This is the first of two volumes of the only English edition of Hegel's Aesthetics, the work in which he gives full expression to his seminal theory of art. The substantial Introduction is his best exposition of his general philosophy of art. In Part I he considers the general nature of art as a spiritual experience, distinguishes the beauty of art and the beauty of nature, and examines artistic genius and originality. Part II surveys the history of art from the ancient world through to the end of the eighteenth century, probing the meaning and significance of major works. Part III (in the second volume) deals individually with architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature; a rich array of examples makes vivid his exposition of his theory.

A major literary event, the publication of the second volume of Peter Weiss's three-volume novel The Aesthetics of Resistance makes one of the towering works of twentieth-century German literature available to English-speaking readers for the first time. The crowning achievement of Peter Weiss, the internationally renowned writer best known for his play Marat/Sade, The Aesthetics of Resistance spans the period from the late 1930s to World War II, dramatizing antifascist resistance and the rise and fall of proletarian political parties in Europe. Volume II, initially published in 1978, opens with the unnamed narrator in Paris after having retreated from the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. From there, he moves on to Stockholm, where he works in a factory, becomes involved with the Communist Party, and meets Bertolt Brecht. Featuring the narrator's extended meditations on paintings, sculpture, and literature, the novel teems with characters, almost all of whom are based on historical figures. Throughout, the narrator explores the affinity between political resistance and art—the connection at the heart of Weiss's novel. Weiss suggests that meaning lies in embracing resistance, no matter how intense the oppression, and that we must look to art for new models of political action and social understanding. The Aesthetics of Resistance is one of the truly great works of postwar German literature and an essential resource for understanding twentieth-century German history.

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Thierry de Duve argues in the first volume of Aesthetics at Large, is as relevant to the appreciation of art today as it was to the enjoyment of beautiful nature in 1790. Going against the grain of all aesthetic theories situated in the Hegelian tradition, this provocative thesis, which already guided de Duve’s groundbreaking book Kant After Duchamp (1996), is here pursued in order to demonstrate that far from confining aesthetics to a stifling formalism isolated from all worldly concerns, Kant’s guidance urgently opens the understanding of art onto ethics and politics. Central to de Duve’s re-reading of the Critique of Judgment is Kant’s idea of sensus communis, ultimately interpreted as the mere yet necessary idea that human beings are capable of living in peace with one another. De Duve pushes Kant’s skepticism to its limits by submitting the idea of sensus communis to various tests leading to questions such as: Do artists speak on behalf of all of us? Is art the transcendental ground of democracy? Or, Was Adorno right when he claimed that no poetry could be written after Auschwitz? Loaded with de Duve’s trademark blend of wit and erudition and written without jargon, these essays radically renew current approaches to some of the most burning issues raised by modern and contemporary art. They are indispensable reading for anyone with a deep interest in art, art history, or philosophical aesthetics.

This volume contains surveys of the main issues in philosophical aesthetics, as discussed by thinkers from ancient Greece to modern times. It is written by members of the Open University and the intention throughout is to make the issues intelligible and interesting to as wide an audience as possible, including those readers with a general interest in the arts as well as more advanced students. The volume begins with questions about the nature of art and beauty. Are there any limitations to what may count as a work of art? Are imitations and forgeries really less valuable than original works? This is followed by discussions of aesthetic experience, truth and the 'imitation of nature' in works of art. In later chapters the emphasis is on the value and evaluation of art. Should art exist for the good of society? What justification is there for censorship in the case of pornography? The final chapters deal with Marxist theories of art, and with structuralist and post-structuralist views in recent continental writings.

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.

In his Aesthetics Hegel gives full expression to his seminal theory of art. He surveys the history of art from ancient India, Egypt, and Greece through to the Romantic movement of his own time, criticizes major works, and probes their meaning and significance; his rich array of examples gives broad scope for his judgement and makes vivid his exposition of his theory. The substantial Introduction is Hegel's best exposition of his general philosophy of art, and provides the ideal way into his Aesthetics. In Part I he considers the general nature of art: he distinguishes art, as a spiritual experience, from religion and philosophy; he discusses the beauty of art and differentiates it from the beauty of nature; and he examines artistic genius and originality. Part II provides a sort of history of art, divded into three periods called Symbolic (India, Persia, Egypt), Classical (Greece), and Romantic (medieval and post-medieval up to the end of the eighteenth century). Part III deals individually with architecture, scuplture, painting, music, and literature.

The work opens with a critical review of developments in Protestant and Catholic Theology since the Reformation which have led to the steady neglect of aesthetics in Christian theology. From here, von Balthasar turns to the central theme of the volume: the question of theological knowledge. He re-examines the nature of Christian believing (here he quickly draws widely on such theological figures as Anselm, Pascal and Newman) which gives due place to the particular kind of 'knowing' which develops within the personal relationship to the believer to the God mediated through the revelation-form of Jesus Christ.

Georg Lukács’s The Specificity of the Aesthetic is both a return to first principles and an attempt to reconstruct the philosophical anthropology and philosophy of history underlying Marxism.