Description
Book SynopsisArt has the capacity to shape and alter our identities. It can influence who and what we are. Those who have had aesthetic experiences know this intimately, and yet the study of art’s impact on the mind struggles to be recognized as a centrally important field within the discipline of psychology. The main thesis of Art and Identity is that aesthetic experience represents a prototype for meaningful experience, warranting intense philosophical and psychological investigation. Currently psychology remains too closed-off from the rich reflection of philosophical aesthetics, while philosophy continues to be sceptical of the psychological reduction of art to its potential for subjective experience. At the same time, philosophical aesthetics cannot escape making certain assumptions about the psyche and benefits from entering into a dialogue with psychology. Art and Identity brings together philosophical and psychological perspectives on aesthetics in order to explore how art creates minds.
Trade Review"Art and Identity is a book any scholar working the field of art or psychology should read. Those invested in the visual arts and the psychology of emotions and experience will find in it a wealth of sources and material. For those invested in literature, this book will prove resourceful as a stepping stone to further their research." - Aleksandar Kordis, in: The European Legacy, 21:5-6
Table of ContentsTone Roald and Johannes Lang: Introduction Mark Johnson: Identity, Bodily Meaning, and Art Ciarán Benson: Acts not Tracts! Why a Complete Psychology of Art and Identity Must Be Neuro-cultural Gerald C. Cupchik: I Am, Therefore I Think, Act, and Express both in Life and in Art Simo Køppe: Sense, Modality, and Aesthetic Experience Judy Gammelgaard: Reading Proust: The Little Shock Effects of Art Kasper Levin: Becoming Worthy of What Happens to Us: Art and Subjectivity in the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze Bjarne Sode Funch: Art and Personal Integrity Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht: Steady Admiration in an Expanding Present: On Our New Relationship to Classics List of Contributors Index Acknowledgements
