Approach to Aesthetics Collected Papers on Philosophical Aesthetics

Approach to Aesthetics is the complete collection of Frank Sibley's articles on philosophical aesthetics. Their appearance within a single volume will be welcome to scholars and students of aesthetics. The value of the book is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of five substantial paperswritten in his later years and hitherto unpublished. Most of the published papers are concerned with a group of related topics: the nature of aesthetic qualities and their relation to non-aesthetic qualities, the relation of aesthetic description to aesthetic evaluation, the different levels ofevaluation, the objectivity of aesthetic judgement. The later papers constitute both a continuation and a significant development of Sibley's individual approach to aesthetics. One group of papers discusses the distinction between attributive and predicative uses of adjectives, first elucidating thedistinction, and then considering its application to 'beautiful' and 'ugly'. Another major paper is an extensive study of the aesthetic significance of tastes and smells, a topic Sibley considered to be much neglected, whose examination could throw interesting light on the boundaries of the conceptof the aesthetic. This collection constitutes a wide ranging yet coherent account of aesthetics by one of the most acute philosophical minds of his generation, one which is and will continue to be a source of controversy and a model of analytical method.

Frank Sibley (1923-1996) was the first Professor of Philosophy to be appointed at Lancaster University, a position he occupied until his retirement.