Aesthetics

A philosopher/mechanic's wise (and sometimes funny) look at the challenges and pleasures of working with one's hands “This is a deep exploration of craftsmanship by someone with real, hands-on knowledge. The book is also quirky, surprising, and sometimes quite moving.” —Richard Sennett...

In Praise of Shadows is an eloquent tribute to the austere beauty of traditional Japanese aesthetics....

A compelling argument for the necessity for art in life, Nietzsche's first book is fuelled by his enthusiasms for Greek tragedy, for the...

Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference. In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, the renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores...

This is a declaration of war. In the name of our creator, we declare a revolutionary war against both the gods and those titans who were gods before them! In the name of our liberator, we declare a revolutionary war against fatalism and every other form of tyranny....

A Sounds True Audio Original: Intimate, life-changing programs with the leading voices in spirituality, personal growth, and healing. “The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion, and in...

The Aesthetic Brain takes the listener on a wide-ranging journey through the world of beauty, pleasure, and art....

An acclaimed philosopher  and new father argues that engaging with beauty can make life worth living....

An Oxford mathematician, playwright, and musician reveals how creative people can harness the profound and productive relationship between mathematics and the arts When Shakespeare has the Three Witches cast Macbeth’s lot, he uses something very weird to do it: not simply “eye of newt and...

In an overloaded, superficial, technological world, in which almost everything and everybody is judged by its usefulness, where can we turn for escape, lasting pleasure, contemplation, or connection to others? While many forms of leisure meet these needs, Zena Hitz writes, few experiences are so...

A compelling call to rediscover the transformative power of art in an age of distraction, coercion, and spectacle – featuring an introduction from Pulitzer Prize–winning author Donna Tartt In Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, J. F. Martel offers a compelling and incisive meditation on...

Ecce Homo, subtitled How One Becomes What One Is, is the final original book written by Friedrich Nietzsche before he succumbed to the insanity which lasted until his death in 1900....

The idea that a small group of dedicated aspirants could work together to help dissipate the heavy enshrouding glamours which oppress humanity and deflect the light of truth, was initially quite a startling one....

The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse—a fear of corruption or contamination through color—lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought.

Counsels and Maxims is a classic work by noted German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. His work has influenced some of the modern world's greatest thinkers, including Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Erwin Schrödinger....

Part memoir and part study of modern life, Shopping Mall examines the modern mythology of the shopping mall and the place it holds in our shared cultural history.

This comprehensive presentation of Roland Barthes’s work tracks his intellectual evolution, with particular emphasis on those areas where his ...

Postmodernism has become the buzzword of contemporary society over the last decade. But how can it be defined? In this highly engaging introduction, the mysteries of this most elusive of concepts are unraveled, casting a critical light upon the way we live now, from the politicizing of museum...

Featuring long-awaited selections from Robert M. Pirsig's unpublished writings, from before and after Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an original collection illuminating the central theme of Pirsig's thought: “Quality” “The ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is...

Featuring an enlightening introduction by the book's translator, Michael T. H. Sadler, providing generational and cultural context for Kandinsky and his work, Concerning the Spiritual in Art gives testimony to the mind and creative expression of Kandinsky and other artists of his generation....

A través de la contemplación silenciosa del mundo que lo rodea, Tanizaki desvela el misterio de la sombra, que no es otro que la esencia misma de la belleza, con un estilo sencillo y ameno pero asombrosamente equilibrado, sereno y sutil....

From the acclaimed Los Angeles Times science writer, a wise, witty, and elegant study of how math provides practical solutions to everyday problems. Are the secrets of the universe written in words - or is it all about the digits? K. C. Cole follows up her paean to the power of physics...

An updated version of the seminal 1994 classic volume on the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Nearly every book with "wabi" or "wabi sabi" in the title is based on the concepts first elucidated in this book. Wabi-sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a...

There is a cause, or a reason, behind everything that happens. This is the fundamental view behind the classical proposition the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which, in 1813, Schopenhauer chose as his subject for further examination in his doctoral dissertation On the Fourfold Root of the...

In The Entanglement, philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, arguing that we have greatly underestimated what this entangled reality means for understanding human nature. Life supplies art with its raw materials, but art, Noë argues, remakes life by...