Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Art

by Edited by Paul Mattick, Jr

• ISBN13: 9780521066839
• ISBN10: 0521066832
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-06-19
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

This collection of essays explores the rise of aesthetics as a response to, and as a part of, the reshaping of the arts in modern society. The theories of art developed under the name of 'aesthetics' in the eighteenth century have traditionally been understood as contributions to a field of study in existence since the time of Plato. If art is a practice to be found in all human societies, then the philosophy of art is the search for universal features of that practice, which can be stated in definitions of art and beauty. However, art as we know it - the system of 'fine arts' - is largely peculiar to modern society. Aesthetics, far from being a perennial discipline, emerged in an effort both to understand and to shape this new social practice. These essays share the conviction that aesthetic ideas can be fully understood when seen not only in relation to intellectual and social contexts, but as themselves constructed in history.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Disinterestedness and denial of the particular: Locke, Adam Smith, and the subject of aesthetics

The beginnings of 'aesthetics' and the Leibnizian conception of sensation

Of the scandal of taste: social privilege as nature in the aesthetic theories of Hume and Kant

Why did Kant call taste a 'common sense'?

Art and money

'Art' as a weapon in cultural politics: rereading Schiller's Aesthetic Letters

Thinking about genius in the eighteenth century

Creation, aesthetics, market: origins of the modern concept of art

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