While Tolstoy may be best remembered as the talented Russian author of such monumentally great works as "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina", he also wrote prolifically in essay format on various subjects. In this volume Tolstoy turns his attention to the study of aesthetics and art in all its forms. Based on fifteen years of research, "What is Art?" is Tolstoy's intellectual exposition into answering the titular question. Rich with criticism for his...

18th century German philosopher, poet, and playwright, Friedrich Schiller began writing while he was in the army. Commanded to stop by his superiors he deserted the army, moved to another country, and began writing under a false name. Schiller was a deep-thinker on ethics and aesthetics. His beliefs held that beauty is not just an aesthetic experience, but that it is also connected with goodness. An essay on aesthetics first published in 1794, "On...

It is remarkably appropriate that this work on aesthetics should have been written by George Santayana, who is probably the most brilliant philosophic writer and the philosopher with the strongest sense of beauty since Plato. It is not a dry metaphysical treatise, as works on aesthetics so often are, but is itself a fascinating document: as much a revelation of the beauty of language as of the concept of beauty. This unabridged reproduction of the...

Published in 1913, Thomas Mann's Death in Venice is one of the most widely read novellas in any language. In the 1970s, Benjamin Britten adapted it into an opera, and Lucchino Visconti turned it into a successful film. Reading these works from a philosophical perspective, Philip Kitcher connects the predicament of the novella's central character to Western thought's most compelling questions. In Mann's story, the author Gustav von Aschenbach becomes...

The legions of Bob Dylan fans know that Dylan is not just a great composer, writer, and performer, but a great thinker as well. In Bob Dylan and Philosophy, eighteen philosophers analyze Dylan's ethical positions, political commitments, views on gender and sexuality, and his complicated and controversial attitudes toward religion. All phases of Dylan's output are covered, from his early acoustic folk ballads and anthem-like protest songs to his controversial...

Si es que existen las historias y los relatos es porque, gracias a sus facultades imaginativas, los seres humanos han sabido crear dimensiones alternativas dentro de la amplia superficie de realidad que habitan. La fascinación por las narraciones, en todo tipo de lenguaje, resulta un foco de permanente atracción para la mente, la que a su vez no puede dejar de preguntarse por esta asombrosa capacidad. Es justamente aquella visión curiosa, novedosa...

Crítica del poder. Fases en la reflexión de una Teoría Crítica de la sociedad es la obra que permitió la consagración de su autor en la primera línea de la filosofía alemana contemporánea y fue el pistoletazo de salida de un brillante itinerario intelectual que ha terminado llevando a Honneth nada menos que a dirigir el célebre Institut für Socialforschung sito en la Goethe Universität frankfurtiana desde el año 2001 y a intervenir, apoyado...