Cover for SLEINIS: Art and Freedom. Click for larger image

Art and Freedom

What does a life with art offer that a life without art does not?

What does a life with art offer that a life without art does not? Art and Freedom asserts that the fundamental point of the enterprise of art is the creation and delivery of values that are not singularly available in the nonart world. E. E. Sleinis discusses visual art, literature, music, theater, and other art forms, arguing that as art both liberates and provides new points of focus and awareness, the art enterprise depends on a positive freeing from the nonart world, rather than on mere addition to it. Art and Freedom introduces a novel classificatory system for representation, expression, and formalist theories of art. Sleinis argues that a characteristic defect of contemporary theories of art is their neglect of the issue of value. Challenging these reductive, formalist notions of art, he emphasizes the potential, and the need, for art to evolve and make progress in ways comparable to the sciences, albeit on a very different model. A smart blend of incisive commentary and illuminating philosophy, Art and Freedom provides a useful context for transforming a sometimes baffling medium into a means of fostering personal growth and creating and sharing values. “The clearest, most carefully developed piece of philosophy I have ever read. Sleinis’s extensive knowledge of the arts themselves enables him to supply examples that are illuminating. A major contribution to aesthetics.” -- George Dickie, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of Art and Aesthetic: An Institutional Approach

Related Titles

previous book next book
Nietzsche's Revaluation of Values

A Study in Strategies

E. E. Sleinis

Journal of Animal Ethics

Edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla N. Cohn

Political Writings

Simone de Beauvoir

Last Works

Moses Mendelssohn

Loser Sons

Politics and Authority

Avital Ronell

Beauvoir and Her Sisters

The Politics of Women's Bodies in France

Sandra Reineke

Taking French Feminism to the Streets

Fadela Amara and the Rise of Ni Putes Ni Soumises

Edited and Translated by Brittany Murray and Diane Perpich

Races of Mankind

The Sculptures of Malvina Hoffman

Marianne Kinkel

Howard Pyle

Imagining an American School of Art

Jill P. May and Robert E. May