Gadamer’s Hermeneutical Aesthetics (Routledge Research in Aesthetics)

173 Pages·2022·4.275 MB·English

by  Cynthia R. Nielsen

“By placing Gadamer’s hermeneutical aesthetics in critical dialogue
with both key aesthetic theories of the philosophical tradition as
well as with important contemporary artists and art movements,
Nielsen’s well-conceived study develops a vibrant bridge between
past and present that clearly demonstrates the continued relevance of
Gadamer’s hermeneutics for our comprehension of the experience
and understanding of art.”
– Daniel L. Tate, St. Bonaventure University, USA
“Cynthia Nielsen’s study of the historical impact of Kant’s aesthetics
on Gadamer’s hermeneutical aesthetics and of the application of
philosophical hermeneutics to contemporary music and art practice,
has transformative implications. By revealing the ontological frame-
works which enable the works of Bearden and Bansky to be so effec-
tive, her book demonstrates the contemporaneousness of Gadamer’s
hermeneutics. This volume is a notable achievement. It offers a dou-
bled disclosure: whilst concretising Gadamer’s philosophical con-
cepts in contemporary art practice, it also shows how art’s images
reach beyond their immediacy by instantiating the structures of
meaning informing them.”
– Nicholas Davey, University of Dundee, UK

Gadamer’s Hermeneutical Aesthetics
This book offers a sustained scholarly analysis of Gadamer’s reflections
on art and our experience of art. It examines fundamental themes in
Gadamer’s hermeneutical aesthetics such as play, festival, symbol, con-
temporaneity, enactment, art’s performative ontology, and hermeneutical
identity.
The first two chapters focus on Gadamer’s critical appropriation and
movement beyond Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics. (Chapter 2 also
includes a coda on Heidegger’s influence.) The final three chapters argue
for the continued relevance of Gadamer’s hermeneutical aesthetics by
bringing his claims into conversation with contemporary art and music,
as well as the ethical and sociopolitical dimensions of the Artworld and
art praxis. The ethical and sociopolitical aspects of art- and music-m aking
are given particular attention in chapters devoted to 20th-century African
American artist Romare Bearden, Banksy’s street art, and a range of jazz
expressions, from traditional jazz to the complex practice of free jazz.
Gadamer’s Hermeneutical Aesthetics will appeal to researchers and
advanced students working on Gadamer, philosophical hermeneutics,
continental philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of contemporary
art and music.
Cynthia R. Nielsen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas,
where she teaches courses in the areas of hermeneutics, aesthetics,
contemporary continental philosophy, and the history of philosophy. She
has two previously published books; a co-edited book, Gadamer’s Truth
and Method: A Polyphonic Commentary (Rowman & Littlefield, March
2022); and her articles have appeared in journals such as Philosophy
Today, Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, Journal
of the British Society for Phenomenology, and Philosophy and Literature.
Routledge Research in Aesthetics
Philosophy of Sculpture
Historical Problems, Contemporary Approaches
Edited by Kristin Gjesdal, Fred Rush, and Ingvild Torsen
Art, Representation, and Make-Believe
Essays on the Philosophy of Kendall L. Walton
Edited by Sonia Sedivy
Philosophy of Improvisation
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Theory and Practice
Edited by Susanne Ravn, Simon Høffding, and James McGuirk
The Aesthetics of Virtual Reality
Grant Tavinor
The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Consciousness and Phantasy
Working with Husserl
Paul Crowther
Objects of Authority: A Postformalist Aesthetics
Jakub Stejskal
Gadamer’s Hermeneutical Aesthetics
Art as a Performative, Dynamic, Communal Event
Cynthia R. Nielsen
The Philosophy of Fiction
Imagination and Cognition
Edited by Patrik Engisch and Julia Langkau
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.
routledge.com/Routledge-Research-in-Aesthetics/book-series/RRA
Gadamer’s Hermeneutical
Aesthetics
Art as a Performative, Dynamic,
Communal Event
Cynthia R. Nielsen
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2023 Cynthia R. Nielsen
The right of Cynthia R. Nielsen to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-032-02037-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-02039-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-18156-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003181569
Typeset in Sabon
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
1 Kantian Resonances and Dissonances 10
2 Hegelian Resonances and Dissonances
(and a Heideggerian Coda) 43
3 Romare Bearden’s Collages and Art’s Address:
On World De-fabrication and Reconfiguration 71
4 Banksy, Street Art, and a Benjaminian Coda 94
5 It’s All about (Hermeneutical) Movement:
Play, Leeway, Difference, and a Coda on Free Jazz 124
Bibliography 156
Index 161
Acknowledgments
As is always the case, there are numerous people to whom I am indebted,
owe thanks, and without whose help and generosity this project would
not have been possible. First and foremost, I thank my partner Will and
daughter Ash for your willingness to give me the space and time to work
on this project. I am especially grateful to a handful of individuals for
their kindness and encouragement, and I owe them special thanks for
reading chapters (and parts of chapters) and offering helpful feedback:
Nicholas Davey, Dan Tate, Niall Keane, Ted George, Greg Lynch, David
Vessey, and John Arthos. Many thanks as well to the University of Dallas
for supporting my research sabbatical for the 2021–2022 academic year
and to my Dallas colleagues José Espericueta and Carla Pezzia for being
so supportive and encouraging. Given that my book focuses on aesthet-
ics, I am delighted that Siobhan Donnelly and the Bearden Foundation
graciously granted me permission to include two beautiful black and
white reproductions of Romare Bearden’s collages, Three Folk Musicians,
1967, and The Dove, 1964.
Lastly, I would like to thank the following editors and journals for
granting me permission to use excerpts and revised versions of my previ-
ously published work. For example, Chapter 1 is an expanded version of
my article “Gadamer’s Complex Engagement with Kantian Aesthetics,”
International Yearbook for Hermeneutics, 2022. Chapter 3 is a reworked
version of my article “Harsh Poetry and Art’s Address: Romare Bearden
and Hans-Georg Gadamer in Conversation,” The Polish Journal of
Aesthetics 43 (4) (2016). Chapter 5 includes a revised version of
“Gadamer on Play and the Play of Art,” in The Gadamerian Mind, edited
by Theodore George and Gert-Jan van der Heiden (New York: Routledge,
2021), and revised sections from “Gadamer on the Event of Art, the
Other, and a Gesture Toward a Gadamerian Approach to Free Jazz.”
Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, March 2016 (an online, open access
journal).
Introduction
Chapter 1 focuses on Gadamer’s complex dialogue with Kantian aesthet-
ics, beginning with his reflections on Kant’s Critique of Judgment in part
one of Truth and Method. A careful reading of his engagement with Kant
reveals that Gadamer does not simply dismiss Kant’s insights in toto but
rather creatively reworks them as he develops his own hermeneutical
aesthetics. Gadamer returns to Kant’s aesthetics 20 years after Truth and
Method in his late essay “Intuition and Vividness” (1980). Here Gadamer’s
dialogue with Kant becomes even more complex, as he reconfigures
Kant’s thinking about the role of imagination in the experience of art.
Before turning to Gadamer’s study of Kant in Truth and Method, we
briefly review relevant key terms and concepts in Kant’s aesthetics. For
example, in §1 of the Critique of Judgment, Kant introduces aesthetic
judgments or judgments of taste. Aesthetic judgments contrast with
empirical judgments. That is, judgments of taste are not cognitive judg-
ments, as they are not based on concepts. Their determining ground is
necessarily subjective. However, what Kant means by subjective must be
clarified. He does not have in mind merely an individual’s subjective feel-
ings, although he does emphasize a particular kind of feeling—namely,
what he calls disinterested pleasure. A subject experiences disinterested
pleasure when she, for example, is struck by a beautiful sunset or a beau-
tiful painting. Disinterested pleasure is the result of her cognitive powers
engaging in what Kant calls “free play.” On the one hand, disinterested
pleasure is subjective in that an individual experiences it. On the other
hand, it is an experience that in theory can be had by all subjects because
all humans share the same cognitive faculties, imagination and under-
standing, which can engage in free play.
In Gadamer’s reading of Kant, he acknowledges that Kant provides an
account of the subjective universality of aesthetic judgments that is not
reducible to mere subjective preferences. Even so, he claims that Kant
has, nonetheless, subjectivized aesthetics by grounding the normativity of
aesthetic judgments in a subjective (and potentially intersubjective) feel-
ing of disinterested pleasure. Pure aesthetic judgments, in other words,
are not about particular features in the object, but rather concern a
DOI: 10.4324/9781003181569-1