Aesthetic Dimensions of Modern Philosophy

Andrew Bowie is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and German at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published widely in philosophy, as well as on musical and literary topics. His publications include German Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. Bowie studied Modern Languages at the University of Cambridge and attained a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of East Anglia. He was a DAAD scholar at the Free University in Berlin, Professor of Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University, Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow in Philosophy at Tübingen University, and twice Leverhulme Major Research Fellow in Philosophy. Bowie is also a jazz saxophonist.

• Introduction1: Grounding the Subject2: The Nature of the Subject3: The Aesthetic Demand4: The Art of Language and the Language of Art5: The Value of the Aesthetic6: The World of Art7: Art, Commodity, and MetaphysicsConclusion

Andrew Bowie's Aesthetic Dimensions of Modern Philosophy is a tour-de-force and astonishingly wide-ranging exploration of the idea of art as a form of philosophical thought. It is also as compelling a defense of that idea as any written; erudite, original, lucid, fair-minded, and wise. It is as well a deeply thoughtful reflection on the great "dissonance" in modernity between the spectacular success of modern natural science and technology, on the one hand, and the ever more impoverished sources of meaning on the other. This is an invaluable contribution to our attempts to understand ourselves in this "destitute" time.