Aesthetics

Though philosopher Alfred North Whitehead did not dedicate any books or articles specifically to aesthetics, aesthetic motifs nonetheless permeate his entire body of work. Despite this, aestheticians have devoted little attention to Whitehead. In this...

'A truly transformative read' Sunday Times STYLE'More than ever, we need books like this' Jessica Seaton, Co-Founder of Toast and author of Gather, Cook, FeastA whole new way of looking at the world - and your life - inspired by centuries-old Japanese...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780394719856Author Friedrich NietzscheFormat PaperbackPage Count 416Imprint Random House USA IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams)...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780981484600Author Leonard KorenFormat PaperbackPage Count 96Imprint Imperfect PublishingPublisher Imperfect PublishingWeight(grams) 198gDimensions(mm)...

Based on the BBC television series, John Berger's Ways of Seeing is a unique look at the way we view art, published as part of the Penguin on Design series in Penguin Modern Classics.'Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it...

40th anniversary edition of the bestselling modern classic: Milan Kundera's iconic novel of love and politics in communist Czechoslovakia.'Shamelessly clever ... Exhilaratingly subversive and funny.' Independent'A modern classic ... As relevant now as...

An unmissable essay from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Don't Touch My Hair and What White People Can Do Next 'A magnificent text' KATY HESSEL 'This is so sharp, and funny, and will be so generously liberating for so many - read it!'...

An intimate reflection on Japanese art and architecture from one of the country's greatest novelists.This is an enchanting essay on aesthetics by one of the greatest Japanese novelists. Tanizaki's eye ranges over architecture, jade, food, toilets, and...

An exploration of public performance in everyday life, by the leading cultural and social thinkerThe Performer explores the relations between performing in art (particularly music), politics and everyday experience. It focuses on the bodily and physical...

The greatest wisdom comes from the smallest creaturesThere is so much we can learn from birds. Through twenty-two little lessons of wisdom inspired by how birds live, this charming french book will help you spread your wings and soar.We often need the...

In Either/Or, using the voices of two characters - the aesthetic young man of part one, called simply 'A', and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section - Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence, contemplating subjects as...

"Radical and inspiring ... Yanagi's vision puts the connection between heart and hand before the transient and commercial" - Edmund de WaalThe daily lives of ordinary people are replete with objects, common things used in commonplace settings. These...

The Joyous Science is a liberating voyage of discovery as Nietzsche's realization that 'God is dead' and his critique of morality, the arts and modernity give way to an exhilarating doctrine of self-emancipation and the concept of eternal recurrence...

Is philosophy still alive? Are there any alternatives to univocal postmodernist thought? Is there any point in asking age-old questions about the existence of reality and the possibility of knowledge, about being (ontology) and knowing (epistemology)? In...

Walter Benjamin - philosopher, essayist, literary and cultural theorist - was one of the most original writers and thinkers of the twentieth century. This new selection brings together Benjamin's major works, including 'One-Way Street', his dreamlike,...

In the frenzied final years of the Weimar Republic, amid economic collapse and mounting political catastrophe, Walter Benjamin emerged as the most original practicing literary critic and public intellectual in the German-speaking world. Volume 2 of the...

'What is poetry, how many kinds of it are there, and what are their specific effects?' Aristotle's Poetics is the most influential book on poetry ever written. A founding text of European aesthetics and literary criticism, from it stems much of our...

Tap into your inner power with this mind-opening guide to vibrational-based living from Instagram star and self-help pioneer behind the internet community Vibrate Higher Daily. "There is another way of being in the world. There is a better way to...

Confessions of a Heretic is a collection of provocative essays by the influential social commentator and polemicist Roger Scruton. Each "confession" reveals aspects of the author's thinking that his critics would probably have advised him to keep to...

'Yes, what is Dionysian? - This book provides an answer - "a man who knows" speaks in it, the initiate and disciple of his god.' The Birth of Tragedy (1872) is a book about the origins of Greek tragedy and its relevance to the German culture of its...

Walter Benjamin is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic intellectual figures of this century. Not only was he a thinker who made an enormous impact with his critical and philosophical writings, he shattered disciplinary and stylistic conventions...

Nietzsche's first published book, The Birth of Tragedy is a compelling argument for the necessity of art in lifeThis landmark work of criticism is fuelled by Nietzsche's enthusiasms for Greek tragedy, the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the music of...

One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history In his near-contemporary account of classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that...

Edmund Burke was one of the foremost philosophers of the eighteenth century and wrote widely on aesthetics, politics and society. In this landmark work, he propounds his theory that the sublime and the beautiful should be regarded as distinct and wholly...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer turns his eye to the seventeenth-century Dutch Golden Age Twenty years ago, Benjamin Moser followed a love affair to an ancient Dutch town. In order to make sense of this new place, he threw himself into the Dutch...

Why do we make things? Why do we choose the emotionally and physically demanding work of bringing new objects into the world with creativity and skill? Why does it matter that we make things well? What is the nature of work? And what is the nature of a...

Today, artists are engaged in investigation. They probe corruption, state violence, environmental destruction and repressive technologies. At the same time, fields not usually associated with aesthetics make powerful use of it. Journalists and legal...

'Foucault leaves no reader untouched or unchanged' Edward SaidAesthetics, the second volume of the complete collection of Michel Foucault's courses, articles and interviews, focuses on the philosophy, literature and art which informed his engagement with...

One of the last surviving members of the futurist generation, Bruno Munari's Design as Art is an illustrated journey into the artistic possibilities of modern design translated by Patrick Creagh published as part of the 'Penguin on Design' series in...

What ends should designers pursue? To what extent should they care about the societal and environmental impact of their work? And why should they care at all? Given the key influence design has on the way people live their lives, designing is fraught...

Taste as Experience puts the pleasure of food at the center of human experience. It shows how the sense of taste informs our preferences for and relationship to nature, pushes us toward ethical practices of consumption, and impresses upon us the...

An invitation to readers from every walk of life to rediscover the impractical splendors of a life of learningIn an overloaded, superficial, technological world, in which almost everything and everybody is judged by its usefulness, where can we turn for...

'To create today means to create dangerously'This new collection contains some of Camus' most brilliant political writing as he reflects on moral responsibility and the role of the artist in the world. Letters to a German Friend, written and published...

Already a classic, this landmark account of early Western thought now appears in a new edition with expanded coverage of the Middle Ages. The Dream of Reason takes a fresh look at the writings of the great thinkers of classic philosophy and questions...

Persuasion analyzed.Aristotle (384-322 BC), the great Greek thinker, researcher, and educator, ranks among the most important and influential figures in the history of philosophy, theology, and science. He joined Plato's Academy in Athens in 367 and...

Marginalized by the scientific age the lessons of the senses have been overtaken by the dominance of language and the information revolution. With The Five Senses Serres traces a topology of human perception, writing against the Cartesian tradition and...

The thinkers of ancient Egypt, Greece and India recognized that numbers governed much of what they saw in their world and hence provided an approach to its divine creator. Robert Lawlor sets out the system that determines the dimension and the form of...

THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom one of our greatest voices in modern philosophy, author of The Course of Love, The Consolations of Philosophy and The School of Life, The Architecture of Happiness explores the fascinating hidden links between...

'To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, religion, all in one'"Brilliant" - Philip Hoare, New StatesmanJohn Ruskin - born 200 years ago, in February 1819 - was the greatest critic of his age: a critic not only of art and architecture but of society and life...

Postmodernism has been a buzzword in contemporary society for the last decade. But how can it be defined? In this Very Short Introduction Christopher Butler challenges and explores the key ideas of postmodernists, and their engagement with theory,...