I had the pleasure of attending Professor Johnson's and Professor Silliman's reading from their new book the other day in the Smith House. It was highly entertaining and thought provoking: enjoyable on all accounts. The discussion following was one primarily of the philosophy of Constructivism, one in which knowledge is constructed by humans as opposed to being discovered by them. (My summation surely does not do it justice)
This left me thinking about, amongst many other things, where a constructivist would stand in the realm of aesthetics, a realm highly predominated by subjective thought already. I suppose as this blog goes, the question is the extent of the entry. It would seem to me that constructivism is an epistemology and therefore would not offer an opinion on art one way or the other.
What do you think? Would this theory of epistemology affect a view of aesthetics, of art?
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Thanks for attending the reading.
ReplyDeleteAs far as constructivism and art goes: I think the radically subjectivist nature of aesthetic judgment is fertile ground for the moderate constructivist. However, radicals notoriously will be unable to account for intersubjective and/or objective features of the (art)world they describe.