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Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

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This book is a collection of essential texts concerning the bridge between Neo-Classicism and, reaching its zenith, Romanticism in German Aesthetic thought. Today, I believe these texts are one of the most important in the history of ideas, because it is the first time thinkers have questioned their ethical place in society, and under what conditions the Good is, in fact, a representation of the Beautiful. This is not only a reaction to Immanuel Kant's two books, Critique of Practical Reason and Judgment, but is also a reformation of the battle to weaken Reason in the face of the rising development of technology.

The first half, Neo-Classicism, are essays by Hamann, Lessing, and Moritz. They are excellent essays that deal with reviving themes put forth by Greek Mythology, Virgil, and Homer. The last half, the romantics, Schiller, Holderlin, Novalis, and Shlegel, rethink Neo-Classicism and puts them under a new aesthetic light, which not only believe in the classical concept of perfection and beauty, but how it relates to ethics, where at its ultimate peak, all man strives to become "a work of art."

The essays may be very technical prima facie, but through reading other texts, such as Frederick Beiser's The Romantic Imperative, you understand the central concerns of the German romantics, and how these concepts are useful today.