Aesthetics & Literary Theory

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  1. Aesthetics (Second Edition)

    Monroe Beardsley

    This second edition features a new 48-page "Afterword—1980" updating Professor Beardsley’s classic work.

    "There is not much I could say to expand the reputation of this classic text, but it is a testament to Beardsley's deep insight that I am finding the book useful for the study of Chinese aesthetics—which Beardsley himself never intended to broach. There may still be no better introduction to thinking about art and beauty.” —Paul R. Goldin, University of Pennsylvania

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  2. Classics in Western Philosophy of Art

    Noël Carroll

    "Indispensable turn-by-turn directions for those navigating the ideas of nine philosophers who set the stage for thinking about art and society. Clear and comprehensive, Noël Carroll is the perfect guide to the history of aesthetics." —Dominic McIver Lopes, University of British Columbia

    "Carroll’s Classics in Western Philosophy of Art is a masterful series of commentaries on nine classical writings on art by philosophers in the Western tradition—learned and penetrating in exegesis, equally penetrating in critique. It’s not just one philosopher after another. Carroll takes note of what later writers say, explicitly or implicitly, about earlier writers, and imagines what those earlier writers might have said in response. He is host to a conversation. How I wish these commentaries had been available when I was still teaching philosophy of art! I would have been spared my own exegetical labors over these often-difficult texts, and my teaching would have been immeasurably improved."
    —Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University

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  3. Essays on Beauty and the Arts

    Bernard Bolzano
    Edited by Dominic McIver Lopes
    Translated by Adam Bresnahan

    Bernard Bolzano’s (1781–1848) writings in aesthetics are clear, concise, and explicit about method. Provocative and revisionary, they champion broad views of beauty, the arts, and their social function. Dominic McIver Lopes’s introductory materials place Bolzano’s essays in context, give them a new interpretation, and map out how to teach them, in full or in part, in a variety of courses.

    "In two eminently teachable essays—clear, controversial, methodologically acute—Bolzano recasts a broadly Kantian aesthetics, connecting beauty to intellectual achievement, education, and art practice. Immensely helpful guidance, for scholars and students, is provided by the editorial materials: translation notes, an elegant theoretical and contextual Introduction of Bolzano and the text, and a forcefully argued Appendix detailing Bolzano’s criticisms of Kant’s aesthetics."
    —Rachel Zuckert, Northwestern University

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  4. Guide To Aesthetics

    Benedetto Croce
    Translated by Patrick Romanell

    Croce’s Guide presents one of the clearest and strongest defenses of the intuitive nature of art in Western philosophical thought.

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  5. Languages of Art

    Nelson Goodman

    “Like Dewey, he has revolted against the empiricist dogma and the Kantian dualisms which have compartmentalized philosophical thought. . . . Unlike Dewey, he has provided detailed incisive argumentation, and has shown just where the dogmas and dualisms break down.”
         —Richard Rorty, The Yale Review

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  6. On Poetry and Style

    Aristotle
    Translated by G. M. A. Grube

    Contains the Poetics and the first twelve chapters of the Rhetoric, Book III.

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  7. On the Musically Beautiful

    Eduard Hanslick
    Translated, with Commentary, by Geoffrey Payzant

    "Like Hanslick, Professor Payzant is both musician and philosopher; and he has brought the knowledge and insights of both disciplines to this large undertaking."
         —Gordon Epperson, Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism

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  8. Poetics (Janko Edition)

    Aristotle
    Translated by Richard Janko

    Richard Janko’s acclaimed translation of Aristotle’s Poetics is accompanied by the most comprehensive commentary available in English that does not presume knowledge of the original Greek. Two other unique features are Janko’s translations with notes of both the Tractatus Coislinianus, which is argued to be a summary of the lost second book of the Poetics, and fragments of Aristotle’s dialogue On Poets, including recently discovered texts about catharsis, which appear in English for the first time.

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  9. Poetics (Sachs Edition)

    Aristotle
    Translated, with Introduction and Notes, Joe Sachs

    "I find the Introduction extremely convincing, lucid, learned, fair to past scholarship, and truly illuminating about the meaning of tragedy in general and about the very specific acceptions of hamartiakatharsis, ekplêxis, and thauma, in the context of an appropriate understanding of the Poetics. Another remarkable feature is the dexterity and ease with which it draws on all the relevant parts of the Aristotelian corpus to shed light on troublesome textual passages in the Poetics. Finally, the style of the Introduction is straightforward, free of unnecessary jargon, direct, and economical, the best interpretation of the Poetics I ever read." —Sabetai Unguru, Tel Aviv University

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  10. Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and Sciences

    Nelson Goodman & Catherine Z. Elgin

    "The authors argue against certain philosophical distinctions between art and science; between verbal and nonverbal meaning; and between the affective and the cognitive. The book continues Goodman's argument against one traditional mode of philosophizing which privileges the notions of 'truth' and 'knowledge'. Hence, the book is in a broadly pragmatic tradition. It also deals in detail with such topics as meaning in architecture and the concept of 'variation' in art, and contains a superb critique of some important views in contemporary epistemology. This work will be savored even by those who will not accept all aspects of Goodman and Elgin's approach. Essential for all undergraduate philosophy collections."
         —Stanley Bates, Choice

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  11. Two Comic Dialogues: Ion and Hippias Major

    Plato
    Translated by Paul Woodruff

    Together these two dialogues contain Plato’s most important work on poetry and beauty.

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  12. Ways of Worldmaking

    Nelson Goodman

    “In a way reminiscent of Einstein, Goodman leads us to the very edge of relativism, only then to step back and to suggest certain criteria of fairness and rightness. More so than any other commentator, he has provided a workable notion of the kinds of skills and capacities that are central for anyone who works in the arts.”
         —Howard Gardner, Harvard University

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