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    Rights statement: This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Alison Stone, The Aesthetic Theory of Frances Power Cobbe, The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 62, Issue 3, July 2022, Pages 387–403 is available online at:https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayac003

    Accepted author manuscript, 287 KB, PDF document

    Embargo ends: 5/07/24

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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The Aesthetic Theory of Frances Power Cobbe

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>31/07/2022
<mark>Journal</mark>British Journal of Aesthetics
Issue number3
Volume62
Number of pages17
Pages (from-to)387–403
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date5/07/22
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This article contributes to recognizing and recovering women’s voices in the history of aesthetics by examining the aesthetic theory put forward in the 1860s by the Anglo-Irish philosopher and feminist Frances Power Cobbe. Cobbe addressed aesthetics and gender, maintaining that there are female geniuses. She addressed art and morality, arguing that art should always aim to express moral truth, and that artworks that express morally good thoughts poorly are artistically better than works that express morally bad thoughts well. She then modified her stance to argue that beauty contains but does not reduce to goodness. Cobbe also developed a comprehensive account of the arts, their relative merits, and the criteria for evaluating them. Her account had problems; nonetheless, it was ambitious, original, and interesting, and Cobbe deserves to be recognized as a woman who made significant interventions in the history of aesthetics.

Bibliographic note

This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Alison Stone, The Aesthetic Theory of Frances Power Cobbe, The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 62, Issue 3, July 2022, Pages 387–403 is available online at:https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayac003