Aesthetics : A Comprehensive Anthology

by Cahn, Steven M.; Meskin, Aaron

• ISBN13: 9781405154352
• ISBN10: 1405154357
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-10-01
• Publisher: BLACKWELL PUBL

Summary

From Plato's Ion to works by contemporary philosophers, this anthology showcases classic texts to illuminate the development of philosophical thought about art and the aesthetic. This volume is the most comprehensive collection of readings on aesthetics and the philosophy of art currently available. Brings together the most significant writings in aesthetics and philosophy of art from the past 2500 years Each section includes a useful introductory essay which provides an overview of developments in the field Broken down into three sections: Historical Sources, Modern Theories, and Contemporary Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Thorough, systematic, and flexible, including two alternative tables of contents (historical and topical); an ideal textbook and guide to the field

Author Biography

Steven M. Cahn is Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of nine books, including Fate, Logic, and Time, Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia, revised edition, Puzzles and Perplexities, second edition, and God, Reason, and Religion. He has also edited or co-edited some thirty volumes, including Classics of Western Philosophy, now in its seventh edition.

Aaron Meskin is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds. His publications on aesthetics have appeared in the British Journal of Aesthetics, the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research and a number of anthologies. He is also aesthetics editor for the online journal Philosophy Compass (Wiley-Blackwell).

Table of Contents

Aesthetics: Classic and Contemporary Readings

Edited by Cahn and Meskin

Preface

Historical Sources

The Modern System of the Arts

Ion: Plato

The Republic: Plato

Symposium: Plato

Poetics: Aristotle

Ennead I, vi: Plotinus

Of Music

On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology

Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times: Third Earl of Shaftesbury

Inquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue

Of the Standard of Taste

Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful

Laocoon

Critique of Judgment

Modern Theories

Introduction to Modern Theories

Letter of an Aesthetic Education of Man

Philosophy of Art

The Philosophy of Fine Art

The World as Will and Representation

The Beautiful in Music

The Birth of Tragedy

What is Art?

ÆPsychical DistanceÆ as a Factor in Art and as an Aesthetic Principle

Art

Aesthetics

The Principles of Art

Art as Experience

Feeling and Form

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The Origin of the Work of Art

Aesthetic Theory

Truth and Method

Contemporary Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art

Introduction to Contemporary Aesthetics

Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy

The Role of Theory in Aesthetics

The Artworld

What is Art? An Institutional Analysis

When is Art?

Identifying Art

The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude

Art and its Objects

What a Musical Work Is

Aesthetic Concepts

Beauty Restored

Categories of Art

Appreciation and the Natural Environment

The Intentional Fallacy

The Postulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal

Art Intention and Conversation

The Ethical Criticism of Art

Expressive Properties of Art

Style and Personality in the Literary Work

Emotions in the Music

Fearing Fictions

Oppressive Texts, Resisting Readers and the Gendered Spectator

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