Bloomsbury The Aesthetics and Ethics of Copying

The Aesthetics and Ethics of Copying responds to the rapidly changing attitudes towards the use of anothers ideas, styles, and artworks. With advances in technology making the copying of artworks and other artefacts exponentially easier, questions of copying no longer focus on the problems of forgery: they now expand into aesthetic and ethical legal concerns. This volume addresses the changes and provides the first philosophical foundation for an aesthetics and ethics of copying. Scholars from philosophy of art, philosophy of technology, philosophy of law, ethics, legal theory, media studies, art history, literary theory, and sociology discuss the role that copying plays in human culture, confronting the question of howand whycopying fits into our broader system of values. Teasing out the factors and conceptual distinctions that must be accounted for in an ontology of copying, they set a groundwork for understanding the nature of copies and copying, showing how these interweave with ethical and legal concepts. Covering unique concerns for copying in the domain of artworks, from music and art to plays and literature, contributors look at work by artists including Heinrich von Kleist, Robert Rauschenberg, Courbet and Manet and conclude with the normative dimensions of copying in the twenty-first century. By bringing this topic into the philosophical domain and highlighting its philosophical relevance, The Aesthetics and Ethics of Copying establishes the complex conditionsontological, aesthetic, ethical, cultural, and legalthat underlie and complicate the topic. The result is a timely collection that establishes the need for further discussion. Review "The volume ... compiles original essays by not just philosophers, but also scholars working in fields such as art history, communication studies, legal studies, literary studies, media studies, and sociology -- as well as one professional DJ ... While most of the essays are philosophical, the authors do not limit themselves to engaging only with the tradition of analytic -- or even broadly Western -- philosophy. Among the noteworthy achievements of this volume, then, is its truly interdisciplinary nature ... To sum up: this is a volume of significant merit. It should be read by anyone interested in aesthetic, cultural, ethical, legal, or ontological considerations pertaining to copying, broadly construed." - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews "[A] landmark contribution to the philosophical literature on this subject. While rooted in analytic philosophy, the contributors offer a robustly interdisciplinary approach to their theme: evolutionary psychology, law, art history, media studies, and social science are brought to bear on the conceptual and legal questions addressed here about the modern copy ... This collection of essays is valuable to scholars not only because the essays are of such high quality, but because it demonstrates the rewards to be reaped by such a boldly interdisciplinary approach to its subject." - Philosophy in Review About the Author Darren Hudson Hick is Visiting Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University, USA.Reinold Schmücker is a Professor of Philosophy at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, Germany.