essence I am not referring to etern...

L'A. prend parti pour Dewey dans le debat qui oppose la theorie pragmatiste de la creativite a l'esthetique analytique, en tant qu'il defend la relation organique de l'objet de production aux processus de production, conformement a sa conception de l'experience en philosophie