Philosophy : Aesthetics

Is music a language of the emotions? How do recorded pop songs differ from works created for live performance? Is John Cage's silent piece, 4'33", music? Stephen Davies's new book collects some of his most important papers on central topics in the philosophy of music. As well as perennial questions, Davies addresses contemporary controversies, including the impact of modern technology on the presentation and reception of both new and old musical works. These essays, two of. them new and previously unpublished, are self-standing but thematically connected, and will be of great interest to philosophers, aestheticians, and to theorists of music and art. - ;Representing Stephen Davies's best shorter writings, these essays outline developments within the philosophy of music over the last two decades, and summarize the state of play at the beginning of a new century. Including two new and previously unpublished pieces, they address both perennial questions and contemporary controversies, such as that over the 'authentic performance' movement, and the impact of modern technology on the presentation and reception of musical works. Rather. than attempting to reduce musical works to a single type, Davies recognizes a great variety of kinds, and a complementary range of possibilities for their rendition. Among the questions that Davies considers are these: How can expressiveness be in a musical work when music experiences nothing? Is music a language of the emotions? How do recorded pop songs and purely electronic pieces differ from works created for live performance? Is John Cage's silent piece, 4'33", music? To what extent is the performer free to create her own interpretation and to what extent is she constrained by the composer's score? Is training in musical technicalities a. prerequisite for a full appreciation of musical works and performances? Is an awareness of the socio-historical setting in which a work is created releva more...

Price: $47.25

Despite the recent upsurge of interest in Theodor Adorno's work, his literary writings are generally under-represented. However, literature is a central element in his aesthetic theory. Bringing together original essays from a distinguished international group of contributors, this book offers a wide ranging account of the literary components of Adorno's thinking. It is divided into three sections, dealing with the concept of literature, with poetry, and with modernity and the novel respectively. At the same time, the book provides a clear sense of the unique qualities of Adorno's philosophy of literature by critically relating his work to a number of other influential theorists and theories including contemporary postmodernist theory and cultural studies. more...

Price: $130.00

This book re-examines the notion of aesthetic experience as well as its value. A team of internationally respected contributors bring together major voices that have directly theorised the concept of aesthetic experience or indirectly worked on topics connected to it. more...

Price: $115.00

Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment is widely held to be the seminal work of modern aesthetics. In recent years it has been the focus of intense interest and debate not only in philosophy but also in literary theory and all disciplines concerned with the aesthetic.The Aesthetic in Kant is a new reading of Kant's problematic text. It draws upon the great volume of recent philosophical work on this classic text and on the context of eighteenth century aesthetics. Kant's work is used as a basis on which to construct a radical alternative to the antinomy of taste - the basic problem of the aesthetic. In Kant's account is a theory of the aesthetic that, far from establishing its 'disinterested' nature, instead makes it symptomatic of what Kant himself describes as the ineradicable human tendency to entertain 'fantastic desires'. more...

Price: $130.00

Theodor Adorno (1903-69) was undoubtedly the foremost thinker of the Frankfurt School, the influential group of German thinkers that fled to the US in the 1930s, including such thinkers as Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer. His work has proved enormously influential in sociology, philosophy and cultural theory. Aesthetic Theory is Adorno's posthumous magnum opus and the culmination of a lifetime's investigation. Analysing the sublime, the ugly and the beautiful, Adorno shows how such concepts frame and distil human experience and that it is human experience that ultimately underlies aesthetics. In Adorno’s formulation ‘art is the sedimented history of human misery’. Edited by Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedeman Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor. more...

Price: $180.00