Conversations on Art and Aesthetics
- Submitting institution
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The University of Kent
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 5762
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
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- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- ISBN
- 9780199686100
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- CAA seeks to conduct new research in aesthetics via the method of intellectual conversation. To achieve this aim, the author obtained research grants from both the British and American Society for Aesthetics, met with leading philosophers of art across the globe, transcribed and compiled the interviews afterwards. The book took seven years to complete. It demonstrates extended scope and scale in a number of ways: it is a longer-form output that is the result of a sustained research effort; access to primary sources required extensive travel and preparation; and it involved a complex, innovative, and collaborative process of creative investigation.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Conversations on Art and Aesthetics conducts and stimulates new research in aesthetics via the method of intellectual conversation. Through this method, Maes puts existing philosophical theories to the test, and also introduces and explores new topics.
The central innovation of the book is its use of the conversational format itself. From a research perspective, the joint effort involved in a conversational format possesses distinct advantages over both conventional interviews and also the now dominant format of the journal article. These advantages are:
(1) in today’s research culture, where scholars are prompted to publish separate essays rather than present grand philosophical systems, it is easy to lose sight of the underlying ideas and overarching themes that hold their work together. Using the conversation format, Maes asked authors directly about the overall coherence of their work giving insight into certain tensions in their thinking.
(2) In research articles there is seldom room to elaborate on the provenance of one’s theories, even though knowledge of the early influences on an author is often helpful in understanding the views they ultimately arrive at. The conversations allow authors to elaborate more fully on their early influences.
(3) What authors do not write about can potentially be as revealing as what they do end up writing about. Hence, many conversations were designed by Maes to address what might be considered as blind spots in the author’s oeuvre.
(4) By collecting the answers of ten leading philosophers in one volume, Maes brings to light various unsuspected contrasts and convergences between these philosophers and, where possible, he has asked authors to comment directly on some of the disagreements that emerged. Consequently, Conversations on Art and Aesthetics offers a reflection on the discipline of aesthetics itself, something that existing modes of publication (journals, interviews, monographs) rarely allows.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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