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Investigations Into the Phenomenology and the Ontology of the Work of Art

What are Artworks and How Do We Experience Them?

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  • Open Access
  • © 2015

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Overview

  • Critically compares and integrates phenomenological and cognitive aesthetics
  • Shows how the study of aesthetic experience and artworks offers a window to human cognition
  • Brings together a unique group of interdisciplinary researches
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Contributions to Phenomenology (CTPH, volume 81)

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About this book

​This book investigates the nature of aesthetic experience and aesthetic objects. Written by leading philosophers, psychologists, literary scholars and semioticians, the book addresses two intertwined issues. The first is related to the phenomenology of aesthetic experience: The understanding of how human beings respond to artworks, how we process linguistic or visual information, and what properties in artworks trigger aesthetic experiences. The examination of the properties of aesthetic experience reveals essential aspects of our perceptual, cognitive, and semiotic capacities.  The second issue studied in this volume is related to the ontology of the work of art: Written or visual artworks are a specific type of objects, containing particular kinds of representation which elicit a particular kind of experience. The research question explored is: What properties in artful objects trigger this type of experience, and what characterizes representation in written and visual artworks? Thevolume sets the scene for state-of-the-art inquiries in the intersection between the psychology and ontology of art. The investigations of the relation between the properties of artworks and the characteristics of aesthetic experience increase our insight into what art is. In addition, they shed light on essential properties of human meaning-making in general.

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Keywords

Table of contents (14 chapters)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Center for Semiotics, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Peer F. Bundgaard

  • Humanomics Centre Department of Arts and Culture, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Frederik Stjernfelt

About the editors

Peer Bundgaard is professor at the Center for Semiotics, Aarhus University, and is the Editor-in-Chief of Cognitive Semiotics.

Frederik Stjernfelt is professor at the Center for Semiotics, Aarhus University, and is member of the Danish Academy as well as the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Post-doctoral habilitation Diagrammatology (Springer 2007). He is also a guest professor at Humboldt University Berlin 2010.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Investigations Into the Phenomenology and the Ontology of the Work of Art

  • Book Subtitle: What are Artworks and How Do We Experience Them?

  • Editors: Peer F. Bundgaard, Frederik Stjernfelt

  • Series Title: Contributions to Phenomenology

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14090-2

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Philosophy and Religion (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and the Author(s) 2015

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-14089-6Published: 30 June 2015

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-36455-1Published: 15 October 2016

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-14090-2Published: 22 June 2015

  • Series ISSN: 0923-9545

  • Series E-ISSN: 2215-1915

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: VI, 264

  • Number of Illustrations: 32 b/w illustrations, 8 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Phenomenology, Cognitive Psychology, Aesthetics

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