Art and Morality : : Essays in the Spirit of George Santayana / / Morris Grossman, Martin A. Coleman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Grossman, Morris,; Coleman, Martin A.,
• MitwirkendeR: Coleman, Martin A.,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Fordham University Press, , [2014]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Series: American Philosophy
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.)

The guiding theme of these essays by aesthetician, musician, and Santayana scholar Morris Grossman is the importance of preserving the tension between what can be unified and what is disorganized, random, and miscellaneous. Grossman described this as the tension between art and morality: Art arrests a sense of change and yields moments of unguarded enjoyment and peace; but soon, shifting circumstances compel evaluation, decision, and action. According to Grossman, the best art preserves the tension between the aesthetic consummation of experience and the press of morality understood as the business of navigating conflicts, making choices, and meeting needs.This concern was intimately related to his reading of George Santayana. The best philosophy, like the best art, preserves the tension between what can be ordered and what resists assimilation, and Grossman read Santayana as exemplifying this virtue in his embrace of multiple perspectives. Other scholars have noted the multiplicity or irony in Santayana’s work, but Grossman was unique in taking such a style to be a substantive part of Santayana’s philosophizing.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Editor’s Preface -- Introduction -- Part One. Art and Morality -- One. Art and Morality -- Two. Morality Bound and Unbound -- Three. Music, Modulation, and Metaphor -- Four. Performance and Obligation -- Five. A Mozartian Recognition Scene -- Six. A Note on Economy and Art -- Seven. An Aesthetic Glance at the Constitution -- Eight. Human Rights and Artistic Appreciations -- Part Two. Artistic Philosophers and Philosophical Artists -- Nine. Interpreting Peirce -- Ten. On Ruf’s The Creation of Chaos: William James and the Stylistic Making of a Disorderly World -- Eleven. How Sartre Must Be Read -- Twelve. On Beardsley’s “An Aesthetic Definition of Art” -- Thirteen. Lessing as Philosophical Dramatist -- Fourteen. Lewis Carroll -- Fifteen. Art and Death -- Sixteen. Brancusi -- Part Three. Santayana -- Seventeen. Drama and Dialectic -- Eighteen. Ontology and Morality -- Nineteen. Spirited Spirituality -- Twenty. Interpreting Interpretations -- Twenty- One. Santayana’s Aesthetics -- Twenty- Two. Santayana’s The Last Puritan -- Twenty- Three. Santayana in California -- Twenty- Four. Ultimate Santayana -- Notes -- Index