Monroe Curtis Beardsley (; December 10, 1915 – September 18, 1985) was an American

philosopher of art Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...

Biography

Beardsley was born and raised in

Bridgeport, Connecticut Bridgeport is the List of municipalities in Connecticut, most populous city and a major port in the U.S. state of Connecticut. With a population of 148,654 in 2020, it is also the List of cities by population in New England, fifth-most populous ...

, and educated at Yale University (B.A. 1936, Ph.D. 1939), where he received the John Addison Porter Prize. He taught at a number of colleges and universities, including

Mount Holyoke College Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States. ...

and Yale University, but most of his career was spent at

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

(22 years) and Temple University (16 years). His wife and occasional coauthor, Elizabeth Lane Beardsley, was also a philosopher at Temple. His work in aesthetics is best known for its championing of the

instrumentalist A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...

theory of art and the concept of aesthetic experience. Beardsley was elected president of the American Society for Aesthetics in 1956. Among literary critics, Beardsley is known for two essays written with

W.K. Wimsatt William Kurtz Wimsatt Jr. (November 17, 1907 – December 17, 1975) was an American professor of English, literary theorist, and critic. Wimsatt is often associated with the concept of the intentional fallacy, which he developed with Monroe Beard ...

, "The Intentional Fallacy" and "The Affective Fallacy," both key texts of

New Criticism New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as ...

. His books include: ''Practical Logic'' (1950), ''Aesthetics'' (1958) (an introductory text), and ''Aesthetics: A Short History'' (1966). He also edited a well-regarded survey anthology of philosophy, ''The European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche''. Beardsley, Monroe. The European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche. New-York: Random House Inc, 2007. Print. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1119524915 He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976. He and his wife were over-all series editors for Prentice-Hall's "Foundations of Philosophy," a series of textbooks on different fields within philosophy, written in most cases by leading scholars in those fields.

References

External links

* * Monroe C. Beardsley
"Postscript 1980-: Some Old Problems in New Perspectives,"
in ''Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism'', 1st ed., 1958; 2d ed., 1981.

1915 births 1985 deaths 20th-century American philosophers Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences American literary critics Mount Holyoke College faculty New Criticism Writers from Bridgeport, Connecticut Philosophers of art Swarthmore College faculty Temple University faculty Yale University alumni Yale University faculty 20th-century American non-fiction writers Philosophers from Connecticut Philosophers from New Jersey Philosophers from Massachusetts {{US-philosopher-stub

Biography

See also

References

External links