Title Highlight: Encyclopedia of Aesthetics

Encyclopedia of aesthetics
Located in Reference, Main Floor REF: BH65 E53 1998
4 volumes, no illustrations, index at the end of the 4th volume.

People often hear the word “aesthetics” but have little idea what this philosophical concept means. The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics fills that gap with over 600 entries written by scholars across a broad spectrum of thought, from philosophers and art historians to anthropologists and legal theorists. The definition of aesthetics used by encyclopedia is that it is a: “…critical reflection on art, culture and nature…” In case this isn’t clear, the book helpfully opens with a history of the development of aesthetics. It is an 18th century concept developed in Western Europe, although its concepts apply to any art anywhere. The first work to fully describe this new field of philosophical endeavor was Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790).

Although aesthetics is linked to art, that term is broadly defined by the authors and entries include not just visual arts, but also written works, music and dance. Included are short biographies of aesthetic philosophers such as Plato, Kant and Heidegger; some artists, writers and musicians like Louis Armstrong, John Cage, Edgar Allan Poe and Thornton Wilder; cultural topics such as Feminist aesthetics and Queer Theory, as well as the historical aesthetics of eras including Byzantium, Ancient Greece, the Harlem Renaissance, Roman Empire and Post-World War II America and the geographical aesthetics in places like the Caribbean, China, India, the Islamic world and Latin America. This work is a useful introduction to an unusual topic.