Showing titles in Aesthetics

From his vantage point as a garden designer and writer based in Kyoto, Marc Peter Keane examines the world around him and delivers astonishing insights through an array of narratives. How the names of gardens reveal their essential meaning. A new definition of what art is. What trees are really made of. The true meaning of the enigmatic torii gate found at Shinto shrines. Why we give flowers as gifts. The essential, underlying unity of the world.

A debate, nearly to the death, about life and art, cocktails included. And a soon-to-be major motion picture from James Franco! Caleb Powell always wanted to become an artist, but he overcommitted to life (he's a stay-at-home dad to three young girls), whereas his former professor David Shields always wanted to become a human being, but he has overcommitted to art.

Why are there so many examples of public figures, entertainers, and normal, everyday people in blackface? And why aren’t there as many examples of people of color in whiteface? This book explains what blackface is, why it occurred, and what its legacies are in the 21st century. There is a filthy and vile thread—sometimes it’s tied into a noose—that connects the first performances of Blackness on English stages, the birth of blackface minstrelsy, contemporary performances of Blackness, and anti-Black racism.

يحاول الكاتب الإجابة عن بعض الأسئلة الشائكة، "كيف يرى الناس أنواع الجمال في زمن كهذا؟ هل عالمنا يعيش "أزمة جمال"؟ وزمننا كزمن للتغيير نحو الأفضل يسعى إلى جمال الناس والمجتمع والسياسة والأخلاق، بعد كل القبح الذي أصاب مساحات كثيرة من حياتنا وربما نفوسنا؛ فالكاتب يحاول اكتشاف الجمال متلمسًا العون من علوم مختلفة كعلم النفس واللاهوت والفلسفة والنقد السنيمائي وعلم الدلالة وغيرها.

A meditation on music as a non-sensory experience.

The burger, long the All-American meal, is undergoing an identity crisis. From its shifting place in popular culture to efforts by investors such as Bill Gates to create the non-animal burger that can feed the world, the burger’s identity has become as malleable as that patty of protein itself, before it is thrown on a grill. Carol Adams’s Burger is a fast-paced and eclectic exploration of the history, business, cultural dynamics, and gender politics of the ordinary hamburger.

While much recent ecocriticism has questioned the value of nature as a concept, Thought's Wilderness insists that it is analytically and politically indispensable, and that romanticism shows us why. Without a concept of nature, Greg Ellermann argues, our thinking is limited to the world that capitalism has made. Defamiliarizing the tradition of romantic nature writing, Ellermann contends that the romantics tried to circumvent the domination of nature that is essential to modern capitalism.

Survival of the Beautiful is a revolutionary new examination of the interplay of beauty, art, and culture in evolution. Taking inspiration from Darwin's observation that animals have a natural aesthetic sense, philosopher and musician David Rothenberg probes why animals, humans included, have innate appreciation for beauty - and why nature is, indeed, beautiful.

*A Financial Times and Waterstones Book of the Year 2025* Many artists are unaware of the mathematics that bubble beneath their craft, while some consciously use it for inspiration. Our instincts might tell us that these two subjects are incompatible forces with nothing in common, but what if...

Get ready to immerse yourself in the enduring power of Epictetus’ Stoic philosophy, brought to life by the strong, masculine voice of a rugged outdoors philosopher, also known as "the rucking philosopher." This audiobook isn’t just a recitation—it’s a bold journey into the timeless lessons of resilience, inner strength, and true freedom.

Since its invention more than 150 years ago, the microphone transformed the world in an instant. Yet its evolution and integration into our daily lives has been comparatively gradual – so gradual, crucially, that it is easy to forget just how much we take it for granted. Every phone has a microphone. Every laptop has a microphone. We are surrounded by microphones. The microphone wields enormous power. But when we're 'on mic' we aren't just powerful, we're vulnerable. Microphones can destroy careers as quickly as make them. The microphone is inextricable from our need to be heard.

In the hierarchy of foods, snacks are deemed trivial – perhaps even childish – especially in contrast to meals, which are seen as substantial and necessary. The multiple aisles devoted to sweet and savoury treats in supermarkets, and the availability of snacks even at places like home improvement and department stores, speak to the popularity of snacking. But the ubiquity of snacks is relatively new and not common to all countries.

Tutte le culture hanno un'idea del bello e dell'arte, ma non tutte la elaborano in forma teorica consapevole ed esplicita. Il Medioevo - dopo secoli in cui è stato trattato solo come periodo buio e barbaro - è stato riscoperto come un'epoca ricca di riflessioni sulla bellezza, sul piacere estetico, sul gusto, sul bello naturale e artistico, sui rapporti tra l'arte e le altre attività umane.

Virginia Heffernan “melds the personal with the increasingly universal in a highly informative analysis of what the Internet is—and can be. A thoroughly engrossing examination of the Internet’s past, present, and future” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) from one of the best living...

A deep dive into the joy and power of personal pleasures, quirks, obsessions and bad taste, from zine royalty, Ione Gamble. Most of us consider taste to be a primal instinct. We like the things we like and everything we choose to consume, covet or loathe in our day-to-day lives is dictated by...

Kant ataca por primera vez el problema estético, y aunque sus ideas fundamentales acerca del arte y la belleza se hallan sistemáticamente expuestas en su obra posterior, la Crítica del Juicio, tienen, sin embargo, las Observaciones sobre el sentimiento de lo bello y lo sublime cierto interés para el conocimiento de los orígenes de la estética kantiana. Pero sobre todo constituyen, una serie de delicadas ocurrencias, de certeras observaciones, de agudas críticas, sin el aparato solemne de la exposición didáctica.

Le dernier opus de "Cosmos" explore les arts, la poésie et la musique : ces créations humaines qui s'allient à la nature pour permettre à chacun d'expérimenter le sublime. Des origines préhistoriques à la prédominance chrétienne, de l'art bourgeois de la Renaissance jusqu'aux créations contemporaines, Michel Onfray ébauche une contre-histoire des arts, citant Mallarmé, André Breton, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Duchamp, Bachelard, Georges Rouquier ou Pierre Soulages. L'art change de paradigme, et si la notion cardinale du beau disparaît, elle laisse la place au sublime, ce sentiment d'étonnement radical et subjugué qui peut réunir en un instant l'homme et le cosmos.

Beauty, Meaning, and Expression: Exploring the Foundations of Aesthetic Theory takes you on a journey through the history of aesthetics, from Plato and Aristotle to the digital age. This comprehensive yet accessible exploration shows how theories of beauty, art, and creativity have shaped culture, politics, and daily life for centuries. Discover how Enlightenment thinkers like Hume, Burke, and Kant defined taste and the sublime, how Romanticism elevated the artist as a visionary genius, and how modernism and postmodernism revolutionized art by challenging tradition and questioning universal...

Qu'est-ce que l'art ? Comment s'est-il constitué et défini à travers l'histoire ? Quels rapports entretient-il avec la philosophie ? Pour la première fois, l'éditeur des savoirs les Presses Universitaires de France et la maison de disques culturels de référence Frémeaux & Associés s'associent pour proposer des cours particuliers sur l'histoire philosophique des arts et des discours sur l'art, conçus et présentés par Carole Talon-Hugon, spécialiste française de l'approche philosophique de l'histoire de l'art.

From the joyous communal connections fostered through shared auditory experience to the devastating impact of noise pollution in the deep sea, musician and author Damon Krukowski urges readers to reconsider the significance of sound and its role in both our personal and collective well-being. He looks despairingly at how the multipronged efforts of urban dwellers to mitigate city noise have led to increased isolation, loss of community, and a sense of physical detachment from one’s surroundings.