Literary examples in analytic aesthetics
the claim of the empirical
pp. 207-223
in: Andrea Selleri, Philip Gaydon (eds), Literary studies and the philosophy of literature, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
Analytic aestheticians often invoke specific literary works as illustrations of broader theoretical issues, making apparent a tension between the philosophical ideal of analysing discrete concepts in a clear fashion and the critical ideal of doing justice to the works themselves. This chapter argues that to gain in neatness by losing in descriptive power is a bad bargain for philosophy, by analysing some instances in which work in aesthetics has been vitiated by an insufficient concern with the particularities of the literary works used as examples. There follows an outline of some ways in which a fuller acquaintance with literary studies may help aestheticians strike a better balance between clear-headedness about the general and fidelity to the empirical.