History of Philosophy Workshop: Daniel Whiting (University of Southampton), "Is Margaret Cavendish an Aesthetician?"

*Please be aware that Harvard Yard is closed to non-Harvard ID holders today. Contact kate_grant@fas.harvard.edu if you do not have a Harvard ID and plan to attend the workshop.

Abstract: According to Paul Guyer, aesthetics—or, more cautiously, modern aesthetics—is fundamentally and at its core a debate as to whether aesthetic experience involves (i) a distinctive form of knowledge, (ii) an emotional experience, or (iii) a free play of the imagination. Guyer adds that aesthetics—so understood—originates in the eighteenth century. Of course, Guyer's conception of the discipline of aesthetics is a contentious one. But my aim in this paper is not to challenge it. Instead, I will show that Margaret Cavendish's reflections on poetry not only contain each of ideas (i-iii). Indeed, I will show that Cavendish's account of the experience of writing and reading poetry offer a unique synthesis of those ideas. This is an independently interesting result. But it also shows that aesthetics—as Guyer characterizes it—dates back at least to the mid-seventeenth century.