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Art and Its Significance

An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory
  • Edited by: Brian Elliott and Stephen David Ross
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2026

About this book

A topical, art-practice focused anthology that caters to diverse interests in aesthetics.

Art and Its Significance is a highly engaging and readable anthology, which ranges from ancient Greek writing on epic and theater to contemporary issues relating to how art is impacted by augmented reality technologies. This collection offers a firm foundation in classic and modern aesthetics by a diverse range of authors from Plato and Aristotle to Judith Butler, Jacques Rancière, and Mary Devereaux. Its thematic organization allows readers to focus on particular topics and genres and make connections between different approaches to a wide range of artistic expression. Each article is introduced with details on the author and a summary of the main arguments offered in the text. Additional section introductions help the reader to understanding how the grouped texts relate to one another. This anthology does not assume prior knowledge of philosophy or aesthetics and is well suited to college course use.

Author / Editor information

Contributor: Brian Elliott Brian Elliott is a faculty member in the Philosophy Department at Oregon State University. His publications include Benjamin for Architects; Natural Catastrophe: Climate Change and Neoliberal Governance; and A Child’s Place in Nature: Towards a Pedagogy for the Anthropocene. --- Contributor: Stephen David Ross Stephen David Ross is Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He is the author of several books, including The Gift of Beauty: The Good as Art; The Gift of Truth: Gathering the Good; The Gift of Touch: Embodying the Good; and the editor of Art and Its Significance: An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory, Third Edition, all published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"This is the best wide-ranging collection of philosophical writings on art that I've found, and I would highly recommend it to other professors teaching undergraduate or graduate classes in aesthetics or related courses." — Andy Amato, University of Texas at Dallas

"Art and Its Significance is wide-ranging, covering texts from the history of Western philosophy from Plato through contemporary thinkers. I like that there are so many different options in the text. That variety and diversity frees professors to design courses in a variety of ways, using the 'same' textbook to support a number of different courses. I would recommend (and have recommended) the text to others for use in their classes." — Anne J. Mamary, Monmouth College, Illinois

Topics

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    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    vii
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    Editor’s Introduction, Fourth Edition

    xiii
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  • I Reality, Experience, and Theater
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    Section Introduction

    1
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    Republic III (Steph. 386–402; c. 375 BCE)

    3
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    Poetics 1–9 (Steph. 1447–1452; c. 350 BCE)

    19
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    “Psychical Distance” as a Factor in Art and as an Aesthetic Principle (1912)

    29
    Edward Bullough
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    Modern Theater Is Epic Theater (1930)

    39
    Bertolt Brecht
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    Art as Experience (1934)

    47
    John Dewey
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    The Artworld (1964)

    59
    Arthur Danto
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    Augmented Reality and Theatre (2024)

    71
    E. B. Hunter
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  • II Music, Emotion, and Dance
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    Section Introduction

    85
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    The Birth of Tragedy (1872)

    87
    Friedrich Nietzsche
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    What Is Art? (1898)

    95
    Leo Tolstoy
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    Night Music (1929)

    101
    Theodor Adorno
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    Feeling and Form (1953)

    107
    Susanne Langer
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    Experimental Music (1958)

    117
    John Cage
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    Four Criteria of Electronic Music (1971)

    123
    Karlheinz Stockhausen
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    The Politics of the Body: Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater (1990)

    133
    David W. Price
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  • III Taste, Imagination, and Literature
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    Section Introduction

    143
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    Of the Standard of Taste (1757)

    145
    David Hume
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    Critique of Judgement (1790)

    155
    Immanuel Kant
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    The Writer and Fantasizing (1908)

    171
    Sigmund Freud
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    A Room of One’s Own (1929)

    179
    Virginia Woolf
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    Psychology and Literature (1930)

    191
    Carl Jung
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    Narrative Emotions: Beckett’s Genealogy of Love (1988)

    203
    Martha Nussbaum
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  • IV History, Interpretation, and Painting
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    Section Introduction

    217
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    Philosophy of Fine Art (1818–1829)

    219
    G. W. F. Hegel
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    On the Spiritual in Art (1912)

    229
    Wassily Kandinsky
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    Suprematism (1927)

    241
    Kasimir Malevich
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    Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art (1936)

    249
    Piet Mondrian
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    Cézanne’s Doubt (1945)

    261
    Maurice Merleau-Ponty
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    Seven Seals of Affirmation (1973)

    273
    Michel Foucault
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    Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism? (1983)

    279
    Jean-François Lyotard
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  • V Politics, Power, and Film
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    Section Introduction

    289
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    The Method of Making a Workers’ Film (1925)

    291
    Sergei Eisenstein
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    Cult of Distraction: On Berlin Picture-Houses (1926)

    295
    Siegfried Kracauer
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    The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (1936)

    301
    Walter Benjamin
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    The Aesthetic Dimension (1977)

    317
    Herbert Marcuse
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    Beauty and Evil: The Case of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1998)

    323
    Mary Devereaux
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    The Pensive Image (2008)

    337
    Jacques Rancière
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  • VI Gender, Difference, and Photography
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    Section Introduction

    349
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    Brief Historical Sketch of the Invention of the Art (1844)

    351
    Henry Fox Talbot
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    The Future of Photographic Technique (1927)

    359
    László Moholy-Nagy
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    Any Theory of the “Subject” Has Always Been Appropriated by the “Masculine” (1974)

    363
    Luce Irigaray
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    In Plato’s Cave (1977)

    373
    Susan Sontag
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    Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1980)

    385
    Roland Barthes
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    Torture and the Ethics of Photography (2007)

    391
    Judith Butler
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    The Coming of Age: Cindy Sherman, Feminism, and Art History (2014)

    405
    Abigail Solomon-Godeau
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  • VII Culture, Collecting, and Architecture
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    Section Introduction

    415
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    The Lamp of Memory (1849)

    419
    John Ruskin
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    Towards a New Architecture (1923)

    427
    Le Corbusier
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    Learning from Las Vegas (1972)

    437
    Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour
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    The Invention of Africa (1988)

    445
    V. Y. Mudimbe
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    On Collecting Art and Culture (1988)

    453
    James Clifford
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    Letter to Peter Eisenman (1990)

    465
    Jacques Derrida
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    Rethinking Historiography and Ethnography: Surrealism’s Intellectual Legacy (2017)

    473
    Natalya Lusty
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    Embodied and Existential Wisdom in Architecture: The Thinking Hand (2017)

    487
    Juhani Pallasmaa
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    Credits

    499
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
February 1, 2026
eBook ISBN:
9798855805482
Edition:
Fourth Edition
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
518
Tables:
4
View content
https://doi.org/10.1515/9798855805482
eBook ISBN: 9798855805482
Keywords for this book
Art and philosophy; Introduction to aesthetics; Philosophy of art; What is art philosophy; Plato on Art; Aristotle on art; Art and augmented reality; Philosophy of beauty and art; Understanding art with philosophy
Audience(s) for this book
For universities and colleges of further and higher education
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