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Title: Philosophies of Art and Beauty: Selected Readings in Aesthetics from Plato to Heidegger by Albert Hofstadter, Richard Kuhns ISBN: 0-226-34812-1 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: August, 1976 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Good start, but don't stop here.
Comment: This is an excellent and very well done anthology. Covering the classic readings, Croce, Plato, Ficino, Salsbury, Schelling, Dewey and others. The editors take space to introduce each selection and highlight its contribution to the field of Aesthetics. The selections are fair, even those including the existentialists, such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, who make large shifts in direction in Aesthetics. Hofstadter also contributes his own translation of Heidegger's selections and Schelling's selections. These are very good in particular.
The first difficulty is that the volume fails to point to advances beyond Heidegger. No volume can contain all the imporant classical and contemporary readings, but it should
have some sort of suggested reading list for newer materials. The problems of Aesthetics that have confronted the field since the 50's and 60's are just as important as the ones of ancient and medieval European culture. The problem of interpreting pure music (no lyrics) and its aesthetic effects in especially important to this field. Even Ayn Rand, who had a quick philosophical (if often flippant or facile) remark on any facet of culture, admitted she was confounded by the act of interpreting and judging pure music.
To address this, the reader should also read or purchase Arthur Danto's volumes. In particular Danto has articulated the main problems of the field (such as the problem of making value judgements) and set the tone. Problems such as ethnocentrism and cultural relativism in Western Aesthetics also need to be investigated by serious students of this topic.
Another issue to investigate that this volume misses is the category of the "Artist," which did not exist in ancient Greece or Rome as we know it today. In fact, the category of Artist, whether bohemian or otherwise, seems to be a fairly recent invention, and has had profound consequences for Aesthetics. To investigate this more, start by reading Flauber's novel "Sentimental Education." This staple of French literary realism will help jump start you past this anthology of philosophical readings.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Classics of Aesthetic Literature
Comment: This anthology of aesthetic texts surveys the key figures from the classic Western tradition in aesthetics beginning with Plato. Since the book's first pulbication in 1964, Hofstadter and Kuhns have been known among theoreticians, historians, and philosophers alike for this book's remarkable contribution to the field of aesthetics. In this book, one will find selections from the ancient Greeks: Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus; to the medieval: St. Augustine; to the Neoplatonist: Ficino; to the German Idealists: Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer; as well as others like: Shaftesbury, Croce, Nietzsche, Dewey, and Heidegger. This motley assortment is an indisputable must for every art historian, philosopher of art, literary critic, aesthetician, theoretician, and the general scholar. I would relish the opportunity at seeing a 21st century revision of this work; perhaps professor Kuhns may consider such a project with some of his brilliant collegues at Columbia University.
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Title: The Lives of the Artists (Oxford World's Classics) by Giorgio Vasari, Julia Conaway Bondanella, Peter Bondanella, Giorgi Vasari ISBN: 019283410X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Aesthetics (Oxford Readers) by Patrick Maynard, Susan Feagin ISBN: 0192892754 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: March, 1998 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Transfiguration of the Commonplace by Arthur Coleman Danto ISBN: 0674903463 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1983 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly ISBN: 0892550589 Publisher: Persea Books Pub. Date: July, 1988 List Price(USD): $12.50 |
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Title: Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art by Anne Sheppard ISBN: 0192891642 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: December, 1987 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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