Encyclopedia of Aesthetics: 4-volume Set [Hardcover]

Michael Kelly (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195113071 | ISBN-13: 978-0195113075 | Publication Date: August 20, 1998

The first reference of its kind surveys the full breadth of critical thought on art, culture, and society--from classical philosophy to contemporary critical theory. Featuring 600 original articles by distinguished scholars from many fields and countries, it is a comprehensive survey of major concepts, thinkers, and debates about the meaning, uses, and value of all the arts--from painting and sculpture to literature, music, theater, dance, television, film, and popular culture. Of special interest are in-depth surveys of Western aesthetics and broad coverage of non-Western traditions and theories of art. The work includes cross references, bibliographies, and an index.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This is the first comprehensive reference source available in an area that concerns several academic disciplines?most especially philosophy but also literary theory, sociology, law, art history, and others?and cultural traditions. The subjects of the topical essays range from people (Aristotle, Kant, Derrida, Santayana) to concepts (Byzantine aesthetics, Chinese aesthetics) to activities (children's art, politics). Major entries are considered in three to five focused essays (with Kant warranting nine), each written by a different authority and each with its own cross references and bibliography. Headnotes at such major entries provide quick access to the section a researcher may seek. The index spans nearly 70 pages, with references indicating both volume and page, and internal cross references further ease the researcher's path. This is both authoritative and accessible, providing scholars and students, practicing artists, and social scientists with an illuminating guide to historical and contemporary scholarship.?Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., CA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"This outstanding work offers depth and breadth, exploring thoroughly the core issues of aesthetics and offering informative overviews of related fields....A unique work of splendid scholarship, readable and reliable, highly recommended for the collection of any library serving a liberal arts program, undergraduate or graduate level."--Choice

" . . . a rare achievement . . . clearly the [Encyclopedia] will be the standard of reference for the foreseeable future."-- International Philosophical Quarterly

"This is the first comprehensive reference source available in an area that concerns several academic disciplines...authoritative and accessible, providing scholars and students, practicing artists, and social scientists with an illuminating guide to historical and contemporary scholarship."--Library Journal

"Will become an immediate reference classic . . . an essential purchase for academic libraries, arts and humanities collections, and larger public libraries."--RBB/Booklist

"It is a magnificent achievement and deserves a very wide readership."--Journal of Philosophy

"The quality and unique focus of the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics make is a valuable completment to other reference sources in the humanities. It is highly recommended . . ."--Art Documentation

"A unique work of splendid scholarship . . . highly recommended for any library serving a liberal arts program."--Choice

"This encyclopedia fills a notorious lacuna in Anglo-American scholarship . . . and arguably will be the primary resource of its kind well into the next century."--Harvard Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 2224 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (August 20, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195113071
• ISBN-13: 978-0195113075
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 9.4 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 17.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,797,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Art and Other Matters, April 17, 2000

By 

Sean Payne - See all my reviews

This review is from: Encyclopedia of Aesthetics: 4-volume Set (Hardcover)

Astonishment and relief when coming across the four volumes of this encyclopedia. After scrounging for scraps of (imprecise, obscure or contradictory) information in various encyclopedia, academic journals and dictionaries, I was relieved and impressed at the breadth and accessibility of the articles. Covers familiar subjects well and extends to related disciplines in psychology, physiology, as well as unexpected regions of pop culture. Detailed and authoritative, and well overdue. (Just a pity it's so expensive).

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Speciality Encyclopedia, February 7, 2006

By 

P. Nagy "revreader" (Chapel Hill, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Encyclopedia of Aesthetics: 4-volume Set (Hardcover)

Encyclopedia of Aesthetics: 4-volume Set edited by Michael Kelly (Oxford University Press) many encyclopedias no matter how extensive or learned the articles, often give the curious reader a sense of flatness, a surface, broad sweeping plane, to which there is no depth, no questions left unanswered. The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics however has avoided this pitfall. The articles are extensive, well-written and leave this reader with a sense of engagement, even practical knowledge, so that I might listen to a piece of music with more perception, enjoy a painting in new ways, and even be so delighted as to hunt down some of the titles listed in the bibliographies at the end of the articles. This encyclopedia could and should enjoy a wide readership because it more than provides the scope of aesthetics today; it also invites readers into the participation and recognition of beauty.

Excerpt: Aesthetics is uniquely situated to serve as a meeting place for numerous academic disciplines and cultural traditions. While it is a single branch of philosophy con¬cerned with art, aesthetics is also a part of other disciplines-such as art history, literary theory, law, sociology-that reflect equally, if differently, about art in its natural and cultural contexts. At the same time, aesthetics is an eighteenth-century European devel¬opment that has not been duplicated anywhere else. Of course, all other cultures around the world have their own "art," and most also have traditions of reflecting philosophically about it. To the extent that they have developed such reflection, whatever they have chosen to call it, these cultures are engaged in a practice related to Western aesthetics. So aesthetics is, in academic terms, both singular and general, and, in cultural terms, both local and global. To capture these multiple dimensions, the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics has been created using a definition of aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture, and nature."
The purpose of this encyclopedia is to contribute to a discursive public sphere in which people representing the disciplines and traditions engaged in aesthetics will be able to articulate their perspectives on the field, thereby fostering dialogue and, where possible, constructing common ground without imposing consensus. To this end, the encyclopedia, which is the first English-language reference work on this scale devoted to aesthetics, of¬fers a combination of historical reference material and critical discussions of contempo¬rary aesthetics intended for general readers and experts alike.
HISTORY OF AESTHETICS
The term aesthetics is derived from the ancient Greek word aisthesis (also spelled aesthe¬sis), which means perception or sensation. In its original usage, the word was related to perceptual or sensory knowledge, usually in contrast to conceptual or rational knowledge, but had little or no specific relevance to art. The initial lack of connection between aes¬thetics and art reflects the fact that, at the time, there was no word for what Westerners now regard as art; the Greek word for art, techne, is closer to the English word craft. Of course, the philosophy of art existed in Plato and Aristotle's age, just as there was Greek "art." Nevertheless, aesthetics did not become connected to art until the eighteenth cen¬tury. Developments within art and philosophy-as well as within other disciplines con¬cerned with art-account for the eventual link between aesthetics and art that is the his¬torical subject of this encyclopedia.
From the classical era to the Middle Ages, reflection on art developed through the work of philosophers such as Augustine, Plotinus, Aquinas, and others. During the Renais¬sance, when art flourished in unparalleled ways, such reflection also experienced a revival as many classical aesthetic ideas were rediscovered and developed in new directions. What was most common during these periods, however, were treatises about individual arts, such as painting, music, or poetry, rather than any theory about art in general. There was also considerable discussion about whether it was possible to distinguish art from craft. Finally, when people wrote about the arts, they typically did so without philosophically analyzing the principles of criticism they were implicitly invoking. In short, aesthetics proper had not yet emerged.
All of this changed in the eighteenth century, mostly in France, Germany, and Great Britain. There was a historical coincidence between a new-found tendency on the part of writers to generalize about the arts and a heightened concern in philosophy for sensory knowledge independent of logical knowledge. The distinction of types of knowledge, inspired in part by the birth of modern science based on empiricism, introduced aesthetics into philosophy; but, following the lead of Alexander Baumgarten, aesthetics still had little to do with art. This was a strange development indeed in the inaugural century of aes¬thetics: those beginning to generalize about art did not use the term aesthetics, while those practicing aesthetics were not principally interested in art. It was not until Immanuel Kant's Critique of judgment (1790) that these two tendencies were systematically united, setting the agenda for aesthetics ever since.
Although this union was unquestionably an important step in the early and subse¬quent history of aesthetics, overemphasis on it tends to obscure an equally important di¬mension of this history, which is central to the rationale for the encyclopedia. Although it is true that aesthetics emerged in the eighteenth century within philosophy, this would not have been possible without developments in art and cultural criticism that had been evolving since at least the Renaissance. Critics-whether philosophers, poets, or writers-began writing about art in general rather than just about the individual arts. Some compared the different arts, as was the case in the "Ut pictura poesis" ("as a paint¬ing, so a poem") tradition, whereas others argued that each art form could be properly understood only on individual terms: painting is independent of poetry, which is inde¬pendent of music, and so on. In its first century, aesthetics was thus marked by a funda¬mental philosophical disagreement about whether generalizing about art was an ad¬vancement in the understanding of the arts. It is this disagreement, rather than just the tendency toward generalizations, that separated Western aesthetics in the eighteenth cen¬tury from its prior history as well as from other cultural traditions.
In that same period, the individual arts in Europe were becoming more accessible to the public than they had ever been before, for they were no longer so closely tied to reli¬gion and politics once the church and monarchy ceased being the exclusive patrons of the arts. There was, in short, a secularization and democratization of the arts and culture in the eighteenth century that contributed to the formation of a cultural public sphere. Crit¬icism was the term most widely used to characterize discussions about the arts and cul¬ture; in fact, the term critique, which Kant transformed in his Critique of Pure Reason, be¬gan in part as the German translation of the English word criticism. This transformation marks the birth of aesthetics as a part of philosophy, but it also highlights the fact that philosophical aesthetics emerged out of a broader cultural context.
From its inception until the present, aesthetics has continued to be distinguished by both its philosophical and cultural roles, even though some theorists have at times at-tempted to restrict aesthetics to just one of its roles. Moreover, the fact that aesthetics has always had these dual roles has made the present encyclopedia both possible and neces¬sary: possible, because the entries here could not have been written unless there were peo¬ple in various disciplines outside of philosophy writing philosophically about art, culture, and nature; and necessary, because aesthetics remains incomplete if its cultural role is not developed. The goal of the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics is to trace the genealogy of aesthetics in such a way as to integrate these two roles.
The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics has been created, and may now be received, in a skeptical environment. It is important to address this skepticism here because it is based on a mis¬conception of aesthetics that the encyclopedia aims to correct in an effort to revitalize the field.
Many people concerned with art and culture today seem to want to distance them-selves from aesthetics. Ask students or general readers what aesthetics is, and most will say that it has something to do with beauty (an impression reinforced by the colloquial use of aesthetic to mean "beautiful") and that it is a thing of the past. Artists, as a group, rarely express any more interest in aesthetics than Barnett Newman did when he remarked that aesthetics is for artists what ornithology is for birds. Art historians and anthropologists typically do not identify with aesthetics either, unless their research involves art created in periods when aesthetics was still considered relevant. Finally, others involved with con-temporary art-critics, legal theorists, sociologists-also do not generally see themselves as concerned with aesthetics, since they regard it as part of philosophy rather than of their own fields.
Why do these diverse groups of people distance themselves from aesthetics, even though they all are involved with art and culture? What they typically object to is the idea that art can be understood according to a set of universal principles about its immutable properties; the term aesthetics suggests this idea to them. It is seen as a branch of philoso¬phy that effectively died once modern art began to challenge the classical view of art as the imitation, often in the guise of beauty,... Read more ›