A History Of Modern Aesthetics The Twentieth Century

"Volume I: The development of aesthetics was one of the great accomplishments of eighteenth-century philosophy, as the classical conception of aesthetic experience as a form of knowledge came under pressure from increasing recognition of the emotional impact of art and from increasing emphasis on the value of freedom in the moral and political thought of the century. This opening volume of A History of Modern Aesthetics recounts how philosophers in Britain, France, and Germany developed these new approaches and searched for ways to combine them with the cognitivism of traditional aesthetics. A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. Aesthetics began with Aristotle's defense of the cognitive value of tragedy in response to Plato's famous attack on the arts in The Republic, and cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience have been central to the field ever since. But in the eighteenth century, two new ideas were introduced: that aesthetic experience is important because of emotional impact - precisely what Plato criticized - and because it is a pleasurable free play of many or all of our mental powers. This book tells how these ideas have been synthesized or separated by both the best-known and lesser-known aestheticians of modern times, focusing on Britain, France, and Germany in the eighteenth century; Germany and Britain in the nineteenth; and Germany, Britain, and the United States in the twentieth"--

Volume I: The development of aesthetics was one of the great accomplishments of eighteenth-century philosophy, as the classical conception of aesthetic experience as a form of knowledge came under pressure from increasing recognition of the emotional impact of art and from increasing emphasis on the value of freedom in the moral and political thought of the century. This opening volume of A History of Modern Aesthetics recounts how philosophers in Britain, France, and Germany developed these new approaches and searched for ways to combine them with the cognitivism of traditional aesthetics. A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. Aesthetics began with Aristotle's defense of the cognitive value of tragedy in response to Plato's famous attack on the arts in The Republic, and cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience have been central to the field ever since. But in the eighteenth century, two new ideas were introduced: that aesthetic experience is important because of emotional impact - precisely what Plato criticized - and because it is a pleasurable free play of many or all of our mental powers. This book tells how these ideas have been synthesized or separated by both the best-known and lesser-known aestheticians of modern times, focusing on Britain, France, and Germany in the eighteenth century; Germany and Britain in the nineteenth; and Germany, Britain, and the United States in the twentieth.

"Volume I: The development of aesthetics was one of the great accomplishments of eighteenth-century philosophy, as the classical conception of aesthetic experience as a form of knowledge came under pressure from increasing recognition of the emotional impact of art and from increasing emphasis on the value of freedom in the moral and political thought of the century. This opening volume of A History of Modern Aesthetics recounts how philosophers in Britain, France, and Germany developed these new approaches and searched for ways to combine them with the cognitivism of traditional aesthetics. A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. Aesthetics began with Aristotle's defense of the cognitive value of tragedy in response to Plato's famous attack on the arts in The Republic, and cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience have been central to the field ever since. But in the eighteenth century, two new ideas were introduced: that aesthetic experience is important because of emotional impact - precisely what Plato criticized - and because it is a pleasurable free play of many or all of our mental powers. This book tells how these ideas have been synthesized or separated by both the best-known and lesser-known aestheticians of modern times, focusing on Britain, France, and Germany in the eighteenth century; Germany and Britain in the nineteenth; and Germany, Britain, and the United States in the twentieth"--

"A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century"--

Volume III: The field of aesthetics was bound to reflect the dramatic upheavals of the twentieth century in philosophy as a whole, in the arts, and in social and political life generally. This third volume of A History of Modern Aesthetics shows how philosophers of art in Germany, Britain, and the United States continued the debate over cognitivist versus alternative approaches to aesthetic experience that was at the heart of the discipline in the previous two centuries while responding to the intellectual challenges of their own times as well. A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. Aesthetics began with Aristotle's defense of the cognitive value of tragedy in response to Plato's famous attack on the arts in The Republic, and cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience have been central to the field ever since. But in the eighteenth century, two new ideas were introduced: that aesthetic experience is important because of emotional impact - precisely what Plato criticized - and because it is a pleasurable free play of many or all of our mental powers. This book tells how these ideas have been synthesized or separated by both the best-known and lesser-known aestheticians of modern times, focusing on Britain, France, and Germany in the eighteenth century; Germany and Britain in the nineteenth; and Germany, Britain, and the United States in the twentieth.

Written by one of Italy's leading contemporary thinkers and available in English for the first time, this book surveys the key themes in Continental aesthetics.

Volume II: Following the explosion of new ideas about our experience of art and nature in the eighteenth century, recounted in Volume I of A History of Modern Aesthetics, many philosophers at the beginning of the nineteenth century - above all, the German Idealists - regrouped around a conception of art as a form of metaphysics and of aesthetic experience as a form of knowledge. This second volume tells how over the course of the century philosophers in Germany, Britain, and eventually the United States struggled to return to a broader approach to the value of aesthetic experience by finding room for the emotional and playful aspects of art. A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. Aesthetics began with Aristotle's defense of the cognitive value of tragedy in response to Plato's famous attack on the arts in The Republic, and cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience have been central to the field ever since. But in the eighteenth century, two new ideas were introduced: that aesthetic experience is important because of emotional impact - precisely what Plato criticized - and because it is a pleasurable free play of many or all of our mental powers. This book tells how these ideas have been synthesized or separated by both the best-known and lesser-known aestheticians of modern times, focusing on Britain, France, and Germany in the eighteenth century; Germany and Britain in the nineteenth; and Germany, Britain, and the United States in the twentieth.

Early Modern Aesthetics is a concise and accessible guide to the history of aesthetics in the early modern period. J. Colin McQuillan shows how philosophers concerned with art and beauty positioned themselves with respect to the ancients and the moderns, how they thought the arts were to be distinguished and classified, the principles they proposed for art and literary criticism, and how they made aesthetics a part of philosophy in the eighteenth century. The book explores the controversies that arose among philosophers with different views on these issues, their relation to the philosophy, science, and art, and their legacy for contemporary aesthetics.