About the Book
The newly expanded and revised edition of Cooper’s popular anthology featuring classic writings on aesthetics, both historical and contemporary
The second edition of this bestselling anthology collects essays of canonical significance in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, featuring a wide range of topics from the nature of beauty and the criteria for aesthetic judgement to the value of art and the appreciation of nature.
Includes texts by classical philosophers like Plato and Kant alongside essays from art critics like Clive Bell, with new readings from Leonardo da Vinci, Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, Ronald W. Hepburn, and Arthur C. Danto among others
Intersperses philosophical scholarship with diverse contributions from artists, poets, novelists, and critics
Broadens the scope of aesthetics beyond the Western tradition, including important texts by Asian philosophers from Mo Tzu to Tanizaki
Includes a fully-updated introduction to the discipline written by the editor, as well as prefaces to each text and chapter-specific lists of further reading
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Plato, The Republic, Book 10 9
2 Aristotle, Poetics, Chapters 1–15 28
3 (A) Mo Tzu, “Against music”
(B) Hsun Tzu, “A discussion of music” 44
4 Plotinus, Enneads, 1.6 55
5 (A) Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, from Books II and III
(B) Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks (Selections) 66
6 Shih‐t’ao, “Quotes on Painting” 77
7 David Hume, “Of the standard of taste” 89
8 Immanuel Kant, “Critique of aesthetic judgement,”Sections 1–14, 16, 23–4, 28 108
9 Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Letters 26–7 139
10 G.W.F. Hegel, Introduction to Aesthetics, Chapters 1–3 154
11 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, Section 52 168
12 (A) Walter Pater, The Renaissance, from Preface and Conclusion
(B) Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying” (Selections) 183
13 Leo Tolstoy, “On art” 196
14 Clive Bell, “The aesthetic hypothesis” 210
15 A.K. Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Síva, Essays 3−4 227
16 Junichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows (Selections) 243
17 John Dewey, Art as Experience, Chapters 1–2 257
18 Martin Heidegger, “The origin of the work of art,” from Lectures 1 and 2 280
19 R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art, Chapter 7 296
20 Ronald W. Hepburn, “Aesthetic appreciation of nature” 319
21 Arthur C. Danto, “The Artworld” 337
Index 353
About the Author :
DAVID E. COOPER is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Durham University and has been a visiting professor at universities in the US, Canada, Malta, and Sri Lanka. His many books include Philosophy: The Classic Readings (Wiley Blackwell, 2009, edited with P.S. Fosl), World Philosophies: A Historical Introduction (Wiley Blackwell, Second Edition, 2002), Existentialism: A Reconstruction (Wiley Blackwell, Second Edition, 1999) and Animals and Misanthropy (2018).
