No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
I have been asked to contribute a paper to the present series of lectures on culture, specifically on whether it is possible to understand the art of other cultures. What I find intriguing is why this question arises; why is such understanding seen as a problem needing discussion?
These are significant questions. How they are answered will be important for any possibility of cross-cultural aesthetic judgments and aesthetic experience. In order to deal with them it is necessary to see how they got purchase, what background they emerged from.
1 Williams, B., Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1972), 20.Google Scholar
2 Ibid. 21.
3 Williams, B., ‘The Truth of Relativism’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 1975 (1974–1975), 215–228.Google Scholar
4 Meiland, J., ‘Bernard Williams' Relativism’, Mind LXXXVIII, No. 350, (04 1979), 258–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Quine, W., Word and Object (New York: Technology Press and Wiley, 1960), 24.Google Scholar
6 Dickie, G., ‘What is Art’, Culture and Art, Aagaard-Morgensen, L. (ed.) (New York: Eclipse Books, Humanities Press, 1976), 21–32.Google Scholar
7 Danto, A., ‘The Art World’Google Scholar, ibid. 9–20.
8 Margolis, J., ‘Works of Art as Physically Embodied and Culturally Emergent Entities’, British Journal of Aesthetics 14, No. 3 (Summer 1974), 187–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Ibid. 187–189.
10 Ibid. 189–190.
11 Ibid. 191–192.
12 Ibid. 193.
13 Ibid. 194.
14 Osborne, H., ‘Primitive Art and Society’, British Journal of Aesthetics 14 No. 4 (Autumn 1974), 300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15 The Holy Qurran, Faríd, M. Ghulám (ed.) (The London Mosque, 1981)Google Scholar: (a) Ch. 57, v. 35 and 55, 1175–1176; (b) Ch. 7, v. 153, 359; (c) Ch. 5, v. 91, 268. All these passages forbid the making of images of living things; the Imáms, in their interpretations, have extended this ban to art.
16 Midgley, M., ‘Trying Out One's New Sword’, broadcast on BBC. The Listener 15 12 1977.Google Scholar
17 Gombrich, E. H., In Search of Cultural History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), sec. 1, p 5.Google Scholar
18 Bell, C., Art (London, 1949), 37.Google ScholarPubMed
19 Schnaase, C., Geschichte der Bildenden Kunste 1, (Leipzig, 1843).Google Scholar
20 Berenson, F., Understanding Persons (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1981).Google Scholar
21 Durkheim, E., ‘Essais sur la conception materialiste de l'histoire’, Revue Philosophique (12 1897)Google Scholar; Suicide (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952)Google Scholar; Pareto, V., The Mind and Society (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935), sec. 7.Google Scholar
22 Meager, R., ‘Art and Beauty’, British Journal of Aesthetics 14 No. 4 (Spring 1974), 102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 Ibid. 104.