The Art Instinct Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution

by Dutton, Denis

• ISBN13: 9781596914018
• ISBN10: 1596914017
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-12-23
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Press

Summary

"The Art Instinct unites two of the most fascinating and contentious disciplines, art and evolutionary science, in a provocative new work that will change the way we think about the arts, from music to literature to pottery. Human tastes in the arts, argues Denis Dutton, are evolutionary traits, shaped by natural selection. They are not, as the past century of art criticism and academic theory would have it, "socially constructed," or determined by the surrounding culture." "Our love of beauty is inborn, and many artistic tastes are universal across cultures - such as the preference for landscapes that feature water and distant trees, like the savannah - where we first evolved. With forceful logic and empirical evidence, Dutton contends that we must premise art criticism on an understanding of human evolution, not on abstract "theory." Witty, learned, and deeply humane, his discussion provides new ways of thinking about creations ranging from Polynesian carvings to Pride and Prejudice. Moreover, it shows the way out of the bleak terrain of the culture wars, and restores the place of beauty, pleasure, and skill as essential artistic values."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

Denis Dutton is the founder and editor of the hugely popular Web site Arts & Letters Daily, named by the Guardian as the best Web site in the world. He also founded and edits the journal Philosophy and Literature, and is a professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Landscape and Longing	p. 13
Art and Human Nature	p. 29
What Is Art?	p. 47
"But They Don't Have Our Concept of Art"	p. 64
Art and Natural Selection	p. 85
The Uses of Fiction	p. 103
Art and Human Self-Domestication	p. 135
Intention, Forgery, Dada: Three Aesthetic Problems	p. 164
The Contingency of Aesthetic Values	p. 203
Greatness in the Arts	p. 220
Acknowledgments	p. 245
Notes	p. 247
Bibliography	p. 259
Index	p. 269
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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