A Bibliography of Bibliographies in Aesthetics by Allan Shields (review)

Books 75 A Bibliography of Bibliographies in Aesthetics. Allan Shields. San Diego State Univ. Press, San Diego, CA, 1974. 79 pp. Paper. Reviewed by Elmer H. Duncan* Due to the rising costs of printing in the U S A . the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism has discontinued publication of its annual bibliography of aesthetics and related fields. Current philosophical sources in aesthetics can still be located in the Philosopher’s Index and the Bibliography of Philosophy. But there is always a need to locate historical sources, bibliographies of aesthetics from the standpoint of the various arts, bibliographies of noted aestheticians, etc. Shields’ work amply meets this need. Its 449 entries cover the whole range of aesthetic topics, from 1900 to the end of 1972 (with a few entries going further back, such as the 1890 Guide to ihe Literature of Aesthetics by Gayley and Scott). It lists very general bibliographies of aesthetics, historical bibliographies and bibliographies of aesthetics from the viewpoints of the visual arts, education, literature, music and psychology. The subject is so vast that few would even pretend to be completely familiar with the literature. The best that students and scholars can do is know where to find the relevant materials. And this requires bibliographies; but bibliographies areuseless if oneis ignorant of their existence or unable to locate them. Students of aesthetics will therefore find Shields’ Bibliography of Bibliographies indispensable. Libraries and serious students of the subject The only weakness (if this could be called a ‘weakness’) of this work is that it is restricted to English language sources. It is to be hoped that similar companion works will be produced for other languages for which they are not available. Shields has provided an excellent, balanced and thorough example for any such future publications. a should have a copy. The Aesthetics of Modernism. Joseph Chiari. Vision, London, 1970. 224 pp. E3.00. Reviewed by Arnold Berleant** Modernism, for Chiari, does not seem to be a coherent art movement or ideology but rather an attitude that characterizes the last three-quarters of a century. This attitude emerged out of the conflict betwen Christianity and scientific rationalism, giving rise to the distinctive mode of thinking, feeling and behaving that characterizes Marxism and existentialism, both of which can be interpreted to retain the religious impulse and scope. In fact, it is this conflict and the corresponding contrary aesthetics of realism and naturalism that grew out of it that supplies Chiari with the central theme of his book. He interprets naturalism as a form of materialism, limited to phenomenal knowledge and physical laws and, thus, to the partial and the fragmentary. Realism, in contrast, he takes as the integration of knowledge of nature and of metaphysical knowledge (p. 51), that is, a synthesis of science,philosophy and theology (p. 52). He apparently identifies modernism with this conception of realism and the book is an elaborate defense of it, together with an attack on those artistic trends that fail to observe its distinctive features. Art, according to Chiari, is realistic when it reveals the essential truth of historio-social reality as ordered by imagination and understood from within (pp. 64, 86). This is extended into a claim about the relation of artistic genius to realism: ‘Genius is the means by which the mystery of the universe and the forces which are at work in history and society are revealed to man. The individual genius is the one whose inner essential structures correspond to the elemental and conflicting forces of the time *Dept. of Philosophy, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76703, U.S.A. **Dept. of Philosophy, C.W. Post Center, Long Island University, Greenvale. NY 11548, U.S.A. in which he lives and who can reveal and express them ...’ (p. 97). ‘The greater the genius the more of reality .., it illumines’ (p. 98). This leads him to condemn naturalism, since it is limited to the mere appearance of objects or to a fragmentary view of reality (p. 101). Naturalism, he claims, offers at most a didacticism or a melodramatic moralism, not the metaphysical vision of order and rightness . It confines itself to pure description, to subjectivism and the relativity of judgment and...