Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Since the beginning of the eighteenth century, the philosophy of art has been engaged in the project of defining fine arts by finding out what they have in common. Peter Kivy's purpose is to trace the history of that enterprise and argue that the definitional project has been unsuccessful, with absolute music as the continual stumbling block. His fruitful change of strategy entails exploring the differences among the arts instead of engaging in an obsessive quest for sameness. He presents five case studies in both literature and music.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface
• 1 How We Got Here, and Why
• 2 Where we are
• 3 Reading and representation
• 4 On the unity of form and content
• 5 The laboratory of fictional truth
• 6 The quest for musical profundity
• 7 The liberation of music
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Kivy asserts that his purpose in this book is development of a theme--namely, the view that contemporary aestheticians will profit by developing the concept of differences among the arts rather than restricting themselves to noting resemblances among them. He critiques views concerning the essence of art by Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Bell, Fry, Hegel, Danto, Weitz, Walton, and Kuhns and also the propositional theory of literary truth and the views that literature is a representational art and that there is a total fusion of form and content in the arts. To illustrate important differences among the arts, he argues that the distinctive role of absolute music is to enable listeners to think only of its and their own "liberation from the world." Kivy's treatment of his theme is a contribution to aesthetics but also to philosophy in general: he holds that both resemblances and differences among the arts are to be studied and this is a period in which philosophical inquiry has perennially tended to emphasize differences among things, situations, and processes that make up the world and to discount what are often equally important resemblances among them. Complete documentation, bibliography, and index. Highly recommended. General; undergraduate; graduate; faculty. M. C. Rose; emeritus, Goucher College