The purpose of this book, we are told right at the start, is to address anew 'the old question, often neglected in contemporary aesthetic debates, about art and truth, or art and cognition' (p. 1)
His purpose is to survey these varied responses, trace their development and adjudicate among them
very widely, and considers many writers who get scant attention nowadays
In any event, though the chapter on 'Christian Platonic and Anti-Platonic Art' is not noticeably shorter than the others, it does not have a key role in the philosophical trajectory that Rockmore is tracing.
There is implicit judgement here, and no imagination about why Rockmore might be taking this approach. More generosity needed here.
This is a hugely ambitious book, and the range of reading that has gone into its making cannot but be impressive, though the steady flow of many lengthy summaries and brief references to a huge number of writers makes for rather heavy going on the part of the reader.
Praise, tempered by a sort of critique here. As if a simply positive remark can't stand on its own. Also, the vocabulary is one of coercion "cannot but be impressive."
more importantly flawed, and in a number of critical ways
Appeal to "most people" is a failure to take ownership of own critique.
It is no pleasure to give a serious and substantial philosophical work such a low rating. So on the positive side I think it can safely be said that readers will undoubtedly benefit from Rockmore's range of reference.
Overview of target project. Seems like one the author would endorse, but it's impossible to know without asking the author, and difficult to guess without having read the work being reviewed.
The use of scare quotes here, and the qualifiers that follow, imply a veiled criticism.
It seems that criticisms must be open in order to be collegial, for otherwise they imply that the target's author is too dimwitted to grasp a meaning which is plainly grasped by the reviewer and the audience.
even the briefest survey would show, I think, that 'aesthetic cognitivism', as it is increasingly referred to, is not only widely discussed, but alive and wel
Very critical language, framing a serious critique. Yet it seems that the obvious has not been stated: the author was too focused on the continental tradition, and the reviewer was largely unfamiliar with that tradition (so much so that he saw the "excursion" into marxist aesthetics as unusual)
For example, he uses the expressions 'art and truth' and 'art and cognition' more or less interchangeably. But the conflation of 'truth' and 'cognition' confounds many of the issues he want to discuss, because there are important dimensions to cognition other than truth
One has to worry here of how the discipline is being defined. Does analytic philosophy have dominance over the field?
In doing so he ranges very widely, and considers many writers who get scant attention nowadays, devoting a whole chapter to 'Marx, Marxism, and Aesthetic Realism', for instance.
n any event, though the chapter on 'Christian Platonic and Anti-Platonic Art' is not noticeably shorter than the others, it does not have a key role in the philosophical trajectory that Rockmore is tracing.
Implies that the chapter is unnecessary, and does not attempt to see why it would have been left in. Even if a philosophical aesthetics is not present in this long period, the author may have chosen to discuss it for the sake of completeness, and to show to what extent a philosophy of art/ aesthetics existed in the middle ages.
I generally like New APPS's policies, but we need to do better than them when it comes to respecting the anonymity of commentators. On one occasion, Catarina Novaes partially identified an anonymous commentator by tracing his/her IP address (it came from her office building). I can't find the link to that post at the moment, but it was very bad form on her part (and on the part of other NewAPPS authors, who defended her actions).
If we allow users to post anonymously, we must not reveal their identities. If we think that they are hecklers, we can delete their comments and ban them, but not provide any identifying information.