'The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics' has assembled 48 brand-new essays, making this a comprehensive guide available to the theory, application, history, and future of the field.

Aesthetics and the philosophy of art are about things in the world – things like the Mona Lisa, but also things like horror movies, things like the ugliest dog in the world, and things like wallpaper. There's a surprising amount of philosophical content to be found in wallpaper. Using a case-driven approach, Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art is grounded in real-world examples that propel thought, debate, and discussion about the nature of art and beauty. Now in its third edition, this tried-and-tested text features fresh cases and new activities. Hands-on Do Aesthetics! activities pepper the text, and Challenge Cases appear at the end of each chapter to test intuitions, to complicate the field of discussion, and to set a path forward. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wall-Paper” serves as a recurring case throughout, and this edition includes the full text of this classic short story. From classical debates that continue to bother philosophers today, to emerging problems of identity, appropriation, and morality, this introduction is designed to engage you in a field that itself engages with so much of the world around you. Here is everything you need to know about the history, themes, thinkers and theories to get you started on aesthetics and the philosophy of art.

A COMPANION TO AESTHETICS This second edition of A Companion to Aesthetics examines questions that were among the earliest discussed by ancient philosophers, such as the nature of beauty and the relation between morality and art, while also addressing a host of new issues prompted by recent developments in the arts and in philosophy, including coverage of non-Western art traditions and of everyday and environmental aesthetics. The volume also canvases debates regarding the nature of representation, the relation between art and truth, and the criteria for interpretation, which are among the most hotly discussed topics in contemporary philosophy. In this extensively revised and updated edition, 168 alphabetically arranged articles provide comprehensive treatment of the main topics and writers in aesthetics. Major additions include historical overviews from the prehistoric to the present and a section on the individual arts. A Companion to Aesthetics will serve students of philosophy, literary criticism, and cultural studies - as well as the educated general reader - both as a work of reference and, with its many substantial essays, as a guide to the best thinking about the arts from the ancient Greeks to the dawn of the twenty-first century.

An ideal guide to aesthetics

Beauty and the End of Art shows how a resurgence of interest in beauty and a sense of ending in Western art are challenging us to rethink art, beauty and their relationship. By arguing that Wittgenstein's later work and contemporary theory of perception offer just what we need for a unified approach to art and beauty, Sonia Sedivy provides new answers to these contemporary challenges. These new accounts also provide support for the Wittgensteinian realism and theory of perception that make them possible. Wittgenstein's subtle form of realism explains artworks in terms of norm governed practices that have their own varied constitutive norms and values. Wittgensteinian realism also suggests that diverse beauties become available and compelling in different cultural eras and bring a shared 'higher-order' value into view. With this framework in place, Sedivy argues that perception is a form of engagement with the world that draws on our conceptual capacities. This approach explains how perceptual experience and the perceptible presence of the world are of value, helping to account for the diversity of beauties that are available in different historical contexts and why the many faces of beauty allow us to experience the value of the world's perceptible presence. Carefully examining contemporary debates about art, aesthetics and perception, Beauty and the End of Art presents an original approach. Insights from such diverse thinkers as Immanuel Kant, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Arthur Danto, Alexander Nehamas, Elaine Scarry and Dave Hickey are woven together to reveal how they make good sense if we bring contemporary theory of perception and Wittgensteinian realism into the conversation.

Preliminary Material -- Aesthetics: Definition and Object -- Difficuties for Aesthetics -- Immediate Aesthetics Perception--the Material Basis of Aesthetics -- The Optimal Starting Point: Nature or Art? -- Three Starting Points for Aesthetics Analysis -- The Essential Properties of Aesthetics Perception -- The Internal Structure of an Aesthetic Object -- The Expressiveness of an Aesthetic Object and its Objective Sense -- Aesthetic Form and Aesthetic Structure -- The Relations of Natural and Artistic Beauty with Respect to Origin -- The Aesthetic Critertion of Natural and Artistic Beauty is the Same -- The Conception of Nature's Beauty in the History of European Culture. The Beauty of Wild Nature -- The Beauty of Organic Forms -- Human Beauty. Its Ideal -- Organic Beauty and the Sexual Instinct -- Beauty and Ugliness. Their Relation in Art -- The Peculiarity of Natural Beauty -- The Relation of Primitive Art to Others Areas of Culture -- Attempts to Derive the Origin of Art form General Psychological Principles. Criticism -- Stimuli for the Emergence of Representational Art -- The Origin of Music -- General Conclusions -- The Artist and the Child (Primitive Man) -- A General Characterization of the Creative Process -- The Creative Process: Three Basic Moments -- Creative Imagination -- The Problem: Formulation and Explication -- Taine's "Milieu Theory" and its Critical Appraisal -- The Psychological Theory of "Numbing" and its Critique -- The Relation of the Artist's Individual and Creativity to the Cultural Environment -- The Relation of the Development of Art to General Cultural Development -- The Historical Changing of Styles and the Theories Explaining it -- Introduction -- Beauty and Morality -- Art (Beauty) and Truth -- The Aesthetic of the Ancient Greeks -- Rationalist Aesthetics in France and Germany -- The Empiricist Aesthetics of the English -- The Aesthetics of Kant -- Vico -- German Idealist Aesthetics: Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer -- The Formalists. Fechner -- Contemporary Aesthetic Theories -- The Problem -- The Relation of the Art Work to the Subject. Optical and Acoustic Impression: Their Difference -- Spatial and Nonspatial Forms of Art -- Objective and Nonobjective Forms of Art -- Representational and Nonrepresentational Art -- Notes -- Index.

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A revised second edition of the bestselling anthology on the major figures and themes in aesthetics and philosophy of art, the ideal resource for a comprehensive introduction to the study of aesthetics Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology offers a well-rounded and thorough introduction to the evolution of modern thought on aesthetics. In a collection of over 60 readings, focused primarily on the Western tradition, this text includes works from key figures such as Plato, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Danto, and others. Broad in scope, this volume also contains contemporary works on the value of art, frequently-discussed continental texts, modern perspectives on feminist philosophy of art, and essays by authors outside of the community of academic philosophy, thereby immersing readers in an inclusive and balanced survey of aesthetics. The new second edition has been updated with contemporary essays, expanding the volume’s coverage to include the value of art, artistic worth and personal taste, questions of aesthetic experience, and contemporary debates on and new theories of art. This edition also incorporates new and more standard translations of Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment and Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, as well as texts by Rousseau, Hegel, DuBois, Alain Locke, Budd, Robinson, Saito, Eaton and Levinson. Presents a comprehensive selection of introductory readings on aesthetics and philosophy of art Helps readers gain a deep historical understanding and clear perspective on contemporary questions in the field Offers new essays specifically selected to promote inclusivity and to highlight contemporary discussions Introduces new essays on topics such as environmental and everyday aesthetics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the connections between aesthetics and ethics Appropriate for both beginning and advanced students of philosophical aesthetics, this selection of texts initiates readers into the study of the foundations of and central developments in aesthetic thought.

Is the Sublime Sustainable? introduces the key points of debate around the sublime while opening new avenues for future inquiry, especially through its comparative aesthetics approach. In it, you will discover how thinking on the sublime emerged historically and then engage with the recent critical scholarship on the topic, including from the fields of theology, philosophy, and literature. The critiques of the sublime are then expanded in dialogue with perspectives from Japanese aesthetics and art, shaping the argument that what is needed today is a sublime that enriches human lives by cultivating profound, participative relationships.