This book presents an up-to-date introduction to the subject that captures the excitement and passion of art itself. It opens by exploring why art is important to us and goes on to grip the reader with a discussion of all of the areas central to aesthetics: aesthetic experience, representation, expression, definition of art, evaluation, interpretation, structuralism and post-structuralism, truth and morality. It draws upon the great thinkers on art, Plato and Kant, Croce and Beardsley, including the most recent iconoclastic views from the Continent of Barthes and Derrida, and invests the...

This is the first introduction to the ideas of the British philosopher, Peter Winch (1926-97). Although author of the hugely influential "The Idea of a Social Science" (1958) much of Winch's other work has been neglected as philosophical fashions have changed. Recently, however, philosophers are again seeing the importance of Winch's ideas and their relevance to current philosophical concerns. In charting the development of Winch's ideas, Lyas engages with many of the major preoccupations of philosophy of the past forty years. The range of Winch's ideas becomes apparent and his importance...