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The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (Routledge Philosophy Companions)

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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.

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.

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.

I am reading this book in conjunction with the 3rd edition of "Philosophy of the Arts: An Introduction to Aesthetics". This book is heavily cited as a preferred background/in-depth companion. At the end of Chapter Six in "Philosophy...", citation is made to chapters 30, 46, 47, 48 and 49 in this book. However, the Kindle edition of this book ends at chapter 46. Is this because it's only the first edition? Or is it because the Kindled edition simply does not include those chapters? While clearly the material is both compelling and important, it is alarming that such a significant portion of the book appears to be missing. Having paid well over $50 for the pair of books, I'd expect them to at least be complete.

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. This book is an excellent way to get a general idea of the vast field of philosophy of art. Aesthetics = philosophy of Art, thinking about art. Using writings from over fifty philosophers on art form Plato to Hans-Georg Gadamer gives the reader a great grounding in all of the philosophical theories of "what is art." The reader will find that how we engage art today is different then how the ancient Greeks did, art was embedded in a cultural context for them. Art was not in museums or in dance halls. Art is in a special zone of experience today in museums, etc. Tragedy for Greeks was part of their politics and religion, sculpture and painting the same way. Music until recently, (after the enlightenment) was for religion or some kind of official function. Philosophy tries to come up with theories about art; it may be a fool's errand. A set of principles that define and illuminates or explains the full measure of art is probably not attainable. However, just because a theory is wrong doesn't mean it has no value, we can draw import from all of them. By using excerpts from different philosophers the reader gets a good understanding of the major art movements, which I identify below.

The "Imitation theory" of art- means it copies something in the natural world. Art refers to some objective reality outside the mind and artwork. (Plato, Aristotle). . Sometimes the imitation theory is also known as the "representational art theory" because the artwork represented something in the world but is not a simplistic idea of copying. The art forms that are most representational are representational sculpture, painting, and drama. The background and implications of the imitation theory first originated in ancient Greece. The imitation theory is the traditional theory that held sway with artists and philosophers up into the eighteenth century Romantic period in Europe. In order for one to fully grasp the meaning of the imitation theory, it is necessary to understand the nuanced meaning of the Greek word for imitation. The Greek word for imitation is mimēsis; thus, art is the imitation of nature for the Greeks. However, mimēsis is a very complex word with many nuanced meanings. It can also mean a representational copy. Plato uses it in speaking of painting. For example, if a Greek painter painted a bird that looked bird like, that would be a sense of mimēsis. Aristotle says art is an imitation of nature, but not just "copying" it. Aristotle does not mean that when art does what it does it reproduces a natural thing. Rather, what Aristotle means is that art impersonates the power of nature to produce something. Human art does something along the lines of what nature does which is very different. Nature produces a tree from out of its power of generation without any intervention from nature, a builder produces a house out of materials which requires the intervention of an agent; however, Aristotle sees no fundamental bright line between those two examples.

The "Expression theory" of art- refers to something going on in the human mind. Art refers to some subjective reality of the human mind, such as ideas, feelings, and cognitive faculties. (Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer). The expression theory is the prime competitor to the imitation theory. The expression theory is a modern phenomenon that turns to the subject. This theory became prevalent with the rise of the Romanticism movement of the nineteenth century. With the expression theory--a shift takes place from the objective outer world of the imitation theory to perception of the mind the subject of the expression theory. Expression theorists expect artworks will produce certain human emotions in the audience. Thus, the expression theory has a certain power in focusing on the mind of both the creator and the audience. Expression theorists argue that the theory has a certain power in being able to articulate the communicative and educative power of the mind.

For example, the artist has an experience that the rest of us have not noticed. Then the artist tries to express this experience in the artwork, which she hopes will transmit to the audience so they can share the artist's experience. The idea in the expression theory that artworks have an educative power is central to Robin Collingwood's theory. The whole idea is that the artist is some kind of educator and the artwork becomes some kind of educational vehicle for people. Of course, art can have so much power in this regard, as in the case of Shakespearean tragedies like Macbeth. Thus, the expression theory gives artwork a new importance, especially in the medium of the written word, since it purports that artworks like literature are something we can learn from that we cannot do any other way.

Contemporary Art Theory

The "Historical artworld," theory- art involves an interrelated complex of artists, artwork, audience, artworld/institutions. All these work in concert with each other, and changes through history adds even more fluidity. This complex changes through history, reflecting a tension between normalcy and creativity (Nietzsche, Dewey, Heidegger, Gadamer).

The features and significance of the historical artworld theory, which more properly should be termed a "notion," is that it does not "locate" art in any one of the four traditional factors of artist, artwork, audience, and artworld institutions that people have traditionally examined to define what art is. The historical artworld notion expands beyond the traditional four factors and takes into account history, and the tension between creativity and normalcy. Thus, the historical artworld notion looks at art through a more broad interpretation then the imitation and expression theories do, by adding history and the tension between creativity and normalcy as well. Thus, the historical artworld notion is better at explaining the fluid relationships between the various facets involved in art. The idea is that it uses "hermeneutics" which means "interpretations" that are in Martin Heidegger's words more "world disclosive." Therefore, the historical artworld notion tends to be less dogmatic than a theory and really seeks to serve as a guidepost for understanding art.

One of the most significant features of the historical artworld notion, unlike the imitation and expression theories, is that as Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer argue, the theory of hermeneutics purports that it is impossible to approach anything independent of historical influences that have already shaped us and therefore, mold how it is we would approach anything. There are already operating influences in how we regard anything in the world, and art would be included in that. By contrast, the imitation theory is too "narrow" in its "accepted rules" of art because it only seeks to imitate objects in the world and disregard the importance of historical influence in creating artworks. One of the ways to understand this is by examining child development. Every adult has been a child, and every child has been shaped by cultural influences through all sorts of ways, education, rearing, etc. In other words, any human self will always be equipped with ways of seeing; therefore, there is no such thing as coming to see something as all by itself. Thus, when we approach a work of art, before we even engage it we are already equipped with inheritances from our tradition and our culture that come to us by way of education and other kinds of influences. No engagement with a work of art is a blank slate-- we are not a tabula rasa. For example, in the case of Greek tragedy, we would have to know what the historical circumstances were and what it was like for the work to be performed at that time. Therefore, any approach to art always carries the art history with it, because historical influences are always shaping how we begin to see anything.

My study has convinced me that Gadamer's hermeneutic circle is the most comprehensive and exciting theory of art that has made a real impression in the art world.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, philosophy of art. I strongly recommend Gadamer's "Truth and Method" for an in-depth understanding of the hermeneutic circle and its explanation of art.

This text is the first in my arts administration masters program. Though I am not through the book the first few chapters are interesting and provoke a thoughtful response.

I first saw this outstanding volume in the bookstore of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Now it is on my shelves (or by my bedside!) in Colorado and I find it indispensable. Anyone curious to know what beauty is - or what "experts" thought ot to be - should have it. Otherwise they may remain "un-aesthetized".