Selected Writings on Aesthetics / / Johann Gottfried Herder; Gregory Moore.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter PUP eBook-Package 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Herder, Johann Gottfried,
• TeilnehmendeR: Moore, Gregory,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2009]; ©2006
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

A seminal figure in the philosophy of history, culture, and language, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) also produced some of the most important and original works in the history of aesthetic theory. A student of Kant, he spent much of his life striving to reconcile the opposing poles of Enlightenment thought represented by his early mentors. His ideas influenced Hegel, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Dilthey, J. S. Mill, and Goethe. This book presents most of Herder's important writings on aesthetics, including the main sections of one of his major untranslated works, Kritische Wälder (Critical Forests). These notes, essays, and treatises, the majority of which appear here in English for the first time, show this idiosyncratic thinker both deeply rooted in the controversies of his day and pointing the way to future developments in aesthetics. Chosen to reflect the extent and diversity of Herder's concerns, the texts cover such topics as the psychology and physiology of aesthetic perception, the classification of the arts, taste, Shakespeare, the classical tradition, and the relationship between art and morality. Few thinkers have reflected so sensitively and productively on the cultural, historical, anthropological, ethical, and theological dimensions of art and the creative process. With this book, the importance of aesthetics to the evolution and texture of Herder's own thought, as well as his profound contribution to that discipline, comes fully into view.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note on the Texts -- Introduction -- Is the Beauty of the Body a Herald of the Beauty of the Soul? -- A Monument to Baumgarten -- Critical Forests, or Reflections on the Art and Science of the Beautiful -- Critical Forests -- Shakespeare -- The Causes of Sunken Taste among the Different Peoples in Whom It Once Blossomed -- On the Influence of the Belles Lettres on the Higher Sciences -- Does Painting or Music Have a Greater Effect? -- On Image, Poetry, and Fable -- Editor's Notes -- Bibliography -- Index