Edgar Wind was one of the most distinguished art historians and philosophers of the twentieth century. He made crucial contributions to debates on aesthetics and on the interdisciplinary nature of cultural history involving such other leading figures as Ernst Cassirer and Erwin Panofsky. It is not always realised, however, that his early thinking was moulded by a concern with the German philosophical tradition, culminating in the analysis of the meaning and function of scientific experimentation and proof. This first edition in English of Edgar Wind's important work Das Experiment und die Metaphysik: Zur Aufloesung der kosmologischen Antinomien (1934) has been translated by Cyril Edwards, and is prefaced by a new introduction by Matthew Rampley placing Wind's philosophical thinking in context. It is being published to coincide with the opening in 2000 of the Sackler Library in Oxford, which will include a Wind Reading room. (Legenda 2000)

This is a new release of the original 1948 edition.

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

An exploration of philosophical and mystical sources of iconography in Renaissance art.

1936 stellte der Kunsthistoriker und Philosoph Edgar Wind sein Manuskript zu Michelangelos Deckenfresken der Sixtinischen Kapelle fertig. Wind begriff den christlichen Erloesungsgedanken als fundamentales Thema des gesamten Raumes und erkannte ein polares Beziehungsgeflecht, welches ihm das Bildprogramm vollstandig erschloss. Methodische Ansatze Aby Warburgs aufnehmend, dessen Mitarbeiter Wind in Hamburg war, analysierte er die Themenwahl Michelangelos. Obwohl fertiggestellt, wurde das Werk nie veroeffentlicht. Es liegt nun erstmals in gedruckter Fassung vor, begleitet von einem ausfuhrlichen Nachwort des Herausgebers.

Will works of the imagination ever regain the power they once had to challenge and mould society and the individual? This was the question posed by Edgar Wind's influential Reith Lectures delivered in 1960 and later expanded into his book Art and Anarchy. The book examines the various forces that have fashioned the modern view of the art, from mechanization and fear of intellect to connoisseurship and--perhaps the fundamental weakness of our age--the dispassionate acceptance of art. In the course of his discussion, Wind surveyed a wide range of topics in the history of painting, literature, music, and the plastic arts from the Renaissance to modern times.