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"Organized around eight themes central to aesthetic theory today, this book examines the sources and development of Kant's aesthetics by mining his publications, correspondence, handwritten notes, and university lectures. Each chapter explores one of eight themes: aesthetic judgment and normativity, formal beauty, partly conceptual beauty, artistic creativity or genius, the fine arts, the sublime, ugliness and disgust, and humor. Robert R. Clewis considers how Kant's thought was shaped by authors such as Christian Wolff, Alexander Baumgarten, Georg Meier, Moses Mendelssohn, Johann Sulzer, Johann Herder, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Edmund Burke, Henry Home, Charles Batteux, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire. His resulting study uncovers and illuminates the complex development of Kant's aesthetic theory and will be useful to advanced students and scholars in fields across the humanities and studies of the arts"--
List of contents
Introduction; Part I. Aesthetic Judgment and Beauty: 1. On Rules of Taste; 2. Beauty Free; 3. Beauty Grounded; Part II. Genius and the Fine Arts: 4. Genius, Thick and Thin; 5. Classifying the Fine Arts; Part III. Negative and Positive States: 6. Meet the Sublime Now: It's a Negative Pleasure; 7. Ugliness and Disgust: Disagreeable Sensations; 8 Playing with Humor; Closing Reflections.
About the author
Robert R. Clewis is the author of The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and Kant's Humorous Writings: An Illustrated Guide (2020), and the editor of Reading Kant's Lectures (2015) and The Sublime Reader (2019).
Summary
Organized around eight core themes in aesthetics today, this book uncovers the complex development of Kant's aesthetic theory. It will be useful to advanced students and scholars in fields across the humanities and studies of the arts.
