The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays

These essays explore Hans-Georg Gadamer's writings on art and literature in English.

Hans-Georg Gadamer (Author), Nicholas Walker (Translated by), Robert Bernasconi (Edited by)

9780521339537, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 February 1987

220 pages
21 x 13.7 x 1.5 cm, 0.255 kg

This volume explores some of the more important of Hans-Georg Gadamer's extensive writings on art and literature. The principal text included is 'The Relevance of the Beautiful', Gadamer's most sustained treatment of philosophical aesthetics. The eleven other essays focus particularly on the challenge issued by modern painting and literature to our customary ideas of art, and in turn revitalize our understanding of it. Gadamer demonstrates the continuing importance of such concepts as imitation, truth, symbol, and play for our appreciation of contemporary art, and thereby establishes its continuity with the Western tradition. The essays here are not technical and are readily accessible to the beginning student and the general reader. The collection as a whole serves to illustrate the practice of hermeneutics and to introduce Gadamer's thought. Robert Bernasconi provides an introduction clarifying the central aims of the essays and their relations to Gadamer's major work, Truth and Method, and to the philosophy of art since Kant. A bibliography of Gadamer's writings available in English is also included.

Foreword
Editor's introduction
Sources
Part I: The Relevance of the Beautiful: Part II: Essays: 1. The festive character of theater
2. Composition and interpretation
3. Image and gesture
4. The speechless image
5. Art and imitation
6. On the contribution of poetry to the search for truth
7. Poetry and mimesis
8. The play of art
9. Philosophy and poetry
10. Aesthetic and religious experience
Appendix: intuition and vividness
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: aesthetics [HPN]