Philosophy: aesthetics Books

Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.''How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young If it was only the other way!''Wilde''s first and only published novel recounts the story of handsome Dorian Gray who upon having his portrait painted desires that it will age and grow ugly while he may remain eternally beautiful. The painting, which reflects each of Gray''s sins and transgressions in its hideousness, haunts him until it finally becomes unbearable. In this dark tale of duplicity and mortality, Wilde creates a world where art and reality collide.

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Book SynopsisBased on the BBC television series, John Berger''s Ways of Seeing is a unique look at the way we view art, published as part of the Penguin on Design series in Penguin Modern Classics.''Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.''''But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.'' John Berger''s Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the Sunday Times critic commented: ''This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures.'' By now he has.John Berger (b. 1926) is an art critic, painter and novelist.born in Hackney, London. His novel G. (1972) won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Booker Prize. If you enjoyed Ways of Seeing, you might like Susan Sontag''s On Photography, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.''Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of professional art critics ... he is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation''Peter Fuller, Arts Review''The influence of the series and the book ... was enormous ... It opened up for general attention areas of cultural study that are now commonplace''Geoff Dyer in Ways of Telling''One of the most influential intellectuals of our time''Observer

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Book SynopsisA fully illustrated, beautifully produced edition of Junichiro Tanizaki's wise and evocative essay on Japanese culture. ‘We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates… Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.’ This book is in fact a portal. Reading it, you will be led by Junichiro Tanizaki’s light touch into a mysterious and tranquil world of darkness and shadows, where gold flashes in the gloom and a deep stillness reigns. If you are accustomed to equate light with clarity, the faded with the worthless and the dim with the dreary, prepare for a courteous but powerful realignment of your ideas. In Praise of Shadows is a poetic paean to traditional Japanese aesthetics – in a free-ranging style that moves from architecture to No theatre, and from cookery to lighting, Tanizaki teaches us to see the beauty in tarnished metal, the sombre dignity in unglazed pottery, the primacy of organic materials that bear witness to the regular touch of human hands. It is also astonishingly prescient, offering a gentle warning against the quest for airbrushed perfection, and reminding us that too much light can pollute and obscure our natural world. In this special edition, the text is accompanied by specially selected images to complement Tanizaki’s reflections and further illustrate the pattern and beauty of shadows.Trade ReviewEssential reading -- David Adjaye, architectAn elegant essay on traditional Japanese aesthetics by the great novelist. A delight to read * Independent on Sunday *More like a poem than an essay * Building Design *Tanizaki suggests an attitude of appreciation and mindfulness, especially mindfulness of beauty, as central to life lived well -- AC GraylingThis has been an important book for my career. I’ve read it multiple times—it continues to be meaningful and I don't expect that will change. Shadows are more important than objects because they enter the realm of the mysterious. The white space is more important than the stroke of the pen. Shadows are the silent reason that objects are recognized; they give them shape. Shadows represent the soul of a place or object -- Tom Kundig, architect

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Book SynopsisExam board: Edexcel Level & Subject: AS and A Level English Literature First teaching: September 2015 Next exams: 2025Trade Review“The new Collins Classroom Classic editions are perfect for schools – clear text, bright covers, a good size for pockets and bags, and a great price that makes buying new class or cohort sets very attractive in these budget-conscious times.” de Stafford School

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Book SynopsisAn unmissable essay from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Don't Touch My Hair and What White People Can Do Next 'A magnificent text' KATY HESSEL 'This is so sharp, and funny, and will be so generously liberating for so many - read it!' KATHERINE RUNDELL 'A must-read' PSYCHOLOGIES For too long, beauty has been entangled in the forces of patriarchy and capitalism: objectification, shame, control, competition and consumerism. We need to find a way to do beauty differently. This radical, deeply personal and empowering essay points to ways we can all embrace our unruly beauty and enjoy our magnificent, disobedient bodies. 'This call to joyful disobedience is proof that Dabiri is one of our most important thinkers and writers ... Fresh, new and important' IRISH TIMES 'Radical, incisive, thoughtful ... I can't recommend enough' VICKY SPRATTTrade ReviewThis is the book we have needed . . . her pièce de resistance, a clarion call for us to reconsider the entire contemporary concept of beauty . . . empowering -- Best New Books in October * Glamour *Wonderful. I love all Emma Dabiri's work, for its insistence on nuance, on praxis, on scholarship, on the necessity of human joy. This is so sharp, and funny, and will be so generously liberating for so many - read it! -- Katherine RundellA magnificent text -- Katy HesselA polemic that offers liberating solutions. This call to joyful disobedience is proof that Dabiri is one of our most important thinkers and writers. Throughout Disobedient Bodies, as in her previous books, Emma Dabiri displays her ability to convey complicated ideas in an accessible, elegant way ... Feminists have been examining beauty standards and the ways in which our bodies are policed for a long time now, but Emma Dabiri's new book still feels fresh, new and important * The Irish Times *A must-read . . . Dabiri writes with empowering enthusiasm on alternatives to the way we look at beauty, and encourages us to rebel against current beauty standards * Psychologies *A radical, incisive and thoughtful assessment of beauty - how we conceive of it under capitalism and how we ought to reframe our thinking about it and, by extension - ourselves. I can't recommend ordering a copy enough. Emma is a fantastic writer . . . she always helps me to find new ways of seeing, perhaps she can do that for you too -- Vicky Spratt * The i *Disobedient Bodies grapples with the complicated and messy history of beauty, and how our constantly evolving (yet always unattainable) standards are entrenched in oppressive systems that hold us back . . . Dabiri takes our understanding beyond the surface. It's an essay that calls for a radical reimagination and holistic reclamation of beauty * Dazed *Engagingly written and well researched . . . A powerful read * Independent *Powerful . . . Disobedient Bodies explores the way in which we spend effort and money rectifying our "flaws" . . . to encourage an alternative approach to beauty -- Best New Books to Read in October 2023 * The i *A very important book -- Carol MorleyPraise for What White People Can Do Next -- :Emma is once-in-a-generation clever -- Caitlin MoranGame-changing -- Jason Okundaye * British Vogue *Essential . . . accessible and yet so full of scholarship. Witty, insightful, a must-read -- Owen JonesImpactful . . . a manifesto for meaningful and lasting change. And trust us, once you've picked it up and started reading, you won't want to put it down * Cosmopolitan *Praise for Don't Touch My Hair -- :Groundbreaking . . . I would urge everyone to read it * Guardian *Groundbreaking . . . scintillating -- Bernardine Evaristo * TLS *Fascinating, educational, personal, humble and engaging. I urge you all to read it! -- Marian Keyes

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Book SynopsisEva Barbarossa is a writer and researcher based in Los Angeles and Italy. Her writing has appeared in the Review of Contemporary Fiction, Surface, and The Island Review.Trade ReviewEva Barbarossa delights in details and shows how much fun technology can be when science appears to be magic. * Mark Kurlansky, author of Paper: Paging Through History (2016), Milk!: A 10,000-Year Food Fracas (2018), and Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of a Common Fate (forthcoming 2019) *In this delightful and engaging account, Eva Barbarossa shows us how our attraction to magnets is just as much part of culture as it is science--and has been for millennia. Magnet brings together everything from magic and mystery to mesmerism and MRIs as Barbarossa unpacks the meaning of a magnet's pull. Magnet is a must read. * Lydia Pyne, author of Bookshelf (2016) and Genuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff (forthcoming 2019) *Table of ContentsPrologue In which I eat hundreds of magnets. 1. Birth In which humans find a stone with magical properties. 2. Earth In which we discover we live on an ancient magnet. 3. Home In which we use magnets to find our way. 4. Alignment In which man and beast align to the magnetic fields. 5. North In which we hunt for polar magnets. 6. Health In which we believe magnets harm and heal. 7. Transcendence In which magnetic fluids provide hope. 8. Tricks In which we use magnets to make trouble. 9. Toys In which we find magnets for play and pedagogy. 10. Technology In which everything needs a magnet. Afterword In which I do not eat more magnets. Acknowledgements Selected sources Notes Index

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Book Synopsis'One of the most rewarding pieces of hip-hop criticism ever written' Jeff Chang 'Brilliant' Giles Peterson 'Will Ashon's dazzling study gets to the heart of hip hop, pop culture and the history of contemporary America. Essential' Matt Thorne 'Each of these chambers contains wonders of history, destiny and mythology' Margo Jefferson Will Ashon tells, in 36 interlinked 'chambers', the story of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and how it changed the world. As unexpected and complex as the album itself, Chamber Music ranges from provocative essays to semi-comic skits, from deep scholarly analysis to satirical celebration, seeking to contextualise, reveal and honour this singularly composite work of art. From the FBI's war on drugs to the porn theatres of 42nd street, from the history of jazz to the future of politics, Chamber Music is an explosive and revelatory new way of writing about music and culture.

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of public performance in everyday life, by the leading cultural and social thinkerThe Performer explores the relations between performing in art (particularly music), politics and everyday experience. It focuses on the bodily and physical dimensions of performing, rather than on words. Richard Sennett is particularly attuned to the ways in which the rituals of ordinary life are performances. The book draws on history and sociology, and more personally on the author's early career as a professional cellist, as well as on his later work as a city planner and social thinker. It traces the evolution of performing spaces in the city; the emergence of actors, musicians, and dancers as independent artists; the inequality between performer and spectator; the uneasy relations between artistic creation and social and religious ritual; the uses and abuses of acting by politicians. The Janus-faced art of performing is both destructive and civilizing. This is the first in a trilogy of books on the fundamental DNA of human expression: performing, narrating, and imaging.

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Book SynopsisBest Books of 2019Scholarly KitchenObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Hashtags can silence as well as shout. They originate in the quiet of the archive and the breathless suspense of the control room, and find voice in the roar of rallies in the streets. The #hashtag is a composite creation, with two separate but related design histories: one involving the crosshatch symbol and one about the choice of letters after it.Celebration and criticism of hashtag activism rarely address the hashtag as an object or try to locate its place in the history of writing for machines. Although hashtags tend to be associated with Silicon Valley invention myths or celebrity power users, the story of the hashtag is much longer and more surprising, speaking to how we think about naming, identity, and being human in a non-human world.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewThe hashtag is everywhere--but why and what does it do? In this small book, Liz Losh insightfully answers this question through historical research, case studies, and rhetorical analyses that explore the possibilities, dangers, and limitations of #CommunicateThis; #HijackThis; #DoesThisReallyMakeADifference. Brilliant and compellingly written, it takes on #controversies and helps us understand how gender, race, and labor matter. * Wendy Chun, Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media, Simon Fraser University, Canada, and author of Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (2017) *This is the story you didn’t know existed--the story of how one little symbol enabled efficient and powerful communication among human beings and between computers. The hashtag is one of the most interesting communicative inventions of this century. Dr. Losh explains how it got this way in clear language and with an eye for detail. * Siva Vaidhyanathan, Robertson Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia, USA, and author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (2018) *Table of Contents#HASHTAG #OCTOTHORPE #INVENTOR #PERSON #PLACE #SLOGAN #BRAND #ORIGIN #INTERSECTION #NOISE #CHATTER #FILE #METADATA #ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Notes Index

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Book SynopsisBeauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference. In this Very Short Introduction the renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores the concept of beauty, asking what makes an object - either in art, in nature, or the human form - beautiful, and examining how we can compare differing judgements of beauty when it is evident all around us that our tastes vary so widely. Is there a right judgement to be made about beauty? Is it right to say there is more beauty in a classical temple than a concrete office block, more in a Rembrandt than in last year''s Turner Prize winner? Forthright and thought-provoking, and as accessible as it is intellectually rigorous, this introduction to the philosophy of beauty draws conclusions that some may find controversial, but, as Scruton shows, help us to find greater sense of meaning in the beautiful objects that fill our lives.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade ReviewMouthwatering design-compact, colorful, sturdy. Can travel in one's pocket. * Walks of Art, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju *Table of ContentsPreface ; 1. Judging beauty ; 2. Human beauty ; 3. Natural beauty ; 4. Everyday beauty ; 5. Artistic beauty ; 6. Taste and order ; 7. Art and Eros ; 8. The flight from beauty ; 9. Concluding thoughts ; Notes and Further Reading

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Book Synopsis''We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks''In this series of remarkable pieces from across his career, John Berger celebrates and dissects the close links between art and society and the individual. Few writers give a more vivid and moving sense of how we make art and how art makes us.One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists.

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Feared and worshiped in equal measure, snakes have captured the imagination of poets, painters, and philosophers for centuries. From Ice Age cave drawings to Snakes on a Plane, this creature continues to enthrall the public. But what harm has been caused by our mythologizing? While considering the dangers of stigma, Erica Wright moves from art and pop culture to religion, fetish, and ecologic disaster. This book considers how the snake has become more symbol than animal, a metaphor for how we treat whatever scares us the most, whether or not our panic is justified.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in the The Atlantic.Trade ReviewCaptivating * Lit Reactor *Deeply personal and highly readable…The navigation among such disparate topics, often at a rapid pace, is decidedly easy going, which has to be attributed to Wright’s accessible and captivating voice… Snake is full of power, packed with sobering reminders about the human-animal relationship and our responsibility in maintaining it. * Chapter16 *We give no creature as much cultural meaning as we do the snake, as Erica Wright shows us in this winning tour through history and biology, religion and fear, medicine and fashion. But the real meat of this book is Wright’s bright sensibility. What she sees when she writes about snakes includes: environmental and biological apocalypse, the meaning of fear, existential crises trying to sleep through the night in an absolutely dark cave, the complicated sublime, "the grace alongside the fangs…awful and beautiful together.” That’s the genius of this book: the self as both instrument and subject. As it turns out, what we talk about when we talk about snakes is ourselves. * Ander Monson, Professor of English, University of Arizona, USA, and author of I Will Take the Answer (2020) *Table of ContentsPreface 1. Kingsnakes and Beauty Queens 2. The Problem of the Serpent 3. From Mademoiselle Dorita to Britney Spears: The Snake Charmer Girls 4. A Mouse in Your Teeth 5. Say Amen and Pass the Cottonmouth 6. Python Pocketbooks 7. Who’s a Good Boy? 8. Snakes Are Not Cheap: Titanoboa and Other Monsters in the Lake 9. The Hobbyist 10. Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth 11. Magnanimity and True Courage Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.In an election year, political signs can be impossible to avoid. They're in front yards, on bumper stickers, and in some places you might never have expected. Tobias Carroll chronicles the permutations and secret histories of political signs, venturing into the story of how they came to be and illuminating how the signs around us shape us in ways we often fail to appreciate. In an era of political polarization and heated debate, what can be learned from studying how our personal space becomes the setting for both? Understanding political signs can help us understand our current political moment, and how we might transcend it.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewA page-turner of cultural analysis and shrewd observation. * Los Angeles Review of Books *During a moment in which Americans are besieged by an onslaught of political messaging from the sublime to the ridiculous, this slim, thoughtful volume helps make sense of what we’re seeing. Tobias Carroll has written a timely meditation on the political sign, an object that telegraphs our deeply held beliefs and exists in 'the space between poetry and prose'… You won’t look at a MAGA hat the same way again. * NPR's Book Concierge *The artifacts he examines look more curious than their familiarity would suggest. * Inside Higher Ed *We have long been taught to think about the politics of signs, but less often is this applied to political signs themselves—our yard signs and bumper stickers and billboards—these strange creatures of the American electoral landscape, some proliferating and gone like dandelions, others stuck in place like barnacles, even as years of political changes leave them as decontextualized fossils. In this brisk and encompassing work, Tobias Carroll examines and makes strange these instruments of power and change and reaction, offering us a sharp and unyielding look at everything that is on the surface that we still do not see. * Mark Doten, author of Trump Sky Alpha *Tobias Carroll has opened my eyes to the signs around me, and now I can’t stop seeing. * Alexis Coe, author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George of Washington and Alice+Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Ubiquity of Yard Signs 2. The Sign Wars 3. The Business of Signs 4. The Pros and Cons of Being Generic 5. Political Signs in the Public Eye 6. Signs as Shorthand, Signs as Remakes 7. On Protest Signs 8. The Making of a Protest Sign 9. Sports & Signs & Sponsors 10. Signs in the Seats Interlude: The Punk Chapter 11. Knives Bats New (Political) Tats 12. HOPE and Its Discontents 13. When Art Is a Sign 14. When a Sign Is Art Conclusion Acknowledgments & Thanks Notes Index

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Book SynopsisBeauty today is a paradox. The cult of beauty is ubiquitous but it has lost its transcendence and become little more than an aspect of consumerism, the aesthetic dimension of capitalism. The sublime and unsettling aspects of beauty have given way to corporeal pleasures and 'likes', resulting in a kind of 'pornography' of beauty. In this book, cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han reinvigorates aesthetic theory for our digital age. He interrogates our preoccupation with all things slick and smooth, from Jeff Koon's sculptures and the iPhone to Brazilian waxing. Reaching far deeper than our superficial reactions to viral videos and memes, Han reclaims beauty, showing how it manifests itself as truth, temptation and even disaster. This wide-ranging and profound exploration of beauty, encompassing ethical and political considerations as well as aesthetic, will appeal to all those interested in cultural and aesthetic theory, philosophy and digital media.Trade Review"In this provocative analysis Han agitates against contemporary notions of smooth air-brushed beauty. Instead he pleads for an aesthetic based on a generative, creative, commitment to truth that can encompass negativity injury and disaster. Ranging from pornography to classical literature this tour de force of thinking about our understanding of beauty reminds us that philosophy can have teeth. Han writes with a compelling urgency about how we live in the here and now, but also how we could live better. Saving Beauty is an aesthetic call to arms; an example of how philosophy can militate for a better world and make us see anew." Karen Leeder, Oxford University “Thrilling… a passionate and engaging read on a notion of beauty that has lost its standing in a digitized world.”Philosophy TodayTable of Contents1. The Smooth 2. The Smooth Body 3. The Aesthetics of the Smooth 4. Digital Beauty 5. The Aesthetics of Veiling 6. The Aesthetics of Injury 7. The Aesthetics of Disaster 8. The Ideal of Beauty 9. Beauty as Truth 10. The Politics of Beauty 11. Pornographic Theatre 12. Lingering on Beauty 13. Beauty as Reminiscence 14. Giving Birth in Beauty Notes

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Book SynopsisJohn Ruskin was born in London in 1819. He became a towering literary figure in the nineteenth century, known for his writings on both art and on political economy. He became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University in 1869. John Ruskin died in 1900.

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Book SynopsisNo other country and no other period has produced a tradition of major aesthetic debate to compare with that which unfolded in German culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. In Aesthetics and Politics the key texts of the great Marxist controversies over literature and art during these years are assembled in a single volume. They do not form a disparate collection but a continuous, interlinked debate between thinkers who have become giants of twentieth-century intellectual history.Trade ReviewThese are key texts in the study of modernism, of expressionist drama and of realism, and of many closesly related general questions. ... It is genuinely an indispensable volume. -- Raymond WilliamsThis is vital reading for anyone concerned with the relationship between art and socialism. -- John FowlesUnlike conventional anthologies of Marxist writings on art, Aestheticand Politics has the form of an intellectual epic, presented as a series of mutual confronations between its protagonists. * Telos *

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Exits are all around us. They are the difference between travelling and arriving, being on the inside or outside. Whether signposted or subversive, personal or political, choices or holes we''ve fallen through, exits determine how we move around our lives, cities, and the world. What does it really mean to exit'? In these meditations on exits in architecture, transport, ancestry, language, garbage, death, Sesame Street and Brexit, Laura Waddell follows the neon and the pictograms of exit signs to see what's on the other side. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewAn incredible writer. Exit is wondrous, cleverly and movingly encouraging us to think of the ordinary in new and challenging ways. As it happens, I read this brilliant book while pondering what an ‘exit’ from the coronavirus lockdown might look like, and the reminder that exits often lead to new and better beginnings was a welcome inspiration indeed. * Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland *Writer, publisher and award-winning Scotsman columnist Laura Waddell straddles the tangible and the theoretical in her thoughtful contribution on exits. * The Scotsman *From its timely nature and broad range of subjects, to the style in which it was written, I would highly recommend Exit, particularly to anyone looking to enjoy their first taste of the Object Lessons series. * The National *Roaming from Glasgow to Kowloon Walled City, Laura Waddell's Exit is deft, compelling and deep; revealing the extent to which the political is always personal. There are no simple escapes in these studies of exclusion, entrapment and exile yet Waddell proves in the persuasive empathy and acuity of her writing that it is possible to throw open our windows to light and sound from outside, elsewhere, one another. * Darran Anderson, author of Imaginary Cities and Inventory *Though physically small, its scope is at once sweeping and intimate, darting ably from urban spaces to individual case studies … a consistent pleasure … dazzling. * Review 31 *Table of ContentsPreface 1. Words Associated with Exit 2. After the World of My Own Language Sank 3. Some Poet Throwing Forked Lightning 4a. The History of Exit Signs 4b. The Poetics of Exit Design 4c. The Future of Exit Signs 5. Grouchland: Brexit, Sesame Street, and Garbage 6. Elevation 7. Evictions and Evacuations 8. Existential Exits 9. EXIT This Way Acknowledgements Notes Index

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Book SynopsisA scuba diving company faces bankruptcy because sharks have infested the area. Solution? Open the world''s first extreme diving school.The Art of Creative Thinking reveals how we can transform ourselves, our businesses and our society through a deeper understanding of human creativity. Rod Judkins, lecturer at the world-famous St Martin''s College of Art, has studied successful creative thinkers from every walk of life, throughout history. Drawing on an extraordinary range of reference points - from the Dada Manifesto to Nobel Prize Winning economists, from Andy Warhol''s studio to Einstein''s desk - he distils a lifetime''s expertise into a succinct, surprising book that will inspire you to think more confidently and creatively.You''ll realise why you should be happy when your train is cancelled; meet the most successful class in educational history (in which every single student won a Nobel prize); discover why graphic nudity during pubTrade ReviewThis is a must-read for aspiring artists and creatives everywhere. * Mumsnet *

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Book SynopsisKant's Critique of Judgement analyses our experience of the beautiful and the sublime in relation to nature, morality, and theology. Meredith's classic translation is here lightly revised and supplemented with a bilingual glossary. The edition also includes the important First Introduction.

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Book SynopsisIn this ground-breaking and influential study Fredric Jameson explores the complex place and function of literature within culture. At the time Jameson was actually writing the book, in the mid to late seventies, there was a major reaction against deconstruction and poststructuralism. As one of the most significant literary theorists, Jameson found himself in the unenviable position of wanting to defend his intellectual past yet keep an eye on the future. With this book he carried it off beautifully. A landmark publication, The Political Unconscious takes its place as one of the most meaningful works of the twentieth century.century.Trade Review'Every now and then a book appears which is literally ahead of its time ...The Political Unconscious is such a book ... it sets new standards of what a classic work is.' - Slavoj Zizek

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Book Synopsis''Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life''The two works brought together here, ''The Decay of Lying'' and ''The Critic as Artist'', are Oscar Wilde''s wittiest and most profound writings on aesthetics, in which he proposes that criticism is the highest form of creation and that lying, the telling of a beautiful untruth, is the ultimate aim of art.One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists.

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Book SynopsisEdmund Burke was one of the foremost philosophers of the eighteenth century and wrote widely on aesthetics, politics and society. In this landmark work, he propounds his theory that the sublime and the beautiful should be regarded as distinct and wholly separate states - the first, an experience inspired by fear and awe, the second an expression of pleasure and serenity. Eloquent and profound, A Philosophical Enquiry is an involving account of our sensory, imaginative and judgmental processes and their relation to artistic appreciation. Burke''s work was hugely influential on his contemporaries and also admired by later writers such as Matthew Arnold and William Wordsworth. This volume also contains several of his early political works on subjects including natural society, government and the American colonies, which illustrate his liberal, humane views.Table of ContentsList of AbbreviationsA Chronology of Edmund BurkeIntroductionFurther ReadingA Note on the TextsA Vindication of Natural Society (1756; second edition, 1757)A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757; second edition, 1759)Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770; third edition, 1770)Speech on American Taxation (1774; third edition, 1775)Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies(1775; third edition, 1775)Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol on the Affairs of America (1777; third edition, 1777)NotesBiographica

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewProbably no European writer of his time left so deep a mark on the imagination -- Conor Cruise O'BrienCamus helps you become "the one you are". And the revolt he incites, an assertion of individual freedom, brings you into a recognition of common human suffering and of the common need to lessen it and to enliven the lives of all -- David Constantine

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Book SynopsisNo philosopher has held a higher opinion of art than Hegel, yet nor was any so profoundly pessimistic about its prospects - despite living in the German golden age of Goethe, Mozart and Schiller. For if the artists of classical Greece could find the perfect fusion of content and form, modernity faced complicating - and ultimately disabling - questions. Christianity, with its code of unworldliness, had compromised the immediacy of man''s relationship with reality, and ironic detachment had alienated him from his deepest feelings. Hegel''s Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics were delivered in Berlin in the 1820s and stand today as a passionately argued work that challenged the ability of art to respond to the modern world.Table of ContentsThe range of aesthetic defined, and some objections against the philosophy of art refuted; methods of science applicable to beauty and art; the conception of artisitc beauty; historical deduction of the true idea of art in modern philosophy; division of the subject.

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Book SynopsisThe greatest wisdom comes from the smallest creaturesThere is so much we can learn from birds. Through twenty-two little lessons of wisdom inspired by how birds live, this charming french book will help you spread your wings and soar.We often need the help from those smaller than us. Having spent a lifetime watching birds, Philippe and Élise a French ornithologist and a philosopher draw out the secret lessons that birds can teach us about how to live, and the wisdom of the natural world. Along the way you'll discover why the robin is braver than the eagle, what the arctic tern can teach us about the joy of travel, and whether the head or the heart is the best route to love (as shown by the mallard and the penguin). By the end you will feel more in touch with the rhythms of nature and have a fresh perspective on how to live the fullest life you can.Trade ReviewBrilliant, magical and engrossing – I will never see birds the same way again * Peter Wohlleben, bestselling author of THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES *A little gem. So much wisdom to be drawn from the feathered world of birds * Raynor Winn, bestselling author of THE SALT PATH *A charming, witty and thought-provoking look at the way bird behaviour can both reflect and influence the way we live our lives * Stephen Moss (Naturalist and author) *This little book does a beautiful job of inspiring awe for the capacities of birds and applying lessons from their lives to the struggles of humanity * Wall Street Journal *

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Book SynopsisConfessions of a Heretic is a collection of provocative essays by the influential social commentator and polemicist Roger Scruton. Each “confession” reveals aspects of the author’s thinking that his critics would probably have advised him to keep to himself. In this selection, covering subjects from art and architecture to politics and nature conservation, Scruton challenges popular opinion on key aspects of our culture: What can we do to protect Western values against Islamist extremism? How can we nurture real friendship through social media? Why is the nation-state worth preserving? How should we achieve a timely death against the advances of modern medicine? This provocative collection seeks to answer the most pressing problems of our age. In his introduction, the bestselling author and commentator Douglas Murray writes of what it cost Scruton to express views considered unpalatable, and of the importance of these ideas after Scruton’s death.

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Book SynopsisFirst and foremost an outcry against injustice and inhumanity, Unto this Last is also a closely argued assault on the science of political economy, which dominated the Victorian period. Ruskin was a profoundly conservative man who looked back to the Middle Ages as a Utopia, yet his ideas had a considerable influence on the British socialist movement. And in making his powerful moral and aesthetic case against the dangers of unhindered industrialization he was strangely prophetic. This volume shows the astounding range and depth of Ruskin''s work, and in an illuminating introduction the editor reveals the consistency of Ruskin''s philosophy and his adamant belief that questions of economics, art and science could not be separated from questions of morality. In Ruskin''s words, ''There is no Wealth but Life.''Table of ContentsEdited with an Introduction and Notes by Clive WilmerIntroductionChronologyFurther ReadingThe King of the Golden RiverFrom The Stones of Venice, Volume IIThe Nature of GothicFrom The Two PathsThe Work of Iron, in Nature, Art, and PolicyFrom Modern Painters, Volume VThe Two BoyhoodsUnto This LastPrefaceEssay I: The Roots of HonourEssay II: The Veins of WealthEssay III: Qui Judicatis TerramEssay IV: Ad ValoremFrom The Crown of Wild OliveTrafficFrom Sesame and LiliesOf Kings' TreasuriesFrom Fors ClavigeraLetter 7: CharitasLetter 10: The Baron's GateNotes

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Book SynopsisAesthetics and the philosophy of art are about things in the world things like the Mona Lisa, but also things like horror movies, things like the ugliest dog in the world, and things like wallpaper. There's a surprising amount of philosophical content to be found in wallpaper. Using a case-driven approach, Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art is grounded in real-world examples that propel thought, debate, and discussion about the nature of art and beauty. Now in its third edition, this tried-and-tested text features fresh cases and new activities. Hands-on Do Aesthetics! activities pepper the text, and Challenge Cases appear at the end of each chapter to test intuitions, to complicate the field of discussion, and to set a path forward. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper serves as a recurring case throughout, and this edition includes the full text of this classic short story. From classical debates that continue to bother philosoTrade ReviewHick's lively and comprehensive introduction manages a remarkable feat: it remains student-friendly while keeping a keen eye trained on historical figures and also carefully navigating contemporary debates. I'm excited to teach with this new edition. Highly recommended. * Sam Cowling, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Denison University, USA *Interesting examples continue to draw us into the concepts and theories of philosophy, but in addition, the chapters now include case studies and challenges. This is an excellent text for helping students grapple in their own way with the aesthetic values of nature and art, and the associated ethical issues. * Jennifer A. McMahon, Professor of Philosophy, The University of Adelaide, Australia *Hick does something I’ve never seen another author of an introductory Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics textbook do, and that’s make it fun. With a point of engagement at every turn, the reader can't help but feel like they're an active part of a conversation. A thing of beauty! * Christy Mag Uidhir, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Houston, USA *Table of ContentsPreface to the Third Edition Introduction: Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, An Extremely Brief History 1: Defining Art 2: Interpretation and Intention 3: Aesthetic Properties and Evaluation 4: The Ontology of Art 5: Emotions and the Arts 6: Art and Morality 7: Art, Aesthetics, and Identity 8: Aesthetics Without Art ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisGuiding you through the topics that shape aesthetics and the philosophy of art, this introduction explores the truth, meaning, taste, aesthetic merit and judgement, creativity and the possibility of machine art, and morality and the possibility of immoral art. Each chapter offers a wealth of examples from Southeast Asia, including the Nanyang style of painting, the mooi indie genre and its postcolonial legacy, groundbreaking works of poetry and literature, dragon kiln pottery, the art of making ang ku kueh, contemporary conceptual art, the dikir barat and the balitaw. Selected for their merit, boldness and connection to the Southeast Asian region, these artworks traverse art and craft, visual art and music, perceptual and conceptual art, real-life and hypothetical examples and folk and fine art. As case studies, these artworks allow us to deal with controversies and address central questions including: - When are artworks considered dangerous? - Why does Socrates re

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Book SynopsisIn his Enquiry Edmund Burke overturned the Platonic tradition in aesthetics and replaced metaphysics with psychology. His revolutions in method and sensibility influenced later philosophers and literary and artistic movements from the Gothic novel to Romanticism and beyond. This new edition guides the reader through Burke's arguments.Trade ReviewBurke's 'Enquiry' is essential reading on aesthetics. Paul Guyer's new edition helps the reader get the most out of the text, with a clear and thought-provoking introduction and excellent notes. * Minerva, Lucia Marchini *

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Book SynopsisVery Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Imagination: A Very Short Introduction explores imagination as a cognitive power and an essential dimension of human flourishing, demonstrating how imagination plays multiple roles in human cognition and shapes humanity in profound ways. Examining philosophical, evolutionary, and literary perspectives on imagination, the author shows how this facility, while potentially distorting, both frees us from immediate reality and enriches our sense of it, making possible our experience of a meaningful world. Long regarded by philosophers as an elusive and mysterious capacity of the human mind, imagination has been the subject of extraordinary ambivalence, described as both dangerous and divine, as merely peripheral to rationality and as essential to all thinking. Drawing on philosophy, aesthetics, literary and cognitive theory as well as the human sciences, this book engages the dramatic conceptual history of imagination together Table of ContentsAcknowledgements 1: What is imagination? 2: Imagination in human evolution 3: From divine madness to cognitive power 4: The productive and aesthetic imagination 5: The augmentation of reality 6: Creativity from invention to wonder References and further reading

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Book SynopsisThis Very Short Introduction provides an overview of the intriguing and provocative life and ideas of twentieth century French philosopher, mystic, and social activist Simone Weil. Weil was not a typical, systematic philosopher. Despite her short life, Weil''s philosophy has much to offer us in our times of personal, communal, political, and environmental crises, both in the breath and poignancy of her philosophy, and the topics it covers.In keeping with Weil''s spirit to consider and address laypeople, Rozelle-Stone takes readers, including those who have had little or no previous exposure to Weil or philosophy, on an accessible journey of Weil''s major philosophical impacts. This exploration consists of seven chapters highlighting: her life and manner of death, both characterized by attention; the influence of ancient Greek ideas on her philosophy; her thoughts on labour and politics; her unique and ecumenical religious inspirations, stemming from Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, an

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Book SynopsisBence Nanay introduces aesthetics, a branch of philosophy that explores the nature of art, beauty, and taste. Looking beyond traditional artistic experiences, he defends the topic from accusations of elitism, and shows how more everyday experiences such as the pleasure in a soft fabric or falling leaves can become the subject of aesthetics.Table of Contents1: Lost in the museum 2: Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll 3: Experience and attention 4: Aesthetics and the self 5: Aesthetics and the other 6: Aesthetics and life 7: Global aesthetics Further reading Index

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Book Synopsis''Yes, what is Dionysian? - This book provides an answer - a man who knows speaks in it, the initiate and disciple of his god.''The Birth of Tragedy (1872) is a book about the origins of Greek tragedy and its relevance to the German culture of its time. For Nietzsche, Greek tragedy is the expression of a culture which has achieved a delicate but powerful balance between Dionysian insight into the chaos and suffering which underlies all existence and the discipline and clarity of rational Apollonian form. In order to promote a return to these values, Nietzsche undertakes a critique of the complacent rationalism of late nineteenth-century German culture and makes an impassioned plea for the regenerative potential of the music of Wagner. In its wide-ranging discussion of the nature of art, science and religion, Nietzsche''s argument raises important questions about the problematic nature of cultural origins which are still of concern today. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford Worl

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Book SynopsisIan Buchanan is the founder of the Deleuze and Guattari Studies journal and author and editor of over thirty books on the work of Deleuze and Guattari including Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus' (Bloomsbury, 2008), and Assemblage Theory and Method (Bloomsbury, 2021) and The Incomplete Project of Schizoanalysis (2021).

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Book SynopsisHere be Kraken! The Squid Cinema From Hell draws upon writers like Vilem Flusser, Donna J. Haraway, Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker to offer up a critical analysis of cephalopods and other tentacular creatures in contemporary media, while also speculating that digital media might themselves constitute a weird, intelligent alien.

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The ocean comprises the largest object on our planet. Retelling human history from an oceanic rather than terrestrial point of view unsettles our relationship with the natural environment. Our engagement with the world''s oceans can be destructive, as with today's deluge of plastic trash and acidification, but the mismatch between small bodies and vast seas also emphasizes the frailty and resilience of human experience. From ancient stories of shipwrecked sailors to the containerized future of 21st-century commerce, Ocean splashes the histories we thought we knew into salty and unfamiliar places.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewSteve Mentz’s Ocean is both a lyrical and scholarly ode to the sea, encrusting and fluid. * The Millions *Oceans are big things, so Steve Mentz has made a concise book of them. From sailors as cyborgs to Queequeg as a mermaid, from Conrad's mirrored sea to Emily Dickinson's marine visions, Mentz swims like Coleridge's library cormorant, collecting glittering things. The result is a wild and wonderful work; part essay, part reverie, wholly full of watery brilliance. * Philip Hoare, author of RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR (2018) *Ocean: a tiny word, but an expansive ecology made fathomable by Mentz's exploration of the human attraction to and fear of the world's oceans as illuminated through poetry, history, and literature. A wondrous read. * Lynne Cox, author of Swimming to Antartica: Tales of a Long-distance Swimmer (2004), Grayson (2006), and Swimming in the Sink: A Memoir (2016) *Mentz takes us on an invigorating 'adventure in thinking,' across vast temporalities and aquatic expanses, rich with strange confluences, and haunted by the terrors of 'wet globalization.' Against the impossibility of understanding the ocean, he casts an inventive blue humanities that lures us with its histories, poetry, theories, queer couplings, exultations, and immersive practices. * Stacy Alaimo, author of Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times (2016) *Table of ContentsDeterratorializing Preface 1. Two Origins: Alien or Core? 2. Seafood before History 3. Myth I: Odysseus, not Achilles 4. Wet Globalization I: The Premodern Anthropocene 5. Sea Poetry I: Adamastor as Warning and Gate 6. Sailors: A Technological History 7. Interlude: Port of New York 8. Sea Poetry II: The Sea in Emily Dickinson 9. Myth II: Queequeg and Other Mermaids 10. Wet Globalization II: Containers 11. Blue Environmentalism: Rachel Carson 12. Swimmers: Immersive Histories Acknowledgments Reading the Blue Humanities: A Bibliographical Essay Index

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Book SynopsisThe Politics of Aesthetics rethinks the relationship between art and politics, reclaiming "aesthetics" from the narrow confines it is often reduced to. Jacques Rancière reveals its intrinsic link to politics by analysing what they both have in common: the delimitation of the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, the thinkable and the unthinkable, the possible and the impossible. Presented as a set of inter-linked interviews, The Politics of Aesthetics provides the most comprehensive introduction to Rancière's work to date, ranging across the history of art and politics from the Greek polis to the aesthetic revolution of the modern age. Available now in the Bloomsbury Revelations series 10 years after its original publication, The Politics of Aesthetics includes an afterword by Slavoj Zizek, an interview for the English edition, a glossary of technical terms and an extensive bibliography.Trade Review"Jacques Rancière is one of the most important and original contemporary French philosophers. This book provides perhaps the best available introduction to his thought in English. Its main contents are two interviews with Rancière...they provide an extraordinarily concise and systematic summary by Rancière of the main themes of his recent work across its whole range. Rancière's project is promising. It is illuminating to see aesthetics as political and politics in aesthetic terms, as a form of the 'distribution of the sensible.'" -Culture Machine -- Culture Machine"[A]n excellent introduction to Jacques Rancière...Slavoj Žižek writes in his afterword: 'Rancière's thought is today more actual than ever: in our time of the disorientation of the left, his writings offer one of the few consistent conceptualizations of how we are to continue to exist.'" - London Review of Books, August 3, 2006 -- London Review of Books'Ranciere has insightful and novel things to say about the problems that beset our understanding of modernity as it applies to art.' * Modern Painters, March 2005 *'Locating the political significance of art has not only gone out of fashion, it has in recent years become a source of embarrassment. No one has argued against this repression with more precision, nuance, and undeniable force than Jacques Ranciere ... This book, with an emphatic "Afterword" by Zizek, provides a riveting and compelling outline of the central elements of Ranciere's politics of aesthetics and its relation to his demanding rethinking of the political.' -- J.M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research'A benchmark, this compact book shows why Ranciere is one of the most compelling thinkers and writers in France since Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze.' -- Tom Conley, Harvard University, USA'This is possibly the most important essay, despite its length, since Adorno's Aesthetic Theory.' -- Adrian Rifkin, Professor of Visual Culture, Middlesex University, UK'A tour de force! Through a revitalisation of the term 'aesthetics', Ranciere is able to raise novel questions concerning the nature of history, the sense of our modernity, the relationship between work and art and between science and art, and the peculiarity of aesthetic experience (showing, in essence, that it cannot be contained but informs all our forms of life and activities).' -- Keith Ansell Pearson, Professor of Philosophy, Warwick University, UK'The readership for Ranciere's work is highly interdisciplinary. Le Partage du sensible would be obligatory reading in graduate courses in Philosophy, Aesthetics, Political Science, French Studies, Literature, and Cultural Studies, where it would be read in the context of other major thinkers of politics and aesthetics such as Walter Benjamin, Jean-Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Etienne Balibar, Michel Foucault, Paul Ricoeur, Jurgen Habermas, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Slavoj Zizek.' -- Kristin Ross, Professor of Comparative Literature, New York University, USATable of ContentsTranslator's preface: The Reconfiguration of Meaning Translator's Introduction: Jacques Ranciere's Politics of Perception \ The Politics of Aesthetics \ Foreword \ The Distribution of the Sensible: Politics and Aesthetics Artistic Regimes and the Shortcomings of the Notion of Modernity \ Mechanical Arts and the Promotion of the Anonymous \ Is History a Form of Fiction? On Art and Work \ Interview with Jacques Ranciere for the English Edition: The Janus-Face of Politicized Art \ Historical and Hermeneutic Methodology \ Universality, Historicity, Equality \ Positive Contradiction \ Politicized Art \ Afterword by Slavoj Zizek: The Lesson of Ranciere \ Appendix I: Glossary of Technical Terms \ Appendix II: Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources \ Index.

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Book SynopsisValery Podoroga was one of the most important thinkers of his generation. Here his most famous work is translated into English for the first time. In it he gives a panorama view of Russian writing, focusing in on the work of Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Andrei Bely. He identifies these authors as pioneers in creating an 'other literature'. This constituted a new form of mimesis or vision of the world, in opposition to the Imperial and national myths.In Mimesis Podoroga develops and elaborates his analytic anthropological approach on these authors with startling effect, excavating the identities and forms of Russian literature, and society. He places an emphasis on how a literary work is a process of world building: both internally by creating a fictive world, but also how it reflects the wider world in which it was produced, and the power with which it changes the world. Finally, the literary work's ability to exist in a time that is other than its own time, a time where it does not have a contemporary reader and an author who exercises his will, but where it nonetheless continues to mean something. Mimesis is rightly seen as the masterwork of one of the world's leading literary thinkers.Trade Review"Podoroga has long been heralded as a quasi-patron saint of post-Soviet philosophy. . . Podoroga liberates classics of Russian literature from questions of historicism or fidelity to an external reality."—Marxism and Philosophy

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