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 t ...

Biography

Beardsley was born and raised in

Bridgeport, Connecticut Bridgeport is the 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 fifth-most populous in New England. Located in eastern Fairfield County at the mouth of the Pequo ...

, and educated at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

(B.A. 1936, Ph.D. 1939), where he received the

John Addison Porter John Addison Porter (March 15, 1822 – August 25, 1866) was an American professor of chemistry and physician. He is the namesake of the John Addison Porter Prize and was a founder of the Scroll and Key senior society of Yale University. Acade ...

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 liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeducational colleges in the United States. It was established as ...

(22 years) and

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then calle ...

(16 years). His wife and occasional coauthor, Elizabeth Lane Beardsley, was also a philosopher at Temple. His work in

aesthetics 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 t ...

is best known for its championing of the instrumentalist 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, "The

Intentional Fallacy In literary theory and aesthetics, authorial intent refers to an author's intent as it is encoded in their work. Authorial intentionalism is the view that an author's intentions should constrain the ways in which a text is properly interpreted. Op ...

" 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 The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

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