What does philosophy know of love? From Plato on, philosophers have struggled to pin love to the dissecting table and view it in the cold light of logic. Yet, as Arthur Danto writes in the foreword to this volume, "how incorrigibly stiff philosophy is when it undertakes to lay its icy fingers on the frilled and beating wings of the butterfly of love."

Love, elusive and philosophically intractable as it is, has long fascinated philosophers. In this collection of classic and modern writings on the topic of erotic love, Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins have chosen excerpts from the great philosophical texts and combined them with the most exciting new work of philosophers writing today.

The result is a broadly conceived, comprehensive, and important work, nearly as stimulating and provocative as love itself. It examines the mysteries of erotic love from a variety of philosophical perspectives and provides an impressive display of the wisdom that the world's best thinkers have brought, and continue to bring, to the study of love.

"Stunning This brilliant interdisciplinary collection is as provocative, enchanting, and richly rewarding as its topic. Unrivaled in scope and richness, blending classic and contemporary readings on love, here is a wellspring of insights for scholars, students, and general readers alike."--Mike W. Martin, author of "Self-Deception and Morality."

Desde su aparicion en 1981, La transfiguracion del lugar comun se ha convertido en referencia obligada de la reflexion filosofica sobre el arte moderno. Danto responde con brillantez a la ya clasica pregunta "Cuando se produce el arte?." Para despejar las incognitas que de aqui se derivan, propone la metafora del lugar comun y su paradojica aplicacion al arte: por que los objetos mas banales quedan transfigurados al ser convertidos en obra de arte? En que se diferencian a pesar de ser materialmente indiscernibles? Que estrategia utiliza el arte de hoy para lograr estos fines? En respuesta a estas cuestiones, Danto relativiza el juicio subjetivo del gusto y nos invita a participar en los juegos de lenguaje y los ambitos institucionales propios del arte moderno. De ellos toma toda su fuerza para abrir la posibilidad de nuevos significados en esta epoca de agotamiento. La interpretacion artistica puede que ya no vuelva a ser una tarea espontanea o comoda, pero si se revelara imprescindible a la hora de restituir el peculiar y enorme valor cognitivo de la experiencia estetica.

A central theme of this book is that the main problems of philosophy and certainly the main traditional problems in the theory of knowledge, concern the space between language and the world. Professor Danto distinguishes between descriptive concepts, concerned with saying how the world is and semantic concepts, which have to do with the application of descriptions of the world. Failure to make these distinctions is responsible for a class of seemingly irresolvable disputes over the foundations of knowledge; but when the distinction is appreciated, a plausible philosophical theory of what it is to know the world can be framed which is free from the standard scepticisms.