This collection on the Standard of Taste offers a much needed resource for students and scholars of philosophical aesthetics, political reflection, value and judgments, economics, and art. The authors include experts in the philosophy of art, aesthetics, history of philosophy as well as the history of science. This much needed volume on David Hume will enrich scholars across all levels of university study and research.

Adorno and Modern Theatre explores the drama of Edward Bond, David Rudkin, Howard Barker and Sarah Kane in the context of the work of leading philosopher Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969). The book engages with key principles of Adorno's aesthetic theory and cultural critique and examines their influence on a generation of seminal post-war dramatists.

Aesthetics is no longer the preserve of art historians and philosophers of art. Changes in society, culture, economy, urban dynamics and everyday life, push us towards considering the aesthetic components of traditionally non-aesthetic domains. Today it is not only legitimate but necessary to query the relationship between the social as a cohesive and encompassing form of community and human institutions and the aesthetic, that is the sensual, sensory, or, perhaps better, the sensible. Increasingly the social seems to emerge from the sensible and sentient meaning of objects. The volume SocioAesthetics: Ambience - Imaginary collects scholars from social science, aesthetics, arts, and cultural studies in case-driven debate, ranging from biometrics to luxury commodities, on how a new alignment of aesthetics and the social is possible and what the possible prospects of this may be.

Chance ordained that Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was not only a philosopher, playwright and writer, but also a salonnier. In other words, an art critic. In 1759, his friend Grimm entrusted him with a project that forced him to acquire "thoughtful notions concerning painting and sculpture" and to refine "art terms, so familiar in his words yet so vague in his mind."

Diderot wrote artistic reviews of exhibitions - Salons - that were organized bi-annually at the Louvre by the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. These reviews, published in the Correspondence Litteraire, were Diderot's unique contribution to art criticism in France. He fulfilled his task of salonnier on nine occasions, despite occasional dips in his enthusiasm and self-confidence.

Compiled and presented by Jean Szenec, this anthology helps the contemporary reader to familiarize himself with Diderot's aesthetic thought in all its greatness. It includes eight illustrations and is followed by texts from Jean Starobinski, Michel Delon, and Arthur Cohen.

'On Art and Artists' is translated by John Glaus, professor of French and an amateur expert of the XVIIIth century."

In these studies Roman Ingarden investigates the nature and mode of being of four kinds of art works: the musical work, the picture, the architectural work, and the film. He establishes that the work of art is a purely intentional object but considers also its connections to the real world. By analyzing a work of art in its constitutive heterogeneous strata, Ingarden demonstrates that a work of art will reveal, when examined in the appropriate way, its own inherent structure. Further, he shows that in consequence of the art work's structure, we must distinguish between the work itself and the concretizations of it by the listener or viewer.
Ingarden elaborates upon the conception of concretization which he present in The Literary Work of Art and applies it to music and visual art. He also employs the concept of aspect to clarify the ontic structure of these art works and the distinction between the concretization of the work and the work itself. The distinction between the work's concretization -- effectuated in the mental experiences of the listener or viewer -- and the work itself serves to help Ingarden confirm and account for the work's intersubjective identity.
The problem of aesthetic value, Ingarden maintains, can be fruitfully treated only after the ontic structure of art work has been clarified. His primary concern in Ontology of the Work of Art is to ascertain and describe that structure and the mode of existence of works of art. In addition, he offers several discussions of aesthetic value, showing in the m the connections between questions of aesthetic value and the structure of the work of art.

Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, James Hatley uses the prose of Primo Levi and Taduesz Borowski, as well as the poetry of Paul Celan, to question why witnessing the Shoah is so pressing a responsibility for anyone living in its aftermath. He argues that the witnessing of irreparable loss leaves one in unresolvable quandary but that the attentiveness of that witness resists the destructive legacy of annihilation.

"In this new and sensitive synthesis of scrupulous thinking about the Holocaust (beginning with scruples about the term Holocaust itself), James Hatley approaches all the major questions surrounding our overwhelming inadequacy in the aftermath of the irreparable. If there is anything unique (in a non-trivial sense) about the Holocaust, surely it is the imperious moral urgency that compels those who contemplate it to revise their view of what it means to be human, and to bear witness to such an event.

Law and Aesthetics draws on the work of poets as well as philosophers. Taking as its starting point Shelley's assertion that poets are unacknowledged legislators, the book suggests that there is a way of thinking that, as yet, has not been taken up by those who make use of literary aesthetics to understand law. The book tracks this aesthetic thinking through the failures of critical legal studies and stages an encounter with psychoanalysis, before suggesting that an aesthetics of law can be exhumed from Nietzsche's work. The aesthetic is a call to the creative: fashion new law. A review of contemporary legal theory that makes use of aesthetic perspectives suggests that dissident and radical Nietzschean energies continue to animate legal thought. In the final chapter, an aesthetics of law is shown to make for an interruption of legal categories, and the generation of new legal relationships. The book concludes with a further meditation on Shelley's poetry, and a call to continue in the spirit of aesthetic reinvention.

Bringing the image into dialogue with the imagination, mimesis and performativity, Christoph Wulf illuminates the historical, cultural and philosophical aspects of the relationship between images and human beings, looking both at its conceptual and physical manifestations. Wulf explores the cultural power of the image. He shows that images take root in our personal and collective imaginaries to determine how we feel, how we perceive the arts and culture, and how our bodies respond with physical actions, in games and dance to rituals and gesture. By showing how imagination occupies an essential place in our daily conduct, Wulf makes a significant contribution to how we think about the role of images in culture, the arts and society.

"This is the first volume of its kind to analyze the impact that theories and practices of imaging have had on a variety of fields. It draws on an impressive range of philosophical approaches, from analytic, to pragmatic, to phenomenological -- concluding that imaging is developing a social and cultural impact comparable to language"--Provided by publisher.

Considered by many to be one of the greatest philosophers of religion and metaphysicians of the twentieth century, Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) addressed questions of aesthetics throughout his long career. Yet his efforts in this area are perhaps the most neglected aspect of his extensive and highly nuanced thought. "Divine Beauty" offers the first detailed explication of Hartshorne's aesthetic theory and its place within his theocentric philosophy.

As Daniel A. Dombrowski explains, Hartshorne advanced a neoclassical or process theism that contrasted with the "classical" theism defended by traditionalist Jews, Christians, and Muslim believers. His conception of God was dipolar, which could attribute to God certain qualities that traditionalists would exclude. For example, in Hartshorne's view, God can embrace excellent aspects of both activity and passivity, or of permanence and change; classical theists, on the other hand, exclude passivity and change from their conceptions.

Dombrowski goes on to explain the ramifications of Hartshorne's view of God for aesthetics, which for him had both broad and narrow meanings: all sensory feeling or sensation, in the broad sense, and a disciplined feeling for beauty, in the narrow sense. Included are discussions on Hartshorne's famous appreciation for the aesthetics of bird song; his view of beauty as a mean between two sets of extremes; his idea of the aesthetic attitude, which concentrates on values that are intrinsic and immediately felt; and the place of death in his aesthetics, in which the value of our lives consists in the beauty or intensity of experience that we contribute to the divine life.

Filling an important gap in our understanding of Hartshorne, "Divine Beauty" also makes a persuasive case for the superiority of his neoclassical theism over classical theism.

This book continues the series Contemporary Philosophy (International Institute of Philosophy), which surveys significant trends in contemporary philosophy. The new volume on Aesthetics, comprising nineteen surveys, shows the variety of approaches to Aesthetics in various cultures. The close connection between aesthetics and religion and between aesthetics and ethics is emphasized in several contributions.

While the field of aesthetics has long been dominated by European philosophy, recent inquiries have expanded the arena to accommodate different cultures as well as different definitions and meanings. Aesthetics often establishes the pattern that connects culture functions in a society. In African and African American societies it functions as the keeper of the traditions. The African aesthetic is visible from popular culture to the classical cultures. In all art forms, including body adornment arts, there emerge symbols, colors, rhythms, styles, and forms that function as artistic instruments and cultural histories. While acknowledging African cultural diversity, the focus here is on the commonalities in the aesthetic that make an Ibo recognize a Kikuyu and a Jamaican recognize a Chewa and an African American recognize a Sotho. The deep structure manifest in African cultures in the diaspora is proof of the aesthetic continuity. The debate continues over the exact nature of African aesthetics, and in this volume scholars and teachers in the fields of African and African American studies approach the subject from a broad range of disciplines. Dance, music, art, theatre, and literature are examined in order fully to appreciate and delineate what the specific qualities and aspects of an African aesthetic might be. Additionally, theoretical concepts and issues are discussed in order to define more clearly what is meant by an African aesthetic. The term African here applies to all Africans, both continental and diasporan, and encompasses historically used terms such as Negro, Black, and Afro-American. This thoughtful and thought-provoking volume will be a valuable addition to the readings of scholars and students in fields ranging from African studies to general philosophy and cultural studies.

This book offers an analysis of humor, comedy, and laughter as philosophical topics in the 19th Century. It traces the introduction of humor as a new aesthetic category inspired by Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" and shows Sterne's deep influence on German aesthetic theorists of this period. Through differentiating humor from comedy, the book suggests important distinctions within the aesthetic philosophies of G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Solger, and Jean Paul Richter. The book links Kant's underdeveloped incongruity theory of laughter to Schopenhauer's more complete account and identifies humor's place in the pessimistic philosophy of Julius Bahnsen. It considers how caricature functioned at the intersection of politics, aesthetics, and ethics in Karl Rosenkranz's work, and how Kierkegaard and Nietzsche made humor central not only to their philosophical content but also to its style. The book concludes with an explication of French philosopher Henri Bergson's claim that laughter is a response to mechanical inelasticity.

Written by an experienced drummer and philosopher, "Groove" is a vivid and exciting study of one of music's most central and relatively unexplored aspects. Tiger C. Roholt explains why grooves, which are forged in music's rhythmic nuances, remain hidden to some listeners. He argues that grooves are not graspable through the intellect nor through mere listening; rather, grooves are disclosed through our "bodily "engagement with music. We grasp a groove bodily by moving with music's pulsations. By invoking the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's notion of "motor intentionality," Roholt shows that the "feel" of a groove, and the understanding of it, are two sides of a coin: to "get" a groove just is to comprehend it bodily and to feel that embodied comprehension.

Most philosophy has rejected the theater, denouncing it as a place of illusion or moral decay; the theater in turn has rejected philosophy, insisting that drama deals in actions, not ideas. Challenging both views, The Drama of Ideas shows that theater and philosophy have been crucially intertwined from the start.
Plato is the presiding genius of this alternative history. The Drama of Ideas presents Plato not only as a theorist of drama, but also as a dramatist himself, one who developed a dialogue-based dramaturgy that differs markedly from the standard, Aristotelian view of theater. Puchner discovers scores of dramatic adaptations of Platonic dialogues, the most immediate proof of Plato's hitherto unrecognized influence on theater history. Drawing on these adaptations, Puchner shows that Plato was central to modern drama as well, with figures such as Wilde, Shaw, Pirandello, Brecht, and Stoppard using Plato to create a new drama of ideas. Puchner then considers complementary developments in philosophy, offering a theatrical history of philosophy that includes Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Burke, Sartre, Camus, and Deleuze. These philosophers proceed with constant reference to theater, using theatrical terms, concepts, and even dramatic techniques in their writings.
The Drama of Ideas mobilizes this double history of philosophical theater and theatrical philosophy to subject current habits of thought to critical scrutiny. In dialogue with contemporary thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum, Iris Murdoch, and Alain Badiou, Puchner formulates the contours of a "dramatic Platonism." This new Platonism does not seek to return to an idealist theory of forms, but it does point beyond the reigning philosophies of the body, of materialism and of cultural relativism.

Everyday aesthetic experiences and concerns occupy a large part of our aesthetic life. However, because of their prevalence and mundane nature, we tend not to pay much attention to them, let alone examine their significance. Western aesthetic theories of the past few centuries also neglect everyday aesthetics because of their almost exclusive emphasis on art. In a ground-breaking new study, Yuriko Saito provides a detailed investigation into our everyday aesthetic experiences, and reveals how our everyday aesthetic tastes and judgments can exert a powerful influence on the state of the world and our quality of life.
By analyzing a wide range of examples from our aesthetic interactions with nature, the environment, everyday objects, and Japanese culture, Saito illustrates the complex nature of seemingly simple and innocuous aesthetic responses. She discusses the inadequacy of art-centered aesthetics, the aesthetic appreciation of the distinctive characters of objects or phenomena, responses to various manifestations of transience, and the aesthetic expression of moral values; and she examines the moral, political, existential, and environmental implications of these and other issues.

In Zhu Guangqian and Benedetto Croce on Aesthetic Thought, Mario Sabattini analyses Croce's influence on the aesthetic thought of Zhu Guangqian. Zhu Guangqian is one of the most representative figures of contemporary Chinese aesthetics. Since the '30s, he had an active role in China both on the literary and philosophical scenes, and, through his writings, he exerted an important influence in the moulding of numerous generations of intellectuals. Some of his works have been widely read, and they still provoke considerable interest in China, on the mainland as well as in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The volume also presents a revised translation of Zhu Guangqian's Wenyi xinlixue (Psychology of Art and Literature).

"Using an approach deeply informed by philosophy of art, art history and perceptual psychology, this book places seeing at the centre of an original theory of pictorial representation and explores the ramifications such a theory has for the visual arts"--

The Poetics of Psychoanalysis: In the Wake of Klein explores the literary aspects of the twentieth-century psychoanalytic tradition that has come to be known as British Object Relations psychoanalysis. Focusing on Melanie Klein's legacy to psychoanalysis between the 1930s and 1970s, it deals with major figures such as Riviere, Isaacs, Winnicott, Milner, and Bion, as well as Klein's contemporary, Ella Sharpe. Mary Jacobus breaks new ground by giving a central place to the literary and aesthetic concerns of the British Object Relations tradition. Paying close attention to writing that is often side-lined by literary critics and theorists, she makes fruitful connections with particular works of literature and art, along with pressing contemporary issues. The three sections focus on the transitions, mediations, and transformations that took place in British Object Relations psychoanalysis as Klein's ideas were developed and transformed. Situating Kleinian thought in relation to later developments and differences, while making it accessible to non-psychoanalytic readers, The Poetics of Psychoanalysis argues against the separation of British and continental traditions and for the continuing links between psychoanalysis and aesthetics. Rather than applying psychoanalytic ideas to literature and aesthetics, the book traces the British Object Relations tradition as a form of proto-modernist discourse in its own right. Linked by a common thread of ideas and structured to reflect a roughly chronological trajectory, individual chapters can also be read as free-standing critical essays. Aimed at literary readers, this book will also be of interest to psychoanalytic practitioners and cultural theorists.

The Shape of Revelation explores the overlap between revelation and aesthetic form from the perspective of Judaism. It does so by setting the Jewish philosophy of Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig alongside its immediate visual environment in the aesthetics of early German modernism, most notably alongside "the spiritual in art" as it appears in the art and art theories of Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Franz Marc. The modern shape of revelation-and "the spiritual in art" that emerges from this conversation-builds upon a vocabulary of form-creation, sheer presence, lyric pathos, rhythmic repetition, open spatial dynamism, and erotic pulse that was unique to Germany in the first quarter of the twentieth century. This study works to identify and critically assess the sensual root that is brought to bear upon the modern image of revelation and "the spiritual in art."

This cultural study reveals the interdependence between British Aestheticism and late-Victorian social-reform movements. Following their mentor John Ruskin who believed in art's power to civilize the poor, cultural philanthropists promulgated a Religion of Beauty as they advocated practical schemes for tenement reform, university-settlement education, Sunday museum opening, and High Anglican revival. Although subject to novelist's ambivalent, even satirical, representations, missionary aesthetes nevertheless constituted an influential social network, imbuing fin-de-siecle artistic communities with political purpose and political lobbies with aesthetic sensibility.

This transdisciplinary project represents the most comprehensive study of imagination to date. The eclectic group of international scholars who comprise this volume propose bold and innovative theoretical frameworks for (re-) conceptualizing imagination in all of its divergent forms. Imagination and Art: Explorations in Contemporary Theory explores the complex nuances, paradoxes, and aporias related to the plethora of artistic mediums in which the human imagination manifests itself. As a fundamental attribute of our species, which other organisms also seem to possess with varying degrees of sophistication, imagination is the very fabric of what it means to be human into which everything is woven. This edited collection demonstrates that imagination is the resin that binds human civilization together for better or worse.

Artworks potentially convey two kinds of knowledge. They obviously afford knowledge of art itself, and they also afford general empirical knowledge, especially knowledge of human psychology and value.

"Knowing Art" collects ten original essays written by leading philosophers who distill and build upon recent work at the intersection of aesthetics and epistemology. Specific topics addressed include the objectivity of critical knowledge, the quality of critical testimony, the roles of principles and perception in critical reasoning, phenomenal knowledge of what a work of art is like, the acquisition of factual information and psychological understanding from fictions, and the limits of images as sources of historical evidence. In addressing these topics, the volume also explores the challenges that art poses for theories of knowledge as well as the challenges that artistic knowledge poses to traditional views about art.

Gerhard Richter examines, in the work of Walter Benjamin, one of the central problems of modernity: the question of how to receive an intellectual inheritance. Covering aspects of Benjamin's complex relationship to the legacies of such writers as Kant, Nietzsche, Kafka, Heidegger, and Derrida, each chapter attends to a key concern in Benjamin's writing, while reflecting on the challenges that this issue presents for the question of inheritability and transmissibility. Both reading Benjamin and watching himself reading Benjamin, Richter participates in the act of inheriting while also inquiring into the conditions of possibility for inheriting Benjamin's corpus today.