This is a long-awaited reissue of Jerrold Levinson's 1990 book Music, Art, and Metaphysics, which gathers together the writings that made him a leading figure in contemporary aesthetics.
Contemplating Art is a compendium of writings from the last ten years by one of the leading figures in aesthetics, Jerrold Levinson. The book contains twenty-four essays and is divided into seven parts.
What is required for a listener to understand a piece of music? Does aural understanding depend upon reflective awareness of musical architecture or large-scale musical structure? Jerrold Levinson thinks not.
The essays are wide-ranging and represent some of the most stimulating work being done within analytic aesthetics. Three of the essays are previously unpublished, and four of them focus on music in the jazz tradition.
The essays in this book discuss fundamental issues of modern and contemporary aesthetics, drawing upon the work of the French philosopher Jean- Pierre Cometti, a key figure in the studies of aesthetics, pragmatism, and Austrian philosophy.
Pour Jerrold Levinson, le rapport des oeuvres d'art à l'histoire entre dans la définition même de l'art, d'un point de vue à la fois ontologique, interprétatif et évaluatif.