The Concept of the BeautifulThe main purpose of this book is to explicate the problematic relationship between the heterogeneity of what is experienced as beautiful and the homogeneity of the conceptualization of that experience, or attempt at such a conceptualization in the era of modern philosophy. While the heterogeneity of what is experienced as beautiful was permitted, and indeed celebrated, in the dominant ancient conception--for example, in the Symposium and Phaedrus of Plato--the need for homogenization in the later appropriation of Plato and in the Enlightenment period relegated the beautiful to the privileged domain of artworks. In her analysis Agnes Heller provides a unique and significant emphasis on the original 'life content' of the experience of the beautiful, which becomes lost in the modern system of the arts. This book details the history of the concept of the beautiful, starting with what Agnes Heller distinguishes between the 'warm' metaphysics of beauty and the 'cold' one--inspired by Plato's Janus-faced relationship to beauty--and ending with a fragmented yet hopeful vision propagated by Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno, among others. In between these two historical parentheses--the metaphysical Plato on one hand and the post-metaphysical Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Adorno on the other hand--lay a plenitude of figures and intellectual developments, all of which contributed to the demise of the concept of the beautiful in the Western metaphysical tradition. The most important of these figures and developments are examined in this book. |
Contents
Acknowledgments | vii |
Preface | ix |
Editors Essay | xiii |
What Went Wrong with the Concept of the Beautiful? | xxxix |
Chapter 01 The Platonic Concept of the Beautiful | 1 |
Chapter 02 Enlightenment or the ThisWorldly Concept of the Beautiful | 27 |
Chapter 03 Kants Concept of the Beautiful | 61 |
Chapter 04 Departure and Arrival | 81 |
Chapter 05 The Fragmentation of the Concept of the Beautiful | 111 |
155 | |
159 | |
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Common terms and phrases
absolute spirit Adorno Agnes Heller Alcibiades artistic artwork ascension autonomy barbarism beautiful art beautiful soul beautiful things beauty of nature becomes Benjamin Birth of Tragedy Burke character Critique of Judgment daimon deconstruction desire Diotima discussion dream end of art Enlightenment Enlightenment concept Erôs eternal everyday existential existential choice experience faculties feeling felicity finitude freedom Freud Greek harmony Hegel Hegelian Heidegger Heller's homogeneity Hong and Hong human Ibid idea ideal immortality individual interpretation judgment of taste Kant Kant’s Kantian Kierkegaard Kristeller Lukács metaphysics modern moral mourning natural beauty negation Nietzsche notion object old narrative one’s passion Penia perfect person Phaedrus philosophy of art Plato Plotinus poet Poros Princeton University Press promise of happiness pure judgment radical refined remains repetition says seducer self-sufficient semblance sense sensual Socrates Søren Kierkegaard soul source of beauty speaks standard of taste story sublime Symposium tion tradition trans transience true truth ugly understanding