This study examines how key figures in the German aesthetic tradition -- Kant, Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel, Hegel, and Adorno -- attempted to think through the powers and limits of art in post-Enlightenment modernity. Ayon Maharaj argues that the aesthetic speculations of these thinkers provide the conceptual resources for a timely dialectical defense of "aesthetic agency"-- art's capacity to make available uniquely valuable modes of experience that escape the purview of Enlightenment scientific rationality.

Blending careful philosophical analysis with an intellectual historian's...

Recent
work in political philosophy and the history of ideas presents Spinoza and
Hegel as the most powerful living alternatives to mainstream Enlightenment
thought. Yet, for many philosophers and political theorists today, one must
choose between Hegel or Spinoza. As Deleuze's influential interpretation
maintains, Hegel exemplifies and promotes the modern "cults of death," while
Spinoza embodies an irrepressible "appetite for living." Hegel is the figure of
negation, while Spinoza is the thinker of "pure affirmation." Yet, between
Hegel and Spinoza there is not...

This study examines how key figures in the German aesthetic tradition -- Kant, Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel, Hegel, and Adorno -- attempted to think through the powers and limits of art in post-Enlightenment modernity. Ayon Maharaj argues that the aesthetic speculations of these thinkers provide the conceptual resources for a timely dialectical defense of "aesthetic agency"-- art's capacity to make available uniquely valuable modes of experience that escape the purview of Enlightenment scientific rationality.
Blending careful philosophical analysis with an intellectual historian's...

Contemporary
discussions of the image like to emphasize art's societal functions. Few
studies come close to answering why pictures and sculptures fascinate and
intrigue regardless of any practical functions they might serve. In this
original, thought-provoking study, Paul Crowther reveals the intrinsic
significance of pictures and sculptures.
To address the
question of how painting becomes an art, Crowther uses the analytic philosophy
of Richard Wollheim as a starting point. But to sufficiently answer the
question, he makes an important link to a tradition much...

Can literary fictions convey significant philosophical views, understood in terms of propositional knowledge? This study addresses the philosophical value of literature by examining how literary works impart philosophy truth and knowledge and to what extent the works should be approached as communications of their authors.

Beginning with theories of fiction, it examines the case against the prevailing 'pretence' and 'make-believe' theories of fiction hostile to propositional theories of literary truth. Tackling further arguments against the cognitive function and value of literature,...

Is Kant really the 'bourgeois' philosopher that his advocates and opponents take him to be?
In this bold and original re-thinking of Kant, Michael Wayne argues that with his aesthetic turn in the Third Critique, Kant broke significantly from the problematic philosophical structure of the Critique of Pure Reason. Through his philosophy of the aesthetic Kant begins to circumnavigate the dualities in his thought. In so doing he shows us today how the aesthetic is a powerful means for imagining our way past the apparent universality of contemporary capitalism.

Here is an unfamiliar...

Subjectivity and Identity is a philosophical and interdisciplinary study that critically evaluates critically the most important philosophical, sociological, psychological and literary debates on subjectivity and the subject. Starting from a history of the concept of the subject from modernity to postmodernity - from Descartes and Kant to Adorno and Lyotard - Peter V. Zima distinguishes between individual, collective, mythical and other subjects.

Most texts on subjectivity and the subject present the topic from the point of view of a single discipline: philosophy, sociology,...

The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice investigates the widely debated, deeply flawed yet influential concept of the uncanny through the lens of feminist theory and contemporary art practice. Not merely a subversive strategy but a cipher of the fraught but fertile dialogue between feminism and psychoanalysis, the uncanny makes an ideal vehicle for an arrangement marked by ambivalence and acts as a constant reminder that feminism and psychoanalysis are never quite at home with one another.

The Feminist Uncanny begins by charting the uncanniness of femininity in...