An excellent question. One can imagine two very different types ofenjoyment that would lead to two very different answers to yourquestion. We might enjoy something because it is familiar, and thusserves to comfort or even reinforce our sense of who we are, and thevalue of who we are. (If I had a choice, I would call this the 'pizzaand beer' theory, after my personal paradigm of what is familiar andenjoyable.) This line of thinking would lend itself to theposition you express in your last question: human productions, evenfrom long ago or far away, rest on a baseline of distinctly humanbeliefs, values or modes of thought that make them in some way'familiar' and thus enjoyable. On the other hand, it also seems reasonable to argue thatsomething alien to me can be enjoyed precisely because it is alien,new, different, or challenging. This suggests that Gilgamesh isenjoyable because it is unfamiliar and continues to resistassimilation into the familiar. These two modes of enjoyment have a certain...

You are certainly not alone in having a little trouble! These terms are used by Nietzsche in his Birth of Tragedy, which was his first published book. It is important to keep a few things in mind when reading this book. First, Nietzsche’s explicit intent was not to talk about the Greeks at all, but rather to talk about the contemporary European scene by way of a complex historical analogy with Greece. Thus, it is not even clear whether any particular artists that Nietzsche may have had in mind are to found in ancient Greece, or 19 th Century Germany. Second, Nietzsche is employing a fairly conventional anthropological notion: that deities and myths are ideal representations of underlying cultural trends. Thus the Apollonian and Dionysian as concepts stand for trends or forces in Greek culture rather than specific cultural products. Third, Nietzsche is also not particularly interested in the Apollonian or Dionysian in themselves. He becomes interested only insofar as these two cultural forms work...

Aesthetic appreciation means well-informed, skilled and close attention to a work of art, all of which can be improved by various types of education. It may be that philosophers of aesthetics tend to not use the word 'appreciation', but the constituent ideas are certainly important. Have a look at previous answers on this site under the heading of 'art': quite a few of them concern context, culture or knowledge.

I think there are actually two questions here. First, the question about the value of 'subtlety'; second, about the value of 'showing' rather than telling. In other words, I'm not convinced that the latter is a definition of 'subtlety'; it seems to me that one can tell with subtlety, and show crudely. So, with apologies, I’ll just look at the showing/telling distinction. We’ll define ‘telling’ as straight-forward, careful, factual (or apparently factual) description. Showing, by contrast, means somehow to make the subject-matter seem real to us, as well as to make it seem important, affecting, and interesting. Since the subject may not be real at all, this involves creating an illusion. Probably the two are not entirely distinct: it may be impossible to show without also telling something. Now, what you call 'telling' is valued in many areas: in journalism, science, history, documentary film-making, and so forth. I suggest that an answer to your question may also be the answer...

A good question. Every human production seems to have criteria according to which it can be judged successful or unsuccessful. For example, the 'latest Ben Stiller' movie is intended by its makers to make people laugh (at the right times), feel good, and thus buy cinema tickets and DVDs. The consumers are by and large happy to agree with this set of criteria. A product that matches its criteria is 'successful'. A film that everyone agrees is a comedy, but at which no one laughs, is unsuccessful. One problem arises when there is disagreement about success: one critic finds a movie funny, another finds it boring. Another problem is when more than one set of criteria are in use: the director wants to make a film about an issue, but the studio wants to sell tickets. Ben Stiller wants to play a serious role, but his public just want him to be funny. A comedy is deemed funny by many, but is condemned by others as demeaning to some group (thus, it is ‘unsuccessful’ according to criteria that...

Yes! Even if we agreed that a 'real emotion' was a necessary feature of all art (and that's a big 'if'), it might not be the only feature. For example, the emotion would still need to be well expressed or communicated; the product might need to avoid being banal or commonplace; we might think it needs also to show or teach us something. I would like to add that, supposing art does have something to do with emotion, there is still much to recommend Wordsworth's notion that poetry at least should have its origin in 'emotion recollected in tranquility'.

A great question! There may be a middle ground to the answer. Beautiful natural objects, and beautiful poetic objects, might both be considered beautiful because of complex or harmonious formal properties that evoke certain responses (this is, roughly, Kant). If this is the case, the a beautiful poem about something ugly would function differently from a beautiful poem about something beautiful. In the former case, the beauty would be purely formal; in the latter, it would be in part representational. Again, a great question, although I suspect it might also be misleading. Many well-known poems about nature are not actually about nature in a straightforward sense. Poems are rarely like landscape paintings. (Come to think of it, neither are landscape paintings.)

A fascinating question. I suspect that art appreciation might well be important, although perhaps only as a symptom of an underlying difference. Let's look at the question more generally. It is important for us to know what are the essential differences between humans and other animals for two reasons. First, because it is an important part of understanding who we are. Second, because we eat animals, wear their skins, keep them in zoos, experiment on them and so forth -- all things that we tend to feel are morally wrong with respect to human beings. Philosophers, then, tend to be divided into three very general camps. 1. Those who believe that there are morally significant differences between human beings and animals. 2. Those who believe that there are not such differences, and thus tend to argue for animal rights. 3. Those who feel this is the wrong question to be asking. Here, we'll ignore the third group, for simplicity. The most common distinctions given by...