Monroe Beardsley

Monroe Curtis Beardsley (December 10, 1915 – September 18, 1985) was an American philosopher of art. Born and raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut, he was educated at Yale University, where he earned his B.A. in 1936 and Ph.D. in 1939, receiving the John Addison Porter Prize. Beardsley's academic career included teaching positions at Mount Holyoke College and Yale University, but he spent the majority of his career at Swarthmore College (22 years) and Temple University (16 years). His wife, Elizabeth Lane Beardsley, was also a philosopher at Temple. In the field of aesthetics, Beardsley is recognized for promoting the instrumentalist theory of art and the concept of aesthetic experience. He served as president of the American Society for Aesthetics in 1956. For literary critics, Beardsley is known for two essays co-authored with W. K. Wimsatt: "The Intentional Fallacy" and "The Affective Fallacy," which are considered key texts of New Criticism. His published works include "Practical Logic" (1950), "Aesthetics" (1958), and "Aesthetics: A Short History" (1966). He also edited "The European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche." In 1976, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He and his wife were also the general series editors for Prentice-Hall's "Foundations of Philosophy" textbook series.