The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics contains forty-six chapters written by leading international scholars covering all aspects of aesthetics. The volume is structured in four parts: History, Aesthetic Theory, Issues and Challenges, and Individual Arts. It opens with an historical overview of aesthetics including entries on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sibley and Derrida. The second part covers the central concepts and theories needed for a comprehensive understanding of contemporary developments in aesthetics including the definitions of art, taste, value of art, beauty, imagination, fiction, narrative, metaphor and pictorial representation. Part three is devoted to the topics that have attracted much contemporary interest in aesthetics including art and ethics, environmental aesthetics and feminist aesthetics. The final part addresses the individual arts of music, photography, film, literature, theatre, dance, architecture and sculpture. Aesthetics is a vibrant growing field within philosophy. It addresses fundamental questions about the nature and value of art that cannot easily be answered by a study of the histories of the arts. This volume should prove invaluable both to curious newcomers, who want to learn more about aesthetics, and to professionals, who desire a ready reference work.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Reviews of the first edition:
‘This is an immensely useful book that belongs in every college library and on the bookshelves of all serious students of aesthetics.’ Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
‘The succinctness and clarity of the essays will make this a source that individuals not familiar with aesthetics will find extremely helpful.’ The Philosophical Quarterly
‘An outstanding resource in aesthetics…this text will not only serve as a handy reference source for students and faculty alike, but it could also be used as a text for a course in the philosophy of art.’ Sondra Bacharach, Australasian Journal of Philosophy
‘Attests to the richness of modern aesthetics…the essays in central topics – many of which are written by well-known figures – succeed in being informative, balanced and intelligent without being too difficult.’ British Journal of Aesthetics
'This handsome reference volume. . .belongs in every library.' Choice
'The Routledge Companions to Philosophy have proved to be a useful series of high quality surveys of major philosophical topics and this volume is worthy enough to sit with the others on a reference library shelf.' - Philosophy and Religion
‘The sheer eclecticism of this work – the variety of content, method, outlook and sensibility – shows the vigour and vitality that aesthetics as a branch of modern philosophy has come to assume in the last two or three decades. Its compilation is a real achievement, and it will appeal to a very wise range of readers. Some of these essays are, and will remain, classics of their kind.’ Richard Wollheim
About the Author
Berys Gaut is a Lecturer in Philosophy at St. Andrews University and Dominic Lopes is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia.
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Dominic Lopes teaches philosophy at the University of British Columbia and writes on images and their value, computer art, and the nature and value of art. His work builds on the premise that works of art should be understood as artifacts of the human mind as well as of human culture.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best survey of aesthetics available,
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This review is from: The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (Routledge Philosophy Companions) (Paperback)
Routledge routinely releases extraordinary material surveying large bodies of knowledge and condensing them into a manageable package of clear, concise articles from a nice variety of perspectives. This is one of their best and most useful (and usable) volumes yet. The field of aesthetics is as old as philosophy itself, but somehow this companion represents major topics and philosophers from every era from Plato to Derrida and Barthes.
The book breaks down into three categories: History, where we get essays on major figures in aesthetics; Aesthetic theory, including essays on major topics such as the "value of art", definition of art, taste, interpretation and others; and finally, Issues and challenges - including criticism, ethics, performance authenticity, and others. Check out the table of contents in the Amazon Online Reader for more. In short, the guide is comprehensive. Naturally, they couldn't include absolutely everything - there's no article on Adorno's widely influential aesthetics and writings on the culture industry, but this is easily forgivable as there are already whole anthologies on Adorno's aesthetics. There are other companions similar to this such as Peter Kivy's very nice Blackwell guide to aesthetics. The Blackwell guide is just fine, but the Routledge companion has a wider scope, more articles, and is simply easier to use. That said, certain volumes (and here I'm thinking of the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism) work nicely with this book, but they have different areas of focus. Having spent some time with the major collections on aesthetics, I can definitely say that this is the finest. I highly recommend it to students, artists, educators, or anyone interested. The writing is extremely clear and the format makes it easy to find exactly what you're looking for. If you want to know more about aesthetics, this is the book for you.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great introduction to the key concepts of aesthetics,
This review is from: The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (Paperback)
This is an exceptionally strong volume in the Routledge Companions to philosophy series. With a few exceptions, the essays in this volume are pitched at just the right level to introduce the reader to some of the major figures and central issues from the history of aesthetics. It is both readable to the interested novice in philosophy and useful for the established scholar who wants to get his or her feet wet in a new area. The book covers history, theory, issues, and the specifics of the individual arts. Each chapter/essay is written by a prominent scholar, and is just the right length to identify several of the predominant issues covered in the scholarship. The coverage is fairly thorough, and the second edition is coming out soon which has even better coverage. I was disappointed that there was not a chapter on Schopenhauer, but you know it is there in the second edition.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent companion to Visual Arts Studies,
By
This review is from: The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (Routledge Philosophy Companions) (Paperback)
Like most of my Amazon purchases, I initially borrowed this book from my university library. I liked it enough to purchase and will remain indefinitely in my growing library collection. The bulky size of this book belies its concise and clear nature, which is a boon for any student attempting to wade through the more dense, wordy literature of some other books on the Philosophy of Art. As the blurb on the rear of the book states, it contains 52 chapters written by leading international scholars which cover pretty much all aspects of aesthetics.
Structurally, the book's layout makes it easy to locate pertinent information quickly. The chapters are divided into sections which discuss the history, theory, issues and challenges of aesthetic theory; and then looks at the individual arts such as film, photography, dance, theater and music (to name a few. Each chapter concludes with a reference list and a further reading list.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Plato's writings about the arts play a foundation role in the history of aesthetics, not simply because they are the earliest substantial contribution to the subject. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
mass art works, sensible authenticity, common denominator argument, recreative imagination, sonic authenticity, actual intentionalism, hypothetical intentionalism, mimetic account, nonaesthetic properties, such pleasure arises, extreme moralism, versus low art, acoustic definition, uniformity amidst variety, distanced contemplation, analytic aesthetics, inauthentic performances, early music movement, ethical flaws, classical film theory, environmental aesthetics, other artforms, pragmatist aesthetics, appreciative description, genuine judgements Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Cornell University Press, Harvard University Press, Princeton University Press, British Journal of Aesthetics, Temple University Press, University of Chicago Press, Museum of Modern Art, University of California Press, New Haven, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Aristotle's Poetics, Philosophical Review, Yale University Press, Journal of Philosophy, The Hague, Henry James, Indiana University Press, Las Meninas, The Birth of Tragedy, Arthur Danto, Chapel Hill New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
Plato's writings about the arts play a foundation role in the history of aesthetics, not simply because they are the earliest substantial contribution to the subject. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
mass art works, sensible authenticity, common denominator argument, recreative imagination, sonic authenticity, actual intentionalism, hypothetical intentionalism, mimetic account, nonaesthetic properties, such pleasure arises, extreme moralism, versus low art, acoustic definition, uniformity amidst variety, distanced contemplation, analytic aesthetics, inauthentic performances, early music movement, ethical flaws, classical film theory, environmental aesthetics, other artforms, pragmatist aesthetics, appreciative description, genuine judgements Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Cornell University Press, Harvard University Press, Princeton University Press, British Journal of Aesthetics, Temple University Press, University of Chicago Press, Museum of Modern Art, University of California Press, New Haven, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Aristotle's Poetics, Philosophical Review, Yale University Press, Journal of Philosophy, The Hague, Henry James, Indiana University Press, Las Meninas, The Birth of Tragedy, Arthur Danto, Chapel Hill New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 81
books:
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35
books
cite this book:
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- The Poetics of Aristotle by Aristotle on 4 pages
- City of God (Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans) (Pelican Classics) by Augustine of Hippo on page 31, page 36, and Index
- Validity in Interpretation by E.D. Hirsch on page 250, and page 460
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke) by John Locke on page 164, and page 294
- The Soldier's Tale by Stravinsky on page 539, and Index
See all 81 books this book cites
- Revealing Art by Matthew Kieran on 5 pages
- Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts by Matthew Kieran in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics by Paul Guyer on page 190, and Back Matter
- Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies) by No?l Carroll on page 183, and Back Matter
- The Aesthetic Dimensions of Educational Administration & Leadership by Eugenie A. Samier on page 16, and page 62
See all 35 books citing this book
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