Lexington Books
Pages: 220
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-0-7391-7047-2 • Hardback • January 2012 • $120.00 • (£92.00)
978-0-7391-7048-9 • eBook • February 2012 • $114.00 • (£88.00)
Agnes Heller, born in 1929 in Budapest, is an influential and internationally recognized philosopher. For her work in political philosophy and ethics she has been awarded the Lessing Prize (Hamburg, 1981), the Hannah Arendt Prize (Bremen, 1995), the Sonning Prize (Copenhagen, 2005), and the Goethe Medal (Weimar, 2010). She is Professor Emeritus at the New School for Social Research in New York.
Marcia Morgan is assistant professor in philosophy at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania and lectures regularly on invitation in Europe and the United States. In 2010 she was awarded the Edna Hong Research Scholarship from the Kierkegaard Library of St. Olaf College for her forthcoming book on Kierkegaard.
Preface
Editor’s Essay
The Concept of the Beautiful, by Agnes Heller
Introduction: What Went Wrong with the Concept of the Beautiful?
Chapter 1: The Platonic Concept of the Beautiful
Chapter 2: Enlightenment, or the This-Worldly Concept of the Beautiful
Chapter 3: Kant's Concept of the Beautiful
Chapter 4: Departure and Arrival: Hegel's Adventure
Chapter 5: The Fragmentation of the Concept of the Beautiful
Agnes Heller's voice resounds in this pedagogic journey through the history of philosophical conceptions of the beautiful. Her choice of philosophical theories follows a continental strain, from Plato through Hume, Burke, Kant, and Hegel, to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin and Adorno. Her interpretations are original, offering us new insight to her philosophy as a whole and into a world that many claim has no beauty left within it. She engages the pessimistic conclusion deeply but ultimately surpasses it, persuasively and without sentimentality.
— Lydia Goehr, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Columbia University
Heller’s text is an impressive interpretation of a very particular slice of aesthetic theory. . . . The text is especially oriented towards specialists in philosophical aesthetics or critical theory, and thus would be a welcome addition to any academic library. Those working in theological aesthetics may. . . find great value in its presentation, particularly in the introductory essay by Morgan.
— Catholic Books Review