Barry Stocker • Michael Mack

Editors

The Palgrave
Handbook of
Philosophy and
Literature
Editors
Barry Stocker Michael Mack
Istanbul Technical University Durham University
Istanbul, Turkey Durham, UK

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 14
Analytic Aesthetics
Jukka Mikkonen

A passage from John Hospers’s Meaning and Truth in the Arts (1946) illus-
trates well the aim of the early analytic enterprise in aesthetics: the investiga-
tion of key concepts in a discourse.

We ask, “What is the meaning of this piece of music?” without stopping to ask
ourselves what it is that we are asking, precisely what sense of “meaning” is being
used here, or what it means for a work of art to have meaning. We assert that art
reveals reality, or expresses truth, without inquiring into the precise meanings of
crucial words like “reality,” “truth,” “expression,” which are so constantly
employed in discussions of this kind. (Hospers 1946, v)

While ‘analytic philosophers’ are today critical about both the demarcation
between analytic and continental philosophy and attempts to define analytic
philosophy, something can be said of the characteristics of the analytic enter-
prise in aesthetics. Typical for the analytic approach are, according to its self-
acknowledged proponents, the application of formal logic, conceptual
analysis, and rational argument; the focus on detail and distinctions and the
orientation to narrowly demarcated problems; the emphasis on objectivity
and a view of philosophical problems as timeless; and a respect for clarity and
a preference for clear prose (Lamarque and Olsen 2004a, 2; Currie et al. 2014,
5). Analytic philosophers of literature have been interested in the nature of

J. Mikkonen (*)
University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland
e-mail: jukka.mikkonen@uta.fi

© The Author(s) 2018 295

B. Stocker, M. Mack (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54794-1_14
296 J. Mikkonen

general concepts, such as ‘literature’, ‘fiction’, ‘narrative’, and ‘meaning’, on

the one hand, and the practice of literature, on the other hand.

The Analytic Approach

Philosophers’ work around philosophy and literature may be roughly divided
into two groups: ‘philosophy and literature’ and ‘philosophy of literature’. The
former mainly explores the philosophical aspects of literary works (or the lit-
erary aspects of philosophical works) and deals with actual works, whereas the
latter consists of systematic exploration of theoretical issues related to litera-
ture. In addition, analytic philosophers illustrating their theories with exam-
ples drawn from literature, philosophers of language examining fictional
entities such as Hamlet and moral philosophers illuminating ethical problems
with literary scenarios—these approaches that make use of literary works do
not fall within either of the groups mentioned. Analytic aestheticians are
mainly working on the philosophy of literature.
There are, crudely stated, three popular views of the aims of the analytic
mission among contemporary aestheticians. These views, which need not be
mutually exclusive, are (1) a philosophy of criticism, (2) a philosophy of
empirical study of art, and (3) a philosophy of art.

1. The early analytic aestheticians of the 1950s conceived their discipline as

‘metacriticism’ or the philosophy of criticism. Their aim was to discover
the fundamental concepts and general principles of art criticism by look-
ing carefully at the work of professional critics. This conception of the
discipline was clearly manifested in Monroe C. Beardsley’s work Aesthetics
(1958), which was subtitled ‘Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism’.
Today, many analytic philosophers of art think that the scope of aesthetics
is much broader than the analysis of concepts. Philosophers are interested
in issues, such as creativity and restoration: also, questions in metaphysics
and the philosophy of mind have a central role in contemporary study (see
Stock and Thomson-Jones 2008, xii). Some think that descriptive or nor-
mative metacriticism is not even possible any more, for criticism has
become so diverse an object that a coherent view of its methods cannot be
given—moreover, the rise of a new critical paradigm would make the phil-
osophical descriptions of critical principles obsolete (Lamarque 2009, 7).
Others defend metacriticism as a part of the analytic approach. Noël
Carroll claims in On Criticism ‘that the time has come to rejuvenate [meta-
criticism], since there is probably more art criticism being produced and
 Analytic Aesthetics 297

consumed now than ever before in the history of the world’ (Carroll 2009,
1). The metacritical conception is also manifest in many contemporary
analytic aestheticians’ work in which critical readings, the interpretations
of the experts of art, are cited as evidence supporting the philosopher’s
theoretical thesis.
2. Interest in the ‘psychology of art’ has been strong in analytic aesthetics,
which is no wonder, as analytic philosophers are often (but not always)
sympathetic to natural scientific approaches. Along the rise of neurosci-
ence and cognitive science, a growing number of aestheticians have taken
an interest to the findings of the sciences of the mind. If neuroscience helps
us to understand information processing in general, could it not also illu-
minate our engagement with works of art? Some philosophers have taken
scientific studies to settle age-old philosophical debates for good, but
Kathleen Stock (2014, 205) remarks perceptively that ‘given philosophers’
tendencies to cautious critical analysis, the use of such evidence is not
always inspected as scrupulously as it could be’. Gregory Currie believes
that aestheticians would learn much if they turned their attention to
empirical disciplines, such as branches of psychology, linguistics, and eco-
nomic and sociological studies of art consumption: yet, he thinks that
empirical research is not much worth without careful philosophical reflec-
tion of the traditional sort, and he sees the task of philosophy in formulat-
ing theoretical models to strengthen the empirical study (Currie 2013,
435–36). Currie and his colleagues (2014, 12) argue that ‘[w]hilst phe-
nomenological and conceptual analysis may tell us much about what we
think we are doing [in experiencing artworks], even aesthetic experts may
be mistaken about what they are actually doing. And this, at least in prin-
ciple, may be the object of scientific investigation’.
3. Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen propose that philosophy of lit-
erature is best understood as literary aesthetics or the philosophy of the
phenomenon of literature. As Lamarque (2009, 8) sees it, ‘the “institution”
of literature investigated by the philosopher concerns … fundamental
structures, those that, in Kantian terminology, “make possible” any rele-
vant interactions between participants in a practice’. In this view, the phi-
losopher is after ‘the logical foundations of the “practice” of literature,
rather as the philosopher of law examines neither particular legal systems
nor the history of law but the grounds on which any such system depends[.]’
(ibid.). Moreover, Lamarque and Olsen (2004b, 201) emphasize that phi-
losophy of literature ought to be aesthetics of literature and focus on the
‘recognizably valuable but non-instrumental experience that has
traditionally been referred to by the term “pleasure”’. Such an approach
examines, for instance, the sort of values associated with literature.
298 J. Mikkonen

Definitions of Literature
The word ‘literature’ is used to denote any body of writing, on the one hand,
and artistically valuable texts, on the other hand. In the latter group are works
of the imagination, such as novels, epic poems, and plays. But not all works
of imagination, such as genre fiction, are considered literature proper; in turn,
some non-fictional works, such as works of history, travel stories, and philo-
sophical works, are seen to possess significant literary value. As aesthetics in
general has been eager to find out what art is, literary aesthetics is keen to
know what literature is in the aesthetic sense.
Aestheticians of today are extremely dubious about essentialist definitions
that attempt to ground literature on some intrinsic quality, such as ‘literari-
ness’, or some sort of psychological response to it in the audience. The consen-
sus is that there are no necessary and sufficient conditions that would make a
text literature. Noël Carroll (1988, 149) takes a ‘historical or narrative
approach’ and claims that

Art is a cultural practice that supplies its practitioners with strategies for identi-
fying new objects as art…. Confronted by a new object, a practitioner of the
artworld considers whether it can be shown that the new work is a repetition,
amplification or repudiation of the tradition.

Likewise, Jerrold Levinson (2007, 28–29) states in his ‘recursive’ definition of

art that ‘an artwork … is something that has been intended by someone for
regard or treatment in some overall way that some earlier or preexisting art-
work or artworks are or were correctly regarded or treated’. Robert Stecker
(1996, 694), in turn, proposes a ‘disjunctive’ definition of literature:

[A] work w is a work of literature if and only if w is produced in a linguistic

medium, and,

1. w is a novel, short story, tale, drama, or poem, and the writer of w intended
that it possess aesthetic, cognitive or interpretation-centered value, and the
work is written with sufficient technical skill for it to be possible to take that
intention seriously, or
2. w possesses aesthetic, cognitive or interpretation-centered value to a signifi-
cant degree, or
3. w falls under a predecessor concept to our concept of literature and was writ-
ten while the predecessor concept held sway, or
4. w belongs to the work of a great writer.
 Analytic Aesthetics 299

In Lamarque and Olsen’s (1994, 255–56) ‘institutional’ view, ‘[a] text is iden-
tified as a literary work by recognizing the author’s intention that the text is
produced and meant to be read within the framework of conventions defining
the practice (constituting the institution) of literature’. Further, the aesthetic
value of literature consists of mimesis and poiesis: humanly interesting content
and the creative and imaginative aspect of treating that content (261–66).

Of course, all these characterizations have been disputed. Perhaps there is

only a ‘literary’ way of reading? Such a view has also been criticized for not
being able to distinguish between works that possess literary value and works
that are merely treated as literature (i.e. read with an emphasis on their rhe-
torical features, for instance).

Ontology and Epistemology of Literature

In addition to the definition of literature, there has been a now somewhat
declining interest in the ontology of literary works. How does a literary work
exist? Analytic philosophers have provided subtle and nuanced ontological
systems, of which two major strands are ‘textualism’ and ‘contextualism’.
Textualists maintain that a literary work is to be identified with the text of the
work or, rather, the text type. For Nelson Goodman (1976, 208), ‘[a] literary
work … is … the text or script itself ’. A problem arises when we have multi-
ple versions of the text, such as manuscripts of Joyce’s Ulysses. Moreover, in a
strict textualist view, a literary work of art cannot survive translation, so a
person who has read Notes from the Underground would not have read
Dostoyevsky’s work Записки из подполья.
Contextualism, in turn, maintains that a literary work is a text type tied to
its context of origin. A ‘poem is not … the brute text that it comprises but
rather that text poetically projected in a specific context anchored to a particu-
lar person, time, and place’ (Levinson 1996, 197). Because features of the
art-historical context of the work affect its identity, textually identical texts
that are produced in different historical contexts would constitute different
works. Proponents of contextualism like to refer to Borges’s playful short story
‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’ (‘Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote’,
1939), in which a fictional twentieth-century French writer achieves to pro-
duce fragments that are verbally identical to Cervantes’s Don Quixote but
which are much richer in meaning, for they connote things that Cervantes’s
seventh-century text could not. But what all belongs to the ‘historical context’
of a work and how strict should the requirements be? Which properties of the
300 J. Mikkonen

work’s spatiotemporal context are accidental and which properties essential to

its identity? How much contexts constrain textual meanings and how much
this ultimately affects the works?
Part of the ontology of literature is the question of how fictional characters,
such as Emma Bovary, exist. Eliminativists like Nelson Goodman (1976/1968)
and Kendall L. Walton (1990) attempt to get rid of apparent reference to
fictional entities by paraphrasing them, whereas accommodationists, such as
Nicholas Wolterstorff (1980) and Amie Thomasson (1999), think that fic-
tional entities are nonexistent objects, possible objects, abstract entities,
Platonic kinds, or the like.
While the study on the semantics of fiction has been to a large extent car-
ried out by metaphysicians, the ontology of ‘fictional worlds’ and the question
of ‘fictional truths’ have united aestheticians with metaphysicians and phi-
losophers of language. A literary work does not reveal to its readers everything
about the characters and the events, and readers have to make a great deal of
inferences about the state of affairs in the world of the work. Readers supple-
ment the narrator’s reports on both personal grounds (e.g. spontaneous visual
imaginings) and ways that are suggested by the work. Some indeterminacies
are subject to interpretative debates, for example, whether the ghosts the gov-
erness sees in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898) are hallucinations or
real. How do we determine what is true in a fiction? David Lewis’s (1978)
view of a fictional world as a set of possible worlds and fictional truth as a
matter of counterfactual reasoning has been highly influential and disputed.
Kendall Walton (1990) has scrutinized two competing principles that have
been proposed to explain how we infer fictional truths. According to the
‘Reality Principle’ (RP), readers assume that the fictional world is as much like
the real world as is compatible with the work’s descriptions and make their
inferences accordingly.
Conversely, the ‘Mutual Belief Principle’ (MBP) maintains that our infer-
ences about the world of fiction ought to follow the beliefs common in the
artist’s society.
In a society in which the earth is believed to be flat, adventurers near the
‘edge’ of the world are fictionally in danger of falling down; ‘Our superior
geographical knowledge need not ruin the excitement for us’ (Walton 1990,
152). While both principles turn out to be problematic in Walton’s inspection,
he thinks that ‘MBP not only gives the artist better control over what is fic-
tional; it also, in many cases, gives appreciators easier access to it’ (153).
There are great many disputes around these principles. What are the ‘mutual
beliefs’ of a society—and what if the author is at odds with them? Lamarque
(1990, 335) has criticized the realistic assumptions underlying many theories
 Analytic Aesthetics 301

of fictional truth and their neglect for literary interpretation, such as Lewis’s
‘assumption that there are “facts” about the fictional worlds waiting to be
discovered’. Of late, he has claimed that it is difficult to establish beliefs about
fictional matters and that many fictional ‘facts’ turn out to be disputable
(Lamarque 2017). The question of truth in fiction has received much atten-
tion in aesthetics; little has been written on the aesthetic value of epistemic
ambiguity in literature.

Fiction
The definition of fictionality and the nature of our attitude toward the con-
tent of works of imaginative literature have greatly fascinated analytic philoso-
phers. Today, most analytic aestheticians think that fiction is not to be defined
in semantic terms (reference and truth), for works of fiction often accordingly
refer to real people, places, and events, whereas non-fictional works may fail
in their references (or truth) without becoming fiction. Rather, fictions invite
a certain kind of response in the audience. In his Mimesis as Make-Believe
(1990), Walton made popular the idea that engaging with fiction means
adopting a ‘make-believe’ attitude to the content of the work. Walton turned
the attention to the social dimension of fiction and proposed that fictions are
‘works whose function is to serve as props in games of make-believe’ (72).
The same year Gregory Currie, in his The Nature of Fiction, emphasized the
role of the author’s ‘fictive intention’ as a base for fictionality. In Currie’s view,
influenced by H.P. Grice’s theory of meaning, the informal definition of fic-
tion is as follows:

I want you to make believe some proposition P; I utter a sentence that means P,
intending that you shall recognize this is what the sentence means, and to rec-
ognize that I intend to produce a sentence that means P; and I intend you to
infer from this that I intend you to make believe that P; and, finally, I intend
that you shall, partly as a result of this recognition, come to make believe that P.
(Currie 1990, 31)

Currie thinks that the author’s intention is crucial for us to distinguish

between works that are fictions and works that are merely treated as fictions;
this idea has become a commonplace in the paradigmatic ‘fictive utterance’
theories that followed from Currie’s proposal.
But is there a particular state of mind associated with our engagement with
fiction? Currie (ibid., 21) notes that a newspaper article or a work of history
302 J. Mikkonen

can ‘stimulate the imagination’ the same way fiction does. He proposes that
the reading of fiction differs from the reading of non-fiction not because of
the activity of the imagination but the attitude we adopt toward the content
of the work: make-belief in fiction, belief in non-fiction.
There has been a lively discussion on the nature and kinds of imagination
in our engagement with fiction. Stacie Friend (2008, 151) argues that ‘there
is no interpretation of imagining or make-believe that designates a response
distinctive to fiction as opposed to nonfiction’. She claims that

The class of works that invite make-believe or imagining is substantially broader

than our ordinary notion of fiction. … Vividly told non-fiction narratives invite
us to imagine what it was like for people to live in different times and places, to
undergo wonderful or horrible experiences, and so on. (Friend 2012, 183)

Friend suggests that we should think of fiction as a genre. For her (187), the
distinction between fiction and non-fiction ought to pay attention to ‘how
the whole work is embedded in a larger context, and specifically in certain
practices of reading, writing, criticizing, and so on’.
Derek Matravers also argues that we should not reserve imagination for
fictions; he claims that we imagine fictional narratives not because of their
fictionality but narrativity. In Matravers’s view our engaging with a represen-
tation (narrative) is neutral between non-fiction and fiction and that imagina-
tion does not separate fiction from non-fiction:

The experience of reading de Quincey’s ‘The Revolt of the Tartars’ is the same
whether we believe it is non-fictional, believe it is fictional, or (as is most likely)
we are ignorant of whether it is non-fictional or fictional (in fact, it is a highly
fictionalized account of actual events.). (Matravers 2014, 78)

Matravers wants to replace the distinction between fiction and non-fiction

with a distinction between ‘representations’ and ‘confrontations’: situations in
which action is not possible (what is being represented to us is out of reach)
and situations in which action is possible. (2014, 50, 57).
Currie has also revised his view of imagination in our engagement with fic-
tion. Drawing on a distinction between ‘propositional’ and ‘perceptual’ imag-
ination and the idea of the intensity of imagining, he proposes that ‘imaginings
vary a good deal in their perceptual and emotional intensity’ and that ‘it is
plausible to suppose that our judgments about the fictional status of a work
depend partly on the intensity of the imaginings they provoke’ (Currie 2014,
361).
 Analytic Aesthetics 303

Walton, in turn, has come to question his own definition of fiction, in

which a proposition is fictional only in case there is a prescription that it is to
be imagined: ‘I have come to realize, belatedly, that this is only half right.
Prescriptions to imagine are necessary but not sufficient for fictionality’
(Walton 2015, 17). Walton remarks that metarepresentations, such as stories
within stories and pictures within pictures, are to be imagined but are not
fictional (fictionally true) in the world of the work.
Of recent, analytic aestheticians have much explored the limits of imagin-
ing. There has been a sparkling discussion on ‘imaginative resistance’, our
inability or unwillingness to imagine fictional propositions that clash with our
moral attitudes, for instance. The phenomenon was problematized by Walton,
who found it described by David Hume. Walton (1994, 29) remarks that
‘[m]orally repugnant ideas may so distract or upset us that we are unable to
appreciate whatever aesthetic value the work possesses’—and that we may be
unwilling even to try. He asks that ‘If the text includes the sentence “In killing
her baby, Giselda did the right thing; after all, it was a girl” … are readers
obliged to accept it as fictional that, in doing what they did, Giselda or the
elders behaved in morally proper ways?’ (Walton 1994, 37). Walton thinks
that the difficulty is in our imagining such views justified or true.
Tamar Szabó Gendler proposes that imaginative resistance occurs because
the problematic fictional propositions take a general form: ‘we are unwilling
to follow the author’s lead because in trying to make that world fictional, she
is providing us with a way of looking at this world which we prefer not to
embrace’ (Gendler 2000, 79; emphasis in original; see also Gendler 2006,
160).
The study of fictionality is a healthy topic of research and future will show
what direction the research will take. Perhaps advances in the philosophy of
mind, for instance, will contribute to theories of imagination in aesthetics.

Narrative
The zeitgeisty concept of narrative has received, for instance, ontological, epis-
temological, and aesthetic attention in the philosophy of literature. Yet, sev-
eral analytic philosophers are annoyed by the buzz and skeptical to, say, ethical
or epistemic views grounded on the concept of narrative or narrativity. Paisley
Livingston, for one, claims that there are serious problems in views which link
narrativity and the epistemic merits or demerits of stories. Livingston (2009,
28) argues that narrative enthusiasts have not been able to show that the value
of narratives would be based on their narrativity.
304 J. Mikkonen

A special issue in the debate on the value of narratives in explaining human

action is the difference between real-life narratives, the stories we tell about
ourselves and others, and literary narratives, such as novels. Peter Goldie
(2012, 151) thinks that we have several ‘fictionalizing tendencies’, as we ‘tend
to structure our autobiographical narratives in a way that makes them danger-
ously close to fictional narratives, and in particular to fictional narratives of
the kind one finds in literature’. Goldie however argues that we need narra-
tives for various purposes, such as understanding emotional processes (e.g.
grief ). Also, he maintains that there is a surplus of meaning in narrative
devices, such as dramatic irony and free indirect discourse.
Lamarque has criticized theories that seek to understand real lives with the
help of literary narratives, asserting that literary narratives and our real-life
narratives are radically different. He argues that the content of a literary work
is ‘perspectival’ and essentially given from a particular point of view. According
to him, this ‘opacity’, as he also calls it, ‘runs deep in narrative representation:
tone, irony, humour, connotation, allusion, narrative voice and other aspects
of representation colour all narrative that aspires to literary status’ (Lamarque
2014, 166). Moreover, he claims that to see fictional characters as ordinary
people and their lives essentially like ours is to ‘ignore all essentially literary
qualities and reduce literature to character and plot at the same level of banal-
ity as found in the stories we tell of ourselves’ (ibid., 68).
In the analytic tradition, the discussion on narrative also boils down to so-
called fundamental questions: what exactly are narratives and what is the
value of stories qua stories; how we can distinguish what is due to narrativity
and what is due to temporality or causality in our explanations of human
action; and so on.

Meaning and Interpretation

Analytic philosophy, which many identified as linguistic philosophy at a time,
has been obsessed with truth and meaning. Against this background, it is no
wonder how keen analytic aestheticians have been exploring ‘meaning’ in the
arts. Analytic philosophers of art have studied, for example, the idea of a
‘right’ interpretation and the compatibility of different critical interpretations
(see Krausz (ed.) 2002). Reasoning and justification in art interpretation and
the truth conditions of interpretative judgments have been historically focal
topics. Barrels of ink have been spilled on the question of the author’s inten-
tion in art interpretation, a debate that began with William K. Wimsatt and
 Analytic Aesthetics 305

Monroe C. Beardsley’s article ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ (1946). Today, there

are roughly three parties in the intention debate: ‘anti-intentionalists’, ‘actual
intentionalists’, and ‘hypothetical intentionalists’.
Anti-intentionalist or ‘value maximization’ theories claim that the author’s
semantic intentions—what she meant by her use of words—are irrelevant in
interpretation. Alan Goldman, for one, considers the aim of art interpretation
to enhance the aesthetic experience of artworks. Goldman (1990, 207) states
that ‘an interpretive explanation is best when it successfully aims to maximize
the artistic value of the interpreted work’. The view allows that there can be
equally acceptable but incompatible interpretations; yet, ‘not all interpreta-
tions are equally acceptable or acceptable at all’, for an interpretation has to be
consistent with ‘elements and properties’ of the work and its context (ibid.,
208, 206). Further, Goldman suspects that

[A]rtists’ reticence about their intentions has much more to do with leaving
room for unintended valuable properties in their works leading to better aes-
thetic experiences in audiences and positive evaluations by critics than it has to
do with inabilities to express themselves in words …. (Goldman 2013, 33)

In turn, actual intentionalists are after the intentions of the historical, flesh-
and-blood author. ‘Absolute’ intentionalism, which does not have much sup-
port today, maintained that the meaning of a work of fiction is the meaning
the author intended in composing it. The problem of the view is that an
author could make her work mean anything simply by deciding so. For ‘mod-
erate’ intentionalists of today, such as Noël Carroll, Gary Iseminger, Robert
Stecker, and Paisley Livingston, a correct interpretation of a work of literature
is the meaning of the text compatible with the actual author’s intention. For
instance, in Carroll’s ‘modest’ actual intentionalism, the meaning of a work is
constrained by the textual meaning, or word sequence meaning, and the best
information about the author’s intended meaning, where available. Best infor-
mation, in turn, consists of evidence such as the art-historical context of the
work, common beliefs of the contemporary audience, the author’s public
biography, her oeuvre, and the like (Carroll 2001, 197–98 & 200–01, 2002,
321, 323, 326 & 328).
Hypothetical intentionalism considers the meaning of a literary work an
assumption of either the actual author’s or a ‘hypothetical’ or ‘postulated’
author’s intended meaning by referring to the beliefs and expectations of the
author’s ‘intended’, ‘ideal’, or ‘appropriate’ audience. Jerrold Levinson (2010,
150) writes that
306 J. Mikkonen

[I]t is false that [François Ozon’s film Swimming Pool (2004)] means only what
it was intended to mean by its maker, even where it can somehow be seen as
meaning what it was intended to mean. The film should rather be taken to
mean, ambiguously, many of the other options … which are reasonably attrib-
uted to the filmmaker on both epistemic and aesthetic grounds. The film is a
much richer, more satisfying, work of art when so viewed.

Alexander Nehamas (2002, 101) argues in his version of hypothetical inten-

tionalism that while a literary work is interpreted and understood as its
author’s production, its author is not identical with the historical author.
Instead, Nehamas argues, the author of a literary work is ‘postulated as the
agent whose actions account for the text’s features; he is a character, a hypoth-
esis which is accepted provisionally, guides interpretation, and is in turn mod-
ified in its light’ (Nehamas 1981, 145).
Participants in the debate have been happy to point out problems in their
opponents’ models. Value maximization theories, for example, are said to dis-
tort the work’s nature: Carroll states that Heinrich Anacker’s anti-Semitic
poems are rendered aesthetically more satisfying by regarding them as ironic,
even though there are strong reasons to read them as sincere poems, as
intended by Anacker. Maximizing their aesthetic value would be, however,
dismissing their ‘conversational’ function (Carroll 1992, 122–23 & 178). The
critique of actual intentionalism, in turn, has problematized the realization of
intentions: Saam Trivedi (2001, 196–98) claims that we cannot find out
whether the author’s actual intentions have been successfully realized in an
artwork, because we cannot compare the intentions with some independent
work meaning and see if the two fit. Hypothetical intentionalism is accused
that it will ultimately collapse to actual intentionalism or that it cannot be
distinguished from value maximization theory (for recent criticism, see
Stecker and Davies 2010).
Analytical theories of interpretation have drawn on the philosophy of lan-
guage and applied concepts such as ‘speech acts’ and ‘conversation’ to litera-
ture. One topic of dispute has been whether literary works could be seen as
utterances. Carroll (1992) and Stecker (2006) suggest that because of their
nature as linguistic products of intentional human action, literary works are
utterances similar to those used in everyday discourse. Conversely, Lamarque
and Olsen claim that ‘the importation of philosophy of language into the
philosophy of literature has had badly distorting effects’ (2004b, 204). They
think that complete literary works do not possess a ‘meaning’—which is
something that can be stated. Moreover, they propose that literary interpreta-
tion focuses on stages beyond verbal understanding, namely, thematic inves-
tigation and aesthetic appreciation.
 Analytic Aesthetics 307

Some pluralistic models have been proposed: perhaps there could be several
legitimate interpretative approaches to works of literature, the intentionalist/
conversational approach being one of these. Perhaps a single text could
embody two works, say, a philosophical and a literary work, and these were to
be interpreted accordingly (see Davies 1995, 8–10; Gracia 2001, 52–56).
Debates on meaning and intention in the arts are peculiar. On the one
hand, it would certainly be silly to narrow literary interpretation to a search
for an authorial intention; on the other hand, the communicative dimension
of art and issues such as a historical author’s unintended racism and its rela-
tion to the ‘meaning’ of the work are surely worth exploring.

Literature and Cognition

The ‘cognitivist’ view that artworks, and literary works in particular, could
provide their audiences significant knowledge and insight on worldly matters
has been a perennial issue in aesthetics and one of the key topics in the ana-
lytic tradition. In addition to historical and geographical knowledge, litera-
ture is seen to provide knowledge of concepts (Gibson 2007), modal
knowledge or knowledge of possibilities (Stokes 2006), or knowledge of emo-
tions (Nussbaum 1990), to mention some. (Although analytic aestheticians
speak of the cognitive value of literature, the investigation has been focused on
the epistemic function of literature, which, again, is easy to understand calling
in mind the history of analytic philosophy.)
Cognitivists claim that literary works may communicate their readers prop-
ositional knowledge (knowledge-that) and/or non-propositional knowledge
(knowledge-how or knowledge-what-it-is-like). The traditional cognitivist
position maintains that literary works could provide readers propositional
knowledge by making assertions or implications or by advancing hypotheses
(for some recent views, see, e.g. Currie and Ichino 2017; Pettersson 2000;
Kivy 1997a, b). Traditional is also the thought that literary fictions could
function akin to scientific thought-experiments (see e.g. Swirski 2007). In
turn, the non-propositional camp commonly proposes that literary works
could offer their readers knowledge of what it is like to be a in a certain situa-
tion (Nussbaum 1990; Gaut 2007), typically highlighting empathic identifi-
cation with the reader and a character. So-called neo-cognitivist theories often
build on this non-propositional view, yet maintaining that literary works do
not provide readers new knowledge but ‘deepen’ or ‘clarify’ or ‘enhance’ or
‘enrich’ readers’ existing knowledge (Carroll 1998a; Graham 2000; Gibson
2007). In addition, neo-cognitivists usually see literary works capable of train-
308 J. Mikkonen

ing readers’ cognitive skills: literary works may, for instance, challenge the
reader’s assumptions or her standard ways of thinking (Elgin 1993; John
1998).
But ‘anti-cognitivism’ has also had a wide support. Anti-cognitivists insist
that literary works do not furnish their readers with new knowledge, at least
that of a traditional, propositional kind, and that the works do not therefore
have cognitive value proper. Anti-cognitivists argue that if we understand the
knowledge that literature affords in the traditional sense of the term, we make
literary works subordinate to fact-stating discourse, and the cognitivist’s task
would be to explain how literature can convey knowledge, even though it is
not assertive; the cognitivist ought to explain the distinctive cognitive value of
literature, but so far her appeals to non-standard forms of knowledge are
‘mere’ metaphors with little explanatory value. Moreover, anti-cognitivists
claim that literature’s contributions to knowledge are trivial at best or that the
‘points’ which literary works make are inarticulate or not agreeable among
readers.
If literary works could change a reader’s beliefs, would these changes inevi-
tably be for good? Little has been said of the effects which literary works actu-
ally have on their readers. Partly inspired by the rise of empirical studies on
the cognitive gains of literature, philosophers have started to ponder how
learning from fiction could be studied and what would count as a proof for
the claims on the educative function of literature (see, e.g. Currie 2013).

Literature and Ethics

Literary works allow us to explore moral positions, and many philosophers
have seen special value in this. Martha Nussbaum (1997) has famously
defended the idea that literary works yield edifying lessons. The question is
important in exploring the intrinsic and instrumental values of literature: are
the ethical insights of an artwork part of its literary value? On the other hand,
do ethical ‘flaws’ like an evidently racistic representation lessen the aesthetic
value of an artwork?
Carroll’s (1998b) ‘moderate moralism’ claims that in some cases a moral
defect in a work of art can be an aesthetic defect and that in some cases a moral
virtue can be an aesthetic virtue. Carroll argues that because works of art are
incomplete and require the audience to fill them in or respond to them ‘in a
manner that facilitates the aim of the work’, that response, including its emo-
tional aspects, ‘is part of the design of the artwork’ (1998b, 520). He claims
that American Psycho, for instance, fails aesthetically because ‘the serial killings
 Analytic Aesthetics 309

depicted in the novel are so graphically brutal that readers are not able morally
to get past the gore in order to savour the parody’ (Carroll 1996, 232).
Matthew Kieran, for his part, defends ‘immoralism’ which advances the
view that ‘a work’s value as art can be enhanced in virtue of its immoral char-
acter’. Immoralism holds that ‘imaginatively experiencing morally defective
cognitive-affective responses and attitudes in ways that are morally problem-
atic can deepen one’s understanding and appreciation’ (Kieran 2003, 72).
Kieran reminds one that artworks ‘[d]rawing on our moral judgements, reac-
tions and assessments should not be conflated with arriving at and making the
appropriate ones’ (60). For ‘autonomists’, such as James C. Anderson and
Jeffrey T. Dean, art is a realm of its own. Autonomists claim that ‘it is never
the moral component of the criticism as such that diminishes or strengthens
the value of an artwork qua artwork’ (1998, 152, emphasis in original).

Literature and Emotion

Do we have to respond emotionally to works of literature in order to under-
stand them properly? Many have argued that an emotional engagement with
fiction is a requirement for its proper understanding. It is also common to
connect this view to a cognitivist position and claim that an empathic identi-
fication with a character gives us experiential knowledge or knowledge of
emotions. Susan Feagin (1996, 242–55) has argued that affective responses to
a literary work is a central part of appreciating it and, further, that a work’s
capacity to provide such responses is part of its literary value. For her, fictions
expand the reader’s ‘affective flexibility’. Jenefer Robinson (2005, 110–11)
claims that the reader’s emotional responses toward fictional characters are
themselves ways of understanding the characters and the situations in which
they are. Berys Gaut argues that emotional responses to fictions may enlarge
the reader’s moral understanding:

One way to learn morally is by seeing a person’s situation as relevantly like

another’s to whom we know how to respond, and this can make the moral learn-
ing involved in our response to art both non-banal and aesthetically relevant.
For instance, Tolstoy gives us a portrait of Anna Karenina that has psychological
reality and depth, and Anna is presented in such a way that we are encouraged
to view her sympathetically, rather than as a heartless woman who abandons a
loyal husband. If one comes to learn morally from this artistic achievement,
then one acquires the ability to see a real woman caught in a similar situation as
an Anna Karenina. (Gaut 2007, 173)
310 J. Mikkonen

These positions are accused of being too straightforward and unsophisticated

literary responses (Posner 1997). Also, it has been argued that emotions felt in
literary experience are relative to the reader and the genre of the work and that
the absence of such personal reactions in professional criticism shows that
they are not an integral part of literary response (Lamarque 2009).
In addition to the relevance of emotions in interpretation, analytic philoso-
phers have debated on the ontological status of our emotions in literary expe-
rience. Colin Radford (1975) started an immense debate on the ‘paradox of
fiction’. Radford asks how can we be moved by what we know does not exist?
He considers such emotions genuine but largely irrational. Walton (1978, 13)
suggests that we only ‘make-believedly’ pity Anna; what we feel is a mere
quasi-emotion. Lamarque (1981, 293) argues that our emotions are genuine
as they are toward intentional objects (mental representations).
In turn, the ‘paradox of tragedy’ deals with our urge to engage with dis-
pleasing representations. How is it that we appreciate and gain pleasure from
artworks that seem to offer us distressing experiences? In a characteristically
analytic manner, Aaron Smuts (2009) has typologized the historical and con-
temporary discussion on the matter into six positions: (1) ‘conversion theory’
maintains that the overall experience of painful works of art is (retrospec-
tively) pleasurable; (2) ‘control theories’ hold that we can overcome the pain
as we have the ability to stop the experience at our will; (3) ‘compensation
theories’ state that we gain compensation (e.g. aesthetic pleasure) for our
painful reactions; (4) ‘meta-response theories’ assert that we are glad to see
that, say, we feel pity at the suffering of others; (5) ‘catharsis’ theory claims
that an unpleasant experience purifies—that is, immunizes or refines or
expels—the emotions (pity, fear); and (6) ‘rich experience theories’ argue that
also painful experiences may be valuable and motivating.

Conclusion
There has been relatively little productive intellectual exchange between ana-
lytic philosophers of literature and literary scholars, partly because literary
criticism has in the recent decades been drawing on continental philosophy
and partly because of the divergence of analytic philosophical and critical
interests. Analytic philosophers like to scrutinize general concepts and put
aside historical, political, and social issues that are important in critical
approaches to actual works. Indeed, analytic philosophers’ interest in the pre-
cise meanings of crucial words is so strong that sometimes they go so far as to
invent their literary examples—something that literary critics might find dis-
 Analytic Aesthetics 311

turbing. Then again, rigorous conceptual investigation may have problems in

finding suitable examples from the actual practice. Analytic philosophers need
to turn every conceptual stone, draw all the relevant distinctions, and test
their views with all the relevant counter-examples they can imagine. Of
course, there has been fruitful interchange between analytic philosophers and
literary scholars in the study of fictionality, for instance. But while one might
think that the two disciplines could improve each other in various ways, one
ought to keep in mind their different aims.

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