Philosophy: aesthetics Books

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 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 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 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 SynopsisIs a tower block, your unmade bed, your lavatory basin, or the bicycle chained to the gate next door a work of art? Why should a novel have a beginning, a middle, and an end; or even a story? Whether we recognise it or not, virtually every aspect of our life today has been influenced in part by the aesthetic legacy of Modernism. In this Very Short Introduction Christopher Butler examines how and why Modernism began, explaining what it is and showing how it has gradually informed all aspects of 20th and 21st century life. Butler considers several aspects of modernism including some modernist works; movements and notions of the avant garde; and the idea of ''progress'' in art. Butler looks at modernist ideas of the self, subjectivity, irrationalism, people and machines, and political definitions of modernism as a whole. 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 ReviewA useful introduction, as lucid and engaging as it is concise. / Peter Blair, University of ChesterTable of Contents1. The Modernist work ; 2. Modernist movements and cultural tradition ; 3. The Modernist artist ; 4. Modernism and politics

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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 SynopsisTwo representative and important works in one volume by one of the greatest German philosophers.The Birth of Tragedy (1872) was Nietzsche''s first book. Its youthful faults were exposed by Nietzsche in the brilliant Attempt at a Self-Criticism which he added to the new edition of 1886. But the book, whatever its excesses, remains one of the most relevant statements on tragedy ever penned. It exploded the conception of Greek culture that was prevalent down through the Victorian era, and it sounded themes developed in the twentieth century by classicists, existentialists, psychoanalysts, and others.The Case of Wagner (1888) was one Nietzsche''s last books, and his wittiest. In attitude and style it is diametrically opposed to The Birth of Tragedy. Both works transcend their ostensible subjects and deal with art and culture, as well as the problems of the modern age generally.Each book in itself gives us an inadequate idea of its author; together, they furnish a striking image of Nietzsche''s thought. The distinguished translations by Walter Kaufmann superbly reflect in English Nietzsche''s idiom and the vitality of his style. Professor Kaufmann has also furnished running footnote commentaries, relevant passages from Nietzsche''s correspondence, a bibliography, and, for the first time in any edition, an extensive index to each book.

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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 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 SynopsisIn this landmark text by one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Gilles Deleuze takes the paintings of Francis Bacon as his object of his study. The book presents a deep engagement with Bacon''s work and the nature of art. Deleuze analyzes the distinctive innovations that came to mark Bacon''s style: the isolation of the figure, the violation and deformations of the flesh, the complex use of color, the method of chance, and the use of the triptych form. Here Deleuze creates a number of his well-known concepts, such as the ''body without organs'' and contrasts his own approach to painting with that of both the phenomenological and the art historical traditions. Deleuze links Bacon''s work to Cezanne''s notion of a ''logic'' of sensation and, investigating this logic, explores Bacon''s crucial relation to past painters such as Cezanne, Velasquez, and Soutine.Trade ReviewA lively and systematic study of Bacon's work. The book is clearly organised, helping to make complicated arguments easier to follow. * Modern Painters *A path-breaking work on the aesthetics of sensation, the philosophy of colour, on form, and on painting in general, Francis Bacon is one of the most important, if not the most crucial, of all of Deleuze's writings. * Tom Conley, Harvard University, USA *One of Deleuze’s most beautifully crafted studies, and an essential component of his aesthetic philosophy. * Southern Humanities Review *Art historians as well as scholars of 20th century intellectual history will find this a rich mine of original thought. * Library Journal *Long-awaited. This book is invaluable for an understanding of the trajectory of Deleuze’s own thought. Offers an entry point into Deleuze’s more explicitly theoretical work that simultaneously grounds and orients that theory in terms of a specific instance. * Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *Table of ContentsTranslator's Preface, by Daniel W. Smith Preface to the French Edition, by Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin Author's Foreword Author's Preface to the English Edition 1. The Round Area, the Ring The round area and its analogues - Distinction between the Figure and the figurative - The fact - The question of "matters of fact" - The three elements of painting: structure, Figure, and contour - Role of the fields 2. Note on Figuration in Past Painting Painting, religion, and photography - On two misconceptions 3. Athleticism First movement: from the structure to the Figure - Isolation - Athleticism - Second movement: from the Figure to the structure - The body escapes from itself: abjection - Contraction, dissipation: washbasins, umbrellas, and mirrors 4. Body, Meat, and Spirit, Becoming-Animal Man and animal - The zone of indiscernibility - Flesh and bone: the meat descends from the bone - Pity - Head, face, and meat 5. Recapitulative Note: Bacon's Periods and Aspects From the scream to the smile: dissipation - Bacon's three successive periods - The coexistence of all the movements - The functions of the contour 6. Painting and Sensation Cezanne and sensation — The levels of sensation — Figuration and violence - The movement of translation, the stroll - The phenomenological unity of the senses: sensation and rhythm 7. Hysteria The body without organs: Artaud - Worringer's Gothic line - What the "difference of level" in sensation means - Vibration - Hysteria and presence - Bacon's doubt — Hysteria, painting, and the eye 8. Painting Forces Rendering the invisible: the problem of painting - Deformation: neither transformation nor decomposition - The scream - Bacon's love of life - Enumeration of forces 9. Couples and Triptychs Coupled Figures — The battle and the coupling of sensation - Resonance - Rhythmic Figures - Amplitude and the three rhythms - Two types of "matters of fact" 10. Note: What Is a Triptych? The attendant - The active and the passive - The fall: the active reality of the difference in level - Light, union and separation 11. The Painting before Painting .. . Cezanne and the fight against the cliche - Bacon and photographs - Bacon and probabilities - Theory of chance: accidental marks - The visual and the manual - The status of the figurative 12. The Diagram The diagram in Bacon (traits and color-patches) - Its manual character - Painting and the experience of catastrophe - Abstract painting, code, and optical space - Action Painting, diagram, and manual space - What Bacon dislikes about both these ways 13. Analogy Cezanne: the motif as diagram - The analogical and the digital - Painting and analogy - The paradoxical status of abstract painting - The analogical language of Cezanne and of Bacon: plane, color, and mass - Modulation - Resemblance recovered 14. Every Painter Recapitulates the History of Painting in His or Her Own Way .. . Egypt and haptic presentation - Essence and accident - Organic representation and the tactileoptical world - Byzantine art: a pure optical world? - Gothic art and the manual - Light and color, the optic and the haptic 15. Bacon's Path The haptic world and its avatars - Colorism - A new modulation - From Van Gogh and Gauguin to Bacon - The two aspects of color: bright tone and broken tone, field and Figure, shores and flows .. . 16. Note on Color Color and the three elements of painting - Color-structure: the fields and their divisions - The role of black Color-force: Figures, flows, and broken tones Heads and shadows - Color-contour - Painting and taste: good and bad taste 17. The Eye and the Hand Digital, tactile, manual, and haptic - The practice of the diagram - On "completely different" relations - Michelangelo: the pictorial fact Index of Paintings Notes Index

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Book SynopsisTheodor Adorno (1903-69) was undoubtedly the foremost thinker of the Frankfurt School, the influential group of German thinkers that fled to the US in the 1930s, including such thinkers as Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer. His work has proved enormously influential in sociology, philosophy and cultural theory. Aesthetic Theory is Adorno's posthumous magnum opus and the culmination of a lifetime's investigation. Analysing the sublime, the ugly and the beautiful, Adorno shows how such concepts frame and distil human experience and that it is human experience that ultimately underlies aesthetics. In Adorno's formulation ‘art is the sedimented history of human misery'.Trade Review"...the fact that they [Continuum] are putting low price tags on works once published in expensive academic editions is something of which we can all be glad.." -Modern Painters, 2/05Table of ContentsTranslator's Acknowledgement \ Translator's Introduction \ 1. Art, Society, Aesthetics \ 2. Situation \ 3. On the Categories of the Ugly, the Beautiful, and Technique \ 4. Natural Beauty \ 5. Art Beauty: Apparition, Spiritualization, Intuitability \ 6. Semblance and Expression \ 7. Enigmaticalness, Truth Content, Metaphysics \ 8. Coherence and Meaning \ 9. Subject-Object \ 10. Toward a Theory of the Artwork \ 11. Universal and Particular \ 12. Society \ 13. Paralimpomena \ 14. Theories On the Origin of Art \ 15. Draft Introduction \ Editor's Afterword.

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Book Synopsis"First published in French language by Editions du Seuil, Paris, under the title Vert, Histoire d'une couleur." c2013--Page facing title page.Trade ReviewOne of The Guardian's Best Books of 2014 One of TheAustralian.com's "In the Good Books" 2014 One of The Globe and Mail 75 Book Ideas for Christmas 2014 "[C]omprehensive and lavishly illustrated."---Natalie Angier, New York Times "[S]umptuously illustrated... These are books to look at, but they are also books to read... Individual colors find their being only in relation to each other, and their cultural force depends on the particular instance of their use. They have no separate life or essential meaning. They have been made to mean, and in these volumes that human endeavor has found its historian."--Michael Gorra, New York Review of Books "Pastoureau's engaging cultural history of the color green tackles art history and color theory... With the look and feel of an artbook, this book holds equal amounts of substance of in the text... His anecdotes are insightful, the references occasionally delightfully esoteric... [H]e gives this substantial discussion further contemporary relevance."--Publishers Weekly "Beautifully illustrated."--Daily Mail "From the ample green gown in Jan van Eyck's painting "The Arnolfini Wedding" to the chartreuse and shamrock in Paolo Veronese's work, from Paul Cezanne's apples to Kees van Dongen's Fauvist use of mint and jungle greens, there's much to sink your eyes into."--Mary Louise Schumacher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "As this beautifully illustrated work shows, the 'uneasiness' of being green is what makes its story so interesting."--Fiona Capp, Sydney Morning Herald "[C]easelessly fascinating and erudite."--Michael Glover, Independent "We absolutely loved this book and we didn't merely read it, we read it twice... Colors are not just colors: they have a history and we can't imagine it ever being superseded by anything more than what Michel Pastoureau has accomplished in his monumental work, Green. Designers of all ilks everywhere need to read this book, and the prior colors (Blue and Black) and future colors he comes out with as well. The thought process, planning and impeccable research that must have gone into this book is prodigious... [T]hough Kermit said it's not easy being green, reading this book is an easy decision! ... This is a hefty tome that lends credence to the academic side of fashion theory... Pastoureau has provided us with a tour de force erudite approach to color... [P]ut it on your Christmas gift list for anyone in the fashion or art world. It's a must to own, and so much fun as a read. Academically speaking, it's popular culture at its best... Green is highly recommended by Whom You Know!"--Whom You Know "[Pastoureau's] pleasantly rambling illustrated narrative charts the changing place of green in Western thought, art and life, from prehistory to the present day."--Caroline Bugler, World of Interiors "[S]prightly... Green is a dash through domains and contexts as varied yet related as optics, clothing manufacture, vexillology, literature, color lexicons, and the history of painting... The point, Pastoureau emphasizes, is that green is, among the colors, exquisitely unstable--both in color theory and in real-life manufacture... Pastoureau is fascinating in describing the long decline of green in the period just before the Age of Revolution."--Eric Banks, Chronicle Review "Michel Pastoureau's Green: The History of a Color is an interesting look at how this sometimes forgotten hue has been perceived in art, fashion, and culture. Beautiful art and a thorough historical survey make this book an irresistible read."--Traditional Home "It ain't easy being ... a book about the colour green. Pastoureau shows us what green has signified at various points in various cultures, and the book illuminates the journey with its bright design."--Globe and Mail "Matching historical detail to artistic and cultural works of art, Pastoureau demonstrates that green richly deserves its place in both the bygone and the contemporary palette."--Lara Killian, PopMatters "In Green: The History of a Color, Michel Pastoureau shows all of the possibilities in just one band of the spectrum... Pastoureau's approach is elegant and revelatory... Green's text is choreographed with accompanying artwork to produce a skillfully designed embarrassment of riches. Clearly, one or two sumptuary laws are being violated. John Calvin is rotating in his grave with enough energy to create prop wash. The paper has heft but not weight. The cover reminds us that we are in a High Age of dust jacket design (the hard cover underneath is no poor relative, either). Text, art, design, materials: a book's book. Open it on plane or train and catch the envious spark--green, of course--in your neighbor's eye."--Peter Lewis, Barnes and Noble Review "A charming study, filled with numerous photos and illustrations. This book will be of great interest to those fascinated by history, culture, and design."--Library Journal "Taking great care not to project present-day definitions, classifications, and conceptions of color onto the past, he follows green's history from early negative associations and its notoriously fugitive pigments to its evolved status as the color of money, fecundity, nature, and environmental concerns... As a companion volume to the author's previous titles, Blue and Black, or as a stand-alone work, this highly anecdotal and beautifully written book belongs in the collection of every library."--Choice "[A] splendid work, vastly informative and beautifully produced... I once toyed with the idea of writing a book on the theme myself and must confess that Pastoureau's book is immeasurably superior to the one I had planned. If only there were a color that signified envy."--Kevin Jackson, Literary Review "Pastoureau's lifetime of research and consideration provide the strong historical and theoretical basis of this excellent study. It is fascinating to recognize that something as seemingly constant as a color is constantly changing, both in actual fact and in how we interpret it. For anyone interested in becoming more familiar with the colors that beautify and enrich our lives, or for anyone interested in thumbing through a richly illustrated, fantastically intelligent book, Green: The History of a Color, is intensely rewarding."--Stephan Delbos, Body Praise for the French edition:"A beautiful presentation of a long-unloved color."--Daphne Betard, Beaux-Arts Praise for the French edition:"A beautiful book that opens the windows wide."--Marie Chaudey, La VieTable of ContentsIntroduction 7 An uncertain color (From the beginning to the year 1000) 11 Did the Greeks see green? 14 Green among the Romans 20 The emerald and the leek 26 Hippodrome green 31 The silences of the Bible and the church fathers 36 A middle color 40 Islamic green 46 A courtly color (11th-14th centuries) 51 The beauty of green 54 A place for green: the orchard 58 A time for green: the spring 65 Youth, love, and hope 71 A chivalrous color 78 A green hero: Tristan 83 A dangerous color (14th-16th centuries) 87 Satan's green bestiary 90 From green to greenish 97 The green knight 103 The dyer's vats 112 "Gay green" and "lost green" 118 Heraldic green 125 The colors of the poet 129 A secondary color (16th-19th centuries) 135 Protestant morals 138 The green of painters 142 New knowledge, new classifications 152 Alceste's ribbons and the green of the theater 155 Superstitions and fairy tales 159 Green in the age of the enlightenment 167 A romantic color? 172 A soothing color (19th-21st centuries) 179 A fashionable color 182 Return to the palette 186 Chevreul and the scientists did not like green 193 Neither did Kandinsky or the Bauhaus 200 Green in everyday life 205 Nature in the heart of the cities 209 Green today 217 Acknowledgments 223 Notes 224 Bibliography 235 Photography credits 240

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A miracle of poetry in the midst of academic rigidity." * Télérama *". . . a rich volume, intelligently illustrated. . . . With sure-footed scholarship, trenchant opinions, Michel Pastoureau goes beyond a perfunctory visit: he makes us realize the importance of this material and avoids the errors of a number of other historians." * Le Monde *". . . a delicious mix of erudition and lighthearted fun." * Livres *"Pastoureau's text moves us through one fascinating area of activity after another. . . . The jacket, cover and end-papers of this luscious book are appropriately blue; its double-columned text breathes easily in the space of its pages; it is so well sewn it opens flat at any place; and fascinating, aptly chosen color plates, not confined to the title color, will please even those eyes denied the good luck of being blue."---William Gass, Los Angeles Times Book Review"Blue is both prettily produced and whimsically enjoyable."---Julian Bell, Times Literary Supplement"Michel Pastoureau takes us into territory that could be made to feel impossibly dense and absurdly specialized. To his credit, the tour is brisk and challenging."---John Loughery, Washington Post Book World"A generous, gorgeous book full of nearly 100 historical and artistic plates, all illustrating the meaning and role of the color blue in Western history. . . . Pastoureau has created something rare: a coffee table book that is also a good read. And not just a good read, but a compelling read."---Brian Bouldrey, Chicago Tribune"Blue . . . is confident, stylish, well-turned out. . . . The book's sapphire glow will grace the most discriminating coffee tables."---Jane Gardam, Spectator"This beautifully illustrated book is well written and informative, and makes an important contribution to the social history of art." * Choice *"In this beguiling and beautiful mixture of art book and social history, the distinguished French scholar shows how the rarest of all colors became the commonest."---Emma Hagestadt and Boyd Tonkin, The Independent Magazine"The material history of a certain section of the spectrum, from the costly tones of the Virgin's cloak to uniforms, Picasso and jeans. History can make you blind, but some historians can make you see again."---James Davidson, Daily Telegraph"Taken together, the earlier volumes on blue (2001), black (2009), green (2013) and red (2017), plus the new book, [Yellow,] represent ‘an edifice’ that [Michel Pastoureau] has been working to build for half a century: a history of colours in (for the most part) Europe from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the 18th century and beyond. . . . [The books] amount to an ambitious project deserving not merely respect but even a touch of awe. There are very few comparable enterprises."---Kevin Jackson, Literary Review

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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 SynopsisTrade Review"Sarah Richmond has now produced a meticulous, elegant translation…" - Jonathan Rée, London Review of Books"Sarah Richmond’s superb new translation…is supplemented by a wealth of explanatory and analytical material [and] a particularly detailed and insightful set of notes on the translation…The first translation of Being and Nothingness was a major academic achievement that has influenced thought across a range of disciplines for more than sixty years. This new edition has the potential to be at least as influential over the coming decades." - Jonathan Webber, Mind"The publication of this excellent new English translation of L’Être et le néant is a welcome addition to the library of Sartre scholarship … There is every chance that it will also attract non-specialist readers to Sartre’s early philosophy and will thus importantly contribute to keeping existentialist thought alive in a context and era chronically bereft of genuine philosophical enlightenment." - Sam Coombes, French Studies"Translating such a book is manifestly a labour of love—it was as much for Barnes as for Richmond, and generations of Anglophone Sartre scholars remain grateful to Barnes, even if, as I expect (and hope) it will, Richmond's careful, thoughtful, and thought‐provoking translation becomes the standard one for use by students as well as professionals." - Katherine J. Morris, European Journal of Philosophy"Sarah Richmond's marvellously clear and thoughtful new translation brings Sartre's rich, infuriating, endlessly fertile masterpiece to a whole new English-language readership." – Sarah Bakewell, author of At The Existentialist Café"Sartre’s philosophy will always be important. Being and Nothingness is not an easy read but Sarah Richmond makes it accessible in English to the general reader. Her translation is exemplary in its clarity." - Richard Eyre"Sarah Richmond's translation of this ground-zero existentialist text is breathtaking. Having developed a set of brilliant translation principles, laid out carefully in her introductory notes, she has produced a version of Sartre’s magnum opus that—finally!—renders his challenging philosophical prose comprehensible to the curious general reader and his most compelling phenomenological descriptions and analyses luminous and thrilling for those of us who have studied Being and Nothingness for years." - Nancy Bauer, Tufts University, USA"This superb new translation is an extraordinary resource for Sartre scholars, including those who can read the work in French. Not only has Sarah Richmond produced an outstandingly accurate and fluent translation, but her extensive notes, introduction, and editorial comments ensure that the work will be turned to for clarification by all readers of Sartre. All in all, this is a major philosophical moment in Sartre studies." - Christina Howells, University of Oxford, UK"A new translation of Being and Nothingness has been long overdue. Sarah Richmond has done an excellent job of translating and clarifying Sartre’s magnum opus, making its rich content accessible to a wider audience." - Dan Zahavi, University of Copenhagen, Denmark"With its scholarly introduction, up-to-date bibliography and numerous footnotes, Richmond's fluent and precise translation will be an indispensable tool even for scholars able to read Sartre in French." - Andrew Leak, University College London, UK"This fine new translation provides us with as crisp a rendering as possible of Sartre’s complex prose. Richmond’s introduction, and a panoply of informative notes, also invite readers to share with her the intricacies of the task of translation and assist in grasping many of the conceptual vocabularies and nuances of this vital text." - Sonia Kruks, author of Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of AmbiguityTable of ContentsForeword Richard Moran, Translator’s Introduction Sarah Richmond, Introduction: In Search of Being, Part 1: The Problem of Nothingness, 1. The Origin of Negation, 2. Bad Faith, Part 2: Being-For-Itself, 1. The Immediate Structures of the For-Itself, 2. Temporality, 3. Transcendence, Part 3: Being-for-the-Other, 1. The Other’s Existence, 2. The Body, 3. Concrete Relations with the Other, Part 4: To Have, To Do and To Be, 1. Being and Doing: Freedom, 2. To Do and to Have, Conclusion, Index

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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 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 SynopsisWe dream in darkness. Yet light is everywhere, blazing its way through our lives and thoughts. We urgently need new ways to think of futures to save the planet, other species, and ourselves. What might happen when the lights go down?

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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 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 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 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 SynopsisTranslation of: Rouge: histoire d'une couleur.Trade Review"Love, oh love, oh bloody love! So intense, so beautiful, so treacherous--so red... The new book Red: The History of a Color by Michel Pastoureau ... considers red in all its manifold guises. A richly and imaginatively illustrated survey filled with history, lore, religion, science, cosmetics, archaeology, medicine, alchemy, superstition, magic, linguistics, and even recipes for pigments, the book ambitiously traverses the centuries from prehistoric times to the present."--Barbara A. MacAdam, ARTnews "Pastoureau is the world's most distinguished and influential historian of colour, and ... his life's work on the symbolism of the spectrum is one of the great humane projects of our day."--Kevin Jackson, Literary Review "Pastoureau ... deftly weaves a tapestry that takes in not just the history of Western art, but also etymology, fairy tales and even the origins of modern road signage in heraldry. There can be no doubting his passion."--Stephen Patience, World of Interiors "Red is the color of lovers, blood, and anguish, and often signifies intensity. It is no doubt one of the most important colors in our history. Michel Pastoureau examines its significance through a slew of analytical essays and photographs that reveal the complex and, at times, controversial nature of the color and its relation to other hues."--Metropolis "Gorgeous... [A] splendid book, beautiful to look at and fascinating to read."--Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe "Does the warning red of our stop signs burble up from the color's association with medieval morality? Does the emergence of red as an ideological identity in right-wing American politics have some echo of the color's use as a symbol of power, such as the red cloak of Charlemagne and the Phrygian cap of the French Revolution? Michel Pastoureau's Red: The History of a Color, recently released by Princeton University Press, is a concise biography of the complex symbolism and perception of this hue of blood and fire."--Allison Meier, Hyperallergic "Beautifully and imaginatively illustrated ... Red is less a theory than a very readable compendium of fascinating facts... Red contains more than enough engrossing diversions that act like a traffic light and bring you to a stop."--Michael Prodger, The Times "Superb."--Vanity Fair "A wonderful book."--Le Figaro Magazine "A heady story of colors."--Telerama "An exciting cultural journey through the color red."--La vie "A rich and exciting story, a transversal approach, accessible to all."--Le Journal des Arts "A captivating human, sociological and spiritual history."--Connaissance des ArtsTable of ContentsIntroduction 7 The First Color (From Earliest Times To The End Of Antiquity) 12 The First Palettes 16 Fire and Blood 22 With Pliny among the Painters 30 Dyeing in Red 37 Roman Purple 40 Red in Everyday Life 44 Evidence from the Lexicon 50 The Favorite Color (Sixth To Fourteenth Centuries) 54 The Four Reds of the Church Fathers 58 The Blood of Christ 64 The Red of Power 69 The First Color of Heraldry 74 Love, Glory, and Beauty 80 Blue versus Red 86 The Wardrobes of Beautiful Florentine Ladies 90 A Controversial Color(Fourteenth To Seventeenth Centuries) 94 In the Flames of Hell 98 Judas, the Redhead 102 Hatred of Red 108 The Red of Painters 116 A Primary Color 126 Fabric and Clothing 130 Little Red Riding Hood 135 A Dangerous Color? (Eighteenth To Twenty-First Centuries) 140 On the Margins of Red: Pink 144 Makeup and Society Life 152 Red Caps and Flags: In the Midst of the Revolution 163 A Political Color 167 Emblems and Signals 176 Red for the Present Day 181 Notes 195 Bibliography 209 Photography Credits214 Acknowledgments 216

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Book SynopsisConcerned in part with the act of collecting, this work is a collection of exemplary art objects. It reveals the object as the self's ultimate other. The author weaves together philosophical and psychoanalytical theory with artistic practice. He examines what is left over - debris and waste - and asks what art can make of these.

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Book SynopsisIn Beyond the Sovereign Self Grant H. Kester continues the critique of aesthetic autonomy begun in The Sovereign Self, showing how socially engaged art provides an alternative aesthetic with greater possibilities for critical practice. Instead of grounding art in its distance from the social, Kester shows how socially engaged art, developed in conjunction with forms of social or political resistance, encourages the creative capacity required for collective political transformation. Among others, Kester analyzes the work of conceptual artist Adrian Piper, experimental practices associated with the escrache tradition in Argentina, and indigenous Canadian artists such as Nadia Myre and Michèle Taïna Audette, showing how socially engaged art catalyzes forms of resistance that operate beyond the institutional art world. From the Americas and Europe to Iran and South Africa, Kester presents a historical genealogy of recent engaged art practices rooted in a deep histTrade Review“In a superlative demonstration of a hypothesis in action, Grant H. Kester’s definitive study Beyond the Sovereign Self effectively melts down, then reimagines our stagnated concepts of aesthetic autonomy and avant-gardism in a dauntless bid to retheorize the increasingly entangled, if not indistinguishable, realms of twenty-first-century social activism and art.” -- Gregory Sholette, author of * The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art *“With characteristic thoroughness, Grant H. Kester articulates the radical potential in challenging the cherished notion of art’s autonomy. Centering dialogic and activist art practices, he insightfully argues that the social labor of cultural resistance necessarily operates in generative forms of collectivity and dissensus.” -- Jennifer A. González, coeditor of * Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 I. Within and Beyond the Canon 1. The Incommensurablity of Socially Engaged Art 33 2. Escrache and Autonomy 54 II. From Object to Event 3. Dematerialization and Aesthetics in Real Time 85 4. The Aesthetic of Answerability 105 III. A Dialogical Aesthetic 5. Social Labor and Communicative Action 137 6. Our Pernicious Temporality 171 7. Being Human as Praxis 202 Conclusion. Beyond the White Wall 229 Notes 235 Works Cited 255 Index 271

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Book SynopsisIn Anteaesthetics, Rizvana Bradley begins from the proposition that blackness cannot be represented in modernity's aesthetic regime, but is nevertheless foundational to every representation. Troubling the idea that the aesthetic is sheltered from the antiblack terror that lies just beyond its sanctuary, Bradley insists that blackness cannot make a home within the aesthetic, yet is held as its threshold and aporia. The book problematizes the phenomenological and ontological conceits that underwrite the visual, sensual, and abstract logics of modernity. Moving across multiple histories and geographies, artistic mediums and forms, from nineteenth-century painting and early cinema, to the contemporary text-based works, video installations, and digital art of Glenn Ligon, Mickalene Thomas, and Sondra Perry, Bradley inaugurates a new method for interpretation—an ante-formalism which demonstrates how black art engages in the recursive deconstruction of the aesthetic forms that remain foundational to modernity. Foregrounding the negativity of black art, Bradley shows how each of these artists disclose the racialized contours of the body, form, and medium, even interrogating the form that is the world itself. Drawing from black critical theory, Continental philosophy, film and media studies, art history, and black feminist thought, Bradley explores artistic practices that inhabit the negative underside of form. Ultimately, Anteaesthetics asks us to think philosophically with black art, and with the philosophical invention black art necessarily undertakes.Trade Review"Anteaesthetics is the study of black aesthetics I didn't know I sorely needed. Bradley offers a razor-sharp and sumptuous meditation on black aesthetics in, through, and vestibular to an anti-black world."—Alexander Ghedi Weheliye, Brown University"Rizvana Bradley's searching theory of black aesthesis traces black art's recursions through the violent origins of the aesthetic. Anteaesthetics opens a mode of reading for black art's non-instrumental exploration of abyssal descent. An incisive and energizing book through and through."—Rei Terada, University of California, Irvine"In this brilliantly conceived and exquisitely rendered study, Bradley offers a path-breaking analysis that will revolutionize how we approach, contest, and undo the Western visual field. Anteaesthetics offers an indispensable and undisciplined new frame for black feminist theorizing."—Huey Copeland, University of Pennsylvania"Incisive and compelling, Bradley's Anteaesthetics restores to thought and feeling a capacious sense of the aesthetic, revealing its tremendous and violent power as nothing less than foundational to a racially typified modern world."—Shane Denson, Stanford University"Anteaesthetics limns the depths of aesthetic and semiotic violence, refocusing our theoretical vision. This is an indispensable text—a tour de force."—Calvin Warren, Emory UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Toward a Theory of Anteaesthetics 2. The Corporeal Division of the World, or Aesthetic Ruination 3. Before the Nude, or Exorbitant Figuration 4. The Black Residuum, or That Which Remains 5. Unworlding, or the Involution of Value

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Book SynopsisFeatures a 48-page 'Afterword - 1980'.

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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 SynopsisAesthetics has long been the preserve of philosophy, art history, and the creative arts but, more recently, the fields of psychology and neuroscience have entered the discussion, and the field of neuroaesthetics has been born.In Brain, Beauty, and Art, leading scholars in this nascent field reflect on the promise of neuroaesthetics to enrich our understanding of this universal yet diverse facet of human experience. The volume consists of essays from foundational researchers whose empirical work launched the field. Each essay is anchored to an original, peer-reviewed paper from the short history of this new and burgeoning subdiscipline of cognitive neuroscience. Authors of each essay were asked three questions: 1) What motivated the original paper? 2) What were the main findings or theoretical claims made? and, 3) How do those findings or claims fit with the current state and anticipated near future of neuroaesthetics? Together, these essays establish the territory and current boundaries of neuroaesthetics and identify its most promising future directions. Topics include models of neuroaesthetics, and discussions of beauty, art, dance, music, literature, and architecture. Brain, Beauty, and Art will inform and stimulate anyone with an abiding interest in why it is that, across time and culture, we respond to beauty, engage with art, and are affected by music and architecture.Trade ReviewFor anyone wishing to learn about the basic constructs and findings of the new field of experimental neuroaesthetics, this is a must-read book and one destined to advance the field. Each chapter is a gem-a brief and highly readable commentary on a pioneering article in which the author(s) of the article explain their motivating hypotheses and reflect on where the field was then, where it is going, and where it should be going. * Ellen Winner, Professor Emerita, Boston College, and author of How Art Works: A Psychological Exploration (OUP, 2019) and An Uneasy Guest in the Schoolhouse: Art Education from Colonial Times to a Promising Future (OUP, 2022) *A landmark publication for a burgeoning, new discipline, Brain, Beauty, and Art offers much of interest for the scholar, scientist, and general reader on a subject of enduring fascination to us all. Edited by pioneers in the field of neuroaesthetics, this comprehensive volume brings together the most important and consequential research while also providing a compelling account of why the love of beauty in all of the forms is an essential part of what it means to be human. * Daniel H Weiss, President and CEO, The Metropolitan Museum of Art *Dr. Chatterjee is a pioneer in neuroaesthetics - not only because of his enduring and cutting-edge body of academic research, but also because of his ability to bring together experts from disparate fields, build on their own findings and insights, and weave a cohesive and compelling narrative on the field. His latest book, Brain, Beauty, and Art, offers the world's most comprehensive view on this burgeoning field, including what it is, how it affects human behavior, and why it matters. After reading his book, I'm sure you'll agree it matters now more than ever! * Pauline Brown, Former Chair of LVMH North America & Author of Aesthetic Intelligence *Table of ContentsForeword. Where have we been and where are now? A Chatterjee, E Cardlillo Frameworks 1. An early framework for a cognitive neuroscience of visual aesthetics. A Chatterjee 2. Bringing it all together: neurological and neuroimaging evidence of the neural underpinnings of visual aesthetic. M Nadal, CJ Cela-Conde 3. But, what actually happens when we engage with art? M Pelowski, H Leder 4. Naturalizing aesthetics. Steven Brown 5. Moving towards emotions in the aesthetic experience. C Di Dio and V Gallese 6. The aesthetic triad. O Vartanian and A Chatterjee 7. How neuroimaging is transforming our understanding of aesthetic taste. M Skov 8. The cognitive neuroscience of aesthetic experience. M Nadal and M Pearce Beauty 9. Facial beauty and the medial orbitofrontal cortex. JP O'Doherty, RJ. Dolan 10. Beautiful people in the brain of the beholder. A Chatterjee 11. The mark of villainy: the connection between appearance and perceived morality. F Hartung 12. A quest for beauty. T Jacobsen 13. Scene preferences, aesthetic appeal and curiosity: revisiting the neurobiology of the infovore. EA Vessel, X Yue, I Biederman 14. Kinds of beauty and the prefrontal cortex. T Pegors 15. Expertise and aesthetic liking. M Skov & U Kirk 16. Social meaning brings beauty: neural response to the beauty of abstract Chinese characters. X He and W Zhang Art 17. The contributions of emotion and reward to aesthetic judgment of visual art. O Vartanian 18. Embodiment and the aesthetic experience of images. V Gallese, D Freedberg, M Alessandra Umiltà 19. The role of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortices in aesthetic valuation. E Munar & CJ Cela-Conde 20. The role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in aesthetic appreciation. M Nadal, Z Cattaneo, and CJ Cela-Conde 21. Is artistic composition in abstract art detected automatically? C Menzel, G Kovács, GU Hayn-Leichsenring, C Redies 22. The contribution of visual area V5 to the perception of implied motion in art and its appreciation. M Nadal and Z Cattaneo 23. Art Is Its own reward. S Lacey, K Sathian 24. Imaging the subjective. EA Vessel, GG Starr 25. Cultural neuroaesthetics of delicate sadness induced by Noh masks. N Osaka 26. Towards a computational understanding of neuroaesthetics. K Iigaya and JP O'Doherty 27. Artists, artworks, aesthetics, cognition. WP Seeley 28. Aesthetic liking is not only driven by object properties, but also by your expectations. M Skov, U Kirk 29. Finding mutual interest between neuroscience and aesthetics: a brush with reality? AJ Parker 30. What can we learn about art from people with neurological disease? A Chatterjee Music 31. Chills, Bets, And Dopamine: a journey Into music reward. L Ferreri, J Riba, R Zatorre, A Rodriguez-Fornells 32. Why does music evoke strong emotions? Testing the endogenous opioid hypothesis. DJ Levitin and LA Fleming 33. Music in all its beauty: adopting the naturalistic paradigm to uncover brain processes during the aesthetic musical experience. E Brattico and V Alluri 34. Investigating musical emotions in people with unilateral brain damage. AM Belfi, A Pralus, C Hirel, D Tranel, B Tillmann*, A Caclin* Language and Literature 35. The neurocognitive poetics model of literary reading 10 years after. AM Jacobs 36. The power of poetry. E Wassiliwizky, W Menninghaus 37. Pictograph portrays what it is: neural response to the beauty of concrete Chinese characters. X He and W Zhang Dance 38. Movement, synchronization, and partnering in dance. S Brown 39. Dance, expertise and sensorimotor aesthetics. B Calvo-Merino 40. An eye for the impossible: exploring the attraction of physically impressive dance movements. ES Cross 41. The mind, the brain and the moving body: dance as a topic in cognitive neuroscience. B Blaesing, B Calvo-Merino 42. Training effects on affective perception of body movements. LP Kirsch, ES Cross Architecture 43. The neuroaesthetics of architecture. O Vartanian 44. Architectural styles as subordinate scene categories. DB Walther 45. Architectural affordances: linking action, perception, and cognition. Z Djebbara, K Gramann 46. Architectural design and the mind. A Coburn Afterword. Where are we now and where are we going? A Chatterjee, E Cardlillo

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Book SynopsisBlack, favorite color of priests and penitents, artists and ascetics, fashion designers and fascists, has always stood for powerfully opposed ideas: authority and humility and sin and holiness. This book discusses the social history of the color black in Europe. It is suitable for those interested in the history of fashion, art, media, or design.Trade ReviewWinner of the 2009 Bronze Medal in Fine Art, Independent Publisher Book Awards One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2009 "Who would have thought the history of a single color could be so fascinating? Black: The History of a Color, by Michel Pastoureau, (Princeton University Press, $35) proceeds chronologically from cave painting to modern fashion and focuses on mythology, heraldry, religion, science and painting along the way. The author, a historian at the Sorbonne, narrates developments in the material, aesthetic and sociological dimensions of the color black with infectious, wide-ranging curiosity and easy-going erudition. After this you'll want to read his previous book, from the same publisher, Blue: The History of a Color."--Ken Johnson, New York Times Praise for Michel Pastoureau's Blue: "Pastoureau's text moves us through one fascinating area of activity after another... The jacket, cover and end-papers of this luscious book are appropriately blue; its double-columned text breathes easily in the space of its pages; it is so well sewn it opens flat at any place; and fascinating, aptly chosen color plates, not confined to the title color, will please even those eyes denied the good luck of being blue."--William H. Gass, author of Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry, writing in the Los Angeles Times Book Review "This handsome, strikingly designed, richly illustrated book traces the history of the color black in Europe... Like his earlier Blue, this book is well researched, skillfully written, and a pleasure to read."--R. M. Davis, Choice "Michael Pastoureau, in Black: The History of a Color, sees the rise of puritanism and Protestantism as the war of the colours--a war against vivid colour that black usually won... He has a terrific story to tell, and a multitude of gorgeous images to help tell it."--Robert Fulford, The National Post "Black is a penetrating, erudite, thoughtfully illustrated cultural history of a color, by Michel Pastoureau, an author whose earlier work has included--surprise, surprise--Blue."--Nicholas A. Basbanes, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette "French popular art historian Pastoureau here tackles one of the most complex and interesting colours, the favourite of 'priests and penitents, artists and ascetics, fashion designers and fascists.' This social history is lavishly illustrated with paintings, movie stills, photo portraits and fashion shoots."--The Globe & Mail "Until I came upon Michel Pastoureau's 2000 book Blue: The History of a Color it had never occurred to me colors had a history. Turns out they do, and tracking the significance first of blue, now black, provides a satisfyingly fresh angle of approach to the past."--Frtiz Lanham, The Houston Chronicle "What is interesting in sociological histories like Pastoureau's is their revelations about how cultural attitudes change. Black's connection with death began as early as ancient Egypt, when people left black stones on funeral pyres, not in a ghoulish way but as a symbol of rebirth (the Egyptian death divinity, Anubis, was painted black)... But this book will have you seeing black in more shades than you imagined."--Victor Swoboda, The Montreal Gazette "The author of more than a dozen art history books, Pastoureau's work is accessible, generous and witty. What's more, like all good illustrated books, this one is has more than 150 pictures in support of its superb text."--Marc Horton, The Edmonton Journal "Now Princeton University Press has published a social history of this most allusive of hues, Black: The History of a Color, by Michel Pastoureau, a French scholar and author of a similarly titled history of the color blue. Both are lavishly illustrated coffee table books that follow their colors down the time line of European history."--John Zeaman, Design NJ Magazine "This erudite and elegantly written exploration of the history of black charts its changing symbolism and shades of meaning as a colour of death and rebirth, of religious authority and evil, of luxury and poverty."--Fiona Capp, The Age (Australia) "Pastoureau combines a charming, conversational tone with a haughtiness I found entirely endearing. A director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne in Paris, he writes from a position of professorial confidence. He has conducted extensive research into the history of colour for a quarter century and his aim is to correct misapprehensions and banish ignorance. His style is not to inquire, explore or interrogate, in the fashion of academic studies today. It is to impart knowledge."--Sebastian Smee, The Australian "As the handsomely produced book demonstrates, black is the colour of the pigment used to draw the great bull of Lascaux, of evil, the devil, funerals, the fecundity of the Earth, bears, crows, hell, half the pieces on a chess board, Satan, heretics and priests alike, mysterious cats and, in the 12th century, the mantle of Mary, the mother of Jesus."--Sydney Morning Herald "[T]his book ... reads quite naturally as English ... and it has something worthwhile to say in a style that is informative rather than aimed mostly at enhancing the reputation of the writer among his academic peers... There is much valuable information about the history of dying in different periods and the fashionability of the color black among the nobility and upper classes (later the wealthy merchant class) of Europe."--Colin Blogs Praise for Michel Pastoureau's Blue: "A generous, gorgeous book full of nearly 100 historical and artistic plates, all illustrating the meaning and role of the color blue in Western history... Pastoureau has created something rare: a coffee table book that is also a good read. And not just a good read, but a compelling read."--Brian Bouldrey, Chicago TribuneTable of ContentsINTRODUCTION

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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 the latest of his books exploring a lifetime's passion for music, bestselling author and philosopher Roger Scruton brings his immense critical faculties to bear on a panoply of different musical genres, both contemporary and classical.Music as an Art begins by examining music through a philosophical lens, engaging in discussions about tonality, music and the moral life, music and cognitive science and German idealism, as well as recalling the author's struggle to encourage his students to distinguish the qualities of good music. Scruton then explains via erudite chapters on Schubert, Britten, Rameau, opera and film how we can develop greater judgement in music, recognising both good taste and bad, establishing musical values, as well as musical pleasures.As Scruton argues in this book, in earlier times, our musical culture had secure foundations in the church, the concert hall and the home; in the ceremonies and celebrations of ordinary life, religion and manners. Yet we no longer live in that world. Fewer people now play instruments and music is, for many, a form of largely solitary enjoyment. As he shows in Music as an Art, we live at a critical time for classical music, and this book is an important contribution to the debate, of which we stand in need, concerning the place of music in Western civilization.Trade ReviewScruton fastidiously argues for tonality and expression as significant components of musical compositions in this enlightening academic work. * Publishers Weekly *This is as clear an argument for the value of Western classical music as one will find. Highly recommended. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction PART I: PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 1 When is a Tune? 2 Music and Cognitive Science 3 Music and the Moral Life 4 Music and the Transcendental 5 Tonality 6 German Idealism PART II: CRITICAL EXPLORATIONS 7 Franz Schubert and the Quartettsatz 8 Rameua the Musician 9 Britten's Dirge 10 David Matthews 11 Reflections on Deaths in Venice 12 Pierre Boulez 13 Film Music 14 The Assault on Opera 15 Nietzsche on Wagner 16 The Music of the Future 17 The Culture of Pop Bibliography Acknowledgements Index A Note on the Author

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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 SynopsisThis unique book is about freeing psychology's poetic imagination from the dead weight of unconscious assumptions about the soul. Whether we think of the soul scientifically or medically, behaviourally or in terms of inner development, all of us are used to thinking of it in an individual context, as something personal. In this book, however, we are asked to consider psychology from a truly transpersonal perspective as a cultural, universal-human phenomenon.Cobb teaches us to look at the world as a record of the soul's struggles to awaken and as the soul's poetry. From this perspective, the real basis of the mind is poetic. Beauty, love, and creativity are as much instincts of the soul as sexuality or hunger. Cobb shows us how artists and mystics can teach us the meaning of love, death, and beauty, if only we can awaken to their creations. The exemplars here are Dante, Rumi, Rilke, Munch, Lorca, Schumann, and Tarkovsky.Trade Review'Archetypal Imagination finds wonderful new ways to bless psychopathology. Rich with good learning and clear writing."-- James Hillman, author of The Soul's Code'I like Noel Cobb's outcries on behalf of ferocity, loneliness, anxiety, "the hideous hag of life", beauty sitting in the lap of terror, Edvard Munch's paintings and Garcia Lorca's panther-like poems -- let's have more.'-- Robert Bly, author of Iron John and The Sibling Society'In this richly stuffed book, Cobb takes psychology to the threshold and invites it into the world, where the artist is bold enough to live, where its language may have more life and its images more independence.'-- Thomas Moore, author of The Care of the Soul and Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality

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Book SynopsisEnchantment is a profound human experience. When we encounter wonder, awe or amazement, that is enchantment. Enchantment can reveal profound truths, lead to deep values and become central to a life well-lived. This unique book explores how enchantment plays out in a wide range of contexts -- in love, art, religion and learning, in food and drink, and perhaps most significantly in our relationship with the natural world. Patrick Curry argues that modernist attempts to undermine or dismiss enchantment as a delusion are not only misguided but dangerous, potentially leading to a disengagement with our world that could have disastrous consequences for our future on this planet.Trade Review'Patrick Curry's study is insightful about uncovenanted blessings that bring delight. It also resonates with current ecological concerns and critiques of technology and economic "rationality" as the measure of human value.'-- Bernice Martin, The Times Literary Supplement'Enchantment. A word that conjures up feelings, images, memories. But they are fleeting. The mind tries to find a box to put it in, to give ita meaning and a history. Yet it retreats from reason behind a veil ofcolours and impressions. It is Blake’s joy which can be kissed in its passing and lives in eternity’s sunrise but cannot be bound or you will destroy its life. So, to find myself with a finite, concrete book which claims to be full of words relating to Enchantment, and its twin Wonder, seems a pure contradiction. Yet, Patrick Curry has succeeded in writing a book which in itself reads like a poem in progress. In trying to define without imprisoning this evanescent theme the door is left open for us to feel and sense our way into this illusive occurrence. For that is what it is. An event, an experience which takes place at a specific moment in time and place between two or more subjects and is gone before you know it; its after effect and its depth of penetration can however last for ever and change a life profoundly.'-- Anna Phillips, Perspectives'This is a delightful, not to say enchanting book about enchantment and the possibilities for wonder in modern life in an era increasingly characterised by disenchantment... The text is beautifully woven, with many magical excerpts and episodes from the author's wide reading and extensive experience... A crucial reminder of what represents real quality of life.'-- David Lorimer, Scientific and Medical Network'I found the book thought-provoking while at the same time relishing its clarity and accessibility -- it can be so hard to talk about this subject without delving in to all kinds of abstract or arcane language -- and in the end, uplifting, for I felt it opened a way in for people who might be suspicious of the philosophical and religious sides of this experience.'-- Professor John Burnside, St. Andrews University'Patrick Curry suggests that the opposite of enchantment is not disenchantment but glamour. Like Jung when he stated that the opposite of love is not hatred but power, Curry shows how glamour is a fabricated, false, fake version of enchantment. His demonstration is extremely convincing. Reading him, one feels like opening one's eyes wider.'-- Ginette Paris, author of The Wisdom of the Psyche'Curry's Enchantment is simply an enchanting book, built on the wonder of our relationship with existence. It is lyrically written for all who have been enchanted, and draws on his own experiences. It encourages each of us to consider the wonder and love we are gifted -- and can return.'-- Haydn Washington, author of A Sense of Wonder Towards Nature'As Patrick Curry argues eloquently in his thoughtful examination of the human condition in these challenging modern times, "enchantment is an experience of wonder". This is no mere academic exercise, although he is surprisingly erudite in his choice of texts, writers and cultural icons to illustrate his thoughts on this vital feature of being fully human. Nor is this a fluffy 'New Age' extended essay on how much better this world would be if we were all nice to each other. Much of the material is philosophical or poetic in nature, drawn from inspirational writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Max Weber, and W.H. Auden. Although mainly positive in tone, Curry does not hold back from stating things as they are. He is passionately scathing in denunciation of elements in the present world that seek to enslave the human race as little more than robots.'-- Magonia Review'What could be more confounding than trying to understand 'enchantment', an uncanny power that by its very nature frustrates all comprehension? Yet in this small volume Patrick Curry accomplishes much. If we join him as he tracks several of the numberless styles of enchantment, if we pay heed to his insights and sometimes argue with him, we'll find ourselves slowly becoming more layered within ourselves, wiser, and maybe even wonder-struck.' -- David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal'Understanding begins -- and ends -- in wonder. This book articulates simply, and in a personal and unpretentious manner, an urgently needed defence of wonder as indispensable to a true perception and just appreciation of the world. We neglect its message at our peril.'-- Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and his Emissary'An impressive erudition and literary sensibility animate the pages of this thoughtful book. With a light poetic touch Curry traces the many ways in which enchantment lies at the core of human experience, even in a world that does its best to disabuse and disillusion us. Detaching it from ideology, Curry sees enchantment as an irrepressible mode of our being present to things, and vice versa. The enchanted moments cannot be sustained yet they lay their claim on us time and time again by virtue of the fact that we are alive and capable of wonder.'-- Robert Pogue Harrison, author of Forests: the Shadow of Civilization'After reading any of [Patrick Curry's] pieces life seems more worth living, and for that I am especially grateful.'-- Zygmunt Bauman, author of Liquid Modernity'Curry is a poet and philosopher and both come through so clearly in his writing which is rich, precise, and full of complex ideas expressed with a remarkable ease... I can't recommend [this book] enough, especially for those who experience enchantment but for whom words for expressing it have always been difficult. At long last, we have our poet philosopher whose respect for enchantment has allowed us to understand its extraordinary qualities at the deepest levels and by gently keeping himself from being at the center of the story (as other writers on enchantment and wonder have not been able to resist) allows us very much to hear his words and yet to be in our own songs. A wonder indeed.'-- Goodreads ReviewerTable of Contents1. Introduction 2. The Dynamics of Enchantment 3. Love 4. Art 5. Religion 6. Food and Drink 7. Learning 8. Nature 9. Disenchantment 10. Technoscience 11. Enchantment as a Way of Life Endnotes A Bibliographical Note Acknowledgements 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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Book SynopsisFrom the first stirrings of modernism to contemporary poetics, the modernist aesthetic project could be described as a form of phenomenological reduction that attempts to return to the invisible and unsayable foundations of human perception and expression, prior to objective points of view and scientific notions. It is this aspect of modernism that this book brings to the fore. The essays presented here bring into focus the contemporary face of ongoing debates about phenomenology and modernism. The contributors forcefully underline the intertwining of modernism and phenomenology and the extent to which the latter offers a clue to the former. The book presents the viewpoints of a range of internationally distinguished critics and scholars, with diverse but closely related essays covering a wide range of fields, including literature, architecture, philosophy and musicology. The collection addresses critical questions regarding the relationship between phenomenology and modernism, with reference to thinkers such as Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, Michel Henry and Paul Ricoeur. By examining the contemporary philosophical debates, this cross-disciplinary body of research reveals the pervasive and far-reaching influence of phenomenology, which emerges as a heuristic method to articulate modernist aesthetic concerns.Table of ContentsContents: Kevin Hart: Preface – Carole Bourne-Taylor/Ariane Mildenberg: Introduction: Phenomenology, Modernism and Beyond – Ariane Mildenberg: Openings: Epoché as Aesthetic Tool in Modernist Texts – H.W. Fawkner: Self-Evidencing Life: Paradoxes of Reduction in Modernism, Phenomenology and Christianity – Raymond Monelle: Proust, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and a Musical Phrase – Hanna Meretoja: Against Pre-Established Meanings: Revisiting Robbe-Grillet’s Relation to Phenomenology – Eoghan Walls: A Flaw in the Science of Transcendence: Hopkins and Husserl on ‘Thisness’ – Matt Ffytche: ‘The Arduous Path of Appearance’: Phenomenology and its Uncertainties in the Work of George Oppen – Filip Mattens: On the Origin of Space – Minna Niemi/Justin Parks: Home, Homelessness and the Wayward Subject in the Novels of James Joyce and Claude McKay – Martin Leer: ‘I Already Live in the Landscape’: Phenomenology and Modernist Landscapes – Jean-Jacques Wünenburger: The Paradoxical Ontology of Image – Michel Collot: Phenomenology and Literary Experience – Carole Bourne-Taylor: Figures of Immanence/Imminence: ‘Enigma Variations’ in Michel Deguy’s Work.

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Book SynopsisOriginally delivered as the prestigious Mellon Lectures on the Fine Arts in 1995, After the End of Art remains a classic of art criticism and philosophy, and continues to generate heated debate for contending that art ended in the 1960s. Arthur Danto, one of the best-known art critics of his time, presents radical insights into art's irrevocable deTrade ReviewWinner of the 1998 Eugene M. Kayden National University Press Book Prize, University of Colorado at Boulder "If you are seriously attentive to contemporary art, you are already aware of Danto and his general positions, and owe it to yourself to read this book. If you are not, but are genuinely curious, you would do well to follow him... Throughout it is clear and direct; at best, it is brilliantly crystalline... I know of no more useful single book on art today."--Michael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun "Is Danto gloomy about the end of art? Not in the slightest... Danto is nothing if not cheered by the prospect of an art world in which everything is permitted."--Roger Copeland, Wilson Quarterly "... the need for critical works such as this one--learned, discerning and refreshingly open-minded--is perhaps greater than ever."--Publishers Weekly "In this, Dr. Danto's best book yet, he helps us make sense of the times we are living in."--Richard Dorment, The Art Newspaper "Required reading for anyone seriously interested in late-modern and contemporary art."--Library Journal "Danto was and remains the high priest of pluralism, and arch-critic of the view that art has a distinctive essence... The chapters in this book are a challenging read, but a good one, because they take us to the heart of a living and profoundly interesting contemporary debate."--A.C. Grayling, Financial Times "Danto makes a lively and stimulating case [about the end of art]... The source ... of all ths mental labor is Andy Warhol, or more precisely his Brillo box sculpture... The utter banality of the piece sent 600 years of art history crashing to the ground in ruins."--Boston Book ReviewTable of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Foreword to the Princeton Classics Edition xi Preface xvii Acknowledgments xxi CHAPTER ONE Introduction: Modern, Postmodern, and Contemporary 3 CHAPTER TWO Three Decades after the End of Art 21 CHAPTER THREE Master Narratives and Critical Principles 41 CHAPTER FOUR Modernism and the Critique of Pure Art: The Historical Vision of Clement Greenberg 61 CHAPTER FIVE From Aesthetics to Art Criticism 81 CHAPTER SIX Painting and the Pale of History: The Passing of the Pure 101 CHAPTER SEVEN Pop Art and Past Futures 117 CHAPTER EIGHT Painting, Politics, and Post-Hisotrical Art 135 CHAPTER NINE The Historical Museum of Monochrome Art 153 CHAPTER TEN Museums and the Thirsting Millions 175 CHAPTER ELEVEN Modalities of History: Possibility and Comedy 193 Index 221

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"What Noë shows is how that essential act of ‘making’ art is more than just an act of pleasure. . . . What it really encompasses is a radical act of inquiry into our entanglement."---Adam Frank, Big Think"[A]rt is at the heart of philosophy and the fusion of the two with a range of subjects can help us better understand what makes us human. . . .Alva Noe has introduced his thesis that is bound to generate enough debate on the antidote supplied by art and philosophy that “makes us what we are”, a state where the people, surrounded by music, art, sculpture, poetry become creative enough to break out of the codified social organisation into a more liberated and an inspirationally fulfilling life infused with the aesthetic."---Shelley Walia, The Hindu

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Beautifully written and compelling, this book digs deep into military doctrine to understand the place of aesthetic cultures within it. Fascinating and disturbing."—Lucy Suchman, author of Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions"A bold, ambitious, and expansive book."—Thomas Stubblefield, author of Drone Art: The Everywhere War as Medium"Erudite yet wonderfully readable, Martial Aesthetics traces the tangled histories of war and art to offer new insights into the artful design and operation of violence in the modern age. "—Caren Kaplan, author of Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Beautifully illustrated. . . . [Pastoureau] unpicks the meanings of the colour by delving into a broad range of cultural references, from history, clothing and myth to art and etymology, and shows the different roles each colour has played in society and how they have changed."---Michael Prodger, The Times"Yellow is in part the story of gold, but that was just the beginning, Michel Pastoureau points out in the fifth of his lively, informative, brightly illustrated series about individual colours."---Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times"Pastoureau’s main aim is not simply to record how hues have been used, but to seek out the various values they have expressed and embodied in different times. . . . Yellow is worth buying as much for its sumptuous images as its scholarship."---Kevin Jackson, Literary Review"The French scholar Michel Pastoureau investigates how individual colours have been viewed and used in the past. Yellow: The History of a Colour is the successor to similar volumes on blue, green, black and red. But it turns out that yellow has had an intriguing, though chequered, time."---Martin Gayford, The Spectator Australia"Yellow: The History of a Color is the fifth such volume that Pastoureau has produced. Like its predecessors, which recount the visual and cultural histories of blue (2001), black (2009), green (2013), and red (2017), this one is elegant and engaging — as alluring to gaze at as it is compelling to read. Yellow may be an unsettling color, but this is a lovely and striking book."---Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe"Like Pastoureau’s earlier volumes, this is a beautifully produced book and an impressive work of scholarship . . . it is a fascinating and sensual celebration of our complex love-hate relationship with what Goethe called this 'joyous colour'."---Peter D. Smith, The Guardian"If you are contemplating going to a museum, or purchasing a painting for millions for your private collection, this book is going to involve less gas or less investment, and the outcome might be more nourishing."---Anna Faktorovich, Pennsylvania Literary Review"[Yellow: The History of a Color] tells the fascinating story of yellow’s evolving place in art, religion, literature and science from its sacred and symbolic status in antiquity, through its demonic associations with lawlessness when tinged with green, but in its pure state, still engendering feelings of pleasure and abundance, to its positive position in Asian societies and its lasting status as the colour of Buddhism."---Wendy and Ian Lipke, Queensland Reviewers Collection"Richly illustrated and impressively wide-ranging." * The Week *"Michel Pastoureau continues his study of colors, following up on similar works about blue, black, green and red. Pastoureau’s book, a measured and scholarly approach, is filled with images of art and artifacts as well as the color’s interesting role in world history."---Diane Cowen, Houston Chronicle"Yellow: The History of a Color takes readers on a Eurocentric tour of the color."---Alicia Eler, Minneapolis Star Tribune"Yellow is perhaps the most difficult of the colors Pastoureau has undertaken so far. Nonetheless, he handles it with the same sure hand and informed historical perspective he did its predecessors (Blue, Green, Red, and Black). . . . Visuals are handsome and accompanied by text that is both scholarly and easily readable, and that addresses subjects ranging from perception, philology, etymology, and dyes and pigments, to the artistic and symbolic use of color from antiquity onward."---R.M. Davis, Choice

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"José Ortega y Gasset is certainly the greatest philosophical essayist of the first half of the 20th century, and very likely one of its few genuinely seminal minds. . . . The Dehumanization of Art is still among the best efforts to define and interpret the radical break in continuity between modern art and the whole Renaissance tradition of representation which ended in the 19th century."—Joseph Frank, New Republic"An erudite and magnanimous capitulation of the old to the young . . . both wise and noble."—Mark Helprin, New Criterion

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWinner of the 2007 Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Philosophy, Association of American Publishers "Mr. Nehamas sets about reclaiming something of beauty's lost meaning by showing how it is connected to our happiness... That ... a work could infuriate one age and become an icon to the next fascinates Mr. Nehamas, who is drawn to works where our aesthetic and moral obligations come into conflict... Mr. Nehamas displays an admirable clarity of thought and language... [W]e can enjoy this book as we might the conversation of a spirited and quirky friend whose most irritating pronouncements are the ones we find ourselves mulling over, with some surprise, a week or two later."--Michael J. Lewis, Wall Street Journal "Alexander Nehamas seeks to reestablish the connections among art, beauty and desire and to show that the values of art are critical."--Publishers Weekly "[A] marvelous book...Nehamas sets out to retrieve beauty on behalf of all those who still use the word 'beautiful' with everyday pleasure: of a child, a landscape, a vase of flowers, an automobile. He does so in a tone of easy familiarity and enviable gracefulness; this is the philosopher not as blunt pragmatist, like the great Richard Rorty, nor as dour sceptic like W. V. Quine, but as winning and witty guide, and genial companion."--Mike Hulme, Times Higher Education Supplement "A wonderful, personal, and philosophic essay concerned with the restoration of beauty's place in art ... a rich conversation of ideas and feelings."--Reamy Jansen, Bloomsbury Review "Because our most meaningful encounters with beauty unfold over time, we can only ever say in retrospect that a beautiful object has not made our lives--or our culture--better... Beauty is only ever that promise: There is no a priori judgment that might reveal what will prove evanescent and what sustaining... In Mr. Nehamas's vision, the possibility of beauty is well worth the price of uncertainty."--Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New York Sun "[A] gracious and insightful book... The best parts of the book, which deal with the intimate love of beauty, are gloriously intelligent without being at all difficult and wise without being pompous."--John Armstrong, Sydney Morning Herald "Nehamas ... thinks that beauty has been too narrowly defined and that both the pro-beauty camp and the anti-beauty camp have painted us into a tight corner. Only a Promise of Happiness is his attempt to free us from the enclosure... Nehamas feels that beauty deserves a second chance because he thinks that the war on beauty has restricted what we can hope to expect from both art and life... [A] sane and provocative book."--Christopher Benfey, Slate.com "The power of beauty, its call to our love and its capacity to move us, is the focus of Only a Promise of Happiness, a new and very welcome book by Princeton philosopher Alexander Nehamas."--John Armstrong, The Australian "[Nehamas] writes with philosophical depth and great clarity and grace. His thoughts are lively and provocative, and he argues that the question of beauty (what is beautiful to me might not be beautiful to you) and the value of art are not rarefied topics, but part of the fabric of our everyday lives."--Nancy Tousley, Calgary Herald "Nehamas' language itself is fascinating, often giving rise to thoughts that in themselves are worth contemplating."--Regis Schilken, Blog Critics Magazine "Every practicing art critic could benefit from reading Nehamas's feeling account. But this shouldn't keep anyone whose curiosity is aroused by the title from picking up this engaging book. Nehamas ... writes with philosophical depth and great clarity and grace. His thoughts are lively and provocative, and he argues that the question of beauty (what is beautiful to me might not be beautiful to you) and the value of art are not rarefied topics, but part of the fabric of our everyday lives."--Nancy Tousley, Calgary Herald "If we are to take beauty seriously, Nehamas argues, we have to admit that it is impossible to really understand it without also understanding love... Nehamas has done us the service of returning the question of beauty to the center of humanistic attention. Only a Promise of Happiness raises important questions about the relationship between knowing and loving."--Joseph Phelan, Weekly Standard "This book contains material for constructive discussion and may even prompt some of us to reconsider the role beauty could or should play not only in the realm of art but in other aspects of our lives."--Giles Auty, The Australian "Nehamas, who wrote important studies on Plato and Nietzsche, is one of the most brilliant, amazing and amusing philosophers of our day. Though many other thinkers surely are as important as he, few rival his elegance, for he cultivates these almost forgotten qualities among scholars: writing well and wit. From its extrinsic features to the inmost convictions of its author, Only a Promise of Happiness is a notable book."--Jose Baracat Jr., Consciousness, Literature and the Arts "Nehamas's argument about beauty in art is beautiful, in the very sense intended by the argument itself."--Carolyn Wilde, Modernism/ModernityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments xiii CHAPTER I: Plato or Schopenhauer? 1 A Feature of Appearance? 13 Modernist Voices 22 Modernist Appropriations 30 CHAPTER II: Criticism and Value 36 Th e Role of Reviewing 44 Beauty, Love, Friendship 53 Beauty, Attractiveness, Evolution 63 CHAPTER III: Art, Beauty, Desire 72 Beauty, Community, Universality 78 Uniformity, Style, Distinction 84 Aesthetics, Directness, Individuality 91 CHAPTER IV: Love and Death in Venice 102 Manet's Olympia 105 CHAPTER Interpretation, Depth, Breadth 120 CHAPTER Interpretation, Beauty, Goodness 126 Beauty, Uncertainty, Happiness 131 Notes 139 Permissions 169 Index 179

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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 SynopsisVery Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring For thousands of years humanity has engaged in creative expression, allowing us to relate to other people, contribute to shared culture, build an identity, and give meaning to our existence. From the painted caves in Lascaux and the invention of the first tools to modern day advertising campaigns and inventors'' labs, creativity has a long past but a short history. The word ''creativity'' emerged in the English language in the 19th century and only become popular from the mid-20th century.This Very Short Introduction explores the history, theory, and practice of creativity from a psychological perspective. Vlad Glaveanu considers the nature and development of the creative process, and analyzes the reasons why we produce creative work. Offering a sociocultural reading of this phenomenon, he discusses how we can understand creative people and their creations within the social, material, and historical context that made them possible. In doing so, he demonstrates how we can address the meaning and value of creativity beyond its contribution to economic growth and personal well-being. Finally Glaveanu focuses on the future of creativity and creativity research, reflecting on technological development, the evolution of society and, ultimately, on our place in a world populated by creative beings, ideas, and encounters. 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.Table of Contents1: Creativity: what is it? 2: The who of creativity 3: The what of creativity 4: The how of creativity 5: The when and where of creativity 6: The why of creativity 7: Creativity: where to? Further Reading Index

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