Aesthetics

An Ethics of Improvisation takes up the puzzles and lessons of improvised music in order to theorize the building blocks of a politically just society. The investigation of what politics can learn from the people who perform and listen to musical...

Though the progress of technology continually pushes life toward virtual existence, the last decade has witnessed a renewed focus on materiality. Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman bears witness to the attention paid by literary theorists, digital...

The writings of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari offer the most enduring and controversial contributions to the theory and practice of art in post-war Continental thought. However, these writings are both so wide-ranging and so challenging that much of...

The notion of landscape typically seems innocuous, associated with leisure and contemplation. Likewise, aesthetics is often seen as apolitical, a matter of subjective tastes and preferences. This book challenges the common understanding of these...

In addition to being a great composer, Richard Wagner was also an important philosopher. Julian Young begins by examining the philosophy of art and society Wagner constructs during his time as a revolutionary anarchist-communist. Modernity, Wagner...

In addition to being a great composer, Richard Wagner was also an important philosopher. Julian Young begins by examining the philosophy of art and society Wagner constructs during his time as a revolutionary anarchist-communist. Modernity, Wagner...

What is a television series? A widespread answer takes it to be a totality of episodes and seasons. Luca Bandirali and Enrico Terrone argue against this characterization. In Concept TV: An Aesthetics of Television Series, they contend that television...

De-Signing Design: Cartographies of Theory and Practice throws new light on the terrain between theory and practice in transdisciplinary discourses of design and art. The editors, Elizabeth Grierson, Harriet Edquist, and Helene Frichot, bring together...

A Hermeneutics of Poetic Education: The Play of the In-Between explores the ways in which both play and poetry orient us toward what surpasses us. Catherine Homan develops an original account of poetic education that builds on Friedrich Hoelderlin's idea...

Aesthetic Transcendentalism is a philosophy endorsing the qualitative and creative aspects of nature. Theoretically it argues for a metaphysical dimension of nature that is aesthetically real, pluralistic, and prolific. It directs our attention to the...

Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars, Intermedialities: Philosophy, Arts, Politics is a comprehensive collection devoted to the new field of research called "intermedialities." The concept of intermedialities...

Nature's Sublime uses a radical new form of phenomenology to probe into the deepest traits of the human process in its individual, social, religious, and aesthetic dimensions. Starting with the selving process the essay describes the role of signs and...

The Aesthetic Sense of Life is a fast-moving book about how to see the world and get value from living every day with the "everyday." Do the infinite number of sensations we're surrounded with every day have intrinsic value? If not, what gives them...

Ludwig Wittgenstein loved movies, and based on his remarks on watching them, there is a strong connection between his experience of watching films and his thoughts on aesthetics. Furthermore, however, Wittgenstein himself has been invoked in recent...

Creatures of Attention excavates the early modern prehistory of our late modern crises of attention. At the threshold of modernity, philosophers, scientists, and poets across Europe began to see attention as the key to autonomous agency and knowledge...

Creatures of Attention excavates the early modern prehistory of our late modern crises of attention. At the threshold of modernity, philosophers, scientists, and poets across Europe began to see attention as the key to autonomous agency and knowledge...

Interpretation and Construction examines the interpretation and products of intentional human behavior, focusing primarily on issues in art, law, and everyday speech. Focuses on artistic interpretation, but also includes extended discussion of...

Although philosophers have examined and commented on music for centuries, Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, had frustratingly little to say about music-directly, at least. This volume, the first to tackle Heidegger...

Detective fiction and philosophy3/4moral philosophy in particular3/4may seem like an odd combination. Working within the framework offered by neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, this book makes the case that moral philosophers ought to take murder mysteries...

Although philosophers have examined and commented on music for centuries, Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, had frustratingly little to say about music-directly, at least. This volume, the first to tackle Heidegger...

The concern in this essay is for our age as one suffering an intellectual severance between our response to existential reality in which the beauty of a created particular thing is divorced from the Cause of that thing's existence. The separation speaks...

Traditional aesthetics has tried to locate the reasons for aesthetic value in the transcendental subject while neglecting the importance of culture, even though it is obvious that artistic styles vary from culture to culture in both a geographical and...

In this detailed and comprehensive study of concepts from Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of time, Tromans undertakes a series of practice as research projects that reformulate Deleuze's work via what Tromans calls a "musical-philosophical" practice. Tromans...

In global terms, creative industries are on the rise, as are new media investigations in art and initiatives that encourage innovation in the arts, for end-use in the economy. However, there is a significant lack of critical reflection on this form of...

Should politically concerned and engaged artistic production disregard questions or/and requirements of aesthetic reception and value? Whether art should be "aesthetic" or "political" is not a new question. Therefore, in spite of those several...

Heidegger's interpretations of the poetry of Hoelderlin are central to Heidegger's later philosophy and have determined the mainstream reception of Hoelderlin's poetry. Gosetti-Ferencei argues that Heidegger has overlooked central elements in...

Beginning with the assertion that earth is the elemental place that grants an abode to humans and to other living things, in Senses of Landscape the philosopher John Sallis turns to landscapes, and in particular to their representation in painting, to...

In this book, Barry and Gail Lord focus their two lifetimes of international experience working in the cultural sector on the challenging questions of why and how culture changes. They situate their discourse on aesthetic culture within a broad and...

Karl Morrison discusses historical writing at a turning point in European culture: the so-called Renaissance of the twelfth century. Why do texts considered at that time to be masterpieces seem now to be fragmentary and full of contradictions? Morrison...

This is a sweeping and provocative work of aesthetic theory: a trenchant critique of the philosophy of art as it developed from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, combined with a carefully reasoned plea for a new and more flexible...

Updated and revised, the Second Edition of Danto and His Critics presents a series of essays by leading Danto scholars who offer their critical assessment of the influential works and ideas of Arthur C. Danto, the Johnsonian Professor Emeritus in the...

Connecting aesthetic experience with our experience of nature or with other cultural artifacts, Aesthetics as Phenomenology focuses on what art means for cognition, recognition, and affect-how art changes our everyday disposition or behavior. Gunter...

Since the middle of the twentieth century, virtue ethics has enriched the range of philosophical approaches to normative ethics, often drawing on the work of the ancient Greeks, who offered accounts of the virtues that have become part of contemporary...

What is the difference between judging someone to be good and judging them to be kind? Both judgements are typically positive, but the latter seems to offer more description of the person: we get a more specific sense of what they are like. Very general...

Antithetical Arts constitutes a defence of musical formalism against those who would put literary interpretations on the absolute music canon. In Part I, the historical origins of both the literary interpretation of absolute music and musical formalism...

In De Gustibus Peter Kivy deals with a question that has never been fully addressed by philosophers of art: why do we argue about art? We argue about the 'facts' of the world either to influence people's behaviour or simply to get them to see what we...

Argument and imagination are often interdependent. The Aesthetics of Argument is concerned with how this relationship may bear on argument's concern with truth, not just persuasion, and with the enhancement of understanding such interdependence may bring...

Does philosophy gain or lose when it is embedded within literature or embodied by drama? Does literary criticism gain or lose when it turns to literary works as occasions for abstract reflection? Leading literary scholars and philosophers interrogate...

Oedipus presents ceaseless paradoxes that have fascinated readers for centuries. He is proud of his intellect, but he does not know himself and succumbs easily to self-deceptions. As a ruler he expresses the greatest good will toward his people, but as...

Since its publication in 1890, Ibsen's Hedda Gabler has been a recurring point of fascination for readers, theater audiences, and artists alike. Newly married, yet utterly bored, the character of Hedda Gabler evokes reflection on beauty, love, passion,...