Essays on the history of aesthetics

"In the past twenty-five years interest in aesthetics and the philosophy of art has accelerated to a remarkable degree. A philosophical discipline that in the 1950s seemed to many a dreary enterprise, idling in the doldrums, has now become one of the most actively pursued. The present collection of essays on the history of aesthetics and the philosophy of art is both a symptom of that revival, and a contribution to its continuation. This collection of essays, from the first half-century of the Journal of the History of Ideas, reflects this growth in interest; they will be of value to philosophers and others in related areas for their intrinsic historical interest, and for the stimulus to further speculation that the history of philosophy has always provided to philosophy itself."--BOOK JACKET. "The essays have been organised into four sections: general overview, antiquity, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The appearance of these seminal essays in one volume will further encourage both the discipline of aesthetics in general, and its history in particular."--Jacket.