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It has been the author’s conviction since Kant after Duchamp (MIT Press, 1996) that Marcel Duchamp’s readymades have forced the cultural critic who takes them seriously to rethink the “concept” of art from the ground up, but in such a way that continuity with the art of the past would not be jettisoned. The crucible for this conviction is whether the appreciation of post-Duchamp art is still “aesthetic” or not. Aesthetics at Large argues that it is, that it must be, and that there is no better account of aesthetic judgment than the one given by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment. Taking it from there, the book seeks to offer a contemporary update of Kantian aesthetics and its consequences for ethics and politics. The book’s guiding thread is the thesis that Kant’s sensus communis is as relevant to the appreciation of art today as it was to the admiration of beautiful nature in 1790.

Artistic License aims at analyzing the right of copyright, given its essential underlying principles in the law, and its relation to contemporary artistic practice. As several legal theorists argue, though the role of copying in artistic practice has evolved, copyright law has failed to keep step, producing an imbalance that puts the law at odds with the domain it is meant to protect. Centrally, Hick works to reconcile growing practices of artistic appropriation and related attitudes about artistic "taking" with developed views of artists’ rights, both legal and moral. Hick examines the philosophical challenges presented by the role of intellectual property in the art world and vice versa. Using real-life examples of artists who have incorporated copyrighted works into their art, he explores issues of artistic creation and the nature of infringement through aesthetic analysis and legal and critical theory. Ultimately, Artistic License provides a critical and systematic analysis of the key philosophical issues that underlie copyright policy, rethinking the relationship between artist, artwork, and the law.

Based upon his reading of the contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy on sense, aesthetics and ethics, in this book John Paul Ricco argues that separation is the archi-spatiality or spaciousness of existence; that aesthetics is the technique and praxis for sustaining a standing in this groundless ground; and that the ethical is the decision of this stance, and of partaking and sharing in this scene of separated spacing with other people and things. By discussing various works of modern and contemporary art, literature and philosophy including Robert Rauschenberg's Erased DeKooning Drawing to Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ candy piles and paper stacks, Marguerite Duras’ The Malady of Death, and Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, Ricco theorizes various ways in which shared-separation—as the source and sense of existence—is aesthetically presented and sustained as the scene of ethical decision between us. In its three-part division, the book begins with anonymous scenes of drawing and erasing, intrusion and encounter (Part One: “Name No One”), then moves to what are theorized as “naked images” and scenes staged by outstretched and extended bodies in their shared naked exposure to the outside and non-knowledge (Part Two: “Naked”), and then to scenes of exposure to the anteriority of loss, withdrawal and retreat in photography, and amongst the offering of and partaking in, the infinite expenditure of readymade things (Part Three: “Neutral and Unbecoming”).

In An Education in Judgment, philosopher D. N. Rodowick makes the definitive case for a philosophical humanistic education aimed at the cultivation of a life guided by both self-reflection and interpersonal exchange. Such a life is an education in judgment, the moral capacity to draw conclusions alone and with others, and in letting one’s own judgments be answerable to the potentially contrasting judgments of others. Thinking, for Rodowick, is an art we practice with and learn from each other all the time. In taking this approach, Rodowick follows the lead of Hannah Arendt, who made judgment the cornerstone of her conception of community. What is important for Rodowick, as for Arendt, is the cultivation of “free relations,” in which we allow our judgments to be affected and transformed by those of others, creating “an ever-widening fabric of intersubjective moral consideration.” That is a fragile fabric, certainly, but one that Rodowick argues is worth pursuing, caring for, and preserving. This original work thinks with and beyond Arendt about the importance of the humanities and what “the humanities” amounts to beyond the walls of the university.

This book attempts to stage at the level of thinking and writing an improvised performance that begins and ends with nothing but nevertheless reveals a multitude of unexpected things while it runs its course. Covering a broad range of improvisatory practises from the world of free improvisation, through literature and dance, to the showbiz glitz of Jimi Hendrix and Cyndi Lauper, the aim is to see what happens when philosophical ideas are made to properly engage with the real contingency of performativity. The result is a radically expanded field of what counts as improvisation and, indeed, what counts as philosophy.

Though many well-known German philosophers have devoted considerable attention to music and its aesthetics, surprisingly few of their writings on the subject have been translated into English. This book aims to fill this important gap for musical scholars and students alike with this compelling guide to the musical discourse of ten of the most important German philosophers, from Kant to Adorno. The book includes contributions from a renowned group of ten scholars, including some of today's most prominent German thinkers, all of whom are specialists in the writers they treat. Each chapter consists of a short biographical sketch of the philosopher concerned, a summary of his writings on aesthetics, and finally a detailed exploration of his thoughts on music.

New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre argues that contemporary television series, especially from Twin Peaks onwards, are significant as both works of art and as meditations in political philosophy. Offering close readings of a wide variety of shows including The Wire, Justified, and Weeds, among others, New Television also engages throughout with European and Anglophone philosophers, such as Stanley Cavell, Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, and Martin Heidegger. In addition to showing how these shows link up to elements of aesthetic modernism and to portions of modern political philosophy, New Television constructs a framework of the genre of new television, a genre that is revealed as having deep political implications, where the world is presented as entirely devoid of any source of normative authority. At the same time, the genre consistently offers one exception to this normative collapse: the family. Though often portrayed in radically non-traditional ways, it is the family, with its many permutations and imperfections, that becomes the site for an exploration of potential political renewal and of the possibility of politics altogether. In this way, New Television proceeds as both a study in aesthetics as well as in political philosophy.

Improvisation is usually either lionized as an ecstatic experience of being in the moment or disparaged as the thoughtless recycling of clichés. Eschewing both of these orthodoxies, this book ranges across the arts—from music to theater, dance to comedy—and considers the improvised dimension of philosophy itself in order to elaborate an innovative concept of improvisation. The author turns to many of the major thinkers within continental philosophy—including Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Theodor Adorno, Immanuel Kant, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze—offering readings of their reflections on improvisation and exploring improvisational elements within their thinking. The author's wry, humorous style offers an antidote to the frequently overheated celebration of freedom and community that characterizes most writing on the subject. Expanding the field of what counts as improvisation, this book will be welcomed by anyone striving to comprehend the creative process.

Taking the demand “know thyself" to heart, Philosophy, Writing, and the Character of Thought argues that philosophy is best understood as an activity of writing, and that writerly choices influence its character in three principal ways. Reflecting on a range of texts from Plato, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein to Hegel, Butler, and de Beauvoir, the book claims that writing not only informs how thought develops, but also shapes the relations that texts have with readers. Moreover, the quantity and quality of one’s writing partially determines the transformative impact that one’s work can have on historical situations. The book thus insists that philosophy’s relation to writing must be at least as self-conscious as its relation to common opinion and established norms, and Philosophy, Writing, and the Character of Thought offers itself as an example of a thoroughly deliberate approach to philosophical prose. Considering each of the ways in which writing influences philosophy, the book explores genres like the aphorism, dialogue, and essay, as well as logical-rhetorical operations like the example, irony, and quotation. In dialogue with authors such as Benjamin, Cavell, Emerson, and Lukacs, it tries to revitalize philosophical writing, arguing that philosophy cannot fulfill its intellectual and cultural promise if it keeps to professional articles and academic prose. Instead, philosophy must embrace writing as an essential, creative activity, and deliberately reform how it approaches its subject matter, readership, and the evolving social practices of reading and reflection.

Between present and past, visible and invisible, and sensation and idea, there is resonance—so philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued and so this book explores. Holding the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé, the paintings of Paul Cézanne, the prose of Marcel Proust, and the music of Claude Debussy under Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological light, it offers interpretations of some of these artists’ masterworks, in turn articulating a new perspective on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. More than merely recovering Merleau-Ponty’s thought, the text thinks according to it. First examining these artists in relation to noncoincidence—as silence in poetry, depth in painting, memory in literature, and rhythm in music—it moves through an array of their artworks toward some of Merleau-Ponty’s most exciting themes: our bodily relationship to the world and the dynamic process of expression. The book closes with an examination of synesthesia as an intertwining of internal and external realms and a call, finally, for philosophical inquiry as a mode of artistic expression. Structured like a piece of music itself, the book offers contexts in which to approach art, philosophy, and the resonance between them.

This book develops a framework for thinking about art through innovative readings of some of the most important philosophical writing on the subject by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. The author exposes new layers in their texts and theories while also marking their limits. By doing so, his aim is to show that philosophy needs to attend to art directly. Consequently, the author also addresses a wide range of works of art, including paintings by Raphael, Monet, and Klee; Shakespeare's comedies; and the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler, and Tan Dun. Through these interpretations, he puts forth a new elaboration of the philosophy of art.

Two Thumbs Up draws on David Hume’s famous 1757 essay “Of the Standard of Taste” to examine the nature of aesthetic appreciation and the workings of critical advice. I begin by considering gustatory taste and asking whether it is educable. Hume thought some individuals—true judges or ideal critics—are specially positioned to understand art. He believed their converging verdicts would constitute the objective standard we seek. After examining and supplementing the set of traits Hume ascribes to ideal critics, I assess the likelihood of irresolvable disagreement within this group. Following Frank Sibley, I accord aesthetic qualities a central role here. The ascription of aesthetic qualities to works of art is often contestable. I weigh possible resolutions of a sample dispute and propose a Suitability Requirement to address the threat critical disagreement poses to realism in aesthetics. Not every critic can appropriately judge every work of art. Acknowledging the developmental arc of critical taste, I take up the practical problem of identifying the Humean critics among us. I also consider how critics shape the taste of the amateurs they advise and probe an analogy comparing the friends we can make to the artworks we can come to like. A closing chapter compares and contrasts the appreciation of nature with the appreciation of art, takes up appreciative puzzles that arise for the arts of literature, film, and architecture, investigates complications that identity politics pose for critical practice, and considers the challenges of bad art and mean critics.