Philosophy : Aesthetics

Theodor Adorno (1903-69) was undoubtedly the foremost thinker of the Frankfurt School, the influential group of German thinkers that fled to the US in the 1930s, including such thinkers as Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer. His work has proved enormously influential in sociology, philosophy and cultural theory. Aesthetic Theory is Adorno's posthumous magnum opus and the culmination of a lifetime's investigation. Analysing the sublime, the ugly and the beautiful, Adorno shows how such concepts frame and distil human experience and that it is human experience that ultimately underlies aesthetics. In Adorno’s formulation ‘art is the sedimented history of human misery’. Edited by Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedeman Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor. more...

Price: $180.00

This volume explores the relationship between Kant' s aesthetic theory and his critical epistemology as articulated in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of the Power of Judgment. The essays revise our understanding of Kant's epistemology, including his notions of discursive understanding, experience, and objective judgment. more...

Price: $64.00

This books presents fresh and fascinating insights into our interpretation of the environment and shows how our aesthetic experience encompasses nature rather than art. more...

Price: $36.95

Peter Kivy presents a fascinating critical examination of the two rival ways of understanding instrumental music. He argues against 'literary' interpretation in terms of representational or narrative content, and defends musical formalism. Along the way he discusses interpretations of a range of works in the canon of absolute music. - ;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 are laid out. In Part II, specific attempts to put literary interpretations on various works of the absolute music canon are examined and criticized. Finally, in Part III, the question is raised as to what the human. significance of absolute music is, if it does not lie in its representational or narrative content. The answer is that, as yet, philosophy has no answer, and that the question should be considered an important one for philosophers of art to consider, and to try to answer without appeal to representational or. narrative content. - more...

Price: $55.00

A timely and philosophically significant contribution to modern aesthetics featuring some of the best contemporary work in philosophical studies of literature, moral beliefs, and thinking in art.:.; Reflects the importance of a moral life of engagement with works of art.; Forms part of the prestigious New Directions in Aesthetics series, which confronts the most intriguing problems in aesthetics and the philosophy of art today. more...

Price: $89.95