The Aesthetic Function of Art

Gary Iseminger's book is a precise, vigorous, and original defense of the intuitive but controversial claim that the distinctive value of art is rooted in the specifically aesthetic function of art. This book presents an exceptionally clear and careful account of the strengths and the objections to aestheticism as it has been conceived in the philosophical literature. Iseminger reorients traditional aestheticism toward the ways in which the practice of art and the informal institution of the artworld promote aesthetic communication. This is an important contribution to a debate that is at the heart of contemporary philosophical thinking about art. -Philip Alperson, Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Director of the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Temple University

This exceptionally lucid and compact book will make a forceful and timely contribution to the present scene in analytical aesthetics. Building on the widely discussed institutional theory of art of recent decades, Gary Iseminger develops an account of art in terms of the function that the art object performs, specifically that it affords aesthetic experience. Iseminger's New Aestheticism, as he terms it, builds on, but confidently and masterfully moves beyond, both institutionalism and aestheticism. -Garry Hagberg, Bard College, author of Meaning and Interpretation and Art as Language

Philosophical theses never die: they just go to sleep for awhile. Gary Iseminger, in this eminently clear and rigorous book, has re-awakened the thesis that the function of art is aesthetic communication. Because of his spirited defense of aestheticism, we will all now have to seriously consider it yet again as a viable theory of art. -Peter Kivy, Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University