The Ideology of the Aesthetic

The Ideology of the Aesthetic presents a history and critique of the concept of the aesthetic throughout modern Western thought. As such, this is a critical survey of modern Western philosophy, focusing in particular on the complex relations between aesthetics, ethics and politics. Eagleton provides a brilliant and challenging introduction to these concerns, as characterized in the work of Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Lukacs, Adorno, Habermas, and others. Wide in span, as well as morally and politically committed, this is Terry Eagleton′s major work to date. It forms both an original enquiry and an exemplary introduction.

Introduction. 1. Free Particulars. 2. The Law of the Heart: Shaftesbury, Hume, Burke. 3. The Kantian Imaginary. 4. Schiller and Hegemony. 5. The World as Artefact: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. 6. The Death of Desire: Arthur Schopenhauer. 7. Absolutte Ironies: Sren Kierkegaard. 8. The Marxist Sublime. 9. True Illusions: Friedrich Nietzshe. 10. The Name of the Father: Sigmund Freud. 11. The Politics of Being: Martin Heidegger. 12. The Marxist Rabbi: Walter Benjamin. 13. Art After Auschwitz: Theodor Adorno. 14. From the Polis to Postmodernism. Index.

Terry Eagleton is Professor of Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow at the University of Manchester. His works include The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990), Literacy Theory: An Introduction (1983), Walter Benjamin (1981) and Marxism and Literacy Criticism (1976).

"That contemporary theory would eventually turn back to consider its origins in the contradictions of philosophical aesthetics was predictable; but nothing could have prepared us for Eagleton′s extraordinary confrontation with the entire modern history of this discourse, in a book which will be indispensable for years to come." F. R. Jameson, Duke University "Eagleton succeeds brilliantly in situating aesthetic theory as an irreducibly heterogeneous series of discourses who ideological and political effect on North Atlantic civilization since the Englightenment has been more diverse and consequential than traditional philosophical, literary, and cultural theory has previously suspected or acknowledged." Choice