Embodiment, Art History, Theodicy, and the Abuse of Beauty: A Response to My Critics

摘要

I am deeply indebted to Jonathan Gilmore, Gregg Horowitz, and Fred Rush, first for their initiative in organizing a symposium on my book, The Abuse of Beauty, which took place at the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics in 2003, and then for turning their presentations into the papers that are published here. As they are among the most gifted philosophers of art in their generation, they have produced a remarkable set of essays - rich, ingenious, informed, and critical, though largely in sympathy with my own undertaking in the book. I have had to select from among their arguments those that I thought I might be able to respond to, with the hope that the interchange might be of mutual value, and at the same time of some interest to readers of Inquiry. I have, thus, addressed Jonathan Gilmore's characterization of what I term embodiment; Gregg Horowitz's suggestion that, because of the ambiguity of the genitive case, a quite different account of "the abuse of beauty" than mine might be given; and Fred Rush's idea of what he terms aesthetic theodicy. In order to take on these topics, I have had to neglect others, but these seemed at once central to their positions and to mine.