The Aesthetics and Ethics of Copying - by Darren Hudson Hick & Reinold Schmücker (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Aesthetics and Ethics of Copying responds to the rapidly changing attitudes towards the use of another's 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 how-and why-copying 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 conditions-ontological, aesthetic, ethical, cultural, and legal-that underlie and complicate the topic. The result is a timely collection that establishes the need for further discussion.

Review Quotes

The Aesthetics and Ethics of Copying brings together an interdisciplinary field of scholars to answer the most pressing philosophical questions about copies and copying from a contemporary perspective. This is a fantastic collection.
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

For too long lawyers and legislatures have accepted a loose consensus on the nature and purpose of the 'intangible things' that are regulated by copyright law. The lawyerly consensus now suffers from slippage as legislative and treaty developments put unexpected pressures on existing concepts. The instant volume, The Aesthetics and Ethics of Copying, addresses crucial questions of definition, aesthetic experience, and copyright policy, and employs the kind of philosophic rigor that the field increasingly needs. I recommend this set of fascinating readings very highly.
Philosophy in Review

This is an immensely helpful and timely volume, richly problematizing the concept of the copy and the act of copying from a variety of perspectives, disciplines and normative commitments, thus clearly establishing the need to think beyond copies as mere instances of economic value in the marketplace of intangibles. Obligatory, rewarding and enjoyable reading for anyone interested in intellectual property and/or its relation to broader cultural concerns.
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

About the Author

Darren Hudson Hick is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Texas Tech University, USA. He is the author of numerous articles on issues in copyright and the ontology of art and Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art (2012).

Reinold Schmücker is a Professor of Philosophy at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, Germany. He is the author of Was ist Kunst? Eine Grundlegung [What Is Art? A Foundation] (1998; Revised Edition, 2014) and editor of several German language collected volumes on aesthetics and the philosophy of art.