Philosophy: aesthetics Books

Book SynopsisTrade ReviewDeftly moving through Julia Kristeva's entire body of work, Elaine P. Miller brilliantly stages engagements between Kristeva's thought and that of Adorno, Arendt, Augustine, Benjamin, Freud, Green, Hegel, Kant, Klein, Lacan, and Proust, among others. Her analysis also sheds light on some of Kristeva's most intractable concepts, including negativity, the uncanny, time, the semiotic, mimesis, art, and the aesthetic. Head Cases is filled with keen insights, rigorous scholarship, and beautiful prose. -- Kelly Oliver, Vanderbilt University By drawing on both the history of philosophical aesthetics and psychoanalysis, Head Cases makes an important contribution to contemporary aesthetic theory and Julia Kristeva studies. As a Kristeva scholar who is also interested in aesthetics, I am very pleased to say that this is simply the best book combining both of these fields. -- Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, author of Feminist Aesthetics and the Politics of Modernism Head Cases is a wonderfully engaging work-lucid, subtle, and invigorating. It will be indispensable for all readers of Kristeva and for anyone preoccupied with the concept of melancholia as a psychological, political, and aesthetic category. -- Rebecca Comay, University of Toronto Ambitious and widely-read... French StudiesTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Losing our Heads 1. Kristeva and Benjamin: Melancholy and the Allegorical Imagination 2. Kenotic Art: Negativity, Iconoclasm, Inscription 3. To Be and Remain Foreign: Tarrying with L'Inquietante Etrangete Alongside Arendt and Kafka 4. Sublimating Maman: Experience, Time, and the Re-erotization of Existence in Kristeva's Reading of Marcel Proust 5. The "Orestes Complex": Thinking Hatred, Forgiveness, Greek Tragedy, and the Cinema of the "Thought Specular" with Hegel, Freud, and Klein Conclusion: Forging a Head Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA counterintuitive take on the deceleration of time and its function in contemporary art and culture.Trade ReviewLutz Koepnick's understanding of the contemporary phenomenon of 'slowness' is refreshingly optimistic and energetic. It propels the reader to discover his or her own instances of slowness amid the dizzying culture of speed in which we find ourselves enmeshed. Through close and careful analyses of select primarily visual works, Koepnick constructs a thesis of contemporary 'slowness' that is in dialogue with theories of modernity and engaged with the potentiality of contemporaneity. A rigorous thinker, Koepnick brilliantly presents new material and theoretical analyses in a form that is compelling and accessible. -- Nora M. Alter, Temple University On Slowness is predicated on the common notion that speed, acceleration, and catastrophic events are at the core of modernism. Lutz Koepnick shows that this view is too simplistic as there always were retarding aspects and slow movements within modernism itself. Koepnick's readings of specific art works and interventions are compelling and encourage the reader to think of other examples, to question how temporality and space are lived and represented today, to ask what aesthetic strategies can be persuasive in our world and why. -- Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University A satisfying read. Library JournalTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: On Slowness 1. Slow Modernism 2. Open Shutter Photography and the Art of Slow Seeing 3. Glacial Visions, Geological Time 4. Dream|Time Cinema 5. Free Fall 6. Video and the Slow Art of Interlacing Time 7. The Art of Taking a Stroll 8. Those Who Read Epilogue: Slowness and the Future of the Humanities Notes Index

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Book SynopsisRethinking the relationship between eighteenth-century Pietist traditions and Enlightenment thought and practice, The Practices of Enlightenment unravels the complex and often neglected religious origins of modern secular discourse. Mapping surprising routes of exchange between the religious and aesthetic writings of the period and recentering concerns of authorship and audience, this book revitalizes scholarship on the Enlightenment. By engaging with three critical categories-aesthetics, authorship, and the public sphere-The Practices of Enlightenment illuminates the relationship between religious and aesthetic modes of reflective contemplation, autobiography and the hermeneutics of the self, and the discursive creation of the public sphere. Focusing largely on German intellectual life, this critical engagement also extends to France through Rousseau and to England through Shaftesbury. Rereading canonical works and lesser-known texts by Goethe, Lessing, and Herder, the book challenTrade ReviewA remarkable and innovative investigation of the confluence of religious (especially pietistic) and aesthetic writings in shaping Enlightenment thought, offering a decisive intervention into intellectual history and the emergence of the aesthetic lexicon that still accompanies us today. -- Paul Fleming, Cornell University This risk-taking, cliche-breaking book embodies the virtues of the writers it studies. Lessing, Rousseau, Kant, Herder, and Goethe come alive in its pages as the inventors of a new apprehension of art, as explorers of interiority, as creators of a critical public. Synthetic vision, astonishing breadth of learning, and richly textured analysis combine to produce a study of remarkable power and subtlety. Every chapter inspired me. The Practices of Enlightenment is a worthy successor to Habermas's great book on the emergence of the public sphere. -- David E. Wellbery, University of Chicago If the legacy of the Enlightenment has been endlessly debated, its origins are hardly well understood. Here, with great precision and elegance, Dorothea von Mucke traces the fundamental religious underpinnings of some key secular achievements of eighteenth-century culture, namely aesthetics, the individual, and the public sphere. This prepares the way for some rather unexpected-and convincing-readings of key Enlightenment texts. The reader emerges with a profound sense of how our secularism has been shaped from its inception by theological forms of thought, a timely consideration. -- David Bates, University of California, Berkeley Why are the arts and literature such crucial spaces for the modern cultivation of human freedom? Dorothea von Mucke gives this question a remarkable history, revealing how and why aesthetics became so fundamental to Western ideals of creativity, responsibility, and autonomy. Moving nimbly across theology, moral philosophy, natural philosophy, and print culture-and engaging a host of eighteenth-century literary figures from the familiar to the unknown-von Mucke's book charts how the Enlightenment made artistic creativity the very marker of humanity itself. -- Jonathan Sheehan, University of California, BerkeleyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part One. The Birth of Aesthetics, the Ends of Teleology, and the Rise of Genius 1. The Surprising Origins of Enlightenment Aesthetics 2. Disinterested Interest: The Human Animal's Lack of Instinct 3. Beautiful, not Intelligent Design 4. Enlightenment Discourses on Original Genius 5. "Where Nature Gives the Rule to Art" 6. The Strasbourg Cathedral: Edification and Theophany Conclusion Part Two. Confessional Discourse, Autobiography, and Authorship 7. Pietism 8. Rousseau 9. Goethe: From the "Confessions of a Beautiful Soul" to Poetry and Truth Part Three. Imagined Communities and the Mobilization of a Critical Public 10. Patriotic Invocations of the Public 11. Real and Virtual Audiences in Herder's Concept of the Modern Public 12. Mobilizing a Critical Public Notes Index

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Book SynopsisConstructs an Arendtian theory of aesthetics from the philosopher’s fragmentary writings on art and perception.Trade ReviewCecilia Sjoholm provides an original and provocative reinterpretation of the difficult and controversial philosophical issues in Hannah Arendt's studies, such as embodiment, realness, appearance, judgment, and the role of sense experience. Doing Aesthetics with Arendt is written with admirable clarity, elegance, and a sense of its own unique voice. -- Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, author of Feminist Aesthetics and the Politics of Modernism In addition to filling a significant hole in existing scholarship, Doing Aesthetics with Arendt performs a powerful double gesture with far-reaching consequences. The double entendre of the title means both cultivating an account of aesthetics in which there appeared to be none and, perhaps more fundamentally, transforming the aesthetic apertures that pre-conceptually determine how a body of work appears. Cecilia Sjoholm has truly done what appeared impossible by doing aesthetics with Arendt. -- Gabriel Rockhill, author of Radical History and the Politics of Art With its insistent references to the spaces of appearances and new beginnings, to judgment and narrative, and to perspectives and plurality, Hannah Arendt's philosophy is thoroughly and emphatically structured by aesthetic categories, which no reader could have failed to notice. Bringing these categories-and some new ones: the sense of 'realness' and the 'sounding' of the language of love-into orderly, pointed, and illuminating focus, Cecilia Sjoholm has compellingly and beautifully constructed for us Arendt's unwritten aesthetics. By allowing Arendt's aesthetic doctrine to so perspicuously come into view, Sjoholm has placed us all in her debt. -- J. M. Bernstein, New School for Social ResearchTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Sensing Space: Art and the Public Sphere 2. The Work of Art 3. The Encroachment of Others 4. Tensions of Law: Tragedy and the Visibility of Lives 5. Comedy in the Dark: Arendt, Chaplin, and Anti-Semitism Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis book is the first in any language to follow the evolution of rasa, or taste, the word Indian intellectuals chose to describe art's aesthetics. A Rasa Reader ranges from rasa's origins in dramaturgical thought—a concept for the stage—to its flourishing in literary thought—a concept for the page.Trade ReviewA Rasa Reader is the product of enormous erudition in both the Indian and European traditions of the philosophy and science of aesthetics, and it will make a unique and powerful contribution to scholars in several areas. No other work of which I am aware enables even the lay reader to grasp the elusive concept of rasa, its relationship to the psychology of emotion, and the way in which successive authors redefined the meaning and locus of the aesthetic response. -- Robert Goldman, University of California, Berkeley A Rasa Reader marks a serious contribution to scholarship on rasa and promises to shape the field for a long time to come. There is certainly no one work in English or any other language that covers anything like the ground this one does. -- Lawrence McCrea, Cornell University A Rasa Reader is a monumental achievement not only in giving clear translations of difficult Sanskrit texts on aesthetics but also in making complicated arguments comprehensible to the general reader. It is the missing cornerstone in the increasing availability of premodern South Asia literature in reliable translation. It is now possible for the curious reader to find his or her way with some depth into a once impenetrable field. -- Stephen Owen, Harvard University Framed by Sheldon Pollock's magisterial introduction and commentary, A Rasa Reader opens out a panoramic view of one of the world's great aesthetic traditions, whose adherents blend philosophical rigor and poetic insight as they advance, dispute, and refine theories of the nature and effects of artistic expression. Discerning readers of this luminous anthology will 'become intoxicated by it'-as the great poet-critic Dandin said of poetry-'like bees by honey.' -- David Damrosch, Harvard University Pollock recounts the core aesthetic concept of rasa by tracking its transformations, extensions, and exclusions. From its early appearance as a term specific to drama to its flowering as a hybrid concept bringing together emotion, eroticism, cuisine, devotion, authenticity, and response, rasa makes sense of aesthetic experiences but in a way that doesn't and shouldn't reduce to any of its near-equivalents in Greek or German philosophies of the beautiful. Comparative literature gains immensely from this detailed, historically differentiated anthology with its illuminating introduction. -- Haun Saussy, University of Chicago In this bold, comprehensive, and bracing foray into classical India, Pollock confirms his reputation as a pioneering intellectual historian-the rare kind that creates a vast new field of inquiry and scholarship while provoking reappraisals of existing ideas, assumptions, and concepts. -- Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade AsiaTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments English Translations of Sanskrit Titles List of Abbreviations Introduction: An Intellectual History of Rasa 1. The Foundational Text, c. 300, and Early Theorists, 650-1025 2. The Great Synthesis of Bhoja, 1025-1055 3. An Aesthetic Revolution, 900-1000 4. Abhinavagupta and His School, 1000-1200 5. Continuing the Controversies Beyond Kashmir, 1200-1400 6. Rasa in the Early Modern World, 1200-1650 English-Sanskrit Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Italian philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato reveals the underpinnings of contemporary subjectivity in the aesthetics and politics of mass media. This book discloses the conceptual groundwork of Lazzarato’s thought as a whole for a time when his writings have become increasingly influential.Trade ReviewLike his comrade Antonio Negri, Maurizio Lazzarato has dedicated himself to exploring the less-traveled paths of modern thought in search of alternatives to capitalist modernity. In Videophilosophy, that exploration produces stunning results. Drawing on Bergson, Nietzsche, Vertov, Nam June Paik, and Bill Viola, Lazzarato constructs an innovative and compelling sequel to two of the most revolutionary texts in media studies: Gilles Deleuze's Cinema books and Walter Benjamin's 'The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.' -- Timothy Murphy, author of Antonio Negri: Modernity and the MultitudeThis elegant translation makes available to Maurizio Lazzarato's growing English readership the theoretical cornerstone of his intellectual project, and puts into context his collaborative practice in video art. Videophilosophy makes an indispensable contribution to the philosophy of time and technology amidst and against the proliferation of contemporary capitalist subjectivities. -- Gary Genosko, author of When Technocultures Collide: Innovation from Below and the Struggle for AutonomyHow can time become crystallized in machines? From the cinematic image to the computational image of digital technologies, the artificial dilatation and construction of time has become equivalent to processes of thought. Videophilosophy takes you on a journey across these machinic syntheses of time, inaugurating a much-awaited media theory binding together materiality and technology in an unprecedented fashion. -- Luciana Parisi, author of Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics, and SpaceTable of ContentsLazzarato’s Political Onto- aesthetics, by Jay HetrickIntroduction1. The War Machine of the Kino-Eye and the Kinoki Against the Spectacle2. Bergson and Machines That Crystallize Time3. Video, Flows, and Real Time4. Bergson and Synthetic Images5. Nietzsche and Technologies of Simulation6. The Economy of Affective Forces7. The Concept of Collective PerceptionAfterword: Videophilosophy Now—an Interview with Maurizio LazzaratoNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisThe Italian philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato reveals the underpinnings of contemporary subjectivity in the aesthetics and politics of mass media. This book discloses the conceptual groundwork of Lazzarato’s thought as a whole for a time when his writings have become increasingly influential.Trade ReviewLike his comrade Antonio Negri, Maurizio Lazzarato has dedicated himself to exploring the less-traveled paths of modern thought in search of alternatives to capitalist modernity. In Videophilosophy, that exploration produces stunning results. Drawing on Bergson, Nietzsche, Vertov, Nam June Paik, and Bill Viola, Lazzarato constructs an innovative and compelling sequel to two of the most revolutionary texts in media studies: Gilles Deleuze's Cinema books and Walter Benjamin's 'The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.' -- Timothy Murphy, author of Antonio Negri: Modernity and the MultitudeThis elegant translation makes available to Maurizio Lazzarato's growing English readership the theoretical cornerstone of his intellectual project, and puts into context his collaborative practice in video art. Videophilosophy makes an indispensable contribution to the philosophy of time and technology amidst and against the proliferation of contemporary capitalist subjectivities. -- Gary Genosko, author of When Technocultures Collide: Innovation from Below and the Struggle for AutonomyHow can time become crystallized in machines? From the cinematic image to the computational image of digital technologies, the artificial dilatation and construction of time has become equivalent to processes of thought. Videophilosophy takes you on a journey across these machinic syntheses of time, inaugurating a much-awaited media theory binding together materiality and technology in an unprecedented fashion. -- Luciana Parisi, author of Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics, and SpaceTable of ContentsLazzarato’s Political Onto- aesthetics, by Jay HetrickIntroduction1. The War Machine of the Kino-Eye and the Kinoki Against the Spectacle2. Bergson and Machines That Crystallize Time3. Video, Flows, and Real Time4. Bergson and Synthetic Images5. Nietzsche and Technologies of Simulation6. The Economy of Affective Forces7. The Concept of Collective PerceptionAfterword: Videophilosophy Now—an Interview with Maurizio LazzaratoNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisPaolo D’Angelo traces the history of concealing art—which Italian calls sprezzatura—from ancient rhetoric to our own times. Finding the precept that art must be hidden from cosmetics to interior design, politics to poetry, the English garden to shabby chic, Sprezzatura is an erudite and surprising tour of aesthetics, philosophy, and art history.Trade ReviewA brilliant and lively essay on a fundamental aesthetic concept. Broad-ranging both philosophically and historically, the author treats the wit and paradox of explaining a rhetorical and performative action of speech or art-making that must conceal its artfulness for the sake of beauty, eloquence, and grace. -- Lydia Goehr, Columbia UniversityIn Sprezzatura, Paolo D’Angelo offers a ‘history of ideas’ that is typical of the best Italian scholarship in terms of its wide‐ranging erudition and historical breadth, which are all too rare in English‐language scholarship. It is very readable—hiding, as it were, the effort with which it was written. It shows how a ‘history of an idea’ can be written with both historical and philosophical panache. -- Paul Kottman, New School for Social ResearchThis is an important and unique book on art and aesthetics that brings together classical and modern aesthetic theories, from Schelling and Kant to Danto and Dickie. D’Angelo’s study is a tour de force through some of the most seminal texts of Western poetics, rhetoric, and philosophy, and it constitutes a mine of erudition and scholarly reflection. -- Massimo Verdicchio, University of AlbertaIn this brilliant volume D'Angelo explicates a simple term. . . and follows this concept through time and place. . . . Essential. * Choice *Table of ContentsPreface to the First EditionNote to the Second Italian Edition1. Concealment2. Part of Eloquence Is to Hide Eloquence3. The Concealed Ornament4. Art or Nature?5. In the Garden6. Iki7. Those Who Cannot Dissimulate Cannot Rule Either8. True Eloquence Mocks Eloquence9. Ready-MadesNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisOwen Hulatt undertakes an original reading of Theodor W. Adorno’s epistemology, deepening our understanding of his theories of truth, art, and the nonidentical. Hulatt’s interpretation casts Adorno’s theory of philosophical and aesthetic truth as substantially unified, supporting his claim that both philosophy and art are capable of being true.Trade ReviewA strikingly original reconstruction and defense of Theodor W. Adorno's account of truth. -- Fabian Freyenhagen, author of Adorno's Practical Philosophy: Living Less Wrongly Diligent, precise, honest, and rigorous-a superb piece of philosophical scholarship that brings the sophistication of Adorno studies to a new level. -- Brian O'Connor, University College Dublin There is no other book that more lucidly and compellingly reconstructs the difficult relationship between epistemology and aesthetics in Adorno's work. Although Adorno vigorously dismissed systematicity, the many connections that unite his central concerns are here made manifest in ways that are likely to move the debate over his legacy substantively forward. For anyone interested in the status and fate of art in modernity, this book will be a landmark. -- Espen Hammer, author of Adorno's Modernism: Art, Experience, and CatastropheTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Models of Experience 2. The Interpenetration of Concepts and Society 3. Negativism and Truth 4. Texture, Performativity, and Truth 5. Aesthetic Truth Content and Oblique Second Reflection 6. Beethoven, Proust, and Applying Adorno's Aesthetic Theory Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA new resolution of the mind-body problem that reconciles materialism and idealism.Trade ReviewThe Incorporeal might seem to be a departure for Elizabeth Grosz, whose work has provided one of the most profound and sustained theorizations of matter, embodiment and sexual difference. Rather than a refusal of corporeal feminism, this book is a powerful exploration of corporeality and its possibilities. A remarkable and groundbreaking work, The Incorporeal intensifies Grosz's already complex and nuanced account of bodies and difference: incorporeality is not to be equated with mind, ideality or the disembodied. It is, rather, part of the volatility that Grosz has always discerned in bodies, human and nonhuman. -- Claire Colebrook, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University In this new book, Elizabeth Grosz continues her investigations of role of the body in thinking in art and science, as in politics and philosophy. Through a fresh engagement with the work of Deleuze and the thinkers he admired, she extracts a vital new ethics, itself part of a philosophy of nature beyond the limits of 'the new materialism'. A stimulating and rigorous journey towards a new philosophy for our times. -- John Rajchman, author of The Deleuze Connections In this rich and deeply rewarding book, Elizabeth Grosz traces the hidden genealogy-centered on but not reducible to Gilles Deleuze-of a philosophy that makes room for both body and mind, without reductionism, but also without mysticism. -- Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University Philosophy, and in its wake cultural theory, has long made periodic pendulum swings between two poles, the materialist and the idealist. What is needed is a move through the middle: an incorporeal materialism, or a materialist idealism. This is the important and timely project Elizabeth Grosz undertakes in this book, with the help of judiciously chosen philosophical guides, from the Stoics to Simondon. -- Brian Massumi, University of Montreal This is a bold, brilliant, and fascinating study of an alternative philosophical tradition. The treatments of Simondon and Ruyer are especially welcome, and a new and highly challenging conception of materialism is offered. -- Keith Ansell-Pearson, University of WarwickTable of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. The Stoics, Materialism, and the Incorporeal 2. Spinoza, Substance, and Attributes 3. Nietzsche and Amor Fati 4. Deleuze and the Plane of Immanence 5. Simondon and the Preindividual 6. Ruyer and an Embryogenesis of the World Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThe Incorporeal might seem to be a departure for Elizabeth Grosz, whose work has provided one of the most profound and sustained theorizations of matter, embodiment and sexual difference. Rather than a refusal of corporeal feminism, this book is a powerful exploration of corporeality and its possibilities. A remarkable and groundbreaking work, The Incorporeal intensifies Grosz's already complex and nuanced account of bodies and difference: incorporeality is not to be equated with mind, ideality or the disembodied. It is, rather, part of the volatility that Grosz has always discerned in bodies, human and nonhuman. -- Claire Colebrook, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Pennsylvania State UniversityIn this new book, Elizabeth Grosz continues her investigations of role of the body in thinking in art and science, as in politics and philosophy. Through a fresh engagement with the work of Deleuze and the thinkers he admired, she extracts a vital new ethics, itself part of a philosophy of nature beyond the limits of 'the new materialism'. A stimulating and rigorous journey towards a new philosophy for our times. -- John Rajchman, author of The Deleuze ConnectionsIn this rich and deeply rewarding book, Elizabeth Grosz traces the hidden genealogy—centered on but not reducible to Gilles Deleuze—of a philosophy that makes room for both body and mind, without reductionism, but also without mysticism. -- Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State UniversityPhilosophy, and in its wake cultural theory, has long made periodic pendulum swings between two poles, the materialist and the idealist. What is needed is a move through the middle: an incorporeal materialism, or a materialist idealism. This is the important and timely project Elizabeth Grosz undertakes in this book, with the help of judiciously chosen philosophical guides, from the Stoics to Simondon. -- Brian Massumi, University of MontrealThis is a bold, brilliant, and fascinating study of an alternative philosophical tradition. The treatments of Simondon and Ruyer are especially welcome, and a new and highly challenging conception of materialism is offered. -- Keith Ansell-Pearson, University of WarwickTheoretically deft, rigorous, lucid, and generous, The Incorporeal is revelatory in animating the variegated metaphysical intimacies of terms whose interplay casts (ongoing) dualist tradition as, if not minoritarian, then as stubbornly in denial or too-stubbornly wedded to the term whose insular privilege it elects to uphold. -- Helen Thompson * Modern Philology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction1. The Stoics, Materialism, and the Incorporeal2. Spinoza, Substance, and Attributes3. Nietzsche and Amor Fati4. Deleuze and the Plane of Immanence5. Simondon and the Preindividual6. Ruyer and an Embryogenesis of the WorldConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisSantiago Zabala declares that in an age where the greatest emergency is the absence of emergency, contemporary art's ability to create new realities is fundamental to democracy. He advances a new aesthetics that draws on Martin Heidegger's distinction between works of art that rescue us from emergency and those that are rescuers into emergency.Trade ReviewZabala's extraordinary book strikes at the very heart of our spiritual predicament. From austerity politics to security measures, everything is legitimized with the axiom that we live in a state of emergency. The first task of the critique of ideology today is thus to dispel this myth of emergency-something that Zabala does brilliantly, combining theoretical stringency with immense readability. -- Slavoj ZzZizek, author of Less than Nothing and Absolute Recoil Why is the absence of emergency the greatest emergency? This question is at the heart of Zabala's new book, which develops further his "ontology of remnants," i.e., what remains of Being in the twenty-first century. Art, like communism, is not an aesthetic or political subject matter for Zabala but rather an ontological event where Being emerges as remnants. This is why instead of aesthetic contemplation he calls for existential interventions meant to change the world. The art world, as well as the philosophical community, will benefit from Zabala's best book so far. -- Gianni Vattimo, author of Art's Claim to Truth and Of Reality Santiago Zabala's Why Only Art Can Save Us is a crucial publication for anyone concerned about the future and necessity of art in the twenty-first century. Its main claim is that the possibility of art lies in its aesthetics of emergency. Although we live in a time of social, political and environmental emergencies, Zabala makes the convincing case that we tend to repress the emergencies we live in. The aesthetics of emergency discloses the concealment of emergency as the essential emergency, helping us to recover the sense of emergency. This aesthetics proposes a major shift in our understanding of art, which is less about representation than existence. -- Christine Ross, James McGill Chair in Contemporary Art History, McGill University Santiago Zabala's new book is a timely and provocative exploration of art in the age of emergency. Today, the real emergency we face is not so much the populist emergencies of media spectacles that confront us ad nauseum day in and day out; rather, it is the emergency that arises from concealing the destruction and oppression that neoliberal democracy, militarism, and global capitalism inflict. It is here where art can save us. Why Only Art Can Save Us is a major contribution to political philosophy and the philosophy of art. -- Adrian Parr, author of Birth of a New Earth and The Wrath of CapitalTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Emergency of Aesthetics 2. Emergency Through Art 3. Emergency Aesthetics Afterword Notes Index

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Book SynopsisSantiago Zabala declares that in an age where the greatest emergency is the absence of emergency, contemporary art's ability to create new realities is fundamental to democracy. He advances a new aesthetics that draws on Martin Heidegger's distinction between works of art that rescue us from emergency and those that are rescuers into emergency.Trade ReviewZabala's extraordinary book strikes at the very heart of our spiritual predicament. From austerity politics to security measures, everything is legitimized with the axiom that we live in a state of emergency. The first task of the critique of ideology today is thus to dispel this myth of emergency—something that Zabala does brilliantly, combining theoretical stringency with immense readability. -- Slavoj Žižek, author of Less Than Nothing and Absolute RecoilWhy is the absence of emergency the greatest emergency? This question is at the heart of Zabala's new book, which develops further his "ontology of remnants," i.e., what remains of Being in the twenty-first century. Art, like communism, is not an aesthetic or political subject matter for Zabala but rather an ontological event where Being emerges as remnants. This is why instead of aesthetic contemplation he calls for existential interventions meant to change the world. The art world, as well as the philosophical community, will benefit from Zabala's best book so far. -- Gianni Vattimo, author of Art's Claim to Truth and Of RealitySantiago Zabala's Why Only Art Can Save Us is a crucial publication for anyone concerned about the future and necessity of art in the twenty-first century. Its main claim is that the possibility of art lies in its aesthetics of emergency. Although we live in a time of social, political, and environmental emergencies, Zabala makes the convincing case that we tend to repress the emergencies we live in. The aesthetics of emergency discloses the concealment of emergency as the essential emergency, helping us to recover the sense of emergency. This aesthetics proposes a major shift in our understanding of art, which is less about representation than existence. -- Christine Ross, author of The Past Is the Present; It’s the Future Too: The Temporal Turn in Contemporary Art and The Aesthetics of Disengagement: Contemporary Art and DepressionSantiago Zabala's new book is a timely and provocative exploration of art in the age of emergency. Today, the real emergency we face is not so much the populist emergencies of media spectacles that confront us ad nauseum day in and day out; rather, it is the emergency that arises from concealing the destruction and oppression that neoliberal democracy, militarism, and global capitalism inflict. It is here where art can save us. Why Only Art Can Save Us is a major contribution to political philosophy and the philosophy of art. -- Adrian Parr, author of Birth of a New Earth and The Wrath of CapitalWhy Only Art Can Save Us examines art that is in touch with the contemporary world, a world that, however you assess such things, is surely in crisis. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Santiago Zabala has written a profound and important work that responds to some of the most demanding issues of our day. * Singapore Review of Books *Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Emergency of Aesthetics2. Emergency Through Art3. Emergency AestheticsAfterwordNotesIndex

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

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

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Book SynopsisWhat does a life with art offer that a life without art does not? This title asserts that the fundamental point of the enterprise of art is the creation and delivery of values that are not singularly available in the nonart world. It discusses visual art, literature, music, theater, and other art forms, arguing that as art both liberates.Trade Review“The clearest, most carefully developed piece of philosophy I have ever read. Sleinis’s extensive knowledge of the arts themselves enables him to supply examples that are illuminating. A major contribution to aesthetics.”--George Dickie, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of Art and Aesthetic: An Institutional Approach

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Book SynopsisDevelops the question of philosophy's regard of the image in thinking by considering painting - where the image most clearly calls attention to itself as an imageTrade ReviewSan Filippo is well-read in feminist and queer theory, and the book is sprinkled with ideas from those fields, which makes this most suitable for graduate-level reading. It can, however, serve as undergraduate coursework for students with a solid background in those subjects. . . . Highly recommended. * Choice *If anything, the most wonderful aspect of this book is just how much its tone captures indirectly the very texture of its thematized phenomenological challenge. Schmidt manages not only to raise a question, but to attune the reader to the sheer fact of gesture in painting. * Continental Philosophy Review *Following on the steps of Continental philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and particularly Gadamer, Schmidt aims to show that artistic images can open on an experience of truth quite distinct from, yet just as valuable as, that occasioned by conceptual knowledge. * Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Genesis of the Question1. Unfolding the Question: An Excentric History2. Heidegger and Klee: An Attempt at a New Beginning3. On Word, Image, and Gesture: Another Attempt at a BeginningAfterword: The Question of Genesis for NowNotesBibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewAesthetics as Phenomenology is an important and potentially major contribution to the philosophy of art. * Phenomenological Reviews *Table of ContentsTranslator's ForewordIntroductionChapter One: Art, Philosophically1. Why Art?2. Which Art?3. Philosophy of Art and AestheticsChapter Two: Beauty4. Free Play5. Appearances and Things6. Showing and Self-ShowingChapter Three: Art Forms7. Arts8. Essential Determinations9. MixturesChapter Four: Nature10. Oppositions11. Limits and Inclusions12. Primordial AppearanceChapter Five: Space13. Places14. Emptiness15. HereBibliographyIndex of Names and SubjectsIndex of Terms

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewSites of Exposure offers a compelling analysis of our experiential life that constitutes what is (and what is not) meaningful to us. The book provides an accessible and timely work on phenomenology that sheds a fresh light on the 'basic principles' that are often implied or occluded in our dominant models for interpreting the world. The author does an excellent job of showing the extent to which such a focus can be crucial for our attempts to understand the current world and our experience of it; from the personal, the interpersonal, to the political. Russon's book is for anyone interested in the topics of philosophy, art, and politics and the question of how those realms are entangled and linked to the level of our lived experience. * KULT online *The author provides a unified vision of a philosophy of art, history, and culture, and he avoids academic jargon in a successful attempt to make the book accessible to all in different but relevant practical ways. . . . Recommended. * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction1. Portrait2. Home3. Exposure4. ThanksgivingAppendix: Notes for Further StudyBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisReclaiming fun as a meaningful concept for understanding games and play.“Fun” is somewhat ambiguous. If something is fun, is it pleasant? Entertaining? Silly? A way to trick students into learning? Fun also has baggage—it seems inconsequential, embarrassing, child's play. In Fun, Taste, & Games, John Sharp and David Thomas reclaim fun as a productive and meaningful tool for understanding and appreciating play and games. They position fun at the heart of the aesthetics of games. As beauty was to art, they argue, fun is to play and games—the aesthetic goal that we measure our experiences and interpretations against. Sharp and Thomas use this fun-centered aesthetic framework to explore a range of games and game issues—from workplace bingo to Meow Wolf, from basketball to Myst, from the consumer marketplace to Marcel Duchamp. They begin by outlining three elements for understanding the drive, creation, and experience of fun: set-

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Book SynopsisAn argument that Modernism is a cognitive phenomenon rather than a cultural one.At the beginning of the twentieth century, poetry, music, and painting all underwent a sea change. Poetry abandoned rhyme and meter; music ceased to be tonally centered; and painting no longer aimed at faithful representation. These artistic developments have been attributed to cultural factors ranging from the Industrial Revolution and the technical innovation of photography to Freudian psychoanalysis. In this book, Samuel Jay Keyser argues that the stylistic innovations of Western modernism reflect not a cultural shift but a cognitive one. Behind modernism is the same cognitive phenomenon that led to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century: the brain coming up against its natural limitations. Keyser argues that the transformation in poetry, music, and painting (the so-called sister arts) is the result of the abandonment of a natural aesthetic based on a set of rules shared be

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Book SynopsisThe intense relationship between philosopher Martin Heidegger and his cabin in the Black Forest: the first substantial account of die Hütte and its influence on Heidegger's life and work.This is the most thorough architectural 'crit' of a hut ever set down, the justification for which is that the hut was the setting in which Martin Heidegger wrote phenomenological texts that became touchstones for late-twentieth-century architectural theory.—from the foreword by Simon SadlerBeginning in the summer of 1922, philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) occupied a small, three-room cabin in the Black Forest Mountains of southern Germany. He called it die Hütte (the hut). Over the years, Heidegger worked on many of his most famous writings in this cabin, from his early lectures to his last enigmatic texts. He claimed an intellectual and emotional intimacy with the building and its surroundings, and even suggested that the landscape expressed itself through

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Book SynopsisFifty paintings, reproduced in color, by an international array of contemporary artists, show the aptness and relevance of painting in an era of uncertainty.In an age of global instability, the threat of chaos looms. Or is the threat more spectral than real? The fear of chaos may simply be our response to living in a world controlled by powerful forces beyond our understanding. Chaos and Awe demonstrates the aptness and relevance of painting as a medium for expressing the uncertainty of our era. It presents more than fifty paintings, by an international array of contemporary artists, that induce sensations of disturbance, curiosity, and expansiveness—the new sublime, derived not from the unfathomable mystery of nature but from the hidden and often insidious forces of culture. Essays by art historians and “painters who write” offer context and illumination.Chaos and Awe, which accompanies a major exhibition at the Frist Art Museum in Nash

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Book SynopsisAn original exploration of the role of aesthetics in contemporary design, uniquely combining philosophical aesthetics and cultural analysis of design.As a product of human ingenuity, design functions as an artificial interface through which we meet the world. While the ubiquity of design seems to render it imperceptible, when we truly reflect on design, we see that it is inextricably entwined with our experience of the world. In Design Aesthetics, Mads Nygaard Folkmann provides an engaging introduction to the field of design aesthetics and its role as a concept. Engaging with sensual, conceptual, and contextual considerations of design aesthetics, this book investigates design experience in tandem with design practice, objects, and perception.Part one of Design Aesthetics lays the theoretical foundation by differentiating between sensual, conceptual, and contextual dimensions of design aesthetics and clarifying what “aesthetic experience&rdquo

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Book SynopsisIn his Enquirywhich has been described as certainly one of the most important aesthetic documents that eighteenth -century England producedthe young Burke provided a systematic analysis of the ''sublime'' and the ''beautiful,'' together with a distinctive terminology which served to express certain facets of the changing sensibility of his time. The introduction traces the main sources of Burke's ideas and establishes the nature of his originality. The largest section of the editor's introduction, however, examines the influence of the Enquiry. Major writers like Johnson, Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy, painters such as Fuseli and Mortimer, and critics such as Diderot, Lessing and Kant, as well as many other minor figures, recognized Burke's new insights, and in varying degrees assimilated them.The second edition, revised by Burke himself, provides the copy-text, including changes between the first and second editions.

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Book SynopsisSwiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (19051988) originated much of twentieth- and twenty-first-century theology''s renewed interest in aesthetics. Von Balthasar''s theology is both poetic and philosophical, and while this combination is often recognized, it calls for an explanation. In Theo-Poetics: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Risk of Art and Being, Anne M. Carpenter explores von Balthasar''s use of poetry and poetic language, and she offers a detailed analysis of his philosophical presuppositions. Carpenter argues that von Balthasar uses poets and poetic language to make theological arguments because this poetic way of speaking expresses metaphysical truth without reducing one to the other. Carpenter begins with von Balthasar''s very early interests in music, literature, and philosophy, in particular his work, Apocalypse of the German Soul. She explores Glory of the Lord and the trilogy, moving through his despair over the possibility of reconcilinTrade Review"How do we value the theological in artistic works? In this book Anne Carpenter creates a significant map to the expansive landscape proposed by theological aesthetics. As she reenacts the “interplay” of poetry and philosophy yielding theology in von Balthasar and his interlocutors, Carpenter points toward the incarnated beauty of human creativity and the inherent unity of reason and heart. Through her careful 'untangling' of the role of the poetic in making theologizing possible, Carpenter confers gravitas on the utterances of artists known and unknown, whose creative abundance overflows and provides us new and important vistas into the in-breaking glory of God." —Cecilia González-Andrieu, Loyola Marymount University"This is a beautifully written work engaging von Balthasar's attempt to wed aesthetics back into the essence of theology. Carpenter presents a sophisticated and creative study of the importance of the aesthetics of the written word in order to reveal the importance of von Balthasar’s project but also to advance it. The work presents a clear overview of the heart of von Balthasar’s work, but also a fresh application of it through an analysis of poetry. The book provides a rich source for contemplating the eternal Word, God’s most creative act of poetry uttered eternally." —John Dadosky, Regis College/University of Toronto"Anne M. Carpenter turns a lot of difficult and abstruse research about Hans Urs von Balthasar in the scholarly literature into a lively and readable book. The volume achieves the goal of explaining the poetic form of von Balthasar's writing, tracing it back to the centrality of the concept of expression in his philosophical theology. The special value of the book is that it explains new developments of von Balthasar and recent objections to von Balthasar in a way that makes them accessible, gathering a lot of diverse scholarship into a single quite short book." —Francesca Murphy, University of Notre Dame“The author seeks to give a positive rather than a critical account of Balthasar’s epistemology. To that end she not only draws on a wide range of the famous theologian’s writings but also on much of the secondary literature.” —Theology“Theo-Poetics importantly emphasizes how von Balthasar’s work can be fruitful for what we could call a theological life . . . which Carpenter so crucially puts at the center.” —Cummins Institute Blog

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Book SynopsisFor over five decades, Samuel Hazo has taught his readers about literature and life with generosity and awareness, taking everyday experiences and translating them into songs at once familiar and surprising. In his poetry, fiction, essays, and plays, Hazo, in a style that is unmistakably his own, extols the wonderment and discovery that emerge in the act of writing, in the movement toward wisdom that results from the expression of feeling. The Stroke of a Pen is a collection of the occasional essays on a variety of subjects, from the relationship between poetry and public speech, to the pursuit of the literary life, to reading within a cultural context governed by power relations. Two essays focus on religion and literature, and the final five include a literary travel essay on Provence, a counterpointing one on the virtues of not traveling but remaining home, a lighter essay that extends the discussion of home to houses, a memory piece on the actor Gregory Peck, and aTrade Review"In this wonderful collection of essays, Hazo displays the breadth of his intellectual curiosity in prose that is highly lyrical: he explores the relationship between belief and the life of a literary critic, the role of faith and university education, the art of writing and the power of imagination, and even the joys of retirement! It is a very good read." —Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president, University of Notre Dame"The Stroke of a Pen will interest poets, writers, literary scholars, and critics, as well as broadly educated readers, who judge the balkanized, theory-and-jargon-driven engagement of literature to have lost track of the aesthetic dimension essential for the full appreciation of literature and life. By contrast, Samuel Hazo's book affirms the necessary depth of the aesthetic impulse in the deep sources of the human quest after meaning." —Daniel Tobin, Emerson College"Samuel Hazo's The Stroke of a Pen offers a grand tour from classroom to classics, from the hazards of household plumbing to the pleasures of Provence. He remarks that 'the chief value of travel for me is the deeper appreciation it gives me of home,' yet reading these elegant essays leaves the reader with what Hazo realized away from home: 'a different sense of your very self—a more resonant one, as if you've suddenly been underlined for emphasis.'" —George Dennis O'Brien, president emeritus, University of Rochester"It will surprise no one familiar with Samuel Hazo’s strong poetry that his prose is, as this collection of essays demonstrates, incisive, insightful, and at times intense. His love of words permeates every page." —William J. Byron, S.J., St. Joseph’s University"Professor Hazo, the first State Poet of Pennsylvania and a distinguished author, combines literature and life across 10 individual essays split into two distinctly contrasting parts. . . . With a balance of literary theory and philosophical allusion, Hazo produces an Ezra Pound-influenced conviction that powerful literature will endure, despite fiscal policy undermining education (essentially committing cultural suicide). . . . With such penmanship, Hazo is a rare breed: timeless in his approach to poetry and prose, dutifully acknowledging contemporaries and colleagues, and unreserved in his erudite pursuits." —Publishers Weekly Annex Reviews“The Stroke of a Pen is an inspiring read for anyone with even a casual interest in the arts. It may give . . . emerging poets . . . a stronger sense of purpose and responsibility. If nothing else it should provide all readers with renewed assurance in the value of artistic undertaking.” —Ploughshares Literary Magazine Blog

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Book SynopsisIn this extended essay, Vittorio Hösle develops a theory of the comical and applies it to interpret both the recurrent personae played by Woody Allen the actor and the philosophical issues addressed by Woody Allen the director in his films.Trade Review“With breathtaking intellectual agility, Hosle . . . balances theories of the comical with the humor of Woody Allen. . . . His analysis never damages Allen's verbal or visual humor. Difficult, without being ponderous, his 'essay' demands sophistication and erudition. It will please scholars who love a profound challenge.” —Choice“Hösle has an impressive command of Allen's work, including the short stories and secondary literature, and he weaves in and out of different textual examples with aplomb. His address to them is speculative, confident.” —Philosophy in Review“. . . A refreshing counterbalance to the traditional neglect of humor and comedy by philosophers. . . .” —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews“It explores the philosophical issues that Allen's comedy explicitly addresses, whether just as the subjects of puns and jokes or as the guiding themes of whole works, such as the identity problem in Zelig, the relation between reality and art in The Purple Rose of Cairo, and the objective value of morality in Crimes and Misdemeanors.” —Reference and Research Book News“Vittorio Hösle's cogent essay on Woody Allen is a beautiful example of a living and fertile relation between philosophy and great film art." —Sueddeutsche Zeitung"That Hösle accepts Allen's work as philosophical challenge, that he takes it seriously as one of the most important artistic manifestations of a modern metaphysical view, is an important invitation for academic philosophy to ask philosophical questions in a way appropriate to our time." —Philosophischer Literaturanzeiger“Vittorio Hösle presents a compelling overview of Allen’s work in which he discusses different theories of laughter and argues for the priority of the incongruity theory as the only one able to answer the normative question, what distinguises good from bad laughter? On this theoretical basis he goes on to delve into both the humor and the philosophical profundity of Allen’s films.” —Sander Lee, Keene State College“In Woody Allen, Vittorio Hösle goes a long way toward explaining everything you wanted to know about Allen but were afraid to ask. Just why exactly is he funny, and why does his humor have a strong appeal for academics? In his comprehensive analysis of Allen’s work, Hösle outlines a workable theory of humor, illustrates his conclusions by referring to the films and prose, and points out several philosophic motifs underlying Allen’s deceptively complex comedies. Hösle’s work elevates the enjoyment of Allen’s films from guilty pleasure to satisfying intellectual engagement with an intriguing contemporary thinker and artist.” —Richard A. Blake, S.J., Boston College

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Book SynopsisIn The Contemplative Self after Michel Henry: A Phenomenological Theology, Joseph Rivera provides a close and critical reconstruction of the philosophical anthropology of Michel Henry (19222002) while also addressing the question of how theology contributes to Henry's phenomenology. In conversation with other French figures such as Derrida, Marion, Lacoste, and Barbaras, Rivera undertakes a global thematic study of Henry's work. He shows how, for Henry, the theological debate is shifted onto a phenomenological problem, with a coincident will to pursue the epistemological efforts of Husserl and Heidegger.The chapters tackle some of the most pressing debates in contemporary Continental philosophy, such as the modern ego, the nature and experience of temporality, and the constitution of the body and otherness, and how a theological discourse may illumine those anthropological structures. The book expands on the modern narrative of the self from Descartes to Nietzsche, opeTrade Review"English-language scholarship on Michel Henry is growing rapidly but still nascent. Joseph Rivera's book is well positioned to be one of the early classics in the field; it does not merely introduce Henry but builds on what comparatively little has been written about his work. Rivera uses his introduction to Henry's thinking as a platform for his own truly critical and constructive project." —Jeffrey Allan Hanson, Australian Catholic University"The Contemplative Self after Michel Henry presents an original and creative approach to the interpretation of the issue of what theology contributes to Michel Henry's phenomenology. The authors Joseph Rivera calls upon, such as Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Derrida, MacIntyre, Ricoeur, Didier Franck, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty, are intelligently evoked and quoted. Rivera looks to anthropological questions since, for Henry, theological questioning brings about consequences in terms of corporeality and ethics. Rivera's reading is both stimulating and true to Henry's work." —Jean Leclercq, Université Catholique de Louvain"Far more than a summary and synthesis, Joseph Rivera conducts a sustained dialogue and impassioned debate with Michel Henry, along with other major figures in phenomenology, in an effort to construct a rich account of the contemplative self that moves beyond the long shadow cast by Descartes—one that gives primacy to embodiment, worldliness, and eschatological hope. Equally at home with philosophical and theological sources, and indebted to Augustine in its constructive aims, this work marks the impressive debut of a scholar whose instincts are to retrieve and freshly reimagine the seminal insights of the Christian tradition." —Brian D. Robinette, Boston College"Joseph Rivera’s The Contemplative Self after Michel Henry is—to my knowledge, at least—the first sustained study in English dedicated to Henry’s phenomenology. Not only is Rivera’s study timely, it has all of the markings of a work that will become a standard point of reference in the field." — Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Philosophy"This book represents an extraordinarily impressive debut of a young philosophical theologian. It is marked by striking intelligence, formidable erudition, and precociously mature philosophical and theological judgment. . . . It is, of course, much more than a book on the late Henry, although it is certainly that, and by far the best book to appear in English." —Modern Theology“This is the first book of a young scholar who promises to be a major voice in the contemporary constructive theological conversations within the broad catholic tradition. . . . In short, here is an utterly intriguing prolegomenon to a further systematic theology that, within the tradition of phenomenology, will stand alongside the work of Marion and Lacoste as perhaps the most serious recovery of a generous catholic theology of our time.” —Literature & Theology“Joseph Rivera’s The Contemplative Self after Michel Henry is—to my knowledge, at the least—the first sustained study in English dedicated to Henry’s phenomenology. If there has been much debate in recent decades about the relationship between phenomenology and theology, Rivera’s study is an impressive exercise in showing that the two can be brought into a productive exchange, by using phenomenology to open afresh venerable theological horizons and questions. For those who are looking not only to familiarize themselves with Henry, but the perennial human question of what it means to be a self at all, The Contemplative Self after Henry is a welcome and satisfying point of departure.”—Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy.

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Book SynopsisEdmund Burke’s Enquiry has been described as ""certainly one of the most important aesthetic documents that eighteenth-century England produced"". This book traces the main sources of Burke's ideas and establishes the nature of his originality. James T. Boulton also examines the influence of the Enquiry.

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Book SynopsisEssays examine the relationship between poetry and public speech, the pursuit of the literary life, to reading within a cultural context governed by power relations.Trade Review"In this wonderful collection of essays, Hazo displays the breadth of his intellectual curiosity in prose that is highly lyrical: he explores the relationship between belief and the life of a literary critic, the role of faith and university education, the art of writing and the power of imagination, and even the joys of retirement! It is a very good read." —Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president, University of Notre Dame"The Stroke of a Pen will interest poets, writers, literary scholars, and critics, as well as broadly educated readers, who judge the balkanized, theory-and-jargon-driven engagement of literature to have lost track of the aesthetic dimension essential for the full appreciation of literature and life. By contrast, Samuel Hazo's book affirms the necessary depth of the aesthetic impulse in the deep sources of the human quest after meaning." —Daniel Tobin, Emerson College"Samuel Hazo's The Stroke of a Pen offers a grand tour from classroom to classics, from the hazards of household plumbing to the pleasures of Provence. He remarks that 'the chief value of travel for me is the deeper appreciation it gives me of home,' yet reading these elegant essays leaves the reader with what Hazo realized away from home: 'a different sense of your very self—a more resonant one, as if you've suddenly been underlined for emphasis.'" —George Dennis O'Brien, president emeritus, University of Rochester"It will surprise no one familiar with Samuel Hazo’s strong poetry that his prose is, as this collection of essays demonstrates, incisive, insightful, and at times intense. His love of words permeates every page." —William J. Byron, S.J., St. Joseph’s University"Professor Hazo, the first State Poet of Pennsylvania and a distinguished author, combines literature and life across 10 individual essays split into two distinctly contrasting parts. . . . With a balance of literary theory and philosophical allusion, Hazo produces an Ezra Pound-influenced conviction that powerful literature will endure, despite fiscal policy undermining education (essentially committing cultural suicide). . . . With such penmanship, Hazo is a rare breed: timeless in his approach to poetry and prose, dutifully acknowledging contemporaries and colleagues, and unreserved in his erudite pursuits." —Publishers Weekly Annex Reviews“The Stroke of a Pen is an inspiring read for anyone with even a casual interest in the arts. It may give . . . emerging poets . . . a stronger sense of purpose and responsibility. If nothing else it should provide all readers with renewed assurance in the value of artistic undertaking.” —Ploughshares Literary Magazine Blog

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Book SynopsisThis book probes the intersection of the beautiful and the ugly, offering a systematic framework to understand, interpret, and evaluate how ugliness can contribute to beautiful art.Many great artworks include elements of ugliness: repugnant content, disproportionate forms, unresolved dissonance, and unintegrated parts. Mark William Roche's authoritative monograph Beautiful Ugliness: Christianity, Modernity, and the Arts challenges current practices of the dominant aesthetic schools by exploring the role of ugliness in art and literature. Roche offers a comprehensive and unique framework that integrates philosophical and theological reflection, intellectual-historical analysis, and interpretations of a large number of works from the arts. The study is driven by the recognition that, though ugliness is usually understood as the opposite of beauty, ugliness nonetheless contributes significantly to the beauty of many artworks.Roche's analysis unfoTrade Review“It is hard to deny that Beautiful Ugliness is an enormously rich, argumentatively dense, and intelligent book that has the power to trigger many discussions. It shows, perhaps precisely through its provocative potential, the enormous power of a rational aesthetics of the ugly.” —Christian Illies, co-author of Philosophy of Architecture"Probably since Karl Rosenkranz's famous Aesthetics of the Ugly of 1853 no comparable effort has been made to look at the various forms in which ugliness can be used for aesthetic purposes and thus become itself a part of the beautiful. Roche's richly illustrated Beautiful Ugliness is highly recommended to philosophers, theologians, and historians of art and literature." —Vittorio Hösle, author of A Short History of German Philosophy"There is something refreshing in Mark William Roche's seriousness and audacity in engaging a theme of great interest, too often neglected. The author addresses and overcomes this neglect, addressing the ugly and beauty in an ordered systematic way. I know nothing which matches its range of engagement." —William Desmond, author of Godsends: From Default Atheism to the Surprise of Revelation"Roche’s erudition is not easily matched, not only in the study of Hegel’s philosophy, but also in literature and the arts. Examples from literature, painting, music, theatre, and film abound in this book, bringing an entirely new dimension to the author’s philosophical argument." —Vladimir Marchenkov, coeditor of Hegel's Political AestheticsTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Abbreviations and Translations Introduction Part One. Conceptual Framework 1. Unveiling Ugliness 2. Aesthetic Categories 3. Intellectual Resources 4. Imperial Rome 5. Late Medieval Christianity 6. The Theological Rationale for Christianity’s Immersion in Ugliness Part Two. Historical Interlude 7. Modernity 8. Modernity’s Ontological and Aesthetic Shift Part Three. Forms of Beautiful Ugliness Styles of Beautiful Ugliness 9. Repugnant Beauty 10. Fractured Beauty 11. Aischric Beauty 12. Beauty Dwelling in Ugliness 13. Dialectical Beauty 14. Speculative Beauty Conclusion Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisNo overall history of the philosophical dialogue has appeared since Rudolf Hirzel''s two-volume study was published in 1895. In The Philosophical Dialogue: A Poetics and a Hermeneutics, Vittorio Hösle covers the development of the genre from its beginning with Plato to the late twentieth-century work of Iris Murdoch and Paul Feyerabend. Hösle presents a taxonomy and a doctrine of categories for the complex literary genre of the philosophical dialogue, focusing on the poetical laws that structure the genre, and develops hermeneutical rules for its correct interpretation.Following an introduction that employs the categories of subjectivity and intersubjectivity to classify philosophy''s modes of expression, Hösle''s book is structured by the classical triad of the production, inner structure, and reception of the literary dialogue. To explain what is meant by philosophical dialogue, Hösle first deals with the specific traits of philosophical dialogue in contrast to otherTrade Review"With its exceptionally clear and powerful argumentation, the book might become the defining work for the study of dialogue. Paraphrasing Kant, one could say that in philosophy mere theory without a history is empty, while history without a theory is blind. Yet in his work Hösle achieves a unique synthesis of historical perceptivity and systematic rigor. This book will be read for many years to come." —Dmitri Nikulin, New School for Social Research“The inventor of philosophy, Plato, wrote in dialogues, as did some of the best philosophers, Cicero, Augustine, Cusanus, Hume and even Heidegger. Yet until Vittorio Hösle no one had thought of devoting a major study to the genre of the philosophical dialogue. His groundbreaking and thorough inquiry inspires one to read more philosophical dialogues and view them in a new light. It is an outstanding piece of scholarship.” —Jean Grondin, Université de Montréal"The Philosophical Dialogue: A Poetics and a Hermeneutics contains four veritable monographs on its four main authors, Plato, Cicero, Hume, and Diderot. The book is well-written and never becomes pedantic; it manifests philological enthusiasm and an intimate knowledge of the connections in the whole area dealt with by this book." —Reinhard Brandt, University of Marburg"Convincingly translated into English by Steven Rendall, a richly stimulating and documented survey is now made widely accessible. . . . a suggestive and authoritative study. The reader is drawn into the potentialities of dialogue—which may, in turn, define reading itself." —Times Literary Supplement“Hösle’s latest publication is highly recommended, especially for its superb research and intelligently written subject matter.” —Catholic Library World“This book will enthrall any who have found the genre of philosophical and theological texts to be of interest and importance, and it will assist anyone wishing better to understand the pragmatics and deictic variables and import of different kinds of philosophical and theological dialogue.” —Modern Theology“The Philosophical Dialogue: A Poetics and a Hermeneutics is a definitive translation of a 2016 German-language history of the genre since its beginnings with Plato.”—The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Book SynopsisExplores the late medieval concepts of absence and void, with a special focus on the materiality of emptiness in later medieval manuscripts. Trade Review“With a Midas-like touch, Elina Gertsman has a gift for turning her every subject into scholarly gold. The Absent Image is no exception.”—Brigitte Buettner Studies in Iconography“Gertsman makes a convincing argument, and at times shows a wonderful novelistic sensibility in describing the micro-dramas on display.”—Times Literary Supplement“Elina Gertsman’s The Absent Image is a rarefied treat for connoisseurs – a kind of apophatic art history. She explores a phenomenon that is seldom studied: the voids, gaps and empty frames that manuscript artists used to represent the unrepresentable.”—Barbara Newman London Review of Books“The book is amusing and thought-provoking in the best sense, and the lavish illustrations create much food for thought, not out of nothing but from a wealth of varied examples.”—Thomas Rainer CAA.Reviews“Gertsman’s book is absolutely brilliant, a paragon of scholarship to be held up as a model to students and colleagues alike.”—Lauren Mancia Medieval Review“This is an intellectually ambitious, rigorously argued, and erudite book that explores visual strategies and their theoretical underpinnings of ‘empty spaces’ in medieval manuscripts. A must-read for scholars of medieval and northern Renaissance art and intellectual history.”—Nino Zchomelidse,author of Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity in Medieval Southern Italy“This is one of the most original books I have read—original in its conception and subject, in the materials studied and illustrated, in the numerous questions posed, and in its compelling conclusions. It is a potentially paradigm-shifting work that will affect how we perceive illustrated manuscripts and that should finally put to rest for art historians the ‘intentional fallacy’ long rejected by literary historians.”—Richard K. Emmerson,author of Apocalypse Illuminated: The Visual Exegesis of Revelation in Medieval Illustrated Manuscripts

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Book SynopsisExplores tensions in aesthetics and art theory between antique figural sculpture experienced in the round and its translation into two-dimensional representations. Examines the work and thought of Goethe, Winckelmann, Hegel, Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, and others.Trade Review“Like the author’s previous pathbreaking and widely admired book on the relation between portrait painting in the studio of Ingres and the broader problematics of painting ‘history,’ Animating the Antique is painstaking, original, and uncompromising. Weaving art history with aesthetics, the history of archaeology and of collections, and other topics, Betzer’s study of the figuration of sculpture in two-dimensional representations sets a unique insight into a multifaceted framework.”—Whitney Davis,author of Replications: Archaeology, Art History, Psychoanalysis“A beautifully written book. One of the most appealing aspects of Animating the Antique is the way it interweaves the histories of discourse and practice over nearly two hundred years. Something similar can be said about painting and sculpture, media that are typically studied largely in isolation from each other: this is the rare book to bring them together in a substantial and illuminating way.”—Michael Cole,author of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and the Art of the Figure

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Book SynopsisTerry Waite invites you to meet some of the exceptional people he has got to know on his travels, and explore with him the widely different forms of solitary existence they inhabit.Trade ReviewThis is a thoughtful and sensitive book from a man who endured the fear and loneliness of captivity. Now, years later, Terry Waite explores solitude in its many forms. * Stella Rimington DBE, former Director General of MI5 *No one is better qualified to write about solitude than Terry Waite, who spent nearly five years of his life in solitary confinement. His exploration of solitude – he calls it a saunter – takes him from his personal ordeal to the Australian outback, to the home of a former British double agent in Moscow, and beyond. His book will be of great value to those who have suffered from too much company or too little, or are interested in the phenomenon of being alone, which is not at all the same as being lonely. Terry Waite’s saunter through solitude is wide ranging, original, well written and (best of all) companionable. * Martin Bell OBE, UNICEF ambassador and former war reporter *This is a wonderfully perceptive and engaging book. Terry Waite takes the reader deep into other worlds, both geographical and psychological, from which they will emerge enlightened and spiritually enriched. * Ranulph Fiennes OBE, explorer, writer and poet *

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Book SynopsisExamines the tensions between the ethical and aesthetic imperatives in literary, artistic, and philosophical works about the HolocaustTrade Review"This book is very profound. Every time Glowacka introduces a major thinker into her consideration of the questions at hand she adds a much deeper understanding not only of the question but also of the thinker. This is a must read for Holocaust scholars and teachers." David Patterson, Hillel Feinberg Chair in Holocaust Studies, University of Texas at Dallas "Dorota Glowacka's impassioned and eloquent dialogue with the philoso--pher Emmanuel Levinas makes a persuasive case for translating his ethics into a poetics (what she calls "poethics") that powerfully illuminates post-Holocaust philosophy, literature, and visual art." Karyn Ball, author of Disciplining the HolocaustTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Disappearing Traces: Holocaust Testimonials between Ethics and Aesthetics 1. “Like an Echo without a Source”: Subjectivity as Witnessing and the Holocaust Narrative 2. The Tower of Babel: Holocaust Testimonials and the Ethics of Translation 3. Lending an Ear to the Silence Phrase: Holocaust Writing of the Differend 4. Poethics of Disappearing Traces: Levinas, Literary Testimony, and Holocaust Art 5. “Witnesses against Themselves”: Encounters with Daughters of Absence Epilogue: “To Write Another Book about the Holocaust . . . ” Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisWhat is art? The philosophers and historians contributing to this volume address the assertion that the term "art" no longer holds meaning. They explore a variety of issues including: aesthetic and institutional theories of art; feminist perspectives; and the relevance of tribal art.Trade Review“Unquestionably the most authoritative and up-to-date collection of materials on a very important philosophical topic. Noël Carroll has done a masterful job of assembling a first-class cast of scholars who have been highly prominent in the ongoing debate over the role of theory in aesthetics. They are concerned with the question of how we can circumscribe the enterprise (or objects) of art in an intellectual environment that is generally hostile to real definition. Public policy makers concerned with public art, K–12 art teachers, students of cultural history, art critics, and many others will naturally be interested in this subject.” —Ronald Moore, University of Washington–Seattle“Carroll is our foremost interpreter of how philosophical aesthetics has developed, and his way of laying out the story is always illuminating.” —Anita Silvers, San Francisco State University

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Book SynopsisThis study examines John Dewey's thinking about the arts and explores the practical implications of that thinking for educators. The author introduces the basics of Dewey's aesthetic theory and then looks at the ways in which a work of art can affect its creator and audience.Trade Review"Philip Jackson's searching meditations on Dewey and art are of abiding interest for all of us who care about our lives and how we nurture and nourish our children." Howard Gardner, Harvard Graduate School of Education "Jackson presents a useful and...insightful review of John Dewey's systematic consideration of the arts...Jackson examines Dewey's theories on how the arts might help people live their lives differently. He also asks teachers of all kinds to consider how they might use the 'lessons' of art in their role as educators...This book makes a sound addition to commentary on the writings of John Dewey and to the fields of curriculum studies, educational philosophy, and arts education." Choice

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Book SynopsisA bold revision of the history of European art, told through the lens of neuroscienceTrade ReviewWon the 2017 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title

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Book SynopsisA collection of inspiring essays by the photographer Robert Adams, who advocates the meaningfulness of art in a disillusioned societyTrade Review“Robert Adams’s photo practice reoriented landscape photography to the effects of man on the environment. In the essays collected in Art Can Help he shares his responses to other photographers’ work. . . . About Terri Weifenbach’s picture of a bumblebee in flight: ‘What does the photographer help us find? First of all, astonishment.’”—William Meyers, Wall Street Journal (Holiday Gift Book selection)

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Book SynopsisA landmark book, “brilliant, thoughtful” (The Atlantic) and “raw and gorgeous” (LA Times), that fast-forwards the discussion of the central artistic issues of our time, from the bestselling author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead.Who owns ideas? How clear is the distinction between fiction and nonfiction? Has the velocity of digital culture rendered traditional modes obsolete? Exploring these and related questions, Shields orchestrates a chorus of voices, past and present, to reframe debates about the veracity of memoir and the relevance of the novel. He argues that our culture is obsessed with “reality,” precisely because we experience hardly any, and urgently calls for new forms that embody and convey the fractured nature of contemporary experience.

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