Contemporary Evolutionary Aesthetics: The View from the Humanities (and Humanists)

Aaron Kozbelt

doi:10.26613/esic.1.2.51

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Contemporary Evolutionary Aesthetics: The View from the Humanities (and Humanists)

Aaron Kozbelt

Published/Copyright: October 1, 2017

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From the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture Volume 1 Issue 2

Abstract

In this article, I assess the current state of evolutionary aesthetics by reviewing four recent books by scholars in art history, literary studies, and psychology. Each book is humanistic in a broad sense. They all address evolutionary themes and share a commitment to understanding aesthetic experience via methodological pluralism, but they differ substantially in perspective and tone. That of Cupchik, a psychologist, expansively discusses the aesthetics of emotion. That of Rampley, an art historian, is the most polemical, with a strong critique of the encroachment of biology into questions of cultural history. Those of Hogan and Aldama, both literary scholars, deal primarily with literature and are the most personal and ultimately the most thought-provoking. The collective humanistic perspective is a departure from more neuroscience-intensive recent volumes, and it highlights the importance of themes like the emergence of aesthetics from the interaction between nature and culture—potentially in different ways at different times throughout the phylogenetic history of our species.

Keywords: evolutionary aesthetics; neuroaesthetics; evolution; aesthetic cognition; art appreciation; literary studies; emotion; two cultures

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Published Online: 2017-10-01

Published in Print: 2017-10-01

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https://doi.org/10.26613/esic.1.2.51

Keywords for this article

evolutionary aesthetics; neuroaesthetics; evolution; aesthetic cognition; art appreciation; literary studies; emotion; two cultures