Thinker · TH-0242
Jerrold Levinson
Jerrold Levinson is an American philosopher of art and music who taught for many years at the University of Maryland, College Park. On artistic…
b. 1948 · College Park, Maryland
Traditions: Analytic
Jerrold Levinson is an American philosopher of art and music who taught for many years at the University of Maryland, College Park. On artistic intention he defends hypothetical intentionalism: a work means what an ideal, informed audience would best hypothesise its author intended, rather than what the author actually intended or what the text alone allows. He has also offered an influential historical definition of art and wide-ranging work on the metaphysics and experience of music.
Key ideas
- Hypothetical intentionalism: a work's meaning is the intention best attributed to its author by an informed, appropriate audience.
- Actual intentions that do not show in the work and its context do not fix its meaning.
- Something is art if it is seriously intended to be regarded in ways in which earlier artworks have been correctly regarded.
- Musical works are structures indicated by a composer at a particular time, not timeless abstract patterns.
Major works
- "Defining Art Historically" (1979, British Journal of Aesthetics)
- Music, Art, and Metaphysics (1990)
- The Pleasures of Aesthetics (1996)
- Music in the Moment (1997)
In the conversation
- Question How can a piece of music be sad when it has no feelings to have?
- Debate A translator cannot afford to be an anti-intentionalist
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where Jerrold Levinson takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 5.2.2 Artistic Intention Does the artist get to say what the work means?