Epicurus and aesthetic disinterestedness
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2177-4218.v7i7p56-74Keywords:
Epicurus, aesthetics, desires, artsAbstract
Aesthetic disinterestedness is one of the central concepts in aesthetics, and Jerome Stolnitz, the most prominent theorist of disinterestedness in the 20th century, has claimed that (i) ancient thinkers engagement with this notion was cursory and undeveloped, and consequently, (ii) the emergence of disinterestedness in the 18th century marks the birth of aesthetics as a discipline. In this paper, I use the extant works of Epicurus to show that the ancient philosopher not only had similar concepts, but also motivated them in careful and complex ways. I argue that, in the Epicurean theoretical framework, arts belong to the category of ‘merely natural’ desires, and this classification, combined with what we know of Epicurus’ rejection of art criticism, shows he had carefully worked out reasons supporting the idea that art ought to be approached terminally, rather than instrumentally. Finally, I compare the notion of aesthetic disinterestedness with Epicurus’ views on arts and argue that in many ways the latter are not inferior to the former, and therefore ought to belong to the history of aestheticsDownloads
Download data is not yet available.
Downloads
Published
2017-03-27
Issue
Section
Articles
License
Responsibility for the content published by Mare Nostrum rests exclusively with the author(s) of such content.
The reproduction of the texts published by Mare Nostrum is licensed according to Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC).
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
How to Cite
Epicurus and aesthetic disinterestedness. (2017). Mare Nostrum, 7(7), 56-74. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2177-4218.v7i7p56-74