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Definition:
The questions of an authors intentions, and to what degree anyone should care about them,
constitute an important aspect of debate in the field of aesthetics. The first issue to realize is
that there are two types of intention: original and achieved.
Original intention is what we normally think of when we consider an artist's intentions. It is whatever effect the artist was hoping to achieve. What the artist actually achieve is labeled achieved intention. The former requires putting one's self in the mind of the artist, whereas the latter requires putting one's self in the actual work.
It is a common thread in postmodern criticism, however, that we should not "privilege" the author and give any great consideration to what the author wanted or meant. Instead, meaning is created in the relationship between the work and the viewer/reader - what the author "meant" simply isn't relevant.
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Related Resources:
What is Aesthetics?
In philosophy, aesthetics is the study of beauty and taste, whether in the form of the comic, the tragic or the sublime. Aesthetics has traditionally been part of other philosophical pursuits like the investigation of epistemology or ethics. However, it started to come into its own and become a more independent pursuit under Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher who saw aesthetics as a unitary and self-sufficient type of human experience.What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?
