Florian Klinger is Associate Professor in Germanic Studies and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Theory of Form: Gerhard Richter and Art in the Pragmatist Age (2022).

• PrefaceONE. The Unsettling 1. The Thought of Aesthetic Distinction2. Life Form and Settledness3. Aesthetic Unsettling4. The Use of Unsettling5. The Account TWO. Accounting for Ourselves 1. Determinacy2. The Original Scene of Self-Determination3. Form as Answer: Hegel's Conception of the Aesthetic as Determinacy4. Form as Question: A Conception of the Aesthetic as Indeterminacy5. The Task of a Unified AccountingTHREE. A Three-Way Capacity1. Rationality and Indeterminacy2. A Rational Capacity3. Failed Attempts at Conceiving Indeterminacy4. Indeterminacy as Part of Our Form5. Indeterminacy as SuchFOUR. Logical Account of Aesthetic Action: Aspectual Irresolution1. The Concept of Aesthetic Action2. Distinction through Aspectual Irresolution3. Internal Unity in Crisis4. Aesthetic Indeterminacy5. External Unity with Action at LargeFIVE. Material Account of Aesthetic Action: Bond without Terms1. Logical and Material Accounting2. Bond without Terms3. Aesthetic Interaction4. Life as Such5. The Question of Who We AreSIX. Aesthetic Transformation 1. Aesthetic Action as Transformation2. Performance without Resources3. The Work of Aspectual Irresolution4. Transformation That Includes Its Terms5. The Aesthetic SelfSEVEN. The Use of the Aesthetic 1. The Political as Example2. Our Form as Political Task3. Tino Sehgal: Genus Politics4. Kara Walker: Politics of Difference5. Mazen Kerbaj: Politics of Life as SuchNotesBibliographyIndex

"With ingenious, stunning readings, Klinger breaks new ground in aesthetics. This is a philosophy of art with which thinkers and scholars will contend for years to come."—Henry W. Pickford, Duke University "Aesthetic Action offers a highly original and substantial outline of a new understanding of aesthetics. This is an important and rigorous contribution to emerging conversations in philosophy, of highest interest for readers interested in giving an account of contemporary art."—Rüdiger Campe, Yale University "Klinger gives us an entirely new way of understanding the indeterminacy of our encounters with art. In his incisive analyses he offers a truly fresh view of art, one that opens the fields of interaction each work creates."—Niklaus Largier, University of California, Berkeley "This book rethinks action through aesthetics and aesthetics through action, providing us with a new insight into the kind of unsettling that the aesthetic is and affords."—María del Rosario Acosta López, University of California, Riverside "Compellingly argued, this ground-breaking book culminates with a series of helpful applications involving case studies of such challenging, contemporary artists as Tino Sehgal, Kara Walker, and Mazen Kerbaj. A dazzling achievement, this book will surely prompt renewed interest in contemporary aesthetics. Essential."—J. G. Moore, CHOICE