Computers have become omnipresent in recent decades, affecting all aspects of modern life and influencing creative pursuits in art, architecture, music, and film. One consequence of this seemingly irreversible trend is its effect on the perception of the aesthetic object, and indeed of nature itself. Dawn of a New Feeling acknowledges that computers have become a formidable tool for creating new and entertaining art forms, while contending that virtual reality is not conducive to meditations on the aesthetic object. Virtual or augmented reality, Raffaele Milani argues, is illusory and blunts the viewer's capacity for feeling a genuine connection with a work of art. First describing how modernity and post-modernity are entangled with virtual reality, engendering linguistic and anthropological confusion in which art seems to have lost its meaning, Milani then contrasts these developments with classical art forms and reflects on the ways in which traditional art objects stimulate an appreciation of nature, which, upon contemplation, appears as an aesthetic object itself. The saturation of our culture by mass media, he argues, can give rise to a renewed desire to experience a more intimate communication with nature. By identifying reading, contemplation, and care for nature as activities that help us to escape the mental atrophy of a web-dominated world and find refuge from the chaos of virtual mediation, Dawn of a New Feeling offers a reinterpretation of contemplative approaches to appreciating aesthetics and to understanding the profound nature of artistic vision.

Gianni Vattimo, one of Europe's foremost contemporary philosophers and most famously associated with the concept of weak thought, explores theoretical and practical issues flowing from his fundamental rejection of the traditional Western understanding of Being as an absolute, unchanging, and transcendent reality. The essays in this book move within the surroundings of Being without constructing a systematic, definitive analysis of the topic. In Being and Its Surroundings, Vattimo continues his career-long exploration of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, in particular his repudiation of metaphysics with its presupposition of the existence of permanent, universal truth, and that of Friedrich Nietzsche, with its promotion of nihilism. One consequence of problematizing the idea of an attainable truth is the relativization of values and cultures. In the face of the death of God - or the absence of a transcendent guarantor of the validity of human judgments - we have the postmodern tendency to see all value systems and assertions of truth as purely subjective, and to suggest that "anything goes," which Nietzsche called passive nihilism. Vattimo advocates a more active response as he challenges all forms of authoritarianism in the world today. He brings his intellectual acumen to bear on such urgent issues as globalization, the clash of civilizations and terrorism, the crisis of democracy, and the relevance of orthodox religion. Rather than endorse dogmatism or indifference and detachment from social engagement in the name of relativism, Vattimo opts for the path of meaningful dialogue and a search for a mediated consensus based on reason, with all its limitations.

This collection of eighteen essays explores the meanings and depictions of beauty and the abject in art (from Renaissance portraiture to the canvasses of Salvador Dali); photography and the representation of the body; film (from the horror genre and gay/lesbian sexuality to socio-political problems); literature (from classical lyric and pastoral drama to the contemporary verbal arts); cultural studies (from the femme fatale and James Bond to vampires and monsters); architecture; and linguistics. These essays not only examine the theme from a variety of media and critical perspectives, they also scrutinize and challenge traditional notions of beauty and the abject.

Silence and the Silenced: Interdisciplinary Perspectives comprises a collection of essays from North American and European scholars who examine the various ways in which the theme of silence is developed in literary narratives as well as in such visual media as photography, film, painting, and architecture. The questions of silence and the presence or absence of voice are also explored in the arena of performance, with examples relating to pantomime and live installations. As the book title indicates, two fundamental aspects of silence are investigated: silence freely chosen as a means to deepen meditation and inner reflection and silence that is imposed by external agents through various forms of political repression and censorship or, conversely, by the self in an attempt to express revolt or to camouflage shame. The approaches to these questions range from the philosophical and the psychological to the rhetorical and the linguistic. Together, these insightful reflections reveal the complexity and profundity that surround the function of silence and voice in an aesthetic and social context.

In The Aesthetics of Grace: Philosophy, Art, and Nature, Raffaele Milani traces the fascinating history of the idea of 'grace' from ancient times to the 1700s. Although this term has been displaced by other concepts with the advent of modernism and postmodernism, the complex ideas related to the notion of 'grace' remain an important aesthetic category, and Milani presents an impressive panorama of reflections on and interpretations of the subject. The subtitle of the work indicates the broad scope of a study that recounts the origins of the term in Latin gratias (favor, regard, or gift), corresponding to the Greek Kharites (givers of beauty and charm). The volume then goes on to examine the Middle Ages, when the concept acquires a more specifically religious meaning (divine mercy, thanks), the Renaissance, when the terms 'gracefulness' and 'elegance' come to dominate in the treatises of the time, and the Ages of Romanticism and Neoclassicism, with their particular treatment of the topic. In the process, Milani meditates on the visual representations of these multiple meanings in the form of second-century frescoes, fifteenth-century paintings by Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, Da Vinci, Mantegna, Correggio, and Carracci, seventeenth-century canvases by Poussin and sculptures by Bernini, and eighteenth-century sculptures by Antonio Canova and paintings by Fragonard. This engaging work weaves with skill and subtlety philosophical, theological, and artistic ideas into a stimulating tapestry.

The twenty-four essays in Rewriting Texts Remaking Images: Interdisciplinary Perspectives examine the complex relationships between original creative works and subsequent versions of these originals, from both theoretical and pragmatic perspectives. The process involves the rereading, reinterpretation, and rediscovery of literary texts, paintings, photographs, and films, as well as the consideration of issues pertaining to adaptation, intertextuality, transcodification, ekphrasis, parody, translation, and revision. The interdisciplinary analyses consider works from classical antiquity to the present day, in a number of literatures, and include such topics as the reuse and resemantization of photographs and iconic images.