Art and Engagement

Arnold Berleant is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Long Island University and the author of Aesthetics of Environment (Temple).

• Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Aesthetics and Experience 1. Experience and Theory in Aesthetics 2. The Unity of Aesthetic Experience Part II: Engagement in the Arts 3. The Viewer in the Landscape 4. Architecture as Environmental Design 5. The Reader's Word 6. Musical Generation 7. Dance as Performance Part III: Art and Reality 8. Cinematic Reality 9. The Realities of Art 10. Epilogue: Art and the End of Aesthetics Notes Index

"Berleant has written the primer for a new aesthetics.... Readers will be delighted by the hundreds of thoughtful and pertinent examples form neolithic to contemporary and from non-Western as well as Western sources.... [Y]ou cannot help but admire the breadth of research and intellectual courage required to bring such a big book to light."-The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism "Art and Engagement presents a forceful argument for the originality and power of aesthetic perception. Demolishing the conceptual barriers erected by limiting Western traditions, the book discloses the condition of engagement involved in our most effective aesthetic encounters and suggests a new direction for aesthetic inquiry."-American Society for Aesthetics Newsletter"[Berleant] brings his full repertoire of knowledge to bear on this most interesting of problems: just how, precisely, do we derive aesthetic reaction from confrontation with a work of art? ...This is a closely studied argument beginning with theoretical studies into the idea of 'engagement'...appropriate for those interested in its application to aesthetic inquiry."-Art Times