Best philosophy aesthetics books according to redditors
We found 49 Reddit comments discussing the best philosophy aesthetics books. We ranked the 29 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 49 Reddit comments discussing the best philosophy aesthetics books. We ranked the 29 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
This article, this VIS, and this anthology ought to be more than enough material to get you started.
Yes, its about critical thinking based off of popular pop fiction, there is an X-man one, a harry potter one, and a Monty Python one. Each one has its charm and critiques how the popular pop fiction shaped our current culture. Honestly Rebecca Housel (one of the authors) is a great professor I had while in college. I would even go as far as to recommend reading the book even if you hate twilight such as myself.
Pretty clumsy altogether. There's a bit too many 'half-quotes' and unfounded assertions (McLuhan as fascist? Nope). Here's just one--
>The same man who claimed, in 1963, that our era “is the greatest in human history” had been decrying, only a few years before,
The full quote (unless the article, which doesn't cite a source, is using a different one) is from 1968 in a televised panel interview with Malcolm Muggeridge, Norman Mailer & Robert Fulford:
>McLuhan: Well, for heaven’s sake, this present time we’re moving into, this electric age, is the dawn of much the greatest of all human ages. There’s nothing to even remotely resemble the scope of human
awareness and human –
>Fulford: Now that's a value judgment.
>McLuhan: No, this is quantity. Most people make their judgments in terms of quality. I’m merely saying, quantitatively, this is by far the greatest human age. What further valuations would you wish to make?
>Fulford: Oh, I thought when you said “greatest” you meant the finest, that is –
>McLuhan: No.
Just as Neil Postman, WIRED, Douglas Coupland and the rest of McLuhans 'disciples' (whether they are 'general semanticists' or 'transhumanists') did not understand him one bit, nor do his critics then or now.
Any confusion as to Marshall's intention with his work stemmed from his image. He was, at the heart of it, a Renaissance scholar who desperately sought after a return of Grammar school in the Trivial sense - as the millenium-spanning tradition of learning faded out of fashion in Queen Elizabeth's England.
>“I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening. Because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I’m resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way to oppose it is to understand it. And then you know where to turn off the buttons.”
Anybody who hopes to seriously understand where Marshall was coming from (still quite saliently) ought to read his PhD thesis, which was just recently published - along with Media & Formal Cause.
https://www.amazon.com/Media-Formal-Cause-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0983274703
https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Trivium-Place-Thomas-Learning/dp/1584232358/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=QPXK93Q8BM41YR61KNCC
> irrational beliefs
On the contrary
No good ones I know of, unless you look for college lecture sessions. Any video biographies I've seen are usually over-dramatic and don't concentrate all that much on trying to understand the work itself, just sensationalizing his place in history. Other than that I'd only maybe want to listen to audiobook readings of his books on youtube.
As for a book I'd recommend you start with The Gay Science, Kaufmann translation. Still one of my favorite books ever, a very personal and esoteric one that has some more complicated and explicit ideas too, and is a good starting point for finding out how the guy thinks.
As long as you're not worried about carrying a book around called 'The Gay Science,' which you shouldn't be.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Gay-Science-Prelude-Appendix-ebook/dp/B003E8AJEM
It's not cheap, but Kearney and Rasmussen's anthology is one of the best I've encountered (though I'm quite partial to the more continental side of things). Amazon link & publisher link. It's pricey, but a great deal for all the content - looking through the selections included might lead to the essay's of interest for cheaper (for example - Kant's Critique of Judgement and Merleau-Ponty's "Eye and Mind" can both be found relatively cheap).
I'd also suggest the far less expensive anthology by Hofstadter and Kuhn's Philosophies of Art and Beauty anthology. It's pretty comprehensive (and massively sized) for it's price - covering Plato to Heidegger. Amazon link & publisher link.
I've heard great things about Lamarque & Olsen's anthology on the more anglophonic side of things, though it's not cheap either. Amazon link & publisher link. I'd give the same advice as above, look through the table of contents and select essays of particular interest.
On a cheaper/lower key level Aesthetics: A Beginner's Guide is a far easier and cheaper read - it's pretty good for getting your feet wet.
Finally, as a way to do your own book finding, why not look through this google search, look through any SEP page that catches your interest, and then check out the bibliographies!
Hope any of these help!
Logged in just to reply to you.
I strongly suggest this book by Stephen Houlgate (a heavy hitter in Hegel scholarship). It's cultivated my interest in German Idealism.
Anyone interested in reading more about Diogenes would be encouraged to read Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes, which is a personal favorite of mine!
If you're interested in the philosophy of comedy as stimulus, I recommend Jacques Ranciere's book The Emancipated Spectator and Elizabeth Grosz's Chaos, Territory, Art. They combine this idea of "the frame of experience" with aesthetic philosophy to pose questions about the role of affect (like laughter) in art. An understanding of humor that addresses facts (as in Dennett's neuroscientific approach), as well as concepts (Bergson) and experiences(Ranciere/Grosz), will provide a greater insight than any one of those will individually.
If it's a thing, it's not a big one, and it's not really known as virtue aesthetics.
That said, thanks to your description, I can kinda highlight some stuff that you may be interested in. If you haven't read them yet, I would recommend the following:
Those works set the conversation for art, its function in society, and considerations of how aspects of the artwork interact with aspects of the ethical and political in the person and society. Plato takes the line that all but moral artwork should be banned from the just polis (but then ends his political work with the myth of Er). Aristotle seems to be okay with tragedy and poetry, if it's a technically sound as an artwork, because it can play a kathartic role. Now, you can problematize these positions with close readings of either text, but these are the established traditions.
Along contemporary lines, there's a lot of work on "ethics and art," which I think should be your next avenue for research. Scholar Berys Gaut wrote a recent, technical (and somewhat dry) book about the topic called Art, Emotion, and Ethics. Jerrold Levinson also edited a volume on the topic, which would be another good place to check out.
Lastly, if you want to take a "virtue aesthetic" route, you'll want to get the basis of virtue ethics. But instead of evaluating art on the basis of anything else, you will want to criticize it on (a) how it affects our moral character, by training our emotions, drives, or reason in a good or bad way, to be attracted to or repulsed from the right/wrong things, and (b) how it affects our ability to flourish, which involves how we improve ourselves, relate meaningfully to others, and try to live in a characteristically human way.
Best of luck!
Based on the blurb, there's a lot of different topics you would be covering in ethics and aesthetics. It might be a good idea to email your professor and get a copy of the syllabus to get a better idea of what to read. Without more information, these SEP articles could be helpful: metaethics, aesthetic judgment, moral realism, moral anti-realism, moral relativism, moral particularism, moral epistemology, and the concept of the aesthetic.
Depending on how much you talk about the intersection between the two, Aesthetics and Ethics edited by Jerrold Levinson and Art, Emotion, and Ethics by Berys Gaut are two books you might want to look at. Also, here is a syllabus on art and ethics.
Depends on what the talk will be on. If it is analytic philosophy of art, which traditionally has focused a whole lot on theories of art, something like this would be fine. I also would suggest this, which I really enjoyed. If the focus on more on other aspects of the philosophy of art, then you might be better off looking in a different direction.
A few reading suggestions:
http://crookedtimber.org/2009/06/09/philosophy-mind-and-manners/
http://crookedtimber.org/2009/06/11/philosophy-ethos-and-argument/
I have some familiarity with both American Studies and philosophy in academia. Some philosophers do exhibit that unfortunate tendency to believe their memories of undergrad gen. ed. literature courses would equip them to teach an introductory literature course, but that faculty lounge philistinism is by no means universal or even widespread. On the other hand, I'm afraid that the ignorance and arrogance exemplified by your committee's remarks on analytic philosophy are all too common in American Studies and Literature departments. Consequently, if you find yourself drawn to analytic approaches, you should think carefully about your choice of advisor and committee members.
Jason Frank has written an excellent chapter on Burke's account of the sublime in a recent volume on political aesthetics.
http://www.amazon.com/Aesthetic-Turn-Political-Thought/dp/1441148345/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417828317&sr=8-1&keywords=the+aesthetic+turn
What's remarkable is that McLuhan (a Catholic convert) likely didn't realize how much his 'Tetrad' resembles Aquinas' critique of Averroes' interpretation of the Aristotelian 'Inner Senses'. The 'new science' presented in laws of media is very old indeed.
The 'retrieve' function is tied to memory (one of Aquinastotle's Inner Senses). This is 'continuity' - a process of Grammar :)
Some reading on the subject:
https://www.amazon.com/Media-Formal-Cause-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0983274703
https://www.amazon.com/Laws-Media-Science-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0802077153
Don't know if you'd be interested in these but I have:
Readings in Medieval Philosophy: This one is kind of falling apart.
Aesthetics: This one is like new. It might have some light pencil marks inside (though I'll double check to be sure that's it), but I barely used it. I bought it for a philosophy of art class.
Interpersonal Communications: Pretty worn, some writing on the inside. Pencil, definitely, maybe some pen as well.
If you're at all interested in any of these, I'm interested in Brave New World and Dune. : )
"On Humour is a fascinating and beautifully written book on what philosophy can tell us about humor and about what it is to be human. Simon Critchley probes some of the most perennial features of humor, such as our tendency to laugh at animals and our bodies, why we mock death with comedy and why we think it's funny when people start to act like machines." By Simon Critchley.
Get the Cambridge Companion to CPR, and read it concurrently. I wrote down the definitions of all the words Kant uses differently in the front cover so I could find them easily when I forgot how he uses them. And as everyone else said, I would read the Prolegomena before taking on CPR.
If you're interested in the Transcendental Aesthetic, I would highly suggest getting Falkenstein's "Kant's Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic". Falkenstein is an amazing Kant scholar, and you will get a lot out of it.
Yeah, it's not really that clear. I'd recommend Stephen Houlgate's An Introduction to Hegel instead (esp chapters 1 & 2). That's written for undergrads in mind, and is as accessible as can be without dumbing down.
This new edition of Adorno's introduction lectures on dialectics looks good too (but I've not read it so can't vouch for it). But generally the books transcribed from his lectures are easier to understand than his own books.
The focus on cultivating arete here has a very classical Greek vibe, and indeed, much of what you're describing falls under the umbrella of what Athena Techne is all about. Be sure to check out the dialogue about theoi in Stephenson's 'Cryptonomicon' too.
Since 'modernism as reskinned paganism' is a hobbyhorse of mine I'm loving everything about your post.
>it's still a fake construct based on how I exert/justify my will against yours.
Your view of morality is one that has been explored extensively in moral philosophy. What you're saying is in fact very close to the philosophy of Freidrich Nietzche. I'd encourage you to read more about what his theory was, as well as some critiques of it such as this.
In my opinion the best book on the Phenomenology is Quentin Lauer's. However, the easiest, but sometimes simplistic, book is Robert Stern's. Also, check out this brief introduction to the Phenomenology by Stephen Houlgate.
Edit: For the best overview of Hegel's thought in general look at Houlgate's.
I would probably have to go with Heidegger's essay The Origin of the Work of Art, if only because I'm a big Heidegger fan. He's not as big on aesthetics though, so for that I might go with Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy.
If you're looking for a decent overview, this was the anthology of philosophy of art class used. Was pretty good and hits on all the major thinkers, as well as some less-known ones, so you can follow up wherever you find something interesting. Also for a contemporary art history course, we used this pretty extensively. There are some anthologies that would cover some older material if you're interested and find a period you're drawn to.
Thanks!
>"The catholic church outlawed zero"
My favorite work on this is Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea The bibliography there is fantastic. It's important to remember that zero as a placeholder is just a convenience, nothing about notation or the mathematics themselves requires the use of zero for most of the mathematics that were being done at the time. God created everything, there is no such thing as nothing because of God's immanence, so zero]was a heretical isdea. The real purpose was that actively working against the adoption of zero kept up a barrier in mathematics that allowed the church strict control of accounting and taxation. They used Roman numerals, not arabic, so zero was't really needed until algebra and geometry necessitated it. It's also covered in "Nothing Matters: A Book About Nothing" but I haven't read that yet.
> This shows a grave lack of understanding of history
I am eagerly awaiting your corrections. I'm not one to assert that religion is at fault for all the problems in the world, or claim they caused the Dark Ages. The church remained the only academic institution for many places during this time, I don't fault them that.
They did suppress views contrary to their ideology. This "same answer to every question" statement of mine may have been excessively reductionist, but I'd say it holds, generally. If it comes down to faith or reason, Christianity holds to faith. When the church makes an empirical claim, and evidence that contradicts it comes to light, it has suppressed or ignored it.
> Sure, they executed scientists to the left and right that did not tow the party line.
I'm well familiar with scientific suppression in the Soviets, and thanks for the link. I had read up on Lyshenko and Vavilov when I studied genetics, it's really quite sad. But Lyshenko wasn't driven by his rejection of Mendellian genetics on theistic grounds, it was his fanaticism for Lamarkian genetics. He was just on the wrong side of the scientific fence. He was then exceptionally petty and unscientific by using political leverage and ideology to suppress his critics. That had nothing to do with his theistic stance, and everything to do with ideological totalitarian states being incapable of scientific dialogue.
In fact, if you go through the whole history of soviet suppression of science, it's all about ideology in totalitarian states. They can't handle the open inquisition science runs on. That has nothing to do with their stances on theism. Science is rejected as "bourgeois pseudoscience" if any interpretation of it threatens the state-sanctioned worldview. There's only one notable exception in that article, and it's Stalin's personal rejection of Mendelian genetics.
When theocracies reject science, they do so on theological grounds. The church suppressed science it believed was a threat to its doctrine and dogma. When a totalitarian state suppresses science, it's not inherently because atheism is a tenet of that totalitarian state's ideology. Yes, Stalin hated Mendelian genetics because a priest came up with it. But the rest of soviet science wasn't suppressed because it had theistic ties, it was suppressed because it undermined other ideologies totally unrelated to theism.
When we look at Hitler rejecting modern physics, atheists don't have a fair argument to make by saying "Catholics suppress physics." That's not at all the grounds Hitler rejected it on, he rejected it because Jewish scientists were heavily involved in the theory of modern physics. We can't even extrapolate that to other catholic states, because the real mechanism of suppression was a dictatorship. In a theocratic state, however, the theology is both the ideology and the system of government. When science is suppressed, it is for theological reasons and the suppression is done by theologists.
There is simply no way you can equate the two, let alone conclude atheism is more suppressive to science than theism has been.
>Also, I don't think he was ever trying to be charming
By no means did I mean to imply he would've been trying for charm, I just picked that word to obliquely reference his sorta abrasive portrayal while still getting across that I had an affection for his "searching for an honest man" shtick
But anyway, it was this one
Edit: the pointed wit and questions reminded me a bit of what I've read of zhaozhou, but while reading this I stopped feeling that way as much
Good book - http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Realism-Antirealism-Neopragmatists-Vanderbilt/dp/0826514278
Beyond Realism & Antirealism
This is a classical one: Aesthetic Theory
But, don't miss this one: Art and It's Shadow
On Hegel in particular, I would recommend Hegel: A Very Short Introduction or the more scholarly An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History.
See Stephen Houlgate's works on Hegel
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Hegel-Freedom-Truth-History/dp/0631230637
(we share a common last name, but no relation)
To expand upon this idea...
Here is the mobile version of your link
Even if it isn't a simulation, shit is just meaningless anyway. Nothing that happens will matter to yourself when you're dead, which is my interpretation of the phrase "YOLO". Nothing matters to the dead, and all there is and ever will be will die, thus nothing will matter in the end. Therefore you can just do whatever stupid shit you come up with. What's the worst consequence? Death? Death is inevitable anyway.
"Wherever we go
And whatever we do
And whatever we see
And whoever we be
It don't matter
I don't mind 'cause you don't matter
I don't mind 'cause I don't matter
You'll see in the end"
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1846947073