Marvelous Images: On Values and the Arts

by Kendall Walton

Overview

The twelve essays by Kendall Walton in this volume address a broad range of theoretical issues concerning the arts. Many of them apply to the arts generally-to literature, theater, film, music, and the visual arts-but several focus primarily on pictorial representation or photography. In "'How Marvelous!': Toward a Theory of Aesthetic Value" Walton introduces an innovative account of aesthetic value, and in this and other essays he explores relations between aesthetic value and values of other kinds, especially moral values. Two of the essays take on what has come to be called imaginative resistance-a cluster of puzzles that arise when works of fiction ask us to imagine or to accept as true in a fiction moral propositions that we find reprehensible in real life. "Transparent Pictures", Walton's classic and controversial account of what is special about photographic pictures, is included, along with a new essay on a curious but rarely noticed feature of photographs and other still pictures-the fact that a depiction of a momentary state of an object in motion allows viewers to observe that state, in imagination, for an extended period of time. Two older essays round out the collection-another classic, "Categories of Art", and a less well known essay, "Style and the Products and Processes of Art", which examines the role of appreciators' impressions of how a work of art came about, in understanding and appreciation. None of the reprinted essays is abridged, and new postscripts have been added to several of them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195177954
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/23/2008
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Kendall Walton turned to philosophy as an undergraduate at Berkeley, after considering a career in music. He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1967, and has taught at the University of Michigan since then. His extensive writings on aesthetics include the groundbreaking, Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a past president of the American Society for Aesthetics.

Table of Contents

IntroductionPart I: Aesthetic and Moral Values1. "How Marvelous": Toward a Theory of Aesthetic ValuePostscripts to "How Marvelous!"2. The Test of Time3. Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality4. On the (So-Called) Puzzle of Imaginative ResistancePart II: Pictures and Photographs5. Pictures & Hobby Horses: Make-Believe Beyond Childhood6. Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic RealismPostscripts to "Transparent Pictures"7. On Pictures & Photographs: Objections Answered8. Seeing In and Seeing Fictionally9. Depiction, Perception, & Imagination: Responses to Richard Wollheim10. Experiencing Still Photographs: What Do You See and How Long Do You See It?Part III: Categories and Styles11. Categories of Art12. Style and the Products and Processes of Art

Editorial Reviews

"...this collection, together with Mimesis (and, I expect, the forthcoming companion volume), will constitute a 'must have' trio, not only for connoisseurs of Walton's philosophy, but as well for those of us who are fascinated by the dynamics exhibited by the careers of people who are the very best at what they do."—Scott Walden, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

From the Publisher