A groundbreaking analysis of Alfred North Whitehead’s thinking on aesthetics.
 
Though philosopher Alfred North Whitehead did not dedicate any books or articles specifically to aesthetics, aesthetic motifs nonetheless permeate his entire body of work. Despite this, aestheticians have devoted little attention to Whitehead. In this book, four scholars of aesthetics provide another angle from which Whiteheadian aesthetics might be reconstructed. Paying special attention to the notion of aesthetic experience, the authors analyze abstraction versus concreteness, immediacy versus mediation, and aesthetic contextualism versus aesthetic isolationism. The concepts of creativity and rhythm are crucial to their interpretation of Whiteheadian aesthetics. Using these concepts, the book interprets the motif of the processes by which experience is harmonized, the sensation of the quality of the whole, and directedness towards novelty.
 

Ondřej Dadejík is assistant professor of aesthetics at Charles University and the University of Southern Bohemia. Martin Kaplický is assistant professor of aesthetics at Charles University and the University of Southern Bohemia. He also teaches at DAMU, the Theatre Faculty of Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts. Miloš Ševčík is head of the aesthetics department at Charles University. Vlastimil Zuska is professor of phenomenology and aesthetics at Charles University.

 

Preface 7
I. Whitehead’s Aesthetic Philosophy and Implicit Aesthetics 10
II. Whitehead and Dewey on the Aesthetic Experience and Art:
Parallels and Differences 33
III. Whitehead and Bergson:
Immediacy, Harmony, Rhythm, and Innovation 92
IV. Aesthetic Experience Reconsidered from a Process Perspective 136
Bibliography 168