Books I'm Reading: Arguing About Art

Arguing About Art, subtitled Contemporary Philosophical Debates (edited by Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley, Routledge, Second Edition, 2002), appears to be intended as a textbook, although I didn't know that when I acquired it. How and when this book found a place on my bookshelf now escapes me, but I liked the title. It's a series of paired essays of opposing viewpoints, each preceded by a summary that neatly captures the issues raised. Re-reading these introductory texts after reading the related essays helps retain the main points of each argument.

The subjects range widely. The first pair of essays attempts to decide whether food is art. The last section examines questions related to public art, specifically the installation and later removal of Richard Serra's sculpture Tilted Arc, in Washington D.C. (this section differs from the others in that it comprises four sub-sections rather than two—a transcript of hearings about the sculpture, the two main essays, and an essay that looks at the Serra sculpture alongside Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans' Memorial). In between, writers discuss authentic musical performance; fakes and forgeries; rock music and musical culture (this pair seems dated now); appreciation, understanding, and nature; photography and representation; feelings and fictions (about why we empathize with characters we know to be fictional); the seeming paradox of enjoying horror; sentimentality; art and morality; and feminism and aesthetics. I thought the essays on fakes and forgeries, on photography, on enjoying horror, on sentimentality, and on public art most interesting, but generally worth a read as an introduction to some basic questions in aesthetics.

Books I'm Reading: Four Essays on Liberty

I just finished Four Essays on Liberty, by Isaiah Berlin, a collection of his essays on liberty (obviously) with a long introduction (longer than at least one of the collected essays) refuting criticisms of his positions. The edition I read is ancient (Oxford University Press, 1969), and falling apart, but has that used bookstore smell about it that I love.

Very enjoyable, but hard work. The prose is lucid and deliciously dense, but therefore demanding of great concentration. This is the kind of book that requires multiple readings to digest. Highlights were the essays on determinism and John Stuart Mill. Berlin pretty neatly demolishes determinism and makes a cogent case for human free will. The Mill essay put Mill's thinking into some semblance of perspective for me--ignorant me. The essay on positive and negative notions of liberty was also interesting and what initially attracted me to the book, which I purchased years ago in Tokyo. It only took me about 15 years to get around to it.... Recommended (if you enjoy this sort of thing).