litprof 's review for:

Aesthetics: A Very Short Introduction by Bence Nanay

2.0

slow-paced

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This book reads like a repetitive and drawn-out argument for taking an open-ended and judgment-free approach to art. Nanay must’ve taken the “mere exposure effect” too much to heart, and thought if he repeatedly exposed us to the same ideas, we’d like them more; instead, I found it frustrating. The global aesthetics chapter had the most information, but it was rather a jumble, and still left me wondering what Nanay sees as significant questions / conversations / debates in aesthetics today. Given that aesthetics is a field of philosophy and music a central form of art that aesthetics should consider, I was dismayed by the author’s lack of understanding of philosophy and music theory. The edition editors should at least have hired readers with basic understanding of those fields to help. This is the second book I’ve read from Oxford’s Very Short Introduction series, and it had a fraction of the content that the first book (Margaret Boden’s on Artificial Intelligence) contained.