Reddit mentions: The best philosophy aesthetics books

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!

I'm not sure how new you are to philosophy, but I would suggest an online course, such as this one offered at coursera, which starts in a couple of days (there are also many others available on youtube and elsewhere). You get taught by professionals, there is a chance to reinforce learning through assignments/quizzes, and there is a discussion forum where you can discuss the ideas you have just learnt with others.

I personally don't think you should start at the deep end, that is, reading popular historical philosophers, like the ones you mentioned, simply because the terms and ideas put forth are to be interpreted within the context that the particular individual was writing. For example, David Hume uses the term 'impression' very differently from how one would nowadays use the term in everyday language. Impression for Hume means 'lively perceptions' (his words) that occur 'in the moment' so to speak. Whereas the term nowadays means something more like an idea, or feeling. It is for this reason that if you are interested in a particular philosopher, and are struggling to understand their ideas, that I would suggest reading the work of someone who has studied said philosopher and who breaks down said philosophers ideas in an easy to digest manner. For example this text on Hume. Or this text on Schopenhauer.

In addition the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a great resource for introducing one to any number of ideas and philosophers. It is written by professionals in the field, and sometimes the material written there is even cited in academic papers. For example there is an article on Schopenhauer with a section on 'The World as Will'.

Also, Academy of Ideas is a great youtube channel which produces short (~10 min) videos on a whole range of philosophers and ideas. They have a video on Schopenhauer and the will

my x-comment from /r/criticaltheory . . .


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

This is a very divisive issue. I studied it a fair bit about 5 years ago, and the debate gets particularly interesting in the early 20th century, but I forget all the relevant philosophers and schools of thought, they are pretty obscure. It is a pretty interesting topic, that even layman like to argue over, so you'd think the debate might get more attention.

I remember certain sections two introductions to aesthetics offering good introductions to the field: this one and this one

Meanwhile, influential French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that taste is affected by class - most notably in his book Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste . I'll just copy and paste the blurb from amazon, which sums up the book's ideas better than I can:

>No judgement of taste is innocent - we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction brilliantly illuminates the social pretentions of the middle classes in the modern world, focusing on the tastes and preferences of the French bourgeoisie. First published in 1979, the book is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind.

>In the course of everyday life we constantly choose between what we find aesthetically pleasing, and what we consider tacky, merely trendy, or ugly. Taste is not pure. Bourdieu demonstrates that our different aesthetic choices are all distinctions - that is, choices made in opposition to those made by other classes. This fascinating work argues that the social world functions simultaneously as a system of power relations and as a symbolic system in which minute distinctions of taste become the basis for social judgement.

Personally, I do believe all taste is subjective. As I like to put it, there is no such thing as a bad book, there is only a bad reader. Ie show me someone who is displeased at some piece of art, and I show you a reader whose prejudices/ preferences are coming into play. I believe that trying to argue that film x is better than film y is like trying to argue that the colour red is better than the colour orange.

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:

• Plato: Republic, Bks. 3, 4, and 10 especially; Phaedrus
  
• Aristotle: Poetics
  
  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!

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.

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.

\>Breaking me of my last vestiges of Scientism

It might help to look at some philosophers who offer alternatives to (and actively oppose) "scientistic" thought.

In the Anglophone tradition, Stanley Cavell is particularly interesting and profound. I'd recommend you start with Stephen Mulhall's book on him (Stanley Cavell: Philosophy's Recounting of the Ordinary), rather than plunging straight into The Claim of Reason. It's more transparent than Cavell's own texts and begins with material on the confusions of what might be called "scientistic" thinking about aesthetics and morality.

In the continental tradition, there are numerous different thinkers who highlight the boundaries of the scientific method. One of the major claims here (in various forms) is that science can function as the instrument of oppressive ideological apparatuses. Foucault gives one version of this story (e.g. Birth of the Clinic, Discipline and Punish – if you want good secondary lit, try Arnold Davidson's book on him), but you should also check out Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment. The latter is pretty heavy going, and so is most secondary lit on Adorno. This book is quite good, but don't google the author:
https://www.amazon.com/Adorno-Critical-Introduction-Simon-Jarvis/dp/0415920574

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.

I have a few suggestions.

The Philosophy Gym has 25 short philosophy things, with pictures and dialogues. Stephen Law also has a lot of other books of similar style that might be worth looking into.

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar is a philosophy joke book, which might be a fun coffee table book.

The Philosophy Bites book has 25 interviews with leading contemporary philosophers.

The Stone Reader has articles by leading contemporary philosophers that were published in the New York Times philosophy column, The Stone.

Hope that helps!

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.

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.

There are a couple of good introductory anthologies with extensive bibliographies: the Blackwell companion, and the Cambridge companion.

You can post again if you have more specific interests in either a play or a tragedian. If you're reading in translation, I don't know if there are many commentaries on individual plays (I only know Seaford's translation and commentary on the Bacchae).

Regarding Birth of Tragedy. Jump right in. An edition with notes like this one might be helpful.

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

On Hegel in particular, I would recommend Hegel: A Very Short Introduction or the more scholarly An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History.

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.

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.

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.

Want flowery prose rich with elegantly-placed double meanings and new italicized words like habitus or doxa?


Want an elaborate, comprehensive mental model of society developed over a person's lifetime?

You should read Pierre Bourdieu.

Start with An Outline of a Theory of Practice. His model of power and the individual, some of the fieldwork is from his time in the French-Algerian war.

Then I recommend Distinction in which he uses extensive empirical evidence to propose a comprehensive model for understanding human action.

Caution: his language is an acquired taste. 👅

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.

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

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.

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!

>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

This article, this VIS, and this anthology ought to be more than enough material to get you started.

Stephen Houlgate, Introduction to Hegel

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Hegel-Freedom-Truth-History/dp/0631230637