A Companion to Aesthetics: The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy

Questions about the nature of beauty and the relation between morality and art were among the earliest discussed by ancient philosophers. And today, a host of new issues has been prompted by recent developments in the arts and in philosophy, testifying to a great revival of interest in aesthetics and literary criticism. The nature of representation, the relation between art and truth, and the criteria for interpretation are among the most debated problems in contemporary philosophy. This reference series, centred on analytic philosophy but also covering important aspects of the continental tradition and of non–Western philosophies, is made up of a number of volumes each dealing with a particular subject area. Taken together the series offers a comprehensive survey of philosophy as a whole. The entries in each volume combine summarized information on names, terms and moverments and each essay is also supported by a selective bibliography. Alphabetically arranged, the 130 articles in this volume provide comprehensive coverage of the main topics and writers in this area of aesthetics. The Companion will serve students of philosophy, literary criticism and cultural studies – as well as the general reader – both as a work of reference and, with its many substantial essays, as a guide to the best thinking about the arts in the late twentieth century.

Introduction. List of Contributors. A Companion to Aesthetics. Index.

David E. Cooper is Professor of Philosophy at Durham University. Joseph Margolis is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. Crispin Sartwell is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama.

"The range is phenomenal, the erudition daunting and the index rigorous. It is an essential purchase for all but the most tough–minded of academic reference collections and it would grace the shelves of many a public or personal library." Reference Reviews "It is a compendium to be welcomed." Cogito "Academic libraries ... should not hesitate to acquire this important reference guide." Religion and Reference "It provides very handy encyclopedic coverage of all main contemporary issues and figures in contemporary aesthetics.... It really must be bought by libraries as a reference text as there is nothing else in its class at the moment." British Society of Aesthetics Newsletter